Pennsylvania state code is not online (apparently they are the only state in this condition, according to one site I went to), so I can't say what I found there.
Chapter 60a in WV has several clauses pertaining to age of those consuming alcohol. Twice it exempts blood relatives and spouses from the penalties for providing alcohol to persons under 21, once it does not. In one section it merely states that no alcohol is to be sold to those under 21, but in another it states that it is a misdemeanor for persons under 21 to purchase or consume alcohol. If a person under 21 were to consume the alcohol in the home, it would require a violation of the 4th Amendment to the US Constitution to determine this, provided such consumption was not done in plain view from the street or another building. Frankly, I'd consult a lawyer in WV concerning this before I made a presumption either way. The law (to my non-lawyerly eyes) is self-contradictory.
MD appears to outright forbid anyone under the age of 21 from even consuming the stuff under all circumstances.
Interestingly, while it does appear that the original complaint about Indiana is correct, the IN law contains a curious exception in that "family" (i.e. homemade) beverages are not covered by the state law at all.
So, as I said, the laws vary state to state and obviously some states aren't as cool as the one I live in. {grin} Next time I hear someone around here (MN) complaining about our bassackwards liquor laws I think I'll mention this.
From what I've heard these sorts of rules don't really exist in most of Europe at all. And frankly, Prohibition in the US is the biggest failure of a policy EVER. Just imagine if it was as easy to avoid paying taxes as it was for those under 21 to get liquor. The Air Force would be holding those bake sales to buy bombers after all.
We can only hope. I'm getting so sick of the school shooting nonsense. I think the way they've reported this starting with Columbine has only helped get more kids into thinking it might be something to try. Cloning seems mostly irrelevant to me, with little ability as a topic to be used to actually deprive citizens of their rights or fuel racial hatred. Sadly, unless our current frat boy of a president loses it and goes back on some chemical or other, we're stuck for anything serious for the public to care about. At least Bill Clinton gave us all those sex scandals and helped show the Democrats for the hypocrites and cowards they really are.
I mean, while I'm not entirely comfortable with the notion of genetically engineered humans, I must admit I'd rather see the American people focused on something that seems largely harmless. And is cloning harmless, or have I been watching too much "Dark Angel" and reading books like D.W. St. John's "Sisters of Glass"?
What a LOAD! If you are under 21 the only way you can have alcohol is in church (and that little thimble of wine is all you'll get there) or your parent's home (with their permission of course).
Unless there is some extension specific to Indiana or Fort Wayne that I don't know about, this sounds like a dad making excuses (or perhaps there are extenuating circumstances). Alcohol laws are vary state by state. Here the MN State Law that very clearly states that persons under 21 are allowed to drink in their parents' homes.
The government has been very loathe over the years (and you can thank the Republicans and their ideological type for this) to interfere with families, for better or worse. It's Democrats with their Nanny State that won't let parents be parents, but are all too willing to sue everyone in sight, including parents, when something goes wrong with kids whose parents were basically hog-tied.
Now obviously this does not extend to giving children large and dangerous doses of alcohol. That would be reckless and dangerous. But a glass of wine or beer with a meal? I've known parents who would cringe at the thought, but I think healthy families with normal chemical use patterns would see nothing amiss here (this is not intended to be a statement about you and your family in particular, please don't take offense).
To stay on topic, this law against certain video games sounds dumb as hell to begin with. Video games are a popular target right now since they have "arrived" as a mass media. But parents have every right in this case to forbid their minor children from even entering the arcade if they have a problem with the games. If an arcade owner can make a "clean" arcade which is profitable, this is surely a niche market worth tapping-- assuming that parents whose children spend enough time in arcades to be affected by the games there give enough of a shit about their child's well-being to begin with.
Hmmm. I just bought a VCR last year, I'm pretty sure it suffers from the lost settings problem. Ditto the microwave. I'm just glad my new VCR doesn't have a blinking clock display at all.
Either way, what use to actually spend time setting the clock until you may need to use it? I never set a clock like this until I have a reason to. Along this same line, I won't fiddle with the clock on my work phone or car stereo for daylight savings time. There are just too many clocks in life to get uptight about the ones that don't really matter.
...which reminds me, it's probably time to figure out how to sync the time on my LAN so that my computers all think it's the same time.
The difference here is that the portion of the DMCA that makes it clear that Slashdot needs to remove the offening OT III post is Constitutionally sound (at least to my non-lawyerly point of view). Neither the Constitution nor any copyright law from the last 200 years make any allowances for fully quoting any copyrighted document without permission. This particular instance does not fall under even the most stretched notion of Fair Use. There was no discussion of the document, there was no discussion of Scientology. It is no different than if I start posting poems from literary journals. Even if credit is given, this is simply copying.
For everyone trying to draw some parallel to DeCSS and trotting out some slippery slope argument about the impending death of Freedom on Slashdot, it seems to me that the fight for DeCSS is something that Slashdot has repeatedly been willing to undertake, based on the notion that the portion of the DMCA that forbids sharing DeCSS code is clearly in contradiction of Fair Use, and may well be unconstitutional.
Oddly enough, it doesn't quite work that way. And to set it up as "represent the interest of the people" versus "acting in self-interest" is a false dichotomy. I don't know about countries outside the US as much, but in the US getting re-elected means that the politician is able to work in the interest of those who elected him/her. So if there is some self-interest in getting re-elected, then it is only by pandering to the public that the politician can stay in office.
What complicates matters is that politicians are usually better informed about most issues than the public-- and I say this because people just cannot understand the issues by watching Cops, Friends, Survivor, and chatting with your friends about romance, soap operas, and TV shows over over-priced lattes and cappucinos. At least politicians spend time regularly reading mail, giving speeches, doing talk shows, etc. Unfortunately, most politicians are not experts at anything except law or history. And sadly, rather than doing any real thinking of their own, the public tends to pick sides quickly in politics and then believe whatever their favorite talking head says.
In this case, as in many others, choosing sides (liberal vs. conservative) only gets you varying degrees of lessened freedom and "filth" hysteria. We have the lefties telling us that pornography is evil because it represents a violation of the civil rights of women, both as a class, and as something that promotes sexual harrassment at work (this sexual harrassment bent is what is being used in my home city to try and push filters through at the libraries). Then we have the righties telling us that this degrades the American family and pollutes society because God does not approve.
So then we get this bizarre alliance between the two in which they are both oblivious to the real consequences of this legislation. Especially bizarre when you consider that the lefties have usually just assisted in making it easier for some small-town conservative group to use this type of legislation to shut down much needed discussions of things like homosexuality or feminism. I mean, can you imagine that the "Vagina Monologues" (a current darling of the mainstream feminist crowd) are not caught by these filters?
The result of all this is that the public lets the leaders lead because they believe the leaders when the leaders say things, even when the leaders have no clue. The leaders, in the attempt to preserve their positions, say things they think people will easily believe or agree with-- usually simplifying the case to things that are hard to argue (like "do it for the kids!", "just say no to drugs"), but do not approach any meaningful discourse on the subject. So, in acting their own self-interest, the politicians are representing the people, but the people prefer representation based on shallow thinking and typically fed to them in unassailable terms by the very people who will be representing them. Vicious circle.
Um. None of that sound doctoring stops at the concert, unless you mean an orchestra concert. Have you ever seen the huge mixing panels in use at a concert? Have you noticed that they use amplifiers? Guitar pedals? Microphones? Those all change sounds.
Or for an even better example, the one time I did spend money on a Metallica ticket, the sound quality at the live show was terrible. All of the speakers were facing somewhere else, so all I really got to hear was echos-- which in a stadium is a severe distortion because of the size of the room.
But I can't really tell when I've converted a song into mp3 then burned it back as AIFF/WAV on CD in a mix. I've found some mp3-players (especially the free ones for Mac OS), though, that really blow-- washed out sound, etc etc.
Not to echo the other responses, but what is it you want to do that a $5 cable from Radio Shack or Fry's or some online retailer wouldn't take care of?
Just to be troublesome, I actually use my MiniDisc player to record LPs and 45s and tapes, then output the analog from a portable MD into the mic jack on my Macintosh. Then I rip to AIFF/MP3, burn CDs as needed. In fact, this is about the only use I get out of the MD unit now that CD burners and blanks are easier to come by.
For that matter, what's wrong with guns or drugs? The cult of secrecy around both kills people, a lot moreso than open dialog or safe experimentation ever will.
I was actually being snide-- I don't see a single reason to have a well-endowed girl in a tight white t-shirt on a site devoted to file sharing. If she's their target market, I'm not sure there will be any files there worth sharing.
She does look a tad young, but whether she's below the age of consent varies quite a bit by jurisdiction. And as someone who was routinely assumed to be 16 or 17 well into my 20's, I'm never ready to say how old someone is without ID.
I don't think they have much to fear as long as they still own the radio airwaves and mainstream music video exists. This is how they have managed to sell singles embedded in full length CDs/Tapes/LPs for years.
How alarmist can you get without actually providing any facts?
Even if they are able to track everything perfectly, no one has time to sift that information for anything other than the blandest types of information. Given that all the marketing efforts in the world don't seem to be able to consistently deliver well-targeted ads to either my real mailbox (most of these don't even have my name spelled correctly) or my emailbox assures me that it will be some time before there is really an issue here.
I'm far more worried about the very real news that the FBI engages in constant stings (and in the process may be one of the major providers) for child pornography. I'm a lot more concerned that European police are actually arresting people for "crimes" like using Napster or writing software like DeCSS. In the end, we have much bigger privacy worries with police forces using extremely sensitive infrared, microwave, and other devices to scan our houses (so much for curtains) and maintaining computerized, nationalized databases on citizens (just wait until some hacker manages to get a few good FBI or IRS files).
You say you're glad to not live in the US, so which country can I join you in where freedom is eternal, easy, and government mandated?
It merely takes advantage of AOL's IM service. In fact, since AOL (by virtue of being associated with Warner Bros) is essentially an RIAA member this is an interesting misuse of their service. I wouldn't be surprised if this catches on and then results in some additional AIM changes that none of us like.
Wooed by the hottie on the front page of www.aimster.com, I was all set to download the client. Until I noticed that they only provide software for Windows machines. *sigh*
If they win, it will be more likely a matter of how much of their legal bills are you willing to pay. It seems to me that the American Sheeple and the Wolves that protect the flocks are all too willing to savage one another in these types of disputes. I wouldn't put it past any employer who thinks a non-compete clause is a good idea in the first place to make sure that it ruins you, even if it doesn't do them one lick of good.
It's not copyright infringement, which actually means that his being banned on this count is a complete miscarriage of justice.
However, naming his song using someone else's trademark in a way which may cause others to believe his work is also the work of the trademark holder does open him to liability on that score. I'm not attempting to pretend I'm a legal official, but putting a band name followed by a "-" or other common separator makes it look like this may be a Metallica song.
Had he named the song "Sticking Gerbils up Metallica's Ass" that would be a much different story.
But parody can be a tricky business. For instance, Mad TV and SNL frequently run parodies that are nigh indistinguishable from the originals except that they are obviously skits on a comedy show. They use the trademarks of other networks and corporations all the time. What they do not do, is pretend to be those other entities in order to find a wider audience for the satires.
So this is exactly the sort of thing Allchin had in mind when he was ranting about how Free software is unAmerican. In fact, he may have even gotten advance wind of this or parts of it. Thankfully he came out looking like a jackass ahead of time.
The only possible problem this causes is when proprietary bastards keep their source code locked in a vault and only ship binaries. Decent Free software will simply require recompiling using a different compiler. I don't know about you, but the fact that the packages on any given distribution are out of date before the ISO is built keeps me from caring, since I end up recompiling all my major packages from source anyway.
And if you really care about binary incompatibility try running a non-x86 processor with a Red Hat-based system (like Yellow Dog Linux), then see how many RPMs you run into that are completely useless. And then please feel free to forward my complaints along with your own to the people who completely ignore an entire chipset, making the excuse that "We support Linux because we released an RPM".
Nationalization of resources and controlling business through excess litigation and legislation are purely left-wing notions. Also known as "pinko" or "commie" by short-sighted libertarians.
I got that too. However, I think the page probably looks fine and doesn't suffer from that with Lynx. A page that is actually readable in Lynx (however it may behave in other browsers) is a rare and delicious treat, though. I'll take his/her word that mojo is among them.
While I may agree that using a Windows share is wrong if you don't have some sort of consent from the share owner (either implied or explicit) I don't think we need faulty analogies to unsecured outbuildings to debate.
On the other hand, I'm a little tired of Mr. and Mrs. Average American expecting their PCs to be as easy to use as a lamp or a handgun. Today's home PC is more powerful than a mainframe was just 30 years ago. Apple sells a "supercomputer" in a seven inch plastic box!
As such, people should consider getting a little training in the computing, and security would be a part of any such training. Having Windows at work is no substitute for real computer training, since at home there won't be any rigid information security policies or professional admins to back up hapless users who go turning on every potential security hole because it sounds neat.
Most of the people I run into with computer questions don't even seem to know how to press F1 for help. They have no intrinsic understanding of why there is a problem, because other than the pretty windows on the screen they have little idea what is actually happening inside their machine. There's an awful lot of computer in the average home these days, run by completely clueless people. If their open share gets used as it was designed to be used, let's just call it part of the learning process. This doesn't do anything the protocol wasn't designed to do-- share files from a specified directory.
Slashdot Mirror
Pennsylvania state code is not online (apparently they are the only state in this condition, according to one site I went to), so I can't say what I found there.
Chapter 60a in WV has several clauses pertaining to age of those consuming alcohol. Twice it exempts blood relatives and spouses from the penalties for providing alcohol to persons under 21, once it does not. In one section it merely states that no alcohol is to be sold to those under 21, but in another it states that it is a misdemeanor for persons under 21 to purchase or consume alcohol. If a person under 21 were to consume the alcohol in the home, it would require a violation of the 4th Amendment to the US Constitution to determine this, provided such consumption was not done in plain view from the street or another building. Frankly, I'd consult a lawyer in WV concerning this before I made a presumption either way. The law (to my non-lawyerly eyes) is self-contradictory.
MD appears to outright forbid anyone under the age of 21 from even consuming the stuff under all circumstances.
Interestingly, while it does appear that the original complaint about Indiana is correct, the IN law contains a curious exception in that "family" (i.e. homemade) beverages are not covered by the state law at all.
So, as I said, the laws vary state to state and obviously some states aren't as cool as the one I live in. {grin} Next time I hear someone around here (MN) complaining about our bassackwards liquor laws I think I'll mention this.
From what I've heard these sorts of rules don't really exist in most of Europe at all. And frankly, Prohibition in the US is the biggest failure of a policy EVER. Just imagine if it was as easy to avoid paying taxes as it was for those under 21 to get liquor. The Air Force would be holding those bake sales to buy bombers after all.
We can only hope. I'm getting so sick of the school shooting nonsense. I think the way they've reported this starting with Columbine has only helped get more kids into thinking it might be something to try. Cloning seems mostly irrelevant to me, with little ability as a topic to be used to actually deprive citizens of their rights or fuel racial hatred. Sadly, unless our current frat boy of a president loses it and goes back on some chemical or other, we're stuck for anything serious for the public to care about. At least Bill Clinton gave us all those sex scandals and helped show the Democrats for the hypocrites and cowards they really are.
I mean, while I'm not entirely comfortable with the notion of genetically engineered humans, I must admit I'd rather see the American people focused on something that seems largely harmless. And is cloning harmless, or have I been watching too much "Dark Angel" and reading books like D.W. St. John's "Sisters of Glass"?
What a LOAD! If you are under 21 the only way you can have alcohol is in church (and that little thimble of wine is all you'll get there) or your parent's home (with their permission of course).
Unless there is some extension specific to Indiana or Fort Wayne that I don't know about, this sounds like a dad making excuses (or perhaps there are extenuating circumstances). Alcohol laws are vary state by state. Here the MN State Law that very clearly states that persons under 21 are allowed to drink in their parents' homes.
The government has been very loathe over the years (and you can thank the Republicans and their ideological type for this) to interfere with families, for better or worse. It's Democrats with their Nanny State that won't let parents be parents, but are all too willing to sue everyone in sight, including parents, when something goes wrong with kids whose parents were basically hog-tied.
Now obviously this does not extend to giving children large and dangerous doses of alcohol. That would be reckless and dangerous. But a glass of wine or beer with a meal? I've known parents who would cringe at the thought, but I think healthy families with normal chemical use patterns would see nothing amiss here (this is not intended to be a statement about you and your family in particular, please don't take offense).
To stay on topic, this law against certain video games sounds dumb as hell to begin with. Video games are a popular target right now since they have "arrived" as a mass media. But parents have every right in this case to forbid their minor children from even entering the arcade if they have a problem with the games. If an arcade owner can make a "clean" arcade which is profitable, this is surely a niche market worth tapping-- assuming that parents whose children spend enough time in arcades to be affected by the games there give enough of a shit about their child's well-being to begin with.
Hmmm. I just bought a VCR last year, I'm pretty sure it suffers from the lost settings problem. Ditto the microwave. I'm just glad my new VCR doesn't have a blinking clock display at all.
Either way, what use to actually spend time setting the clock until you may need to use it? I never set a clock like this until I have a reason to. Along this same line, I won't fiddle with the clock on my work phone or car stereo for daylight savings time. There are just too many clocks in life to get uptight about the ones that don't really matter.
...which reminds me, it's probably time to figure out how to sync the time on my LAN so that my computers all think it's the same time.
The difference here is that the portion of the DMCA that makes it clear that Slashdot needs to remove the offening OT III post is Constitutionally sound (at least to my non-lawyerly point of view). Neither the Constitution nor any copyright law from the last 200 years make any allowances for fully quoting any copyrighted document without permission. This particular instance does not fall under even the most stretched notion of Fair Use. There was no discussion of the document, there was no discussion of Scientology. It is no different than if I start posting poems from literary journals. Even if credit is given, this is simply copying.
For everyone trying to draw some parallel to DeCSS and trotting out some slippery slope argument about the impending death of Freedom on Slashdot, it seems to me that the fight for DeCSS is something that Slashdot has repeatedly been willing to undertake, based on the notion that the portion of the DMCA that forbids sharing DeCSS code is clearly in contradiction of Fair Use, and may well be unconstitutional.
Oddly enough, it doesn't quite work that way. And to set it up as "represent the interest of the people" versus "acting in self-interest" is a false dichotomy. I don't know about countries outside the US as much, but in the US getting re-elected means that the politician is able to work in the interest of those who elected him/her. So if there is some self-interest in getting re-elected, then it is only by pandering to the public that the politician can stay in office.
What complicates matters is that politicians are usually better informed about most issues than the public-- and I say this because people just cannot understand the issues by watching Cops, Friends, Survivor, and chatting with your friends about romance, soap operas, and TV shows over over-priced lattes and cappucinos. At least politicians spend time regularly reading mail, giving speeches, doing talk shows, etc. Unfortunately, most politicians are not experts at anything except law or history. And sadly, rather than doing any real thinking of their own, the public tends to pick sides quickly in politics and then believe whatever their favorite talking head says.
In this case, as in many others, choosing sides (liberal vs. conservative) only gets you varying degrees of lessened freedom and "filth" hysteria. We have the lefties telling us that pornography is evil because it represents a violation of the civil rights of women, both as a class, and as something that promotes sexual harrassment at work (this sexual harrassment bent is what is being used in my home city to try and push filters through at the libraries). Then we have the righties telling us that this degrades the American family and pollutes society because God does not approve.
So then we get this bizarre alliance between the two in which they are both oblivious to the real consequences of this legislation. Especially bizarre when you consider that the lefties have usually just assisted in making it easier for some small-town conservative group to use this type of legislation to shut down much needed discussions of things like homosexuality or feminism. I mean, can you imagine that the "Vagina Monologues" (a current darling of the mainstream feminist crowd) are not caught by these filters?
The result of all this is that the public lets the leaders lead because they believe the leaders when the leaders say things, even when the leaders have no clue. The leaders, in the attempt to preserve their positions, say things they think people will easily believe or agree with-- usually simplifying the case to things that are hard to argue (like "do it for the kids!", "just say no to drugs"), but do not approach any meaningful discourse on the subject. So, in acting their own self-interest, the politicians are representing the people, but the people prefer representation based on shallow thinking and typically fed to them in unassailable terms by the very people who will be representing them. Vicious circle.
Um. None of that sound doctoring stops at the concert, unless you mean an orchestra concert. Have you ever seen the huge mixing panels in use at a concert? Have you noticed that they use amplifiers? Guitar pedals? Microphones? Those all change sounds.
Or for an even better example, the one time I did spend money on a Metallica ticket, the sound quality at the live show was terrible. All of the speakers were facing somewhere else, so all I really got to hear was echos-- which in a stadium is a severe distortion because of the size of the room.
But I can't really tell when I've converted a song into mp3 then burned it back as AIFF/WAV on CD in a mix. I've found some mp3-players (especially the free ones for Mac OS), though, that really blow-- washed out sound, etc etc.
Not to echo the other responses, but what is it you want to do that a $5 cable from Radio Shack or Fry's or some online retailer wouldn't take care of?
Just to be troublesome, I actually use my MiniDisc player to record LPs and 45s and tapes, then output the analog from a portable MD into the mic jack on my Macintosh. Then I rip to AIFF/MP3, burn CDs as needed. In fact, this is about the only use I get out of the MD unit now that CD burners and blanks are easier to come by.
For that matter, what's wrong with guns or drugs? The cult of secrecy around both kills people, a lot moreso than open dialog or safe experimentation ever will.
I was actually being snide-- I don't see a single reason to have a well-endowed girl in a tight white t-shirt on a site devoted to file sharing. If she's their target market, I'm not sure there will be any files there worth sharing.
She does look a tad young, but whether she's below the age of consent varies quite a bit by jurisdiction. And as someone who was routinely assumed to be 16 or 17 well into my 20's, I'm never ready to say how old someone is without ID.
http://www.ucomics.com/boondocks/viewbo.cfm?uc_ful l_date=20010226&uc_comic=bo&uc_daction=X
I don't think they have much to fear as long as they still own the radio airwaves and mainstream music video exists. This is how they have managed to sell singles embedded in full length CDs/Tapes/LPs for years.
you already did. www.boondocks.com
How alarmist can you get without actually providing any facts?
Even if they are able to track everything perfectly, no one has time to sift that information for anything other than the blandest types of information. Given that all the marketing efforts in the world don't seem to be able to consistently deliver well-targeted ads to either my real mailbox (most of these don't even have my name spelled correctly) or my emailbox assures me that it will be some time before there is really an issue here.
I'm far more worried about the very real news that the FBI engages in constant stings (and in the process may be one of the major providers) for child pornography. I'm a lot more concerned that European police are actually arresting people for "crimes" like using Napster or writing software like DeCSS. In the end, we have much bigger privacy worries with police forces using extremely sensitive infrared, microwave, and other devices to scan our houses (so much for curtains) and maintaining computerized, nationalized databases on citizens (just wait until some hacker manages to get a few good FBI or IRS files).
You say you're glad to not live in the US, so which country can I join you in where freedom is eternal, easy, and government mandated?
It merely takes advantage of AOL's IM service. In fact, since AOL (by virtue of being associated with Warner Bros) is essentially an RIAA member this is an interesting misuse of their service. I wouldn't be surprised if this catches on and then results in some additional AIM changes that none of us like.
Wooed by the hottie on the front page of www.aimster.com, I was all set to download the client. Until I noticed that they only provide software for Windows machines. *sigh*
What a load. Not worth attempting to rebut, since the main point seems to be to construct an Open Source zealotry windmill at which to tilt.
It may be that Napster is immune, but I see a lot of weird stuff like *.mp3.mpg and *.mp3.vbs when I use the OpenNap servers.
If they win, it will be more likely a matter of how much of their legal bills are you willing to pay. It seems to me that the American Sheeple and the Wolves that protect the flocks are all too willing to savage one another in these types of disputes. I wouldn't put it past any employer who thinks a non-compete clause is a good idea in the first place to make sure that it ruins you, even if it doesn't do them one lick of good.
It's not copyright infringement, which actually means that his being banned on this count is a complete miscarriage of justice.
However, naming his song using someone else's trademark in a way which may cause others to believe his work is also the work of the trademark holder does open him to liability on that score. I'm not attempting to pretend I'm a legal official, but putting a band name followed by a "-" or other common separator makes it look like this may be a Metallica song.
Had he named the song "Sticking Gerbils up Metallica's Ass" that would be a much different story.
But parody can be a tricky business. For instance, Mad TV and SNL frequently run parodies that are nigh indistinguishable from the originals except that they are obviously skits on a comedy show. They use the trademarks of other networks and corporations all the time. What they do not do, is pretend to be those other entities in order to find a wider audience for the satires.
So this is exactly the sort of thing Allchin had in mind when he was ranting about how Free software is unAmerican. In fact, he may have even gotten advance wind of this or parts of it. Thankfully he came out looking like a jackass ahead of time.
Oh good god. Quit whining and shut up!
The only possible problem this causes is when proprietary bastards keep their source code locked in a vault and only ship binaries. Decent Free software will simply require recompiling using a different compiler. I don't know about you, but the fact that the packages on any given distribution are out of date before the ISO is built keeps me from caring, since I end up recompiling all my major packages from source anyway.
And if you really care about binary incompatibility try running a non-x86 processor with a Red Hat-based system (like Yellow Dog Linux), then see how many RPMs you run into that are completely useless. And then please feel free to forward my complaints along with your own to the people who completely ignore an entire chipset, making the excuse that "We support Linux because we released an RPM".
Here goes my ability to moderate in this thread, but I just wanted to point out that this is the single best post I've seen on Slashdot in weeks.
Nationalization of resources and controlling business through excess litigation and legislation are purely left-wing notions. Also known as "pinko" or "commie" by short-sighted libertarians.
I got that too. However, I think the page probably looks fine and doesn't suffer from that with Lynx. A page that is actually readable in Lynx (however it may behave in other browsers) is a rare and delicious treat, though. I'll take his/her word that mojo is among them.
While I may agree that using a Windows share is wrong if you don't have some sort of consent from the share owner (either implied or explicit) I don't think we need faulty analogies to unsecured outbuildings to debate.
On the other hand, I'm a little tired of Mr. and Mrs. Average American expecting their PCs to be as easy to use as a lamp or a handgun. Today's home PC is more powerful than a mainframe was just 30 years ago. Apple sells a "supercomputer" in a seven inch plastic box!
As such, people should consider getting a little training in the computing, and security would be a part of any such training. Having Windows at work is no substitute for real computer training, since at home there won't be any rigid information security policies or professional admins to back up hapless users who go turning on every potential security hole because it sounds neat.
Most of the people I run into with computer questions don't even seem to know how to press F1 for help. They have no intrinsic understanding of why there is a problem, because other than the pretty windows on the screen they have little idea what is actually happening inside their machine. There's an awful lot of computer in the average home these days, run by completely clueless people. If their open share gets used as it was designed to be used, let's just call it part of the learning process. This doesn't do anything the protocol wasn't designed to do-- share files from a specified directory.