In your list of cases, I would find guilty in the Parks case (civil disobedience is better served when more attention is brought to the bad law), and in the Scopes case (for the same reason).
In the runaway slave case I would nullify, and as a matter of fundamental law i.e. slavery is incompatible with the Great Writ.
The problem with jury nullification is that it cuts both ways. What happens when an unpopular person or person who is a member of an unpopular group is the victim, and the criminal gets off even though they were obviously guilty? Or the other way around - a popular person is the victim and the accused is not popular. See the Lindburgh kidnapping trial for example.
Nullification happens, but it is right to discourage it because it creates chaos rather than order in the legal system.
Used music or overstock outlets are the great bargain that is under the radar. Amazon's marketplace, Berkshire record outlet, etc. give you cheap legal access to all the music you could ever want on these nice durable optical disks called CD's. No need to open up your PC to the legal liability or security issues that internet file sharing carry with it, and $3.00 rather than $16.99 pricing is the norm.
I did not need any additional Ubuntu repositories to get Java or Flash. These are available from the base Ubuntu repository. My WiFi function also uses a proprietary Intel firmware load and was supported using the basic installation. The only non-base repository I am using is to support multimedia.
While as you say package management is not a daily activity, if it doesn't work properly you can become hosed like I was because it is such a fundamental piece of a modern Linux distribution. As far as YaST being fixed, I will wait and see; now that I have a fully functional laptop for the first time under Linux there is no reason for me to change at the moment.
I recently overlayed my laptop installation of SuSE with Ubuntu Feisty because of problems I had with YaST. YaST update performance was so slow and unreliable I gave up and started using the various SuSE yum repositories. That worked pretty well for me for a while, and I certainly appreciated the good multimedia support in SuSE. About the only thing I didn't like was lack of usable ACPI with my laptop.
However a couple of weeks ago the bubble burst. A yum upgrade pulled in some new packages, a kernel and so on. When the upgrade was done I lost my wireless connectivity, and reverting back to the old kernel didn't help. Basically I was hosed. I did a fair number googles, posted some questions and got pointed to pages written by others with similar problems with the Intel 3945abg that I had. Eventually I gave up. I thought of waiting for 10.3, but decided to try Ubuntu first. I am glad I did. Not only did the install go MUCH faster, but the Debian package manager Ubuntu uses is WAY nicer and faster. Hardware detection was nearly flawless, and even the ACPI works. The overall performance of the GUI is also considerably better than SuSE's.
As far as I am concerned the problems I had with YaST plus the obvious quality of apt-get etc. have made me an Ubuntu convert.
Now I am really looking forward for Gutsy, and would not go back to using SuSE on a bet. The only thing I have found that SuSE handled better was the multimedia stuff, and I am working on understanding what I can do to make my Ubuntu do what I need in that regard.
So everyone who has a common cold or athlete's foot should be "under careful scrutiny and control" ???
Anyone can go visit a local lake and come up with a culture more harmful than what this guy had. The natural environment is full of this stuff. Leave a bagel out on your kitchen counter for a weekend and you have a bioterrorism weapon?
Poppycock. Common law embodies a heritage of freedom. Code Napoleon embodies a heritage of state dictatorship. Instead of a body of of laws imposed by a central authority to govern every possible situation (and no doubt to the benefit of those with the money or position to influence the shape of those laws) Common Law provides a mechanism where laws arise from the lower levels of the legal system and percolate upwards through the system. And the idea the precedent is immutable is fatuous. Precedent is a living body.
Louisiana has been using the Napoleonic system since it joined the US. I can tell you from having lived and worked in that state that their legal system is no better or worse than any other state- it is in fact the implementation and administrators that govern the effectiveness of the system. And in Louisiana they certainly have no special competence.
Yes, common law is more chaotic. It is also a far older system which has a much longer track record of success.
Prior to the invention of the printing press copyright was not necessary since there was no economic incentive to copy a work - maintenance of the slaves or paying the manual transcriber's salary was a far greater cost than buying copies from the author's agents.
It was only in England (not too coincidently) the home of the industrial revolution 400 years ago this incentive brought about by mass production of copies first came to exist, and it is not too surprising that this is where and when copyright law first emerged.
Playing on the idea of the noble savage not needing copyright law is disingenuous and completely neglects the main issue - mass production or copies at prices low enough to make a creator's work a significant part of the cost of the copy.
The FBI has a pretty good image in my part of the country. It's main activity here seems to be rooting out corruption at a municipal and state level. Almost every day there is a headline detailing a bribery sting operation that caught some local politician trying to make money on the side accepting money to fix contracts or grease the wheels for some no-bid purchase.
Compared to local police I think I trust them more, not less.
This is the organization that could not handle an international vaccine program without falling flat on it's face due to internal politics. I can't imagine that it would be any better in handling external politics.
There are some perfectly valid reasons to be suspicious of any one country administering the TLD list. Retiring zombie TLDs isn't one of them. Just set up a grace period. After 3 years don't process any more new domain applications. After 5 years no domain renewals. After 15 years no TLD.
Very few domains will have a lifetime longer than that, and if they do chances are they are run by clueful people who will have aliases set up long before the tits up date.
iPod is ok, but it seriously needs to get with the program. In particular that means FLAC support (hopefully somebody will tell me it already has this) and a SPDIF digital output so I can feed it into some serious portable amplification like the magnificent iBasso D1 and drive real headphones (not ear buds).
Then maybe the iPod will erase its tragic legacy of low bit rate mp3s and people will be able to hear music at a decent fidelity level.
By far the most worrisome thing to me about closed source software is proprietary file formats. Almost always the data is worth far more than the software, and when vendors try to lock up the data they are making a grab right for the testicles.
This is ultimately why OOXML is such a big deal, and why I would much rather has open source.
We can't directly and distinctly perceive magnetism, the rotation of the earth, the strong nuclear force either, continental drift or photons, yet there seems to be no problem with acceptance of these phenomena as real. Heck we even have people who claim the moon landings are a fraud because they don't believe the evidence and haven't gone there themselves.
The issue here is really very simple. Scientific investigation and study has resulted in the understanding of evolution as the mechanism for ever increasing complexity in life. Science at its very foundation requires naturalistic explanations of natural phenomena. Since science has not advanced to the point where a set of axioms can be constructed that allow the deductive proof of these explanations, we have the situation where inductive logic is used for the proof of these explanations. It is the fundamental structure of science today.
Now we have the problem that the Bible teaches something else; i.e. an external supernatural force a.k.a. God is responsible for the creation of complex forms of life. Some people reject the teachings of science in this regard and choose the Biblical account instead. I have no problem with people having these beliefs. It is, or at should be a free country.
The problem I have is that some people who adhere to the Biblical account believe that this account means the scientific account is wrong despite the fact that they are unable to provide the counter examples that would invalidate the inductive reasoning used by in the scientific account. Not only is this an issue, but there have been endless attempts to teach these non-scientific beliefs (non-scientific in the sense that they rely on supernatural rather than naturalistic explanations) as if they were science, or even attempt to redefine the basic framework of science to accommodate these supernatural explanations, or use the legal process to forbid teaching the scientific explanation.
Here it is at the end. You cannot appeal to a higher power and call the result science. Creationism and its bastard stepchild, intelligent design are bankrupt intellectual concepts and frauds when they are presented as science or alternatives to scientific evolution.
Honestly, I have no problem with people arguing about religion and trying to prove it wrong, that's to be expected and trying to silence it is akin to saying that your argument is weaker than your opponent's.
Unfortunately debates involving religion seem to inspire fanatics. Assassinations of doctors who perform abortions. The murder of Hypatia. Burning of Protestants during the Counter-Reformation.
That is nothing compared to the actual storage technology. Attempting to recover data packed at a density of 1 GB/sq.in. from a disk spinning at 10,000 revolutions per minute where the actual data is stored in a micron thin layer of rust on the surface of the disk is manifestly impossible.
"and that they're now desperate to protect their executives from SCO's creditors while seeking yet another delay"
Executives have no risk from creditors unless criminal conduct can be shown, or it can be shown that SCO did not operate as a corporation. It is very rare for these conditions to occur. The only thing Darl and his buddies are at risk for is unemployment.
The main reason to form a corporation is to protect the owners and principals of the corporation from personal liability. This is why you see phrases like 'Limited Liability Corporation'.
Breaking strong encryption is certainly not trivial. The mathematics that makes this true is still valid. As far as exporting cryptographic techniques, this was based on the fact that there were few people who really understood the state of the art in software, and they were all working in the US. That knowledge eventually spread through a variety of mechanisms, and the export controls only became a hindrance to US software companies looking to sell worldwide, without doing anything to enhance national security.
The evolution of technology in this case didn't make the crime easier to commit, it made the crime itself moot.
There was a point at which pirating media WAS a serious crime because it took a serious CRIMINAL to do it.
There has never been a time in my adult life (which I measure from 1965, when I turned 15) where pirating of some sort of media took a serious, dedicated criminal - from taping a friend's vinyl records, duplicating Bill Gates' original BASIC tapes, Xeroxing textbooks or articles, to copying VCRs tapes, CDs, and now DVDs, it has always been within the easy reach of the casual individual.
The only thing the internet has done is remove the restriction that you have to bring a copy or original to your house before you can copy it. In many ways piracy over the internet is more difficult and risky, because by transmitting the data over the public internet you expose yourself to observation by the copyright holders. In some sense using the internet and getting away with it takes a much more dedicated individual than these older methods.
There is no legal principle that grants an exemption from criminality or civil liability because technology has made the wrong easier to commit. The seriousness is always judged by the amount of damage caused.
Slashdot Mirror
In your list of cases, I would find guilty in the Parks case (civil disobedience is better served when more attention is brought to the bad law), and in the Scopes case (for the same reason).
In the runaway slave case I would nullify, and as a matter of fundamental law i.e. slavery is incompatible with the Great Writ.
The problem with jury nullification is that it cuts both ways. What happens when an unpopular person or person who is a member of an unpopular group is the victim, and the criminal gets off even though they were obviously guilty? Or the other way around - a popular person is the victim and the accused is not popular. See the Lindburgh kidnapping trial for example.
Nullification happens, but it is right to discourage it because it creates chaos rather than order in the legal system.
Mod parent up. Jury nullification is a two-edged sword.
Used music or overstock outlets are the great bargain that is under the radar. Amazon's marketplace, Berkshire record outlet, etc. give you cheap legal access to all the music you could ever want on these nice durable optical disks called CD's. No need to open up your PC to the legal liability or security issues that internet file sharing carry with it, and $3.00 rather than $16.99 pricing is the norm.
I did not need any additional Ubuntu repositories to get Java or Flash. These are available from the base Ubuntu repository. My WiFi function also uses a proprietary Intel firmware load and was supported using the basic installation. The only non-base repository I am using is to support multimedia.
While as you say package management is not a daily activity, if it doesn't work properly you can become hosed like I was because it is such a fundamental piece of a modern Linux distribution. As far as YaST being fixed, I will wait and see; now that I have a fully functional laptop for the first time under Linux there is no reason for me to change at the moment.
I recently overlayed my laptop installation of SuSE with Ubuntu Feisty because of problems I had with YaST. YaST update performance was so slow and unreliable I gave up and started using the various SuSE yum repositories. That worked pretty well for me for a while, and I certainly appreciated the good multimedia support in SuSE. About the only thing I didn't like was lack of usable ACPI with my laptop.
However a couple of weeks ago the bubble burst. A yum upgrade pulled in some new packages, a kernel and so on. When the upgrade was done I lost my wireless connectivity, and reverting back to the old kernel didn't help. Basically I was hosed. I did a fair number googles, posted some questions and got pointed to pages written by others with similar problems with the Intel 3945abg that I had. Eventually I gave up. I thought of waiting for 10.3, but decided to try Ubuntu first. I am glad I did. Not only did the install go MUCH faster, but the Debian package manager Ubuntu uses is WAY nicer and faster. Hardware detection was nearly flawless, and even the ACPI works. The overall performance of the GUI is also considerably better than SuSE's.
As far as I am concerned the problems I had with YaST plus the obvious quality of apt-get etc. have made me an Ubuntu convert.
Now I am really looking forward for Gutsy, and would not go back to using SuSE on a bet. The only thing I have found that SuSE handled better was the multimedia stuff, and I am working on understanding what I can do to make my Ubuntu do what I need in that regard.
Anyone dealing with infectious agents of any kind
So everyone who has a common cold or athlete's foot should be "under careful scrutiny and control" ???
Anyone can go visit a local lake and come up with a culture more harmful than what this guy had. The natural environment is full of this stuff. Leave a bagel out on your kitchen counter for a weekend and you have a bioterrorism weapon?
Let's get real here.
Worse yet, mathematics, a singular noun has as its root word the Latin neuter plural mathematica.
What a muddled language the British inflicted on us.
I do not expect you to understand this, as anglo-saxons have an inherent incapability to understand other cultures.
Ah, a racist. I can see there is no need to continue here.
there American, fixed it for you.
This is an American site, you silly little British girlie - man.
Math is a really really powerful tool.
Poppycock. Common law embodies a heritage of freedom. Code Napoleon embodies a heritage of state dictatorship. Instead of a body of of laws imposed by a central authority to govern every possible situation (and no doubt to the benefit of those with the money or position to influence the shape of those laws) Common Law provides a mechanism where laws arise from the lower levels of the legal system and percolate upwards through the system. And the idea the precedent is immutable is fatuous. Precedent is a living body.
Louisiana has been using the Napoleonic system since it joined the US. I can tell you from having lived and worked in that state that their legal system is no better or worse than any other state- it is in fact the implementation and administrators that govern the effectiveness of the system. And in Louisiana they certainly have no special competence.
Yes, common law is more chaotic. It is also a far older system which has a much longer track record of success.
Prior to the invention of the printing press copyright was not necessary since there was no economic incentive to copy a work - maintenance of the slaves or paying the manual transcriber's salary was a far greater cost than buying copies from the author's agents.
It was only in England (not too coincidently) the home of the industrial revolution 400 years ago this incentive brought about by mass production of copies first came to exist, and it is not too surprising that this is where and when copyright law first emerged.
Playing on the idea of the noble savage not needing copyright law is disingenuous and completely neglects the main issue - mass production or copies at prices low enough to make a creator's work a significant part of the cost of the copy.
The FBI has a pretty good image in my part of the country. It's main activity here seems to be rooting out corruption at a municipal and state level. Almost every day there is a headline detailing a bribery sting operation that caught some local politician trying to make money on the side accepting money to fix contracts or grease the wheels for some no-bid purchase.
Compared to local police I think I trust them more, not less.
This is the organization that could not handle an international vaccine program without falling flat on it's face due to internal politics. I can't imagine that it would be any better in handling external politics.
There are some perfectly valid reasons to be suspicious of any one country administering the TLD list. Retiring zombie TLDs isn't one of them. Just set up a grace period. After 3 years don't process any more new domain applications. After 5 years no domain renewals. After 15 years no TLD.
Very few domains will have a lifetime longer than that, and if they do chances are they are run by clueful people who will have aliases set up long before the tits up date.
Universal making its stuff incompatible with the market leading playback device. Apple is not.
iPod is ok, but it seriously needs to get with the program. In particular that means FLAC support (hopefully somebody will tell me it already has this) and a SPDIF digital output so I can feed it into some serious portable amplification like the magnificent iBasso D1 and drive real headphones (not ear buds).
Then maybe the iPod will erase its tragic legacy of low bit rate mp3s and people will be able to hear music at a decent fidelity level.
SC Johnson and Johnson and Johnson are two very different companies.
So why exactly do you make the same off-topic post any time there is an article on Slashdot that is unfavorable to Germany?
By far the most worrisome thing to me about closed source software is proprietary file formats. Almost always the data is worth far more than the software, and when vendors try to lock up the data they are making a grab right for the testicles.
This is ultimately why OOXML is such a big deal, and why I would much rather has open source.
We can't directly and distinctly perceive magnetism, the rotation of the earth, the strong nuclear force either, continental drift or photons, yet there seems to be no problem with acceptance of these phenomena as real. Heck we even have people who claim the moon landings are a fraud because they don't believe the evidence and haven't gone there themselves.
The issue here is really very simple. Scientific investigation and study has resulted in the understanding of evolution as the mechanism for ever increasing complexity in life. Science at its very foundation requires naturalistic explanations of natural phenomena. Since science has not advanced to the point where a set of axioms can be constructed that allow the deductive proof of these explanations, we have the situation where inductive logic is used for the proof of these explanations. It is the fundamental structure of science today.
Now we have the problem that the Bible teaches something else; i.e. an external supernatural force a.k.a. God is responsible for the creation of complex forms of life. Some people reject the teachings of science in this regard and choose the Biblical account instead. I have no problem with people having these beliefs. It is, or at should be a free country.
The problem I have is that some people who adhere to the Biblical account believe that this account means the scientific account is wrong despite the fact that they are unable to provide the counter examples that would invalidate the inductive reasoning used by in the scientific account. Not only is this an issue, but there have been endless attempts to teach these non-scientific beliefs (non-scientific in the sense that they rely on supernatural rather than naturalistic explanations) as if they were science, or even attempt to redefine the basic framework of science to accommodate these supernatural explanations, or use the legal process to forbid teaching the scientific explanation.
Here it is at the end. You cannot appeal to a higher power and call the result science. Creationism and its bastard stepchild, intelligent design are bankrupt intellectual concepts and frauds when they are presented as science or alternatives to scientific evolution.
Honestly, I have no problem with people arguing about religion and trying to prove it wrong, that's to be expected and trying to silence it is akin to saying that your argument is weaker than your opponent's.
Unfortunately debates involving religion seem to inspire fanatics. Assassinations of doctors who perform abortions. The murder of Hypatia. Burning of Protestants during the Counter-Reformation.
The list is long.
I expect this is going to end up in a legal mess.
That is nothing compared to the actual storage technology. Attempting to recover data packed at a density of 1 GB/sq.in. from a disk spinning at 10,000 revolutions per minute where the actual data is stored in a micron thin layer of rust on the surface of the disk is manifestly impossible.
"and that they're now desperate to protect their executives from SCO's creditors while seeking yet another delay"
Executives have no risk from creditors unless criminal conduct can be shown, or it can be shown that SCO did not operate as a corporation. It is very rare for these conditions to occur. The only thing Darl and his buddies are at risk for is unemployment.
The main reason to form a corporation is to protect the owners and principals of the corporation from personal liability. This is why you see phrases like 'Limited Liability Corporation'.
Breaking strong encryption is certainly not trivial. The mathematics that makes this true is still valid. As far as exporting cryptographic techniques, this was based on the fact that there were few people who really understood the state of the art in software, and they were all working in the US. That knowledge eventually spread through a variety of mechanisms, and the export controls only became a hindrance to US software companies looking to sell worldwide, without doing anything to enhance national security.
The evolution of technology in this case didn't make the crime easier to commit, it made the crime itself moot.
There was a point at which pirating media WAS a serious crime because it took a serious CRIMINAL to do it.
There has never been a time in my adult life (which I measure from 1965, when I turned 15) where pirating of some sort of media took a serious, dedicated criminal - from taping a friend's vinyl records, duplicating Bill Gates' original BASIC tapes, Xeroxing textbooks or articles, to copying VCRs tapes, CDs, and now DVDs, it has always been within the easy reach of the casual individual.
The only thing the internet has done is remove the restriction that you have to bring a copy or original to your house before you can copy it. In many ways piracy over the internet is more difficult and risky, because by transmitting the data over the public internet you expose yourself to observation by the copyright holders. In some sense using the internet and getting away with it takes a much more dedicated individual than these older methods.
There is no legal principle that grants an exemption from criminality or civil liability because technology has made the wrong easier to commit. The seriousness is always judged by the amount of damage caused.