No. Claiming that Iraq had programs to develop WMDs was not a lie. Claiming that Iraq did not cooperate with inspections was not a lie. Claiming that Iraq has, in the past, used gas on its own people, was not a lie.
One part of CNN's paraphrasing of his speech might be taken to imply existing weapons, but I doubt he actually said that, given how a White House publication on the topic only talks about how Saddam might potentially rebuild his arsenal. There was no claim he had already rebuilt it and was ready to strike the US in 45 minutes.
The imminent threat of existing WMDs mandates immediate action, without necessarily gaining international support first. WMD programs allow more time to gain support, and/or more measured responses. There's an important difference. That's also why Republicans are lying when they say Clinton made the same claims Bush did.
Yes, you should thank me. Not everyone would call Franken's letter a lie. I notice you carefully chose your hyperlink in such a way as to avoid the part that shows the original letter and says it "reads like a joke." I wish lies like "I will be the Education President" were as funny.
And thank you for confirming that you have no rational argument against what Franken presents in his book, except lame ad-hominem attacks.
If you want to constrain your sources only to liars who haven't admitted anything, go ahead. However, you always have the choice of checking the sources he cites.
I have an even better idea. Declare that software is nonstatutory material for a patent. Patents on systems that include software should be evaluated solely on the novelty, etc. of the non-software parts of the system.
Great idea, huh? Actually, it wasn't mine. The US Supreme Court thought of it first. How the USPTO and lower courts managed to ignore it is beyond me. If Europe legalizes software patents, it will be the first place in the world to officially do so.
When Bush said we had enough evidence of existing WMDs (not just WMD programs), Democrats believed him. That was a huge mistake, and I hope they don't repeat it.
I'll also take Kennedy to task for opposing renewable energy in the form of windmills off Cape Cod. I'm a registered Democrat because the mathematical reality is that our government is a two-party system; there's strength in numbers. Democrats are the lesser of two evils. Folks like Nader need to win the Democratic Party first, and then take on the nation.
Al Franken's book is full of well-documented evidence. The outrageous title is a parody of the outrageous titles Ann Coulter chooses for her books. I read Franken's book, and found only one statistics abuse in the entire thing. Calling him crazy is the only avenue you have left; his arguments are quite solid. I'd suggest you expand your "wide variety of sources" to include Franken's book.
Except for Labor, every economic sector spoke with its money saying Bush would serve its interests better. They were proved right when the anti-trust case against Microsoft fell apart. They were proved right when the EPA got eviscerated and polluters got free rein. They were proved right when Cheney visited the CIA to say "you aren't looking hard enough" to agents who couldn't find the evidence to support the case for a war for the energy industry's benefit in Iraq.
No, Gore wouldn't have been perfect. But in this election, as in the last, I'll be voting for any breathing organism that has a chance of beating Bush. You "all politicians are alike" people have the freedom to continue in blissful ignorance if you must, but please understand that some people feel obligated to pay attention to the facts of what's going on, and that's what makes it an emotional issue for us.
Here's the argument Judge Rich uses that boggles my mind:
a general purpose computer in effect becomes a special purpose computer once it is programmed to perform particular functions pursuant to instructions from program software
That same reasoning applied to Benson would have resulted in a different decision. Even moreso for Flook. Judges Archer and Nies were right on the money when they wrote in the dissent,
...the rationale that leads to this conclusion and the majority's holding that Alappat's rasterizer represents the invention of a machine are illogical, inconsistent with precedent and with sound principles of patent law, and will have untold consequences.
Oh great. Nice to know that DMCA problems will be "sorted out" someday at great legal cost to some little-guy victim of the RIAA.
"Protect and preserve the rights of people who use copyrighted works"? Give me a break. You lose the ability to fast-forward ads in a DVD you buy. You lose the right to bring a DVD with you to another part of the world and play it on somebody else's DVD player. You lose the right to use free software to play your DVD. Just because it doesn't take away every one of our rights doesn't mean the DMCA can boast of protecting and preserving. It expands the power of copyright holders, period.
Copyright law says that I, as creator of my work, can control how it is used and by whom.
No! No! No! Copyright law says no such thing. It's extremely important that you understand this. Your ignorance will influence law to favor EULAs.
Copyright law excludes other people from copying, distributing, publicly performing, or harming the artistic integrity of your work. They need your permission (i.e. license) to do any of these things. A license agreement is a contract that says, "if you agree to my terms, I'll share my exclusive rights to this work with you." You only need to agree to a software license if you intend to copy, distribute, publicly perform, or modify software.
You do not need a license agreement to run software off of a CD that you buy. If you open up a box and find a "license agreement" inside, ignore it. The transient copies of a program that are a necessary part of running it are explicitly allowed under copyright law so long as you're the lawful owner of your copy (e.g. the CD you bought), so you don't need the copyright owner's permission.
Shrink-wrap licenses are gaining ground in the courts, however. If license terms are conspicuously visible on the outside of the package, you may be held to them. Click-through licenses are still questionable, because the contract was sealed when you paid for the product, and click-through "licenses" try to change contract terms after the sale. The danger is this: when the average consumer has a "reasonable expectation" that he's obligated to agree to a click-through license after purchasing software, these "licenses" may become enforceable contracts.
Is this the same Judge Rich the Supreme Court cites in Diehr as follows?
Judge Lane, joined by Judge Rich, argued that Benson should be read as a general proscription of the patenting of computer programs regardless of the form of the claims.
Diamond v. Diehr affirmed previous cases declaring that a formula (or algorithm or software) standing alone cannot be patented. However, if you have a claim that is innovative outside the formula/algorithm/software part of the system, then
a claim drawn to subject matter otherwise statutory does not become nonstatutory simply because it uses a mathematical formula, computer program or digital computer.
The above quote makes it obvious that they continued to view a computer program standing alone as nonstatutory, as in previous rulings.
See especially section IV of the Diehr opinion where they preemtively smack down attempts to re-draft claims to sound like systems when they're really nothing more than patents on software or other nonstatutory material.
If some judges in Europe uphold software patents, then software patents are exactly as legal in Europe as they are in the U.S. There is no U.S. law that makes software patentable. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled software unpatentable in every case it has ever ruled on. Unfortunately, one Federal Circuit judge mistakenly ruled one patentable, and the USPTO is out of control.
If you had any clue what Gore actually said, you would see that he was obviously referring to his service in congress, not technical inventions. He did take initiative in opening the university/military/government network to create what we now know as the Internet. If not for Gore, you wouldn't be able to flaunt your ignorance on Slashdot the way you just did.
The general consensus out there does seem to be that investors get warm fuzzies from companies holding patents. Apparent monopolies do keep that unpredictable "free market" concept from interfering with investment plans. However, isn't it true that lots of companies out there do OK without actually enforcing their software patents? I'd feel better about Amazon holding software patents if they didn't initiate suits.
In 1981 the US Supreme Court issued a ruling that declared a certain patent valid despite the fact that software was a part of the system patented. Justices ruled that if the system as a whole was patentable, the inclusion of non-patentable material (in this case software) as part of the system did not make the entire system unpatentable.
The opinion contained a whole section to assert that patents on software (automatically invalid) could not be made valid by drafting the application to make them look like a "system" with trivial non-software portions. Nonetheless, after this opinion, the USPTO started approving all sorts of patents that were essentially patents on software.
Further confusing the situation, a lower court decision, In re. Allapat, contradicted the Supreme Court's precedent and declared software patentable.
Question for lawyers: Whom do we blame for US software patents?
The Supreme Court for not correcting Allapat or taking on any other software patent case since 1981? They are asked to hear ten times as many cases as they can actually hear. Perhaps software patents aren't high up on the list of injustices hurting society.
Justice Rich for the In Re. Allapat decision? Is he expected to actually read Diamond v. Diehr himself, or are the lawyers arguing the case responsible for making sure he understands it?
The lawyers arguing Allapat? Maybe they thought Diehr was so obvious it didn't require explaining.
The article's description of mod_security as a "powerful umbrella shielding applications from attacks" seems to oversell it. If you have a known app with a known exploit, you can use mod_security instead of fixing the app. But even the mod_security docs themselves say it's better to fix the app.
For apps which accept arbitrary text input (most do!) a general filter against, e.g. "insert into", is a bad idea? This slashdot post includes those two words together; you have to be specific about which inputs get filtered how. Again, this is better done in the app itself.
I just took a look at freshemeat.net and it looks like there are at least 9 images on the front page. I would guess that means 9 HTTP requests where the database connection was not used and 1 where it was used.
Jetty running on that single aging server will blow the doors off of PHP. That's what I saw when I did some BRL benchmarking some time ago. Presumably you'll get similar results with JSP.
At least with the Apache 1 model, every process is going to have a connection open whether it's serving a page that will use it or not, so it's essentially wasted. You don't have this problem with connection pools.
How do PHP persistent connections work in the Apache 2 model, I'd like to know? Hopefully it's a connection pool behind the scenes.
Automatic conversion is weak typing in my book. Do you know some "everything is a string" language out there that doesn't internally convert strings to numbers when doing math? Just leaves everything the same type? If PHP isn't weak typed, what is?
Slashdot Mirror
No. Claiming that Iraq had programs to develop WMDs was not a lie. Claiming that Iraq did not cooperate with inspections was not a lie. Claiming that Iraq has, in the past, used gas on its own people, was not a lie.
One part of CNN's paraphrasing of his speech might be taken to imply existing weapons, but I doubt he actually said that, given how a White House publication on the topic only talks about how Saddam might potentially rebuild his arsenal. There was no claim he had already rebuilt it and was ready to strike the US in 45 minutes.
Please provide a specific link to opensecrets.org that doesn't contradict your main claim.
The imminent threat of existing WMDs mandates immediate action, without necessarily gaining international support first. WMD programs allow more time to gain support, and/or more measured responses. There's an important difference. That's also why Republicans are lying when they say Clinton made the same claims Bush did.
Yes, you should thank me. Not everyone would call Franken's letter a lie. I notice you carefully chose your hyperlink in such a way as to avoid the part that shows the original letter and says it "reads like a joke." I wish lies like "I will be the Education President" were as funny.
And thank you for confirming that you have no rational argument against what Franken presents in his book, except lame ad-hominem attacks.
If you want to constrain your sources only to liars who haven't admitted anything, go ahead. However, you always have the choice of checking the sources he cites.
I have an even better idea. Declare that software is nonstatutory material for a patent. Patents on systems that include software should be evaluated solely on the novelty, etc. of the non-software parts of the system.
Great idea, huh? Actually, it wasn't mine. The US Supreme Court thought of it first. How the USPTO and lower courts managed to ignore it is beyond me. If Europe legalizes software patents, it will be the first place in the world to officially do so.
When Bush said we had enough evidence of existing WMDs (not just WMD programs), Democrats believed him. That was a huge mistake, and I hope they don't repeat it.
I'll also take Kennedy to task for opposing renewable energy in the form of windmills off Cape Cod. I'm a registered Democrat because the mathematical reality is that our government is a two-party system; there's strength in numbers. Democrats are the lesser of two evils. Folks like Nader need to win the Democratic Party first, and then take on the nation.
Al Franken's book is full of well-documented evidence. The outrageous title is a parody of the outrageous titles Ann Coulter chooses for her books. I read Franken's book, and found only one statistics abuse in the entire thing. Calling him crazy is the only avenue you have left; his arguments are quite solid. I'd suggest you expand your "wide variety of sources" to include Franken's book.
Except for Labor, every economic sector spoke with its money saying Bush would serve its interests better. They were proved right when the anti-trust case against Microsoft fell apart. They were proved right when the EPA got eviscerated and polluters got free rein. They were proved right when Cheney visited the CIA to say "you aren't looking hard enough" to agents who couldn't find the evidence to support the case for a war for the energy industry's benefit in Iraq.
No, Gore wouldn't have been perfect. But in this election, as in the last, I'll be voting for any breathing organism that has a chance of beating Bush. You "all politicians are alike" people have the freedom to continue in blissful ignorance if you must, but please understand that some people feel obligated to pay attention to the facts of what's going on, and that's what makes it an emotional issue for us.
That same reasoning applied to Benson would have resulted in a different decision. Even moreso for Flook. Judges Archer and Nies were right on the money when they wrote in the dissent,
Oh great. Nice to know that DMCA problems will be "sorted out" someday at great legal cost to some little-guy victim of the RIAA.
"Protect and preserve the rights of people who use copyrighted works"? Give me a break. You lose the ability to fast-forward ads in a DVD you buy. You lose the right to bring a DVD with you to another part of the world and play it on somebody else's DVD player. You lose the right to use free software to play your DVD. Just because it doesn't take away every one of our rights doesn't mean the DMCA can boast of protecting and preserving. It expands the power of copyright holders, period.
No! No! No! Copyright law says no such thing. It's extremely important that you understand this. Your ignorance will influence law to favor EULAs.
Copyright law excludes other people from copying, distributing, publicly performing, or harming the artistic integrity of your work. They need your permission (i.e. license) to do any of these things. A license agreement is a contract that says, "if you agree to my terms, I'll share my exclusive rights to this work with you." You only need to agree to a software license if you intend to copy, distribute, publicly perform, or modify software.
You do not need a license agreement to run software off of a CD that you buy. If you open up a box and find a "license agreement" inside, ignore it. The transient copies of a program that are a necessary part of running it are explicitly allowed under copyright law so long as you're the lawful owner of your copy (e.g. the CD you bought), so you don't need the copyright owner's permission.
Shrink-wrap licenses are gaining ground in the courts, however. If license terms are conspicuously visible on the outside of the package, you may be held to them. Click-through licenses are still questionable, because the contract was sealed when you paid for the product, and click-through "licenses" try to change contract terms after the sale. The danger is this: when the average consumer has a "reasonable expectation" that he's obligated to agree to a click-through license after purchasing software, these "licenses" may become enforceable contracts.
Know your rights! Use them or lose them!
Is this the same Judge Rich the Supreme Court cites in Diehr as follows?
What changed his mind for In re. Alappat?
The above quote makes it obvious that they continued to view a computer program standing alone as nonstatutory, as in previous rulings.
See especially section IV of the Diehr opinion where they preemtively smack down attempts to re-draft claims to sound like systems when they're really nothing more than patents on software or other nonstatutory material.
If some judges in Europe uphold software patents, then software patents are exactly as legal in Europe as they are in the U.S. There is no U.S. law that makes software patentable. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled software unpatentable in every case it has ever ruled on. Unfortunately, one Federal Circuit judge mistakenly ruled one patentable, and the USPTO is out of control.
If you had any clue what Gore actually said, you would see that he was obviously referring to his service in congress, not technical inventions. He did take initiative in opening the university/military/government network to create what we now know as the Internet. If not for Gore, you wouldn't be able to flaunt your ignorance on Slashdot the way you just did.
The general consensus out there does seem to be that investors get warm fuzzies from companies holding patents. Apparent monopolies do keep that unpredictable "free market" concept from interfering with investment plans. However, isn't it true that lots of companies out there do OK without actually enforcing their software patents? I'd feel better about Amazon holding software patents if they didn't initiate suits.
In 1981 the US Supreme Court issued a ruling that declared a certain patent valid despite the fact that software was a part of the system patented. Justices ruled that if the system as a whole was patentable, the inclusion of non-patentable material (in this case software) as part of the system did not make the entire system unpatentable.
The opinion contained a whole section to assert that patents on software (automatically invalid) could not be made valid by drafting the application to make them look like a "system" with trivial non-software portions. Nonetheless, after this opinion, the USPTO started approving all sorts of patents that were essentially patents on software.
Further confusing the situation, a lower court decision, In re. Allapat, contradicted the Supreme Court's precedent and declared software patentable.
Question for lawyers: Whom do we blame for US software patents?
The article's description of mod_security as a "powerful umbrella shielding applications from attacks" seems to oversell it. If you have a known app with a known exploit, you can use mod_security instead of fixing the app. But even the mod_security docs themselves say it's better to fix the app.
For apps which accept arbitrary text input (most do!) a general filter against, e.g. "insert into", is a bad idea? This slashdot post includes those two words together; you have to be specific about which inputs get filtered how. Again, this is better done in the app itself.
I just took a look at freshemeat.net and it looks like there are at least 9 images on the front page. I would guess that means 9 HTTP requests where the database connection was not used and 1 where it was used.
Jetty running on that single aging server will blow the doors off of PHP. That's what I saw when I did some BRL benchmarking some time ago. Presumably you'll get similar results with JSP.
Then use Jetty.
At least with the Apache 1 model, every process is going to have a connection open whether it's serving a page that will use it or not, so it's essentially wasted. You don't have this problem with connection pools.
How do PHP persistent connections work in the Apache 2 model, I'd like to know? Hopefully it's a connection pool behind the scenes.
Automatic conversion is weak typing in my book. Do you know some "everything is a string" language out there that doesn't internally convert strings to numbers when doing math? Just leaves everything the same type? If PHP isn't weak typed, what is?
The problem with PHP isn't dynamic typing, it's loose typing.
Scheme has strict dynamic typing. You get more concise code, but not so error prone as PHP.
Java has strict static typing, possibly somewhat less error prone, but less convenient.
Languages like ML have strict static typing, but type inference makes the code more concise.