Slashdot != Professional Journalism
on
KDE 3.0 is Out
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Don't confuse Slashdot with journalism. The site is still run like a college kid's pet project. Sure they're making money and have thousands of readers but that doesn't make the staff qualified journalists/editors. They're geeks with a popular geek web-site -- nothing more.
I come here almost everyday to see what they've collected because it's usually a nice mix. It has a the right amounts of tech, science and politics to keep me coming back. But, I never read their 'editorials' or Jon Katz because it's amateurish bunk. And, usually skip or skim the comments for the same reason:).
Problem is he's supposed to be representing people not companies. Remember, companies (in theory at least) are not constituents and can't (in theory) vote.
And before anyone says it, I don't buy the "what's good for the business is good for the community" crap.
(The stadium, by the way, can go, as far as I'm concerned.)
Three Rivers has already been nuked by the greedy sons-a-bitches that decided we needed two new stadiums despite the fact that the people of Pittsburgh opposed the idea.
Unfortunately, even the Founders and authors of the Constitution did not fully understand what rights were. They said that people were "endowed by their Creator" with rights, but I don't even think they meant this, precisely.
Being theists (of some variation) they believed that man was created by God and that by nature of that creation -- by nature of being a man -- they had rights.
They had a very clear understanding of what rights are, they believed in natural rights. And, no, they were not all theists. I believe they used the term Creator because it doesn't necessarily imply a god let alone a specific god.
If they were to generalize further, they would have realized that man has rights b/c rights are what he requires to exist, thus to live, thus to think, thus to own property, thus to be free from coersion.
They did. This is the idea behind natural rights.
People still don't realize this today. They think people have rights to the minds of others. They think that groups of people have rights (only individuals have rights). They think people have economic rights (your "right" to a job or to health care can only negate the individual rights of those who provide you a job or a health care). And if politicians think that we have a right to health care b/c we pay taxes, then that isn't a right, it's a purchased service.
I mostly agree with you here.
Owners of music have the right to sell their music to whomever they want, under any license they want. If people don't buy their music for any reason, owners are free to change the price or license restrictions. A music consumer has no rights to that music except to listen to it, to use or destroy the medium he may have bought with it (e.g., a CD), and to do anything else his license permits him.
An owner of some music has every right to say whom he will allow to rebroadcast his music and under what terms. If he allows no one to broadcast it, then he will receive no royalties. Simple as that. It is only a matter of value-for-value trade.
See, here's the problem. Copyright isn't about what consumers can do with someone else's right. Creators of a copyrightable work do not naturally have any special rights to that work. Let me stress that:
Creators of a copyrightable work do not naturally have any special rights to that work.
Special rights (copyright) are granted to them through a social contract (i.e. a law). In other words, we (you, me and everybody else in this country) agree that it is of benefit to society to grant copyrights to creators of certain works in order to foster that type of work. Copyrights can be taken away, sold or thrown out. The (natural) right to life, for example, can't be taken away (murder), sold (slavery) or thrown out (suicide).
All of the rights that you list for an owner of a piece of music are rights that have been granted him by his fellow man. We, as a society, can decide he shouldn't get any special rights to that music.
Companies, not creators of copyrightable works, are abusing the copyright system for monetary gain and noone is doing anything to stop them. It's time to rework the copyright laws of this country.
First off I apologize for the flame, nothing personal. I just get frutrated when people really don't understand some of the basics tenets that this country was founded on. I really want you to understand...
Sorry, but I don't buy it. Rights (as I understand) are granted by a more powerful entity to a less-powerful entity.
You understand incorrectly if you're referring to the political system of the U.S.A. If it's your opinion that that's what rights should be then fine.
In other words, the government allows that people have certain rights to vote, assemble, speak, etc., but those rights can be retracted at any given time.
Go back to the quote "We hold these truths to be self-evident etc." The rights exist in the first place. The government is given permission by the people to restrict rights under certain circumstances. The government get its rights from the people not the other way around. This is the foundation of our form of government. Read the Bill of Rights. It doesn't grant rights to the people it sets limits on the government ensuring the rights of the people -- the rights that exist naturally. Those rights cannot be retracted at any time. The government has to have a damn good reason to deny anyone their rights.
I view rights as a human construct, something we created to share power between government and the governed. Without a more powerful entity to grant rights to the lesser entity, those rights do not exist and we live in a state of anarchy. So I still don't buy the argument of natural rights.
You are entitled to your own view of rights. But, this country, its Constitution and laws are based on the concept of natural rights. That's not my opinion, it's historical fact.
Your original post questioned whether people were "blowing smoke up your ass" with the term natural rights. They weren't. It is a well established political philosophy that is the backbone of this nation and many others.
So, I have a little better understanding of "natural rights" now, you asshole, but I still don't buy it.
I encourage you to read up on John Locke to get a better understanding of natural rights.
By the way, just what in the hell is a "natural right"?
Get an education. If you grew in the U.S.A. you need to go back to grade school and enroll in a Social Studies class.
Can someone please inform the more ignorant of us what a "natural right" is and give some concrete examples so we know that you're not just blowing smoke up our asses?
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Sorry for the flame but you really are ignorant. The entire Bill of Rights (BoR) is based on the idea of natural rights. The BoR takes the idea of natural rights and codifies for practical use in a society.
Do really think they're trying to put Exxon, Shell, etc. out of business? Who do you think WalMart gets their gas from? Many, if not most, gas stations are privately owned. Thery're more like franchises. There's someone in your community that owns that station. They just buy all their gas from one supplier and advertise it that way.
This isn't WalMart against Shell. It's WalMart against Your Local Mechanic. Sellingat or below cost isn't efficient, it's abusive.
but I think the idea of using such publications to undermine/compete with comercial sources of information is somewhat new.
OK, that makes more sense to me. But, I'd bet it's a result of the advances in telecommunications rather than the success of open-source. I think it prallels the open-source movement not follows it. They both benefit immeasurably from high-speed communication.
I was refering to the number of people who read the tree versions of tech magazines as opposed to the number of hits/or the number or/. readers.
I misunderstood then. That makes more sense. But, considering the editorial quality of Slashdot, I hope Soros' project fairs better!
There. Is that what you wanted? A little external confirmation.
The world would be a better place if everyone were as smart as you. You've never done anything so stupid in your life. Wow, gee, I wish there were more people like you.
So, let them raise the price of CDs to cover the cost of the returned ones. It'll only hurt them in the end. The higher the price goes, the less likely people will be to buy them, the more likely they will be to steal/copy them. They're gouging people already but that gouging has a threshold somehwere.
I'm skeptical that the States would go after music labels. I don't think I'd really want them to. Music and art, while I believe they are needed, are not essential in the most basic survival sense and I can very easily make my own if I need to. Food, water, power and even computer operating systems are harder to come buy, or at least I'm dependent on others to provide them. We've become dependent enough on computers that the States would go after MS abuses. We're not that dependent -- and probably never will be -- on music, especially music from the major labels.
There are plenty of independent music labels and bands out there that charge ~$10 for a CD -- shipped. For example, see: Smells Like Records.
I've heard that the first ten minutes of LOTR takes a bit front the Silmarillion and the Hobbit to explain the Ring. Sounds a lot like the beginning of the animated LOTR.
Also, to the original point, I think the film rights to The Hobbit are owned by someone else.
The lameness filter won't let me post it here. I've put the necessary changes to your firewall script here. I used the same tool to generate my ipchains firewall and added this. I can play Quake3 and Wolf MP test just fine.
Really? I assumed it was supposed to some kind of combination of 'twenties' and 'teens.' Do they really market this stuff to kids? I would never buy a kid a $300-$400 toy for the digital-age equivalent of passing notes.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't confuse Slashdot with journalism. The site is still run like a college kid's pet project. Sure they're making money and have thousands of readers but that doesn't make the staff qualified journalists/editors. They're geeks with a popular geek web-site -- nothing more.
I come here almost everyday to see what they've collected because it's usually a nice mix. It has a the right amounts of tech, science and politics to keep me coming back. But, I never read their 'editorials' or Jon Katz because it's amateurish bunk. And, usually skip or skim the comments for the same reason :).
Problem is he's supposed to be representing people not companies. Remember, companies (in theory at least) are not constituents and can't (in theory) vote.
And before anyone says it, I don't buy the "what's good for the business is good for the community" crap.
Three Rivers has already been nuked by the greedy sons-a-bitches that decided we needed two new stadiums despite the fact that the people of Pittsburgh opposed the idea.
Unfortunately, even the Founders and authors of the Constitution did not fully understand what rights were. They said that people were "endowed by their Creator" with rights, but I don't even think they meant this, precisely.
Being theists (of some variation) they believed that man was created by God and that by nature of that creation -- by nature of being a man -- they had rights.
They had a very clear understanding of what rights are, they believed in natural rights. And, no, they were not all theists. I believe they used the term Creator because it doesn't necessarily imply a god let alone a specific god.
If they were to generalize further, they would have realized that man has rights b/c rights are what he requires to exist, thus to live, thus to think, thus to own property, thus to be free from coersion.They did. This is the idea behind natural rights.
People still don't realize this today. They think people have rights to the minds of others. They think that groups of people have rights (only individuals have rights). They think people have economic rights (your "right" to a job or to health care can only negate the individual rights of those who provide you a job or a health care). And if politicians think that we have a right to health care b/c we pay taxes, then that isn't a right, it's a purchased service.I mostly agree with you here.
Owners of music have the right to sell their music to whomever they want, under any license they want. If people don't buy their music for any reason, owners are free to change the price or license restrictions. A music consumer has no rights to that music except to listen to it, to use or destroy the medium he may have bought with it (e.g., a CD), and to do anything else his license permits him. An owner of some music has every right to say whom he will allow to rebroadcast his music and under what terms. If he allows no one to broadcast it, then he will receive no royalties. Simple as that. It is only a matter of value-for-value trade.See, here's the problem. Copyright isn't about what consumers can do with someone else's right. Creators of a copyrightable work do not naturally have any special rights to that work. Let me stress that:
Creators of a copyrightable work do not naturally have any special rights to that work.
Special rights (copyright) are granted to them through a social contract (i.e. a law). In other words, we (you, me and everybody else in this country) agree that it is of benefit to society to grant copyrights to creators of certain works in order to foster that type of work. Copyrights can be taken away, sold or thrown out. The (natural) right to life, for example, can't be taken away (murder), sold (slavery) or thrown out (suicide).
All of the rights that you list for an owner of a piece of music are rights that have been granted him by his fellow man. We, as a society, can decide he shouldn't get any special rights to that music.
Companies, not creators of copyrightable works, are abusing the copyright system for monetary gain and noone is doing anything to stop them. It's time to rework the copyright laws of this country.
First off I apologize for the flame, nothing personal. I just get frutrated when people really don't understand some of the basics tenets that this country was founded on. I really want you to understand...
Sorry, but I don't buy it. Rights (as I understand) are granted by a more powerful entity to a less-powerful entity.You understand incorrectly if you're referring to the political system of the U.S.A. If it's your opinion that that's what rights should be then fine.
In other words, the government allows that people have certain rights to vote, assemble, speak, etc., but those rights can be retracted at any given time.Go back to the quote "We hold these truths to be self-evident etc." The rights exist in the first place. The government is given permission by the people to restrict rights under certain circumstances. The government get its rights from the people not the other way around. This is the foundation of our form of government. Read the Bill of Rights. It doesn't grant rights to the people it sets limits on the government ensuring the rights of the people -- the rights that exist naturally. Those rights cannot be retracted at any time. The government has to have a damn good reason to deny anyone their rights.
I view rights as a human construct, something we created to share power between government and the governed. Without a more powerful entity to grant rights to the lesser entity, those rights do not exist and we live in a state of anarchy. So I still don't buy the argument of natural rights.You are entitled to your own view of rights. But, this country, its Constitution and laws are based on the concept of natural rights. That's not my opinion, it's historical fact.
Your original post questioned whether people were "blowing smoke up your ass" with the term natural rights. They weren't. It is a well established political philosophy that is the backbone of this nation and many others.
So, I have a little better understanding of "natural rights" now, you asshole, but I still don't buy it.I encourage you to read up on John Locke to get a better understanding of natural rights.
By the way, just what in the hell is a "natural right"?
Get an education. If you grew in the U.S.A. you need to go back to grade school and enroll in a Social Studies class.
Can someone please inform the more ignorant of us what a "natural right" is and give some concrete examples so we know that you're not just blowing smoke up our asses?
Sorry for the flame but you really are ignorant. The entire Bill of Rights (BoR) is based on the idea of natural rights. The BoR takes the idea of natural rights and codifies for practical use in a society.
See also:
Who marked this insightful?
Do really think they're trying to put Exxon, Shell, etc. out of business? Who do you think WalMart gets their gas from? Many, if not most, gas stations are privately owned. Thery're more like franchises. There's someone in your community that owns that station. They just buy all their gas from one supplier and advertise it that way.
This isn't WalMart against Shell. It's WalMart against Your Local Mechanic. Sellingat or below cost isn't efficient, it's abusive.
Could you provide the source for that quote?
I've tried Google but every page that has it only cites Thomas Jefferson. Nobody gives a full citation./P.
but I think the idea of using such publications to undermine/compete with comercial sources of information is somewhat new.
OK, that makes more sense to me. But, I'd bet it's a result of the advances in telecommunications rather than the success of open-source. I think it prallels the open-source movement not follows it. They both benefit immeasurably from high-speed communication.
I was refering to the number of people who read the tree versions of tech magazines as opposed to the number of hits/or the number or /. readers.
I misunderstood then. That makes more sense. But, considering the editorial quality of Slashdot, I hope Soros' project fairs better!
dont blame the crack
No offense to crack intended :)
I find it interesting that areas other than programming are showing signs of the opensource movement.
Open, peer-reviewed acacdemic publishing pre-dates open source/free software by many, many decades.
How many more readers does /. get than Yahoo! Internet magazine or Wired?? I would imagine a lot more...
Are you on crack? Slashdot isn't even in the same league as those sites.
Or were you being sarcastic?
You're obviously of superior intelligence.
There. Is that what you wanted? A little external confirmation.
The world would be a better place if everyone were as smart as you. You've never done anything so stupid in your life. Wow, gee, I wish there were more people like you.
Happy yet? I could go on if you really need it.
After going to Pricewatch, make sure you look up the business on ResellerRatings.com.
With few exceptions, the price is proportional to rating. The lowest prices on Pricewatch are almost always from disreputable resellers.
Yeah, but the Linux port was done by a guy at Id.
So, let them raise the price of CDs to cover the cost of the returned ones. It'll only hurt them in the end. The higher the price goes, the less likely people will be to buy them, the more likely they will be to steal/copy them. They're gouging people already but that gouging has a threshold somehwere.
I'm skeptical that the States would go after music labels. I don't think I'd really want them to. Music and art, while I believe they are needed, are not essential in the most basic survival sense and I can very easily make my own if I need to. Food, water, power and even computer operating systems are harder to come buy, or at least I'm dependent on others to provide them. We've become dependent enough on computers that the States would go after MS abuses. We're not that dependent -- and probably never will be -- on music, especially music from the major labels.
There are plenty of independent music labels and bands out there that charge ~$10 for a CD -- shipped. For example, see: Smells Like Records.
The reason Prince changed his name to a symbol and became "the artist formerly known as Prince," was to screw the record companies.
I'm not a huge fan of his music but I respect him more than most any 'big name' star. His heart is in the right place.
I don't anything about AutoCad, dwg or dxf but I noticed this on apps.kde.com the other day:
Linux Drawing ViewerI've heard that the first ten minutes of LOTR takes a bit front the Silmarillion and the Hobbit to explain the Ring. Sounds a lot like the beginning of the animated LOTR.
Also, to the original point, I think the film rights to The Hobbit are owned by someone else.
The lameness filter won't let me post it here. I've put the necessary changes to your firewall script here. I used the same tool to generate my ipchains firewall and added this. I can play Quake3 and Wolf MP test just fine.
Tux Games will be selling the Windows version bundled with a custom CD that has the Linux binaries and "everything you should need to get it running."
This is a joke, right? Right?!!! ...
Really? I assumed it was supposed to some kind of combination of 'twenties' and 'teens.' Do they really market this stuff to kids? I would never buy a kid a $300-$400 toy for the digital-age equivalent of passing notes.
OK, where the hell did they come up with non-word, "tweens." I hate it already and this is the first time I've seen it.
When the revolution comes, the marketing people will be the first against the wall.
This is like Burger King charging for each French Frie. It's not worth the money it would cost to keep track of all of the page views.
Check Linuxgames for more info and another mirror.
Ahem...
That's Pittsburgh. And if you're a real yinzer, you pronounce it "Picksburgh."
Thank You.