If people had as much right to bear arms as the
Second Amendment claimed
That's funny, I'm pretty sure we have exactly as much right to bear arms as the Second Amendment claims.
The Second Amendment:
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed. (emphasis mine)
So if you're in the army, or you're in a state-supported militia, you have the right to bear arms. If you're not, and you're not supporting the state's security and you're not training so that you can support the state's militia, you don't.
Miller said there was no evidence to suggest that any source code had been modified or corrupted in the attacks. But the company couldn't say one way or the other whether source code had been stolen
In other news, the Windows Development group reports fewer bugs and longer uptimes than ever...
go to www.whitehouse.gov and email the President today and tell him , politely, how this will make things MUCH, MUCH WORSE
Uh huh...that'll change the world. After all, we all know that every single email ever written and sent to a congressman or other elected official was read.
(the above is sarcastic, people. Several congresspeople have been interviewed about email and said that they do not read email because they can't be certain it's coming from their district, and because they don't have the time. Letters change the world, email doesn't.)
What I would like to see is a website devoted to keeping track of these issues, answering the question "who is my congressman and how do I write him/her?" (i.e. having a zipcode-to-congressperson's address translator), and having sample letters for each issue so that you could download the letter, change it to fit your voice (or not if you're really lazy) and print it out. Sign it and send it. Then they'll listen. And the cost is what? 33 cents + 1 piece of paper at about 10 cents + 1 envelope at about 25 cents (high prices) = less than 70 cents.
Unfortunately, I don't have the time or graphic skills to make a decent webpage, so most of the time I don't try. If you do, please take this and run with it. And give me an email cause I'd be willing to help.
on the GNU system (and this includes GNU/Linux), the GNU C library is the
only C library. So the distribution terms of the GNU C library determine whether it is possible to compile a
proprietary program for the GNU system. There is no ethical reason to allow proprietary applications on the
GNU system, but strategically it seems that disallowing them would do more to discourage use of the GNU
system than to encourage development of free applications.
That is why using the Library GPL is a good strategy for the C library
From The Gnu Project History
Apparently, the point of the LGPL is strategic, not moral. In which case, CS's use of the LGPL and accepting the API and NDA seems like a good strategic idea since once CS is accepted and there are tons of games for the PS/2, they could then use their market share to force Sony to let them open source the wrapper.
Jeff
Re:Copyright, GPL, and selling (out)
on
Deja For Sale
·
· Score: 1
You probably won't see this, but I thought I'd respond.
I do indeed recognize that the editorial opinion, while vocal, is not the entirety of the site. It is, however, a significant percentage. Supporting Napster usage is karma whoring because it will get you mod'd up, while if you're arguing against Napster, you'd better be damn persuasive if you want to be listened to. It seemed to me when I read this article that the people arguing that Deja had their copyrighted material had also posted pro-Napster stuff (I followed the user links and looked at their other posts, and since we had the Fanning Napster post yesterday...)
In any event, the majority of the readership may not be hypocritical, but there's are quite a few hypocrites out there.
Jeff
Copyright, GPL, and selling (out)
on
Deja For Sale
·
· Score: 2
I don't get it. I keep reading posts by/.'ers saying "they can't sell the database, it has my copyrighted work/code/pictures/whatever on it." or "They can't sell the databas, it has my code on it, which is GPL'd, so they can't make money off it." I won't even discuss whether or not that's legal under the GPL--others have done a better job than I coud do.
What I will discuss is the hypocrisy. Never mind that they're not actually selling your content, they're selling their business. (Technicality, but absolutely true, they're not really making money off the value of your content, which is what copyright is designed to protect, they're making money off its existence. Yeah, I ain't a lawyer, so I might be totally clueless there. It doesn't matter. I've got a real point here.)
How about the hypocrisy (boy, the tangents...)? Here we are arguing that Napster should be legal cause it's not violating copyright, it's "sharing," and then when a company, that has merely archived posts that we knew were going out into the public domain, we start screaming about our copyright. For shame!
Woo hoo! I'm an "angry, psychopathic fascist" and a "grim, humourless fanatic!" Hot damn.
My friend, you are terribly amusing.
First of all, I don't agree with the current system. If you read my last paragraph you'd see that I stated I was being sarcastic. It's difficult to identify sarcasm on the net, but even if you took my entire post as being serious, how did you come up with my "agreeing with the system"?
Oh, I suppose I should attend to my use of the cliche "stood up against a wall and shot" while I'm here laughing at your attacks. It's a cliche. A figure of speech. As in, a way of using speech, not to be literal, but to show with images.
I'm also really curious how you got the belief that I am opposed to the Bill of Rights or to freedom (and why you capitalized it).
Yes, I'm laughing at you. Your responses were so amusing.
America hasn't been a "free country" in a long time, if you're referring to the right to do whatever you want and damn the consequences. America hasn't been a "free country" this century if you're referring to children's rights. Children don't have rights. Children are frighteningly close to property of the country and their parents. Their parents have the right to raise them however they wish, unless and until they begin a narrow category of action known as "abuse" (which I won't even get into the hypocrisy regarding), at which point the govenment can take away the kids and raise them however the government wants.
Children are a perpetual, self-sustaning second class. They have effectively no rights, and no voice to complain about it. Get used to it. It's been going on since forever.
Your "draconian laws" are there to "protect" children, who are obviously impressionable in their youth and thus need protection. They're also there to aid parents in preventing kids from violating their will. Because, after all, children must never ever think for themselves. Until of course they become adults.
Yes, some of the above is sarcastic. Some of it is real. No I didn't bother to separate it out. Why? Because you're going to read it through your understanding of the world, and take from it whatever your brain feels like taking from it. So why should I bother with the effort to make it easier for you to disagree with me?
While I completely agree with you on the points of causality and new technology being lambasted simply because it's misunderstood and new, I have to disagree with your final point. It's true that there are a lot of idiots out there, and it's true that genetic engineering might mean that in the future, there will be less idiots.
However, your implicit argument is that if everybody had an IQ above 125, we'd have less misunderstanding, less violence, less hate, less whatever. This I think is bullshit. I've known a lot of very intelligent people who were incredibly violent, a lot of very intelligent people who were so hidebound and conservative they thought the internet should be banned for its violence, and a lot of very intelligent people who really should have been stood up against a wall and shot a long time ago for being such assholes. Intelligence is not the only answer. It's something we should work on, but many other things are too.
If we're looking for utopic solutions (gengineering), we could look at finding infallible tests to prove that people are going to be good parents before allowing them to have children. We can look at societal aid to parents, both in training them how to be good parents, and in providing the support systems so they can continue with their lives. We can look at societal aid for kids growing up trying to figure out life. Better mentoring systems (with good mentors, for once!), better educational systems that reward intelligence and good behavior and stop encouraging bullies with lying faces who can suck up to teachers. Things like that.
We've got a lot of problems, and pure intelligence ain't the only answer.
Okay, we all have bias. But my review is going to be completely unlike all the other ones in that I like Netscape PR3 without loving it.
First, yes, it is fast. I'm running it right now under Windows and it's faster than 4.74 by about 5 times (no, that's not a benchmark, it's subjective), and it's even faster than IE 4, which was the winner for speed for a while. It makes HotJava look like a Chevy Nova.
But while it is fast, there are a few things that are really annoying. Most of them you can disable, but some of them just keep reappearing. The My Sidebar thing, first of all, is bloatware, but some people may like it. So when I went to View and saw that I could make it disappear, I was very happy. And then, two clicks later, I hit the search button to see what it would do, and the sidebar popped up again. I turned it off, closed Netscape, and opened it again and it was back. All the built in buttons return the sidebar.
In addition, the built-in buttons on the bottom aren't removable. No way to get rid of them. And no way to customize them, at least that I can find (it may be in preferences, but I haven't looked).
See the problem with ui bloat is that everybody wants something different. Which is why you have to make it customizable. Like the Home button, which I miss and can't get the thing to return. Yes, I know not everyone wants it, but I do. Which is why I like customizability.
Then there's the fact that I can choose which search engine I want to be the default. Now that's a nice touch.
And JavaScript, notoriously slow and unstable, is now faster and more stable. Yes, it still crashes, yes it still freezes, and yes, it's still slow. But it's better. Maybe we'll get there in a decade or two...
So overall, it's better than Netscape 4, but I'm not quite happy yet. I think I'll go play with it under Linux.
Warning: The below is a rant. You have been warned.
I am sick and tired of this fucking stupid analogy being parroted by half of Slashdot and everyone in the rest of the world. Just as Jack Valenti's keys-to-the-department-store analogy is bullshit, so is this one. And now I'm going to explain exactly why it's crap.
First of all, it is an analogy, a word which is based on the word analog which in this instance comes not from the opposite of digital but from the greek related. Note analog refers to related, not exactly the same. An analogy is a simpler, easier to understand (at least for the intended recipient) example of what the topic is like. Not what it is exactly, but what it's similar to. An analogy cannot hold water in all cases or it would not be an analogy, but a directly correlated example.
What do I mean by that? Well, take the following analogy: CDs are analogous to vinyl. They play music. They're round. The CD spins around and a reader of some type reads the music and produces sound. If you'd never seen a CD before, had no idea what one was, but knew vinyl, it'd be a good analogy. But if you then tried to build a CD player out of that analogy, you'd fail. Why? Because there are differences--there must be, for it to be an analogy and not simply an example.
Just the same with the car-as-analog-to-website or other internet service. Finding the keys in someone's car and driving it away without permission is an analogy to hijacking a net service without permission. But it fails after only a simple scrutiny. Why? Because the car is no longer available to the original owner. But the service is! In addition, a car is private property that has been paid for so that the owner can use it himself, and is unable to be used by multiple people at one time. A web page, on the other hand, is designed for use by multiple people and, if on the internet, is assumed to be available for public consumption. In addition, my use of it does not exclude your use of it.
All of the other stupid analogies follow the same reasoning. The portscan-is-like-rattling-the-windows analogy is also bullshit. First of all, the internet is not the real world. People keep saying if you don't want people using your machine don't put it on the net, and others respond that that's bullshit, but it's not. The net is a public network of machines, designed for interoperability. Private houses are not. If we could put a house in an alternate dimension and only the owners and their guests could get there, we would. But we can't, because that dimension doesn't exist. The net, on the other hand, is specifically there to share information. That was the original DARPAnet design and intent, and that's still the design and intent. If you want a machine that is there for you to do work and not to be part of the global network, you don't have to connect it. If you want to connect it, you run the risk of it being out there. It's like if you put something out there on the sidewalk, which is public space.
But that's an analogy, and not perfectly apt, because a computer is private property. Which means breaking in and destroying or changing data is illegal. But tapping it to see what ports are open is NOT. Why? Because it's a private computer in public space, which means that they may have put it up there to make ports available. You can't know until you tap on the ports to see. Now if you get in and do something that is obviously not allowed (and frequently that's why they state it in ftp login pages), you are violating privacy. If you use a public service, you are not. There's no perfect analogy because it's a totally new concept of half-private half-public, without a perfect analog in the real world. In the real world it's either in private space or it's in public space. The net is public space made out of private data. Thus copying someone else's data is illegal but allowed by netiquette (with proper citation). Why? Because it's a new concept, a new medium, without the same workings of the old.
There are many more bad analogies out there, and I don't have the energy to debunk them all. Just remember, if you've bothered to read this far, that an analogy cannot be used to explain all the rules and details of the analog. They just aren't the same. An analogy can only be used to deal with stuff that's similar, and when the two diverge, the analogy fails.
I don't know anything about Stephen King's schmuck-ism, but I would agree that 13 bucks a downloaded book is absurd, especially if the author is getting 10 or 15% like with book publishing. That's the standard attempt from the publishing industry, and I find it unacceptable.
But wait! There's more! So go support Open Culture in their attempt to redefine online publishing. Who knows if it'll work, but it's worth a shot.
Your aging rustbucket is your car. It doesn't have anything to do with hundreds or thousands of other people. The analogy would not be to putting a note on your dashboard (and I would argue it's actually a note on their window, but whatever), but rather would be to contacting the manufacturer of the car.
Really, though, the critical thing is that the analogy between a car and a banking database does not work. A car is an individually owned product. A banking database is a service to thousands if not millions of people. A carjacking affects one person. The cracking of a computer database could affect millions.
I'll leave it to someone else to figure out an appropriate analogy. I'm too tired.
The problem with your analogy is that I don't use your car. With a computer system, especially a high-profile system like a bank or (and these are even less secure) a medical system, LOTS of people use it.
So the analogy that works is not going around a parking lot determining if cars are unlocked, but rather checking car types to determine if the locks are enough to hold against, say, another car's key. And cars whose locks can be opened by other cars' keys (or cars whose doors open when their locks are engaged!) should not be allowed out there.
I will completely agree to this. As a non-degreed worker looking for a job in Boston right now, I've found that most companies either want senior whatevers (progrmmers, unix admins, etc) or they specifically state requirements: BS/BA and 1-3 years experience. And they're talking experience in the field. It's starting to get really frustrating with the market talking about how there aren't enough workers.
So does anyone in Boston need a junior programmer? I also do Linux administration? (grin)
If a state cannot redress injuries directed at that state through web site activity, then the power of the Internet will become a dangerous resource...
Totally correct. The Internet is a dangerous resource, because you cannot control it. Someone in another country has rights that you don't have control over, because they have different laws.
The result? They sue, to try to regain control because big business sees people's speech as damaging their profits.
Just out of curiosity, does anyone know any sites that provide movies copied from DVDs using DeCSS? I've seen a lot of avi's and mpgs copied from VHS, and a few copied from DVDs using the older copiers, but I've never seen anyone post or provide (IRC, Gnutella, etc) a _good_ copy of a DVD. They're just too big!
Even admitting that I don't search really hard for.vob files, how many can there be? They're too big to download easily, too big to keep many, and too rare to show up in the many places I visit.
So where the hell is the $4 billion dollars of loss (or whatever they're claiming) coming from?
THE COURT: Just a minute. Before we get carried away in the minutia of 512(c). What 512(c) provides, if I'm reading it correctly, is a
limitation on liability for infringement of copyright. Am I correct?
MR. KATZ: Yes, your Honor.
THE COURT: Your clients are not being sued for infringement of copyright. They're being sued for violation of Section 1201. Right?
MS. GROSS: But 1201 is designed to protect copyrighted work.
THE COURT: Maybe so, but it's not infringement of copyright. Isn't that true, counsel?
It's like the Marx brothers in that transcript! In case you missed it, here's Goldstein's response to it.
While I'm interested in the candidates' stances on technology, I don't really think any of them are going to outright tell us. Nader and Buchanan might, but neither of them is going to get more than 10-15% of the vote (and that's a high estimate). So I don't think there's much we can do to determine who's going to be pro free software, or pro rights.
There's a more important point, though. An incredibly important point. In the next 4 years, we're looking at a possible replacement of as many as half of the Supreme Court. Some major liberal justices are about to retire, and if you look at the cases of the past, the ones where freedom has won (and abortion is the most obvious of these), the decisions have been 5-4. If one liberal justice retires, and Bush is in office, we will be looking at a reactionary backlash, a major dent to freedom, which could last two or three decades before we can really win the Supreme Court back to the side of progression.
I don't think we have a choice if we want to maintain a Supreme Court with any chance of preserving our freedom. A vote for Nader is a vote for Bush. Gore is the only candidate who is likely to put liberal justices on the bench, and thus, despite his other problems, is the only acceptable candidate in my view.
Jeff
Slashdot Mirror
That's funny, I'm pretty sure we have exactly as much right to bear arms as the Second Amendment claims.
The Second Amendment: A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed. (emphasis mine)
So if you're in the army, or you're in a state-supported militia, you have the right to bear arms. If you're not, and you're not supporting the state's security and you're not training so that you can support the state's militia, you don't.
Jeff
In other news, the Windows Development group reports fewer bugs and longer uptimes than ever...
Jeff
Since when do you have to work hard to apt-get something? Isn't that the whole point of apt-get?
Yeah, so it's off-topic...sue me. =)
Jeff
PS: Anyone who takes the last comment seriously is in serious jeopardy of being hired as a company lawyer...
Uh huh...that'll change the world. After all, we all know that every single email ever written and sent to a congressman or other elected official was read.
(the above is sarcastic, people. Several congresspeople have been interviewed about email and said that they do not read email because they can't be certain it's coming from their district, and because they don't have the time. Letters change the world, email doesn't.)
What I would like to see is a website devoted to keeping track of these issues, answering the question "who is my congressman and how do I write him/her?" (i.e. having a zipcode-to-congressperson's address translator), and having sample letters for each issue so that you could download the letter, change it to fit your voice (or not if you're really lazy) and print it out. Sign it and send it. Then they'll listen. And the cost is what? 33 cents + 1 piece of paper at about 10 cents + 1 envelope at about 25 cents (high prices) = less than 70 cents.
Unfortunately, I don't have the time or graphic skills to make a decent webpage, so most of the time I don't try. If you do, please take this and run with it. And give me an email cause I'd be willing to help.
Jeff
From The Gnu Project History
Apparently, the point of the LGPL is strategic, not moral. In which case, CS's use of the LGPL and accepting the API and NDA seems like a good strategic idea since once CS is accepted and there are tons of games for the PS/2, they could then use their market share to force Sony to let them open source the wrapper.
Jeff
I do indeed recognize that the editorial opinion, while vocal, is not the entirety of the site. It is, however, a significant percentage. Supporting Napster usage is karma whoring because it will get you mod'd up, while if you're arguing against Napster, you'd better be damn persuasive if you want to be listened to. It seemed to me when I read this article that the people arguing that Deja had their copyrighted material had also posted pro-Napster stuff (I followed the user links and looked at their other posts, and since we had the Fanning Napster post yesterday...)
In any event, the majority of the readership may not be hypocritical, but there's are quite a few hypocrites out there.
Jeff
What I will discuss is the hypocrisy. Never mind that they're not actually selling your content, they're selling their business. (Technicality, but absolutely true, they're not really making money off the value of your content, which is what copyright is designed to protect, they're making money off its existence. Yeah, I ain't a lawyer, so I might be totally clueless there. It doesn't matter. I've got a real point here.)
How about the hypocrisy (boy, the tangents...)? Here we are arguing that Napster should be legal cause it's not violating copyright, it's "sharing," and then when a company, that has merely archived posts that we knew were going out into the public domain, we start screaming about our copyright. For shame!
Jeff
My friend, you are terribly amusing.
First of all, I don't agree with the current system. If you read my last paragraph you'd see that I stated I was being sarcastic. It's difficult to identify sarcasm on the net, but even if you took my entire post as being serious, how did you come up with my "agreeing with the system"?
Oh, I suppose I should attend to my use of the cliche "stood up against a wall and shot" while I'm here laughing at your attacks. It's a cliche. A figure of speech. As in, a way of using speech, not to be literal, but to show with images.
I'm also really curious how you got the belief that I am opposed to the Bill of Rights or to freedom (and why you capitalized it).
Yes, I'm laughing at you. Your responses were so amusing.
Jeff
America hasn't been a "free country" in a long time, if you're referring to the right to do whatever you want and damn the consequences. America hasn't been a "free country" this century if you're referring to children's rights. Children don't have rights. Children are frighteningly close to property of the country and their parents. Their parents have the right to raise them however they wish, unless and until they begin a narrow category of action known as "abuse" (which I won't even get into the hypocrisy regarding), at which point the govenment can take away the kids and raise them however the government wants.
Children are a perpetual, self-sustaning second class. They have effectively no rights, and no voice to complain about it. Get used to it. It's been going on since forever.
Your "draconian laws" are there to "protect" children, who are obviously impressionable in their youth and thus need protection. They're also there to aid parents in preventing kids from violating their will. Because, after all, children must never ever think for themselves. Until of course they become adults.
Yes, some of the above is sarcastic. Some of it is real. No I didn't bother to separate it out. Why? Because you're going to read it through your understanding of the world, and take from it whatever your brain feels like taking from it. So why should I bother with the effort to make it easier for you to disagree with me?
Jeff
However, your implicit argument is that if everybody had an IQ above 125, we'd have less misunderstanding, less violence, less hate, less whatever. This I think is bullshit. I've known a lot of very intelligent people who were incredibly violent, a lot of very intelligent people who were so hidebound and conservative they thought the internet should be banned for its violence, and a lot of very intelligent people who really should have been stood up against a wall and shot a long time ago for being such assholes. Intelligence is not the only answer. It's something we should work on, but many other things are too.
If we're looking for utopic solutions (gengineering), we could look at finding infallible tests to prove that people are going to be good parents before allowing them to have children. We can look at societal aid to parents, both in training them how to be good parents, and in providing the support systems so they can continue with their lives. We can look at societal aid for kids growing up trying to figure out life. Better mentoring systems (with good mentors, for once!), better educational systems that reward intelligence and good behavior and stop encouraging bullies with lying faces who can suck up to teachers. Things like that.
We've got a lot of problems, and pure intelligence ain't the only answer.
Jeff
First, yes, it is fast. I'm running it right now under Windows and it's faster than 4.74 by about 5 times (no, that's not a benchmark, it's subjective), and it's even faster than IE 4, which was the winner for speed for a while. It makes HotJava look like a Chevy Nova.
But while it is fast, there are a few things that are really annoying. Most of them you can disable, but some of them just keep reappearing. The My Sidebar thing, first of all, is bloatware, but some people may like it. So when I went to View and saw that I could make it disappear, I was very happy. And then, two clicks later, I hit the search button to see what it would do, and the sidebar popped up again. I turned it off, closed Netscape, and opened it again and it was back. All the built in buttons return the sidebar.
In addition, the built-in buttons on the bottom aren't removable. No way to get rid of them. And no way to customize them, at least that I can find (it may be in preferences, but I haven't looked).
See the problem with ui bloat is that everybody wants something different. Which is why you have to make it customizable. Like the Home button, which I miss and can't get the thing to return. Yes, I know not everyone wants it, but I do. Which is why I like customizability.
Then there's the fact that I can choose which search engine I want to be the default. Now that's a nice touch.
And JavaScript, notoriously slow and unstable, is now faster and more stable. Yes, it still crashes, yes it still freezes, and yes, it's still slow. But it's better. Maybe we'll get there in a decade or two...
So overall, it's better than Netscape 4, but I'm not quite happy yet. I think I'll go play with it under Linux.
Jeff
I am sick and tired of this fucking stupid analogy being parroted by half of Slashdot and everyone in the rest of the world. Just as Jack Valenti's keys-to-the-department-store analogy is bullshit, so is this one. And now I'm going to explain exactly why it's crap.
First of all, it is an analogy, a word which is based on the word analog which in this instance comes not from the opposite of digital but from the greek related. Note analog refers to related, not exactly the same. An analogy is a simpler, easier to understand (at least for the intended recipient) example of what the topic is like. Not what it is exactly, but what it's similar to. An analogy cannot hold water in all cases or it would not be an analogy, but a directly correlated example.
What do I mean by that? Well, take the following analogy: CDs are analogous to vinyl. They play music. They're round. The CD spins around and a reader of some type reads the music and produces sound. If you'd never seen a CD before, had no idea what one was, but knew vinyl, it'd be a good analogy. But if you then tried to build a CD player out of that analogy, you'd fail. Why? Because there are differences--there must be, for it to be an analogy and not simply an example.
Just the same with the car-as-analog-to-website or other internet service. Finding the keys in someone's car and driving it away without permission is an analogy to hijacking a net service without permission. But it fails after only a simple scrutiny. Why? Because the car is no longer available to the original owner. But the service is! In addition, a car is private property that has been paid for so that the owner can use it himself, and is unable to be used by multiple people at one time. A web page, on the other hand, is designed for use by multiple people and, if on the internet, is assumed to be available for public consumption. In addition, my use of it does not exclude your use of it.
All of the other stupid analogies follow the same reasoning. The portscan-is-like-rattling-the-windows analogy is also bullshit. First of all, the internet is not the real world. People keep saying if you don't want people using your machine don't put it on the net, and others respond that that's bullshit, but it's not. The net is a public network of machines, designed for interoperability. Private houses are not. If we could put a house in an alternate dimension and only the owners and their guests could get there, we would. But we can't, because that dimension doesn't exist. The net, on the other hand, is specifically there to share information. That was the original DARPAnet design and intent, and that's still the design and intent. If you want a machine that is there for you to do work and not to be part of the global network, you don't have to connect it. If you want to connect it, you run the risk of it being out there. It's like if you put something out there on the sidewalk, which is public space.
But that's an analogy, and not perfectly apt, because a computer is private property. Which means breaking in and destroying or changing data is illegal. But tapping it to see what ports are open is NOT. Why? Because it's a private computer in public space, which means that they may have put it up there to make ports available. You can't know until you tap on the ports to see. Now if you get in and do something that is obviously not allowed (and frequently that's why they state it in ftp login pages), you are violating privacy. If you use a public service, you are not. There's no perfect analogy because it's a totally new concept of half-private half-public, without a perfect analog in the real world. In the real world it's either in private space or it's in public space. The net is public space made out of private data. Thus copying someone else's data is illegal but allowed by netiquette (with proper citation). Why? Because it's a new concept, a new medium, without the same workings of the old.
There are many more bad analogies out there, and I don't have the energy to debunk them all. Just remember, if you've bothered to read this far, that an analogy cannot be used to explain all the rules and details of the analog. They just aren't the same. An analogy can only be used to deal with stuff that's similar, and when the two diverge, the analogy fails.
Jeff
But wait! There's more! So go support Open Culture in their attempt to redefine online publishing. Who knows if it'll work, but it's worth a shot.
Jeff
Your aging rustbucket is your car. It doesn't have anything to do with hundreds or thousands of other people. The analogy would not be to putting a note on your dashboard (and I would argue it's actually a note on their window, but whatever), but rather would be to contacting the manufacturer of the car.
Really, though, the critical thing is that the analogy between a car and a banking database does not work. A car is an individually owned product. A banking database is a service to thousands if not millions of people. A carjacking affects one person. The cracking of a computer database could affect millions.
I'll leave it to someone else to figure out an appropriate analogy. I'm too tired.
Jeff
So the analogy that works is not going around a parking lot determining if cars are unlocked, but rather checking car types to determine if the locks are enough to hold against, say, another car's key. And cars whose locks can be opened by other cars' keys (or cars whose doors open when their locks are engaged!) should not be allowed out there.
Jeff
So does anyone in Boston need a junior programmer? I also do Linux administration? (grin)
Jeff (anomaly@voicenet.com)
(laugh, it's funny.)
Jeff
But is the world ready for genetically altered java? First robots, then languages? What are they going to do, turn it into C#? (don't hit me) Jeff
Totally correct. The Internet is a dangerous resource, because you cannot control it. Someone in another country has rights that you don't have control over, because they have different laws.
The result? They sue, to try to regain control because big business sees people's speech as damaging their profits.
Just out of curiosity, does anyone know any sites that provide movies copied from DVDs using DeCSS? I've seen a lot of avi's and mpgs copied from VHS, and a few copied from DVDs using the older copiers, but I've never seen anyone post or provide (IRC, Gnutella, etc) a _good_ copy of a DVD. They're just too big!
Even admitting that I don't search really hard for .vob files, how many can there be? They're too big to download easily, too big to keep many, and too rare to show up in the many places I visit.
So where the hell is the $4 billion dollars of loss (or whatever they're claiming) coming from?
Jeff
MR. KATZ: Yes, your Honor.
THE COURT: Your clients are not being sued for infringement of copyright. They're being sued for violation of Section 1201. Right?
MS. GROSS: But 1201 is designed to protect copyrighted work.
THE COURT: Maybe so, but it's not infringement of copyright. Isn't that true, counsel?
It's like the Marx brothers in that transcript! In case you missed it, here's Goldstein's response to it.
J
There's a more important point, though. An incredibly important point. In the next 4 years, we're looking at a possible replacement of as many as half of the Supreme Court. Some major liberal justices are about to retire, and if you look at the cases of the past, the ones where freedom has won (and abortion is the most obvious of these), the decisions have been 5-4. If one liberal justice retires, and Bush is in office, we will be looking at a reactionary backlash, a major dent to freedom, which could last two or three decades before we can really win the Supreme Court back to the side of progression.
I don't think we have a choice if we want to maintain a Supreme Court with any chance of preserving our freedom. A vote for Nader is a vote for Bush. Gore is the only candidate who is likely to put liberal justices on the bench, and thus, despite his other problems, is the only acceptable candidate in my view. Jeff