[...] don't many copyright provisions state that you have to aggressively pursue infringement, or risk losing your copyright?
That's a trademark rule, not copyright. Trademarks, copyrights and patents are the unholy trinity of intellectual property, and they're so very different that it doesn't make much sense to categorise them under the same banner. They each have their own arcane weirdnesses that don't apply to the other two.
It sounds like you think that people running one man businesses should be immune to prosecution by larger ones.
The only reason it "sounds like you think that" to you is because you've read what you thought I wrote, rather than what I actually wrote.
The point I was trying (and apparently in your case failing) to make is that UE's legal threats on this guy are both completely amoral and also qualify as standard schoolyard bullying ("I don't want you to do that and I'm bigger than you, so I'll make your life miserable until you stop it!"). They share the (apparently far too common) viewpoint that if they can find a legal loophole to get what they want, it's pretty much compulsory that they exploit it. The moral/ethical viability of using their legal system to back-door attack a guy who's doing the right thing under his country's legal system - apparently that's a bit too much for them to consider.
In conclusion, it's not that the "small guy" attacked by a big company must be in the right - but when he is in the right (as in this case), it further emphasises the despicable nature of the bully. To see this demonstrated, just watch UE fold like... er... a thing that folds really quickly and easily...:) when IMSLP is restarted by an organisation with the ability (and willingness) to defend itself.
[...] Talk about major spin. how about this as a title: "Site that infringed copyright gets prosecuted for infringing copyright"
[...] If the website was really keen to provide copyright-free music, why didn't they just stick to doing that.
You didn't RTFA, did you?
They (or rather, he, as it was only one person (a student), running a non-commercial site out of his own pocket) were only providing music that was out of copyright... in Canada.
The problem here, and the thing that makes it outrageous, is that publisher (Universal Edition) threatened to obtain a "judgement" against the guy in Europe - which then (according to UE's version of Canadian law, which may or may not be entirely accurate) would be enforceable against the guy in Canada. I don't know about you, but I find that kinda fucked up.
The other part, however, is more simple (and more familiar) - a large organisation with effectively infinite resources launches a "legal" assault on a single person with none. The guy had absolutely no time, funds, or any other resources to fight this. The publisher could probably have threatened to sue him in Canada, where they'd (presumably) have absolutely no case at all, and he'd still pretty much have to give up.
So well done, Universal Edition - you fucknuts. Why don't you go find a few newborn puppies you can kick, if you really want to feel like big tough men.
Yeah, almost exactly the same for me. A friend of mine pointed me to the pre-login slashdot, and I read for a while. Then when the registration thingy appeared, I ignored it for a while... but still got an account early enough to have a low four-digit UID (and my own name!).
Ah, Enlightenment. Windowmaker. Redhat. 2.0 kernels. And that guy who wrote editorials on the nature of geekness, who a surprising number of slashdotters seemed to really despise. It doesn't really seem that long ago.:)
Are you hiring coders or puzzle makers? Do you also ask them to write the code left handed?
Heh. I was going to suggest that they also be blindfolded, hands tied behind back, and be forced to type out the code (correctly first time, of course) on a typewriter. With a missing capslock key. And typing with their left pinkie toe. In Brainfuck.
After all, if the goal is to see how well they can solve a pressure problem with pointlessly silly obstacles thrown in the way, why not go the whole hog?:)
And that isn't even a very hard puzzle -- it just weeds out those who can't think under pressure. Move characters one at a time from the end to the beginning, shifting the remaining characters right and keeping count of what you've moved.
Wow. If that's really the kind of solution Osty was thinking of in his original post, I'm quite disturbed. I was trying to think of something with slightly less horribly poor performance:), but couldn't come up with anything - even ignoring some of Osty's misleading restrictions (sheesh, "without using any extra storage space beyond a single character").
Mind you, this sort of a problem would probably be quite well suited to Brainfuck. In more ways than one.
Agreement or contract? I'm talking about contracts. Most contracts are spoken, because most contracts are formed when you buy something in a shop.
If you really believe this, then your definition of "contract" is so vague as to be meaningless. Which is not to say that you're entirely wrong, of course.:)
I had a look at the Wikipedia page on contracts - the most interesting thing I noted (from a language pedant point-of-view) is that contracts which are invalid/void/unenforceable (for whatever reason - eg. one of the parties involved was a minor) are still referred to as "contracts".
So technically speaking, you may be right. When a ten-year-old child goes into a shop to buy some chewing gum, that action might be considered as forming a legally-invalid-and-hence-totally-meaningless "contract" with the shop. Of course that doesn't matter at all for the purposes of the transaction, because the exchange of money for chewing gum is simple enough that contract law is completely irrelevant (even if it was applicable).
This is kind of important as regards your point - whether EULAs can be considered a valid contract (in the most common case of a shrinkwrap EULA for an over-the-counter software product). I'd think not, but then the law doesn't always work the way I think it should (unfortunately:)).
But then I'm also fairly sure that a license agreement can be legally enforced without being considered a contract, in which case introducing this sideline about contracts into a thread about EULAs is completely pointless and just muddies the waters.
Full-quoting because it was inappropriately downmodded (and it saved me having to think enough to type essentially the same thing).
anoncow:
yes, but you can reverse engineer the car if you so wish (and if you have the funds) and change it to your liking and honda can't say shit about it, except for maybe voiding your warranty.
Why shouldn't you be able to investigate it and modify it as you like?
zootm:
The obvious answer to this is a that it's just not a part of the contract you agreed to [...]
Excellent answer. If the process of purchasing or otherwise licensing the software involved me viewing and signing my informed-and-competent-adult agreement to a legally binding contract, then that is perfectly reasonable.
[...] by buying/using the software.
...The what now?:-)
This is where some of us start to mutter that lending any legal weight to sight-unseen shrinkwrap EULAs is just plain dumb, such things are ridiculous and (should be) unenforceable, and giving them anything approaching the status of actual contracts is cartwheeling into crazy land.
Well, at least that's what I'm muttering. Should I mutter louder?:)
And we aren't just talking about gaps in 2001, but some of these have gaps in more than one place (and the recession started in 2000, under Clinton's watch anyway!).
Gaps. Sigh. I've got heaps of gaps in my employment history. Of course I've primarily worked as a contractor.
I guess that makes me a lesser person, right?:)
Seriously, you need to let go of this kind of weird habit of judging people by the things they don't tell you. Here's a hint - maybe they don't include details on every minute of their history because it's none of your fucking business (quite seriously).
I've had a couple of interviews with people who have your problem - that seem obsessed with examining every gap in the employment history you provide, and demanding I explain it. Eventually, after about the seventh time I shrug my shoulders and say (in the exact same tone) "I wasn't working at that time," they get the point.
Well, maybe they got some kind of other point:). After all, I never got offered anything by those interviewers. It's about at the point now that an interviewer asking me to "explain the gaps" or asking me bland Interviewing 101 questions like "what's your greatest weakness?" will just get me standing up and saying "Okay, I think it's best we end the interview here, before we waste any more of each other's time."
Mind you, neither of the above is such an absolute interview-over marker as the interviewer admitting they use PVCS for source control:).
Uh, it might be a "fundamental Freedom" if you had a "fundamental Right" of some sort to do as you wish with other people's IP.
Your choice of words (ie. "do as you wish with other people's IP") is revealing here. Software that you've (legally) acquired, running on your machine? Why shouldn't you be able to investigate and modify it as you like? Note that I said "modify", not "redistribute".
If you purchase a physical item, do you still think of it as the seller's property after you've paid for it and taken it home?
Fundamentally, the whole concept of "intellectual property" just doesn't work in the same way as physical property. I guess that's why many (most? all?) software vendors try to suggest that their software is "licensed", not "sold". Pity that most consumers don't see things quite the same way.:)
Anyway, your link between "fundamental" freedoms/rights is a little hazy. It doesn't have to be enshrined in the law for people to support it as a freedom (or indeed to consider it a right).
Unfortunately, you don't.
It's not something that has to apply to all software - the point is more that you can choose to only use software that guarantees those freedoms.
I can only say that I haven't filled it out for at least the last two times and I haven't been hassled by anyone. Maybe I'm just lucky. We'll see.
I've often wondered how high that $100/day bullshit could go before it falls into the too-stupid-for-words category. So, not filling in a form gets you a fine that's much larger than that for not voting, for driving over the speed limit, drink-driving, physical assault... and unlike all the others, it keeps increasing. Yeah, right:).
Absolutely agreed. It's kind of unfortunate that their economy isn't doing quite as well as Australia's at the moment, so I can't quite justify going and finding a job there, but I still like them. They still have asshole politicians, but I've always felt that even their asshole politicians are better than ours.:)
You may have misunderstood me a tad. I wasn't meaning to imply that the question was entirely valueless (though it is - if religious communities can't work out where to build their disinformation centres, fuck them), I was taking an opportunity to mock religion as nothing more than an (ill-informed) opinion:-).
The overall effects of including such a question in the census are (IMHO) more negative than positive. People really don't need more excuses to separate themselves from the dreaded "Others". I can especially see this sort of shit causing paranoia among the WASPier Australians when they get more detailed info about how the Muslim Australians are outbreeding them.
To a large extent, this is a racial/ethnic question in disguise. Stupid. I can see some justification for the rest of the census (though I still choose to not participate), but not this question.
(re: the ABS not giving a stuff about people's opinions)
Except of course for that one little (optional? I wouldn't know, I haven't even looked at the last two Oz censuses, much less filled them out) question about religious affiliation. Which, of course, is about the only question with which the form-fillers can have a bit of fun. Damn Jedi:).
The advantages of OOP have been very well researched and understood for nearly 30 years.
Well, the so-called "advantages" of OOP have at least been well propagandised for at least some of the last 30 years.:)
It is unquestionably a major advance in software development, with relevance to all areas, including websites, allowing re-use, encapsulation, isolation and testing of code [...]
None of those concepts you mention have anything in particular to do with OOP. And you shouldn't really be terribly surprised that more than a few programmers find OOP evangelism more than a little extreme. See Andrei Stepanov and Paul Graham for a couple of good examples.
Certainly an interesting and likely valid usage that I hadn't thought of before. That probably is where "I could care less" instead of "couldn't" originated from.
My (similar-ish) theory was that it was shorthand - ie. the phrase "I could care less" had the implied continuation "...but I don't."
Thus resulting in a meaning roughly similar to "I couldn't care less."
And I agree, the sort of people that say those things are unlikely to appreciate the finer points of language:).
Thanks for the reasonably mellow response, I appreciate it. But speaking of that response:
First off, do I think that some small minority of policemen abuse their authority, and that this needs vigorous prosecution and punishment? Do I think there's an important role for citizen oversite committees and for ACLU lawyers? Absolutely.
Er, good. But you're not really acknowledging a lot there. It's pretty much a given that at least a "small minority" (whatever that means) of the police abuse their powers. But would you be willing to acknowledge that a majority of police abuse their powers fairly routinely? And in the unfortunate cases where they're ordered to do so by their superiors, just about all of them will? (Mind you, they probably won't think of what they're doing as wrong).
It doesn't take a lot. Police are almost always going to be outnumbered, so they always have to feel wary, that they're a target. A civilian that gives them "trouble" by, for example, trying to assert their rights... well, nobody likes to lose face, especially cops. And in almost all countries (first as well as third world) the cops have enormous scope for intimidation and harassment. Demanding identification, asking invasive questions, sometimes a personal search... or just being a rude asshole in an attempt to goad you into losing your temper.
As another poster has pointed out, when I said "never" I did not mean the police never abuse their authority. That would be as silly as saying Linux programmers never write malicious or stupid code. I meant that arresting someone as described in the article without a warrant could never be done legally, and that, therefore, it is a rare event.
Okay, what's the difference between legal and illegal? If it's practically impossible to appropriately punish someone for committing an illegal act, then the illegality of that act is meaningless. It might as well be legal.
DoJ statistics note there are about 13 million arrests a year in the United States. Can you provide evidence that in, say, as many as 5% of those cases (e.g. for over half a million people per year) the arrests are illegal, or the person arrested suffers physical abuse while in custody?
No, I can't.
We're probably talking a bit at cross-purposes here, I think. I was really just trying to point out that your idea (very roughly paraphrased) that "it's not legal, so the police can't do it" is slightly worthless. If you'd said something like "the risk of being caught and punished is too high, so the police are very unlikely to do it," that'd be much much better.
Well, it'd be much much better if it was true, of course:-). Unfortunately, the risk of cops being caught/punished for most abuses of power is so low that it's not even worth considering.
Because what I'm aware of now is only that occasionally the police are abusive, and the proper response is citizen watchfulness.
"Citizen watchfulness" and (worthy) organisations like the ACLU just aren't enough. No matter how "proper" you might think them, they're not sufficient to deal with the problem. Just as police themselves need the right tools to deal effectively with certain kinds of organised crime, there needs to be properly-funded investigators (and prosecutors) - over a significant period of time - to weed out the really-corrupt cops (and perhaps encourage the less-corrupt ones to behave themselves).
There are of course "internal affairs"-type police, who are funded to investigate some kinds of police corruption and institutionalised abuse, but their funding (and hence their scope) is too limited.
Can the police walk up to you at a public function, where you're doing absolutely nothing illegal, just minding your own business, and showing no indications of fleeing the country -- and arrest you without a warrant? Never.
I'm not quite sure what to think about you. Do you live in some kind of fantasy world where police never break the law, where police never show any inclination to abuse their power just to be petty and vindictive? For fuck's sake, police are human just like the rest of us, and are (if anything) even more likely to be nasty little ethically-challenged pricks than the rest of humanity.
"Can the police walk up to you at a public function, where you're doing absolutely nothing illegal, just minding your own business, and showing no indications of fleeing the country -- and arrest you without a warrant? Never."
Never??? Seriously dude, you hardly need to look very far to find examples of police abusing their powers (and getting away with it). And the reason they can get away with it is because there's just not a lot you can (legally) do to stop an officer arresting you (you can hardly say "I refuse to let you arrest me, you don't have proper legal authority" and expect them to listen). And the only worthwhile option you have of fighting back (in most cases) is the risky, expensive and stressful option of a civil suit.
And as far as actually getting police charged with an actual crime... heh, good luck with that. Police are very very well aware of how far they can go without even the slightest risk of punishment to themselves. One lovely example is exactly what happened with this guy - arresting them early on the weekend (or late on Friday), so they have to wait out the weekend before having a chance to go before a judge. And even if the judge then immediately orders the person's release, the cops can still laugh "ha, we chucked him in jail for 2-3 days for no reason at all."
It really does, it's a fantastic API (with even better documentation). I did some commercial development with Qt (think it was version 2) back in 2000 - damn it was nice.
Only minor problem is that it spoiled me for other kinds of C++ development, especially a few years later when I found myself working with MS Visual C++ (version 6, no less). The horror, the horror.:-)
Slashdot Mirror
I did.
You five-digit kids. Get off my lawn, etc.
That's a trademark rule, not copyright. Trademarks, copyrights and patents are the unholy trinity of intellectual property, and they're so very different that it doesn't make much sense to categorise them under the same banner. They each have their own arcane weirdnesses that don't apply to the other two.
The only reason it "sounds like you think that" to you is because you've read what you thought I wrote, rather than what I actually wrote.
The point I was trying (and apparently in your case failing) to make is that UE's legal threats on this guy are both completely amoral and also qualify as standard schoolyard bullying ("I don't want you to do that and I'm bigger than you, so I'll make your life miserable until you stop it!"). They share the (apparently far too common) viewpoint that if they can find a legal loophole to get what they want, it's pretty much compulsory that they exploit it. The moral/ethical viability of using their legal system to back-door attack a guy who's doing the right thing under his country's legal system - apparently that's a bit too much for them to consider.
In conclusion, it's not that the "small guy" attacked by a big company must be in the right - but when he is in the right (as in this case), it further emphasises the despicable nature of the bully. To see this demonstrated, just watch UE fold like... er... a thing that folds really quickly and easily... :) when IMSLP is restarted by an organisation with the ability (and willingness) to defend itself.
You didn't RTFA, did you? They (or rather, he, as it was only one person (a student), running a non-commercial site out of his own pocket) were only providing music that was out of copyright... in Canada.
The problem here, and the thing that makes it outrageous, is that publisher (Universal Edition) threatened to obtain a "judgement" against the guy in Europe - which then (according to UE's version of Canadian law, which may or may not be entirely accurate) would be enforceable against the guy in Canada. I don't know about you, but I find that kinda fucked up.
The other part, however, is more simple (and more familiar) - a large organisation with effectively infinite resources launches a "legal" assault on a single person with none. The guy had absolutely no time, funds, or any other resources to fight this. The publisher could probably have threatened to sue him in Canada, where they'd (presumably) have absolutely no case at all, and he'd still pretty much have to give up.
So well done, Universal Edition - you fucknuts. Why don't you go find a few newborn puppies you can kick, if you really want to feel like big tough men.
Yeah, almost exactly the same for me. A friend of mine pointed me to the pre-login slashdot, and I read for a while. Then when the registration thingy appeared, I ignored it for a while... but still got an account early enough to have a low four-digit UID (and my own name!).
Ah, Enlightenment. Windowmaker. Redhat. 2.0 kernels. And that guy who wrote editorials on the nature of geekness, who a surprising number of slashdotters seemed to really despise. It doesn't really seem that long ago. :)
Heh. I was going to suggest that they also be blindfolded, hands tied behind back, and be forced to type out the code (correctly first time, of course) on a typewriter. With a missing capslock key. And typing with their left pinkie toe. In Brainfuck.
After all, if the goal is to see how well they can solve a pressure problem with pointlessly silly obstacles thrown in the way, why not go the whole hog? :)
Wow. If that's really the kind of solution Osty was thinking of in his original post, I'm quite disturbed. I was trying to think of something with slightly less horribly poor performance :), but couldn't come up with anything - even ignoring some of Osty's misleading restrictions (sheesh, "without using any extra storage space beyond a single character").
Mind you, this sort of a problem would probably be quite well suited to Brainfuck. In more ways than one.
If you really believe this, then your definition of "contract" is so vague as to be meaningless. Which is not to say that you're entirely wrong, of course. :)
I had a look at the Wikipedia page on contracts - the most interesting thing I noted (from a language pedant point-of-view) is that contracts which are invalid/void/unenforceable (for whatever reason - eg. one of the parties involved was a minor) are still referred to as "contracts".
So technically speaking, you may be right. When a ten-year-old child goes into a shop to buy some chewing gum, that action might be considered as forming a legally-invalid-and-hence-totally-meaningless "contract" with the shop. Of course that doesn't matter at all for the purposes of the transaction, because the exchange of money for chewing gum is simple enough that contract law is completely irrelevant (even if it was applicable).
This is kind of important as regards your point - whether EULAs can be considered a valid contract (in the most common case of a shrinkwrap EULA for an over-the-counter software product). I'd think not, but then the law doesn't always work the way I think it should (unfortunately :)).
But then I'm also fairly sure that a license agreement can be legally enforced without being considered a contract, in which case introducing this sideline about contracts into a thread about EULAs is completely pointless and just muddies the waters.
Cake or death?
Full-quoting because it was inappropriately downmodded (and it saved me having to think enough to type essentially the same thing).
anoncow:What he said. :)
Excellent answer. If the process of purchasing or otherwise licensing the software involved me viewing and signing my informed-and-competent-adult agreement to a legally binding contract, then that is perfectly reasonable.
This is where some of us start to mutter that lending any legal weight to sight-unseen shrinkwrap EULAs is just plain dumb, such things are ridiculous and (should be) unenforceable, and giving them anything approaching the status of actual contracts is cartwheeling into crazy land.
Well, at least that's what I'm muttering. Should I mutter louder? :)
Gaps. Sigh. I've got heaps of gaps in my employment history. Of course I've primarily worked as a contractor.
I guess that makes me a lesser person, right? :)
Seriously, you need to let go of this kind of weird habit of judging people by the things they don't tell you. Here's a hint - maybe they don't include details on every minute of their history because it's none of your fucking business (quite seriously).
I've had a couple of interviews with people who have your problem - that seem obsessed with examining every gap in the employment history you provide, and demanding I explain it. Eventually, after about the seventh time I shrug my shoulders and say (in the exact same tone) "I wasn't working at that time," they get the point.
Well, maybe they got some kind of other point :). After all, I never got offered anything by those interviewers. It's about at the point now that an interviewer asking me to "explain the gaps" or asking me bland Interviewing 101 questions like "what's your greatest weakness?" will just get me standing up and saying "Okay, I think it's best we end the interview here, before we waste any more of each other's time."
Mind you, neither of the above is such an absolute interview-over marker as the interviewer admitting they use PVCS for source control :).
Your choice of words (ie. "do as you wish with other people's IP") is revealing here. Software that you've (legally) acquired, running on your machine? Why shouldn't you be able to investigate and modify it as you like? Note that I said "modify", not "redistribute".
If you purchase a physical item, do you still think of it as the seller's property after you've paid for it and taken it home?
Fundamentally, the whole concept of "intellectual property" just doesn't work in the same way as physical property. I guess that's why many (most? all?) software vendors try to suggest that their software is "licensed", not "sold". Pity that most consumers don't see things quite the same way. :)
Anyway, your link between "fundamental" freedoms/rights is a little hazy. It doesn't have to be enshrined in the law for people to support it as a freedom (or indeed to consider it a right).
It's not something that has to apply to all software - the point is more that you can choose to only use software that guarantees those freedoms.
Well, not the bit about knowing two killers, but the rest, yeah. :)
I can only say that I haven't filled it out for at least the last two times and I haven't been hassled by anyone. Maybe I'm just lucky. We'll see.
I've often wondered how high that $100/day bullshit could go before it falls into the too-stupid-for-words category. So, not filling in a form gets you a fine that's much larger than that for not voting, for driving over the speed limit, drink-driving, physical assault... and unlike all the others, it keeps increasing. Yeah, right :).
Absolutely agreed. It's kind of unfortunate that their economy isn't doing quite as well as Australia's at the moment, so I can't quite justify going and finding a job there, but I still like them. They still have asshole politicians, but I've always felt that even their asshole politicians are better than ours. :)
And of course, baaa.
You may have misunderstood me a tad. I wasn't meaning to imply that the question was entirely valueless (though it is - if religious communities can't work out where to build their disinformation centres, fuck them), I was taking an opportunity to mock religion as nothing more than an (ill-informed) opinion :-).
The overall effects of including such a question in the census are (IMHO) more negative than positive. People really don't need more excuses to separate themselves from the dreaded "Others". I can especially see this sort of shit causing paranoia among the WASPier Australians when they get more detailed info about how the Muslim Australians are outbreeding them.
To a large extent, this is a racial/ethnic question in disguise. Stupid. I can see some justification for the rest of the census (though I still choose to not participate), but not this question.
(re: the ABS not giving a stuff about people's opinions)
Except of course for that one little (optional? I wouldn't know, I haven't even looked at the last two Oz censuses, much less filled them out) question about religious affiliation. Which, of course, is about the only question with which the form-fillers can have a bit of fun. Damn Jedi :).
You can always rely on slashdot if you want to see a few (well, more than a few) outstanding examples of HCGS sufferers.
Though it's really the people reading their work that are suffering. *sigh* :)
But you might lose your job if you were too loose with your words.
Well, the so-called "advantages" of OOP have at least been well propagandised for at least some of the last 30 years. :)
None of those concepts you mention have anything in particular to do with OOP. And you shouldn't really be terribly surprised that more than a few programmers find OOP evangelism more than a little extreme. See Andrei Stepanov and Paul Graham for a couple of good examples.
My (similar-ish) theory was that it was shorthand - ie. the phrase "I could care less" had the implied continuation "...but I don't." Thus resulting in a meaning roughly similar to "I couldn't care less."
And I agree, the sort of people that say those things are unlikely to appreciate the finer points of language :).
*takes a few deep breaths* :-)
Thanks for the reasonably mellow response, I appreciate it. But speaking of that response:
Er, good. But you're not really acknowledging a lot there. It's pretty much a given that at least a "small minority" (whatever that means) of the police abuse their powers. But would you be willing to acknowledge that a majority of police abuse their powers fairly routinely? And in the unfortunate cases where they're ordered to do so by their superiors, just about all of them will? (Mind you, they probably won't think of what they're doing as wrong).
It doesn't take a lot. Police are almost always going to be outnumbered, so they always have to feel wary, that they're a target. A civilian that gives them "trouble" by, for example, trying to assert their rights... well, nobody likes to lose face, especially cops. And in almost all countries (first as well as third world) the cops have enormous scope for intimidation and harassment. Demanding identification, asking invasive questions, sometimes a personal search... or just being a rude asshole in an attempt to goad you into losing your temper.
Okay, what's the difference between legal and illegal? If it's practically impossible to appropriately punish someone for committing an illegal act, then the illegality of that act is meaningless. It might as well be legal.
No, I can't.
We're probably talking a bit at cross-purposes here, I think. I was really just trying to point out that your idea (very roughly paraphrased) that "it's not legal, so the police can't do it" is slightly worthless. If you'd said something like "the risk of being caught and punished is too high, so the police are very unlikely to do it," that'd be much much better.
Well, it'd be much much better if it was true, of course :-). Unfortunately, the risk of cops being caught/punished for most abuses of power is so low that it's not even worth considering.
"Citizen watchfulness" and (worthy) organisations like the ACLU just aren't enough. No matter how "proper" you might think them, they're not sufficient to deal with the problem. Just as police themselves need the right tools to deal effectively with certain kinds of organised crime, there needs to be properly-funded investigators (and prosecutors) - over a significant period of time - to weed out the really-corrupt cops (and perhaps encourage the less-corrupt ones to behave themselves). There are of course "internal affairs"-type police, who are funded to investigate some kinds of police corruption and institutionalised abuse, but their funding (and hence their scope) is too limited.
I'm not quite sure what to think about you. Do you live in some kind of fantasy world where police never break the law, where police never show any inclination to abuse their power just to be petty and vindictive? For fuck's sake, police are human just like the rest of us, and are (if anything) even more likely to be nasty little ethically-challenged pricks than the rest of humanity.
"Can the police walk up to you at a public function, where you're doing absolutely nothing illegal, just minding your own business, and showing no indications of fleeing the country -- and arrest you without a warrant? Never."
Never??? Seriously dude, you hardly need to look very far to find examples of police abusing their powers (and getting away with it). And the reason they can get away with it is because there's just not a lot you can (legally) do to stop an officer arresting you (you can hardly say "I refuse to let you arrest me, you don't have proper legal authority" and expect them to listen). And the only worthwhile option you have of fighting back (in most cases) is the risky, expensive and stressful option of a civil suit.
And as far as actually getting police charged with an actual crime... heh, good luck with that. Police are very very well aware of how far they can go without even the slightest risk of punishment to themselves. One lovely example is exactly what happened with this guy - arresting them early on the weekend (or late on Friday), so they have to wait out the weekend before having a chance to go before a judge. And even if the judge then immediately orders the person's release, the cops can still laugh "ha, we chucked him in jail for 2-3 days for no reason at all."
It really does, it's a fantastic API (with even better documentation). I did some commercial development with Qt (think it was version 2) back in 2000 - damn it was nice. Only minor problem is that it spoiled me for other kinds of C++ development, especially a few years later when I found myself working with MS Visual C++ (version 6, no less). The horror, the horror. :-)
Not for very much longer... :)