Xian? God, why do I allow humanity to continue living... I think it's especially funny that you show how you're better than "intolerant" people by being intolerant yourself.
Hehe well I'm a student as well as an employee. The stuff I was referring to is software developed for use by the VR Lab, which the copyrights do belong to the university. And anyone can look in the Subversion logs to see what I've written...:P Subversion keeps your mistakes FOREVER...
Actually I didn't even intend that I thought they were immoral, just that SOMEONE thinks they're immoral and therefore if we used morality to determine rights the whole damn thing falls apart. I think this guy has Christian Persecution Syndrome or something.
Actually I never said I thought they were immoral. The person I was responding to put "immoral" in quotes so I was giving him examples of "immoral" acts which don't infringe on other people's rights, not acts that I found immoral. The point is that SOMEONE finds them "immoral", and therefore if we used morality to determine "rights", "rights" would become arbitrary.
I think you need to re-examine who's the ignorant one here.
Morals most certainly have a place in such an argument, because rights and laws are inherently dependent upon the moral codes of those people defining them.
No, they are not. Rights in no way shape or form are dependent on a "moral" code. That means if the moral code changes, your "rights" can be taken away and then they were never rights in the first place. A right is not something that can be decided or bestowed. You either have it as a virtue of existence or you don't. In modern liberal societies (especially those, like the US, that have based their philosphy on the writings of people like Locke) we recognize that you have three natural, inalienable rights: life, liberty, pursuit of happiness. Those rights do not come from some moral code but are founded upon your existence as a living, reasoning being capable of making your own choices in life. The rights are based on the idea that as an independent, living being you alone own yourself and since you are your own property there are certain things about yourself that are within only your control. All other things claimed as rights must descend directly from these three principles and must do so in a way that does not infringe upon the already established rights of others. Morality does not matter.
In some places of the world is not immoral to kill people who do not follow the your religion. That does not mean said person does not have a right to continue living.
Also, these hardware manufacturers are also software distributors. If they weren't, the license wouldn't bind them at all, dummy. Did you even think that through beyond it sounding like a snappy comeback? Because it doesn't make any sense at all.
Yes, and the software they distribute is in no way limited. You can take it and run it on your home built PVR box if you want. What TiVo restricted was running someone else's code on their HARDWARE. So why is a software license limiting their choices in regards to their hardware, dummy?
But who am I kidding? Clearly it's evil to prevent evil because preventing things is an evil denial of freedom.
Preventing "evil" by denying someone freedom who has done nothing wrong is evil. It's not "evil" for TiVo to say "our hardware will not run unsigned binaries". It's a business decision. If you don't like it, take your business elsewhere.
I wonder if he used vi or emacs to to write that..../me ducks
I'm torn between being so happy that someone finally understood and so depressed that it took so many replies and crazy moderations before that happened...
I can't claim to be an old timer and firsthand familiar with these things, but it seems to me so many young GNU adherents don't understand how much being a hacker already approaches a religion (especially in the negative aspects of organized religion) without someone PURPOSELY trying to espouse religious philosophy. We already have enough heresies, inquisitions, and crusades amongst people who are just trying to get work done or do research... When you start ordaining prophets and messiahs, you're asking for trouble.
Then again half the people reading what I'm writing are probably equating the word "hacker" with some black hat stealing their credit card numbers and defacing websites...
So you would say that a persons concept as to what his Rights are have nothing to do with morality?
Yes.
What "immoral" act does not infringe on a alleged "Right"?
Homosexuality. Imbibing drugs and alchohol. Viewing pornography. Pre-marital sex. Masturbation. Do I have to keep going? Did you even think before you wrote that?
Your rights have nothing to do with morality. You have rights as a virtue of existence. The intersection between what acts are considered "immoral" and what acts infringe on your rights as an individual is definitely not nil, but they are not equivalent nor is one a subset of the other. As a matter of fact, "moral" restrictions on behavior often end up infringing on your "rights" as a living being. The fact that infringing upon someone else's rights is also often considered "immoral" (but not always, take note!) is simply a recognition by religion of natural rights, not natural rights coming from some moral code.
Except that he is a religious leader. He even (admittedly, jokingly) says so himself. Morals have no place in an argument about rights and law. Rights are self evident and law exists to protect them.
Do I bring morality into a business transaction when I pay for a $20 bill with the words "In God We Trust" on it? Does swearing on the Bible in a court of law bring morality into a legal matter? The use of GPL in the kernel was a pragmatic decision, and I think the huge amount of people willing to contribute to Linux over HURD is a pretty big approval of the "pragmatic" side of the argument over the "moral" side. It's kind of like having the ten commandments on a courthouse wall because "they're a good basis for civil behavior" but understanding that doesn't include any of the claptrap about worshiping "God". (Well, except that on commandment about not worshiping other gods, but you get the point...)
Because the FSF requires that if you submit anything, you have to assign the copyright to them. Keeps the proles in line, you know...
Yeah except EGCS spent a while as a non-GNU project (until GNU was embarrassed into admitting it was better), I thought, which I would have assumed would have prevented the usual GNU monkeying around with copyrights.
You know, when I write code for my University I lose the copyright on that, too, but at least I'm compensated for it...
I think--especially if you view previous comments from him--that he has known for years that RMS is a religious zealot. That doesn't mean he can't keep criticizing people for bringing religion into an argument that doesn't need it.
Take away the law as a measure for morality and you take away the measuring stick for trust.
Your comment confuses me greatly.
In modern western societies, laws are not based on morality. They're based on the protection of rights, which themselves are a virtue of one's existence. Theft, kidnapping, and murder are illegal not because they are immoral, but because they deny the victim their most basic rights: life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. Good law and good legal documents do not involve morality.
In America our value system and legal practices do owe much to Judeo-Christian belief systems, but the legal documents that provide the foundation for our society and its government owe their genesis much more from philosophies of Locke (who did an excellent job of separating "natural rights" from any supernatural influence) than any collection of religious morals. In theory (if not in practice) the entire legal code of our society should derive from those initial founding documents.
Honestly I think the GPL should be thought of (and developed) as more of a "social contract" wherein the body of the people agree to give up certain rights (in this case, the right to exercise certain features of copyright law) to receive social order. At no point does morality have to enter into a social contract, and it's better off without it.
Anyway, aside from GCC, there are plenty of BSD alternatives to most GNU projects.
You know, after EGCS (and the associated bazaar development model) became the official GCC branch, I kinda figured they'd face the same problem as the kernel does of producing a GPLv3 branch--with thousands of contributers having provided their work under GPLv2, it would be impossible to track them all down and get their permission to relicense their work as GPLv3. Yet I see announcements for GPLv3 trumpeting the fact that the GCC project is "on board". Can someone explain to me what I'm missing here?
That's moronic. If you don't like the license, don't use it.
I have to disagree. He's making a valid point that RMS approaches the entire "Open Source/Free Software" debate as not a legal or even ethical issue, but a moral issue. The use of the word "moral" isn't an invention of Linus, that's the word RMS uses to describe it himself. That means RMS is declaring himself a religious leader, which is patently absurd. We already have enough "holy wars" in hacker culture without someone actively pursuing religious agendas.
Is GPL 3 that unreasonable given the behavior of the RIAA and MPAA of recent?
Yes.
Don't try to out-badguy corporate scum. They have budgets for it, you don't. Extending a software license to limit hardware manufacturers is ridiculous.
Nevermind the fact that this has NOTHING to do with the RIAA and MPAA, will accomplish nothing vis a vis their war on piracy, and so I'm confused as to exactly why the hell you brought them up.
Yawn. So what's worse: Spidey having a destructive fight with Carnage in Manhattan that leaves a few people wounded, or just let Carnage roam around offing dozens of people at will? Hmmm.
False dilemma. There's a third option: An individual who can be held accountable for his actions (preferably affiliated with law enforcement of some kind) takes down Carnage. I'm more of a fan of the first option in my comics, but it's not usually a workable option in reality.
I'll take 50+ years of history over one crappy storyline, thank you.
Emphasis mine So you didn't just not read Civil War, but you're not reading anything Marvel's putting out right now. Teh awesome.
And even Spider Man didn't bring the Green Goblin to justice. He didn't kill him directly, but he didn't do much to not kill him...
Then again, he apparently didn't die anyway. Supervillain respawning in 5...
1) Obviously you didn't read Civil War, as the whole point there was that innocent people often get hurt in the process of vigilantism but since they wear a mask, no one can be held to account. Fuck the bad guys, thinkofthechildren! 2) Obviously you haven't read Spider Man lately, either. Or New Avengers... Or Captain America, etc., etc., etc. Quite a lot of people lately have been very happy to dish out punishment outside of the legal system.
Are you sure it isn't an indictment of a government that works outside the law?
I know people like to say that this government does that, and I don't doubt there are isolated cases of it. But with things like Waco/Ruby Ridge, how the FBI under Kennedy treated Civil Rights leaders, etc. I don't see how this is a new thing.
I write in a voice as the slashdot spokesman of the right wing, largely becuase I think its safe to say that I am the only Bush support on slashdot that can program in assembly language and is also self effacing enough to take my politics not too seriously.
Hey, I can program in assembly! Well, MIPS assembly, so I guess that doesn't count...:P
and view the likes of Hannity and Rush in the same kind of people as Howard Stern - shock jocks but not real values.
Well I'll agree on Hannity mostly, I'm sick of hearing the guy. Rush, however, puts on a front of being irreverent while there is significant discussion of news and conservative philosophy on his show. Granted, I'm not conservative myself, but I can appreciate someone who can be honest and articulate when discussing his political ideology.
Exactly. And in addition to that, the government didn't beat Cap. He didn't care what the government thought (and is already known for fighting them several times throughout his career). What beat him was when he realized he was fighting the people. He gave up.
I want Tony Stark to die by being slowly mashed into paste by a Hulk-Thor tagteam, but to be honest he's probably right. Vigilantes, no matter how much we love the underdog, are generally a bad thing. Civil War wasn't any more of an indictment of the government than it was of vigilantes working outside of the law.
I'm sure the wii has the largest following of elderly gamers of any console to date, but you think the sales to the older folks even accounts for 5% of the wii sales?
No, but I think the vast vast majority of Wii sales have been to non-tech-savvy users. I used "Grandma" as the extreme example of this, but the soccer moms buying this for their kids aren't buying it to modchip it either. "Grandma" is also personally a funny example to me since recently a discussion popped up on a GDC mailing list about an article by CliffyB's brother about how "non gamers" are buying the Wii in droves and "ruining" the industry. So it's rather amusing to get "Teh grandmothers!!!1!!" from one side and "Teh hAx0rs!!!!1!!" from the other side when discussing who's buying the damn thing.
I think you're deluded.
Wait, which one of us said "I think one of the strongest selling points for the Wii is that there are modchips already available. And you can download and burn games onto DVDRs." and then went on to imply that hardware sales are moved by ease of piracy? And I'm deluded? 99% of the user base of the Wii is not knowledgeable enough or interested enough to pirate games for it. Anyone who thinks otherwise is following the same old tired Slashdot pattern of assuming the average Slashdot commenter has anything in common with the average consumer.
And yes, people are pirating wii games, as well as Xbox360, PSP, Gamecube, PC and games from every single platform that has had its DRM bypassed. Just because you're not doing it doesn't mean its not prevalent.
Yes, I'm well aware. But such people have always represented an almost unnoticeable minority of purchasers of these systems--with the exception of perhaps the Dreamcast, I suppose...
MS wants to produce games for Vista only and that's underatable from a marlketing point of view. It's their right and has nothing to do with the DOJ as the grandparent cried.
And as someone else already pointed out, the rules change when you're a monopoly. Especially a criminal one.
I think one of the strongest selling points for the Wii is that there are modchips already available. And you can download and burn games onto DVDRs.
Yeah, because all those grandmothers buying the Wii are l33t h@x0r pirates. Get a life. Software to hardware sales ratios started out better than 3-to-1, and I think have gotten better since. People are buying the Wii and buying games, not pirating them.
But the expectation that people are going to RP *in character* is silly: it's not like WOW was designed to attract pencil-and-paper RPG players like myself. It specifically caters to console gamers, and is very successful at that.
Bingo. Roleplaying works much better in smaller groups in person where you have an actual chance to interact. Too many people or not enough interaction and someone's going to get drowned out.
But I have known people to RP very different personalities for game to game, or even sometimes from character to character, none of which were in character for the game.
I know I'm more of an asshole when I play my Warlock, but YMMV.:)
That in character part is just a little too weird and geeky for most people. I've been playing PnP RPGs for 25 years, and while we always insist on characters acting in character, players actually speaking in character would be... too weird and geeky.
Talking in character? I think they call that LARPing...
Slashdot Mirror
Xian? God, why do I allow humanity to continue living... I think it's especially funny that you show how you're better than "intolerant" people by being intolerant yourself.
Hehe well I'm a student as well as an employee. The stuff I was referring to is software developed for use by the VR Lab, which the copyrights do belong to the university. And anyone can look in the Subversion logs to see what I've written... :P Subversion keeps your mistakes FOREVER...
Actually I didn't even intend that I thought they were immoral, just that SOMEONE thinks they're immoral and therefore if we used morality to determine rights the whole damn thing falls apart. I think this guy has Christian Persecution Syndrome or something.
Actually I never said I thought they were immoral. The person I was responding to put "immoral" in quotes so I was giving him examples of "immoral" acts which don't infringe on other people's rights, not acts that I found immoral. The point is that SOMEONE finds them "immoral", and therefore if we used morality to determine "rights", "rights" would become arbitrary.
I think you need to re-examine who's the ignorant one here.
And that, is exactly the answer I was looking for. That clears everything up, thanks. :)
No, they are not. Rights in no way shape or form are dependent on a "moral" code. That means if the moral code changes, your "rights" can be taken away and then they were never rights in the first place. A right is not something that can be decided or bestowed. You either have it as a virtue of existence or you don't. In modern liberal societies (especially those, like the US, that have based their philosphy on the writings of people like Locke) we recognize that you have three natural, inalienable rights: life, liberty, pursuit of happiness. Those rights do not come from some moral code but are founded upon your existence as a living, reasoning being capable of making your own choices in life. The rights are based on the idea that as an independent, living being you alone own yourself and since you are your own property there are certain things about yourself that are within only your control. All other things claimed as rights must descend directly from these three principles and must do so in a way that does not infringe upon the already established rights of others. Morality does not matter.
In some places of the world is not immoral to kill people who do not follow the your religion. That does not mean said person does not have a right to continue living.
Yes, and the software they distribute is in no way limited. You can take it and run it on your home built PVR box if you want. What TiVo restricted was running someone else's code on their HARDWARE. So why is a software license limiting their choices in regards to their hardware, dummy?
Preventing "evil" by denying someone freedom who has done nothing wrong is evil. It's not "evil" for TiVo to say "our hardware will not run unsigned binaries". It's a business decision. If you don't like it, take your business elsewhere.
I'm torn between being so happy that someone finally understood and so depressed that it took so many replies and crazy moderations before that happened...
I can't claim to be an old timer and firsthand familiar with these things, but it seems to me so many young GNU adherents don't understand how much being a hacker already approaches a religion (especially in the negative aspects of organized religion) without someone PURPOSELY trying to espouse religious philosophy. We already have enough heresies, inquisitions, and crusades amongst people who are just trying to get work done or do research... When you start ordaining prophets and messiahs, you're asking for trouble.
Then again half the people reading what I'm writing are probably equating the word "hacker" with some black hat stealing their credit card numbers and defacing websites...
Yes.
Homosexuality. Imbibing drugs and alchohol. Viewing pornography. Pre-marital sex. Masturbation. Do I have to keep going? Did you even think before you wrote that?
Your rights have nothing to do with morality. You have rights as a virtue of existence. The intersection between what acts are considered "immoral" and what acts infringe on your rights as an individual is definitely not nil, but they are not equivalent nor is one a subset of the other. As a matter of fact, "moral" restrictions on behavior often end up infringing on your "rights" as a living being. The fact that infringing upon someone else's rights is also often considered "immoral" (but not always, take note!) is simply a recognition by religion of natural rights, not natural rights coming from some moral code.
Except that he is a religious leader. He even (admittedly, jokingly) says so himself. Morals have no place in an argument about rights and law. Rights are self evident and law exists to protect them.
Do I bring morality into a business transaction when I pay for a $20 bill with the words "In God We Trust" on it? Does swearing on the Bible in a court of law bring morality into a legal matter? The use of GPL in the kernel was a pragmatic decision, and I think the huge amount of people willing to contribute to Linux over HURD is a pretty big approval of the "pragmatic" side of the argument over the "moral" side.
It's kind of like having the ten commandments on a courthouse wall because "they're a good basis for civil behavior" but understanding that doesn't include any of the claptrap about worshiping "God". (Well, except that on commandment about not worshiping other gods, but you get the point...)
Yeah except EGCS spent a while as a non-GNU project (until GNU was embarrassed into admitting it was better), I thought, which I would have assumed would have prevented the usual GNU monkeying around with copyrights.
You know, when I write code for my University I lose the copyright on that, too, but at least I'm compensated for it...
I think--especially if you view previous comments from him--that he has known for years that RMS is a religious zealot. That doesn't mean he can't keep criticizing people for bringing religion into an argument that doesn't need it.
Your comment confuses me greatly.
In modern western societies, laws are not based on morality. They're based on the protection of rights, which themselves are a virtue of one's existence. Theft, kidnapping, and murder are illegal not because they are immoral, but because they deny the victim their most basic rights: life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. Good law and good legal documents do not involve morality.
In America our value system and legal practices do owe much to Judeo-Christian belief systems, but the legal documents that provide the foundation for our society and its government owe their genesis much more from philosophies of Locke (who did an excellent job of separating "natural rights" from any supernatural influence) than any collection of religious morals. In theory (if not in practice) the entire legal code of our society should derive from those initial founding documents.
Honestly I think the GPL should be thought of (and developed) as more of a "social contract" wherein the body of the people agree to give up certain rights (in this case, the right to exercise certain features of copyright law) to receive social order. At no point does morality have to enter into a social contract, and it's better off without it.
You know, after EGCS (and the associated bazaar development model) became the official GCC branch, I kinda figured they'd face the same problem as the kernel does of producing a GPLv3 branch--with thousands of contributers having provided their work under GPLv2, it would be impossible to track them all down and get their permission to relicense their work as GPLv3. Yet I see announcements for GPLv3 trumpeting the fact that the GCC project is "on board". Can someone explain to me what I'm missing here?
I have to disagree. He's making a valid point that RMS approaches the entire "Open Source/Free Software" debate as not a legal or even ethical issue, but a moral issue. The use of the word "moral" isn't an invention of Linus, that's the word RMS uses to describe it himself. That means RMS is declaring himself a religious leader, which is patently absurd. We already have enough "holy wars" in hacker culture without someone actively pursuing religious agendas.
Don't try to out-badguy corporate scum. They have budgets for it, you don't. Extending a software license to limit hardware manufacturers is ridiculous.
Nevermind the fact that this has NOTHING to do with the RIAA and MPAA, will accomplish nothing vis a vis their war on piracy, and so I'm confused as to exactly why the hell you brought them up.
So you didn't just not read Civil War, but you're not reading anything Marvel's putting out right now. Teh awesome. And even Spider Man didn't bring the Green Goblin to justice. He didn't kill him directly, but he didn't do much to not kill him... Then again, he apparently didn't die anyway. Supervillain respawning in 5...
1) Obviously you didn't read Civil War, as the whole point there was that innocent people often get hurt in the process of vigilantism but since they wear a mask, no one can be held to account. Fuck the bad guys, thinkofthechildren!
2) Obviously you haven't read Spider Man lately, either. Or New Avengers... Or Captain America, etc., etc., etc. Quite a lot of people lately have been very happy to dish out punishment outside of the legal system.
I know people like to say that this government does that, and I don't doubt there are isolated cases of it. But with things like Waco/Ruby Ridge, how the FBI under Kennedy treated Civil Rights leaders, etc. I don't see how this is a new thing.
Exactly. And in addition to that, the government didn't beat Cap. He didn't care what the government thought (and is already known for fighting them several times throughout his career). What beat him was when he realized he was fighting the people. He gave up.
I want Tony Stark to die by being slowly mashed into paste by a Hulk-Thor tagteam, but to be honest he's probably right. Vigilantes, no matter how much we love the underdog, are generally a bad thing. Civil War wasn't any more of an indictment of the government than it was of vigilantes working outside of the law.
And as someone else already pointed out, the rules change when you're a monopoly. Especially a criminal one.
Yeah, because all those grandmothers buying the Wii are l33t h@x0r pirates. Get a life. Software to hardware sales ratios started out better than 3-to-1, and I think have gotten better since. People are buying the Wii and buying games, not pirating them.