Help! Help! I'm being censored! (According to WorldNetDaily's definition of censorship, anyway)
Now, hopefully the GGP has some idea of why we find WND's comments laughable. It's not that it's a conservative or liberal bias, it's that the bias prevents it from seeing the truth and reporting it in a way that leaves readers with a fair impression of what's going on.
Yes, the fact that it's conservative biased is relevent here, and is a reason to ignore it. Not because of the direction of the bias, but because of the bias. Because of the framing. To describe truth, you need to be prepared to avoid an agenda. That doesn't mean you can't say that someone has committed an evil act simply because there's a political dimension, but it does mean that your words have to be appropriate. WND frequently fails that test. It leaves readers with a false impression, because it allows hyperbole to get the better of it. It shouldn't have had a link on Slashdot's front page.
Well, as the other responder, Shrubsky, implies, there's more to it than greed.
Greed is just a function of conservatism, which revolves around the principle of evil. Greed is simply an attribute of conservatism because it is evil, in much the same way as, say, lying or hypocracy is.
I think you owe conservatives an apology for stating one of their principles completely out of context, as if it's the whole of conservatism, and that it doesn't have some principled basis.
Well, yeah, I'm aware of that. I was responding to the parent who was talking about Sat boxes.
But I'd still like to know where the Firewire requirement for any type of box has been mandated. You say cable companies are regulated, but (and maybe I'm wrong in thinking this) I was under the impression that there's very little regulation in terms of cable equipment and requirements, to the point that even CableCARD is more or less optional.
I have had digital cable in the past, from Adelphia, and there was no firewire port. Was this illegal, or was the regulation relatively recent, or is it not really a regulation?
I agree. I think people forget that the standard is "Beyond reasonable doubt", not "Mathematically proven to be true."
Fiction is a pretty awful thing to judge standards of evidence from. How many people have watched dramatisations of old Agatha Christie novels (Poirot, etc) and wondered how the hell the "evidence" given could possibly be seen as enough (it's convenient that her murderers always make a full confession once the fact that they could have been the only person with access to the knife that night because they were the only person aware that it was in an unlocked bathroom on the floor.) We have that, and then we have CSI. Real police work seems to be rather more, well, "real world", than that.
...and in his car, and the passenger seat had been removed for no explained reason. (The car is small, it's a hatchback and thus it would be hard to put a large object in without removing a seat.)
This is circumstantial evidence, and is presumably what the arrest is based upon. It could be that the explanation is as simple as Nina having a nose-bleed in both places, and that Hans removed the passenger seat as he needed to transport a server between two offices. But the police, right now, apparently don't have an explanation they're willing to believe.
Personally, I'm having a hard time understanding how Hans would have been able to do this without his children seeing what was going on, but without knowing all the facts, it's hard to draw a conclusion. I guess if there is a trial, we'll find out then.
I believe Reiser owns Namesys, he's not just the guy who runs it.
As such, his disappearance, for whatever reason, will have a profound effect on the company if he doesn't take steps to ensure otherwise. And he may not be able to take those steps at all if he's convicted.
IF the judge issued an order to pull the domain registration and believed that he had the jurisdiction to do so (depends on the judge, depends on the answere given) then Tucows would be in Contempt of Court for not following the order.
Well, yeah, but the point is that it's Canadian TUCOWS that would be in contempt... but they wouldn't be because there's no way the judge would consider a Canadian company in its jurisdiction. The judge might consider the US subsidary within its jurisdiction, but the US subsidary isn't able to do what the judge has ordered. So it wouldn't be in contempt either.
The Google example is a hard one to make any judgements on, largely because Google was voluntarily cooperating, and the problem was a mix-up with where the Brazillian police had sent the requests. They had sent the requests to Google Brazil. Google Brazil wasn't able to help, and so they'd taken Google Brazil to court.
Probably also worth mentioning that I doubt the judge is unaware that the case is bullshit. I can see him following the law to the degree he has to (and as such he has to consider these remedies, even if he disagrees with them), but I doubt he's going to take an overly-broad view of what his powers are.
I don't believe that legally the court could put pressure in UT to make CT do something.
Remember, TUCOWS hasn't actually done anything. The court can make a US company to do something, and even a US subsidary of a foreign company to do something, but its powers become limited beyond that. Can it punish a US subsidary because a company the US subsidary has no control over (its parent), which is not subject to US law, fails to obey a US court order that is beyond its jurisdiction to begin with?
I'm having a hard time believing that to be true. The US subsidary wouldn't have done anything to violate the law, and the Canadian subsidary wouldn't be subject to the judge's rulings, so it strikes me as improbable unless the law has been specifically written to allow such things, and I find that very improbable for this type of case (ordinary civil tort) as there would be all manner of international repurcusions if US courts could throw their weight around like that.
ICANN is the organization responsible for all domain registration.
Well, not really. It's the organization responsible for ensuring the system works, but domain registrations themselves are handled by a variety of private companies and organizations.
They were ordered to remove spamhous.org 's registration
Well, no, they weren't. The court was considering telling them to, but it hasn't got that far yet.
and as the article says, have refused
Kind of. What the article actually says is that ICANN said this isn't something they can't do. Namely because they're not the organization responsible for all domain registration. Domain registrations themselves are handled by a variety of private companies and organizations.
The registrar that sponsors their domain, Tucows Inc., could still be ordered to cut their registration
Well, TUCOWS doesn't actually sponsor their domain, Spamhaus themselves do that. TUCOWS is the registrar, which means they organize the whole bit that involves it being available via DNS.
Also TUCOWS probably can't be ordered to cut their registration. TUCOWS is a Canadian company, and it's unlikely that Spamhaus's business is with any American subsidary.
if that happens, watch your inbox for deluges of spam.
This is something that might happen.
If the registrar was GoDaddy or someone high profile like that, we'd probably be alright
Erm, again, this appears to be wrong on the face of it. GoDaddy is actually no more high profile than TUCOWS, and is also a fully American business. Had Spamhaus registred with GoDaddy, then they would almost certainly have been doing business with the American part, eventually, of GoDaddy.
Also GoDaddy does have a history of suspending domains on a whim.
Tucows... we're screwed.
Probably not. It really depends on what kind of leverage the Federal court has over Canadian companies that have branches that trade in the US concerning transactions that aren't made involving the US business. I'm not convinced it has any.
The judge is just following the law, and, indeed, the constitution. This has nothing to do with "freedom of speech". Spamhaus asked for a civil suit to be moved to Federal Court, and then failed to defend themselves. Wham. Default judgement.
It doesn't matter whether Spamhaus is being sued for describing Ted Kaczynski or "Spamford" Wallace as a spammer. It doesn't matter if this is Spamhaus or SPEWS. It doesn't matter if spam is a nuisance or welcomed by millions of people across the world. They failed to turn up. They're subject to a default judgement and legal sanctions to prevent them from continuing the offense.
That's what the law and constitution says is the correct response, and therefore, while it might be unpopular, this is the correct thing for the judge to do. For all the criticisms of judges "legislating from the bench", it seems that the majority of people would rather they do that than follow the law. (Witness SCOTUS's response to the Connecticut eminent-domain thing. For some reason, everyone decided it was SCOTUS at fault. The real problem was a vague phrase in the constitution, an out of control local government, and state and Federal legislatures who'd failed to impose legal limits. But everyone blamed the judges.)
The judge needs to follow the law, even when it's unpopular. The legislature needs to be told to deal with this fiasco. And Spamhaus needs to be more careful and less stupid and contradictory in their ways of dealing with courts.
Here's a question. If you were ICANN, would you want to get involved in this particular can of worms?
I mean: they can either obey the court order, and destroy their credibility with much of people responsible for the Internet's infrastructure, or they can disobey it, and risk serious legal sanctions.
Saying "Er, you need to talk to someone else. That's someone else's job. I'm just the janitor" isn't really standing on principle, it's copping out.
Which isn't to suggest it's not the technically correct response. But portraying it as "admirable restraint and intelligence" and suggesting ICANN actually wanted to wade into this is way off the mark.
Well, the arrest requires considerably less evidence than a conviction.
Part of the reason for an arrest usually involves the detectives wanting to obtain more information that can only be obtained from the suspect. In this case. Reiser wasn't talking voluntarily (largely because he was upset with the police interfering with a child custody hearing.) I say that not because I'm suggesting the cops don't think he's guilty, but because whether they do or don't isn't really much of a factor here, they have a limited amount of information to go on, Reiser is a suspect (as someone with a motive who hasn't been eliminated as a suspect), and they can only gather more evidence of a particular type by questioning him.
At the very least, if he claims an alibi, they should be in a position to check it out.
Mozilla doesn't want programs called "Firefox" to diverge too much from the original. Debian wants to make some changes that go beyond what the Mozilla group are happy calling "Firefox". So they've taken option #2 and renamed it.
It's just a choice. It's the choice both are happy with. Why it keeps being portrayed as some kind of war is beyond me.
s Spamhaus really going down over this? It's not Spamhaus that suffers... they aren't going down... for a brief time there's gonna be lots of spam flying around the internet, but in a short time everyone will switch to the new domain. No big deal. Spamhaus doesn't NEED it's users. Users need Spamhaus. The court has failed to punish Spamhaus, but rather will succeed in punishing all users of Spamhaus. That's the trouble with a US court and a US company trying to punish a British-based non-profit organization. What can either effectively do to Spamhaus?
I'm not sure what you're saying here. You say it's not Spamhaus that suffers, but that it's the users. But you also say the users will just switch to a new domain.
In the end, yes, it's Spamhaus that suffers. The work they're trying to achieve will be compromised by their actions, and the individual members of the group will, at the very least, be risking everything should they ever decide to visit the US, even on a stop-over flight. That's the very least. There are also procedures to allow for certain civil judgements to be enforced by British courts. So the founders of Spamhaus may end up bankrupt as a result.
In the end though, I don't think "the users" will suffer. Filtering systems are truly awful, and are the result of desperation and the Internet's origins of a voluntary, cooperative, network of like minded peers where system administrator's loyalty was to the 'net, and therefore their accountability was to the 'net too. Spamhaus is a remnant of that environment. It is woefully obsolete, and its existance and the reliance upon systems like it and SPEWS are why spam continues to be a serious problem on the 'net.
To deal with spam, end users have to be accountable. They're not. If ABC Corp sells people's email addresses, there's no come back for them. It's not hard to deal with the issues, it's just draconian, collatoral damage inducing, IP-address and bogus protocol enforcement methods are the ways spam fighters, blinded by their hatred of spammers to the point they care little about the damage they cause, are what people are used to and what people rely upon.
In addition, I actually knew very little of Spamhaus or e360 before they missed their trial, but now I know quite a lot and now I think Spamhaus is really cool. e360 has provided the best possible marketing campaign for Spamhaus.
Well, all that publicity will do them no good if Spamhaus is actually put out of action by e360's actions.
Spam will go when we start using the right solutions to tackle the actual issues. The issue is that there's such a thing as unwanted email. There are easy ways to turn off unwanted email, and then there are the snake oils. For the last ten years, we've relied upon snake oil. And Spamhaus has, of late, been one of the major quack doctors vending the stuff. Good riddance.
Spamhaus is based in the UK, and in the UK truth is not an absolute defense. FWIW.
(I also doubt it's the case in the US, if you're using forms of words that are technically true that nonetheless leave people with an impression opposite to reality. For example, accusing someone of being a serial liar who isn't even honest to his wife, and then justifying it in court by pointing out that the person recently lied in order to prevent his wife from knowing about a surprise birthday party, I'd have thought wouldn't be a case of "Truth is an absolute defense.")
The absense of truth as an absolute defense in UK libel law is one of the reasons why magazines like Private Eye will tip-toe around using the most obvious words to describe common occurances. You will never be reported as being drunk in those pages, only "tired and emotional." And Private Eye is infamous for the number of libel suits it routinely loses anyway.
It's not even a rumour. The people talking about the Linux kernel being on the Wii are being explicit in saying it will not be available to end-users (though Nintendo-approved programmers will be able to build upon it.)
There's nothing about the Wii's rumoured strategy that suggests there will be more freedom for end users. The PS3, on the other hand, will apparently have a full version of GNU available for it, so if the worst comes to the worst, you'll be able to do full development on a PS3. We don't know, and have no reason to believe, that the same is true of the Wii.
Let's wait and see. But right now the available evidence is that the Wii and X-Box 360 will be fully locked down, and the PS3 will be at least fractionally user programmable.
FWIW, the Playstation 3 also runs Linux (and a version of GNU/Linux will supposedly be available from day 1.)
But... beyond that, and what everyone else said, it's probable that this will have no effect. Remember that a commercial game for GNU/Linux on PCs has:
1. To be compiled for x86.
2. To use OpenGL/X11.
3. To use ALSA or OSS.
None of these, with the possible exception of (3), are likely to be true for PS3 or Wii "Linux". That is, Sony and Nintendo will have their own ways to make it easy for the developers to hit the hardware.
You essentially have what boils down to two real options: you can either distribute the source with the binaries (in which case, yes, Wii owners would be the only people who Nintendo would have to distribute the source to), or you can make a "written offer", but that written offer applies to everyone, not just those who received a binary.
So if the Wii ships with a CD containing the source code, provided under the GPL, they've done everything they need to. More likely, however, it will not, so the Wii will probably ship with an offer, and that offer will be available to everyone, Wii owners or otherwise.
For those who care, the relevent part of the GPL is here:
3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:
a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
c) {...}
(C is an option for non-commercial distribrution and as such does not apply to Nintendo.)
I can buy a recently manufactured Commodore 64. True, I have to get a soldering iron out if I want a real keyboard, and I don't quite know how to attach a real C64 disk drive or tape deck, but you can, nonetheless, buy them.
Amigas, on the other hand, haven't been made since the death of Escom. PowerMac like machines with "AmigaOne" slapped on the face-plates were available for a limited time, if you knew who to talk to, in the earlier part of this decade, but these couldn't run AmigaOS or its software. They can, apparently, run betas of AmigaOS 4, but that's about it and, in any case, they're not available any more. AROS on a PC is about as much "an Amiga" as this bizarre combination.
If someone puts an A1200 in a joystick and ramps up production, I'll buy your argument. For now though, it's as dead as a 1950s car model.
AmigaOS 4 is based upon AmigaOS 3. It's a port of AmigaOS to the PowerPC platform. It has nothing to do with AmigaObjects or that project's successors.
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Help! Help! I'm being censored! (According to WorldNetDaily's definition of censorship, anyway)
Now, hopefully the GGP has some idea of why we find WND's comments laughable. It's not that it's a conservative or liberal bias, it's that the bias prevents it from seeing the truth and reporting it in a way that leaves readers with a fair impression of what's going on.
Yes, the fact that it's conservative biased is relevent here, and is a reason to ignore it. Not because of the direction of the bias, but because of the bias. Because of the framing. To describe truth, you need to be prepared to avoid an agenda. That doesn't mean you can't say that someone has committed an evil act simply because there's a political dimension, but it does mean that your words have to be appropriate. WND frequently fails that test. It leaves readers with a false impression, because it allows hyperbole to get the better of it. It shouldn't have had a link on Slashdot's front page.
Well, as the other responder, Shrubsky, implies, there's more to it than greed.
Greed is just a function of conservatism, which revolves around the principle of evil. Greed is simply an attribute of conservatism because it is evil, in much the same way as, say, lying or hypocracy is.
I think you owe conservatives an apology for stating one of their principles completely out of context, as if it's the whole of conservatism, and that it doesn't have some principled basis.
I don't know if it's the cause or not, but Sun has reversed its stagnation of late and actually had several quarters of growth.
Well, yeah, I'm aware of that. I was responding to the parent who was talking about Sat boxes.
But I'd still like to know where the Firewire requirement for any type of box has been mandated. You say cable companies are regulated, but (and maybe I'm wrong in thinking this) I was under the impression that there's very little regulation in terms of cable equipment and requirements, to the point that even CableCARD is more or less optional.
I have had digital cable in the past, from Adelphia, and there was no firewire port. Was this illegal, or was the regulation relatively recent, or is it not really a regulation?
Mine, a Dish Network 625, doesn't even have a firewire out.
I don't think Firewire is actually that common, and I'm not sure where Tepples gets the "supposed to have" requirement from.
I agree. I think people forget that the standard is "Beyond reasonable doubt", not "Mathematically proven to be true."
Fiction is a pretty awful thing to judge standards of evidence from. How many people have watched dramatisations of old Agatha Christie novels (Poirot, etc) and wondered how the hell the "evidence" given could possibly be seen as enough (it's convenient that her murderers always make a full confession once the fact that they could have been the only person with access to the knife that night because they were the only person aware that it was in an unlocked bathroom on the floor.) We have that, and then we have CSI. Real police work seems to be rather more, well, "real world", than that.
This is circumstantial evidence, and is presumably what the arrest is based upon. It could be that the explanation is as simple as Nina having a nose-bleed in both places, and that Hans removed the passenger seat as he needed to transport a server between two offices. But the police, right now, apparently don't have an explanation they're willing to believe.
Personally, I'm having a hard time understanding how Hans would have been able to do this without his children seeing what was going on, but without knowing all the facts, it's hard to draw a conclusion. I guess if there is a trial, we'll find out then.
I believe Reiser owns Namesys, he's not just the guy who runs it.
As such, his disappearance, for whatever reason, will have a profound effect on the company if he doesn't take steps to ensure otherwise. And he may not be able to take those steps at all if he's convicted.
Well, yeah, but the point is that it's Canadian TUCOWS that would be in contempt... but they wouldn't be because there's no way the judge would consider a Canadian company in its jurisdiction. The judge might consider the US subsidary within its jurisdiction, but the US subsidary isn't able to do what the judge has ordered. So it wouldn't be in contempt either.
The Google example is a hard one to make any judgements on, largely because Google was voluntarily cooperating, and the problem was a mix-up with where the Brazillian police had sent the requests. They had sent the requests to Google Brazil. Google Brazil wasn't able to help, and so they'd taken Google Brazil to court.
Probably also worth mentioning that I doubt the judge is unaware that the case is bullshit. I can see him following the law to the degree he has to (and as such he has to consider these remedies, even if he disagrees with them), but I doubt he's going to take an overly-broad view of what his powers are.
I don't believe that legally the court could put pressure in UT to make CT do something.
Remember, TUCOWS hasn't actually done anything. The court can make a US company to do something, and even a US subsidary of a foreign company to do something, but its powers become limited beyond that. Can it punish a US subsidary because a company the US subsidary has no control over (its parent), which is not subject to US law, fails to obey a US court order that is beyond its jurisdiction to begin with?
I'm having a hard time believing that to be true. The US subsidary wouldn't have done anything to violate the law, and the Canadian subsidary wouldn't be subject to the judge's rulings, so it strikes me as improbable unless the law has been specifically written to allow such things, and I find that very improbable for this type of case (ordinary civil tort) as there would be all manner of international repurcusions if US courts could throw their weight around like that.
Probably very little. I doubt TUCOWS will be stupid enough to tell the court that it accepts its jurisdiction, unlike Spamhaus.
Well, not really. It's the organization responsible for ensuring the system works, but domain registrations themselves are handled by a variety of private companies and organizations.
Well, no, they weren't. The court was considering telling them to, but it hasn't got that far yet.
Kind of. What the article actually says is that ICANN said this isn't something they can't do. Namely because they're not the organization responsible for all domain registration. Domain registrations themselves are handled by a variety of private companies and organizations.
Well, TUCOWS doesn't actually sponsor their domain, Spamhaus themselves do that. TUCOWS is the registrar, which means they organize the whole bit that involves it being available via DNS.
Also TUCOWS probably can't be ordered to cut their registration. TUCOWS is a Canadian company, and it's unlikely that Spamhaus's business is with any American subsidary.
This is something that might happen.
Erm, again, this appears to be wrong on the face of it. GoDaddy is actually no more high profile than TUCOWS, and is also a fully American business. Had Spamhaus registred with GoDaddy, then they would almost certainly have been doing business with the American part, eventually, of GoDaddy.
Also GoDaddy does have a history of suspending domains on a whim.
Probably not. It really depends on what kind of leverage the Federal court has over Canadian companies that have branches that trade in the US concerning transactions that aren't made involving the US business. I'm not convinced it has any.
The judge is just following the law, and, indeed, the constitution. This has nothing to do with "freedom of speech". Spamhaus asked for a civil suit to be moved to Federal Court, and then failed to defend themselves. Wham. Default judgement.
It doesn't matter whether Spamhaus is being sued for describing Ted Kaczynski or "Spamford" Wallace as a spammer. It doesn't matter if this is Spamhaus or SPEWS. It doesn't matter if spam is a nuisance or welcomed by millions of people across the world. They failed to turn up. They're subject to a default judgement and legal sanctions to prevent them from continuing the offense.
That's what the law and constitution says is the correct response, and therefore, while it might be unpopular, this is the correct thing for the judge to do. For all the criticisms of judges "legislating from the bench", it seems that the majority of people would rather they do that than follow the law. (Witness SCOTUS's response to the Connecticut eminent-domain thing. For some reason, everyone decided it was SCOTUS at fault. The real problem was a vague phrase in the constitution, an out of control local government, and state and Federal legislatures who'd failed to impose legal limits. But everyone blamed the judges.)
The judge needs to follow the law, even when it's unpopular. The legislature needs to be told to deal with this fiasco. And Spamhaus needs to be more careful and less stupid and contradictory in their ways of dealing with courts.
Ha!
Here's a question. If you were ICANN, would you want to get involved in this particular can of worms?
I mean: they can either obey the court order, and destroy their credibility with much of people responsible for the Internet's infrastructure, or they can disobey it, and risk serious legal sanctions.
Saying "Er, you need to talk to someone else. That's someone else's job. I'm just the janitor" isn't really standing on principle, it's copping out.
Which isn't to suggest it's not the technically correct response. But portraying it as "admirable restraint and intelligence" and suggesting ICANN actually wanted to wade into this is way off the mark.
Well, the arrest requires considerably less evidence than a conviction.
Part of the reason for an arrest usually involves the detectives wanting to obtain more information that can only be obtained from the suspect. In this case. Reiser wasn't talking voluntarily (largely because he was upset with the police interfering with a child custody hearing.) I say that not because I'm suggesting the cops don't think he's guilty, but because whether they do or don't isn't really much of a factor here, they have a limited amount of information to go on, Reiser is a suspect (as someone with a motive who hasn't been eliminated as a suspect), and they can only gather more evidence of a particular type by questioning him.
At the very least, if he claims an alibi, they should be in a position to check it out.
There is no dispute.
Mozilla doesn't want programs called "Firefox" to diverge too much from the original. Debian wants to make some changes that go beyond what the Mozilla group are happy calling "Firefox". So they've taken option #2 and renamed it.
It's just a choice. It's the choice both are happy with. Why it keeps being portrayed as some kind of war is beyond me.
I'm not sure what you're saying here. You say it's not Spamhaus that suffers, but that it's the users. But you also say the users will just switch to a new domain.
In the end, yes, it's Spamhaus that suffers. The work they're trying to achieve will be compromised by their actions, and the individual members of the group will, at the very least, be risking everything should they ever decide to visit the US, even on a stop-over flight. That's the very least. There are also procedures to allow for certain civil judgements to be enforced by British courts. So the founders of Spamhaus may end up bankrupt as a result.
In the end though, I don't think "the users" will suffer. Filtering systems are truly awful, and are the result of desperation and the Internet's origins of a voluntary, cooperative, network of like minded peers where system administrator's loyalty was to the 'net, and therefore their accountability was to the 'net too. Spamhaus is a remnant of that environment. It is woefully obsolete, and its existance and the reliance upon systems like it and SPEWS are why spam continues to be a serious problem on the 'net.
To deal with spam, end users have to be accountable. They're not. If ABC Corp sells people's email addresses, there's no come back for them. It's not hard to deal with the issues, it's just draconian, collatoral damage inducing, IP-address and bogus protocol enforcement methods are the ways spam fighters, blinded by their hatred of spammers to the point they care little about the damage they cause, are what people are used to and what people rely upon.
Well, all that publicity will do them no good if Spamhaus is actually put out of action by e360's actions.
Spam will go when we start using the right solutions to tackle the actual issues. The issue is that there's such a thing as unwanted email. There are easy ways to turn off unwanted email, and then there are the snake oils. For the last ten years, we've relied upon snake oil. And Spamhaus has, of late, been one of the major quack doctors vending the stuff. Good riddance.
Spamhaus is based in the UK, and in the UK truth is not an absolute defense. FWIW.
(I also doubt it's the case in the US, if you're using forms of words that are technically true that nonetheless leave people with an impression opposite to reality. For example, accusing someone of being a serial liar who isn't even honest to his wife, and then justifying it in court by pointing out that the person recently lied in order to prevent his wife from knowing about a surprise birthday party, I'd have thought wouldn't be a case of "Truth is an absolute defense.")
The absense of truth as an absolute defense in UK libel law is one of the reasons why magazines like Private Eye will tip-toe around using the most obvious words to describe common occurances. You will never be reported as being drunk in those pages, only "tired and emotional." And Private Eye is infamous for the number of libel suits it routinely loses anyway.
It's not even a rumour. The people talking about the Linux kernel being on the Wii are being explicit in saying it will not be available to end-users (though Nintendo-approved programmers will be able to build upon it.)
This is not like the PS2/PS3 Linux.
There's nothing about the Wii's rumoured strategy that suggests there will be more freedom for end users. The PS3, on the other hand, will apparently have a full version of GNU available for it, so if the worst comes to the worst, you'll be able to do full development on a PS3. We don't know, and have no reason to believe, that the same is true of the Wii.
Let's wait and see. But right now the available evidence is that the Wii and X-Box 360 will be fully locked down, and the PS3 will be at least fractionally user programmable.
FWIW, the Playstation 3 also runs Linux (and a version of GNU/Linux will supposedly be available from day 1.)
But... beyond that, and what everyone else said, it's probable that this will have no effect. Remember that a commercial game for GNU/Linux on PCs has:
1. To be compiled for x86.
None of these, with the possible exception of (3), are likely to be true for PS3 or Wii "Linux". That is, Sony and Nintendo will have their own ways to make it easy for the developers to hit the hardware.2. To use OpenGL/X11.
3. To use ALSA or OSS.
You're both right and both wrong.
You essentially have what boils down to two real options: you can either distribute the source with the binaries (in which case, yes, Wii owners would be the only people who Nintendo would have to distribute the source to), or you can make a "written offer", but that written offer applies to everyone, not just those who received a binary.
So if the Wii ships with a CD containing the source code, provided under the GPL, they've done everything they need to. More likely, however, it will not, so the Wii will probably ship with an offer, and that offer will be available to everyone, Wii owners or otherwise.
For those who care, the relevent part of the GPL is here:
(C is an option for non-commercial distribrution and as such does not apply to Nintendo.)
I hope this helps.
I can buy a recently manufactured Commodore 64. True, I have to get a soldering iron out if I want a real keyboard, and I don't quite know how to attach a real C64 disk drive or tape deck, but you can, nonetheless, buy them.
Amigas, on the other hand, haven't been made since the death of Escom. PowerMac like machines with "AmigaOne" slapped on the face-plates were available for a limited time, if you knew who to talk to, in the earlier part of this decade, but these couldn't run AmigaOS or its software. They can, apparently, run betas of AmigaOS 4, but that's about it and, in any case, they're not available any more. AROS on a PC is about as much "an Amiga" as this bizarre combination.
If someone puts an A1200 in a joystick and ramps up production, I'll buy your argument. For now though, it's as dead as a 1950s car model.
AmigaOS 4 is based upon AmigaOS 3. It's a port of AmigaOS to the PowerPC platform. It has nothing to do with AmigaObjects or that project's successors.