Ask any historian, and they will tell you that the defeat of the British in what is now the USA was entirely caused by political problems in England (your motherland).
Don't I have the right to, somehow, get that audio back?
Not if it involves breaking into to your local Sam Goodys, and stealing a new copy of the disc, which is analagous to what the criminal Napster users are doing.
I know it's an unfashionable viewpoint, but I think that users of Napster and Gnutella are trying to get something for nothing. They want to hear the results of hundreds of person-hours of studio time, plus God knows how much creative energy without paying the creator a single dime.
In any other sphere, this would be plain and simple theft. Because a computer is involved, it somehow is a 'human rights issue' ?
Perhaps the 'Your rights online' topic should be renamed 'Your criminal behavior is not defensible' I mean, Slashdot should show some leadership and responsibility here. Many slashdot readers are quite young and easily influenced by what they read here. A few words from slashdot coming down firmly on the side of law and order could give them some very useful moral guidance.
In the meantime, I just hope the RIAA gets some real muscle to prosecute these theives and send a message to all 'slackers' 'crackers' and 'hackers' that theft is theft, no matter what technology you use to perpetrate it.
I'm interested to know how they managed a Linux port so quickly. With DirectX being the 3D standard on Windows and OpenGL on Linux, have they got some cool abstraction layer on top of both ?
Quite correct. And our movies are also censored, and nobody would argue that this is not a good thing, since it protects our children from graphic portayals of sex and violence. (The only thing Hollywood seems to churn out these days).
You cannot be sure it is on collision course until it is within range of the more sensitive measuring equipment. Anyway the 6 minute figure was from memory,it might be 6 days for all I know, I'm no rocket scientist. All I do know is that we urgently need to spend more and more money on this problem if we are to avoid imminent cometary/asteroidal annahilation.
I have a right to not respect your group, and you have a right to not respect mine
No. No. NO. All religions will teach you that you MUST respect the views of others. You have NO right to disrespect me, and this is the cause of so much strife in the world. If the Isralies just let the Palestinians build their mosque on the temple mount, the problems there would stop overnight. If the extremist Hindus had not destroyed the Mosque in Adhoya, the local Muslims would not be up in arms.
A little respect goes a long way. Unfortunately Corporatism, consumerism and a cultish attachment to the rights of the individual above the rights of society as a whole have led America to the edge of the Abyss.
We have 6year olds carrying guns to kindergarten. We have gun-toting crack dealers on every street corner. All because we pay too much attention to the rights of the individual. Once you accept that society is an organism, you will understand why sometimes individuals need to be silenced for the good of the group as a whole. Its like removing a cancerous tumor.
The real problem is not censorship. That happens in the USA EVERY DAY (just read some Chomsky if you have not already done so). The problem is who is being censored. Currently far too much freedom is given to right wingers (Insane NRA Gun nuts, pro-lifers, KKK Neo Nazis etc) and not enough is focussed on more socially aware groups.
Something like this could happen to Earth again and we would have about 6 minutes warning at most. Nostradamus predicted that an asteroid would hit Earth in 2003. With sufficient money spend on space defense research, we could have something like a nuclear bomb that could destroy a comet or asteroid before it hits us.
Hopefully the new Bush administration will increase the priority of this. Its a non-political issue really because it doesn't matter if you're Republican or Democrat when that big-assed asteroid hits you will be toast!
Were Native Americans or African slaves afforded these rights ?
The constitution is an ancient document of little relavence to todays world. You cannot bring universal human rights into existance simply by saying 'make it so'. This is not Star Trek and you are not Jean-Luc Picard.
The reality is that many cultures far more socially advanced than the US 'Me-first society' consider censorship nescessary. Judaeism, Islam, Christianity developed the concept of Blasphemy to control what was said (as they recognized the dangers of unbridled free speech).
Now I am quite well-travelled and have been to (amongst other places) Iran, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, The Netherlands, The United Kingdom, the People's Republic of China, and the Soviet Union (as was). All these places have something that America lacks, and that is respect for religious and cultural diversity. Which in practice means censorship. We cannot have it both ways. In effect by allowing freedom of speech, our constitution is denying us the right to religious freedom. If someone can denounce my God with no comeback from the state, it just creates an atmosphere of persecution.
Point is, most of the animal testing that goes on is not medical it is cosmetic e.g. shampoo, lipstick etc. I have nothing against genuine research, and I can conceive that it may on rare occasions be morally acceptable to experiment on animals, but on this scale, it just seems wrong.
What do you mean "we"? John Carmack and co. make games. He offers them for sale. People buy them. He makes the kind of games he wants to play and he is lucky that people like them enough too support his desire to continue making them
Juan Pablo Escobar makes crack cocaine. He offers it for sale. People buy it. He makes the kind of crack cocaine he likes to use, and he is lucky that people like it enough too support his desire to continue making it.
Perhaps if the Slashdot reading morons with IQs in the sub-80s stopped and thought for more than 1 second before posting, they would realise that maybe, just maybe, uncontrolled capitalism is not the only moral force in the world, and that perhaps simulated murder should not be treated as entertainement or be dignified with the title 'game'.
Personally, I think the developers of violent pornography like Quake, Doom, Unreal, etc are no better than a gang of Columbian Crack barons. It is difficult to determine which group has a worse effect on US society (or what's left of it).
Perhaps not always (but see here for more info), but according to my relatives in the UK, around 30% of police in the greater London area routinely carry firearms in their vehicles. The myth of the British 'Bobby' with his friendly smile and truncheon lives on in the minds of many Americans. The reality is somewhat different.
I expect you think London is permanaently under a thick cloud of fog too ?
As for your speaker's corner comment, that is maybe true, I could not say, but for more information this link to the UK race relations act (1976) should prove unusually informative for slashdot. (It's not a goatse.cx link, trust me:-))
To make it easier for you all, I QUOTE:
The Race Relations Act makes racial discrimination unlawful and gives people the right to bring their complaint before an employment tribunal or a court. Racial discrimination can include harassment and victimisation.
Racist incidents ranging from harassment and abuse to physical violence are offences under the criminal law. Inciting racial hatred is also a criminal offence
Don't get me wrong, I think the US could use a law like this, it restricts free speech, but only in so far as it is needed to protect disadvantaged members of society.
As for the IRA, nobody likes a war, but their country was invaded by the British under the Heath administration in the early 1970s, so you can understand why they are acting the way they do (which is not to condone violence in any way).
This is not exacly intuitive though, is it ?
I mean, if the command was called something like 'kernalversion' and did not take an obscure argument '-r' WTF ?
I'm sorry but Linux has a long loooong way to go before it has the simplicity of Bill's (admittedly flakey) product.
Its all very well as Americans for us to think freedom of speech is an absolute. We are fortunate enough to have something called a 'Constitution' which guaruantees that we will always be free to say whatever we like, whereever we like, whenever we like.
Unfortunately other countries are not the same as us. To a greater or lesser degree almost all other countries find it wise to curtail free speech for reasons of social control.
The United Kingdom for example has draconian laws outlawing hate-speech, and IRA "terrorists" (freedom fighters) are not allowed to be interviewed on TV.
Saudi Arabia beleive it or not banned 'Baywatch' because it was thought it would corrupt their youth.
So I think we can see that we need to be sensitive to other cultures before we go on screaming about censorship. What would be called censorship in the USA would be viewed as responsible government in many countries, especially in Europe, the Middle East, and Singapore/China.
market their products like crazy
Blatently lies to the consumer.
they want to make big money out of it.
And to have a Monopoly.
Who's the retard someone who wants to make money doing what they love or someone who wants no money for doing what he loves?
If you have to ask this question, you have already lost the battle. It is not for nothing that the world's major religions all have a rule that 'it is better to give than to receive'. Perhaps if you could look beyond your personal greed toward the greater good of humanity you would not come across as a money-grabbing sociopath with no concern for ethics and morals.
Yes kiddie it takes money to buy food, water, house, etc.
Espcecially if your house cost $59 million, and has garage space for 30 vehicles, and plasma screen TVs in every room. NOBODY deserves to be as rich as Bill Gates. I do not CARE what he has done or not done. Morally, he is the equivalent of Osma Bin Ladin or Gerry Adams. He will pay the price when he has to come face to face with his creator.
That would be true, if only there was an easy way to find out what kernal you are running. What command would tell me this. In Windoze it's easy, you click on my computer/properties/version and it tells you. How can you do this easily in Linux, without resorting to rocket science commands like awk and grep and sed ?
I always thought slashdot was a parody of those rabid pro-linux zealot sites. But more recently I've been wondering if some of the views expressed here are actually genuine !
Anyone care to own up to posting an honest opinion on this parody site. Go on, admit you didn't get the joke...
Although I don't really see the need for a separate Indian BSD web site (since the common language of India is in fact English, a simple mirror would suffice) It is good to see someone recognize that the major IT superpower in the modern economy is India.
A few facts.
CS degerees awarded in 2000: 7680652
Masters in CS/EE in 2000: 9000045
Linux users: 89000000
A country like India has the most educated population in the world, with 99% literacy rate, and first class educational institutions. The USA may rest on its IT laurels at the moment, but in 10-20 years time, it will be us Americans applying to the Indian embassy for the equivalent of an H1-B. Mark my words.
Think about it, the Brits had computers in the 1890's years and years before IBM (Babbage's Difference engine)
They also invented the light bulb before the US, and had radio working in the 1870's (marconi). If you take a look at most technology, it is almost always a re-hash of something that went before, with a slightly different twist added by some new technique or material.
The space shuttle is a direct descendant of the wright brother's triplane than took off at Kitty Hawk in 1912.
So really, we should not be surprised when something old turns out to have a cool use.
Sometime the past and history doesn't suck, occasionally it can be quite cool.
Sequencing the gene is only half the battle, now they need to work out how to fix the problem. Maybe if scientists cooperated (in an open source style) instead of hoarding their knowledge for the likes of Hoffman-LaRoche, Wellcome etc, the breakthroughs would come sooner.
I bet if they gave biotech grad students this 'source' to leprosy, they would come up with a fix pretty damn quick. With many eyes all bugs are shallow.
Most of these arguments could be stopped if we allowed corporations to register their own TLDs.
It makes no sense for sun to be www.sun.com, and ibm to be www.ibm.com. The ".com" is redundant. It also causes more centralisation in the DNS database than is strictly needed. What would make sense is to drop the.com, and make.ibm and.sun etc etc into TLDs.
While we are at it, bind should be updated to support unicode, and someone really ought to port it to NT. (even though I hate Microsoft, and everything they stand for, as an MCSE I am always being asked to get standard Unix/Linux stuff to work on NT. Ususally I just stick a 'secret' Liunx box in there, and everyone is happy in their ignorance, but some of the moronic places I work demand an 'All Microsoft' environment.
Ramjets and scramjets are hardly new technology they have been around in one form or another since the 60's. What would be more interesting would be if this thing used an air breathing engine like the old 'HOTOL' project of british aerospace. However if their spacecraft were like their automobiles, the damn thing would be leaking oil all over the western hemisphere before spontaneously combusting:-).
Fun is fine (although personally I find graphic portrayal of extreme violence quite distasteful, and think it should be banned). What is wrong is letting all that computing power fester away unused for the 90% of the time the machine is not being used.
Slashdot Mirror
Ask any historian, and they will tell you that the defeat of the British in what is now the USA was entirely caused by political problems in England (your motherland).
Not if it involves breaking into to your local Sam Goodys, and stealing a new copy of the disc, which is analagous to what the criminal Napster users are doing.
And I find the mysogyny in your posting highly offensive, and request that your account be suspended.
I have sent a copy of your posting to Commander Taco.
In any other sphere, this would be plain and simple theft. Because a computer is involved, it somehow is a 'human rights issue' ?
Perhaps the 'Your rights online' topic should be renamed 'Your criminal behavior is not defensible' I mean, Slashdot should show some leadership and responsibility here. Many slashdot readers are quite young and easily influenced by what they read here. A few words from slashdot coming down firmly on the side of law and order could give them some very useful moral guidance.
In the meantime, I just hope the RIAA gets some real muscle to prosecute these theives and send a message to all 'slackers' 'crackers' and 'hackers' that theft is theft, no matter what technology you use to perpetrate it.
Is it open source ?
No. No. NO. All religions will teach you that you MUST respect the views of others. You have NO right to disrespect me, and this is the cause of so much strife in the world. If the Isralies just let the Palestinians build their mosque on the temple mount, the problems there would stop overnight. If the extremist Hindus had not destroyed the Mosque in Adhoya, the local Muslims would not be up in arms.
A little respect goes a long way. Unfortunately Corporatism, consumerism and a cultish attachment to the rights of the individual above the rights of society as a whole have led America to the edge of the Abyss.
We have 6year olds carrying guns to kindergarten. We have gun-toting crack dealers on every street corner. All because we pay too much attention to the rights of the individual. Once you accept that society is an organism, you will understand why sometimes individuals need to be silenced for the good of the group as a whole. Its like removing a cancerous tumor.
The real problem is not censorship. That happens in the USA EVERY DAY (just read some Chomsky if you have not already done so). The problem is who is being censored. Currently far too much freedom is given to right wingers (Insane NRA Gun nuts, pro-lifers, KKK Neo Nazis etc) and not enough is focussed on more socially aware groups.
Hopefully the new Bush administration will increase the priority of this. Its a non-political issue really because it doesn't matter if you're Republican or Democrat when that big-assed asteroid hits you will be toast!
The constitution is an ancient document of little relavence to todays world. You cannot bring universal human rights into existance simply by saying 'make it so'. This is not Star Trek and you are not Jean-Luc Picard.
The reality is that many cultures far more socially advanced than the US 'Me-first society' consider censorship nescessary. Judaeism, Islam, Christianity developed the concept of Blasphemy to control what was said (as they recognized the dangers of unbridled free speech).
Now I am quite well-travelled and have been to (amongst other places) Iran, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, The Netherlands, The United Kingdom, the People's Republic of China, and the Soviet Union (as was). All these places have something that America lacks, and that is respect for religious and cultural diversity. Which in practice means censorship. We cannot have it both ways. In effect by allowing freedom of speech, our constitution is denying us the right to religious freedom. If someone can denounce my God with no comeback from the state, it just creates an atmosphere of persecution.
Juan Pablo Escobar makes crack cocaine. He offers it for sale. People buy it. He makes the kind of crack cocaine he likes to use, and he is lucky that people like it enough too support his desire to continue making it.
Perhaps if the Slashdot reading morons with IQs in the sub-80s stopped and thought for more than 1 second before posting, they would realise that maybe, just maybe, uncontrolled capitalism is not the only moral force in the world, and that perhaps simulated murder should not be treated as entertainement or be dignified with the title 'game'.
Personally, I think the developers of violent pornography like Quake, Doom, Unreal, etc are no better than a gang of Columbian Crack barons. It is difficult to determine which group has a worse effect on US society (or what's left of it).
Perhaps not always (but see here for more info), but according to my relatives in the UK, around 30% of police in the greater London area routinely carry firearms in their vehicles. The myth of the British 'Bobby' with his friendly smile and truncheon lives on in the minds of many Americans. The reality is somewhat different.
I expect you think London is permanaently under a thick cloud of fog too ?
As for your speaker's corner comment, that is maybe true, I could not say, but for more information this link to the UK race relations act (1976) should prove unusually informative for slashdot. (It's not a goatse.cx link, trust me :-))
To make it easier for you all, I QUOTE:
The Race Relations Act makes racial discrimination unlawful and gives people the right to bring their complaint before an employment tribunal or a court. Racial discrimination can include harassment and victimisation. Racist incidents ranging from harassment and abuse to physical violence are offences under the criminal law. Inciting racial hatred is also a criminal offence
Don't get me wrong, I think the US could use a law like this, it restricts free speech, but only in so far as it is needed to protect disadvantaged members of society.
As for the IRA, nobody likes a war, but their country was invaded by the British under the Heath administration in the early 1970s, so you can understand why they are acting the way they do (which is not to condone violence in any way).
I'm sorry but Linux has a long loooong way to go before it has the simplicity of Bill's (admittedly flakey) product.
Unfortunately other countries are not the same as us. To a greater or lesser degree almost all other countries find it wise to curtail free speech for reasons of social control.
The United Kingdom for example has draconian laws outlawing hate-speech, and IRA "terrorists" (freedom fighters) are not allowed to be interviewed on TV.
Saudi Arabia beleive it or not banned 'Baywatch' because it was thought it would corrupt their youth.
So I think we can see that we need to be sensitive to other cultures before we go on screaming about censorship. What would be called censorship in the USA would be viewed as responsible government in many countries, especially in Europe, the Middle East, and Singapore/China.
MS copies anything it can.
market their products like crazy
Blatently lies to the consumer.
they want to make big money out of it.
And to have a Monopoly.
Who's the retard someone who wants to make money doing what they love or someone who wants no money for doing what he loves?
If you have to ask this question, you have already lost the battle. It is not for nothing that the world's major religions all have a rule that 'it is better to give than to receive'. Perhaps if you could look beyond your personal greed toward the greater good of humanity you would not come across as a money-grabbing sociopath with no concern for ethics and morals.
Yes kiddie it takes money to buy food, water, house, etc.
Espcecially if your house cost $59 million, and has garage space for 30 vehicles, and plasma screen TVs in every room. NOBODY deserves to be as rich as Bill Gates. I do not CARE what he has done or not done. Morally, he is the equivalent of Osma Bin Ladin or Gerry Adams. He will pay the price when he has to come face to face with his creator.
Anyone care to own up to posting an honest opinion on this parody site. Go on, admit you didn't get the joke...
A few facts.
CS degerees awarded in 2000: 7680652
Masters in CS/EE in 2000: 9000045
Linux users: 89000000
A country like India has the most educated population in the world, with 99% literacy rate, and first class educational institutions. The USA may rest on its IT laurels at the moment, but in 10-20 years time, it will be us Americans applying to the Indian embassy for the equivalent of an H1-B. Mark my words.
They also invented the light bulb before the US, and had radio working in the 1870's (marconi). If you take a look at most technology, it is almost always a re-hash of something that went before, with a slightly different twist added by some new technique or material.
The space shuttle is a direct descendant of the wright brother's triplane than took off at Kitty Hawk in 1912.
So really, we should not be surprised when something old turns out to have a cool use.
Sometime the past and history doesn't suck, occasionally it can be quite cool.
I bet if they gave biotech grad students this 'source' to leprosy, they would come up with a fix pretty damn quick. With many eyes all bugs are shallow.
While we are at it, bind should be updated to support unicode, and someone really ought to port it to NT. (even though I hate Microsoft, and everything they stand for, as an MCSE I am always being asked to get standard Unix/Linux stuff to work on NT. Ususally I just stick a 'secret' Liunx box in there, and everyone is happy in their ignorance, but some of the moronic places I work demand an 'All Microsoft' environment.
Morons!!!