No basic? Really? The Starship Troopers I saw had a long sequence of basic, including the scene where Rico screws up, gets someone killed, and takes a bunch of lashes. I don't know that it's word for word what was in the book (haven't read it in many years) but it was pretty darned close.
Rico does not get anyone killed in basic training in the novel. In the novel, Rico gets lashes for conduct that, in real combat, would have caused serious injury or death to his fellow soldiers (he fires a fake nuclear rocket at a target without ordering the recruits nearby to clear the area first).
There is technically a part of the movie in which Rico is in basic training, but its relationship to the related parts of the book is essentially in name only. The basic scenes in the novel are specifically the part of the novel where Rico's indoctrination into the MI causes him to begin to understand - for good or bad - what society had been trying to teach him about morality and public service, and how rights and responsibilities are necessarily intertwined.
The critical difference between Starship Troopers the movie and Starship Troopers the novel is that in the novel the MI (and the Federal government in general) are a competent, moral (by some definition), integrated part of the overall government and society and the choice to serve or not serve is portrayed as a fair choice: some people want to and can serve, some people don't want to or cannot serve. Those who do not serve have nearly all the rights of those who do not: the main two rights they don't get are the right to serve in law enforcement or the federal government, and the right to vote.
I should point out here that originally, only property owners had the right to vote in the United States under the Constitution. And the rationale for that restriction is spelled out in the Federalist papers as very similar to that espoused by the fictional government in the novel. In the Federalist papers, its stated that in effect, it did not make sense for people without any "skin in the game" to have the power to dictate what the government did by voting. If you didn't own property, you couldn't be taxed (the income tax didn't exist yet). The logic was that only people who pay taxes should decide how they were spent. That notion of suffrage evolved over time as the role of government began to affect everyone increasingly whether they were property owners or not. But in the novel, the rationale for only giving veterans the right to vote is: they've proven they are willing to give up *all* their rights to serve others, even if only temporarily. And in fact, veterans have the right to vote but *active military* does not.
This is a vast contrast to the movie, where the MI is portrayed as cartoonish incompetent fools and jingoish lunatics. Rico never comes to the realizations he does in the novel regarding morality and responsibility. First he joins out of peer pressure (granted, he does this in the novel also). Then he stays to seek revenge for Buenos Aires (he decides to stay in the novel when he realizes he now agrees with his moral history teacher's teachings about responsibility and service). Then out of the blue he gives a weird eulogy for Dizzy that I guess is supposed to parallel his decision to join OCS in the novel, but there's absolutely no character growth leading up to that point at all.
Rico has an actual character arc in the novel which *is* the whole story. Rico in the movie is a literal marrionette, yanked around to dance whatever dance is required in each scene, without any character arc at all. And without that character arc, there is no story. Instead, Starship Troopers the movie is a movie where Stuff Just Happens. Its often visually entertaining Stuff That Happens, but there's no real story connecting the Stuff That Happens.
I was surprised how well the movie tried to follow the plot of the book.
Which book are you referring to?
I've been seeing the whole "Starship Troopers (the movie) is just misunderstood" train building up steam for a while now, but the truth is I got it then, I still get it now, but its still not a particularly good movie. Its an ok mindless popcorn movie, but to try to elevate Starship Troopers to ingenius satire is like trying to elevate Plan Nine From Outer Space as Hollywood movie production culture satire. For satire to be good satire, the satirist must at least make more effort delivering the satire as the audience is forced to make recognizing the satire. If the audience has to work harder to justify the satire than the satirist did in creating the work, then the satire is really the work of the audience and not the work. You can stare at clouds and claim brilliant satire if you try hard enough.
Letting the masses vote doesn't work. Having a free media doesn't really work either. Neither of these things have preserved my freedom. They have only eroded it.
Relative to what? What freedom did you lose when Democracies began to displace other forms of government? Its fashionable now to think that its the end of the world as we know it, and things might suck relative to an imaginary utopia that exists only in my head, but I wouldn't step into a time machine and trade living today for any other period in time.
The thing about dictatorships is that the phrase "I would support a dictator" is meaningless: dictators do not need, want, or benefit from your support. That's what makes them dictators.
Democracies are slow and imperfect because people are slow and imperfect, and often progress comes, as Max Plank observed, when the opponents to progress grow old and die. We fight stupid wars for stupid reasons and thousands of people die unnecessarily, but that pales in comparison to the entire generation of people decimated by World War I. Women have only had the unambiguous federally protected right to vote in the United States for less than a hundred years and for less than half the country's lifespan, and now their vote often decides elections. In one generation popular pressure upon a democracy is having more effect on Freedoms afforded to people of non-heterosexual orientation in the US than in the last hundred years.
Sure, a dictatorship would have been able to settle these matters much more quickly, but the problem with dictatorships is that they rarely settle these matters correctly.
A hundred years ago the technology didn't exist for the government to intrude on my privacy to the degree it does today, but a hundred years ago the technology also didn't exist for me to even be meaningfully informed about what the government did to me or around me and discuss it in a public forum. The freedom of information act in the US is only 46 years old. The internet a bit younger. The wide-spread public internet just about twenty years old.
This is not to excuse the abuses of today. Its to emphasize the abuses of yesterday were diminished or eliminated by people who tried to improve the system recognizing its flaws, not by those who assumed it was irrecoverably broken. The end of slavery in America didn't end all discrimination, but it did end the institution of slavery. That's how progress happens. Every generation makes extremely big mistakes that don't seem like mistakes to all of them. And every successive generation contains the people who will try to reverse those mistakes, but will make their own big mistakes as well. How do I judge whether progress is being made? I ask if there's any other moment in time I would rather live in the history of my country, from 1781 to yesterday, and the answer is no. That's progress.
3: Quoting the law:
"(5)Knowingly and without permission disrupts or causes the disruption of computer services or denies or causes the denial of computer services to an authorized user of a computer, computer system, or computer network."
That's what he was found guilty under. What systems administrator or programmer would do business in the state of California with such a vague law? Be Incompetent, Fuck up, have a vengeful boss, go to jail. That's what this case is really about; the ability of state officials to fail to routinely document and confirm systems access by employee's whom make 100k+ a year who's job responsibility is to configure and maintain tens of millions of dollars of mission critical gear to toss your ass in jail on the flimsiest of reasons because they don't want to be bothered with kindergarten simple shit.
Even if he really was a malicious, self-serving, rent-seeking prick, being convicted under that law is complete and total bullshit.
Wrong.
Section h of the same statute states:
(h)(1)Subdivision (c) does not apply to punish any acts which are committed by a person within the scope of his or her lawful employment. For purposes of this section, a person acts within the scope of his or her employment when he or she performs acts which are reasonably necessary to the performance of his or her work assignment.
Furthermore, h(2):
(2)Paragraph (3) of subdivision (c) does not apply to penalize any acts committed by a person acting outside of his or her lawful employment, provided that the employee's activities do not cause an injury, as defined in paragraph (8) of subdivision (b), to the employer or another, or provided that the value of supplies or computer services, as defined in paragraph (4) of subdivision (b), which are used does not exceed an accumulated total of one hundred dollars ($100).
In other words, the law says you cannot be prosecuted if your conduct was something you reasonably had to do to do your job, but the act of doing so caused damage or denial of service. Childs claimed this as an affirmative defense, but the court ruled that a) deleting everyone else's passwords except his own, and b) changing his passwords so no one would know them, and c) deliberately changing the router settings so their configurations would not survive a reboot in defiance of best practices, and d) refusing to give anyone else access even when ordered to do so by his superiors did not count as "acts which are reasonably necessary to the performance of his or her work assignment."
Moreover, the law says even if you do something that *isn't* part of your job description and cause any of the damages specified in the law, you still have to create a minimum level of damage to be criminally liable. It cannot be a trivial level of damage that cannot be quantified.
That's what this case is really about; the ability of state officials to fail to routinely document and confirm systems access by employee's whom make 100k+ a year who's job responsibility is to configure and maintain tens of millions of dollars of mission critical gear to toss your ass in jail on the flimsiest of reasons because they don't want to be bothered with kindergarten simple shit.
Court documents show that as soon as his access revocations were detected, people began to try to address the situation but Childs consistently refused to return control. In fact, he dodged meetings intended to resolve the situation before it reached the level of criminal prosecution several times. And he admitted such in court. Childs admitted in court that he *actively* prevented DTIS from gaining administrative access to their systems because he felt none of them were qualified to have administrative access.
Who would want to work under such a law's governance? I wish everyone had to, so I would have to deal with far less prima donnas and dipshits.
The problem is that there are a significant amount of people in the U.S> who believe that some of the things Snowden leaked are harmful to the US.
For example, he leaked that the U.S> was spying on specific Chinese Universities, to determine how they were hacking into our military and industrial computers. Now those universities know how to be more careful. It is unlikely they will stop trying to hack into us.
The problem Snowden has is that even if he "started a conversation" about U.S. intelligence, he still leaked a number of things that could easily be found to be harmful to the U.S. Even if 98% of the things he leaked were good things for the world to know, he will ALWAYS be at risk of being charged for the 2% of the things he leaked that are genuinely bad for the world to know.
There is also no such thing as a greater good exemption to violating the law. Regardless of whether anyone thinks Snowden's disclosures served a greater good, the fact is Snowden is false in stating his position as being just "dissent." He did in fact break the law. Essentially of the millions of other people voicing "dissent" in the US government's surveillance programs are, so far as I can tell, not currently being prosecuted.
By his own admission Snowden believes that the conduct of the US government may not be strictly illegal, its just (by his standards) "harmful." Furthermore, also by his own admission he did not disclose what he did to bring those matters before the appropriate authorities but to "open a dialog" because he felt the appropriate authorities would not properly investigate or even target himself over the disclosures. That means by his own admission he committed a crime with no specific legal grounds for doing so.
The problem Snowden faces is that while a lot of people want people like Snowden when he's on their side, they go completely berserk when people like Snowden are not. That's why even as many countries rail against the conduct Snowden disclosed, most are very uncomfortable about unambiguously condoning his behavior directly. If a Snowden decided to leak the identities of Anonymous participants for what they perceived as the greater good for example - something which isn't even illegal - I doubt they would get the same deference afforded to Snowden.
The real world is a complicated place that rarely has simple answers to tough questions. The same US Constitution that affords the rights Snowden supporters claim the US government violated also specifies who specifically gets to decide what is and is not Constitutional behavior, and Snowden is not currently a member of that branch of government. Cherry picking which parts of the Constitution are the important parts and which are not is not a specific right given to US citizens. And deciding to ignore some parts of the Constitution to serve the greater good is precisely the crime Snowden is accusing the US government of performing.
As a 20 something I'm eagerly waiting for these baby boomers to just retire so we don't have to deal with thier nonsense. There is nothing wrong with answering a text message in a meeting if your are not involved in the conversation and you don't disturb anyone else.
In and of itself, perhaps. However, if you're in a meeting I'm in, and you decide to do anything other than focus 100% of your attention on the meeting, if you miss something critical you have no excuse. I will hold you responsible for anything you miss because you decided you could opt out safely, if it turns out you were wrong.
I have been in more brain dead meetings than I can count, and its true 90% of meetings have little value and 90% of the content in meetings with some value still have no value, but you're still responsible for your own conduct and your own actions.
The guy who pays attention, takes notes, participates as best as they can, does their best to act on the information in the meeting, and makes a mistake, I'm likely to cut a lot of slack. The guy who decides they know better, feels their time is more important than anyone else's time, feels they are free to disregard what's going on around them based solely on their own superior judgment, and then blows it because they were wrong, I'm more inclined to just cut.
I actually respect arrogance, up to a point. And that point is: arrogance cannot exceed skill. If you decide you know better, all I can say is: you better be right, pretty much all the time.
Also, I hate going to meetings, but when I'm required or forced to, I give the meeting my full attention because I don't decide when I'm required to give my best effort and when I'm not. As a professional I am always giving my best effort, all of the time, regardless of whether I think the task "deserves" it or not. And I judge the character of other professionals in part on that standard. I believe they are what they show me when they think it doesn't matter. That's who they really are, not the performance they put on when they think they are being graded.
I see from your detailed response you have strong feelings about this subject. My son has a managing position in the legal department of a German company that is a direct competitor to GE. Trade treaties are signed to insure fair trade practices are enforced. It just seems that the fate of the average factory worker was overlooked.
Almost 20% of Antigua's GDP is trade with the US. They don't have to obey our laws, we don't have to buy their stuff. Trade war, bring it on. The US hasn't won a war in seventy years but I think we might win one with Antigua.
The problem is that Antigua's economy is so small its dwarfed by the US entertainment industry. If the US retaliates illegally to the actions of Antigua which are explicitly sanctioned by the WTO, the obvious response would likely be for the WTO to continue to authorized additional exceptions or suspensions of intellectual property protection to Antigua until eventually the US stops all trade with Antigua, and Antigua replaces all of that trade gap by selling US-registered media. The US can't win such a war not because its not powerful enough, but because its too powerful: it has everything to lose and nothing to gain.
Apple makes more net profit from iTunes than Antigua's entire GDP. When you have all the money and you're fighting someone with none of the money, the odds of you coming out with even more of all the money and the other guy leaving with even less of none of the money are virtually zero. How can the US possibly win this fight when the entire country of Antigua can make more money selling blue rays of the Dark Knight Trilogy than it can actually being Antigua? This would be like the Walt Disney Company sueing a homeless person for wearing Mickey Mouse ears in public. The power imbalance is enormous, but nevertheless one side has nothing to lose and the other nothing to win which makes all that power worthless.
The US can control many other nations through our ports. If you don't respect our IP laws, your stuff is not unloaded. The dollar may not be worth what it used to but everyone still wants to sell us stuff.
That's an interesting position to take, that the US can ignore international trade laws with impunity, by threatening to annihilate its own economy through a multilateral trade war.
Once again, US IP laws have no direct impact on citizens of other nations, except by voluntary participation in international treaty. Antigua selling US content without compensating US copyright holders is NOT a violation of US IP law,because US IP law doesn't apply to Antiguan citizens. The US does not get to pass laws for the whole world. Antiguan citizens don't have to obey US law, they only have to obey Antiguan law. Antigua itself required its citizens to honor US copyright by Antiguan Law, by virtue of international treaty. Without that treaty, US law is worth exactly nothing outside its borders. By ignoring the ruling of an international trade court in favor of its own national interests, the US is violating the law. The injured party has recourse to remedy that injury. To claim this doesn't "respect our IP laws" ignores the fact that its the US that is violating the law, and complaining about a violation that cannot exist outside of international law. Outside of international law, there's no such thing as an Antiguan violating US copyright law. US Copyright Law does not apply to citizens of countries other than the US.
Except by virtue of treaty which a lot of people seem to think the US is free to ignore, or should even contemplate rejecting out of hand.
The Senate votes to modify or repeal it, and the President signs off. Same with any time the US does anything with a treaty.
That doesn't solve anything, because even if the US withdraws from the WTO, they cannot prevent Antigua from suspending US copyright within its borders. As I point out above, the WTO is the only thing that makes US copyright law valid anywhere outside the US in the first place. Withdraw from the WTO, and who's going to enforce US copyright law outside the US? Why would any country enforce US copyright law when the US acts to ignore international law in this area.
I suspect that media creation is an area where the US has a huge trade surplus. In a world where the US ignores everyone else's intellectual property law and everyone else ignores US intellectual property law, everyone else wins and the US loses. The US needs the rest of the world to play ball far, far more than everyone else needs the US to do so. This is a fact I think most sovereignty-nuts fail to understand: the US probably exports more of its laws than it imports others. In a world where the US decided not to subject itself to any international law, its own interests would be the ones most impacted.
So, to be clear, the United States democractically elected government passed a law, that applies only to United States citizens. A bunch of foreign bankers have decided that they don't like that law, and so they are overruling it.
I'm sure Slashdot will be thrilled with any decision that hurts intellectual property enforcement, but try to look at what's going on here. It is really, really bad for democracy when elected officials can be overruled by overseas bankers. The United States is right to refuse to comply with the ruling, and should do everything in its power to resist. Our democracy ain't exactly working great, but it's better than a bunch of unelected bureaucrats ruling by decree from overseas.
Just to be clear, the only reason American copyright law has any power at all outside of the United States is because of treaty. If you believe the US government can pass any law they want so long as it only affects its citizens, then Antigua can also pass a law that only affects its citizens that allow them to copy any media they want that originates from the US and resell it for whatever they want without compensation to the original creator. So what's the problem?
The only problem is if you think Antigua should be compelled to honor international law that honors US copyright law, but the US should not be compelled to honor international law in return.
There was once a common practice of forcing defendants to testify, and adding more charges if they denied guilt and then were found guilty anyways. The Fifth Amendment protects against that practice, and only that practice.
Not really. Historically, and the compelling reason for asserting the right to "be compelled to be a witness against himself" is to eliminate the incentive for the government to use coercion against criminal suspects i.e. torture.
So Bennett Haselton seriously still doesn't understand the Fifth Amendment yet? The right is not a right to be silent: its a right to not be compelled to incriminate one's self. There is no specific right to "be silent." That's why the Fifth Amendment applies to defendants but not potential witnesses or third parties. The reason why Haselton cannot figure out why the "right to remain silent" can apply to defendants and not third parties appears to be that he doesn't possess a dictionary or is unable to understand the concept of "self-incrimination."
The Fifth Amendment is not about keeping secrets. Its about balancing the rights of criminal defendants and the right of the government to prosecute criminal defendants. The Constitution skews that balance strongly towards the defendant and away from government prosecution when it comes to attempting to compel confessions. But only confessions and related self-incrimination. The Constitution places no value on the desire of third parties to just not cooperate with prosecutions just because they don't want to.
the only companies that might have a real claim of injury would be Blackberry and those behind things like FirefoxOS.
Actually, another set of companies that might not have a legal claim but could be injured by basically giving Surface tablets away are PC hardware manufacturers. The presumption is that everyone that buys one of those heavily discounted Surface tablets would have bought an IOS or Android tablet instead. But its also possible that cannibalizes Windows ultrabook sales by a significant amount, and even if Microsoft doesn't get sued they are likely to make their hardware partners extremely angry.
That might not stop Microsoft (it didn't stop them from entering the tablet hardware business in the first place) but it certainly is a factor in their decision making process.
Which brings us to Sarah Sharp's complaints. Yes, she could have left her duties as a result of offense and do other things. Instead, she voiced her opinion in the hopes that the environment become more professional meaning polite and being able to work without abuse (and not Linus's definition of passive-aggressiveness). Is it wrong to politely ask people to be more professional before leaving upon a second offense?
That's a tricky compound question. Its not wrong to ask people to be more polite: Sarah Sharp did nothing wrong there. It *is* wrong to presume your code of conduct should automatically be everyone else's under the guise of claiming the moral high ground of "professionalism."
But it seems the kernel developers, Linus and Sarah both included, are handling the situation much better than the outsider discussion surrounding them. Sarah asserted her belief that the tone of the kernel dev mailing list needed to be moderated. Linus asserted his belief that his tone is essential to his role as kernel dev wrangler. Both agreed to discuss it further in person, which is where such discussions are more likely to make progress.
I don't personally see any bad guys there: I just happen to believe that while Sarah Sharp had every right to ask for a change in tone, Linus had every right to say "no."
Civilization is expensive. If it's not worth paying for a trial, it's not worth imprisoning someone. The cost of a jury trial should be incentive for the state to imprison as few people as possible.
So if the prosecution is willing to avoid a trial in exchange for a guilty plea on lesser charges, and the defendant is willing to avoid the risk of a trial in exchange for a guilty plea on lesser charges, and the courts are willing to accept the plea deal because it seems to be a fair and balanced compromise (courts have to approve plea deals generally), everyone involved wants something and you're the person that's going to deny them that thing, all because you have a warped sense of "rights?"
It would be much simpler, actually, in your world, to simply make it a constitutional requirement that all criminal defendents plead innocent. The guilty plea itself eliminates the prosecutorial requirement to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. So why not force all defendants to plead innocent to all crimes, from parking tickets to murder?
It grates me when someone has to rant or cuss just in their "normal" conversation.
Linus is acting like a spoiled 3 year old, and this will eventually backfire.
Are you speaking geologically, like "eventually the Sun will collapse into a white dwarf" eventually? Or are you talking about an event some of us might theoretically be alive to witness? Because you're talking about something happening "eventually" that hasn't happened in over twenty years yet.
Between Linus' attitudes and the random "directions" of Ubuntu's Shuttleworth, Linux is in a whole lot of trouble!
History suggests otherwise. Actually, History wants to come right out and call BS, just as soon as it regains control of the programming on the cable channels claiming to speak for it.
You might want some people from Intel in on the kernel development. They have some of the best in the business at optimization. If you want to tell them all off that's your prerogative, but don't then cry if they say "Ok, we will leave."
You say that like Martians replaced Linus' brain last week, and this is all new.
Intel has developers working with Linux out of their own self-interest, not as a community service project. If they feel its not in their best interests they will leave, but not one instant sooner and not for any other reason.
I should also point out that Linus didn't "tell off" anyone from Intel, except to say, in response to a demand to change his mode of management, "No." He also did so politely, in contrast to many posters who seem to imply that Linus tyrannically suppresses anyone who disagrees with him. As I've seen him do regularly, when not confronted with what he perceives to be carelessness or stupidity when it comes to the management of the kernel source itself, he has responded to opposition succinctly and politely, intermixed with humorous deflection. He has, perhaps ironically, not responded rudely to the request to cease being rude.
I think there's some false dichotomy from Linus here. He seems to split it up into either acting that way he does or else it becomes lying and backstabbing, because that's what he thinks "acting professionally" means. Ie, either he wears a bathrobe or else he has to wear a tie.
Doesn't calling it a false dichotomy presume that Linus doesn't have some prior background managing a large development environment of volunteers which might cause him to draw that conclusion from direct experience? Like, say, managing the linux kernel development for twenty years.
You imply Linus is speaking hypothetically, and not referentially. I believe, based on my own recollections of the history of Linux kernel development (as an outsider to the process looking in) that while Linus always had moments of being "direct" he also has direct experience of what happens when he lets things slide on the assumption that mere discussion will correct the problem only to have it blow up in his face. I think he's intrinsically direct, but he's also *learned* over the years that it works better when he is, then when he is not. And he's not on a continuous rampage, so he has the ability to compare what happens to situations that are discussed blandly verses those that are attacked aggressively.
A lot of people are suggesting there are better ways that I don't believe have any experience proving there are better ways. And corporate development teams have almost no resemblance to the kernel development teams: Linus is functioning less like the HR or management of a corporate dev team (who has the power to hire and fire people and has control over the future employment progress of the team members) and more like a forum moderator with limited or no admin rights, somehow trying to keep the forum members in line by force of personality alone. Its actually amazing that Linus is as judicious with his outbursts as he appears to be given the circumstances.
I work in a pretty successful technology company. We have a "no brilliant jerks" policy. Doesn't matter how good someone is, if they're actively corrosive to working with people, they're gone.
The difference between your company and the Linux kernel is that as a practical matter, Linus can't fire anyone. That's a very critical difference. You can eliminate the "jerks." Linus has to enforce order on a community that only listens to him voluntarily.
When your HR department proves its capable of maintaining its "no brilliant jerks" policy through nothing more than gentle reminders, with the threat of termination contractually eliminated, then your experience would be analogous.
In fact, everyone comparing Linus and the Linux kernel developers to J. Random Company are entirely missing the point, because the two have virtually nothing to do with each other. What Linus has accomplished is more closely analogous to a forum moderator with no administrative rights managing to maintain order on a controversial forum for twenty years non-stop than it is to managing a corporate development team, where people have a strong incentive to keep in line because their livelihoods depend on at least the semblance of order and cooperation.
For the price of an abrasive personality and the very infrequent public outburst, Linus has actually accomplished no small miracle. I wouldn't want the job, and I would have no idea whatsoever how to do that job, and I've managed people for years.
Maybe it's time to eject him from the LKML and give the reigns to someone else ?
Go for it. In fact, everyone who thinks Linus' behavior is "unacceptable" should look up the definition of that word, stop accepting it, and fork the kernel.
The best way to demonstrate that there exists a better way is proof by example. Alternatively, perhaps some reflection should be put into the fact that Linus did not win the role of lead kernel developer in a lottery, and the fact that he was its first developer also granted him no special claim to control the project for about twenty years. Linus doesn't just sit at home reading mailing lists while finding people to curse at. He's worked extremely hard not just in terms of writing code, but more specifically in wrangling developers. Until someone has had to do this, on a grand scale, over long time periods, with no external authority structure to back them up, that someone has no idea what they are talking about when they decide they or anyone else can do better.
Linus saves his harshest criticism for other major maintainers, not individual developers. It amazes me that so few people misunderstand why it goes largely unchallenged. Its not because, as some have implied, that Linus has somehow weeded out non-sycophants. Its actually that large maintainers don't need an explanation for Linus' management style because they see the same problems themselves on a much smaller scale. They may not react in the same way, they may even disagree, but the vast majority of them *understand*. That understanding comes from walking a mile in maintainer shoes, and then realizing what the job of maintainer of maintainers is like.
If even half of them disapproved of Linus' management of the kernel, a fork would have happened a long time ago.
"I work in a pretty successful technology company. We have a "no brilliant jerks" policy. Doesn't matter how good someone is, if they're actively corrosive to working with people, they're gone."
You highlight the enormous difference between your company and the Linux Kernel Development community. Someone exists that can fire people.
"Can I come to your door and swear at you all day long?"
No, but if *I* come to *your* door you can swear at me all you want, because I can always leave.
He says in the article that he failed to discuss his concerns with anyone in his office basically because he didn't trust any of them. If any of my employees said they didn't trust me to act properly so they took it upon themselves to... they'd be fired before they could finish that sentence. I fail to see the controversy in an employer terminating an employee that admits they don't trust their employer, because only an idiot would themselves trust such a person with any level of responsibility.
The circumstances are irrelevant. If you don't trust me, I don't trust you, and you're gone. The rest of this is righteousness ping-pong.
If your own words can be used to convict you, then the police and government gain a huge incentive to torture you into confessing.
But there are still laws against torture. So even without the fifth, they still can't torture.
Without the right to avoid self-incrimination the police could torture you into confessing even if it is illegal: they may have broken the law but you could still have your confession used against you. The right to avoid self-incrimination is there specifically because our system of laws, and those of many countries in the world, do not want to arbitrate what is "fair" and "unfair" questioning of criminal suspects. The moral decision encapsulated within the law is that the risk of coercion and the temptation to use it is too great to allow any grey area.
Addressing the OPs criteria:
#1: The world with Fifth Amendment-style protections *is* clearly different from the world without them. There is no need to invoke hypotheticals. No legal mind - for or against the protections - would argue otherwise. In particular, the claim that the "overzealous prosecutor scenario" fails this test is itself false: prosecutions are nullified because Fifth Amendment protections were not adhered to in the current world. It is therefore automatically true to state that if those protections didn't exist, the world would be clearly different: those prosecutions would not have been nullified, and those people would then be convicted.
#2: The question of whether the world is "better" with Fifth Amendment-style protections is a highly subjective, but it is instructive to note that in many parts of the world where such protections did not previously exist, they are being adopted explicitly because those people believe their world will be better with those protections. I believe that is strong qualitative evidence of this.
#3: The criteria that the Fifth Amendment protections be shown to not benefit all suspects equally is frankly ludicrous. I can find no reason to suggest that this is a necessary or sufficient requirement for a just or effective law. For example, the right to avoid double-jeopardy also, by analogous analysis, "hampers all law enforcement efforts equally." It is, however, also considered a cornerstone of the US legal system: not-guilty verdicts are final.
#4: As mentioned previously, the right to avoid self-incrimination isn't a black or white case of "it prevents torture." It more specifically takes away the incentive to conduct *any* vigorous non-voluntary interrogation. And moreover the law doesn't apply penalties to the government if they violate the right, it takes away the benefits of that violation. Criteria #4 says the right to not be beaten is separate from the right to remain silent and that's correct. But what the OP fails to understand, apparently, is what that means. If the police beat a confession out of you, they have committed assault upon you. They could be held accountable for that. But without the right to avoid self-incrimination, your confession could still be used against you. Because those two rights are separate.
#5: Since the fifth criteria links to a wikipedia article (Prosecutor's fallacy) I'll respond in kind: False dilemma. Critiera 5 presumes that failures in the criminal justice system are problems of incompetence, that perfect competency would eliminate problems of applying the law. However, its not true that this is the only problem the criminal justice system faces, nor is it even the most important one. The more important one is one of judgment and systematic drift. As mentioned above, what constitutes valid or abusive questioning is often a matter of judgment or opinion. The purpose of the right against self-incrimination is to eliminate that problem by eliminating the area upon which judgment can apply. That's why we have speed limits, and not a law that says "don't drive too fast." And when we have thousands of people applying individual
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No basic? Really? The Starship Troopers I saw had a long sequence of basic, including the scene where Rico screws up, gets someone killed, and takes a bunch of lashes. I don't know that it's word for word what was in the book (haven't read it in many years) but it was pretty darned close.
Rico does not get anyone killed in basic training in the novel. In the novel, Rico gets lashes for conduct that, in real combat, would have caused serious injury or death to his fellow soldiers (he fires a fake nuclear rocket at a target without ordering the recruits nearby to clear the area first).
There is technically a part of the movie in which Rico is in basic training, but its relationship to the related parts of the book is essentially in name only. The basic scenes in the novel are specifically the part of the novel where Rico's indoctrination into the MI causes him to begin to understand - for good or bad - what society had been trying to teach him about morality and public service, and how rights and responsibilities are necessarily intertwined.
The critical difference between Starship Troopers the movie and Starship Troopers the novel is that in the novel the MI (and the Federal government in general) are a competent, moral (by some definition), integrated part of the overall government and society and the choice to serve or not serve is portrayed as a fair choice: some people want to and can serve, some people don't want to or cannot serve. Those who do not serve have nearly all the rights of those who do not: the main two rights they don't get are the right to serve in law enforcement or the federal government, and the right to vote.
I should point out here that originally, only property owners had the right to vote in the United States under the Constitution. And the rationale for that restriction is spelled out in the Federalist papers as very similar to that espoused by the fictional government in the novel. In the Federalist papers, its stated that in effect, it did not make sense for people without any "skin in the game" to have the power to dictate what the government did by voting. If you didn't own property, you couldn't be taxed (the income tax didn't exist yet). The logic was that only people who pay taxes should decide how they were spent. That notion of suffrage evolved over time as the role of government began to affect everyone increasingly whether they were property owners or not. But in the novel, the rationale for only giving veterans the right to vote is: they've proven they are willing to give up *all* their rights to serve others, even if only temporarily. And in fact, veterans have the right to vote but *active military* does not.
This is a vast contrast to the movie, where the MI is portrayed as cartoonish incompetent fools and jingoish lunatics. Rico never comes to the realizations he does in the novel regarding morality and responsibility. First he joins out of peer pressure (granted, he does this in the novel also). Then he stays to seek revenge for Buenos Aires (he decides to stay in the novel when he realizes he now agrees with his moral history teacher's teachings about responsibility and service). Then out of the blue he gives a weird eulogy for Dizzy that I guess is supposed to parallel his decision to join OCS in the novel, but there's absolutely no character growth leading up to that point at all.
Rico has an actual character arc in the novel which *is* the whole story. Rico in the movie is a literal marrionette, yanked around to dance whatever dance is required in each scene, without any character arc at all. And without that character arc, there is no story. Instead, Starship Troopers the movie is a movie where Stuff Just Happens. Its often visually entertaining Stuff That Happens, but there's no real story connecting the Stuff That Happens.
I was surprised how well the movie tried to follow the plot of the book.
Which book are you referring to?
I've been seeing the whole "Starship Troopers (the movie) is just misunderstood" train building up steam for a while now, but the truth is I got it then, I still get it now, but its still not a particularly good movie. Its an ok mindless popcorn movie, but to try to elevate Starship Troopers to ingenius satire is like trying to elevate Plan Nine From Outer Space as Hollywood movie production culture satire. For satire to be good satire, the satirist must at least make more effort delivering the satire as the audience is forced to make recognizing the satire. If the audience has to work harder to justify the satire than the satirist did in creating the work, then the satire is really the work of the audience and not the work. You can stare at clouds and claim brilliant satire if you try hard enough.
Letting the masses vote doesn't work. Having a free media doesn't really work either. Neither of these things have preserved my freedom. They have only eroded it.
Relative to what? What freedom did you lose when Democracies began to displace other forms of government? Its fashionable now to think that its the end of the world as we know it, and things might suck relative to an imaginary utopia that exists only in my head, but I wouldn't step into a time machine and trade living today for any other period in time.
The thing about dictatorships is that the phrase "I would support a dictator" is meaningless: dictators do not need, want, or benefit from your support. That's what makes them dictators.
Democracies are slow and imperfect because people are slow and imperfect, and often progress comes, as Max Plank observed, when the opponents to progress grow old and die. We fight stupid wars for stupid reasons and thousands of people die unnecessarily, but that pales in comparison to the entire generation of people decimated by World War I. Women have only had the unambiguous federally protected right to vote in the United States for less than a hundred years and for less than half the country's lifespan, and now their vote often decides elections. In one generation popular pressure upon a democracy is having more effect on Freedoms afforded to people of non-heterosexual orientation in the US than in the last hundred years.
Sure, a dictatorship would have been able to settle these matters much more quickly, but the problem with dictatorships is that they rarely settle these matters correctly.
A hundred years ago the technology didn't exist for the government to intrude on my privacy to the degree it does today, but a hundred years ago the technology also didn't exist for me to even be meaningfully informed about what the government did to me or around me and discuss it in a public forum. The freedom of information act in the US is only 46 years old. The internet a bit younger. The wide-spread public internet just about twenty years old.
This is not to excuse the abuses of today. Its to emphasize the abuses of yesterday were diminished or eliminated by people who tried to improve the system recognizing its flaws, not by those who assumed it was irrecoverably broken. The end of slavery in America didn't end all discrimination, but it did end the institution of slavery. That's how progress happens. Every generation makes extremely big mistakes that don't seem like mistakes to all of them. And every successive generation contains the people who will try to reverse those mistakes, but will make their own big mistakes as well. How do I judge whether progress is being made? I ask if there's any other moment in time I would rather live in the history of my country, from 1781 to yesterday, and the answer is no. That's progress.
3: Quoting the law: "(5)Knowingly and without permission disrupts or causes the disruption of computer services or denies or causes the denial of computer services to an authorized user of a computer, computer system, or computer network."
That's what he was found guilty under. What systems administrator or programmer would do business in the state of California with such a vague law? Be Incompetent, Fuck up, have a vengeful boss, go to jail. That's what this case is really about; the ability of state officials to fail to routinely document and confirm systems access by employee's whom make 100k+ a year who's job responsibility is to configure and maintain tens of millions of dollars of mission critical gear to toss your ass in jail on the flimsiest of reasons because they don't want to be bothered with kindergarten simple shit.
Even if he really was a malicious, self-serving, rent-seeking prick, being convicted under that law is complete and total bullshit.
Wrong.
Section h of the same statute states:
(h)(1)Subdivision (c) does not apply to punish any acts which are committed by a person within the scope of his or her lawful employment. For purposes of this section, a person acts within the scope of his or her employment when he or she performs acts which are reasonably necessary to the performance of his or her work assignment.
Furthermore, h(2):
(2)Paragraph (3) of subdivision (c) does not apply to penalize any acts committed by a person acting outside of his or her lawful employment, provided that the employee's activities do not cause an injury, as defined in paragraph (8) of subdivision (b), to the employer or another, or provided that the value of supplies or computer services, as defined in paragraph (4) of subdivision (b), which are used does not exceed an accumulated total of one hundred dollars ($100).
In other words, the law says you cannot be prosecuted if your conduct was something you reasonably had to do to do your job, but the act of doing so caused damage or denial of service. Childs claimed this as an affirmative defense, but the court ruled that a) deleting everyone else's passwords except his own, and b) changing his passwords so no one would know them, and c) deliberately changing the router settings so their configurations would not survive a reboot in defiance of best practices, and d) refusing to give anyone else access even when ordered to do so by his superiors did not count as "acts which are reasonably necessary to the performance of his or her work assignment."
Moreover, the law says even if you do something that *isn't* part of your job description and cause any of the damages specified in the law, you still have to create a minimum level of damage to be criminally liable. It cannot be a trivial level of damage that cannot be quantified.
That's what this case is really about; the ability of state officials to fail to routinely document and confirm systems access by employee's whom make 100k+ a year who's job responsibility is to configure and maintain tens of millions of dollars of mission critical gear to toss your ass in jail on the flimsiest of reasons because they don't want to be bothered with kindergarten simple shit.
Court documents show that as soon as his access revocations were detected, people began to try to address the situation but Childs consistently refused to return control. In fact, he dodged meetings intended to resolve the situation before it reached the level of criminal prosecution several times. And he admitted such in court. Childs admitted in court that he *actively* prevented DTIS from gaining administrative access to their systems because he felt none of them were qualified to have administrative access.
Who would want to work under such a law's governance? I wish everyone had to, so I would have to deal with far less prima donnas and dipshits.
The problem is that there are a significant amount of people in the U.S> who believe that some of the things Snowden leaked are harmful to the US. For example, he leaked that the U.S> was spying on specific Chinese Universities, to determine how they were hacking into our military and industrial computers. Now those universities know how to be more careful. It is unlikely they will stop trying to hack into us.
The problem Snowden has is that even if he "started a conversation" about U.S. intelligence, he still leaked a number of things that could easily be found to be harmful to the U.S. Even if 98% of the things he leaked were good things for the world to know, he will ALWAYS be at risk of being charged for the 2% of the things he leaked that are genuinely bad for the world to know.
There is also no such thing as a greater good exemption to violating the law. Regardless of whether anyone thinks Snowden's disclosures served a greater good, the fact is Snowden is false in stating his position as being just "dissent." He did in fact break the law. Essentially of the millions of other people voicing "dissent" in the US government's surveillance programs are, so far as I can tell, not currently being prosecuted.
By his own admission Snowden believes that the conduct of the US government may not be strictly illegal, its just (by his standards) "harmful." Furthermore, also by his own admission he did not disclose what he did to bring those matters before the appropriate authorities but to "open a dialog" because he felt the appropriate authorities would not properly investigate or even target himself over the disclosures. That means by his own admission he committed a crime with no specific legal grounds for doing so.
The problem Snowden faces is that while a lot of people want people like Snowden when he's on their side, they go completely berserk when people like Snowden are not. That's why even as many countries rail against the conduct Snowden disclosed, most are very uncomfortable about unambiguously condoning his behavior directly. If a Snowden decided to leak the identities of Anonymous participants for what they perceived as the greater good for example - something which isn't even illegal - I doubt they would get the same deference afforded to Snowden.
The real world is a complicated place that rarely has simple answers to tough questions. The same US Constitution that affords the rights Snowden supporters claim the US government violated also specifies who specifically gets to decide what is and is not Constitutional behavior, and Snowden is not currently a member of that branch of government. Cherry picking which parts of the Constitution are the important parts and which are not is not a specific right given to US citizens. And deciding to ignore some parts of the Constitution to serve the greater good is precisely the crime Snowden is accusing the US government of performing.
As a 20 something I'm eagerly waiting for these baby boomers to just retire so we don't have to deal with thier nonsense. There is nothing wrong with answering a text message in a meeting if your are not involved in the conversation and you don't disturb anyone else.
In and of itself, perhaps. However, if you're in a meeting I'm in, and you decide to do anything other than focus 100% of your attention on the meeting, if you miss something critical you have no excuse. I will hold you responsible for anything you miss because you decided you could opt out safely, if it turns out you were wrong.
I have been in more brain dead meetings than I can count, and its true 90% of meetings have little value and 90% of the content in meetings with some value still have no value, but you're still responsible for your own conduct and your own actions.
The guy who pays attention, takes notes, participates as best as they can, does their best to act on the information in the meeting, and makes a mistake, I'm likely to cut a lot of slack. The guy who decides they know better, feels their time is more important than anyone else's time, feels they are free to disregard what's going on around them based solely on their own superior judgment, and then blows it because they were wrong, I'm more inclined to just cut.
I actually respect arrogance, up to a point. And that point is: arrogance cannot exceed skill. If you decide you know better, all I can say is: you better be right, pretty much all the time.
Also, I hate going to meetings, but when I'm required or forced to, I give the meeting my full attention because I don't decide when I'm required to give my best effort and when I'm not. As a professional I am always giving my best effort, all of the time, regardless of whether I think the task "deserves" it or not. And I judge the character of other professionals in part on that standard. I believe they are what they show me when they think it doesn't matter. That's who they really are, not the performance they put on when they think they are being graded.
I see from your detailed response you have strong feelings about this subject. My son has a managing position in the legal department of a German company that is a direct competitor to GE. Trade treaties are signed to insure fair trade practices are enforced. It just seems that the fate of the average factory worker was overlooked.
Almost 20% of Antigua's GDP is trade with the US. They don't have to obey our laws, we don't have to buy their stuff. Trade war, bring it on. The US hasn't won a war in seventy years but I think we might win one with Antigua.
The problem is that Antigua's economy is so small its dwarfed by the US entertainment industry. If the US retaliates illegally to the actions of Antigua which are explicitly sanctioned by the WTO, the obvious response would likely be for the WTO to continue to authorized additional exceptions or suspensions of intellectual property protection to Antigua until eventually the US stops all trade with Antigua, and Antigua replaces all of that trade gap by selling US-registered media. The US can't win such a war not because its not powerful enough, but because its too powerful: it has everything to lose and nothing to gain.
Apple makes more net profit from iTunes than Antigua's entire GDP. When you have all the money and you're fighting someone with none of the money, the odds of you coming out with even more of all the money and the other guy leaving with even less of none of the money are virtually zero. How can the US possibly win this fight when the entire country of Antigua can make more money selling blue rays of the Dark Knight Trilogy than it can actually being Antigua? This would be like the Walt Disney Company sueing a homeless person for wearing Mickey Mouse ears in public. The power imbalance is enormous, but nevertheless one side has nothing to lose and the other nothing to win which makes all that power worthless.
The US can control many other nations through our ports. If you don't respect our IP laws, your stuff is not unloaded. The dollar may not be worth what it used to but everyone still wants to sell us stuff.
That's an interesting position to take, that the US can ignore international trade laws with impunity, by threatening to annihilate its own economy through a multilateral trade war.
Once again, US IP laws have no direct impact on citizens of other nations, except by voluntary participation in international treaty. Antigua selling US content without compensating US copyright holders is NOT a violation of US IP law,because US IP law doesn't apply to Antiguan citizens. The US does not get to pass laws for the whole world. Antiguan citizens don't have to obey US law, they only have to obey Antiguan law. Antigua itself required its citizens to honor US copyright by Antiguan Law, by virtue of international treaty. Without that treaty, US law is worth exactly nothing outside its borders. By ignoring the ruling of an international trade court in favor of its own national interests, the US is violating the law. The injured party has recourse to remedy that injury. To claim this doesn't "respect our IP laws" ignores the fact that its the US that is violating the law, and complaining about a violation that cannot exist outside of international law. Outside of international law, there's no such thing as an Antiguan violating US copyright law. US Copyright Law does not apply to citizens of countries other than the US.
Except by virtue of treaty which a lot of people seem to think the US is free to ignore, or should even contemplate rejecting out of hand.
The Senate votes to modify or repeal it, and the President signs off. Same with any time the US does anything with a treaty.
That doesn't solve anything, because even if the US withdraws from the WTO, they cannot prevent Antigua from suspending US copyright within its borders. As I point out above, the WTO is the only thing that makes US copyright law valid anywhere outside the US in the first place. Withdraw from the WTO, and who's going to enforce US copyright law outside the US? Why would any country enforce US copyright law when the US acts to ignore international law in this area.
I suspect that media creation is an area where the US has a huge trade surplus. In a world where the US ignores everyone else's intellectual property law and everyone else ignores US intellectual property law, everyone else wins and the US loses. The US needs the rest of the world to play ball far, far more than everyone else needs the US to do so. This is a fact I think most sovereignty-nuts fail to understand: the US probably exports more of its laws than it imports others. In a world where the US decided not to subject itself to any international law, its own interests would be the ones most impacted.
So, to be clear, the United States democractically elected government passed a law, that applies only to United States citizens. A bunch of foreign bankers have decided that they don't like that law, and so they are overruling it.
I'm sure Slashdot will be thrilled with any decision that hurts intellectual property enforcement, but try to look at what's going on here. It is really, really bad for democracy when elected officials can be overruled by overseas bankers. The United States is right to refuse to comply with the ruling, and should do everything in its power to resist. Our democracy ain't exactly working great, but it's better than a bunch of unelected bureaucrats ruling by decree from overseas.
Just to be clear, the only reason American copyright law has any power at all outside of the United States is because of treaty. If you believe the US government can pass any law they want so long as it only affects its citizens, then Antigua can also pass a law that only affects its citizens that allow them to copy any media they want that originates from the US and resell it for whatever they want without compensation to the original creator. So what's the problem?
The only problem is if you think Antigua should be compelled to honor international law that honors US copyright law, but the US should not be compelled to honor international law in return.
There was once a common practice of forcing defendants to testify, and adding more charges if they denied guilt and then were found guilty anyways. The Fifth Amendment protects against that practice, and only that practice.
Not really. Historically, and the compelling reason for asserting the right to "be compelled to be a witness against himself" is to eliminate the incentive for the government to use coercion against criminal suspects i.e. torture.
So Bennett Haselton seriously still doesn't understand the Fifth Amendment yet? The right is not a right to be silent: its a right to not be compelled to incriminate one's self. There is no specific right to "be silent." That's why the Fifth Amendment applies to defendants but not potential witnesses or third parties. The reason why Haselton cannot figure out why the "right to remain silent" can apply to defendants and not third parties appears to be that he doesn't possess a dictionary or is unable to understand the concept of "self-incrimination."
The Fifth Amendment is not about keeping secrets. Its about balancing the rights of criminal defendants and the right of the government to prosecute criminal defendants. The Constitution skews that balance strongly towards the defendant and away from government prosecution when it comes to attempting to compel confessions. But only confessions and related self-incrimination. The Constitution places no value on the desire of third parties to just not cooperate with prosecutions just because they don't want to.
the only companies that might have a real claim of injury would be Blackberry and those behind things like FirefoxOS.
Actually, another set of companies that might not have a legal claim but could be injured by basically giving Surface tablets away are PC hardware manufacturers. The presumption is that everyone that buys one of those heavily discounted Surface tablets would have bought an IOS or Android tablet instead. But its also possible that cannibalizes Windows ultrabook sales by a significant amount, and even if Microsoft doesn't get sued they are likely to make their hardware partners extremely angry.
That might not stop Microsoft (it didn't stop them from entering the tablet hardware business in the first place) but it certainly is a factor in their decision making process.
Which brings us to Sarah Sharp's complaints. Yes, she could have left her duties as a result of offense and do other things. Instead, she voiced her opinion in the hopes that the environment become more professional meaning polite and being able to work without abuse (and not Linus's definition of passive-aggressiveness). Is it wrong to politely ask people to be more professional before leaving upon a second offense?
That's a tricky compound question. Its not wrong to ask people to be more polite: Sarah Sharp did nothing wrong there. It *is* wrong to presume your code of conduct should automatically be everyone else's under the guise of claiming the moral high ground of "professionalism."
But it seems the kernel developers, Linus and Sarah both included, are handling the situation much better than the outsider discussion surrounding them. Sarah asserted her belief that the tone of the kernel dev mailing list needed to be moderated. Linus asserted his belief that his tone is essential to his role as kernel dev wrangler. Both agreed to discuss it further in person, which is where such discussions are more likely to make progress.
I don't personally see any bad guys there: I just happen to believe that while Sarah Sharp had every right to ask for a change in tone, Linus had every right to say "no."
Civilization is expensive. If it's not worth paying for a trial, it's not worth imprisoning someone. The cost of a jury trial should be incentive for the state to imprison as few people as possible.
So if the prosecution is willing to avoid a trial in exchange for a guilty plea on lesser charges, and the defendant is willing to avoid the risk of a trial in exchange for a guilty plea on lesser charges, and the courts are willing to accept the plea deal because it seems to be a fair and balanced compromise (courts have to approve plea deals generally), everyone involved wants something and you're the person that's going to deny them that thing, all because you have a warped sense of "rights?"
It would be much simpler, actually, in your world, to simply make it a constitutional requirement that all criminal defendents plead innocent. The guilty plea itself eliminates the prosecutorial requirement to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. So why not force all defendants to plead innocent to all crimes, from parking tickets to murder?
It grates me when someone has to rant or cuss just in their "normal" conversation.
Linus is acting like a spoiled 3 year old, and this will eventually backfire.
Are you speaking geologically, like "eventually the Sun will collapse into a white dwarf" eventually? Or are you talking about an event some of us might theoretically be alive to witness? Because you're talking about something happening "eventually" that hasn't happened in over twenty years yet.
Between Linus' attitudes and the random "directions" of Ubuntu's Shuttleworth, Linux is in a whole lot of trouble!
History suggests otherwise. Actually, History wants to come right out and call BS, just as soon as it regains control of the programming on the cable channels claiming to speak for it.
Don't whine if people do and development slows.
You might want some people from Intel in on the kernel development. They have some of the best in the business at optimization. If you want to tell them all off that's your prerogative, but don't then cry if they say "Ok, we will leave."
You say that like Martians replaced Linus' brain last week, and this is all new.
Intel has developers working with Linux out of their own self-interest, not as a community service project. If they feel its not in their best interests they will leave, but not one instant sooner and not for any other reason.
I should also point out that Linus didn't "tell off" anyone from Intel, except to say, in response to a demand to change his mode of management, "No." He also did so politely, in contrast to many posters who seem to imply that Linus tyrannically suppresses anyone who disagrees with him. As I've seen him do regularly, when not confronted with what he perceives to be carelessness or stupidity when it comes to the management of the kernel source itself, he has responded to opposition succinctly and politely, intermixed with humorous deflection. He has, perhaps ironically, not responded rudely to the request to cease being rude.
I think there's some false dichotomy from Linus here. He seems to split it up into either acting that way he does or else it becomes lying and backstabbing, because that's what he thinks "acting professionally" means. Ie, either he wears a bathrobe or else he has to wear a tie.
Doesn't calling it a false dichotomy presume that Linus doesn't have some prior background managing a large development environment of volunteers which might cause him to draw that conclusion from direct experience? Like, say, managing the linux kernel development for twenty years.
You imply Linus is speaking hypothetically, and not referentially. I believe, based on my own recollections of the history of Linux kernel development (as an outsider to the process looking in) that while Linus always had moments of being "direct" he also has direct experience of what happens when he lets things slide on the assumption that mere discussion will correct the problem only to have it blow up in his face. I think he's intrinsically direct, but he's also *learned* over the years that it works better when he is, then when he is not. And he's not on a continuous rampage, so he has the ability to compare what happens to situations that are discussed blandly verses those that are attacked aggressively.
A lot of people are suggesting there are better ways that I don't believe have any experience proving there are better ways. And corporate development teams have almost no resemblance to the kernel development teams: Linus is functioning less like the HR or management of a corporate dev team (who has the power to hire and fire people and has control over the future employment progress of the team members) and more like a forum moderator with limited or no admin rights, somehow trying to keep the forum members in line by force of personality alone. Its actually amazing that Linus is as judicious with his outbursts as he appears to be given the circumstances.
Well, I guess that's my cue.
I work in a pretty successful technology company. We have a "no brilliant jerks" policy. Doesn't matter how good someone is, if they're actively corrosive to working with people, they're gone.
The difference between your company and the Linux kernel is that as a practical matter, Linus can't fire anyone. That's a very critical difference. You can eliminate the "jerks." Linus has to enforce order on a community that only listens to him voluntarily.
When your HR department proves its capable of maintaining its "no brilliant jerks" policy through nothing more than gentle reminders, with the threat of termination contractually eliminated, then your experience would be analogous.
In fact, everyone comparing Linus and the Linux kernel developers to J. Random Company are entirely missing the point, because the two have virtually nothing to do with each other. What Linus has accomplished is more closely analogous to a forum moderator with no administrative rights managing to maintain order on a controversial forum for twenty years non-stop than it is to managing a corporate development team, where people have a strong incentive to keep in line because their livelihoods depend on at least the semblance of order and cooperation.
For the price of an abrasive personality and the very infrequent public outburst, Linus has actually accomplished no small miracle. I wouldn't want the job, and I would have no idea whatsoever how to do that job, and I've managed people for years.
Maybe it's time to eject him from the LKML and give the reigns to someone else ?
Go for it. In fact, everyone who thinks Linus' behavior is "unacceptable" should look up the definition of that word, stop accepting it, and fork the kernel.
The best way to demonstrate that there exists a better way is proof by example. Alternatively, perhaps some reflection should be put into the fact that Linus did not win the role of lead kernel developer in a lottery, and the fact that he was its first developer also granted him no special claim to control the project for about twenty years. Linus doesn't just sit at home reading mailing lists while finding people to curse at. He's worked extremely hard not just in terms of writing code, but more specifically in wrangling developers. Until someone has had to do this, on a grand scale, over long time periods, with no external authority structure to back them up, that someone has no idea what they are talking about when they decide they or anyone else can do better.
Linus saves his harshest criticism for other major maintainers, not individual developers. It amazes me that so few people misunderstand why it goes largely unchallenged. Its not because, as some have implied, that Linus has somehow weeded out non-sycophants. Its actually that large maintainers don't need an explanation for Linus' management style because they see the same problems themselves on a much smaller scale. They may not react in the same way, they may even disagree, but the vast majority of them *understand*. That understanding comes from walking a mile in maintainer shoes, and then realizing what the job of maintainer of maintainers is like.
If even half of them disapproved of Linus' management of the kernel, a fork would have happened a long time ago.
You highlight the enormous difference between your company and the Linux Kernel Development community. Someone exists that can fire people.
"Can I come to your door and swear at you all day long?" No, but if *I* come to *your* door you can swear at me all you want, because I can always leave.
He says in the article that he failed to discuss his concerns with anyone in his office basically because he didn't trust any of them. If any of my employees said they didn't trust me to act properly so they took it upon themselves to... they'd be fired before they could finish that sentence. I fail to see the controversy in an employer terminating an employee that admits they don't trust their employer, because only an idiot would themselves trust such a person with any level of responsibility. The circumstances are irrelevant. If you don't trust me, I don't trust you, and you're gone. The rest of this is righteousness ping-pong.
If your own words can be used to convict you, then the police and government gain a huge incentive to torture you into confessing.
But there are still laws against torture. So even without the fifth, they still can't torture.
Without the right to avoid self-incrimination the police could torture you into confessing even if it is illegal: they may have broken the law but you could still have your confession used against you. The right to avoid self-incrimination is there specifically because our system of laws, and those of many countries in the world, do not want to arbitrate what is "fair" and "unfair" questioning of criminal suspects. The moral decision encapsulated within the law is that the risk of coercion and the temptation to use it is too great to allow any grey area.
Addressing the OPs criteria:
#1: The world with Fifth Amendment-style protections *is* clearly different from the world without them. There is no need to invoke hypotheticals. No legal mind - for or against the protections - would argue otherwise. In particular, the claim that the "overzealous prosecutor scenario" fails this test is itself false: prosecutions are nullified because Fifth Amendment protections were not adhered to in the current world. It is therefore automatically true to state that if those protections didn't exist, the world would be clearly different: those prosecutions would not have been nullified, and those people would then be convicted.
#2: The question of whether the world is "better" with Fifth Amendment-style protections is a highly subjective, but it is instructive to note that in many parts of the world where such protections did not previously exist, they are being adopted explicitly because those people believe their world will be better with those protections. I believe that is strong qualitative evidence of this.
#3: The criteria that the Fifth Amendment protections be shown to not benefit all suspects equally is frankly ludicrous. I can find no reason to suggest that this is a necessary or sufficient requirement for a just or effective law. For example, the right to avoid double-jeopardy also, by analogous analysis, "hampers all law enforcement efforts equally." It is, however, also considered a cornerstone of the US legal system: not-guilty verdicts are final.
#4: As mentioned previously, the right to avoid self-incrimination isn't a black or white case of "it prevents torture." It more specifically takes away the incentive to conduct *any* vigorous non-voluntary interrogation. And moreover the law doesn't apply penalties to the government if they violate the right, it takes away the benefits of that violation. Criteria #4 says the right to not be beaten is separate from the right to remain silent and that's correct. But what the OP fails to understand, apparently, is what that means. If the police beat a confession out of you, they have committed assault upon you. They could be held accountable for that. But without the right to avoid self-incrimination, your confession could still be used against you. Because those two rights are separate.
#5: Since the fifth criteria links to a wikipedia article (Prosecutor's fallacy) I'll respond in kind: False dilemma. Critiera 5 presumes that failures in the criminal justice system are problems of incompetence, that perfect competency would eliminate problems of applying the law. However, its not true that this is the only problem the criminal justice system faces, nor is it even the most important one. The more important one is one of judgment and systematic drift. As mentioned above, what constitutes valid or abusive questioning is often a matter of judgment or opinion. The purpose of the right against self-incrimination is to eliminate that problem by eliminating the area upon which judgment can apply. That's why we have speed limits, and not a law that says "don't drive too fast." And when we have thousands of people applying individual