Hmm. Untrusted is punchier, but it implies that it could be trusted under certain circumstances. Untrustable makes it clearer that it can't be. Heck, how about we just appropriate Microsoft's terms and call it "untrustworthy"?
It's funny if your formative experiences were after the Berlin Wall coming down, and pre WTC. The 1990s were a pretty neat time, when all's said and done. I'm sure we'll swing back there sooner or later, but government, business and media are closer than they've been since McCarthy, perhaps closer, so it might take a while before they stop trying to stimulate the economy by reminding us that we might all die tomorrow.
With a young son, sure, I want him to be safe tomorrow, but I also want him not to have to deal with the crap that we're storing up today. We're building a society based on runaway consumerism, building a garbage mountain, wrecking the ozone (hey, the rate that it's disappearing has slowed! Whoop dee doop!), there's no sign of us switching away from fossil fuels before we absolutely have to, and our foreign policy is to make the rest of the world fear us more than they hate us.
This is the guy who won't give a straight answer to explicit questions about the LGPL and Java linking?
Hey, Eben, when's the last time you won a case? When's the last time you were even arguing before a judge or jury court?
My medical studies make me an "leading expert" on the vulnerable areas of the human body. Funnily enough, that doesn't mean that any untrained street punk can't kick my ass.
Frankly I'd give more credence to a practicing lawyer than a guy who got tenure by documenting other peoples' achievements.
My god, no wonder the RIAA views us as soft targets. If you can't even be bothered to google for "refusing a subpoena", what chance have you got in fighting one?
Oh, please just fuck off. It was a civil suit. There was no assumption of either innocence or guilt. Get this through your thick heads, a criminal case and a civil suit are completely different entities. In a civil suit, quite often the criteria used is whether a "reasonable person" would consider an action right or wrong, so neither Joe Sixpack nor Joe Senator have any excuse for waiting for the verdict. They should be able to use their reasonable judgement to figure out that using Napster was wrong.
"Based on this notification, no change to the Homeland Security Advisory System (HSAS) is anticipated; the current HSAS level is YELLOW."
Hasn't it been yellow for like ever? I think they just can't figure out how to change the bulb.
Slightly more seriously, are we all comfortable with the idea that the Vaterland Security Advisory System is now here to stay, and that it's now featured in contexts where the words "external" or "terrorists" don't appear? That Homeland Security bulletins, much like the "troops killed in Iraq" daily scorecard, are now routine routine occurances?
I've just had a kid. When he starts asking what the HSAS is, what do I tell him? "We're at War, junior. We've always been at War. Terrorists, drug barons, organized criminals, religious extremists, crackers, hackers, commies, arabs, they're all out to get us, and it's important to know just how scared the government wants us to be that we're going to die today."
Instead of saying open source versus closed source, how about we just start saying open source versus untrustable? That might help to chivvy things along.
I know that this is playing to the gallery, but if we're simply going to redefine terms to suit ourselves, how about try a bit of it ourselves. For example:
Please think about what you're saying. Do you honestly believe that if you write code then release it under a GPL, that restricts what you can do with that code?
There is nothing, legally or ethically, to stop you from taking a piece of code that you've written yourself and released under the GPL, then selling or licensing it to anyone you like, under any terms you like. You can license the source, you can sell binaries, you can do whatever you like. That doesn't effect what people can do with your GPL licenced version, any more than the GPL license effects what you or your other licensees can do with the code.
Seriously, you need to take a long hard look at what you think the GPL actually is, and why you think that. It's just another license, it doesn't have superpowers.
It's perhaps more common that you think. After all, how would you know? Confidentiality would be one of the terms of purchase.
For example, my company wanted to buy a non-GPL license for a common GPLd winCE installer package (because it links a GPL self extractor stub to the compressed package). The author declined, not because of a principled anti-commercial stand per se, he just believed (incorrectly, in our view) that there wasn't a GPL issue with using it, and so couldn't understand our concern. In the event, we spent the money that he could have had as a reward for his work on writing our own.
After looking at the correspondance and the situation, I came to an inescapable conclusion: he was an idiot, and his intransigence produced a lose-lose situation. The sooner GPL zealots get it through their heads that it's not polluting their karma to sell non-GPL versions of their work as well as releasing it under the GPL, the better for everyone concerned.
Don't presume to tell me how I can and can't license my copyrighted code, and I won't tell you how to license yours. It's possible to release code under GPL and sell it, for example, which is win-win-win (author, purchaser, everyone else) as far as I can see.
It was the early 1990s. UNIX workstations were DRM protected to only allow us to run the flavour of UNIX that was sold with them. Under purchaser pressure, the workstation/UNIX sellers caved in and allowed us to run any version of commercial UNIX that we wanted. Huzzah!
Then along came this guy calling himself "Lunis", who claimed that he wanted to write his own kernel! How dumb did he think we were? He just wanted to pirate commercial UNIX kernels. Nobody writes their own kernels from scratch. What a crazy idea!
(Cut to present day) Get the point? Having a short list of approved software precludes anyone doing what Linus did ever again. And "ever" is a long time.
>Are you seriously claiming that they're a "Communist" party in anything but name now?
Meh, the very idea of having a communist party and career politicians is anathemaic to the idea of rule of the proletariat by and for the proletariat. As soon as leaders rise from the proletariat, they become almost by definition bourgeois. Communism is only equitable as long as it's the opposition.
In short, I agree with you, but I think it's delusional to believe that any government is more than an oligarchy dressed up in populist clothing. I'm not claiming that communism works, just that the Chinese state - whatever you want to call it - seems to be working rather well.
Sigh. Civil case, balance of probability, if you're paying for the connection then it's probable that you're sharing the files. Let's get away from this "they can't prove nuthin'" nonsense. They don't have to prove anything, they just have to show that it's likely.
The principle disturbs them. What's to stop me subpoening an ISP for details of every IP address in its netblock? If they want to call me out, they (under the DMCA) lose their common carrier protections. If they cave in, I have access to all of their customer details.
A subpoena is a demand for information prior to going to court. It's trivially easy to obtain one (they're not vetted by judges) but failing to comply with a properly filed subpoena is an offence in itself.
Care to bet how long it would take me to write a script to generate a list of every IP address in an ISP's netblock, along with a couple of copyrighted track names for each one? Then you just prepend the DMCA incantation, get it rubberstamped by a clerk, and the ISP is obliged to hand over details for every one of its customers, or leave itself open to being sued (under the DMCA) for contributory copyright infringement in addition to being hammered for failing to comply with the subpoena.
Are you beginning to see why ISPs want to fight this?
Very amusing, but Germany did insist on building tanks with thick, faceted armour and narrow tracks until very late in WWII, when they could have simply cloned the superior T34 design. Likewise, Russia stuck to dumb Katyusha rockets for years after Germany was lobbing guided missiles.
I do agree with the grandparent that the more brutal the regime, the less likely it is to admit infallibility by conceding, even implicitely, that their technology is sub-optimal. Say, who's got the best tanks, aircraft, small arms and basic training in the world?
Slashdot Mirror
Hmm. Untrusted is punchier, but it implies that it could be trusted under certain circumstances. Untrustable makes it clearer that it can't be. Heck, how about we just appropriate Microsoft's terms and call it "untrustworthy"?
It's funny if your formative experiences were after the Berlin Wall coming down, and pre WTC. The 1990s were a pretty neat time, when all's said and done. I'm sure we'll swing back there sooner or later, but government, business and media are closer than they've been since McCarthy, perhaps closer, so it might take a while before they stop trying to stimulate the economy by reminding us that we might all die tomorrow.
With a young son, sure, I want him to be safe tomorrow, but I also want him not to have to deal with the crap that we're storing up today. We're building a society based on runaway consumerism, building a garbage mountain, wrecking the ozone (hey, the rate that it's disappearing has slowed! Whoop dee doop!), there's no sign of us switching away from fossil fuels before we absolutely have to, and our foreign policy is to make the rest of the world fear us more than they hate us.
Good luck, kid, you're going to need it.
This is the guy who won't give a straight answer to explicit questions about the LGPL and Java linking?
Hey, Eben, when's the last time you won a case? When's the last time you were even arguing before a judge or jury court?
My medical studies make me an "leading expert" on the vulnerable areas of the human body. Funnily enough, that doesn't mean that any untrained street punk can't kick my ass.
Frankly I'd give more credence to a practicing lawyer than a guy who got tenure by documenting other peoples' achievements.
My god, no wonder the RIAA views us as soft targets. If you can't even be bothered to google for "refusing a subpoena", what chance have you got in fighting one?
"Last year's winner of the Herbert Block Freedom Award was Vanessa Leggett, a freelance journalist who was imprisoned for 168 days for refusing a subpoena to surrender the notes and interviews she'd accumulated while researching a book about the murder of a Houston socialite."
Oh, please just fuck off. It was a civil suit. There was no assumption of either innocence or guilt. Get this through your thick heads, a criminal case and a civil suit are completely different entities. In a civil suit, quite often the criteria used is whether a "reasonable person" would consider an action right or wrong, so neither Joe Sixpack nor Joe Senator have any excuse for waiting for the verdict. They should be able to use their reasonable judgement to figure out that using Napster was wrong.
"Based on this notification, no change to the Homeland Security Advisory System (HSAS) is anticipated; the current HSAS level is YELLOW."
Hasn't it been yellow for like ever? I think they just can't figure out how to change the bulb.
Slightly more seriously, are we all comfortable with the idea that the Vaterland Security Advisory System is now here to stay, and that it's now featured in contexts where the words "external" or "terrorists" don't appear? That Homeland Security bulletins, much like the "troops killed in Iraq" daily scorecard, are now routine routine occurances?
I've just had a kid. When he starts asking what the HSAS is, what do I tell him? "We're at War, junior. We've always been at War. Terrorists, drug barons, organized criminals, religious extremists, crackers, hackers, commies, arabs, they're all out to get us, and it's important to know just how scared the government wants us to be that we're going to die today."
Nice world he's going to grow up in.
Jeez, you Microserf zealots are getting irrational and touchy. Back off man, that's our shtick. ;-P
Instead of saying open source versus closed source, how about we just start saying open source versus untrustable? That might help to chivvy things along.
And so on. Interesting opinion. Unfortunately, it's incorrect.
Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun back, Dowling v. the United States: 'It follows that interference with copyright does not easily equate with theft, conversion or fraud. The Copyright Act even employs a separate term of art to define one who misappropriates a copyright: "Anyone who violates any of the exclusive rights of the copyright owner," that is, anyone who trespasses into his exclusive domain by using or authorizing the use of the copyrighted work in one of the five ways set forth in the statute, "is an infringer of the copyright."'
I know that this is playing to the gallery, but if we're simply going to redefine terms to suit ourselves, how about try a bit of it ourselves. For example:
Then we get a go:
Not perhaps technically accurate, but hey, they started it.
Please think about what you're saying. Do you honestly believe that if you write code then release it under a GPL, that restricts what you can do with that code?
There is nothing, legally or ethically, to stop you from taking a piece of code that you've written yourself and released under the GPL, then selling or licensing it to anyone you like, under any terms you like. You can license the source, you can sell binaries, you can do whatever you like. That doesn't effect what people can do with your GPL licenced version, any more than the GPL license effects what you or your other licensees can do with the code.
Seriously, you need to take a long hard look at what you think the GPL actually is, and why you think that. It's just another license, it doesn't have superpowers.
It's perhaps more common that you think. After all, how would you know? Confidentiality would be one of the terms of purchase.
For example, my company wanted to buy a non-GPL license for a common GPLd winCE installer package (because it links a GPL self extractor stub to the compressed package). The author declined, not because of a principled anti-commercial stand per se, he just believed (incorrectly, in our view) that there wasn't a GPL issue with using it, and so couldn't understand our concern. In the event, we spent the money that he could have had as a reward for his work on writing our own.
After looking at the correspondance and the situation, I came to an inescapable conclusion: he was an idiot, and his intransigence produced a lose-lose situation. The sooner GPL zealots get it through their heads that it's not polluting their karma to sell non-GPL versions of their work as well as releasing it under the GPL, the better for everyone concerned.
Sure, because cheap TV is third on the bill of rights.
No... wait... you're an idiot. If you think you're paying too much, stop paying it.
This is a local government, for local people. Are you local at all?
See answer 3, and be advised that on Earth, we have this illogical concept called "hew-more"
Quite right, but I was going to summarise it as "Duhhhh". ;-)
Don't presume to tell me how I can and can't license my copyrighted code, and I won't tell you how to license yours. It's possible to release code under GPL and sell it, for example, which is win-win-win (author, purchaser, everyone else) as far as I can see.
> What's to prevent me from putting this special marker on a copy of a game?
The Green Lantern, Thundra, or possibly... Ghost Rider.
(Cue alternate history lesson)
It was the early 1990s. UNIX workstations were DRM protected to only allow us to run the flavour of UNIX that was sold with them. Under purchaser pressure, the workstation/UNIX sellers caved in and allowed us to run any version of commercial UNIX that we wanted. Huzzah!
Then along came this guy calling himself "Lunis", who claimed that he wanted to write his own kernel! How dumb did he think we were? He just wanted to pirate commercial UNIX kernels. Nobody writes their own kernels from scratch. What a crazy idea!
(Cut to present day) Get the point? Having a short list of approved software precludes anyone doing what Linus did ever again. And "ever" is a long time.
>a few friends of mine are working on building a trebuchet to sling people across the Channel.
I hope you weren't practicing on Bulgarian students.
>Are you seriously claiming that they're a "Communist" party in anything but name now?
Meh, the very idea of having a communist party and career politicians is anathemaic to the idea of rule of the proletariat by and for the proletariat. As soon as leaders rise from the proletariat, they become almost by definition bourgeois. Communism is only equitable as long as it's the opposition.
In short, I agree with you, but I think it's delusional to believe that any government is more than an oligarchy dressed up in populist clothing. I'm not claiming that communism works, just that the Chinese state - whatever you want to call it - seems to be working rather well.
Sigh. Civil case, balance of probability, if you're paying for the connection then it's probable that you're sharing the files. Let's get away from this "they can't prove nuthin'" nonsense. They don't have to prove anything, they just have to show that it's likely.
The principle disturbs them. What's to stop me subpoening an ISP for details of every IP address in its netblock? If they want to call me out, they (under the DMCA) lose their common carrier protections. If they cave in, I have access to all of their customer details.
A subpoena is a demand for information prior to going to court. It's trivially easy to obtain one (they're not vetted by judges) but failing to comply with a properly filed subpoena is an offence in itself.
Care to bet how long it would take me to write a script to generate a list of every IP address in an ISP's netblock, along with a couple of copyrighted track names for each one? Then you just prepend the DMCA incantation, get it rubberstamped by a clerk, and the ISP is obliged to hand over details for every one of its customers, or leave itself open to being sued (under the DMCA) for contributory copyright infringement in addition to being hammered for failing to comply with the subpoena.
Are you beginning to see why ISPs want to fight this?
Very amusing, but Germany did insist on building tanks with thick, faceted armour and narrow tracks until very late in WWII, when they could have simply cloned the superior T34 design. Likewise, Russia stuck to dumb Katyusha rockets for years after Germany was lobbing guided missiles.
I do agree with the grandparent that the more brutal the regime, the less likely it is to admit infallibility by conceding, even implicitely, that their technology is sub-optimal. Say, who's got the best tanks, aircraft, small arms and basic training in the world?
I guess some people just like to duplicate things. ;-P