I went to Canada a while back, and must say that the difference to arriving in the US (which I do regularly) is simply staggering. I'd made an error filling in the customs form, but was just told to correct it, and asked when I was leaving and that was it. Hardly looked at my passport. Not to mention the much more relaxed checkin when I was flying back home. Compared to the make-you-feel-like-a-criminal fingerprinting and photographing + visa vaiwer forms asking if you've ever committed genocide and whether or not you're planning to commit terrorism or other crimes while in the US (WTF? Does anyone EVER tick yes on anything on that list?).
Even Chinese border control makes you feel more welcome than the US.
And that's ignoring the occasional asshole behind the desk when visiting the US - it's not so much the behavior as the overall process. Even the nicest, friendliest US border guards (and I've come across a few who were really nice, and most are courteous enough, which is impressive when you come across someone who's clearly nearing the end of a shift with the kind of crap they have to deal with) still has to follow a procedure that makes visiting quite a few dictatorships seem nice and friendly.
He was talking about appearance, with the intent of passing easily through US border control, numbskull, seeing as the West seems stuck in the idea that muslims == dark features and so anyone lightskinned often find it easier to get through border control unchallenged.
If we assume "master" means "know every detail of the language", I'll agree with you. If we're talking about master as "know well enough to use it highly effectively" I'm not so sure. None of your examples would make a difference for most developers in the latter case. I can't remember the last time I saw C code that used register, volatile or for that matter "char * const", though granted the former two will be important for people who intend to do hardware work (but is then easy enough to learn). In fact, I've worked with C developers that's never in their career used any of those and wouldn't have a clue what they're even for, because it's a dark corner of the language that most normal app developers never bother with (as is const-correctness generally in C and C++ - people use some very specific patterns and forget about the rest).
People can "master" a subset of the language appropriate for what they need very quickly - few people EVER learn every quirky little feature.
I tend to consider a good thing, because even crappy ports help plug the holes that prevent Linux from being a full desktop alternative for people. Whenever the Linux penetration of the desktop gets large enough, competition will take care of making better ports a requirement. For now, getting stuff that's "good enough" is far more valuable than getting perfect ports.
Personally I'm coming closer and closer to making the conclusion that if a democracy goes to war against you, civilians are legitimate targets. At least anyone of voting age. We are collectively responsible for allowing our governments to go to war if we quietly accept an elected government to attack without doing more than waiting for the next time we can cast a vote.
The military are "just" following orders, and while they have a responsibility to refuse unlawful orders, ultimately with the way modern armies are structured it's unrealistic to assume most people will dare refuse even outright illegal orders and much less orders that are just ethically questionable.
Thus, if I was put in the situation of having to organize a defense against a technologically superior army, the first thing I'd do would be to decide to ignore parts of the Geneva conventions:
1) I'd specifically target officers. 2) I'd focus on hiding and finding way to hit civilians rather than spending time going after regular troops at all
Fighting face to face with regular troops simply makes no sense, as you'd be fighting a losing fight against troops that would endure far less losses than you. The only way to win in a situation like that is to find other ways to take the war to the enemy's home.
The problem is that the US doesn't exactly has a history of siding only with people wanting to get rid of their oppressive dictators. More often than not, ever since the US got militarily and economically strong enough to interfere, the US have been propping up dicators or supporting the overthrow of elected regimes, and in any case not giving a fuck about what the cost is to the local population.
There's a good reason why the US face so much hostility around the world.
Can you image any of the wars over the last 2000 years if the parties involved had access to unlimited humans to replace the dead? The human cost certainly HAS put a check on war-waging. Armies used to be tiny, because there simply weren't enough people around to man the kind of wars we've seen in the last hundred years. Even in WW I and WW II the availability of people to fight was a major limitation on both sides.
The "human cost" isn't only about suffering, but about sheer numbers. If you replace the loss of soldiers with the loss of machines you can quickly make more off, you change the nature of war dramatically.
This might be a problem in countries where people are used to dubbed content, but I find myself often turning subtitles on even when watching movies etc. in languages I understand, because it lets me be lazy and not pay full attention... If you grow up in a country where subtitles are common, you'll quickly learn to read fast enough that a glance on the screen every now and again is enough to get the full dialogue whenever whats happening is boring you and you don't pay full attention (talk to someone else in the room or whatever).
I doubt I've ever had a problem following subtitles since I was maybe 8 or 9.
But then I grew up in Norway, and all foreign shows except programs for small children would be subtitled rather than dubbed. Seeing as a fairly significant percentage of programs shown are English language movies and series, it amounts to a lot of exposure to reading.
It's worth reiterating one point you make: There are tons of different versions of the iPod on the list. Specifically, each and every combination of colors and flash/disk and model is on there somewhere. As far as I know there are far more versions of iPod's than there are of Zune's. So even if a single Zune model every now and again shoots to the top, it means nothing. Unless there are suddenly 10+ different Zune versions overtaking the various iPod models on an ongoing basis, Apple still has the upper hand.
After some upgrade CPU usage has been going through the roof (and staying there) more and more frequently for me. Combined with the memory leaks it's now seriously close to the point where I'll start moving to some other browser. Problem is I don't like any of the alternatives - I use Opera for some things that tends to bring Firefox to it's knees, but I can't stand it's UI for regular usage... I really, really want to be able to stick to Firefox, but not if it means restarting my browser many times a day (it used to be once or twice a day - now either memory usage or persistent high CPU usage will cause me to restart it every 2-3 hours of browsing).
You mean a majority of US citizens would be prepared to elect an atheist? Yeah, right. This isn't about Bush vs. Gore - ALL the Republican and Democratic candidates are religious.
Qmail stems from a time when serious UNIXen were commercial and closed. Getting the libc source cost big money; fixes were not solicited.
When Qmail was release, glibc was more than a decade old. So though glibc might not have been as widely used as those of commercial Unix versions there were certainly plenty of opportunity to release it.
That said, most of the stuff he reimplemented is not stuff that belongs in libc, and quite a bit of it is pointless paranoia and just contributes to make the Qmail source hard to read.
A free market requires competition. If companies are allowed to exploit monopolies to reduce competition, there is no free market. Yes, that means regulation is often needed to ensure the market stays free, just as regulation is needed to ensure freedom in many other cases. Try imagine the chance of freedom of expression remaining without laws to prevent the government from restricting speech or restricting persons from using violence to suppress speech, for example.
The idea that freedom is possible without force or threat of force is only true in very limited cases, unless you are naive enough to believe in a world where everyone is prepared to respect the rights of others.
For that matter, phone usage in Norway is pretty cheap, and while Norway is small compared to Canada there's also only 4.5 million people, and there's GSM coverage even in the middle of the central mountain ranges, where nobody lives (to the point where they have to regularly issue warnings for people going for walking trips into the mountains not to rely on it as their only emergency preparation, in case the coverage drops due to bad weather)
The reason this worked in Norway is regulation far beyond what is being proposed in Canada: In Norway anyone can start a cellphone network and can demand roaming access from the licensees at cost + a limited profit margin, under the argument that since spectrum is a imited resource, anything else would restrict competition.
As a result, there are tens of cellphone companies, some of which owns their network, some which own parts of their network (where it's cost effective compared to the roaming costs) and some who only sell additional services on top of the other networks.
It's similar to the "local loop unbundling" for fixed line telephony in several European countries (where the companies owning the physical lines are required to sell access to those lines for customers who want to use a different provider at cost plus a limited profit margin again) where the argument is pretty much the same (you can't have everyone digging up streets to lay more cable, so it's either less competition or treat the local loop as a semi-shared resource).
These are typical examples of where regulation leads to more choice and far more competition, and thus a far better working market.
200 lines of code is sufficient to express fairly complex ideas. While there may be 200 line snippets that may constitute "fair use" if those 200 lines where a cohesive enough piece of work to be worth copying, I very much doubt it.
AFAIK "works created for public use" in the US would refer to works created by a US government agency.
It most certainly does NOT refer to works that are publicly posted, as in that case it would effectively negate copyright protection entirely, as the purpose of copyright is to protect exactly works that are published.
I you'd worked for me, I'd have had someone review everything you'd ever written for copyright infringement. A creative work is automatically copyrighted on publication. If no license is posted with it, you have no rights other than fair use. It's that simple. Copying the code into your own application for commercial use is not fair use.
To rephrase: The ONLY things giving you a right to copy is fair use or an explicit license. If your use falls outside fair use and you don't have an explicit license, you have infringed.
The UK only "opts out" of a few of those parts of directives that explicitly allow an opt-out - the UK can't legally opt out of implementing EU directives as it pleases, as when the UK joined the EU, it did so by adopting a law that by it's wording became part of the UK's constitutional framework.
The only legal way for the UK to not adopt a directive where they haven't explicitly negotiationed an opt out clause would be for Parliament to repeal the European Communities Act 1972, and by doing so seceding from the EU.
There's been a lot of debate in legal circles whether even that would be legal - one one hand the principle of parliamentary sovereignty in theory allows Parliament to pass laws overriding any law they see fit (while the UK does have a constitution it exists in the form of ordinary laws and court precedent, and so there are in theory nothing preventing Parliament from changing it the same way a normal law is passed), on the other hand the wording of the act has made some legal scholars claim that the act in effect repealed parliamentary sovereignty with respect to the European Union, because it was passed after the Parliament Act, and did effectively give EU law precedence over UK law wherever there's a conflict.
As much as I dislike the fingerprinting etc., I have never been treated badly by US immigration officials. I don't doubt that it happens, but just wanted to offer an alternative view. I fly London to San Francisco regularly (8-9 times so far this year, 6 or so last year), and the furthest they've gone was once asking me why I come so often to the US, with no follow up questions once I explained (they probably asked because I at that point only had stamps from SFO in my passport, and I had lots of them, - most other countries I go to don't stamp). They also ask the standard questions about what line of business I'm in etc., but that's it. Last time I got a tiny little bit of hassle because I'd forgotten to hand the visa waiver exit slip to the airline last time I left, but since I'd been admitted for 3 months and I was still within that period he only asked me to not do it again.
Exactly how does publishing her identity make a difference vs. directing peoples rage at the DA's office where it belongs?
Except where there is a direct and credible immediate danger to the community of not knowing someones identity (say a suspected serial killer that's free) I don't see any justification for republishing a suspects identity unless peoples AIM is to put them at risk of vigilante justice. To me, posting her identity online makes the posters the scum of the earth, and in the same category of assholes as this woman is if she's done what's been claimed. Frankly, if she deserves to be punished, then so do they.
None of the points you have listed make ANY difference. AT ALL. Or have YOU forgotten "innocent until proven guilty"?
There's a large difference between the name being possible to find by going to the right places, and having it plastered all over the place. What is the purpose? The only purpose I can see of posting their identity is that people hope that "someone" is going to do something with that information.
That's at best disgusting and makes people who does it scum in my eyes.
If law enforcement isn't doing their job, then you protest against law enforcement, you don't take enforcement into your own hands.
Law enforcement REFUSED to deal with it. And let's face it, laws and how they are enforced is very political. It's not unexpected for a vacuum to be filled.
That law enforcement didn't do anything is no excuse for vigilantism. If law enforcement doesn't do their job, you protest about law enforcement, not about someone you suspect of having done something wrong.
The US government puts people at risk all the time by publishing the names and addresses of people deemed to be "sex offenders" (I use this term lightly for the US, because of all the FUD and extremist politics).
Ahh... The old "someone else does it too" defense. I suppose this means you think it's ok to murder too, since some states have the death penalty.
Yes crowds can be dangerous. People can be dangerous, but keeping something that obviously has a large public interest a secret is wrong (and unrealistic). Sometimes you just got to let the chips fall where they may and find out what type of society we live in.
Lynch mobs rarely do research. There's plenty of examples where media has been directly responsible in causing attacks on people by publishing names and addresses or pictures which people could have easily found for themselves, but the kind of people who go out and do that kind of crap are not usually the same kind of people that put in the effort to find out their identities.
There IS a huge difference between making information available and making it easily accessible or pushing it in peoples faces.
Personally I don't want a society where people do the equivalent of shaking a red cloth in front of a bull regularly in the name of "public interest" - it's at best tasteless, and at worst dangerous. I strongly believe that anyone doing this should be equally responsible for any illegal act carried out as a result - hopefully that would be a deterrent.
Slashdot Mirror
Life sucked before I went to university in '94 and finally got an actual internet connection instead of just mail exchange...
Even Chinese border control makes you feel more welcome than the US.
And that's ignoring the occasional asshole behind the desk when visiting the US - it's not so much the behavior as the overall process. Even the nicest, friendliest US border guards (and I've come across a few who were really nice, and most are courteous enough, which is impressive when you come across someone who's clearly nearing the end of a shift with the kind of crap they have to deal with) still has to follow a procedure that makes visiting quite a few dictatorships seem nice and friendly.
He was talking about appearance, with the intent of passing easily through US border control, numbskull, seeing as the West seems stuck in the idea that muslims == dark features and so anyone lightskinned often find it easier to get through border control unchallenged.
People can "master" a subset of the language appropriate for what they need very quickly - few people EVER learn every quirky little feature.
I tend to consider a good thing, because even crappy ports help plug the holes that prevent Linux from being a full desktop alternative for people. Whenever the Linux penetration of the desktop gets large enough, competition will take care of making better ports a requirement. For now, getting stuff that's "good enough" is far more valuable than getting perfect ports.
The military are "just" following orders, and while they have a responsibility to refuse unlawful orders, ultimately with the way modern armies are structured it's unrealistic to assume most people will dare refuse even outright illegal orders and much less orders that are just ethically questionable.
Thus, if I was put in the situation of having to organize a defense against a technologically superior army, the first thing I'd do would be to decide to ignore parts of the Geneva conventions:
1) I'd specifically target officers. 2) I'd focus on hiding and finding way to hit civilians rather than spending time going after regular troops at all
Fighting face to face with regular troops simply makes no sense, as you'd be fighting a losing fight against troops that would endure far less losses than you. The only way to win in a situation like that is to find other ways to take the war to the enemy's home.
There's a good reason why the US face so much hostility around the world.
The "human cost" isn't only about suffering, but about sheer numbers. If you replace the loss of soldiers with the loss of machines you can quickly make more off, you change the nature of war dramatically.
I doubt I've ever had a problem following subtitles since I was maybe 8 or 9.
But then I grew up in Norway, and all foreign shows except programs for small children would be subtitled rather than dubbed. Seeing as a fairly significant percentage of programs shown are English language movies and series, it amounts to a lot of exposure to reading.
It's worth reiterating one point you make: There are tons of different versions of the iPod on the list. Specifically, each and every combination of colors and flash/disk and model is on there somewhere. As far as I know there are far more versions of iPod's than there are of Zune's. So even if a single Zune model every now and again shoots to the top, it means nothing. Unless there are suddenly 10+ different Zune versions overtaking the various iPod models on an ongoing basis, Apple still has the upper hand.
After some upgrade CPU usage has been going through the roof (and staying there) more and more frequently for me. Combined with the memory leaks it's now seriously close to the point where I'll start moving to some other browser. Problem is I don't like any of the alternatives - I use Opera for some things that tends to bring Firefox to it's knees, but I can't stand it's UI for regular usage... I really, really want to be able to stick to Firefox, but not if it means restarting my browser many times a day (it used to be once or twice a day - now either memory usage or persistent high CPU usage will cause me to restart it every 2-3 hours of browsing).
You mean a majority of US citizens would be prepared to elect an atheist? Yeah, right. This isn't about Bush vs. Gore - ALL the Republican and Democratic candidates are religious.
When Qmail was release, glibc was more than a decade old. So though glibc might not have been as widely used as those of commercial Unix versions there were certainly plenty of opportunity to release it.
That said, most of the stuff he reimplemented is not stuff that belongs in libc, and quite a bit of it is pointless paranoia and just contributes to make the Qmail source hard to read.
The idea that freedom is possible without force or threat of force is only true in very limited cases, unless you are naive enough to believe in a world where everyone is prepared to respect the rights of others.
The reason this worked in Norway is regulation far beyond what is being proposed in Canada: In Norway anyone can start a cellphone network and can demand roaming access from the licensees at cost + a limited profit margin, under the argument that since spectrum is a imited resource, anything else would restrict competition.
As a result, there are tens of cellphone companies, some of which owns their network, some which own parts of their network (where it's cost effective compared to the roaming costs) and some who only sell additional services on top of the other networks.
It's similar to the "local loop unbundling" for fixed line telephony in several European countries (where the companies owning the physical lines are required to sell access to those lines for customers who want to use a different provider at cost plus a limited profit margin again) where the argument is pretty much the same (you can't have everyone digging up streets to lay more cable, so it's either less competition or treat the local loop as a semi-shared resource).
These are typical examples of where regulation leads to more choice and far more competition, and thus a far better working market.
200 lines of code is sufficient to express fairly complex ideas. While there may be 200 line snippets that may constitute "fair use" if those 200 lines where a cohesive enough piece of work to be worth copying, I very much doubt it.
It most certainly does NOT refer to works that are publicly posted, as in that case it would effectively negate copyright protection entirely, as the purpose of copyright is to protect exactly works that are published.
To rephrase: The ONLY things giving you a right to copy is fair use or an explicit license. If your use falls outside fair use and you don't have an explicit license, you have infringed.
So in your world treating people with respect is "coddling and capitulation"? You sound like a really pleasant and friendly person.
The only legal way for the UK to not adopt a directive where they haven't explicitly negotiationed an opt out clause would be for Parliament to repeal the European Communities Act 1972, and by doing so seceding from the EU.
There's been a lot of debate in legal circles whether even that would be legal - one one hand the principle of parliamentary sovereignty in theory allows Parliament to pass laws overriding any law they see fit (while the UK does have a constitution it exists in the form of ordinary laws and court precedent, and so there are in theory nothing preventing Parliament from changing it the same way a normal law is passed), on the other hand the wording of the act has made some legal scholars claim that the act in effect repealed parliamentary sovereignty with respect to the European Union, because it was passed after the Parliament Act, and did effectively give EU law precedence over UK law wherever there's a conflict.
As much as I dislike the fingerprinting etc., I have never been treated badly by US immigration officials. I don't doubt that it happens, but just wanted to offer an alternative view. I fly London to San Francisco regularly (8-9 times so far this year, 6 or so last year), and the furthest they've gone was once asking me why I come so often to the US, with no follow up questions once I explained (they probably asked because I at that point only had stamps from SFO in my passport, and I had lots of them, - most other countries I go to don't stamp). They also ask the standard questions about what line of business I'm in etc., but that's it. Last time I got a tiny little bit of hassle because I'd forgotten to hand the visa waiver exit slip to the airline last time I left, but since I'd been admitted for 3 months and I was still within that period he only asked me to not do it again.
Different government agencies have different agendas. It's not like the government is one cohesive whole.
Except where there is a direct and credible immediate danger to the community of not knowing someones identity (say a suspected serial killer that's free) I don't see any justification for republishing a suspects identity unless peoples AIM is to put them at risk of vigilante justice. To me, posting her identity online makes the posters the scum of the earth, and in the same category of assholes as this woman is if she's done what's been claimed. Frankly, if she deserves to be punished, then so do they.
There's a large difference between the name being possible to find by going to the right places, and having it plastered all over the place. What is the purpose? The only purpose I can see of posting their identity is that people hope that "someone" is going to do something with that information.
That's at best disgusting and makes people who does it scum in my eyes.
If law enforcement isn't doing their job, then you protest against law enforcement, you don't take enforcement into your own hands.
That law enforcement didn't do anything is no excuse for vigilantism. If law enforcement doesn't do their job, you protest about law enforcement, not about someone you suspect of having done something wrong.
The US government puts people at risk all the time by publishing the names and addresses of people deemed to be "sex offenders" (I use this term lightly for the US, because of all the FUD and extremist politics).
Ahh... The old "someone else does it too" defense. I suppose this means you think it's ok to murder too, since some states have the death penalty.
Yes crowds can be dangerous. People can be dangerous, but keeping something that obviously has a large public interest a secret is wrong (and unrealistic). Sometimes you just got to let the chips fall where they may and find out what type of society we live in.
Lynch mobs rarely do research. There's plenty of examples where media has been directly responsible in causing attacks on people by publishing names and addresses or pictures which people could have easily found for themselves, but the kind of people who go out and do that kind of crap are not usually the same kind of people that put in the effort to find out their identities.
There IS a huge difference between making information available and making it easily accessible or pushing it in peoples faces.
Personally I don't want a society where people do the equivalent of shaking a red cloth in front of a bull regularly in the name of "public interest" - it's at best tasteless, and at worst dangerous. I strongly believe that anyone doing this should be equally responsible for any illegal act carried out as a result - hopefully that would be a deterrent.