The two-party system is NOT part of the American way. The strangehold of the two party system is what gets all kind of bad politicians - from both sides - to get elected without having real positions on issues, and then to pass laws that suck because it's politicially infeasible to vote against your party. It didn't use to be that way.
"It didn't use to be that way" when? Name a single time in American history in which there were three or more viable parties and it wasn't a transition from the old two to the new two.
I am not defending the two party system, but I don't see any historic evidence for your claim that America used to be different in this respect.
Okay, so only a dumbass or a panicky man buys the books. But both the innocent and the guilty panic when they believe they're suspects. So again, the books aren't evidence about guilt.
Can you cite any examples of a production quality closed source filesystem embedded in a commercial operating system spontaneously failing after the operating system's support is dropped or the manufacturer goes out of business?
No. Can you name any production quality open source filesystems that have similarly failed?
If not, I'll stick by my claim. Open source projects seem less worrisome when something bad happens to the principal developers. The code is there, and if the project is useful to enough folk, we can expect development to continue.
Oh, you mean like the blood splatters that were found in HIS car that has been confirmed as HER blood?
And the fact that the rear seats are missing from said car?
And the fact that he actively attempted to hide the car from police?
And the fact that he had books on how law enforcement handles homicide investigations?
The first three facts are pretty incriminating, but the books are horrible evidence.
His wife was missing. They were in the process of a messy divorce. Even if he were innocent, he would realize that he was a likely suspect. In that situation, it makes perfect sense to get some books and learn about the process. (Note: he acquired the books a few days after his wife went missing.)
I'm extrapolating greatly here, but if he's a common geek-type, perhaps she left or ran away because he was paying too much attention to work and not the relationship - though that doesn't explain leaving the child behind.
Boy, you are extrapolating. They were separated. She was dropping the kids off. The article does not say why, but it could certainly be for a visit. Why guess that she was abandoning her children?
When an OSS maintainer gives up, you can still maintain the software precisely because you have the source so that there are ways of maintaining the software.
Actually no.
I can not maintain the code.
He didn't say that you could maintain the code. He said there are ways of maintaining the software. This includes input from better qualified and better motivated programmers. And so you and I may rely on the work of others on reiserfs, just as we have been doing up until now.
But with a closed source filesystem, we'd have a lot more worries.
Re:just wondering?
on
Online Revenge
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
No. Copyright doesn't work like that.
Suppose I write a book and sell a copy to you. Even if I express no copyright or licensing restrictions, you do not have the right to distribute that text. (You have first sale rights to loan, sell or give the book, but not to distribute copies of the entire text.) The same applies to photos. If you acquire photos for which I hold the copyright, you have no legal right to distribute those photos absent some explicit agreement with me.
The copyright holder retains distribution rights unless there is an explicit agreement otherwise. (The fact that software comes with the inevitable shrinkwrap terms and DVDs come with reminders that all rights have been reserved probably explains why folks think copyrights have to be expressly claimed. But it isn't so in any Berne convention signatory, like the US and UK.)
the Seller sold the buyer the equipment... the harddrive thusly becoming the property of the "buyer"....Didn't the contents of the harddrive also became the property of the buyer????
Assuming that is correct... would it really be "wrong" for the buyer to utilize the contents of the drive to his choosing????
No. The buyer has put up a website with someone else's photos on it. This is an apparent (if minor) copyright infringement if nothing else. He's redistributing copyrighted work. (The seller is presumably the copyright holder for some but not all of these photos.)
At least in the U.S., this would be a pretty minor complaint, since the damages due to copyright infringement are negligible. But literally speaking, it is nonetheless an infringement.
Anyway, there are other possible infringements as well. I don't know diddly about UK privacy laws, for instance, but it's not implausible he's violating those. Libel is also a possibility.
Huh? Where the heck did the parent say school officials should suspend you for building a Duke Nukem map?
Maybe he's right or maybe he's wrong about whether schools should be concerned with illegal activity away from school grounds. But your example has nothing to do with his claim.
It would be cowardly if we lived in a world where people didn't get punished for what they said. In this world, it's just common sense.
Huh? It's not cowardly because you really can get hurt by saying the wrong thing?
I thought trying to avoid harm rather than take a stand was more or less the definition of "cowardly". Don't get me wrong. Anonymity has its uses. But choosing anonymity in order to avoid bad consequences is cowardice (or at least "un-brave").
I'll admit that I'm not particularly brave, but let's be honest about what bravery and cowardice are.
This is a war of genocide- originally genocide between Islamic sects, but now it's spilled outside of their borders. The only choice is which sect commits the genocide, not whether the genocide will happen or not. It will.
Golly. I don't see any reason to continue this discussion. I could end by calling you a few names, but you will remain confident in your vision and nothing would change.
Yes, indeed. That would work. Just start killing innocent family members and the bin Laden would surrender and other Islamic terrorists would put down their arms. That's what would happen.
Not a newly justified hatred of the US. Not worldwide condemnation for an undeniable terrorist act. No sir, instead, the terrorists would see that they cannot win against the US and they would give up and we would live in peace and harmony with our Islamic brothers.
This religion also happens to be a political system, which is why it's so dangerous and why it is so fast growing. The prophecy that makes it both, the promise that makes it both, is a promise of justice and one world government from one single city.
Huh? What prophecy is that? You can give a reputable source that says Islam aims for world takeover, can you?
Take out that city- make it so that there is NO hope of establishing the "Nation of Islam" anytime within the next 1000 years- and you will remove that promise. Two cobalt warheads, fired from the US on ICBMs, would do it. For humanitarian reasons, you's want to hold off a bit- give the people time to evacuate first, after all, you're trying to kill the theology not the people. But in the end, the result is the same- the ancient trade centers of Mecca and Medina, and a huge amount of the desert around them, glowing in the dark for the next 1000 years as a testament to all followers of all religions as to what happens when you take money to do terrorism.
Destroy holy sites in order to stop Islamic terrorism. Great idea! That has to bring peace!
Well, the difference between my tactics and Bush's isn't much. The only difference is that the guilty have gone free and the innocent have suffered under Bush.
Right, no innocents suffer when you attempt to destroy an entire religion by destroying its holy sites. After all, all them muslims are guilty in their hearts, aren't they?
If you've got 15 names, murder 10. Then drop a Usenet post with a couple of scene shots saying "There's five names left on my list. If you want to know if yours is on it, just keep spamming." That would stop much more than 15 spammers. (Or at least they'd cower.)
You'd get better effect if you murdered 15 and claimed to have a list of twenty.
I see. Rather than defend your previous statement that they should have been shot down over heavily populated areas, you'll make a new hypothetical. You'll assume that three jets could have intercepted each craft in an unpopulated area and forced it down.
Basically, 9-11 proved that this administration is incompetant.
Nonsense. In fact, the immediate response to 9/11 was fairly competent (Bush's goat story notwithstanding). After 9/11, there was actually a ray of hope for the administration. They reacted with surprising restraint. This was the one time when I was pleasantly surprised by the Bush administration.
Failure to intercept the jets was not an indictment of the administration. I'm certain that Clinton's military would have done no better at all.
The proof of incompetence came later. And in spades. And we'll pay for it for a long time to come.
Tactical situations involving national security should *always* err on the side of caution....Add to that a flight path into restricted airspace after intercept- and I want those soldiers shooting first, not asking questions of the chain of command.
Shooting down a civilian airliner without asking questions is erring on the side of caution?
Suppose that they had intercepted each of those planes. When did they enter restricted airspace? Probably when they were over a heavily populated area. So, your notion of caution is: destroy the civilian airliner and let it crash into a populated area because they might be planning something bad.
Wow. I was with you up until this. Speaking of straw man arguments.
I belive the term you are looking for is "ad hominem": attaking the messenger rather than the message. But it's not and ad hominem if it's true.
You're right. It was not a straw man, since you weren't caricaturing an argument but rather a group.
It is not really an ad hominem either, because you weren't refuting an argument by attacking the messenger. (By the way, ad hominem is a fallacy regardless of whether it's true or not---the fallacy is about relevance, not truth.)
Instead, you said: The media isn't biased when they interview wacky nutjobs because wacky nutjobs are representative of the NRA. This isn't logical fallacy. It's simply a false statement, presumably due to prejudice and bias.
Rather than spending vast amounts of money on politics and fighting all forms of gun control, they should spend that cash talking about the responsiblities of gun ownership and the importance of getting training in the storage, maintainance and use of firearms.
In fact, the NRA spends considerable resources on training and safety programs. This fact isn't particularly newsworthy, however, at least not compared to their political lobbying. So one hears about political efforts much more often than safety training.
You might argue they still don't do enough in this area, but the fact is they don't ignore it. See http://www.nrahq.org/safety/.
Well, that is a rather accurate chariacature of the NRA. Rather than talking about gun education and the responsiblities of gun ownership, all of their political efforts focus on fighting off all forms of gun control. They talk about firearms as if they were magical firearms, guranteed to keep away robbers and evil governments.
Wow. I was with you up until this. Speaking of straw man arguments.
Neither side of the discussion is well-served by caricaturing the other side. Instead of pretending that gun-rights advocates are right-wing nutjobs, why not dispute what was at issue? Namely, the claim that the media only interviews nutjobs when presenting the pro-gun side.
Well, the big difference in US and Chinese censorship is: the US rarely puts their own journalists in jail for what they write.
On the other hand, there are more than a few foreigner journalists in Guantanamo Bay. A recent This American Life episode discusses a case where two satirists were held in Guantanamo for three years, largely based on two parodies they published. (Look about three minutes into the file.)
Also, "Reporters Without Borders said six Iraqi journalists were arrested by U.S. troops and held for months without charges, legal representation or visitors." (from here).
I recall a recent comment on an NPR news program: The United States is currently holding a remarkable number of journalists. Fewer than China, but within the top five nations of jailed journalists, perhaps second or third. Of course, the overwhelming majority of the jailed journalists are not American citizens.
I am sorry that I can't find the article at present and so perhaps you will doubt my claim. I wouldn't blame you and I wish I knew where I heard the claim.
Again, are China and the US moral equals when it comes to censorship? No, certainly not. On this, you and I agree. But you asked for examples of US government censorship. Now, jailing journalists for what they write in other countries is not exactly censorship, but it's troubling nonetheless.
What is most interesting, at least in my opinion, is that economic success, which we once thought of as solely the result of a free market, is also attainable by a heavy-handed communist society. China is soon to be the world's economic leader with its billion or so people and growing technological prowess.
What makes you think China is communist? Sure, they talk about socialism, but capitalism is widespread. There are "special economic regions" like Shenzhen and Shanghai with their own stock exchanges. Even outside of these areas, privately owned stores, restaurants and internet cafes are everywhere.
Economic development in China is primarily due to the increased influence of capitalism. It is not a success story for Marxist theory.
Note: I don't really have a dog in this fight. I'm not arguing whether Marxism is correct or not. But in this case, it seems pretty clear that China's success is not confirmation of Marx's theory (or Mao's interpretations).
I'm sorry, but campus political correctness in the US doesn't even come close to the suffering the Chinese have had to endure.
And this long litany of suffering has what to do with internet censorship?
I don't know whether your allegations about the breadth of Maoist censorship are correct, but I'll assume so. Regardless, these claims must be about the cultural revolution and not about modern China.
Chinese censorship of the internet is a bad thing. Sometimes, people are even jailed for what they write. That is a terrible fact.
But it is not at all the moral equivalent of the cultural revolution. And since the discussion today isn't about those dark times, I don't see why your post was relevant.
Slashdot Mirror
The two-party system is NOT part of the American way. The strangehold of the two party system is what gets all kind of bad politicians - from both sides - to get elected without having real positions on issues, and then to pass laws that suck because it's politicially infeasible to vote against your party. It didn't use to be that way.
"It didn't use to be that way" when? Name a single time in American history in which there were three or more viable parties and it wasn't a transition from the old two to the new two.
I am not defending the two party system, but I don't see any historic evidence for your claim that America used to be different in this respect.
Okay, so only a dumbass or a panicky man buys the books. But both the innocent and the guilty panic when they believe they're suspects. So again, the books aren't evidence about guilt.
Can you cite any examples of a production quality closed source filesystem embedded in a commercial operating system spontaneously failing after the operating system's support is dropped or the manufacturer goes out of business?
No. Can you name any production quality open source filesystems that have similarly failed?
If not, I'll stick by my claim. Open source projects seem less worrisome when something bad happens to the principal developers. The code is there, and if the project is useful to enough folk, we can expect development to continue.
Oh, you mean like the blood splatters that were found in HIS car that has been confirmed as HER blood?
And the fact that the rear seats are missing from said car?
And the fact that he actively attempted to hide the car from police?
And the fact that he had books on how law enforcement handles homicide investigations?
The first three facts are pretty incriminating, but the books are horrible evidence.
His wife was missing. They were in the process of a messy divorce. Even if he were innocent, he would realize that he was a likely suspect. In that situation, it makes perfect sense to get some books and learn about the process. (Note: he acquired the books a few days after his wife went missing.)
I don't see that the books are relevant at all.
I'm extrapolating greatly here, but if he's a common geek-type, perhaps she left or ran away because he was paying too much attention to work and not the relationship - though that doesn't explain leaving the child behind.
Boy, you are extrapolating. They were separated. She was dropping the kids off. The article does not say why, but it could certainly be for a visit. Why guess that she was abandoning her children?
The article said there were groceries in the van. It did not say that they were bought after she left Hans's house.
When an OSS maintainer gives up, you can still maintain the software precisely because you have the source so that there are ways of maintaining the software.
Actually no.
I can not maintain the code.
He didn't say that you could maintain the code. He said there are ways of maintaining the software. This includes input from better qualified and better motivated programmers. And so you and I may rely on the work of others on reiserfs, just as we have been doing up until now.
But with a closed source filesystem, we'd have a lot more worries.
No. Copyright doesn't work like that.
Suppose I write a book and sell a copy to you. Even if I express no copyright or licensing restrictions, you do not have the right to distribute that text. (You have first sale rights to loan, sell or give the book, but not to distribute copies of the entire text.) The same applies to photos. If you acquire photos for which I hold the copyright, you have no legal right to distribute those photos absent some explicit agreement with me.
The copyright holder retains distribution rights unless there is an explicit agreement otherwise. (The fact that software comes with the inevitable shrinkwrap terms and DVDs come with reminders that all rights have been reserved probably explains why folks think copyrights have to be expressly claimed. But it isn't so in any Berne convention signatory, like the US and UK.)
the Seller sold the buyer the equipment... the harddrive thusly becoming the property of the "buyer"....Didn't the contents of the harddrive also became the property of the buyer????
Assuming that is correct... would it really be "wrong" for the buyer to utilize the contents of the drive to his choosing????
No. The buyer has put up a website with someone else's photos on it. This is an apparent (if minor) copyright infringement if nothing else. He's redistributing copyrighted work. (The seller is presumably the copyright holder for some but not all of these photos.)
At least in the U.S., this would be a pretty minor complaint, since the damages due to copyright infringement are negligible. But literally speaking, it is nonetheless an infringement.
Anyway, there are other possible infringements as well. I don't know diddly about UK privacy laws, for instance, but it's not implausible he's violating those. Libel is also a possibility.
AOL is the internet.
But I think it costs more than $29.99.
I post to Usenet with an unobfuscated email address. I'm not particularly worried about your threat.
Hell, my email address is visible here on slashdot! Why do you suppose I am scared of making it public?
Huh? Where the heck did the parent say school officials should suspend you for building a Duke Nukem map?
Maybe he's right or maybe he's wrong about whether schools should be concerned with illegal activity away from school grounds. But your example has nothing to do with his claim.
It would be cowardly if we lived in a world where people didn't get punished for what they said. In this world, it's just common sense.
Huh? It's not cowardly because you really can get hurt by saying the wrong thing?
I thought trying to avoid harm rather than take a stand was more or less the definition of "cowardly". Don't get me wrong. Anonymity has its uses. But choosing anonymity in order to avoid bad consequences is cowardice (or at least "un-brave").
I'll admit that I'm not particularly brave, but let's be honest about what bravery and cowardice are.
This is a war of genocide- originally genocide between Islamic sects, but now it's spilled outside of their borders. The only choice is which sect commits the genocide, not whether the genocide will happen or not. It will.
Golly. I don't see any reason to continue this discussion. I could end by calling you a few names, but you will remain confident in your vision and nothing would change.
Yes, indeed. That would work. Just start killing innocent family members and the bin Laden would surrender and other Islamic terrorists would put down their arms. That's what would happen.
Not a newly justified hatred of the US. Not worldwide condemnation for an undeniable terrorist act. No sir, instead, the terrorists would see that they cannot win against the US and they would give up and we would live in peace and harmony with our Islamic brothers.
Another winning strategy! Congrats!
This religion also happens to be a political system, which is why it's so dangerous and why it is so fast growing. The prophecy that makes it both, the promise that makes it both, is a promise of justice and one world government from one single city.
Huh? What prophecy is that? You can give a reputable source that says Islam aims for world takeover, can you?
Take out that city- make it so that there is NO hope of establishing the "Nation of Islam" anytime within the next 1000 years- and you will remove that promise. Two cobalt warheads, fired from the US on ICBMs, would do it. For humanitarian reasons, you's want to hold off a bit- give the people time to evacuate first, after all, you're trying to kill the theology not the people. But in the end, the result is the same- the ancient trade centers of Mecca and Medina, and a huge amount of the desert around them, glowing in the dark for the next 1000 years as a testament to all followers of all religions as to what happens when you take money to do terrorism.
Destroy holy sites in order to stop Islamic terrorism. Great idea! That has to bring peace!
Well, the difference between my tactics and Bush's isn't much. The only difference is that the guilty have gone free and the innocent have suffered under Bush.
Right, no innocents suffer when you attempt to destroy an entire religion by destroying its holy sites. After all, all them muslims are guilty in their hearts, aren't they?
Their "restraint" has given us 5 years of war for what should have been a 24 hour retaliatory strike against a religion.
A retaliatory strike against a religion? Twenty-four hours and we'd have subdued Islam, the fastest growing faith in the world?
I never thought I'd say this to anybody in the world, but I'm happy Bush is in office and not you.
If you've got 15 names, murder 10. Then drop a Usenet post with a couple of scene shots saying "There's five names left on my list. If you want to know if yours is on it, just keep spamming." That would stop much more than 15 spammers. (Or at least they'd cower.)
You'd get better effect if you murdered 15 and claimed to have a list of twenty.
I see. Rather than defend your previous statement that they should have been shot down over heavily populated areas, you'll make a new hypothetical. You'll assume that three jets could have intercepted each craft in an unpopulated area and forced it down.
Basically, 9-11 proved that this administration is incompetant.
Nonsense. In fact, the immediate response to 9/11 was fairly competent (Bush's goat story notwithstanding). After 9/11, there was actually a ray of hope for the administration. They reacted with surprising restraint. This was the one time when I was pleasantly surprised by the Bush administration.
Failure to intercept the jets was not an indictment of the administration. I'm certain that Clinton's military would have done no better at all.
The proof of incompetence came later. And in spades. And we'll pay for it for a long time to come.
Tactical situations involving national security should *always* err on the side of caution....Add to that a flight path into restricted airspace after intercept- and I want those soldiers shooting first, not asking questions of the chain of command.
Shooting down a civilian airliner without asking questions is erring on the side of caution?
Suppose that they had intercepted each of those planes. When did they enter restricted airspace? Probably when they were over a heavily populated area. So, your notion of caution is: destroy the civilian airliner and let it crash into a populated area because they might be planning something bad.
Wow. I was with you up until this. Speaking of straw man arguments.
I belive the term you are looking for is "ad hominem": attaking the messenger rather than the message. But it's not and ad hominem if it's true.
You're right. It was not a straw man, since you weren't caricaturing an argument but rather a group.
It is not really an ad hominem either, because you weren't refuting an argument by attacking the messenger. (By the way, ad hominem is a fallacy regardless of whether it's true or not---the fallacy is about relevance, not truth.)
Instead, you said: The media isn't biased when they interview wacky nutjobs because wacky nutjobs are representative of the NRA. This isn't logical fallacy. It's simply a false statement, presumably due to prejudice and bias.
Rather than spending vast amounts of money on politics and fighting all forms of gun control, they should spend that cash talking about the responsiblities of gun ownership and the importance of getting training in the storage, maintainance and use of firearms.
In fact, the NRA spends considerable resources on training and safety programs. This fact isn't particularly newsworthy, however, at least not compared to their political lobbying. So one hears about political efforts much more often than safety training.
You might argue they still don't do enough in this area, but the fact is they don't ignore it. See http://www.nrahq.org/safety/.
Well, that is a rather accurate chariacature of the NRA. Rather than talking about gun education and the responsiblities of gun ownership, all of their political efforts focus on fighting off all forms of gun control. They talk about firearms as if they were magical firearms, guranteed to keep away robbers and evil governments.
Wow. I was with you up until this. Speaking of straw man arguments.
Neither side of the discussion is well-served by caricaturing the other side. Instead of pretending that gun-rights advocates are right-wing nutjobs, why not dispute what was at issue? Namely, the claim that the media only interviews nutjobs when presenting the pro-gun side.
Well, the big difference in US and Chinese censorship is: the US rarely puts their own journalists in jail for what they write.
On the other hand, there are more than a few foreigner journalists in Guantanamo Bay. A recent This American Life episode discusses a case where two satirists were held in Guantanamo for three years, largely based on two parodies they published. (Look about three minutes into the file.)
Also, "Reporters Without Borders said six Iraqi journalists were arrested by U.S. troops and held for months without charges, legal representation or visitors." (from here).
I recall a recent comment on an NPR news program: The United States is currently holding a remarkable number of journalists. Fewer than China, but within the top five nations of jailed journalists, perhaps second or third. Of course, the overwhelming majority of the jailed journalists are not American citizens.
I am sorry that I can't find the article at present and so perhaps you will doubt my claim. I wouldn't blame you and I wish I knew where I heard the claim.
Again, are China and the US moral equals when it comes to censorship? No, certainly not. On this, you and I agree. But you asked for examples of US government censorship. Now, jailing journalists for what they write in other countries is not exactly censorship, but it's troubling nonetheless.
What is most interesting, at least in my opinion, is that economic success, which we once thought of as solely the result of a free market, is also attainable by a heavy-handed communist society. China is soon to be the world's economic leader with its billion or so people and growing technological prowess.
What makes you think China is communist? Sure, they talk about socialism, but capitalism is widespread. There are "special economic regions" like Shenzhen and Shanghai with their own stock exchanges. Even outside of these areas, privately owned stores, restaurants and internet cafes are everywhere.
Economic development in China is primarily due to the increased influence of capitalism. It is not a success story for Marxist theory.
Note: I don't really have a dog in this fight. I'm not arguing whether Marxism is correct or not. But in this case, it seems pretty clear that China's success is not confirmation of Marx's theory (or Mao's interpretations).
I'm sorry, but campus political correctness in the US doesn't even come close to the suffering the Chinese have had to endure.
And this long litany of suffering has what to do with internet censorship?
I don't know whether your allegations about the breadth of Maoist censorship are correct, but I'll assume so. Regardless, these claims must be about the cultural revolution and not about modern China.
Chinese censorship of the internet is a bad thing. Sometimes, people are even jailed for what they write. That is a terrible fact.
But it is not at all the moral equivalent of the cultural revolution. And since the discussion today isn't about those dark times, I don't see why your post was relevant.