The question of whether kazaa is, in fact, violating the law should be settled in court somewhere, and somehow it doesn't seem like vanatu is the venue.
That can only be settled on a per-country basis. We already know that they're not breaking the law in the Netherland (at least not by operating a file sharing service, they might be parking illegally or assassinating rivals for all I know).
Only the Vanatu courts can determine whether they're doing anything illegal in Vanatu. Only the Autralian courts can determine whether they're doing anything illegal in Autralia, onlythe US courts can determine whether they're doing anything illegal in the USA and only the Iraqi courts can determine whether they're doing anything illegal in Iraq. Of course, deciding that they are doing somethign illegal in any particular country doesn't automatically give that country the power to do anything about it.
There's no one universal answer that can be "settled in court somewhere".
At risk of going off-topic, can you explain "mens rea" and "actus reus". I could go back to the dictionary for a definition, but based on this post, I think I'd rather hear your explanation.
In general, a crime has two components. The actus reus, which is the act itself, and the mens rea, which is the state of mind.
For example, the actus reus for theft is taking someone else's property. The mens rea is intending to permanently deprive them of the property.
Some crimes don't require mens rea, generally because the legislature either were off on a crusade and didn't want any "loopholes" or because there is some genuine policy issue at stake.
While that statement is technically correct, copyright infringement denies the copyright owner their legal right to control their intellectual property, and is therefore quite close to the dictionary definition of larceny.
Okay, so you agree that copyright infringement isn't theft, although I take it you want to hold onto a position of "it's quite close to coming under a definition of larceny I managed to dig out"?
I suppose it rests upon whether you consider intangible works of equal status to material ones.
NO.
Valuing intangible works a lot doesn't turn copyright infringement into theft. Valuing them a really obessive amount doesn't turn it into murder either.
If you take from me, without my permission, without any legal right to do so and with the intention of permanently depriving me of it, a scrap of paper that I own that is of no particular value to me nor to anyone else then that is theft.
If instead of a scrap piece of paper it's a love letter of great personal value to me but no economic value to anyone, still theft.
If instead of that it's a valuable work of art, still theft.
If you copy something of mine then that is not theft, no matter how valuable the work is, no matter how devastating the effect is on me.
If you break my arm then that's not theft, even though my arm is of great value to me.
If you smash all the windows in my house that is not theft, even if the effect on me is essentially the same as if you'd managed to somehow remove the windows and run of with them (which would be theft).
Theft is a different offence to copyright infringement, and to murder, criminal damage, rape, treason, etc etc etc.
This is not about value. They are different offences. The mens rea differs. The actus reus differs. The available penalties differ. They are not the same.
If you want to convince people that copyright infringement is every bit as serious as theft then go ahead. But pretending it is theft just detracts from your point, because it gets you sidetracked. It's like vegetarians saying "meat is murder" it might be great for a giggle with other vegetarians, show how committed you are etc. but with anyone not already in agreement with you it just sets eyes rolling and leads the discussion awawy from what presumably actually matters to you i.e. that you think copyright infringement is a bad thing.
That statement shows a frightening lack of awareness. I'd expect someone who's supporting the position to at least know that these people are definitely not being held as POWs.
You're citing a web site that doesn't even know what an acronym is (I find it amusing that, technically, they do know that an acronym has to be a pronounceable word, but they have a blurb on their web site to claim that isn't the case in order to make themselves look less stupid...at least to the ignorant masses), to "prove" that a journalist supposedly doesn't know how to pluralize an abbreviation? Simply amazing.
10 years ago I would have agreed with you, but I think the hordes of people who liked the word "acronym" but could never remember what it meant beyond that it had something to do with initial letters have effectively changed the common use meaning of the word.
More surprising I think is the web site's usage of "indisputably". They explicitly recognise that there are people (including lexicographers) who stick with the original meaning of the word "acronym" and they must be able to work out that those people would say that FBI is not an acronym. Yet in the same paragraph they say that it "indisputably" is, without any arguments to back up their claim or anything. Weird.
Linux community and many open source projects simply use GPL without much thinking, but that prevents people from writing commercial software and using that existing code in their code.
Microsoft's licences also mostly prevent people from writing commercial software (or any other software) and using Microsoft's existing code in their code. Believe it or not, Word isn't released as public domain.
GPL gives you a lot more freedoms than Microsoft's licensing does. If you feel it's still not enough then I have sympathy with that, but suggesting that Microsoft have a point about the GPL license being restrictive is absurd.
However, ZDnet is not written for geeks, it is written for (perhaps the geekier side) of the general public. Hence, when they use the term desktop computer, they are referencing a simpler definition [computeruser.com], that includes Macintoshes.
My idea of a desktop computer would include a Macintosh too. What is this other definition some people are supposedly using?
Once he's convicted, he can probably count on a civil suit filed by the law firm.
A civil action would add little to the criminal case in either deterrence or vengeance and it is very unlikely that he has anything worth suing him for. A civil suit would just be throwing money (or billable time which could have been money) to the wind.
Re:Do not pass go, do not collect $200
on
Dow vs. Parody
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· Score: 2
Agreed, they even put the kind of totally outrageous statements that only a corporation run by people with no sense of morality could make. How could anyone be expected to distinguish this from the real Dow Chemical?
The OSD would apply to patents that the licensor owns. I reject the notion that some third party can make your software non-OSD-compliant by filing for a patent. If we let that happen, there'd be no Open Source software at all.
If you're trying to establish which software provides certain freedoms then whether it's the author or someone else who has restricted those freedoms is irrelevant. What's the point of being able to identify something as being "open source software" if potentially none of the freedoms that are supposedly the characteristics of open source software are in fact present?
I reject the notion that some third party can make your software non-OSD-compliant by filing for a patent. If we let that happen, there'd be no Open Source software at all.
I don't care whether or not it's "OSD-compliant" I care whether I have the freedoms that that implies.
You seem to be trying to apply the definition in such a way as to ignore whether it achieves anything (and yes I know who wrote the definition).
So, just to be clear on this, fire practices are illegal in your country because the obvious result of raising the alarm is that people stampede to the exits, possibly crushing each other on the way? Or are you suggesting that this crushing somehow occurs only if the shouting of fire is less official?
I have been involved in fire practices with no prior warning in crowded premises before now without any stampeding or crushing. I'm intrigued as to why you would consider a stampede to be the "obvious" outcome, sounds like more attention needs to be paid to education and, yes, to practicing ahead of the real thing.
I don't think so; an OS is those utilities PLUS the kernel.
That's what he said, though the first sentence was rather clumsy :
"no, the kernel is the kernel, and the os are all the apps debian wrote to interact with the kernel and the kernel."
those last 3 words are to include the kernel as part of the os.
Well, that isn't my argument. I never stated a position in favor of either copyright or GPL. In actuality, my argument is "if you're going to advocate the GPL, you are also advocating copyright law, whether you like it or not".
That doesn't make any sense. If someone dislikes copyright laws and believes that the GPL helps to mitigate against the problems that they associate with copyright laws then they are in no way contradicting themselves by both supporting the GPL whilst copyright laws remain in place and supporting the abolition of copyright laws (thus rendering the GPL no longer necessary for THEIR purposes; the fact that copyright law + GPL could provide something that some other people might consider overall good is irrelevant).
To try an analogy, remembering that you don't have to agree with their view that copyright is a bad thing in order to appreciate whether they're being consistent; suppose that there exists a horrible lethal disease. It cause massive suffering and slow death. Suppose that a vaccine against the disease can be made, but in order to do so you have to make use of the germs of the disease itself. Now suppose that the vaccine has some extra effect on top of protecting against the disease, perhaps it also helps you build up immunity to some less serious diseases. Now, if someone both supports use of the vaccine to fight against the disease for so long as the disease is around and supports eliminating the disease as an even better long term goal, are they being inconsistent?
Again, you do not have to believe that copyright is analogous to a horrible disease to assess whether those that do are being consistent. The vaccine won't be possible without the disease, the vaccine gives benefits that will then no longer exist, but if their primary goal is eradication of the disease... where's the inconsistency?
Sauron's fair form was lost to him after the forging of the rings, but before his defeat by the Last Alliance. From "Akallabeth" concerning the fall of Numenor :
For Sauron himself was filled with great fear at the wrath of the Valar, and the doom that Eru laid upon sea and land. It was greater far than aught he had looked for, hoping only for the death of the Numenoreans and the defeat of their proud king. And Sauron, sitting in his black seat in the midst of the Temple, had laughed when he heard the trumpets of Ar-Pharazon sounding for battle; and again he had laughed when he heard the thunder of the storm; and a third time he laughed at his own thought, thinking what he would now do in the world, being rid of the Edain for ever, he was taken in the midst of his mirth, and his seat and the temple fell into the abyss. But Sauron was not of mortal flesh, and though he was robbed now of that shape in which he had wrought so great an evil, so that he could never again appear fair to the eyes of Men, yet his spirit arose out of the deep and passed as a shadow and a black wind over the sea, and came back to Middle-earth and to Mordor that was his home. There he took up again his great Ring in Barad-dur, and dwelt there, dark and silent, until he wrought himself a new guise, an image of malice and hatred made visible; and the Eye of Sauron the Terrible few could endure.
And in similar words from "Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age" (also by Tolkien of course) :
There now he brooded in the dark, until he had wrought for himself a new shape; and it was terrible, for his fair semblance had departed for ever when he was cast into the abyss at the drowning of Numenor. He took up again the great Ring and clothed himself in power; and the malice of the Eye of Sauron few even of the great among Elves and Men could endure.
It does go on to talk about him wrestling with Gil-Galad and Elendil and of the ring being cut from his hand so obviously there was more to him than just the Eye, but it wasn't fair of form, whatever it was.
Linus seems pretty smart and reasonable. I find it disappointing that he so smugly suggests there is no God. Just because he cannot see the hand of God at work, he reasons it is not there.
Yes, let's hope that he's more open minded about fairies, unicorns and the Easter Bunny.
I wonder if Linux would have been the phenomena it is today if Linus had been brought up in evolution-bashing Kansas...
Yes, but he'd be saying "Linux isn't designed, the reason it works is because we have God on our side. We have lots of changes coming from people interested in pulling the project in different directions, including me, but He guides us to accept only the best final outcome. Look at Sun, they're doomed to failure because they try to follow their own narrow path instead of putting faith in the Lord..." etc. etc.
I think you must have only read the summary. They weren't really talking about evolution (at least not evolution of life forms), they were talking about software design using evolution as an analogy.
I'd say it was interesting to give some insight into the personalities involved, not much else though. Certainly nothing profound.
You're thinking about contract law. Copyright law says "this thing is owned by the copyright holder, and he can prevent anyone he wants from getting access to it" (basically). The only variant that exists in copyright law is the concept of "public domain": a person who would otherwise hold copyright over something can put that thing into the public domain, in which case no one has differential rights to that thing. Contract law says "different parties have different rights, resources, and privileges, and they can negotiate exchanges of those rights, resources, and privileges under these rules." Copyright grants a privilege to one party that is excluded from other parties. Contract law influences how the copyright holder can grant his priveleges to other people.
Okay, it's some years since I got my law degree and it's in UK law whereas I would guess you're talking from an American perspective but imho you're just plain wrong. Granting someone permission to copy and distribute your copyrighted work does not in any way require a contract just as giving someone a gift doesn't require contract law and telling someone they can enter your house, use your computer, or borrow your car does not require contract law. You can use a contract in any of those situations but if all you're doing is giving permissions then contract simply doesn't come into it.
Firstly, I think that in any legal agreement that's put forwards in good faith one of the most fundamental objectives must be that the parties to it understand it. A contract between Microsoft and IBM can be thoroughly incomprehensible without careful interpretation by a team of lawyers because that's the level of attention that those companies can give it. A contract between IBM and its most junior employees should be comprehensible by those employees with the level of resources they can reasonably be expected to have. Software licences, whether proprietary or free, should be designed to be comprehensible to the people who are being asked to agree to them.
There's nothing wrong with a highly legalistic licence expected to be used amongst companies or individuals that will have lawyers examine them closely and that can be the objective in a free software licence but if you're intending it to be used more widely then you should make sure it makes sense to others. Would you want to be in the position of suing someone who had agreed to your licence in good faith believing they had more rights under it than they did simply because you'd made it incomprehensible? Or do you want to discourage anyone from actually contributing to your project because they don't understand what rights they have?
Secondly, in the context of licences intended to be used internationally I think that attempts to be clever with the legalese are misguided. Sure your obscure term of art wins you points in your home jurisdiction but elsewhere it may be interpreted completely differently - it may even have an established contrary meaning. And no, you can't just assume that foreign courts will accept any clauses you put in that forbid them from interpreting the contracts under their own laws.
Thirdly, you're simply wrong in your assertion "The next thing is that all licenses are based in contract law. There is no room in copyright law for granting permissions beyond those explicitly enumerated (and irrevocable) in copyright law."
The one thing that copyright law does give the copyright holder is the right to give people permission to do the activities that are otherwise prohibited by copyright law. That's the whole point of it. If I own copyright on a work then I can say "you may copy this", no contract there it's purely a permission (a licence) I can choose to give. Equally I can say "you can copy this once", "you can copy this but only once per year", "school teachers may copy this but nobody else" or "anyone anyone whose foot fits this slipper may copy this". None of those are contractual. They are all permissions (licences) that can be granted by a copyright holder.
Should the GNOME board consist of community members or GNOME hackers? If the latter, it's going to be impossible not to have strong representation by Ximian and Red Hat. If the latter, merely difficult.
You said "latter" twice. Should the former latter have been former and the latter latter latter or the former latter latter and the latter latter former?
When DeGualle asked President Johnson to remove US/Nato troops from France after France "QUIT!!" NATO, I loved Johnsons response: "Do you want us to move out our hundred thousand dead, too?" Give up like you did for Hitler and pipe down.
If your government thought they'd somehow "bought" a right to have troops stationed in France by your actions in liberating them from the Germans then I'm not surprised they wanted you out. The whole point of your help was supposedly to leave them a free country. Your president's attempt at emotional blackmail (only going by your quote here, I'm assuming it's true) seems pretty pathetic.
The EU is trying very hard to push freer markets (including diminishing the public service's wheight) down national government's throats. National governments and national populations are the real obstacle to massive deregulation (Britain being, unsurprisingly, an exception).
If the EU isn't the national governments and it isn't the national populations, then what is it?
Surely the bureaucrats don't have the power to decide that deregulation is a good thing if the national governments have decided the opposite? Don't they implement the policies agreed by the national governments? If it isn't the national governments who make the ultimate decisions then then who exactly is supposed to be running the show? If it is the national governments then it doesn't seem to mean anything to say that "the EU" wants one thing while the national governments oppose it.
if you wanna know what i think, an agreement is great. they did some lame things, but they have some excellent software and hardware, and i have no major anti-microsoft sentiments.
if you don't, then at least dig this: when the people that tell the news start telling you what your civic duty is, you gotta look 2x
Well, first the bit about doing you civic duty was what Drek, who submitted the story, said, not what the Slashdot staff said. That's why it's in quote marks. But, you can still make the point that Slashdot chose to quote it when they didn't have to of course.
Secondly though, it doesn't tell you that you should be opposed to the settlement. It's implicit in the comment that it's your civic duty to give them your views on the proposed settlement, but there's nothing there as to what your views should be. It's a reasonable assumption that he was expecting many people here to be opposed to the settlement but I don't see how you can take offense at anything he said as implying that you "should" be anti-Microsoft or that you should take any other particular view either.
Personally I think that if you like the settlement, as apparently you do, then it would be a good thing for you to email the DOJ telling them so and ideally saying why.
If you don't like them suggesting that trying to help prompt the right outcome (whatever you might think that would be) is a civic duty then, well, it's just someone's opinion, not like they're holding a gun to your head,
Slashdot Mirror
The question of whether kazaa is, in fact, violating the law should be settled in court somewhere, and somehow it doesn't seem like vanatu is the venue.
That can only be settled on a per-country basis. We already know that they're not breaking the law in the Netherland (at least not by operating a file sharing service, they might be parking illegally or assassinating rivals for all I know).
Only the Vanatu courts can determine whether they're doing anything illegal in Vanatu. Only the Autralian courts can determine whether they're doing anything illegal in Autralia, onlythe US courts can determine whether they're doing anything illegal in the USA and only the Iraqi courts can determine whether they're doing anything illegal in Iraq. Of course, deciding that they are doing somethign illegal in any particular country doesn't automatically give that country the power to do anything about it.
There's no one universal answer that can be "settled in court somewhere".
At risk of going off-topic, can you explain "mens rea" and "actus reus". I could go back to the dictionary for a definition, but based on this post, I think I'd rather hear your explanation.
In general, a crime has two components. The actus reus, which is the act itself, and the mens rea, which is the state of mind.
For example, the actus reus for theft is taking someone else's property. The mens rea is intending to permanently deprive them of the property.
Some crimes don't require mens rea, generally because the legislature either were off on a crusade and didn't want any "loopholes" or because there is some genuine policy issue at stake.
While that statement is technically correct, copyright infringement denies the copyright owner their legal right to control their intellectual property, and is therefore quite close to the dictionary definition of larceny.
Okay, so you agree that copyright infringement isn't theft, although I take it you want to hold onto a position of "it's quite close to coming under a definition of larceny I managed to dig out"?
I suppose it rests upon whether you consider intangible works of equal status to material ones.
NO.
Valuing intangible works a lot doesn't turn copyright infringement into theft. Valuing them a really obessive amount doesn't turn it into murder either.
If you take from me, without my permission, without any legal right to do so and with the intention of permanently depriving me of it, a scrap of paper that I own that is of no particular value to me nor to anyone else then that is theft.
If instead of a scrap piece of paper it's a love letter of great personal value to me but no economic value to anyone, still theft.
If instead of that it's a valuable work of art, still theft.
If you copy something of mine then that is not theft, no matter how valuable the work is, no matter how devastating the effect is on me.
If you break my arm then that's not theft, even though my arm is of great value to me.
If you smash all the windows in my house that is not theft, even if the effect on me is essentially the same as if you'd managed to somehow remove the windows and run of with them (which would be theft).
Theft is a different offence to copyright infringement, and to murder, criminal damage, rape, treason, etc etc etc.
This is not about value. They are different offences. The mens rea differs. The actus reus differs. The available penalties differ. They are not the same.
If you want to convince people that copyright infringement is every bit as serious as theft then go ahead. But pretending it is theft just detracts from your point, because it gets you sidetracked. It's like vegetarians saying "meat is murder" it might be great for a giggle with other vegetarians, show how committed you are etc. but with anyone not already in agreement with you it just sets eyes rolling and leads the discussion awawy from what presumably actually matters to you i.e. that you think copyright infringement is a bad thing.
He was taken as a POW.
That statement shows a frightening lack of awareness. I'd expect someone who's supporting the position to at least know that these people are definitely not being held as POWs.
You're citing a web site that doesn't even know what an acronym is (I find it amusing that, technically, they do know that an acronym has to be a pronounceable word, but they have a blurb on their web site to claim that isn't the case in order to make themselves look less stupid...at least to the ignorant masses), to "prove" that a journalist supposedly doesn't know how to pluralize an abbreviation? Simply amazing.
10 years ago I would have agreed with you, but I think the hordes of people who liked the word "acronym" but could never remember what it meant beyond that it had something to do with initial letters have effectively changed the common use meaning of the word.
More surprising I think is the web site's usage of "indisputably". They explicitly recognise that there are people (including lexicographers) who stick with the original meaning of the word "acronym" and they must be able to work out that those people would say that FBI is not an acronym. Yet in the same paragraph they say that it "indisputably" is, without any arguments to back up their claim or anything. Weird.
Linux community and many open source projects simply use GPL without much thinking, but that prevents people from writing commercial software and using that existing code in their code.
Microsoft's licences also mostly prevent people from writing commercial software (or any other software) and using Microsoft's existing code in their code. Believe it or not, Word isn't released as public domain.
GPL gives you a lot more freedoms than Microsoft's licensing does. If you feel it's still not enough then I have sympathy with that, but suggesting that Microsoft have a point about the GPL license being restrictive is absurd.
However, ZDnet is not written for geeks, it is written for (perhaps the geekier side) of the general public. Hence, when they use the term desktop computer, they are referencing a simpler definition [computeruser.com], that includes Macintoshes.
My idea of a desktop computer would include a Macintosh too. What is this other definition some people are supposedly using?
Once he's convicted, he can probably count on a civil suit filed by the law firm.
A civil action would add little to the criminal case in either deterrence or vengeance and it is very unlikely that he has anything worth suing him for. A civil suit would just be throwing money (or billable time which could have been money) to the wind.
Agreed, they even put the kind of totally outrageous statements that only a corporation run by people with no sense of morality could make. How could anyone be expected to distinguish this from the real Dow Chemical?
A sick is to eat KILLED animals?
You'd rather we eat LIVE ones?
The OSD would apply to patents that the licensor owns. I reject the notion that some third party can make your software non-OSD-compliant by filing for a patent. If we let that happen, there'd be no Open Source software at all.
If you're trying to establish which software provides certain freedoms then whether it's the author or someone else who has restricted those freedoms is irrelevant. What's the point of being able to identify something as being "open source software" if potentially none of the freedoms that are supposedly the characteristics of open source software are in fact present?
I reject the notion that some third party can make your software non-OSD-compliant by filing for a patent. If we let that happen, there'd be no Open Source software at all.
I don't care whether or not it's "OSD-compliant" I care whether I have the freedoms that that implies.
You seem to be trying to apply the definition in such a way as to ignore whether it achieves anything (and yes I know who wrote the definition).
So, just to be clear on this, fire practices are illegal in your country because the obvious result of raising the alarm is that people stampede to the exits, possibly crushing each other on the way? Or are you suggesting that this crushing somehow occurs only if the shouting of fire is less official?
I have been involved in fire practices with no prior warning in crowded premises before now without any stampeding or crushing. I'm intrigued as to why you would consider a stampede to be the "obvious" outcome, sounds like more attention needs to be paid to education and, yes, to practicing ahead of the real thing.
I don't think so; an OS is those utilities PLUS the kernel.
That's what he said, though the first sentence was rather clumsy :
"no, the kernel is the kernel, and the os are all the apps debian wrote to interact with the kernel and the kernel."
those last 3 words are to include the kernel as part of the os.
Well, that isn't my argument. I never stated a position in favor of either copyright or GPL. In actuality, my argument is "if you're going to advocate the GPL, you are also advocating copyright law, whether you like it or not".
That doesn't make any sense. If someone dislikes copyright laws and believes that the GPL helps to mitigate against the problems that they associate with copyright laws then they are in no way contradicting themselves by both supporting the GPL whilst copyright laws remain in place and supporting the abolition of copyright laws (thus rendering the GPL no longer necessary for THEIR purposes; the fact that copyright law + GPL could provide something that some other people might consider overall good is irrelevant).
To try an analogy, remembering that you don't have to agree with their view that copyright is a bad thing in order to appreciate whether they're being consistent; suppose that there exists a horrible lethal disease. It cause massive suffering and slow death. Suppose that a vaccine against the disease can be made, but in order to do so you have to make use of the germs of the disease itself. Now suppose that the vaccine has some extra effect on top of protecting against the disease, perhaps it also helps you build up immunity to some less serious diseases. Now, if someone both supports use of the vaccine to fight against the disease for so long as the disease is around and supports eliminating the disease as an even better long term goal, are they being inconsistent?
Again, you do not have to believe that copyright is analogous to a horrible disease to assess whether those that do are being consistent. The vaccine won't be possible without the disease, the vaccine gives benefits that will then no longer exist, but if their primary goal is eradication of the disease... where's the inconsistency?
"MS compatible office suite" I should think that's like an "IBM compatible PC". Probably Star Office. Doubt Microsoft are getting any money from this.
Sauron's fair form was lost to him after the forging of the rings, but before his defeat by the Last Alliance. From "Akallabeth" concerning the fall of Numenor :
For Sauron himself was filled with great fear at the wrath of the Valar, and the doom that Eru laid upon sea and land. It was greater far than aught he had looked for, hoping only for the death of the Numenoreans and the defeat of their proud king. And Sauron, sitting in his black seat in the midst of the Temple, had laughed when he heard the trumpets of Ar-Pharazon sounding for battle; and again he had laughed when he heard the thunder of the storm; and a third time he laughed at his own thought, thinking what he would now do in the world, being rid of the Edain for ever, he was taken in the midst of his mirth, and his seat and the temple fell into the abyss. But Sauron was not of mortal flesh, and though he was robbed now of that shape in which he had wrought so great an evil, so that he could never again appear fair to the eyes of Men, yet his spirit arose out of the deep and passed as a shadow and a black wind over the sea, and came back to Middle-earth and to Mordor that was his home. There he took up again his great Ring in Barad-dur, and dwelt there, dark and silent, until he wrought himself a new guise, an image of malice and hatred made visible; and the Eye of Sauron the Terrible few could endure.
And in similar words from "Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age" (also by Tolkien of course) :
There now he brooded in the dark, until he had wrought for himself a new shape; and it was terrible, for his fair semblance had departed for ever when he was cast into the abyss at the drowning of Numenor. He took up again the great Ring and clothed himself in power; and the malice of the Eye of Sauron few even of the great among Elves and Men could endure.
It does go on to talk about him wrestling with Gil-Galad and Elendil and of the ring being cut from his hand so obviously there was more to him than just the Eye, but it wasn't fair of form, whatever it was.
Linus seems pretty smart and reasonable. I find it disappointing that he so smugly suggests there is no God. Just because he cannot see the hand of God at work, he reasons it is not there.
Yes, let's hope that he's more open minded about fairies, unicorns and the Easter Bunny.
I wonder if Linux would have been the phenomena it is today if Linus had been brought up in evolution-bashing Kansas...
Yes, but he'd be saying "Linux isn't designed, the reason it works is because we have God on our side. We have lots of changes coming from people interested in pulling the project in different directions, including me, but He guides us to accept only the best final outcome. Look at Sun, they're doomed to failure because they try to follow their own narrow path instead of putting faith in the Lord..." etc. etc.
I think you must have only read the summary. They weren't really talking about evolution (at least not evolution of life forms), they were talking about software design using evolution as an analogy.
I'd say it was interesting to give some insight into the personalities involved, not much else though. Certainly nothing profound.
You're thinking about contract law. Copyright law says "this thing is owned by the copyright holder, and he can prevent anyone he wants from getting access to it" (basically). The only variant that exists in copyright law is the concept of "public domain": a person who would otherwise hold copyright over something can put that thing into the public domain, in which case no one has differential rights to that thing. Contract law says "different parties have different rights, resources, and privileges, and they can negotiate exchanges of those rights, resources, and privileges under these rules." Copyright grants a privilege to one party that is excluded from other parties. Contract law influences how the copyright holder can grant his priveleges to other people.
Okay, it's some years since I got my law degree and it's in UK law whereas I would guess you're talking from an American perspective but imho you're just plain wrong. Granting someone permission to copy and distribute your copyrighted work does not in any way require a contract just as giving someone a gift doesn't require contract law and telling someone they can enter your house, use your computer, or borrow your car does not require contract law. You can use a contract in any of those situations but if all you're doing is giving permissions then contract simply doesn't come into it.
I disagree.
Firstly, I think that in any legal agreement that's put forwards in good faith one of the most fundamental objectives must be that the parties to it understand it. A contract between Microsoft and IBM can be thoroughly incomprehensible without careful interpretation by a team of lawyers because that's the level of attention that those companies can give it. A contract between IBM and its most junior employees should be comprehensible by those employees with the level of resources they can reasonably be expected to have. Software licences, whether proprietary or free, should be designed to be comprehensible to the people who are being asked to agree to them.
There's nothing wrong with a highly legalistic licence expected to be used amongst companies or individuals that will have lawyers examine them closely and that can be the objective in a free software licence but if you're intending it to be used more widely then you should make sure it makes sense to others. Would you want to be in the position of suing someone who had agreed to your licence in good faith believing they had more rights under it than they did simply because you'd made it incomprehensible? Or do you want to discourage anyone from actually contributing to your project because they don't understand what rights they have?
Secondly, in the context of licences intended to be used internationally I think that attempts to be clever with the legalese are misguided. Sure your obscure term of art wins you points in your home jurisdiction but elsewhere it may be interpreted completely differently - it may even have an established contrary meaning. And no, you can't just assume that foreign courts will accept any clauses you put in that forbid them from interpreting the contracts under their own laws.
Thirdly, you're simply wrong in your assertion "The next thing is that all licenses are based in contract law. There is no room in copyright law for granting permissions beyond those explicitly enumerated (and irrevocable) in copyright law."
The one thing that copyright law does give the copyright holder is the right to give people permission to do the activities that are otherwise prohibited by copyright law. That's the whole point of it. If I own copyright on a work then I can say "you may copy this", no contract there it's purely a permission (a licence) I can choose to give. Equally I can say "you can copy this once", "you can copy this but only once per year", "school teachers may copy this but nobody else" or "anyone anyone whose foot fits this slipper may copy this". None of those are contractual. They are all permissions (licences) that can be granted by a copyright holder.
Should the GNOME board consist of community members or GNOME hackers? If the latter, it's going to be impossible not to have strong representation by Ximian and Red Hat. If the latter, merely difficult.
You said "latter" twice. Should the former latter have been former and the latter latter latter or the former latter latter and the latter latter former?
When DeGualle asked President Johnson to remove US/Nato troops from France after France "QUIT!!" NATO, I loved Johnsons response: "Do you want us to move out our hundred thousand dead, too?" Give up like you did for Hitler and pipe down.
If your government thought they'd somehow "bought" a right to have troops stationed in France by your actions in liberating them from the Germans then I'm not surprised they wanted you out. The whole point of your help was supposedly to leave them a free country. Your president's attempt at emotional blackmail (only going by your quote here, I'm assuming it's true) seems pretty pathetic.
The EU is trying very hard to push freer markets (including diminishing the public service's wheight) down national government's throats. National governments and national populations are the real obstacle to massive deregulation (Britain being, unsurprisingly, an exception).
If the EU isn't the national governments and it isn't the national populations, then what is it?
Surely the bureaucrats don't have the power to decide that deregulation is a good thing if the national governments have decided the opposite? Don't they implement the policies agreed by the national governments? If it isn't the national governments who make the ultimate decisions then then who exactly is supposed to be running the show? If it is the national governments then it doesn't seem to mean anything to say that "the EU" wants one thing while the national governments oppose it.
if you wanna know what i think, an agreement is great. they did some lame things, but they have some excellent software and hardware, and i have no major anti-microsoft sentiments.
if you don't, then at least dig this: when the people that tell the news start telling you what your civic duty is, you gotta look 2x
Well, first the bit about doing you civic duty was what Drek, who submitted the story, said, not what the Slashdot staff said. That's why it's in quote marks. But, you can still make the point that Slashdot chose to quote it when they didn't have to of course.
Secondly though, it doesn't tell you that you should be opposed to the settlement. It's implicit in the comment that it's your civic duty to give them your views on the proposed settlement, but there's nothing there as to what your views should be. It's a reasonable assumption that he was expecting many people here to be opposed to the settlement but I don't see how you can take offense at anything he said as implying that you "should" be anti-Microsoft or that you should take any other particular view either.
Personally I think that if you like the settlement, as apparently you do, then it would be a good thing for you to email the DOJ telling them so and ideally saying why.
If you don't like them suggesting that trying to help prompt the right outcome (whatever you might think that would be) is a civic duty then, well, it's just someone's opinion, not like they're holding a gun to your head,