The "info" scheme, and therefore the list of namespaces, will be controlled by an existing standards body called NISO.
Why would something called the "National Information Standards Organization" be controlling what's presumably an inernational scheme? Or is this supposed to be a local thing? It didn't sound like it.
Arguing semantics because you can't come up with a real argument against the other person's point is a pretty good sign you've lost the argument.
Doing pretty much anything "because you can't come up with a real argument against the other person's point" would be a pretty good sign that you'd lost the argument. That doesn't mean it's wrong to object to someone's choice of words.
If I say "My dog can talk" and you say "That's not a dog, it's a parrot", that doesn't mean you're losing the argument. In fact the only argument there is whether it's a dog or a parrot, and it's only just started.
No, extra services as in "Well the normal phone service allows telemarketers to call you. If you would like we'll provide an extra service to block them as best we can."
Except for those callers who have paid the extra "unblockable calls" fee, but for an even higher fee we can block those for you too, except for the ones that...
The Commission is the executive of the EU. It carries out and polices EU law. It also proposes EU legislation, but since it cannot itself pass the legislation this does not make it a legislative body.
That doesn't make sense. The House of Commons in the UK can't pass legislation by itself (even using the Parliament Act to bypass the House of Lords any legislation still needs Royal Assent), that doesn't mean that the House of Commons isn't a legislative body.
If the only way to pass legislation in the EU is for it to first be approved by the European Commission (which is what saying it must be proposed by the European Commission means) then the European Commission is PART of the legislature, though not the whole thing.
If legislation could also be initiated by the European Parliament without European Commision involvement then I could see your point, but if their involvement is a necessary condition of legislation being paseed then of course they're a legislative body. How could you define 'legislative body' in such a way as to exclude them?
Apparently Take-Two Interactive is being sued by the parents of two kids who killed a man.
That isn't apparent to me. The story linked to says that "Miss Bede and the family of Aaron Hamel plan to sue Take-Two Interactive Software, which publishes Grand Theft Auto, for liability in a wrongful death lawsuit. "
Miss Bede was seriously injured. Aaron Hamel was killed. They were not the parents of the kids.
I don't agree with suing the game company, let alone Sony, over this, but pretending it's the parents of the kids doing the suing makes it sound roughly 23 million times more absurd than it is.
When the companies actively squash research to find out whether such a thing is safe, it implies that the companies know ahead of time what the results will be, and that the results will be detrimental.
I think you're overstating things there. The fact that the outcome MAY be detrimental is enough for it to be in their best interests not to know about it, given that that status quo is for their product to be used more and more anyway.
What is true is that companies actively trying to prevent or deter research from taking place into possible health risks of thier products is a seriously bad thing.
I don't believe that the SCO claims have any real merit. But this article seemed to be making a big deal out of Darl McBride saying in his Q&A that he didn't previously know that the code in question had been contributed by SGI. So far as I can see he didn't say anything of the kind.
"In this Q&A, CEO McBride states, 'Well, at SCO Forum, there were some folks that came out and basically sniffed out some of the [disputed System V] code we were showing and [concluded] that it emanated from SGI.' That this code "emanated" from SGI was news to SCO."
I don't see how you can get from Darl's quote to the conclusion that the source being SGI was news to him. All he says is that people outside of SCO worked out where the code came from, which is why he's commenting on it publicly. Nothing there implies either way whether he knew about it before.
Once you remove this strange interpretation of his quote there doesn't seem to be anything left to base the article on.
There are plenty of legitimate flaws in SCO's case. This doesn't seem to be one of them.
Incidentally, anomaly's post has been moderated up to +5. Presumably that's on the strength of his/her comments about the subject under discussion rather than the P.S., but the fact remains that the post is very far from having been censored, it's actually been highlighted. Similarly both you and anomaly are posting with a karma bonus so it doesn't look like your postings have been being "suppressed".
I think I just proved my point. I made a one sentence reply and was immediately attacked by two other replies.
I don't think you made any sort of point. I've responded in much the same way in the past to other people who have complained that having people criticise or mock their (non-religious) views is incompatible with free speech. It isn't.
I also think that in context that "P.S." was pretty weird, but that's just my subjective reaction. Agree with that or not, the people replying were fully entitled to do so and were not infringing on anyone's free speech.
The peer pressure is very strong here.
It's tempting to think that you're trolling for comparisons with religious groups at this point so that you can throw them back as further repression. So there, go ahead:p
Is it just me, or is tending towards the facist and totalitarian a pre-requisite of being a British Home Secretary?
In recent years at least, yes. I was going to say that the Labour ones actually seem to be more right wing than the Tory ones but then I rembered that the last Tory one was Michale Howard, so maybe they aren't worse but they're as close as you could find without visiting mental asylums.
Yes, your posts are actually very reasonable. I misread the first one, I think I let my expectations based on some of the others I'd read colour how I read it. So I thought I was disagreeing but... I agree:)
Choosing not to leave is an action, or an inaction if you prefer, either way he is entitled to judge people on what they choose to do and not to do. You, I would guess, would form a different judgment, that doesn't invalidate his right to follow his view. Pretending that that is inconsistent with being an equal opportunities employer is just silly.
I'd be interested to find out if the person who wrote that did so before or after they died.
Doubtless I'm being pedantic but the experience referred to wasn't death but dying, so the real question would be whether the person was dying or not. And of course they were; we're all dying.
No reasonable person is going to quit their high paying job, sell their house and flip burgers for a living just to make a political stand about Linux.
So the issue from your perspective is that you don't consider the moral issues raise by SCO's behaviour (if any) to be sufficient to quit over. That's a valid judgment for you to make. And deciding that someone who would take that view is not someone that Damage Studios would want to employ is a valid judgment for them to make.
Not in the country I live in, and I'm extremely sceptical that it's true in the USA either. If it is true then I have more sympathy with your position than I would otherwise, but I have to really hope you're working to reform your society.
So exactly when do you walk out? When they find out the company is using pirated software? How much? When they poison neighbors with chemicals? How many should die or become ill first? When they steal money from people through acts of fraud? What is fraudulent behavior? Is it legally manipulating the books to appear profitable?
Sorry, but that's a really silly question. When you should get out is when YOU decide their behaviour is that objectionable. Other people will judge you on your actions, each by their own standards.
I wouldn't have a serious problem with a low level of software piracy by my employer. If they were poisoning their neighbours with chemicals I'd be straight out the door AND reporting them. Legally manipulating the books is something I could cope with, but I'd want to be sure it was legal.
You or anyone else can form an opinion of me on each of those points and you might decide I'm not the sort of person you would want to hire. That's a valid judgment for you to make. You might consider me morally lax or unrealistically idealistic or just annoying:) any of those is valid reason for you to choose against me.
You decide how you're wiling to behave. Everyone else decides how to react to your behaviour. That's the way it goes. In fact, you can decide "I'd never even consider working for Damage Studios because of their policy on that". And it's fine for you to do so.
You can demand an objectively right answer to every moral judgment so that nobody will ever treat you negatively based on your actions if you like, but you're not going to get one.
Honestly, Mr/Mrs codemonkey owes it to their family/to themselves to keep that job.
And nobody else owes them anything. Sorry, but the fact that other people may react negatively to your actions is just one of the things you have to take into account in making your decisions. There is nothing at all wrong with future employers basing their hiring policy on what Mr/Mrs codemonkey was prepared to do to keep their job.
It's one thing to decide that it's more important to put food on the table than to stick to your principles. It's quite another to announce that the rest of the world owes it to you to let you off any consequences.
The chance (very low in this case I imagine) that you won't be able to get subsequent employment as a result of your choices is just one of the things you'll need to take into account in making your decision. Other people are fully entitled to base their actions towards you on your past behaviour.
Re:How can one steal lines of code?
on
Back To SCO
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· Score: 1
If I were to fraudulently reduce the number representing your balance in your entry in the database, and then increase the number representing the balance in my own entry, I have not physically taken anything away from you. All I did was change some data in a database. But I reduced your ability to draw money from the bank through fraud, and so I stole from you.
This is not true. In this instance you have defrauded the bank, but you haven't stolen anything from me. Before your action the bank owed me a certain sum of money and after your action the bank still owes me the exact same sum of money. You may have inconvenienced me greatly and maybe even cause me financial loss if I cna't demonstrate convincingly the correct amount I'm owed but you haven't "stolen" from me.
Likewise, if I copy something from you illegally and sell or give it away, and that something is valuable because it is scarce, I've stolen from you since I illegally reduced the price you could get if you were to sell your item.
No, you haven't. Just like if you come around to my house and smash all the windows you will have reduced the value of my house but you won't have "stolen" either the house or the windows. Just because an act is criminal and involves financial loss does not make it theft.
Property theft is a crime because it deprives the rightful owner of his possessions.
You're correct that theft does involve depriving the rightful owner of his possessions, but that isn't a necessary quality of crimes. There are plenty of crimes that do not involve depriving anyone of property.
"Offenses" such as copyright infringement are not crimes.
Copyright infringement certainly CAN be a crime, at least in some jurisdictions including the USA. It often isn't a crime though.
Re:Go Big Blue!
on
Back To SCO
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Generally accurate. However, taking something does at least strongly imply that the previous person no longer has it. If I make an exact replica of your car, I don't think you would claim I'd taken your car. If that included replicating your copyrighted paintwork I don't think you could reasonably claim that I'd 'taken' your copyright. You'd still have copyright.
Certainly as a matter of law, copying something is not the same as theft. Copyright infringement is covered by different laws to theft and carries different penalties.
Of course, if someone wants to use the word for emotional impact then when challenged they can always say they were speaking figuratively. Like saying prices are "extortionate" or "daylight robbery" or that someone is "getting away with murder" doesn't mean those offences are literally involved. It only get amusing when someone is challenged and tries to insist that copying something really is theft.
However, a good friend of mine has a 17 year old that is a computer wiz. Thank god dad is even better. He recently found a few downloaded songs during an audit (yes he does this) of his son's Linux system.
Are you serious?
He searches his 17 year old son's PC for files and examines anything he's trying to hide? Does he search his room and read his diary too? If the son isn't doing a bit more than just downloading files in rebellion then it's a miracle.
Will you be searching through your daughter's computer when she's 17?
Slashdot Mirror
The "info" scheme, and therefore the list of namespaces, will be controlled by an existing standards body called NISO.
Why would something called the "National Information Standards Organization" be controlling what's presumably an inernational scheme? Or is this supposed to be a local thing? It didn't sound like it.
Arguing semantics because you can't come up with a real argument against the other person's point is a pretty good sign you've lost the argument.
Doing pretty much anything "because you can't come up with a real argument against the other person's point" would be a pretty good sign that you'd lost the argument. That doesn't mean it's wrong to object to someone's choice of words.
If I say "My dog can talk" and you say "That's not a dog, it's a parrot", that doesn't mean you're losing the argument. In fact the only argument there is whether it's a dog or a parrot, and it's only just started.
No, extra services as in "Well the normal phone service allows telemarketers to call you. If you would like we'll provide an extra service to block them as best we can."
Except for those callers who have paid the extra "unblockable calls" fee, but for an even higher fee we can block those for you too, except for the ones that...
The Commission is the executive of the EU. It carries out and polices EU law. It also proposes EU legislation, but since it cannot itself pass the legislation this does not make it a legislative body.
That doesn't make sense. The House of Commons in the UK can't pass legislation by itself (even using the Parliament Act to bypass the House of Lords any legislation still needs Royal Assent), that doesn't mean that the House of Commons isn't a legislative body.
If the only way to pass legislation in the EU is for it to first be approved by the European Commission (which is what saying it must be proposed by the European Commission means) then the European Commission is PART of the legislature, though not the whole thing.
If legislation could also be initiated by the European Parliament without European Commision involvement then I could see your point, but if their involvement is a necessary condition of legislation being paseed then of course they're a legislative body. How could you define 'legislative body' in such a way as to exclude them?
Apparently Take-Two Interactive is being sued by the parents of two kids who killed a man.
That isn't apparent to me. The story linked to says that "Miss Bede and the family of Aaron Hamel plan to sue Take-Two Interactive Software, which publishes Grand Theft Auto, for liability in a wrongful death lawsuit. "
Miss Bede was seriously injured. Aaron Hamel was killed. They were not the parents of the kids.
I don't agree with suing the game company, let alone Sony, over this, but pretending it's the parents of the kids doing the suing makes it sound roughly 23 million times more absurd than it is.
When the companies actively squash research to find out whether such a thing is safe, it implies that the companies know ahead of time what the results will be, and that the results will be detrimental.
I think you're overstating things there. The fact that the outcome MAY be detrimental is enough for it to be in their best interests not to know about it, given that that status quo is for their product to be used more and more anyway.
What is true is that companies actively trying to prevent or deter research from taking place into possible health risks of thier products is a seriously bad thing.
this code "emanated" from SGI was news to SCO.
That wasn't quoted from SCO, it was quoted from the author of the article. The SCO quote ends immediately before the sentence you quote.
you're a bit thick aren't you?
No comment.
I don't believe that the SCO claims have any real merit. But this article seemed to be making a big deal out of Darl McBride saying in his Q&A that he didn't previously know that the code in question had been contributed by SGI. So far as I can see he didn't say anything of the kind.
"In this Q&A, CEO McBride states, 'Well, at SCO Forum, there were some folks that came out and basically sniffed out some of the [disputed System V] code we were showing and [concluded] that it emanated from SGI.' That this code "emanated" from SGI was news to SCO."
I don't see how you can get from Darl's quote to the conclusion that the source being SGI was news to him. All he says is that people outside of SCO worked out where the code came from, which is why he's commenting on it publicly. Nothing there implies either way whether he knew about it before.
Once you remove this strange interpretation of his quote there doesn't seem to be anything left to base the article on.
There are plenty of legitimate flaws in SCO's case. This doesn't seem to be one of them.
Incidentally, anomaly's post has been moderated up to +5. Presumably that's on the strength of his/her comments about the subject under discussion rather than the P.S., but the fact remains that the post is very far from having been censored, it's actually been highlighted. Similarly both you and anomaly are posting with a karma bonus so it doesn't look like your postings have been being "suppressed".
I think I just proved my point. I made a one sentence reply and was immediately attacked by two other replies.
:p
I don't think you made any sort of point. I've responded in much the same way in the past to other people who have complained that having people criticise or mock their (non-religious) views is incompatible with free speech. It isn't.
I also think that in context that "P.S." was pretty weird, but that's just my subjective reaction. Agree with that or not, the people replying were fully entitled to do so and were not infringing on anyone's free speech.
The peer pressure is very strong here.
It's tempting to think that you're trolling for comparisons with religious groups at this point so that you can throw them back as further repression. So there, go ahead
Isn't it funny how most Slashdotters talk about freedom of information and expression, only to jump all over anyone who mentions God?
Hilarious. Who would have thought that people who advicate free expression would express themselves so freely?
Is it just me, or is tending towards the facist and totalitarian a pre-requisite of being a British Home Secretary?
In recent years at least, yes. I was going to say that the Labour ones actually seem to be more right wing than the Tory ones but then I rembered that the last Tory one was Michale Howard, so maybe they aren't worse but they're as close as you could find without visiting mental asylums.
Yes, your posts are actually very reasonable. I misread the first one, I think I let my expectations based on some of the others I'd read colour how I read it. So I thought I was disagreeing but... I agree :)
Choosing not to leave is an action, or an inaction if you prefer, either way he is entitled to judge people on what they choose to do and not to do. You, I would guess, would form a different judgment, that doesn't invalidate his right to follow his view. Pretending that that is inconsistent with being an equal opportunities employer is just silly.
I'd be interested to find out if the person who wrote that did so before or after they died.
Doubtless I'm being pedantic but the experience referred to wasn't death but dying, so the real question would be whether the person was dying or not. And of course they were; we're all dying.
No reasonable person is going to quit their high paying job, sell their house and flip burgers for a living just to make a political stand about Linux.
So the issue from your perspective is that you don't consider the moral issues raise by SCO's behaviour (if any) to be sufficient to quit over. That's a valid judgment for you to make. And deciding that someone who would take that view is not someone that Damage Studios would want to employ is a valid judgment for them to make.
Yes when people don't make money they starve.
Not in the country I live in, and I'm extremely sceptical that it's true in the USA either. If it is true then I have more sympathy with your position than I would otherwise, but I have to really hope you're working to reform your society.
So exactly when do you walk out? When they find out the company is using pirated software? How much? When they poison neighbors with chemicals? How many should die or become ill first? When they steal money from people through acts of fraud? What is fraudulent behavior? Is it legally manipulating the books to appear profitable?
:) any of those is valid reason for you to choose against me.
Sorry, but that's a really silly question. When you should get out is when YOU decide their behaviour is that objectionable. Other people will judge you on your actions, each by their own standards.
I wouldn't have a serious problem with a low level of software piracy by my employer. If they were poisoning their neighbours with chemicals I'd be straight out the door AND reporting them. Legally manipulating the books is something I could cope with, but I'd want to be sure it was legal.
You or anyone else can form an opinion of me on each of those points and you might decide I'm not the sort of person you would want to hire. That's a valid judgment for you to make. You might consider me morally lax or unrealistically idealistic or just annoying
You decide how you're wiling to behave. Everyone else decides how to react to your behaviour. That's the way it goes. In fact, you can decide "I'd never even consider working for Damage Studios because of their policy on that". And it's fine for you to do so.
You can demand an objectively right answer to every moral judgment so that nobody will ever treat you negatively based on your actions if you like, but you're not going to get one.
Honestly, Mr/Mrs codemonkey owes it to their family/to themselves to keep that job.
And nobody else owes them anything. Sorry, but the fact that other people may react negatively to your actions is just one of the things you have to take into account in making your decisions. There is nothing at all wrong with future employers basing their hiring policy on what Mr/Mrs codemonkey was prepared to do to keep their job.
So you don't find it hypocritical that on the same page they state that they are an Equal Opportunity Employer?
An equal opportunity employer doesn't discrimate based on race, sex, etc. that doesn't mean they can't judge people based on their past actions.
It's one thing to decide that it's more important to put food on the table than to stick to your principles. It's quite another to announce that the rest of the world owes it to you to let you off any consequences.
The chance (very low in this case I imagine) that you won't be able to get subsequent employment as a result of your choices is just one of the things you'll need to take into account in making your decision. Other people are fully entitled to base their actions towards you on your past behaviour.
If I were to fraudulently reduce the number representing your balance in your entry in the database, and then increase the number representing the balance in my own entry, I have not physically taken anything away from you. All I did was change some data in a database. But I reduced your ability to draw money from the bank through fraud, and so I stole from you.
This is not true. In this instance you have defrauded the bank, but you haven't stolen anything from me. Before your action the bank owed me a certain sum of money and after your action the bank still owes me the exact same sum of money. You may have inconvenienced me greatly and maybe even cause me financial loss if I cna't demonstrate convincingly the correct amount I'm owed but you haven't "stolen" from me.
Likewise, if I copy something from you illegally and sell or give it away, and that something is valuable because it is scarce, I've stolen from you since I illegally reduced the price you could get if you were to sell your item.
No, you haven't. Just like if you come around to my house and smash all the windows you will have reduced the value of my house but you won't have "stolen" either the house or the windows. Just because an act is criminal and involves financial loss does not make it theft.
Property theft is a crime because it deprives the rightful owner of his possessions.
You're correct that theft does involve depriving the rightful owner of his possessions, but that isn't a necessary quality of crimes. There are plenty of crimes that do not involve depriving anyone of property.
"Offenses" such as copyright infringement are not crimes.
Copyright infringement certainly CAN be a crime, at least in some jurisdictions including the USA. It often isn't a crime though.
Generally accurate. However, taking something does at least strongly imply that the previous person no longer has it. If I make an exact replica of your car, I don't think you would claim I'd taken your car. If that included replicating your copyrighted paintwork I don't think you could reasonably claim that I'd 'taken' your copyright. You'd still have copyright.
Certainly as a matter of law, copying something is not the same as theft. Copyright infringement is covered by different laws to theft and carries different penalties.
Of course, if someone wants to use the word for emotional impact then when challenged they can always say they were speaking figuratively. Like saying prices are "extortionate" or "daylight robbery" or that someone is "getting away with murder" doesn't mean those offences are literally involved. It only get amusing when someone is challenged and tries to insist that copying something really is theft.
However, a good friend of mine has a 17 year old that is a computer wiz. Thank god dad is even better. He recently found a few downloaded songs during an audit (yes he does this) of his son's Linux system.
Are you serious?
He searches his 17 year old son's PC for files and examines anything he's trying to hide? Does he search his room and read his diary too? If the son isn't doing a bit more than just downloading files in rebellion then it's a miracle.
Will you be searching through your daughter's computer when she's 17?