Lawmakers make laws FOR US, and if we don't stand up, then we won't get the laws we want.
Ummm, are they? Lately they more and more seem to be making laws only for corporations and not for the people. Last time I checked, corporations didn't vote. So why don't the people vote for people who care for the people instead of for over-sponsored concubines of the Big Money like Gore and Bush Jr.? And "concubine" is the most lenient word I could find for the intended meaning I wish to convey...
Limiting the viewer of a DVD to white people is simply discrimination and thus a violation of Constitutional rights.
Ah, but limiting the viewing of a DVD to people who run a monopoly OS is okay? Limiting the viewing of a DVD to people in one particular country is okay aswell?
Yes, these things are not entirely comparable, but I smell something of a contradiction anyway...
And if we do do this, how do keep the economy running?
Personally I don't own any movies on playable media because I don't have a VCR and because I run Linux which is notoriously bad at video and audio playback - yes, I know that's also driver related, and most of my problem is in that department since Aureal went bust. But anyway, a good friend of mine does have a very extensive collection of movies on MPEG and DivX, and an equally impressive collection of legally imported Region 1 DVDs - there are no laws against importing Region 1 DVDs to Region 2 countries. I often watch those with him.
But what I noticed was that the more movies I watched, the more of a movie freak I became. Currently I catch at least one, sometimes two and sporadicaly even more movies a week in a theatre, most of them (the at-least-one-per-week) are sneak previews, the others are movies that I want to see that I didn't catch in the sneak. Since being introduced to illegally copied and legally yet controvercially imported movies, the number of movies I watch in theatres per month on average has tenfolded. Now that I have access to an almost unlimited supply of movies playing on a TV near me, I more and more want to see those same movies in their full glory on the big white screen.
With all my power, I can't see where the movie industry has lost any money on me or my friend - quite the contrary, actually...
2) allowing users to opt-in to the advanced-user features and interface. (think "advanced options" buttons in an interface)
Bingo. The thing about Windows is that it makes it really easy to do easy stuff, but extremely hard or sometimes even almost impossible to do the harder stuff because it's all hidden away to protect the beginners. Sometimes to solve a problem you have to get closer to the internals of a program or an operating system, and Windows often won't allow you to do that, leaving only the option of completely reinstalling the system...
Inability to use a computer is not an indication of stupidity, anymore than being unable to fly a 747.
You're absolutely right there. But the difference is that people who don't know how to fly a 747 generally don't, whereas people who don't know how to use a computer do. That's the stupidity: it's not in not knowing how to use it, it's in trying to use it anyway.
Exactly... Expecting to be able to get behind a computer the very first time and be able to use it is like expecting to be able to get behind the wheel of a car for the first time and be able drive across Paris without getting a scratch on your car. Or like putting a rooky behind the controls of a Boeing 777 or an F15 and expect them to be able to take off and fly them.
Computers are complex machines, much more complex than any other machine used by man, and thus learning to use them (properly) will take much more time than learning to use a VCR, for example. A lot of people I know don't know how to use their VCR, so how could they possibly operate a machine that's thousands upon thousands of times as complex?
Microsoft Windows and Apple MacOS go a long way to make computers easier to use. Too long a way. Many people expect to be able to buy a computer and work with it right away, without having to learn anything about computers first, not realising that it's not a simple kitchen appliance but an incredibly complex and powerful machine instead. They want to be able to drive a car without knowing how to use the clutch or the stick. They want to be able to drive around a city without knowing anything about traffic rules, like that you have to keep right, have to stop when the light goes green and the exceptions to that, and the exceptions to those exceptions ("no turn on red").
The internet is being flooded by people who send HTML email with lots of flashy colours, who make homepages in Frontpage that either come straight from a template or that have the most eyetearing colours you've ever seen and put them online on Geoshitties, Xoom, Yahoo or whatever. People who think netiquette somehow doesn't apply to them, that they should be able to decide what they do and do not want to do.
Yes, netiquette isn't a law, neither are table manners, yet when you're in a restaurant, you do adhere to table manners, so why don't you adhere to netiquette when you're online? Why do you spend lots of time learning to drive a car, yet expect to be able to use a computer instantly?
The Vision of Escaflowne is a GREAT anime series that's Different in style. It's still very anime, but also very refreshing. At first the Doonesbury-like facial features kinda weird you out, but you get used to it pretty quickly as you lose yourself in the story. All in all Escaflowne rates right up there in my anime top 10, together with Lain, Cowboy Bebop, Evangelion, Bubblegum Crisis and, ohwell, I guess most Anime lovers a kind of similar top 10:)
Step 1: Create yourself a/. account. Yes, it requires you to not be an Anonymous Coward anymore, though, as a registered user, you can still choose to post as an AC so that shouldn't matter to you one bit.
Step 2: Go to the user prefs, and select to not show any Anime items and/or anything from CmdrTaco.
Step 3:... There's no step 3!
Apple references aside, is that so hard? Guess not. Go out and do it. Please.
After every episode (except the last, ofcourse *duh*) it says "To Be continued", where Be is in Be Inc blue and red. The Navvies are also refreshingly non-Microsoft-like. Damn, I'd love to get my hands on that operating system *grin*.
Oh, don't EVER watch Lain dubbed. Sucks. Subbed all the way.
What's the point of installing 2.1 when 2.2 was a few weeks away?
What's the point of waiting for potato to go stable while you could have already used it when it was frozen, or even when it was still unstable?
Keep in mind, what Debian calls "unstable" still won't crash on you. I've run potato in its unstable days for a very long time, and the only real problems I encountered were dependency problems.
First, about the marijuana. Why should eBay "as a respectable company" pull such an auction? How can you possibly equate marijuana with human body parts? Yes, ofcouse I'm biased, because I'm Dutch, but it's also a fact that marijuana is less addictive and less damaging than alcohol. All aside from the fact that I've never seen a stoned person beat somebody almost to death "just because he was stoned", whereas I have seen drunk people do that.
Second, about what makes that page illegal. The matter is rather complicated in its own right. First, I assume that the French legislation about racism is at least very similar to the Dutch. Here in the Netherlands, it is illegal to say or display anything racistic. Since Nazis were obviously racists, that also includes Nazism and things associated with it. However, it is not the swastika that's banned. It is an ancient religious symbol that is in widespread use in eastern religions, and as such, there is nothing wrong with it. Displaying swastikas, Nazi flags, Hitler's speeches and such in the interest of history is okay aswell. But painting a swastika on the wall of a Jewish burial ground is not. But here comes the bit that's really relevant to this issue: it is illegal to sell or import any items such as flags, uniforms, gas canisters and Hitler's book Mein Kampf.
It is not illegal to buy or own such stuff. It is however illegal to sell or import it. So basically, it would be legal for you to make a Nazi banner yourself, as long as you don't display it publicly, and don't sell it. The rules are becoming more forgiving though. In many right extremist marches Nazi banners and arm bands are displayed. Quite often right extremists have to be protected by the police to be safe from offended people.
You may say "it's been over 50 years, get over it." But on the other hand, it was _only_ 50 years. Many people still alive, including our queen and her mother, have lived through that war, have actually seen the atrocities. Most elderly Jewish people in Europe have survived spending many years in hiding, or even Nazi camps. My own grandfather lived in a swamp for three years to hide from the Germans, my grandmother was once arrested and beaten almost to death because she had lost her ID, even though she had a note from the police that she had lost it. My parents' neighbour lost a hand when the allies bombed my home town to root out a Nazi military encampment.
On top of that, war and genocide is going on right in Europe's back yard, right inbetween Italy and Greece, both members of the European Union, cutting all roads to the latter. Dare deny that we have a good reason to be sensitive when it comes to right extremist materials.
Third, about the application of national laws to the Internet: they don't. But they do apply to the operators of the servers, and to the people surfing. Thus it is a good decision, imho, to pull the debated materials from yahoo.fr, because yahoo.fr's operators have to obey French laws. However, yahoo.com's operators do not, and thus have every right to keep displaying those goods. A French surfer buying those goods would break his country's laws, though. If not by buying it, then by importing it.
Yahoo has no right (by US law) to bar French people access. The French government however can definitely decide to bar access to yahoo.com from French providers, but that just wouldn't work. IMHO, the best solution would be to pull it from yahoo.fr, and maybe put a notice on yahoo.com that it may not be legal to import the discussed materials to other countries and to check that before purchasing it.
Ofcourse I agree with what you're saying 120%, but you have to realise a few things.
First of all, there's the law of reverse accountability: the more people are available to do something only one person needs to do, the less likely the chance that anybody does it. Everybody knows the stories of somebody drowning, choking, having a heart attack or dying in other odd manners while dozens of people are watching and not doing anything. If there's one person watching, (s)he'll act. Two persons, they probably will too. Three, probably at leat one will. Once you get to twenty, the chance of anybody acting has already dropped below 10%. Now do the math for a guesstimated 20,000 appalled/. readers.
Second of all, why would the burdain of checking the validity of patents be on the backs of the public? That's what the whole damn patent office is for! Why don't THEY call in independent professionals to check the validity for them? I mean, that patent on hyperlinking is just rediculous. If anybody of that patent office had ever spent any time on the Internet, they'd have seen how widespread hyperlinking is already used.
Maybe, on top of my first point, nobody is reacting to them because they're so rediculous that anybody with the slightest bit of common sense will be able to see that it wouldn't hold any ground? Why is it that so many American institutions seem so awefully braindead when it comes to anything that has anything even remotely to do with technology?
EGN has already been there, done that, some 2 years ago. EGN is an ICQ clone by BrainScan specifically targeted at gamers that never really got off the ground. I've beta tested it, so incidentally my EGN ID# is 108, but that all is beside the point. Thing is, EGN displayed a little ad in the top part of the window, usually advertising some gaming site on the BrainScan network. A whole batch of those would be downloaded off the server when you're offline, and the ads would keep cycling when you were offline or lost connection.
But, correct me if I'm wrong, hasn't Apple posted the images themselves? So then, if the images originate from the leak, it wouldn't be fair use, but if they originate from Apple's site, it would. It's impossible to prove either.
*the photos were most likely copywrighted In this case it's acceptable use.
*Apple asked the sites to remove and they refused. This is not a case of the person not knowing what they were doing was wrong Apple asking them to remove it doesn't make it wrong to still display them. Well, not legally at least.
*info leaking too early could hurt competition Then make sure it doesn't leak...
*info leaking too early could damage chances at getting a patent on the item - once an idea is in the public domain, it is no longer patentable, even if only your design is in the public domain. The images aren't public domain - they're copyrighted by Apple. And even if they weren't, the image of something being public domain doesn't make the thing itself public domain.
*Rumors sites are fun for the fanatics, who have already decided whether or not to buy apple, but they don't actually generate new sales of products, so they aren't losing any business by shutting them down Since when is not losing business a reason to do something?
All in all, your arguments are extremely week. Once the genie is out of the bottle, there's no putting it back. Actually, I think Apple made a huge mistake pulling out the legal guns. The pictures were only posted on Apple rumour sites, and the design was so out of the ordinary that it would have been disregarded as fan fiction had Apple not jumped. The Apple cube is now right in the middle of the spotlight, exactly the opposite of the effect they wanted to reach.
Or did they?
Could this all be a ploy to get the attention? To get Apple back in the headlines? If that's so, three words come to mind: Hook, Line and Sinker.
Software engineers should not be held accountable for a bug which causes an orbital rocket to deviate from its course and slam into a crowded school - management must allow adequate time for testing.
Exactly. That's why I don't want all of Microsoft to fry - in fact, I admire most Microsoft programmers because with their extremely limited means they still manage to make something that's pretty good. I only want to fry Microsoft's marketing department. I wonder what deepfried marketborg tastes like?
yeah, up to this far it's been offtopic, but I promise I'll get there...
*clearing throat*
This seems to be a real problem with society today, blaming the tool, the tool's creator, or anything else, except (or sometimes in addition to) blaming those who are really responsible. Sometimes that's warranted, sometimes it's not, and sometimes you land right in the middle of the Zone Where Normal Things Don't Happen Very Often, aka the Gray Area.
First, you have to blame the person who is responsible in the first degree. If you download or serve MP3s from/on Napster, YOU are responsible. If you're dying of lung cancer because you've smoked all your life, YOU are responsible. If you kill somebody because you were driving under the influence, YOU are responsible. If you kill somebody with a firearm, YOU are responsible. If you push the Big Red Button, YOU are responsible. Then you may go and see if those who are responsible in the second degree can or cannot be (partly) blamed.
The key is responsibility. OFCOURSE the creator of Napster is (partly) responsible for the rampant music piracy committed through it. The question is whether he is to blame or not. OFCOURSE Big Tobacco is (partly) responsible for the deaths tobacco causes. The question is whether they are to blame or not. OFCOURSE the alcohol industry is (partly) responsible for deaths by driving under the influence... ahwell, you'll have caught my drift by now.
You are at all times responsible for the results of your actions, whether intended or not. If something goes wrong, it may not have been your fault, but it's still your responsibility. Say you're playing baseball, and you hit the ball so hard into the pitcher's face that he is hospitalised. It's not your fault, in fact, it's nobody's fault, but it's still your responsibility.
Taking such responsibility is a big and hard step, but if everybody did it, the world would be a much better place. And don't forget to visualise whirled peas.
The creator of Napster isn't responsible for the crimes certain Napster's users commit. No more than, as you say, the inventor of gun powder is responsible for the crimes committed by certain gun users.
philosophy, however, is a waste of everyone's time.
That is probably not the best of things to say to one who is going to study Philosopy of Science, Technology and Society (after trying Computer Science and finding it way too dry). Philosophy is definitely not a waste of everybody's time.
For example, take the sociological impact of computers and most notably the Internet. People who know sociology generally don't know much about technology, and people who know a lot about computers an the Internet don't know the first thing about sociology. Would you want either to answer questions about the Internet's impact on society to, for example, politicians? The former wouldn't understand the technology, the latter wouldn't understand the scope of the impact, and wouldn't be understood by the politicians, with crackpot bills like CDA, COPPA and COPA as a result. A "technical philosophy" person would be able to answer such questions, though...
I know exactly what you mean, and I've pondered that question and similar ones for a long time too. In the end I came to the conclusion that we all live in our own universe, in our own reality. The brains of humans are totally different, there aren't two brains you can find that are the same, thus it stands to reason that each person's perception is also different. But when you learn to distinguish colours, for example, you learn which colour to give what name. The same goes for sound, by the way.
That everybody perceives differently is very obvious when you start noticing it. My father has trouble telling colours apart when it's rather dark, and my girlfriend will have trouble seeing the difference between orange, pink, purple and red under similar rather low-light conditions, which becomes very obvious as we shoot some pool every monday and tuesday evening. I sometimes have trouble telling certain shades of blue and green apart. Another friend of mine has extreme difficulty telling two tones apart if they're exactly one octave from eachother. Another example is that somebody who's cross-eyed doesn't see a double image. Their brain has adapted to the defect just as it would have adapted to correctly positioned eyes and will generate a correct stereoscopic image, though ofcourse not with the same field of vision.
My conclusion is that everybody does see differently, but we've invented a protocol (language) to be able to communicate with eachother.
A highschool classmate of mine was totally colourblind. She only saw black and white because due to an extremely rare genetic defect she had only the light sensor thingies that see black and white, not the ones that distinguish colour. (Sorry about that, I don't know the English word for those things. I mean what's known in Dutch as "staafjes" and "kegeltjes" respectively). This had a few interesting side-effects, though. Even though she saw no colour whatsoever, she had an extremely sharp vision, somewhere in the range of 5-10/20, and she could discern most colours by grayshade. If you gave her a black and white picture, comments like "wow, that's a nice purple dress" weren't uncommon. She had her own pencil set with the colours written on them. After doing some research to find out which colours looked exactly the same to her, we had a brief period of great fun swapping stickers around - luckily she could laugh about it too, though our art teacher couldn't *ouch*.
If you let people vote on sites, it's rather easy to screw sites over. Say I set up a site about my personal Pagan (Neo-Pagan if you so insist) beliefs, and a large group of fundamentalist [Insert Other Religion] decides that offends them and calls upon all their members to vote my site down?
Otoh, I'd love to see Linux users vote www.microsoft.com down!:)
That you don't recognise my name and some other things you write prove you haven't been into Subspace for a very long time compared to me. I've played the game since about version 1.08, iirc, just after Ragnarok. When the developers tried to pass control (partly) to the players in a structured and gradual way, I was one of the so-called Vangels - a very select group of about a dozen or so players who sysopped game servers. Personally I was in charge of Turf Zone, which, due to a bug in the server software I was never able to return to its former glory. But it was sure fun while it lasted.
As for Trench Wars... Those kinds of zones suck, imho. It's more luck than skill, more brawn than brain. Turf Zone, now there was a cool game. Running Zone was cool too, and Powerball and A Small Warzone also have my firm okay. I still sporadically play in League Zone, Duelling Zone or Chaos Zone - the latter only when I'm truly bored:)
Slashdot Mirror
Lawmakers make laws FOR US, and if we don't stand up, then we won't get the laws we want.
Ummm, are they? Lately they more and more seem to be making laws only for corporations and not for the people. Last time I checked, corporations didn't vote. So why don't the people vote for people who care for the people instead of for over-sponsored concubines of the Big Money like Gore and Bush Jr.? And "concubine" is the most lenient word I could find for the intended meaning I wish to convey...
)O(
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
Limiting the viewer of a DVD to white people is simply discrimination and thus a violation of Constitutional rights.
Ah, but limiting the viewing of a DVD to people who run a monopoly OS is okay? Limiting the viewing of a DVD to people in one particular country is okay aswell?
Yes, these things are not entirely comparable, but I smell something of a contradiction anyway...
)O(
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
And if we do do this, how do keep the economy running?
Personally I don't own any movies on playable media because I don't have a VCR and because I run Linux which is notoriously bad at video and audio playback - yes, I know that's also driver related, and most of my problem is in that department since Aureal went bust. But anyway, a good friend of mine does have a very extensive collection of movies on MPEG and DivX, and an equally impressive collection of legally imported Region 1 DVDs - there are no laws against importing Region 1 DVDs to Region 2 countries. I often watch those with him.
But what I noticed was that the more movies I watched, the more of a movie freak I became. Currently I catch at least one, sometimes two and sporadicaly even more movies a week in a theatre, most of them (the at-least-one-per-week) are sneak previews, the others are movies that I want to see that I didn't catch in the sneak. Since being introduced to illegally copied and legally yet controvercially imported movies, the number of movies I watch in theatres per month on average has tenfolded. Now that I have access to an almost unlimited supply of movies playing on a TV near me, I more and more want to see those same movies in their full glory on the big white screen.
With all my power, I can't see where the movie industry has lost any money on me or my friend - quite the contrary, actually...
)O(
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
2) allowing users to opt-in to the advanced-user features and interface. (think "advanced options" buttons in an interface)
Bingo. The thing about Windows is that it makes it really easy to do easy stuff, but extremely hard or sometimes even almost impossible to do the harder stuff because it's all hidden away to protect the beginners. Sometimes to solve a problem you have to get closer to the internals of a program or an operating system, and Windows often won't allow you to do that, leaving only the option of completely reinstalling the system...
)O(
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
A monkey can learn to do this.
Yes. You can also teach a monkey to drive a car, but that doesn't mean it can participate in traffic.
)O(
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
Inability to use a computer is not an indication of stupidity, anymore than being unable to fly a 747.
You're absolutely right there. But the difference is that people who don't know how to fly a 747 generally don't, whereas people who don't know how to use a computer do. That's the stupidity: it's not in not knowing how to use it, it's in trying to use it anyway.
)O(
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
Exactly... Expecting to be able to get behind a computer the very first time and be able to use it is like expecting to be able to get behind the wheel of a car for the first time and be able drive across Paris without getting a scratch on your car. Or like putting a rooky behind the controls of a Boeing 777 or an F15 and expect them to be able to take off and fly them.
Computers are complex machines, much more complex than any other machine used by man, and thus learning to use them (properly) will take much more time than learning to use a VCR, for example. A lot of people I know don't know how to use their VCR, so how could they possibly operate a machine that's thousands upon thousands of times as complex?
Microsoft Windows and Apple MacOS go a long way to make computers easier to use. Too long a way. Many people expect to be able to buy a computer and work with it right away, without having to learn anything about computers first, not realising that it's not a simple kitchen appliance but an incredibly complex and powerful machine instead. They want to be able to drive a car without knowing how to use the clutch or the stick. They want to be able to drive around a city without knowing anything about traffic rules, like that you have to keep right, have to stop when the light goes green and the exceptions to that, and the exceptions to those exceptions ("no turn on red").
The internet is being flooded by people who send HTML email with lots of flashy colours, who make homepages in Frontpage that either come straight from a template or that have the most eyetearing colours you've ever seen and put them online on Geoshitties, Xoom, Yahoo or whatever. People who think netiquette somehow doesn't apply to them, that they should be able to decide what they do and do not want to do.
Yes, netiquette isn't a law, neither are table manners, yet when you're in a restaurant, you do adhere to table manners, so why don't you adhere to netiquette when you're online? Why do you spend lots of time learning to drive a car, yet expect to be able to use a computer instantly?
*sigh*
)O(
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
Not in my browser...
)O(
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
The Vision of Escaflowne is a GREAT anime series that's Different in style. It's still very anime, but also very refreshing. At first the Doonesbury-like facial features kinda weird you out, but you get used to it pretty quickly as you lose yourself in the story. All in all Escaflowne rates right up there in my anime top 10, together with Lain, Cowboy Bebop, Evangelion, Bubblegum Crisis and, ohwell, I guess most Anime lovers a kind of similar top 10 :)
)O(
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
Or no more articles by that lame CmdrTaco dude?
/. account. Yes, it requires you to not be an Anonymous Coward anymore, though, as a registered user, you can still choose to post as an AC so that shouldn't matter to you one bit.
... There's no step 3!
Easy!
Step 1: Create yourself a
Step 2: Go to the user prefs, and select to not show any Anime items and/or anything from CmdrTaco.
Step 3:
Apple references aside, is that so hard? Guess not. Go out and do it. Please.
)O(
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
After every episode (except the last, ofcourse *duh*) it says "To Be continued", where Be is in Be Inc blue and red. The Navvies are also refreshingly non-Microsoft-like. Damn, I'd love to get my hands on that operating system *grin*.
Oh, don't EVER watch Lain dubbed. Sucks. Subbed all the way.
)O(
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
What's the point of installing 2.1 when 2.2 was a few weeks away?
What's the point of waiting for potato to go stable while you could have already used it when it was frozen, or even when it was still unstable?
Keep in mind, what Debian calls "unstable" still won't crash on you. I've run potato in its unstable days for a very long time, and the only real problems I encountered were dependency problems.
)O(
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
That's a serial potato processor :)
)O(
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
First, about the marijuana. Why should eBay "as a respectable company" pull such an auction? How can you possibly equate marijuana with human body parts? Yes, ofcouse I'm biased, because I'm Dutch, but it's also a fact that marijuana is less addictive and less damaging than alcohol. All aside from the fact that I've never seen a stoned person beat somebody almost to death "just because he was stoned", whereas I have seen drunk people do that.
Second, about what makes that page illegal. The matter is rather complicated in its own right. First, I assume that the French legislation about racism is at least very similar to the Dutch. Here in the Netherlands, it is illegal to say or display anything racistic. Since Nazis were obviously racists, that also includes Nazism and things associated with it. However, it is not the swastika that's banned. It is an ancient religious symbol that is in widespread use in eastern religions, and as such, there is nothing wrong with it. Displaying swastikas, Nazi flags, Hitler's speeches and such in the interest of history is okay aswell. But painting a swastika on the wall of a Jewish burial ground is not. But here comes the bit that's really relevant to this issue: it is illegal to sell or import any items such as flags, uniforms, gas canisters and Hitler's book Mein Kampf.
It is not illegal to buy or own such stuff. It is however illegal to sell or import it. So basically, it would be legal for you to make a Nazi banner yourself, as long as you don't display it publicly, and don't sell it. The rules are becoming more forgiving though. In many right extremist marches Nazi banners and arm bands are displayed. Quite often right extremists have to be protected by the police to be safe from offended people.
You may say "it's been over 50 years, get over it." But on the other hand, it was _only_ 50 years. Many people still alive, including our queen and her mother, have lived through that war, have actually seen the atrocities. Most elderly Jewish people in Europe have survived spending many years in hiding, or even Nazi camps. My own grandfather lived in a swamp for three years to hide from the Germans, my grandmother was once arrested and beaten almost to death because she had lost her ID, even though she had a note from the police that she had lost it. My parents' neighbour lost a hand when the allies bombed my home town to root out a Nazi military encampment.
On top of that, war and genocide is going on right in Europe's back yard, right inbetween Italy and Greece, both members of the European Union, cutting all roads to the latter. Dare deny that we have a good reason to be sensitive when it comes to right extremist materials.
Third, about the application of national laws to the Internet: they don't. But they do apply to the operators of the servers, and to the people surfing. Thus it is a good decision, imho, to pull the debated materials from yahoo.fr, because yahoo.fr's operators have to obey French laws. However, yahoo.com's operators do not, and thus have every right to keep displaying those goods. A French surfer buying those goods would break his country's laws, though. If not by buying it, then by importing it.
Yahoo has no right (by US law) to bar French people access. The French government however can definitely decide to bar access to yahoo.com from French providers, but that just wouldn't work. IMHO, the best solution would be to pull it from yahoo.fr, and maybe put a notice on yahoo.com that it may not be legal to import the discussed materials to other countries and to check that before purchasing it.
Ofcourse, IANAL...
)O(
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
Ofcourse I agree with what you're saying 120%, but you have to realise a few things.
/. readers.
First of all, there's the law of reverse accountability: the more people are available to do something only one person needs to do, the less likely the chance that anybody does it. Everybody knows the stories of somebody drowning, choking, having a heart attack or dying in other odd manners while dozens of people are watching and not doing anything. If there's one person watching, (s)he'll act. Two persons, they probably will too. Three, probably at leat one will. Once you get to twenty, the chance of anybody acting has already dropped below 10%. Now do the math for a guesstimated 20,000 appalled
Second of all, why would the burdain of checking the validity of patents be on the backs of the public? That's what the whole damn patent office is for! Why don't THEY call in independent professionals to check the validity for them? I mean, that patent on hyperlinking is just rediculous. If anybody of that patent office had ever spent any time on the Internet, they'd have seen how widespread hyperlinking is already used.
Maybe, on top of my first point, nobody is reacting to them because they're so rediculous that anybody with the slightest bit of common sense will be able to see that it wouldn't hold any ground? Why is it that so many American institutions seem so awefully braindead when it comes to anything that has anything even remotely to do with technology?
)O(
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
EGN has already been there, done that, some 2 years ago. EGN is an ICQ clone by BrainScan specifically targeted at gamers that never really got off the ground. I've beta tested it, so incidentally my EGN ID# is 108, but that all is beside the point. Thing is, EGN displayed a little ad in the top part of the window, usually advertising some gaming site on the BrainScan network. A whole batch of those would be downloaded off the server when you're offline, and the ads would keep cycling when you were offline or lost connection.
)O(
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
Stolen material is not covered under fair use.
But, correct me if I'm wrong, hasn't Apple posted the images themselves? So then, if the images originate from the leak, it wouldn't be fair use, but if they originate from Apple's site, it would. It's impossible to prove either.
)O(
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
*the photos were most likely copywrighted
In this case it's acceptable use.
*Apple asked the sites to remove and they refused. This is not a case of the person not knowing what they were doing was wrong
Apple asking them to remove it doesn't make it wrong to still display them. Well, not legally at least.
*info leaking too early could hurt competition
Then make sure it doesn't leak...
*info leaking too early could damage chances at getting a patent on the item - once an idea is in the public domain, it is no longer patentable, even if only your design is in the public domain.
The images aren't public domain - they're copyrighted by Apple. And even if they weren't, the image of something being public domain doesn't make the thing itself public domain.
*Rumors sites are fun for the fanatics, who have already decided whether or not to buy apple, but they don't actually generate new sales of products, so they aren't losing any business by shutting them down
Since when is not losing business a reason to do something?
All in all, your arguments are extremely week. Once the genie is out of the bottle, there's no putting it back. Actually, I think Apple made a huge mistake pulling out the legal guns. The pictures were only posted on Apple rumour sites, and the design was so out of the ordinary that it would have been disregarded as fan fiction had Apple not jumped. The Apple cube is now right in the middle of the spotlight, exactly the opposite of the effect they wanted to reach.
Or did they?
Could this all be a ploy to get the attention? To get Apple back in the headlines? If that's so, three words come to mind: Hook, Line and Sinker.
)O(
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
Software engineers should not be held accountable for a bug which causes an orbital rocket to deviate from its course and slam into a crowded school - management must allow adequate time for testing.
... ahwell, you'll have caught my drift by now.
Exactly. That's why I don't want all of Microsoft to fry - in fact, I admire most Microsoft programmers because with their extremely limited means they still manage to make something that's pretty good. I only want to fry Microsoft's marketing department. I wonder what deepfried marketborg tastes like?
yeah, up to this far it's been offtopic, but I promise I'll get there...
*clearing throat*
This seems to be a real problem with society today, blaming the tool, the tool's creator, or anything else, except (or sometimes in addition to) blaming those who are really responsible. Sometimes that's warranted, sometimes it's not, and sometimes you land right in the middle of the Zone Where Normal Things Don't Happen Very Often, aka the Gray Area.
First, you have to blame the person who is responsible in the first degree. If you download or serve MP3s from/on Napster, YOU are responsible. If you're dying of lung cancer because you've smoked all your life, YOU are responsible. If you kill somebody because you were driving under the influence, YOU are responsible. If you kill somebody with a firearm, YOU are responsible. If you push the Big Red Button, YOU are responsible. Then you may go and see if those who are responsible in the second degree can or cannot be (partly) blamed.
The key is responsibility. OFCOURSE the creator of Napster is (partly) responsible for the rampant music piracy committed through it. The question is whether he is to blame or not. OFCOURSE Big Tobacco is (partly) responsible for the deaths tobacco causes. The question is whether they are to blame or not. OFCOURSE the alcohol industry is (partly) responsible for deaths by driving under the influence
You are at all times responsible for the results of your actions, whether intended or not. If something goes wrong, it may not have been your fault, but it's still your responsibility. Say you're playing baseball, and you hit the ball so hard into the pitcher's face that he is hospitalised. It's not your fault, in fact, it's nobody's fault, but it's still your responsibility.
Taking such responsibility is a big and hard step, but if everybody did it, the world would be a much better place. And don't forget to visualise whirled peas.
)O(
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
The creator of Napster isn't responsible for the crimes certain Napster's users commit. No more than, as you say, the inventor of gun powder is responsible for the crimes committed by certain gun users.
)O(
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
philosophy, however, is a waste of everyone's time.
That is probably not the best of things to say to one who is going to study Philosopy of Science, Technology and Society (after trying Computer Science and finding it way too dry). Philosophy is definitely not a waste of everybody's time.
For example, take the sociological impact of computers and most notably the Internet. People who know sociology generally don't know much about technology, and people who know a lot about computers an the Internet don't know the first thing about sociology. Would you want either to answer questions about the Internet's impact on society to, for example, politicians? The former wouldn't understand the technology, the latter wouldn't understand the scope of the impact, and wouldn't be understood by the politicians, with crackpot bills like CDA, COPPA and COPA as a result. A "technical philosophy" person would be able to answer such questions, though...
)O(
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
I know exactly what you mean, and I've pondered that question and similar ones for a long time too. In the end I came to the conclusion that we all live in our own universe, in our own reality. The brains of humans are totally different, there aren't two brains you can find that are the same, thus it stands to reason that each person's perception is also different. But when you learn to distinguish colours, for example, you learn which colour to give what name. The same goes for sound, by the way.
That everybody perceives differently is very obvious when you start noticing it. My father has trouble telling colours apart when it's rather dark, and my girlfriend will have trouble seeing the difference between orange, pink, purple and red under similar rather low-light conditions, which becomes very obvious as we shoot some pool every monday and tuesday evening. I sometimes have trouble telling certain shades of blue and green apart. Another friend of mine has extreme difficulty telling two tones apart if they're exactly one octave from eachother. Another example is that somebody who's cross-eyed doesn't see a double image. Their brain has adapted to the defect just as it would have adapted to correctly positioned eyes and will generate a correct stereoscopic image, though ofcourse not with the same field of vision.
My conclusion is that everybody does see differently, but we've invented a protocol (language) to be able to communicate with eachother.
)O(
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
A highschool classmate of mine was totally colourblind. She only saw black and white because due to an extremely rare genetic defect she had only the light sensor thingies that see black and white, not the ones that distinguish colour. (Sorry about that, I don't know the English word for those things. I mean what's known in Dutch as "staafjes" and "kegeltjes" respectively). This had a few interesting side-effects, though. Even though she saw no colour whatsoever, she had an extremely sharp vision, somewhere in the range of 5-10/20, and she could discern most colours by grayshade. If you gave her a black and white picture, comments like "wow, that's a nice purple dress" weren't uncommon. She had her own pencil set with the colours written on them. After doing some research to find out which colours looked exactly the same to her, we had a brief period of great fun swapping stickers around - luckily she could laugh about it too, though our art teacher couldn't *ouch*.
)O(
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
If you let people vote on sites, it's rather easy to screw sites over. Say I set up a site about my personal Pagan (Neo-Pagan if you so insist) beliefs, and a large group of fundamentalist [Insert Other Religion] decides that offends them and calls upon all their members to vote my site down?
:)
Otoh, I'd love to see Linux users vote www.microsoft.com down!
)O(
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
That you don't recognise my name and some other things you write prove you haven't been into Subspace for a very long time compared to me. I've played the game since about version 1.08, iirc, just after Ragnarok. When the developers tried to pass control (partly) to the players in a structured and gradual way, I was one of the so-called Vangels - a very select group of about a dozen or so players who sysopped game servers. Personally I was in charge of Turf Zone, which, due to a bug in the server software I was never able to return to its former glory. But it was sure fun while it lasted.
:)
As for Trench Wars... Those kinds of zones suck, imho. It's more luck than skill, more brawn than brain. Turf Zone, now there was a cool game. Running Zone was cool too, and Powerball and A Small Warzone also have my firm okay. I still sporadically play in League Zone, Duelling Zone or Chaos Zone - the latter only when I'm truly bored
)O(
Never underestimate the power of stupidity