Well, how many tanks does the pope have anyway? The Pope has a military, called the Pontifical Swiss Guard. Tanks would be next to worthless in the Vatican City, as it's just over 100 acres. I suspect that the Pope could remain comfortably ensconced within the basements of the Vatican for quite some time, but the real concern would be the countries that would defend the Vatican. Italy would retaliate without question (given that it would also imply an attack on Italian soil). Most of the E.U. would almost certainly render assistance. Russia might help to defend the Vatican. Worse, most of South and Central America would almost certainly drop all of their petty disputes and attack the United States within hours after such an assault on the Vatican.
Overall, the only thing that the U.S. could do that would be arguably stupider would be to bomb Beijing or Jerusalem.
When it comes to Scientology, however, there's no nation to deal with. They're just a modern, fringe cult.
There, fixed that for you. Please don't quote people and modify the quotation.
I did not, in fact, mean to use the word "cult", as that word is rarely used by any two people to mean the same thing. It can refer to any small religion (which is arguably the correct usage in the modern sense). It can refer to any body of religious practices (this is an archaic usage). It can refer to organizations that use religion purely as cover to perform illegal or immoral acts (Jonestown comes to mind) or otherwise separate membership from the rest of society (e.g. the Unification Church). It can refer to religions which are not considered "acceptable alternatives" by the mainstream (e.g. Christians in the U.S. referring to Paganism). It can refer to any religion that is not the speaker's (I've heard many U.S. Baptists refer to Roman Catholicism this way). It's just not a useful word.
But when these huge companies work with other huge companies AND government agencies like the FBI and CIA, do you think you even have a chance in Hell? Cases are won against the Federal Government on a regular basis. The question is, what kind of service should these users expect? They are sold a service that says they get fast downloads, and so they try to download something and it's not only fast, but blocked. I see no reason that Comcast, even if assisted by the Federal Government, could justify that.
If they attack any and all Torrents this way, then their users should build a case based on the blocking of major Linux distribution downloads from Fedora, SuSE and Ubuntu and make a class action out of it, certainly! This is a clear violation of their ToS, at least as I read it a few years ago when I was a customer. If it has changed, then perhaps someone could post the relevant quote from it here? Please, not the whole thing.
I mean, American Atheists has claimed that the human race would have gone to the moon by the 3rd century (yes, the 3rd century C.E.) if it hadn't been for those "evil Christians" (this is in "Atheists: The Last Minority")
Atheists are not a singular group with a common theological stance. But American Atheists are (not to be confused with Americans who happen to be atheists).
To quote:
The organization was founded by Madalyn Murray O'Hair, the noted Atheist activist [and has] Published over 120 books about Atheism, criticism of religion, and state/church separation. Titles offered include "The Bible Handbook" and Madalyn O'Hair's "Why I am an Atheist."
You can't sue the Pope. As the Bush administration rightly pointed out (and you have no idea how rare it is for me to agree with that administration), in the U.S. the Pope is considered a foreign head-of-state, with all of the legal protections that that entails. We could invade the Vatican and bomb the Pope, but we could not sue him in a U.S. court of law any more than we could the Prime Minister of the U.K.
Tell that to Manuel Noriega Manuel Noriega was not sued in a U.S. court of law. He was deposed by military action. His trial occurred after his deposition.
If you're suggesting that we use military force to depose the Pope and then bring him back to the U.S. to stand trail... well, what you're suggesting is an act of war, just be aware of that.
When it comes to Scientology, however, there's no nation to deal with. They're just a modern, fringe religion. Thus, they have no immunity in a U.S. (nor, I imagine, Belgian) court.
I am not defending the scientologists, but.... You could state many of these things for numerous religons.
Sue the Pope? Good luck with that. You can't sue the Pope. As the Bush administration rightly pointed out (and you have no idea how rare it is for me to agree with that administration), in the U.S. the Pope is considered a foreign head-of-state, with all of the legal protections that that entails. We could invade the Vatican and bomb the Pope, but we could not sue him in a U.S. court of law any more than we could the Prime Minister of the U.K.
That said, Scientology's accused of: "extortion, fraud, unfair trading, violation of privacy laws, and unlawfully practicing medicine." I'm not sure that you can accuse Roman Catholicism (as a whole, discounting fringe groups that aren't practicing core doctrine) of most of those.
Inherent to any political philosophy that's based on ideals, not pragmatism, is the acceptance that sometimes society will be worse off in certain ways if the philosophy is followed. I'm a libertarian, but I don't believe a true free market would magically protect everyone - I recognize there's a risk of increased poverty and stratification (although I'm not convinced that's actually the inevitable result). I just think the government intervention needed to prevent it is MORE unjust than allowance of the natural processes that cause it. I don't see the government's role as to try and cure social ills; it's there to prevent people from violating one another's rights, and to prevent foreign invasion. Anything beyond that requires it to create some injustices in the name of addressing others. OK, then help me out, here. What stops the U.S. from descending into another Great Depression if we stop regulating the economy, and what injustice do we suffer for having a prime lending rate upon which our economic stability is based?
Discovery Channel did a 30-minute segment about this [...] the editors/journalists massacred the subject to the point that the research was rendered unrecognizable This isn't even unique to science. Every company I've worked for has had multiple articles in trade magazines where someone called up the CEO, got lots of quotes, and proceeded to write an article that said things that had no connection to reality.
My current company has one article that we've framed and hung on the wall that says we've written all of our code in one particular programming language. What's really funny about that is that we're best known for using another programming language entirely, and any cursory background information search would have turned that up.
Some journalists are excellent. Most are just like every other industry's mainstream employees.
And this is the core of libertarian thought: if I'm not hurting you, leave me the hell alone. Don't tell me what to do. Don't order me to attend your schools. Don't take my money for your causes. Let me trade freely (for example, let me buy sugar from Cuba). Let me read, or view, or say, what I want. I don't need you to tell me what to do; I'm quite capable of figuring it out for myself. Let me have sex with any adult I want, male or female (n.b. I'm quite straight, but I see no reason to surpress other adults' desires; I'm still protective of minors). Let me put into my body what I choose to put in it. Yeah, that's pretty much the Libertarian setup.
It's a great point of view, and one that should be represented at the highest levels of government, but I fear for the nation that actually tries to put it into practice. Just a simple example: the free market creates periodic recessions and even depressions. Careful regulation of the economy (e.g. in the U.S. by the Federal Reserve) has allowed the U.S. to keep inflation under control for two decades now. This is a giant benefit to everyone who lives here (especially those who are saving for the future), including the Libertarians who seem to enjoy its benefit, but not actually want the controls.
Laws that control what substances you are allowed to ingest are often over-aggressive, and poorly thought out. They're implemented out of fear, rather than consideration and understanding. This is why THC is regulated as if it were lethal. On the other hand, there are substances which are extremely addictive and highly damaging to those who consume them (e.g. methamphetamine). In those cases, I'm all for having legislation that attacks those who produce and sell the drugs. If you're not, spend some time around meth addicts who are trying to recover. Their lives are essentially over. Many describe the world as "gray" because their brains have adapted to levels of endorphins and other chemicals that they cannot produce naturally. They can essentially only experience pre-drug levels of pleasure when taking the drug. If someone has that drug in their hands and decides to swallow it, I won't hold it against them, but the bastard that's making a buck by selling it to them (not the kid that passed it along, but the guy that oversees its distribution in bulk, knowing full-well what it will do) should be eaten by ants... slowly.
As for sex... I'm happier to see the debate held than silently bottled up until it becomes violence. We do need to have discussions about what kinship means, for example (yes, that's what the gay marriage debate is over).
I think what most Libertarians really want is for the economic and social structures that they grew up with to continue to exist, but for the entire apparatus of government to simply classify them as a special case and leave them alone. It's an oddly selfish point of view, as far as I can tell.
You can't exactly expect someone who isn't Roddenberry to be Roddenberry. Abrams will have his 5 minutes of fame here; but I really don't see his movie being a box office hit. I think you're confused.
You have some strange connection drawn between Star Trek and Gene Roddenberry. I appreciated his work on the original show, though I thought he stumbled when it came to ST:TMP and ST:TNG season one.... still he was a bright guy with excellent vision.
But I'm not stupid enough to think my opinion counts when it comes to box office hits.
Here are some stats for you:
* 41 years ago, Star Trek first aired. Most people alive today were not alive to see it. * 20 years ago, Star Trek: The Next Generation first aired. There are people who have graduated from college who weren't born when it aired. * Gene Roddenberry died in 1991. If he died before you were born, you can learn to drive in some states. * Star Trek: Generations, the movie where Kirk died, was released in 1994, 13 years ago. If you watched it in High School, and thus your only real connection to Roddenberry's idea of Trek was an aging Shatner getting shot in a desert, then you're now in your mid-to-late 20s.
Now, can we get past the idea that a Star Trek movie's success is going to rely on the opinions of people who know who Roddenberry was?
This is just baseless speculation. It sounds like this guy just pulled the whole thing out of his bunghole. They're right as often as they're wrong (that's the risk of trying to thread together rumors about an industry that specializes in misdirection), but if anyone knows this for sure, it's Moriarty. We'll see, I suppose. I'll be sure to submit a review to Slashdot when it comes out.
I disagree, though. MS is still "the" name in operating systems for nearly everybody... do you know ANY entity (person or business) that decided to stop using Windows because of government action?
NO. Well, not to ruin your nice rhetorical setup there, but yes. Dozens.
Any large organization that runs Linux server-side today does so because the OEM-side pressure that Microsoft was able to exert dried up as a result of the anti-trust case in the U.S. This reduced Microsofts ability to restrict the playing field, and a number of very large organizations sprung up which could deliver Windows, but could just as easily deliver other OSes like Linux. On the other hand, you had IBM. They were exiting the Intel market because they could not compete on Microsoft's terms. Once Microsoft wasn't allowed to dictate market-shaping terms any longer, IBM jumped back in with a vengeance, and now run some of the largest Intel-based datacenters in the world... some of which run Windows, but many of which run IBM's new darling OS... Linux. The lack of OEM controls were the foot in the door that many organizations needed for a number of reasons.
Do you know of any that started using it because they got sick of MS and said, you know, OSX looks like a good alternative? Heh. You're joking of course. If you honestly think that that's how decisions are made, you're sadly mistaken. The market is a one-ton child with an IQ of 5. It crawls its way toward the surest source of nourishment and kills anything that threatens its supply. There's no room for organizations that do things because they're "sick of" the way things are done. No, the only thing that such a beast understands is a good swift kick from time to time when it does something that cannot be ignored.
I'm not arguing MS used illegal anti-competitive practices to get to the top, but government intervention is not what is driving people to alternatives. No, of course not. What drove people to alternatives was the honest urge to innovate. What gave those alternatives an opportunity to bloom outside of academia was a slew of government interventions on at least 2 continents.
I am a libertarian, in fact At first, I read that as "I am a librarian..." I was wondering why that had anything to do with the discussion.;-)
And MS HAS lost market share to MacOS (and perhaps fractionally Linux), and it did so because of the free market, not anything the government has done. All politics aside, this is clearly false (though that should say "the governments," plural.
Microsoft has had to tone down their anti-competitive practices substantially over the course of the last 10 years. They have been fighting a long and painful battle in the EU over their practices there, and they have had to relinquish tremendous control over the deployment of their operating system in the U.S. The anti-trust suit may have been eviscerated by the Bush administration when they took over, but the damage was substantially done, and a direct return to their previous practices would have forced the hand of a now-friendly Justice Department, not to mention civil suits.
The U.S. States also had something to do with this. Their constant efforts to push MS into adopting and supporting broader standards has changed the way MS has handled many of their data decisions.
Microsoft's current market position simply cannot be separated from the efforts of governments over the last decade to control their trade practices.
I'm all for making the playing field even and all, but federal/state oversight of the operating system is a bad idea. There are two valid options in the long-term. Because a monopoly OS becomes a defacto arm of the government (being able to enforce policy via changes to the way everyone, including the government, gets information and/or can communicate with the world) oversight will eventually be a must. To avoid that, Windows would have to not be a monopoly. MacOS is cutting in a bit, and given time might present a sufficient competitive force. Linux is certainly presenting viable competition on the server-side, so I don't think there's a monopoly threat there.
Microsoft has pushed the states very, very hard to prevent them from moving to other platforms. If they continue to do so, the states are left only with the need to seek oversight on what is effectively a monopoly over critical government resources.
Competition, in this case, is in Microsoft's best interests.
You're not actually reading the text that they linked to, are you?
We're not talking about Wikipedia's concept of authorship, here, but the tool's. The tool tracks who first wrote something and doesn't re-assign authorship because it was removed (e.g. by a vandal) and then restored.
You would have to remove what they wrote and then restore it in your own words in such a way that your edit was good enough to be retained by the community. In which case, the system worked.
Generalize that to controversy of any form. I have spent some time editing articles that focus on bigotry, genitalia and other topics which get a lot of vandalism... I wonder how that would be dealt with....
I would expect it to consider the percentage of original text that remains. For example, if you write 2 paragraphs and over time 20 words are edited by others, that's a pretty decent rate.
Editor wars are an old thing. The real concern I'd have would be how you deal with old editors who don't contribute anymore (but were "trustworthy" when they did) vs. new editors. Overall, I think it's a good idea, and I would go so far as to say that MediaWiki should offer a feature that performs this analysis for you.
But does this apply to gmail?! Is your gmail contents "intended to be available to the members of the public"?
I thought not. I think the concern is that the wording is ambiguous. As usual, the Slashdot headline takes the most sensationalist way of approaching the issue, but at its core it's a question of whose intent you're talking about. Is it, "services which are intended to be available to the members of the public," or, "content which is intended to be available to the members of the public?"
My sense is that Google means the latter (as most of us would expect), but the wording is ambiguous, and it might well serve them better to revise the agreement to eliminate that ambiguity.
Most DRMed products are not "sold", but rather "licensed". As such, the owner has every right to control their use
There is no basis in law upon which they can have any such control. A landlord can restrict an apartment because it is HIS apartment! When I buy a CD or DVD, it is MINE. A licensed product is not sold. If you think that holding a product in your hands after giving someone money means that you own it, you're sorely mistaken, and have a dangerously naive view of your relationship with the vendor. As with most things, it's useful to actually pay attention to the legal documents to which you become a party.
It is not okay for some company or individual to be able to control how I can use what I own. First off, we were not discussing what was OK and what was not, only that DRM and the GPL impose restrictions in order to achieve their goals. In both cases, this is quite true, and while I was not the original poster, I agree fully.
Now, that being said, your point is rather shaky, legally speaking. Most DRMed products are not "sold", but rather "licensed". As such, the owner has every right to control their use (just as a landlord has every right to place restrictions on how you use an apartment).
I find it unacceptable that I can't watch any version of a movie that I have bought. I don't know of any movie that has such restrictions. It was a hypothetical in my post, which illustrated the point.
Frankly, I'm not sure what the article is trying to state.
If the code is released under GPLv3, then modifications of the code must be able to run on the same hardware. True, as far as it goes.
The problem is that folks like TiVo don't want you changing the behavior of the system. They don't care about the GPL code. If they have a hypervisor that implements their rules and private whatnot while the GPLed OS runs under a virtual machine, then you can change that GPLed code all you like, but you can't affect the real machine in a way that the hypervisor doesn't like.
This should be quite legit with respect to the GPLv3, and merely demonstrates what we always knew: software is too powerful to be effectively restricted by a legal document. There's probably a good thesis in that, in fact.
Nope. [DRM] tries to maximize revenue of corporations by intrusive means discussed at length here on/. while the [GPLv3] establishes a legal framework for public use of material.
Nope.
DRM has nothing to do with revenue. Of course, it's a tool which is most often used with respect to increasing revenue, but there is no fundamental connection between the two. I might, for example, use DRM to release a movie which I wish to re-release occasionally in order to switch which of two characters shoots the other first (not mentioning any names, here). I might charge nothing for these releases, I just want to make sure that everyone is forced to watch the version that I've decided is "current". DRM can do that.
The GPL is a tool which allows me to restrict the use of my source code such that only people willing to grant other people my pet set of rights can distribute it. Everyone else must ask for my permission first, or they get nothing (and likely will get nothing, even if they ask).
Now, I'm a fan of the GPL. I'm a fan of the clever hack which it embodies for using copyright law to control the distribution of additional, non-copyright rights. Very cool. I'm also a fan of the basic idea of offering users who want to share the right to do so.
However, it's completely unreasonable to draw an imaginary line in the sand between one set of restrictions (you can share, but only if you play by my rules) and another (you can use, but only if you play by my rules) on the basis that one doesn't comprise a restriction because the intent is different.
Slashdot Mirror
Overall, the only thing that the U.S. could do that would be arguably stupider would be to bomb Beijing or Jerusalem.
There, fixed that for you. Please don't quote people and modify the quotation.
I did not, in fact, mean to use the word "cult", as that word is rarely used by any two people to mean the same thing. It can refer to any small religion (which is arguably the correct usage in the modern sense). It can refer to any body of religious practices (this is an archaic usage). It can refer to organizations that use religion purely as cover to perform illegal or immoral acts (Jonestown comes to mind) or otherwise separate membership from the rest of society (e.g. the Unification Church). It can refer to religions which are not considered "acceptable alternatives" by the mainstream (e.g. Christians in the U.S. referring to Paganism). It can refer to any religion that is not the speaker's (I've heard many U.S. Baptists refer to Roman Catholicism this way). It's just not a useful word.
If they attack any and all Torrents this way, then their users should build a case based on the blocking of major Linux distribution downloads from Fedora, SuSE and Ubuntu and make a class action out of it, certainly! This is a clear violation of their ToS, at least as I read it a few years ago when I was a customer. If it has changed, then perhaps someone could post the relevant quote from it here? Please, not the whole thing.
Atheists are not a singular group with a common theological stance. But American Atheists are (not to be confused with Americans who happen to be atheists).
To quote: The organization was founded by Madalyn Murray O'Hair, the noted Atheist activist [and has] Published over 120 books about Atheism, criticism of religion, and state/church separation. Titles offered include "The Bible Handbook" and Madalyn O'Hair's "Why I am an Atheist."
Tell that to Manuel Noriega Manuel Noriega was not sued in a U.S. court of law. He was deposed by military action. His trial occurred after his deposition.
If you're suggesting that we use military force to depose the Pope and then bring him back to the U.S. to stand trail... well, what you're suggesting is an act of war, just be aware of that.
When it comes to Scientology, however, there's no nation to deal with. They're just a modern, fringe religion. Thus, they have no immunity in a U.S. (nor, I imagine, Belgian) court.
Sue the Pope? Good luck with that. You can't sue the Pope. As the Bush administration rightly pointed out (and you have no idea how rare it is for me to agree with that administration), in the U.S. the Pope is considered a foreign head-of-state, with all of the legal protections that that entails. We could invade the Vatican and bomb the Pope, but we could not sue him in a U.S. court of law any more than we could the Prime Minister of the U.K.
That said, Scientology's accused of: "extortion, fraud, unfair trading, violation of privacy laws, and unlawfully practicing medicine." I'm not sure that you can accuse Roman Catholicism (as a whole, discounting fringe groups that aren't practicing core doctrine) of most of those.
My current company has one article that we've framed and hung on the wall that says we've written all of our code in one particular programming language. What's really funny about that is that we're best known for using another programming language entirely, and any cursory background information search would have turned that up.
Some journalists are excellent. Most are just like every other industry's mainstream employees.
It's a great point of view, and one that should be represented at the highest levels of government, but I fear for the nation that actually tries to put it into practice. Just a simple example: the free market creates periodic recessions and even depressions. Careful regulation of the economy (e.g. in the U.S. by the Federal Reserve) has allowed the U.S. to keep inflation under control for two decades now. This is a giant benefit to everyone who lives here (especially those who are saving for the future), including the Libertarians who seem to enjoy its benefit, but not actually want the controls.
Laws that control what substances you are allowed to ingest are often over-aggressive, and poorly thought out. They're implemented out of fear, rather than consideration and understanding. This is why THC is regulated as if it were lethal. On the other hand, there are substances which are extremely addictive and highly damaging to those who consume them (e.g. methamphetamine). In those cases, I'm all for having legislation that attacks those who produce and sell the drugs. If you're not, spend some time around meth addicts who are trying to recover. Their lives are essentially over. Many describe the world as "gray" because their brains have adapted to levels of endorphins and other chemicals that they cannot produce naturally. They can essentially only experience pre-drug levels of pleasure when taking the drug. If someone has that drug in their hands and decides to swallow it, I won't hold it against them, but the bastard that's making a buck by selling it to them (not the kid that passed it along, but the guy that oversees its distribution in bulk, knowing full-well what it will do) should be eaten by ants... slowly.
As for sex... I'm happier to see the debate held than silently bottled up until it becomes violence. We do need to have discussions about what kinship means, for example (yes, that's what the gay marriage debate is over).
I think what most Libertarians really want is for the economic and social structures that they grew up with to continue to exist, but for the entire apparatus of government to simply classify them as a special case and leave them alone. It's an oddly selfish point of view, as far as I can tell.
You have some strange connection drawn between Star Trek and Gene Roddenberry. I appreciated his work on the original show, though I thought he stumbled when it came to ST:TMP and ST:TNG season one.... still he was a bright guy with excellent vision.
But I'm not stupid enough to think my opinion counts when it comes to box office hits.
Here are some stats for you:
* 41 years ago, Star Trek first aired. Most people alive today were not alive to see it.
* 20 years ago, Star Trek: The Next Generation first aired. There are people who have graduated from college who weren't born when it aired.
* Gene Roddenberry died in 1991. If he died before you were born, you can learn to drive in some states.
* Star Trek: Generations, the movie where Kirk died, was released in 1994, 13 years ago. If you watched it in High School, and thus your only real connection to Roddenberry's idea of Trek was an aging Shatner getting shot in a desert, then you're now in your mid-to-late 20s.
Now, can we get past the idea that a Star Trek movie's success is going to rely on the opinions of people who know who Roddenberry was?
NO. Well, not to ruin your nice rhetorical setup there, but yes. Dozens.
Any large organization that runs Linux server-side today does so because the OEM-side pressure that Microsoft was able to exert dried up as a result of the anti-trust case in the U.S. This reduced Microsofts ability to restrict the playing field, and a number of very large organizations sprung up which could deliver Windows, but could just as easily deliver other OSes like Linux. On the other hand, you had IBM. They were exiting the Intel market because they could not compete on Microsoft's terms. Once Microsoft wasn't allowed to dictate market-shaping terms any longer, IBM jumped back in with a vengeance, and now run some of the largest Intel-based datacenters in the world... some of which run Windows, but many of which run IBM's new darling OS... Linux. The lack of OEM controls were the foot in the door that many organizations needed for a number of reasons. Do you know of any that started using it because they got sick of MS and said, you know, OSX looks like a good alternative? Heh. You're joking of course. If you honestly think that that's how decisions are made, you're sadly mistaken. The market is a one-ton child with an IQ of 5. It crawls its way toward the surest source of nourishment and kills anything that threatens its supply. There's no room for organizations that do things because they're "sick of" the way things are done. No, the only thing that such a beast understands is a good swift kick from time to time when it does something that cannot be ignored. I'm not arguing MS used illegal anti-competitive practices to get to the top, but government intervention is not what is driving people to alternatives. No, of course not. What drove people to alternatives was the honest urge to innovate. What gave those alternatives an opportunity to bloom outside of academia was a slew of government interventions on at least 2 continents.
Microsoft has had to tone down their anti-competitive practices substantially over the course of the last 10 years. They have been fighting a long and painful battle in the EU over their practices there, and they have had to relinquish tremendous control over the deployment of their operating system in the U.S. The anti-trust suit may have been eviscerated by the Bush administration when they took over, but the damage was substantially done, and a direct return to their previous practices would have forced the hand of a now-friendly Justice Department, not to mention civil suits.
The U.S. States also had something to do with this. Their constant efforts to push MS into adopting and supporting broader standards has changed the way MS has handled many of their data decisions.
Microsoft's current market position simply cannot be separated from the efforts of governments over the last decade to control their trade practices.
Microsoft has pushed the states very, very hard to prevent them from moving to other platforms. If they continue to do so, the states are left only with the need to seek oversight on what is effectively a monopoly over critical government resources.
Competition, in this case, is in Microsoft's best interests.
You're not actually reading the text that they linked to, are you?
We're not talking about Wikipedia's concept of authorship, here, but the tool's. The tool tracks who first wrote something and doesn't re-assign authorship because it was removed (e.g. by a vandal) and then restored.
You would have to remove what they wrote and then restore it in your own words in such a way that your edit was good enough to be retained by the community. In which case, the system worked.
Overall, I think it would be an excellent thing.
Generalize that to controversy of any form. I have spent some time editing articles that focus on bigotry, genitalia and other topics which get a lot of vandalism... I wonder how that would be dealt with....
I would expect it to consider the percentage of original text that remains. For example, if you write 2 paragraphs and over time 20 words are edited by others, that's a pretty decent rate.
Editor wars are an old thing. The real concern I'd have would be how you deal with old editors who don't contribute anymore (but were "trustworthy" when they did) vs. new editors. Overall, I think it's a good idea, and I would go so far as to say that MediaWiki should offer a feature that performs this analysis for you.
-~~~~
I thought not. I think the concern is that the wording is ambiguous. As usual, the Slashdot headline takes the most sensationalist way of approaching the issue, but at its core it's a question of whose intent you're talking about. Is it, "services which are intended to be available to the members of the public," or, "content which is intended to be available to the members of the public?"
My sense is that Google means the latter (as most of us would expect), but the wording is ambiguous, and it might well serve them better to revise the agreement to eliminate that ambiguity.
There is no basis in law upon which they can have any such control. A landlord can restrict an apartment because it is HIS apartment! When I buy a CD or DVD, it is MINE. A licensed product is not sold. If you think that holding a product in your hands after giving someone money means that you own it, you're sorely mistaken, and have a dangerously naive view of your relationship with the vendor. As with most things, it's useful to actually pay attention to the legal documents to which you become a party.
Now, that being said, your point is rather shaky, legally speaking. Most DRMed products are not "sold", but rather "licensed". As such, the owner has every right to control their use (just as a landlord has every right to place restrictions on how you use an apartment). I find it unacceptable that I can't watch any version of a movie that I have bought. I don't know of any movie that has such restrictions. It was a hypothetical in my post, which illustrated the point.
If the code is released under GPLv3, then modifications of the code must be able to run on the same hardware. True, as far as it goes.
The problem is that folks like TiVo don't want you changing the behavior of the system. They don't care about the GPL code. If they have a hypervisor that implements their rules and private whatnot while the GPLed OS runs under a virtual machine, then you can change that GPLed code all you like, but you can't affect the real machine in a way that the hypervisor doesn't like.
This should be quite legit with respect to the GPLv3, and merely demonstrates what we always knew: software is too powerful to be effectively restricted by a legal document. There's probably a good thesis in that, in fact.
/. while the [GPLv3] establishes a legal framework for public use of material.
Nope.Nope. [DRM] tries to maximize revenue of corporations by intrusive means discussed at length here on
DRM has nothing to do with revenue. Of course, it's a tool which is most often used with respect to increasing revenue, but there is no fundamental connection between the two. I might, for example, use DRM to release a movie which I wish to re-release occasionally in order to switch which of two characters shoots the other first (not mentioning any names, here). I might charge nothing for these releases, I just want to make sure that everyone is forced to watch the version that I've decided is "current". DRM can do that.
The GPL is a tool which allows me to restrict the use of my source code such that only people willing to grant other people my pet set of rights can distribute it. Everyone else must ask for my permission first, or they get nothing (and likely will get nothing, even if they ask).
Now, I'm a fan of the GPL. I'm a fan of the clever hack which it embodies for using copyright law to control the distribution of additional, non-copyright rights. Very cool. I'm also a fan of the basic idea of offering users who want to share the right to do so.
However, it's completely unreasonable to draw an imaginary line in the sand between one set of restrictions (you can share, but only if you play by my rules) and another (you can use, but only if you play by my rules) on the basis that one doesn't comprise a restriction because the intent is different.
Yeah, sorry. No *modern camera* (one using lenses) has an infinite depth of field.
Of course, what you describe is probably pretty close to exactly what's being done.