It's my understanding that the two parties didn't just "put aside" their differences, the US government paid off each side and told them to quit fighting and get to work building better airplanes and that the government wouldn't allow enforcement of any of their patents. For the good of the country.
Presumably at this point the US government realised that patents were intended as a means to an end. Wonder if the current US government would do the same.
The first Mickey Mouse cartoons would have eventually lapsed into the public domain if it weren't for the Sonny Bono law. BR?No doubt someone will post the link to the website which explains that the first Mickey Mouse cartoons most likely are in the public domain. Due to Disney messing up the original copyright attribution...
The scientologist have some weird fucking veiws. If i'm not mistaken, they have all this crap about how it's ok to kill/assault/lie/cheat/defam and destroy people if they are against the religion.
Hardly a position unique to Scientologists. If anything this takes them out of the "cult" catagory and puts them together with "real religious", including various branchs of Jeudism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Shinto, etc. Which have in both past and present interpreted their holy books(s) in a way to justify all sorts of atrocities against people not of "their religion". Sometimes even when those they are attacking.use exactly the same holy book(s).
The scientology HQ is actually a ship in international waters at all times. It's immune from the law in any land and is pretty much immune to any kind of attack from a rogue individual. I am afraid you will need a submarine, missile, or a battle ship to destroy their headquarters.
I'm sure there are plenty of individuals and small groups capable of building a torpedo bomber from scratch. Ships are very vulnerable to air attack they have no hope of outrunning even the slowest of aircraft. IIRC any ship not flying the flag of a real nation state is considered a "pirate" under international law. If it does fly the flag of a nation if is subject to the laws of that nation.
Software can be the same way. Complicated systems take a long time to write, and unless the people writing them are already filthy rich, they need some incentive before they are going to put in a hundred thousand man-hours.
Software has an interesting property in that it costs nothing to reuse something which already exists. So very often even a "complex" system will not take a long time to put together.
In our capitilistic economy, it is just not possible to make a living writing software if you allow everyone to copy it freely.
There are plenty of ways where it is difficult or impossible for people to earn livings. Some of these are essential for the functioning of society.
For further enlightenment, take a look at the situation in Israel. You've got a bunch of Muslims committing terrorist actions against Israel. On the other hand, you've got Israel, whose police actions kill just as many Palestinian civilians,
So far as the body count goes rather more Palestinian than Israeli civilians have wound up dead. Also often ignored or skirted around in Western (and especially US) news is that there is also terrorism from groups of Israelis. The current situation actually starting from a terrorist attack on a Palestinian school.
Once you seperate the traditions from the ideology of the religion, you get the following differences. Muslims believe Jesus was just another prophet, no the son of God. Christians, of course, believe otherwise. The both, however, believe that Jesus is the messiah (or savior, I think they're similar, correct me on this) but differ in the fact that Christians believe that he has already come, while Muslims believe he will come in the future. Overall, other aspects of the religions are similar. Both emphasize self-sacrifice (which is reflected in western culture in the idea of hard work) with Islam leaning a bit more towards ascetism. Both emphasize charity, both emphasize belief in one God (the exact same God, btw). Now, once you get outside the core beliefs, then things get strange. All that stuff about the virgins and heaven is akin to the gothic stuff in Christianity. These "details" arose in both religions during the cultural flourishes of their respective civilizations. In this respect, modern Christianity differs from medival christianity just as much as modern Christianity differs from modern Islam. There isn't really one "modern Islam", one "modern Christianity" or one "modern Judaism" in the first place. Indeed there are plenty of Jews who condem the actions of the Israeli state and even question it's existance.
Young, white, Christian men weren't scrutinized in the same way that young Muslims and Arab men are for a very sensible reason. It's a simple fact that the Arab culture is in opposition to Western culture and values.
Arab is not a synonym for Moslem. Some Arabs are Jewish, some are Christian, some are Moslem, some are Athiest, some are probably Hindu and Buddist... Some Arabs are anti Western culture some are very pro Western culture. There is also if they are pro or anti specific Western governments which is not the same thing. Another common misunderstanding, at least in the US, is to treat Zionist as a synonym for Jew. Even though some of the most forceful American Zionists claim to be Christian and some of the most forceful ant-Zionists are Jewish.
It simply makes statistical sense to keep an eye on those who are most likely to come from the country we're at war with.
Possible they might have relatiation on their mind if they have been subject to an unprovoked attack.
If you tried preventing bombings by watching all young, white, Christian men - you'd be wasting a *lot* of time.
When did The Klan, neo-Nazi's and various other groups claiming to follow some pervered version of Chritianity disappear from the US?
That surveillance is oh-so-effective. Look at the length of time it took to catch the unibomber and that kook (still on the lam) who is accused of the Atlanta Olympic and abortion clinic bombings. The breaks in those cases involved third parties (the brother of the unibomber and a med student jogger who called the cops) and were not the result of Gov't surveillance. Same kind of argument with Timothy McVeigh. They caught him after the fact due to good ole fashioned gum-shoe detective work.
Examples are hardly unique to North America. The state with the most Government surveillance was the former German Democratic Republic. Who collected files on a substantial portion of the population. None of this vast effort told them their country was about to cease to exist:)
Police units at every level have too much real work to do and too small a budget to waste time watching all of the wierdos in the woods. Let alone trying to figure out who the real weirdos are.
Surveillance is most effective where you already have some kind of suspect.
Hell, most of the people who live in the countryside do so because they prefer not to have too much civilization (excepting, of course, the satellite antenna) around them. The police would have to spy on everyone who lives in the countryside based on your criterion.
Probably in the process ignoring tip offs about criminals who lived in urban areas...
You've made some good points. I was going to say something similar about pointing out the backgrounds of the terrorists.
Turns out that over a third of the people identified as the September 11th hijackers were proven to have been using identities stolen from completly innocent people. What is to say that future terrorists won't do the same?
There are mentions in ancient texts of what could be the use of nuclear weapons, most notably from India. As well as fused soil and stone all over the planet. If a technology were lost to subsequent civilisations it would appear magical and fantastic. e.g. a story of a man who flew on the back of the giant eagle Useaf and cast down mighty thunderbolts on his enemies might make a lot more sense to some future people than some story about a flying machines made of metal propelled by oil.
And was that somebody not hung up by the belief that the world was flat? Or maybe at least some ancients had a few clues?!
Simple observation, especially on and near the ocean will establish the shape of the Earth.
On a somewhat related topic, the ancients seemed to know about the precession of the equinoxes. This implies measurements taken over a period of more than 10000 years and a sufficient theory to interpret those observations.
Our civililisation didn't require 10,000+ years of accurate measurements to work this out. So why should anyone else?
Yes it is possible: case in point, the Ancient Egyptians are known to have used mouldy bread (which contains penicillin) to treat wounds, yet they had no knowledge of germ theory.
Which shows that an empircal "engineering" approach can be highly sucessful.
Once you understand about germs however, you can figure out how penecillin works, and can start to manufacture better antibiotics.
You have to be careful to avoid overuse of antibiotics however. Otherwise the result is to breed antibiotic resistance bacteria.
The Egyptians also made "beer" (really about 0.5% or 1 proof) for normal drinking from the waters of the Nile. It is an interesting question whether their civilization was really based on the inadvertent discovery of the astringent property of ethanol.
Hardly unique to the ancient Egyptians. Beer (and wine) have been used throughout Europe, North African and West Asia for this purpose. So much so that whilst Europeans evolved the ability to detoxify alcohol people from parts of the world such as China often cannot tolerate alcohol at all. Because the ancient Chinese made water safe to drink by making tea.
The biggest joke is on states who built electric car charging stations with proprietary Magnacharger paddles to support EV-1s. With the EV-1s off the road, there really isn't any use for those charging stations anymore
This is where hybid vehicles have the advantage. In that they can use existing infrastructure, rather than requiring something to be built from scratch.
If this were true, GPL'd code would almost NEVER find use in a corporate environment. The biggest seller for GPL'd code is that people can modify it to suit their own needs. If a company wishes to use GPL'd code with their proprietary environment, it's quite likely some modification of that GPL'd code would be desirable to make it more compatible with that environment. If you were to force that company to release its changes, they'd have to release proprietary (and potentially trade secret) data.
The GPL does not oblige you to distribute the code also it applies only to program code not to data handled by that code. If you alter a GPL wordprocessor the GPL does not affect any documents you have written with it, altering a GPL database does not apply the GPL to your data. In contrast there are proprietary systems which do "infect" your data. The vast majority of companies arn't in the business of supplying software to anyone else in the first place...
The right way is a supeona the ISP asking for a list of customers who have downloaded kiddie porn from these websites. Prosecute under existing laws. The listed website could even be used as valuable tools (bait) in ferreting out criminals likely to cause harm to children.
Assuming someone dosn't think it's ammusing to post spam with links to this website or link other websites to it.
Also, as an interesting note, my Canadian passport contains a warning that says, roughly, the following. "If you hold dual citizenship, you are subject to their laws, including military service, while on their soil." If I were living in Canada, I would not be subject to US military service simply because I hold citizenship.
Remembering that "on their soil" includes diplomatic missions, ships and aircraft... Usually you are subject to the laws of a country when you are on their soil, regardless of your citizenship. In the absence of any specific treaty between that country and yours. The US is one of a small number of countries which attempt to apply their own laws in an extra territorial way.
In other countries, people become adults at different times (14 in Albania, 17 in Cyprus, 16 in Norway, full chart here [ageofconsent.com]).
Ages of consent do not always correspond with ages of majority. You can end up with situations where it is lawful for people to have sex, but not to be involved in watching or creating any kind of "porn". Also in some parts of the world, most notably the US, ages of consent are sub nationaly defined.
I beleive that the only person with authority to prosecute them is whomever licensed whatever programs that they are violating the GPL with.
It the law worked even handedly it should probably work something like the Adobe/Elcomsoft case. Once the authorities have been tipped off the actual prosecution being handled by the state...
Then, there's also the issue of legality of licensing. Does the law say anything about EULAs being a binding legal contract?
Which isn't relevent here since the GPL is not and EULA in the first place.
No. AFAIK the law is only concerned with copyright. Therefore, as long as copyright is not violated, anything else the license disallows can be ignored.
If you attempt to distribute GPL copies works in violation of the GPL then you have broken copyright. Remember that by default you cannot distribute copies at all.
but usually Microsoft hardware isn't bad at all. I like their USB mice quite a bit, and their natural ergonomic keyboard is pretty cool. So as far as their hardware record, they've had a good reputation (IMHO).
Do Microsoft actually make hardware? Or do they simply put their name on hardware someone else made?
Slashdot Mirror
It's my understanding that the two parties didn't just "put aside" their differences, the US government paid off each side and told them to quit fighting and get to work building better airplanes and that the government wouldn't allow enforcement of any of their patents. For the good of the country.
Presumably at this point the US government realised that patents were intended as a means to an end. Wonder if the current US government would do the same.
The first Mickey Mouse cartoons would have eventually lapsed into the public domain if it weren't for the Sonny Bono law.
BR?No doubt someone will post the link to the website which explains that the first Mickey Mouse cartoons most likely are in the public domain. Due to Disney messing up the original copyright attribution...
The scientologist have some weird fucking veiws. If i'm not mistaken, they have all this crap about how it's ok to kill/assault/lie/cheat/defam and destroy people if they are against the religion.
Hardly a position unique to Scientologists. If anything this takes them out of the "cult" catagory and puts them together with "real religious", including various branchs of Jeudism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Shinto, etc. Which have in both past and present interpreted their holy books(s) in a way to justify all sorts of atrocities against people not of "their religion". Sometimes even when those they are attacking.use exactly the same holy book(s).
The scientology HQ is actually a ship in international waters at all times. It's immune from the law in any land and is pretty much immune to any kind of attack from a rogue individual. I am afraid you will need a submarine, missile, or a battle ship to destroy their headquarters.
I'm sure there are plenty of individuals and small groups capable of building a torpedo bomber from scratch. Ships are very vulnerable to air attack they have no hope of outrunning even the slowest of aircraft.
IIRC any ship not flying the flag of a real nation state is considered a "pirate" under international law. If it does fly the flag of a nation if is subject to the laws of that nation.
Software can be the same way. Complicated systems take a long time to write, and unless the people writing them are already filthy rich, they need some incentive before they are going to put in a hundred thousand man-hours.
Software has an interesting property in that it costs nothing to reuse something which already exists. So very often even a "complex" system will not take a long time to put together.
In our capitilistic economy, it is just not possible to make a living writing software if you allow everyone to copy it freely.
There are plenty of ways where it is difficult or impossible for people to earn livings. Some of these are essential for the functioning of society.
Isn't the point of DRM that you won't be able to play it 40 years from and will, therefore, have to purchase another copy?
Doubt it will be that long, the people involved are probabaly considering something closer to 4 years than 40...
Yeah, but Ariel Sharon isn't surrounded with the same glorification as both Menachim Begin and Yitzhak Shamir are.
At least not yet. I read this morning that there are even Israelis calling for him to face trial for war crimes.
For instance, a "reliability" rating of 98% would be given to the attribute of sharing a name and place of birth with a known terrorist.
This isn't as useful as you might think. A terrorist could have a common name or adopt one.
For further enlightenment, take a look at the situation in Israel. You've got a bunch of Muslims committing terrorist actions against Israel. On the other hand, you've got Israel, whose police actions kill just as many Palestinian civilians,
So far as the body count goes rather more Palestinian than Israeli civilians have wound up dead. Also often ignored or skirted around in Western (and especially US) news is that there is also terrorism from groups of Israelis. The current situation actually starting from a terrorist attack on a Palestinian school.
Once you seperate the traditions from the ideology of the religion, you get the following differences. Muslims believe Jesus was just another prophet, no the son of God. Christians, of course, believe otherwise. The both, however, believe that Jesus is the messiah (or savior, I think they're similar, correct me on this) but differ in the fact that Christians believe that he has already come, while Muslims believe he will come in the future. Overall, other aspects of the religions are similar. Both emphasize self-sacrifice (which is reflected in western culture in the idea of hard work) with Islam leaning a bit more towards ascetism. Both emphasize charity, both emphasize belief in one God (the exact same God, btw). Now, once you get outside the core beliefs, then things get strange. All that stuff about the virgins and heaven is akin to the gothic stuff in Christianity. These "details" arose in both religions during the cultural flourishes of their respective civilizations. In this respect, modern Christianity differs from medival christianity just as much as modern Christianity differs from modern Islam.
There isn't really one "modern Islam", one "modern Christianity" or one "modern Judaism" in the first place. Indeed there are plenty of Jews who condem the actions of the Israeli state and even question it's existance.
But instead of bombing innocent civilians (ie. terrorism) why not get to the root of terrorism?
Possibly because having terrorists makes such a good excuse for government backed military and paramilitary actions.
The US needs to not kill more people or attempt to control more lives, they must stop doing what makes terrorists mad.
It's also quite likely to encourage people who wern't previously "terrorists" to consider violent action.
Young, white, Christian men weren't scrutinized in the same way that young Muslims and Arab men are for a very sensible reason. It's a simple fact that the Arab culture is in opposition to Western culture and values.
Arab is not a synonym for Moslem. Some Arabs are Jewish, some are Christian, some are Moslem, some are Athiest, some are probably Hindu and Buddist... Some Arabs are anti Western culture some are very pro Western culture. There is also if they are pro or anti specific Western governments which is not the same thing.
Another common misunderstanding, at least in the US, is to treat Zionist as a synonym for Jew. Even though some of the most forceful American Zionists claim to be Christian and some of the most forceful ant-Zionists are Jewish.
It simply makes statistical sense to keep an eye on those who are most likely to come from the country we're at war with.
Possible they might have relatiation on their mind if they have been subject to an unprovoked attack.
If you tried preventing bombings by watching all young, white, Christian men - you'd be wasting a *lot* of time.
When did The Klan, neo-Nazi's and various other groups claiming to follow some pervered version of Chritianity disappear from the US?
That surveillance is oh-so-effective. Look at the length of time it took to catch the unibomber and that kook (still on the lam) who is accused of the Atlanta Olympic and abortion clinic bombings. The breaks in those cases involved third parties (the brother of the unibomber and a med student jogger who called the cops) and were not the result of Gov't surveillance. Same kind of argument with Timothy McVeigh. They caught him after the fact due to good ole fashioned gum-shoe detective work.
:)
Examples are hardly unique to North America. The state with the most Government surveillance was the former German Democratic Republic. Who collected files on a substantial portion of the population. None of this vast effort told them their country was about to cease to exist
Police units at every level have too much real work to do and too small a budget to waste time watching all of the wierdos in the woods. Let alone trying to figure out who the real weirdos are.
Surveillance is most effective where you already have some kind of suspect.
Hell, most of the people who live in the countryside do so because they prefer not to have too much civilization (excepting, of course, the satellite antenna) around them. The police would have to spy on everyone who lives in the countryside based on your criterion.
Probably in the process ignoring tip offs about criminals who lived in urban areas...
You've made some good points. I was going to say something similar about pointing out the backgrounds of the terrorists.
Turns out that over a third of the people identified as the September 11th hijackers were proven to have been using identities stolen from completly innocent people.
What is to say that future terrorists won't do the same?
Care to point out the ancient nuclear weapon?
There are mentions in ancient texts of what could be the use of nuclear weapons, most notably from India. As well as fused soil and stone all over the planet.
If a technology were lost to subsequent civilisations it would appear magical and fantastic. e.g. a story of a man who flew on the back of the giant eagle Useaf and cast down mighty thunderbolts on his enemies might make a lot more sense to some future people than some story about a flying machines made of metal propelled by oil.
And was that somebody not hung up by the belief that the world was flat? Or maybe at least some ancients had a few clues?!
Simple observation, especially on and near the ocean will establish the shape of the Earth.
On a somewhat related topic, the ancients seemed to know about the precession of the equinoxes. This implies measurements taken over a period of more than 10000 years and a sufficient theory to interpret those observations.
Our civililisation didn't require 10,000+ years of accurate measurements to work this out. So why should anyone else?
Yes it is possible: case in point, the Ancient Egyptians are known to have used mouldy bread (which contains penicillin) to treat wounds, yet they had no knowledge of germ theory.
Which shows that an empircal "engineering" approach can be highly sucessful.
Once you understand about germs however, you can figure out how penecillin works, and can start to manufacture better antibiotics.
You have to be careful to avoid overuse of antibiotics however. Otherwise the result is to breed antibiotic resistance bacteria.
The Egyptians also made "beer" (really about 0.5% or 1 proof) for normal drinking from the waters of the Nile. It is an interesting question whether their civilization was really based on the inadvertent discovery of the astringent property of ethanol.
Hardly unique to the ancient Egyptians. Beer (and wine) have been used throughout Europe, North African and West Asia for this purpose. So much so that whilst Europeans evolved the ability to detoxify alcohol people from parts of the world such as China often cannot tolerate alcohol at all. Because the ancient Chinese made water safe to drink by making tea.
The biggest joke is on states who built electric car charging stations with proprietary Magnacharger paddles to support EV-1s. With the EV-1s off the road, there really isn't any use for those charging stations anymore
This is where hybid vehicles have the advantage. In that they can use existing infrastructure, rather than requiring something to be built from scratch.
If this were true, GPL'd code would almost NEVER find use in a corporate environment. The biggest seller for GPL'd code is that people can modify it to suit their own needs. If a company wishes to use GPL'd code with their proprietary environment, it's quite likely some modification of that GPL'd code would be desirable to make it more compatible with that environment. If you were to force that company to release its changes, they'd have to release proprietary (and potentially trade secret) data.
The GPL does not oblige you to distribute the code also it applies only to program code not to data handled by that code. If you alter a GPL wordprocessor the GPL does not affect any documents you have written with it, altering a GPL database does not apply the GPL to your data. In contrast there are proprietary systems which do "infect" your data.
The vast majority of companies arn't in the business of supplying software to anyone else in the first place...
The right way is a supeona the ISP asking for a list of customers who have downloaded kiddie porn from these websites. Prosecute under existing laws. The listed website could even be used as valuable tools (bait) in ferreting out criminals likely to cause harm to children.
Assuming someone dosn't think it's ammusing to post spam with links to this website or link other websites to it.
Also, as an interesting note, my Canadian passport contains a warning that says, roughly, the following. "If you hold dual citizenship, you are subject to their laws, including military service, while on their soil." If I were living in Canada, I would not be subject to US military service simply because I hold citizenship.
Remembering that "on their soil" includes diplomatic missions, ships and aircraft... Usually you are subject to the laws of a country when you are on their soil, regardless of your citizenship. In the absence of any specific treaty between that country and yours. The US is one of a small number of countries which attempt to apply their own laws in an extra territorial way.
In other countries, people become adults at different times (14 in Albania, 17 in Cyprus, 16 in Norway, full chart here [ageofconsent.com]).
Ages of consent do not always correspond with ages of majority. You can end up with situations where it is lawful for people to have sex, but not to be involved in watching or creating any kind of "porn". Also in some parts of the world, most notably the US, ages of consent are sub nationaly defined.
I beleive that the only person with authority to prosecute them is whomever licensed whatever programs that they are violating the GPL with.
It the law worked even handedly it should probably work something like the Adobe/Elcomsoft case. Once the authorities have been tipped off the actual prosecution being handled by the state...
Then, there's also the issue of legality of licensing. Does the law say anything about EULAs being a binding legal contract?
Which isn't relevent here since the GPL is not and EULA in the first place.
No. AFAIK the law is only concerned with copyright. Therefore, as long as copyright is not violated, anything else the license disallows can be ignored.
If you attempt to distribute GPL copies works in violation of the GPL then you have broken copyright. Remember that by default you cannot distribute copies at all.
but usually Microsoft hardware isn't bad at all. I like their USB mice quite a bit, and their natural ergonomic keyboard is pretty cool. So as far as their hardware record, they've had a good reputation (IMHO).
Do Microsoft actually make hardware? Or do they simply put their name on hardware someone else made?