I'm not trying to create a debate on gun control, because people on either side have as much chance as an atheist trying to convert the Pope. (Face value on that, please.) Instead, could you provide for me an example of legal gun use in which there is truly no alternative to using a gun? Hunting is invalid, as we got by for millennia without firearms.
Conversely... cameras, film and video both, serve a very useful purpose. (Guns - to kill, Cameras - momentos/distribution of facts, as in freedom of the press). Cameras are not a good analagy. The role of a camera has nothing to do with the role of a gun. Everything, with no exceptions whatsoever, can be used to cause harm in some manner or another. Does this mean that we should ban *everything*, sit in grassy fields all day with crossed legs, never moving, never speaking? Of course not.
Are the manufacturers responsible for whenever a product can be used illegally? No. Are the manufacturers responsible when the product's primary use is illegal and they make no bones about it? Yes.
Napster has apparently removed a couple user accounts associated with illegal usage. That's.006% down, all but.01% to go.
Do you think Napster should remain online, knowing that 99% of their traffic is illegal, and that "legal use" is effectively unenforcable? If I've not responded to your question in the last few paragraphs satisfactorily, let me know.
With regards to Smith & Wesson, I personally believe yes, but enough people feel otherwise to prevent it from going through. Not too many people who commit armed robberies (with guns) are capable of manufacturing their own weapons. An armed individual with a knife or baseball bat can be disarmed without casualties many times more often than a gunman.
Kiddie porn. For all the millions of time this gets mentioned, it isn't a major problem. Besides - you seem to like guns by your tone. If one in ten thousand guns is used for a crime (I'm sure it's much higher), one in ten million cameras is used for child porn.
Finally, DeCSS. You seem to be making many incorrect asumptions about me, but I will give you the benefit of doubt and assume you understand that DeCSS allows the playing of DVDs, and that before it was released, bit-for-bit copies of DVDs could be made. That it is truly so hard for someone to find a lawyer who will go in and provide this fact and end the controversy related to it, shocks me. That DeCSS may or may not be illegal because it goes around the DVD consortium's player lisencing is another matter, and is the core of the matter.
Back to the numbers game, though. With Napster, it is more likely a ten thousand to one ratio of illegal to legal mp3s. To argue otherwise is silly.
Napster is definitely aiding and quite possibly abetting people commit copyright violations.
While the penalty for a single count may be a small, there is no doubt that a million $100 fines add up. Let's not forget that $100 is far from the maximum possible fine. Under the Canadian Criminal Code (it's what I know, though IANAL), one who either aids or abets in a criminal act is just as liable as the one who commits it.
The Osaka ruling changes nothing related to Napster, it simply brought the thought to my mind.
Slashdot. Where we hate intellectual property laws, but when someone takes ONE SENTENCE of our stuff, we scream bloody murder.
I can't speak for other posters, but I have never, ever posted something that would make me a hypocrite with regards to IP. You may or may not have noticed that there are many thousand user accounts. From one to the next, views differ. I believe that IP is useful, but that 50 years after the death of the author (in America) is far too long a period of time. I would post a complaint on an article talking about the possible extension of this time period.
I would not, however, post a comment saying "IP law sucks. Get rid of it altogether." Others would. The difference here is that realists are posting more about the potential misuse of their own property than the idealists who like to post about something that has no significant impact upon them.
Quotation without credit is not considered quotation. It is considered plagiarism. Help yourself in future endeavors. Make your disclaimer similar to Technocrat.net's, in which Bruce Perens clearly states that both he and the poster can republish the comments.
So are you going to sue me for copyright infringement for just quoting you without your permission? No, because anything you say in a public forum is up for grabs. That's just like the President trying to say that anything he says in a public speach is copyrighted by him and that we can't reprint it without his permission. (Although that would have been nice to cover up some stupid sayings that dumb politicians have made...)
Although you think it is ridiculous, it is fact. While not often enforced, any public speech which was written ahead of time is covered under copyright law. Look up information on King's "I have a Dream" speech for some background.
While nothing I wrote is in this book as I didn't comment on those articles, I would be talking to my lawyers if something were.
Because Slashdot does not have a disclaimer stating that they may do what they wish with the comments and in fact do tell us that the "comments are owned by the Poster", they are very open to lawsuits.
I find it hard to believe that Andover did not consuly any lawyers before compilling this, but they should certainly ask them what the implications are. Again, without a disclaimer stating that Slashdot may republish all posted comments without permission, they cannot.
How about highlighting the text you want to copy, middle clicking where you'd like to paste?
This works 100% of the time, to the best of my knowledge. I do get annoyed when I accidently highlight the text I want to replace, therefore unhighlighting what I wanted to copy
My post is trollish, but I really don't care if it gets moderated. At least several hundred people (probably) saw it already, I got what I was going for.
The only advantage to the moderation and +1 bonus is that people are more likely to see your posts when you want them to. By the same virtue, how many people saw your also trolling post at 0?
That fact that he is correct in this circumstance notwithstanding, does anyone have any doubt that Zico is easily Slashdot's most frequently moderated up troll, period?
It's not some issue I have with his karma and/or the infamous karmawhoring of others. I have enough of my own for a +1 and about 60 first posts without losing same. It's more that I can't help but wonder why I see four posts by Zico on this article, all saying the same thing, and all of them above my default Score: 2 threshold, despite the fact he had the courtesy to start a couple of them at one.
It's funny, actually.
And Zico, I think that the reason this was posted is because Slashdot is still attempting to produce original content, despite the fact that the quality thereof is abysmal. (See: Katz, Jon - Martyr to the Geeks; Katz, Jon - the "this profiling... it includes geeks" guy; Katz, Jon - the "instead of turning in geeks, let's turn in jocks. That'll get them" guy; Katz, Jon - "someone asked me to please die"; etc)
I'm not anal, so I'm not going to peruse your post very carefully for spelling and/or grammatical errors.
Would "Real World" (tm) have been a better way to explain to you that I refer to the great expanse with a blue sky that is somewhere beyond the curtained basement you seem to have temporarily crawled out of?
As your point about real shows doesn't apply, most of your arguments are invalid. Even so, I will restate that this is through personal experience. Didn't you go through high school? If not, you'll understand it in a few more years.
Some research reveals that you are both female and either a graduate student or emoplyed somewhere.
Risking annoying you even more, I would ask if you remember how all the "popular" girls would chat on the phone from about grade six onwards nonstop. If not, fine; although I'm not sure how that's possible. I'm simply stating the fact that they now do it online.
(sincerly, the apparently sexist, mysogenic pig, legoboy)
One thing I've noticed over the past couple years is that just as in the "Real World", both women and girls online are rediculously compulsive chatters.
I have a teenaged sister who will pretty much spend every last spare minute she has chatting online, and most of her friends do the same. It's definately not considered geeky any more among a fair number of the younger people here, anyways.. More of a replacement for the 3-way daisy chain phone calls with 15 different people on the line. (Although you'd think they could visit each other in person when they aren't at school or a party.)
What is more interesting to see is the older females in this group. The ones in the late 20's and early 30's who are not online for recipes, but to chat. I'm sure it's far from normal, but siblings of two different people who work for me are both addicted to online chatting. One ran (note past tense) a quiet craft shop, which now closed until further notice so that she can stay at home and chat. Could the woman not do this on a computer at work, even? The other one quit her retail job to do same.
I don't really have any opinion on this behavior, and I neither condemn nor condone it.
This looks more like a hacker's theme for Windows than anything else like "Travel" and "Falling Leaves" It pushes those so-called limitations a fair bit as well. Myself, I'm a fan of simple/functional/out of the way.
The screenshot, btw, is from the GeoShell project. Google should find it for you, if you're interested.
You would almost think it is impossible for anyone to control all the quality content on the web. After all... when a million monkeys at a million keyboards can make a million websites (http://www.geocities.com), why would people need to stick to the big sites?
Oh... Quality content. That means stuff that people want to read, right?
Hey... Maybe that French law that had some people so riled up was right after all. I wasn't really flamed for saying it was a good thing, but other people were.
The French law clearly laid down the terms on which a webhosting company would be responsible for its content. It went something like: If you can't point us at the client, you're in trouble. Otherwise, cool. You (provider) can host anything whatsoever without fear of persecution.
On an unrelated note, how do the mostly American readers of Slashdot like the report in Rolling Stone that as part of the "War on Drugs", money went to magazines such as "Seventeen" to fund fictional stories, plublished as real, which were basicly anecdotal "Drugs are bad" literature.
why does netscape have to add in the other junk when one don't want the stupid junk as the AIM and such.. I think the user should be able to disable it from it or they can have AIM as a seperate thing.. netscape acts like M$ adding bloateware...
This sort of thing is why some of us click on "Custom..." which lets us "customize" our installation.
If Slashdot had only posted, say... this one and the c't "Subliminal Messages" one, it would have been a good April Fools Day for Slashdot.
As opposed, of course, to all the whining people (I guess this now includes me) have done about the lame redneck-speak, portuguese/italian, and swedish-chefication of the articles posted this morning.
------
Re:There's a grea* site about hoaxes on the Intern
on
Hoax-a-go-go!
·
· Score: 2
There's this really funny story about some poor sap who thought he was going to someone's personal home pahe, but in reality was sent to a hardcore bestiality web site! Check it out at http://home.san.rr.com/~jrf/hoaxes/hoax1.html.
Not that I clicked it, but I still think this is funny enough to repost at a higher score.
Slashdot Mirror
No sense? I shall try to amend that.
I'm not trying to create a debate on gun control, because people on either side have as much chance as an atheist trying to convert the Pope. (Face value on that, please.) Instead, could you provide for me an example of legal gun use in which there is truly no alternative to using a gun? Hunting is invalid, as we got by for millennia without firearms.
Conversely... cameras, film and video both, serve a very useful purpose. (Guns - to kill, Cameras - momentos/distribution of facts, as in freedom of the press). Cameras are not a good analagy. The role of a camera has nothing to do with the role of a gun. Everything, with no exceptions whatsoever, can be used to cause harm in some manner or another. Does this mean that we should ban *everything*, sit in grassy fields all day with crossed legs, never moving, never speaking? Of course not.
Are the manufacturers responsible for whenever a product can be used illegally? No. Are the manufacturers responsible when the product's primary use is illegal and they make no bones about it? Yes.
Napster has apparently removed a couple user accounts associated with illegal usage. That's .006% down, all but .01% to go.
Do you think Napster should remain online, knowing that 99% of their traffic is illegal, and that "legal use" is effectively unenforcable? If I've not responded to your question in the last few paragraphs satisfactorily, let me know.
------
With regards to Smith & Wesson, I personally believe yes, but enough people feel otherwise to prevent it from going through. Not too many people who commit armed robberies (with guns) are capable of manufacturing their own weapons. An armed individual with a knife or baseball bat can be disarmed without casualties many times more often than a gunman.
Kiddie porn. For all the millions of time this gets mentioned, it isn't a major problem. Besides - you seem to like guns by your tone. If one in ten thousand guns is used for a crime (I'm sure it's much higher), one in ten million cameras is used for child porn.
Finally, DeCSS. You seem to be making many incorrect asumptions about me, but I will give you the benefit of doubt and assume you understand that DeCSS allows the playing of DVDs, and that before it was released, bit-for-bit copies of DVDs could be made. That it is truly so hard for someone to find a lawyer who will go in and provide this fact and end the controversy related to it, shocks me. That DeCSS may or may not be illegal because it goes around the DVD consortium's player lisencing is another matter, and is the core of the matter.
Back to the numbers game, though. With Napster, it is more likely a ten thousand to one ratio of illegal to legal mp3s. To argue otherwise is silly.
------
Okay, you can switch one word with another.
Provide some backup arguments, and I'll be happy to talk. Until then, the sky remains blue.
------
Anywhere.
Napster is definitely aiding and quite possibly abetting people commit copyright violations.
While the penalty for a single count may be a small, there is no doubt that a million $100 fines add up. Let's not forget that $100 is far from the maximum possible fine. Under the Canadian Criminal Code (it's what I know, though IANAL), one who either aids or abets in a criminal act is just as liable as the one who commits it.
The Osaka ruling changes nothing related to Napster, it simply brought the thought to my mind.
------
I didn't ever think about this angle, but suddenly Napster seems to be in a little more danger than they were.
------
Slashdot. Where we hate intellectual property laws, but when someone takes ONE SENTENCE of our stuff, we scream bloody murder.
I can't speak for other posters, but I have never, ever posted something that would make me a hypocrite with regards to IP. You may or may not have noticed that there are many thousand user accounts. From one to the next, views differ. I believe that IP is useful, but that 50 years after the death of the author (in America) is far too long a period of time. I would post a complaint on an article talking about the possible extension of this time period.
I would not, however, post a comment saying "IP law sucks. Get rid of it altogether." Others would. The difference here is that realists are posting more about the potential misuse of their own property than the idealists who like to post about something that has no significant impact upon them.
------
Quotation without credit is not considered quotation. It is considered plagiarism. Help yourself in future endeavors. Make your disclaimer similar to Technocrat.net's, in which Bruce Perens clearly states that both he and the poster can republish the comments.
------
So are you going to sue me for copyright infringement for just quoting you without your permission? No, because anything you say in a public forum is up for grabs. That's just like the President trying to say that anything he says in a public speach is copyrighted by him and that we can't reprint it without his permission. (Although that would have been nice to cover up some stupid sayings that dumb politicians have made...)
Although you think it is ridiculous, it is fact. While not often enforced, any public speech which was written ahead of time is covered under copyright law. Look up information on King's "I have a Dream" speech for some background.
While nothing I wrote is in this book as I didn't comment on those articles, I would be talking to my lawyers if something were.
Because Slashdot does not have a disclaimer stating that they may do what they wish with the comments and in fact do tell us that the "comments are owned by the Poster", they are very open to lawsuits.
I find it hard to believe that Andover did not consuly any lawyers before compilling this, but they should certainly ask them what the implications are. Again, without a disclaimer stating that Slashdot may republish all posted comments without permission, they cannot.
------
How about highlighting the text you want to copy, middle clicking where you'd like to paste?
This works 100% of the time, to the best of my knowledge. I do get annoyed when I accidently highlight the text I want to replace, therefore unhighlighting what I wanted to copy
------
Following line: Good example of Fair Use.
Ain't it cool?
I just noticed that we can filter out Star Wars if we don't want to see it now. Way to go Slashdot people.
Woohoo! (and all the rest of that.. I hate Star Wars, haven't seen the new one, and won't)
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Following line: Good example of Fair Use.
Close, but wrong.
My post is trollish, but I really don't care if it gets moderated. At least several hundred people (probably) saw it already, I got what I was going for.
The only advantage to the moderation and +1 bonus is that people are more likely to see your posts when you want them to. By the same virtue, how many people saw your also trolling post at 0?
Will you see this one?
------
Following line: Good example of Fair Use.
That fact that he is correct in this circumstance notwithstanding, does anyone have any doubt that Zico is easily Slashdot's most frequently moderated up troll, period?
It's not some issue I have with his karma and/or the infamous karmawhoring of others. I have enough of my own for a +1 and about 60 first posts without losing same. It's more that I can't help but wonder why I see four posts by Zico on this article, all saying the same thing, and all of them above my default Score: 2 threshold, despite the fact he had the courtesy to start a couple of them at one.
It's funny, actually.
And Zico, I think that the reason this was posted is because Slashdot is still attempting to produce original content, despite the fact that the quality thereof is abysmal. (See: Katz, Jon - Martyr to the Geeks; Katz, Jon - the "this profiling... it includes geeks" guy; Katz, Jon - the "instead of turning in geeks, let's turn in jocks. That'll get them" guy; Katz, Jon - "someone asked me to please die"; etc)
------
Following line: Good example of Fair Use.
http://www.linuxcanada.com/linux_pos.html .
Can't say what the quality of it is, though...
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Following line: Good example of Fair Use.
It's no big deal, and to add to the earlier message, ridiculous was meant in a humourous way, rather than to pass judgement.
That's the other reason I'm a big fan of meeting people face to face though, body language and the nuances involved in tone of voice.
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Following line: Good example of Fair Use.
I'm not anal, so I'm not going to peruse your post very carefully for spelling and/or grammatical errors.
Would "Real World" (tm) have been a better way to explain to you that I refer to the great expanse with a blue sky that is somewhere beyond the curtained basement you seem to have temporarily crawled out of?
As your point about real shows doesn't apply, most of your arguments are invalid. Even so, I will restate that this is through personal experience. Didn't you go through high school? If not, you'll understand it in a few more years.
Some research reveals that you are both female and either a graduate student or emoplyed somewhere.
Risking annoying you even more, I would ask if you remember how all the "popular" girls would chat on the phone from about grade six onwards nonstop. If not, fine; although I'm not sure how that's possible. I'm simply stating the fact that they now do it online.
(sincerly, the apparently sexist, mysogenic pig, legoboy)
------
Following line: Good example of Fair Use.
One thing I've noticed over the past couple years is that just as in the "Real World", both women and girls online are rediculously compulsive chatters.
I have a teenaged sister who will pretty much spend every last spare minute she has chatting online, and most of her friends do the same. It's definately not considered geeky any more among a fair number of the younger people here, anyways.. More of a replacement for the 3-way daisy chain phone calls with 15 different people on the line. (Although you'd think they could visit each other in person when they aren't at school or a party.)
What is more interesting to see is the older females in this group. The ones in the late 20's and early 30's who are not online for recipes, but to chat. I'm sure it's far from normal, but siblings of two different people who work for me are both addicted to online chatting. One ran (note past tense) a quiet craft shop, which now closed until further notice so that she can stay at home and chat. Could the woman not do this on a computer at work, even? The other one quit her retail job to do same.
I don't really have any opinion on this behavior, and I neither condemn nor condone it.
It's just... interesting.
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Following line: Good example of Fair Use.
Maybe this will correct some of the imbalance in net content.
Oh boy! Just what we need... Two million sites with pictures of naked guys.
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Following line: Good example of Fair Use.
Hrm...
This looks more like a hacker's theme for Windows than anything else like "Travel" and "Falling Leaves" It pushes those so-called limitations a fair bit as well. Myself, I'm a fan of simple/functional/out of the way.
The screenshot, btw, is from the GeoShell project. Google should find it for you, if you're interested.
------
Following line: Good example of Fair Use.
You would almost think it is impossible for anyone to control all the quality content on the web. After all... when a million monkeys at a million keyboards can make a million websites (http://www.geocities.com), why would people need to stick to the big sites?
Oh... Quality content. That means stuff that people want to read, right?
------
Following line: Good example of Fair Use.
Hey... Maybe that French law that had some people so riled up was right after all. I wasn't really flamed for saying it was a good thing, but other people were.
The French law clearly laid down the terms on which a webhosting company would be responsible for its content. It went something like: If you can't point us at the client, you're in trouble. Otherwise, cool. You (provider) can host anything whatsoever without fear of persecution.
On an unrelated note, how do the mostly American readers of Slashdot like the report in Rolling Stone that as part of the "War on Drugs", money went to magazines such as "Seventeen" to fund fictional stories, plublished as real, which were basicly anecdotal "Drugs are bad" literature.
------
why does netscape have to add in the other junk when one don't want the stupid junk as the AIM and such.. I think the user should be able to disable it from it or they can have AIM as a seperate thing.. netscape acts like M$ adding bloateware...
This sort of thing is why some of us click on "Custom..." which lets us "customize" our installation.
------
If Slashdot had only posted, say... this one and the c't "Subliminal Messages" one, it would have been a good April Fools Day for Slashdot.
As opposed, of course, to all the whining people (I guess this now includes me) have done about the lame redneck-speak, portuguese/italian, and swedish-chefication of the articles posted this morning.
------
There's this really funny story about some poor sap who thought he was going to someone's personal home pahe, but in reality was sent to a hardcore bestiality web site! Check it out at http://home.san.rr.com/~jrf/hoaxes/hoax1.html.
Not that I clicked it, but I still think this is funny enough to repost at a higher score.
------
Looks like they've fixed the "irridium" typo.
Not that it changes the fact that there isn't any source there to open.
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For the love of god, the Open Source Irridium (sic) movement is not a serious effort.
Read the entire website, poll included, and tell me you honestly believe it is.
------