I have to say, writing a loop to do this is anything but intuitive.
I agree it's surprising that DOS commands can't achieve even a simple move as commands per se, and I would add that the nature of the 'move' and 'copy' commands makes it is obvious that a loop (ie. a "simplistic script") is required. And isn't that what I was saying above? At the point that scripting becomes necessary I won't bother using DOS when there are better tools readily at hand.
Yes this probably reflects my level of DOS ignorance and my familiarity with other tools more than anything else. And I admit that for this minimal example it's probably just as easy to write it as a one-line on the terminal as OP posted (on bash and ksh, I write for loops all the time). But the issue here is not whether this particular example can be writen as a one-liner, it's that simple stuff that a bare command will do on a unix shell already require a loop on DOS. And that means that when you come to do more complicated stuff you're already at least one level behind.
I did too, even tho the first clause was a bit bad worded. Same issues still stand tho.
No they don't. You could increase the number of days and shorten the hours of day and end up spending less time in school. All the Asian countries referred to below do that.
Of course the superior performance in mathematics in Asian countries could have more to do with cultural effects other than the number of days vs. the number of hours per day in schools. It probably does. However I think it is well established that learning is enhanced by processing information in more smaller chunks. Which is not to say the administration would necessarily be wise enough to shorten the school day as it increases their number.
Yes, but then those of us who want a shell get... the freaking MS-DOS Command Prompt. Quite possibly the worst shell interface known to mankind.
Whether or not it's the worst interface know to humankind, or not, I can't figure out how to make it do simple OS stuff (short of writing a batch file). Now I've heard it said (to my wife by some friend who does MS training) "geeks like that [not referring to me btw] are a dime a dozen. They all hate Windows, because they don't know how to use it. That might be true, so maybe I'm just an ignorant geek, but let me give an example of something I frequently have to do.
We've received some XML files for processing. There is a parent dir (sorry 'folder') and it contains as many folders as there are files (ie each files lives in it's own folder). The number of files is not small, but not exactly BIG either, say around the 1000 mark. Ie. what I want to do is simply mv */*xml. Very basic stuff.
Being an ignorant *nix geek, I find this a difficult task to achieve using the GUI, so I try the MS-DOS shell, I still can't work it out, move being somewhat different to mv. And I freely admit it might be my fabled geek ignorance of Windows at work, so if anyone can give me the DOS cmd that does this...
The only way I can get it happening is to write a simplistic script. So if I have to do that I'm going to use perl or python rather than DOS, no? Python has a nice enough shell, so I might as well use that... finally I end up living in the python shell when on a Windows box (and everybody is happy).
Which goes to show that the best way to use Windows is not to use Windows at all, even when you are using Windows... at least for me. Hmm that's almost a sig.
I think its more Microsoft attempting to be similar to Apple.
Isn't that what they've been done since Windows 1.0? Similar, yet different enough not to loose the look'n'feel litiations. Or am I showing my age here? But yes, you absolutely correct, they are trying to address their image problem (and coming off looking like wannabees).
And its a pain for the average user.
It's even more pain for the expert user. When you're manipulation several thousands of files at the same time you realise that what Windows needs is an OS! (Well a shell actually -- personally I operate Windows via a Python shell). Yes the Mac is 'easy,' but for myself the thing that makes it really servicable is Terminal.app. Though I should add of the three systems I use (*nix, osx and win in that order) I'm surprised to find myself on occasion actually using the GUI on the mac!? Wierd.
What's interesting is that my mother, who's a history teacher, on the contrary loathes Civilization. She thinks the ability to build the pyramids or the great wall in, say, Paris can only make the player confused about the actual history.
Though I may lack your mother's experience of teaching History to larger groups of children, I do have a double History major (a subject in which I excelled above all others) in one of my degrees. Putting aside the argument from authority however, my particular experience suggests your mother's fears are misplaced. Neither of my boys has the least doubt about where "the Pyramids" are (they are very scathing of Google Earth's apparent inability to locate them correctly!?), nor that the Eiffel Tower is in Paris, nor that the Great Wall is in China and was started by Qin Shi Huang, etc. etc. Least of all the 6 year old.
Now clearly it is not sufficient to allow the kids to play the game and that be the sum total of their education in regard to History. But that's not the point!
The point is that great wonders become the topics of interest and subsequent information gathering. The illustrated book of Great Wonders we bought the older boy some years ago no longer sits neglegted on the bookshelf. The book of World Religions, similarly, has acquired greater relevance. The point is that the names of the Great Leaders are no longer random syllables. They are the subject of play ("I'm Genghis Kahn... aaaaahh!") and conversation. This weekend the 8 year old asked:
"Papa, did all the Mongol rulers have the name 'Khan'?"
"Well, 'Khan' is actually the title for the ruler, like 'King,' actually Gengis Khan's name was Temundshin and when he was a boy his father was killed and... until he conquered and united all the Mongol and Turkic tribes in the area."
Followed by a conversation about which Great Leaders share the characteristic of uniting divided elements of a people. He already knew from a presentation on Qin he had done at school last year, that Qin united the Warring States to form China.
"But did you know Bismark did too, and that until 1871 there was no country 'Germany' as such?"
In other words I can talk to the kids about history in a way that is now much more meaningful for them. And they ask questions about it based on things and people encountered in the game. In any case, as far as I'm concerned it makes for more interesting conversation than the evolution of various Pokemon under the influence of diffrent engergies.
Oh, and btw, there is a pyramid in Paris, the glass one, just outside the Louvre;)
Building the monument - the Pyramid, The Cathedral of Notre Dame, The Golden Gate Bridge, The Great Wall of China - is fun. But do you really understand its significance?
If you don't -go and find out!
My 6 and 8 year old have recently started playing CivIV. While it would be overstating the case to say that their interest in learning has been entirely sparked by the exclusively by the game (the 6 year old was already obsessed with all things Ancient Egypt), these kind of wonders especially have resulted in greater attention being paid to the kind of History documentaries I like to expose them to. Last week they watched a show called "Great Wonders of the Islamic World" with the kind of attention that was previously reserved for StarWars, TMNT, and David Attenborough Nature docos. The 6 year old is extending his obsession to Aztecs (they have pyramids too!) as a result of this game.
This has demonstrated very clearly to me that at least some games (well at least Civilization), have a valuable role to play in fostering involvement with younger children. This is not to say that education should consist solely of electronic game-playing.
I too am appalled at some comments, however I value liberty of speech much higher. So what if some nutcase says something nutty?
The problem is that there are competing rights. I value the right of an individual to their own dignitas very highly. A person's reputation is something they have spent their life building. In some cases their reputation is something the person has spent many years repairing, following various youthful indescretions. In a sense, since it is the result of years of Labour, reputation can be conceived of as a species of property pertaining to that individual (inalienable though it is).
I also value freedom of conscience and speech highly. Indeed one could argue that these freedoms are a necessary part of our individual dignity. Whether or not they are that, or completely separate rights, they are clearly rights of greatest importance.
We thus have two right, neither of which imo, can simply be overridden by the other. With competing rights the problem is to find the correct balance. Here this balance involves the further problem of who should govern the limitation placed upon speech, and how we can trust them to minimise that limitation and find the proper balance. It is extremely problematic.
In the U.S., the 1st Amendment implicitly (inasmuch as it explicitly constrains the legislature, leaving, one would have imagined, the common law of defamation in place) allows some sort of balance to be struck by the courts. Personally, I found it surprising to see it invoked by the honourable Justices in the New York Times v Sullivan case, radically to restrict the reach of defamation (at least in respect to public persons). Jurisprudence, however, inevitably reflects the Zeitgeist.
its your own responsibility to determine whether there is truth to it, you should not act (in any way whatsoever) upon something that could just be slander until you have determined the truth for yourself.
You shouldn't act upon it, but people actually do. And slander is viral. One would hope that those who fail to live up to their "responsibility to determine... [the] truth" would be the ones to suffer the consequences of that failure. However, they are not! The person who suffers is the very individual whose reputation has been vandalised.
I would much rather have ten people say lies and one person telling the truth, then everyone being forced to shut up.
Perhaps I'm too concerned with the rights of an individual victim of defamation, as against the rights of the community generally to slander and ostracise that individual?
OK, I admit starting the passage with "Seriously though" was mischievous. OTOH, when I imply that humanity would be the poorer but for the scibblings I leave on slashdot and similar fora, I would hope the reader can see the tongue planted firmly in my cheek.
There were also traces of honesty. You are absolutely correct! As adults we ought to be taking responsibility for our actions (including speech acts). My irony was deployed to make just that point.
However, it is also true that I would write less without the level of anonymity these fora afford me. Not because I want to hurt or defame people --even anonymously this holds no special appeal --but because I wouldn't want, at some point in the future, to be held to what I write today. When I look back at what I wrote (non-anonymously) on Usenet in late 80s early 90s, I wince. Damn you Google Groups!
So I both believe we should take responsibility for what we as well as valuing my anonymity. At least I haven't got it all worked out yet. Maybe it's something along the lines of anonymity being a privilege that the law can revoke when it is used abusively...?
The all the slander and attorney lawyers in the world can not touch you unless they can prove that at the exact time you expressed your opinion it was not in fact your true opinion but that you lied about it and falsely expressed your opinion in order to slander someone.
Speaking as a lawyer, I would caution against presuming this is sufficient, to protect yourself against "all the slander and attorney lawyers in the world."
In my jurisdiction, for instance, 'truth' (by itself) has only been a defence to defmation since 1 January 2006 (and this was, IMHO, a very poorly thought out 'reform'). Prior to that you were required to show more (eg. truth + public interest). In much of the common law word (eg UK) this is still the case. I believe that throughout most of the world, whether the defamatory publication is an honestly held opinion, is not relevant. The question is whether the 'imputation' is defamatory, and whether it is true (and, jurisdicition depending, more than merely true).
As I understand it, even in the US, the principle in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, requiring actual malice to be shown, applies only to public officials. Or do you have any better (more recent) authority which suggests otherwise?
You might find lawyers more of a threat than you imagine.;)
That [nice young woman] in New York got a court to force Google to give up the ID of someone who hurt her feelings
Great, now you've exposed Slashdot to the same liability. %}
Seriously though, this is a real concern. I for one value my anonymity. If I had to take responsibility for everything I wrote, I'd hardly write anything at all. And wouldn't humanity be the poorer for that!
Well, I'm no physicist, but the months may be shorter and/or follow a different sequence "down under"
I'm no physicist either, but I am downunder. Anyhow, I don't get it, what's difficult to understand here?! Can you guys up top not count?!
She was sacked December '07 and got a job in October '08. So that would be March, June, April, November, January, August, she was out of work, no? That's six months in my book!
If I had incurable cancer and knew it would end very painfully, I'd off myself first. I'd probably go as long as they gave me morphine and then heroin for the pain tho.
I reckon an overdose of morphine or heroin (which is just morphine with an advanced delivery system), would be the preferred way to go out, period. I say this because of the stories one frequently hears of paramedics being assaulted after they administer Naloxone to a dying user. "Arsehole, you ruined my stone!" Must be a pleasant way to go if you get that angry at having your life saved.:o
In 2008, China is purported to have performed 1,718 out of the 2,390 reported executions in the entire world. 72% is a pretty significant chunk. Iran's #2 with 346 (14%).
I would not want to condone state-sanctioned murder in China, Iran or anywhere else. However, in a discussion about the relative "restraint"... cough... if China vs Iran, of what possible relevance can the figure of percentage of world-wide executions be?
A more meaningful metric would be something like number of executions per 100,000 citizens in each particular country.
The question was rhetorial. I would presume most of us would be (rightly) outraged if our service providers took to censoring our blogs, emails, etc. At the other side of the equation, if someone has a site which takes contributions from the public, what right have we (the public|state) to restrict their right to moderate these contributions. My point was that sites/service providers like Flickr lie in a grey area between the two. And this is a case in point, (Flickr's claim IP infringment notwithstanding).
... "What did we expect to happen when all of our shit is on hardware owned by someone else?"
At about the time we agreed that anything of general public utility could be owned by private individuals instead of the king, the state, Big Brother or who/whatever. Long before the internet , I used to use this technology called the telephone. It ran on someone else's hardware, someone to whom I would not willingly have conded the right to monitor or restrict my communications over that technology.
We won't be getting away from the situation where private interests own hardware we rely on to communicate. The potential for conflict between their rights as property owners, and our rights as communicators will only grow. Now in the case of a corporation (which are not truly private, but an amalgam of private/state) some level of public control and restriction on how they utilise their property is easily justified. But if the hardware were owned by a private individual, a partnership or an unincorporated company, where do we draw the line with telling people how to excercise their propeitary rights. Or do we simply surrender our communicative rights?
Crap like this will become increasingly common as we move info to "the cloud". Hope it was worth saving the $25/mo. hosting fee.
Yes, I agree. The question is do we sink in the crap or clean it up, and if so, how?
But then the first amendments only really prevents government control of speach (sic)
That is very true. And this right was formulated in an age when governments, rather than corporations, posed the greatest threat to free speech. Perhaps a modern right, reflecting the changed reality, is required?
Now I don't believe the freedom of any particular publisher to determine what appears or does not appear in their publication, ought to be restrained. Freedom of speech clearly includes the freedom not to speak. OTOH where a person, say by reason of their dominance of a particular market, can in effect dictate to 3rd parties what appears in their publications, freedom of speech is dangerously undermined. I'm thinking here, for example, of magazine publishers who have to run their pre-publication copy past the Walmart censors, before they can afford to go to print.
In the case of a website like Flickr, which advertises itself as a forum where people can publish their own creations, we step into a very large grey area. If a person has their own site, should the hosting company or network provider, have the right to say what they can or cannot publish, on the basis that it is being published on that company's equipment?
Paradoxically perhaps, if the US government were to be "socialist" and provide taxpayer funded "free" social and content publishing sites, the rights of the individual users to publish what they want, including parody images of the President captioned with the word "socialism," would be safeguarded. So how does one balance the right of a content publising site (such as Flickr) to determine what appears on their site, with the freedom of expression of the users of that site?
Slashdot Mirror
Not sure if it still works ...
The filename, directory name, or volume label syntax is incorrect.
You're right though, it's easier than he makes it sound. Just go to the parent folder, hit Search, type *.xml, drag and drop.
I wasn't trying to make it sound difficult. Thanks for the tip though ... seems obvious enough now that you've told me. :)
I have to say, writing a loop to do this is anything but intuitive.
I agree it's surprising that DOS commands can't achieve even a simple move as commands per se, and I would add that the nature of the 'move' and 'copy' commands makes it is obvious that a loop (ie. a "simplistic script") is required. And isn't that what I was saying above? At the point that scripting becomes necessary I won't bother using DOS when there are better tools readily at hand.
Yes this probably reflects my level of DOS ignorance and my familiarity with other tools more than anything else. And I admit that for this minimal example it's probably just as easy to write it as a one-line on the terminal as OP posted (on bash and ksh, I write for loops all the time). But the issue here is not whether this particular example can be writen as a one-liner, it's that simple stuff that a bare command will do on a unix shell already require a loop on DOS. And that means that when you come to do more complicated stuff you're already at least one level behind.
I did too, even tho the first clause was a bit bad worded. Same issues still stand tho.
No they don't. You could increase the number of days and shorten the hours of day and end up spending less time in school. All the Asian countries referred to below do that.
Of course the superior performance in mathematics in Asian countries could have more to do with cultural effects other than the number of days vs. the number of hours per day in schools. It probably does. However I think it is well established that learning is enhanced by processing information in more smaller chunks. Which is not to say the administration would necessarily be wise enough to shorten the school day as it increases their number.
We're taking this to (sic) literally. Surely? I mean Windows isn't seriously thinking people will host one of these parties.
You're kidding me dude? You mean you're not going to host a Win7 party?!
The tupperware people versus the Arne Jacobsen cutlery set ... So where the fuck does that leave me?
Well if you're not having a party I guess that leaves you as a 'gay Apple user'.* You even know who Arne Jacobsen is ... ;)
* That's a meme that seems to have died on /. (and maybe I should have left it in its grave)
Yes, but then those of us who want a shell get... the freaking MS-DOS Command Prompt. Quite possibly the worst shell interface known to mankind.
Whether or not it's the worst interface know to humankind, or not, I can't figure out how to make it do simple OS stuff (short of writing a batch file). Now I've heard it said (to my wife by some friend who does MS training) "geeks like that [not referring to me btw] are a dime a dozen. They all hate Windows, because they don't know how to use it. That might be true, so maybe I'm just an ignorant geek, but let me give an example of something I frequently have to do.
We've received some XML files for processing. There is a parent dir (sorry 'folder') and it contains as many folders as there are files (ie each files lives in it's own folder). The number of files is not small, but not exactly BIG either, say around the 1000 mark. Ie. what I want to do is simply mv */*xml . Very basic stuff.
Being an ignorant *nix geek, I find this a difficult task to achieve using the GUI, so I try the MS-DOS shell, I still can't work it out, move being somewhat different to mv. And I freely admit it might be my fabled geek ignorance of Windows at work, so if anyone can give me the DOS cmd that does this ...
The only way I can get it happening is to write a simplistic script. So if I have to do that I'm going to use perl or python rather than DOS, no? Python has a nice enough shell, so I might as well use that ... finally I end up living in the python shell when on a Windows box (and everybody is happy).
Which goes to show that the best way to use Windows is not to use Windows at all, even when you are using Windows ... at least for me. Hmm that's almost a sig.
I think its more Microsoft attempting to be similar to Apple.
Isn't that what they've been done since Windows 1.0? Similar, yet different enough not to loose the look'n'feel litiations. Or am I showing my age here? But yes, you absolutely correct, they are trying to address their image problem (and coming off looking like wannabees).
And its a pain for the average user.
It's even more pain for the expert user. When you're manipulation several thousands of files at the same time you realise that what Windows needs is an OS! (Well a shell actually -- personally I operate Windows via a Python shell). Yes the Mac is 'easy,' but for myself the thing that makes it really servicable is Terminal.app. Though I should add of the three systems I use (*nix, osx and win in that order) I'm surprised to find myself on occasion actually using the GUI on the mac!? Wierd.
What's interesting is that my mother, who's a history teacher, on the contrary loathes Civilization. She thinks the ability to build the pyramids or the great wall in, say, Paris can only make the player confused about the actual history.
Though I may lack your mother's experience of teaching History to larger groups of children, I do have a double History major (a subject in which I excelled above all others) in one of my degrees. Putting aside the argument from authority however, my particular experience suggests your mother's fears are misplaced. Neither of my boys has the least doubt about where "the Pyramids" are (they are very scathing of Google Earth's apparent inability to locate them correctly!?), nor that the Eiffel Tower is in Paris, nor that the Great Wall is in China and was started by Qin Shi Huang, etc. etc. Least of all the 6 year old.
Now clearly it is not sufficient to allow the kids to play the game and that be the sum total of their education in regard to History. But that's not the point!
The point is that great wonders become the topics of interest and subsequent information gathering. The illustrated book of Great Wonders we bought the older boy some years ago no longer sits neglegted on the bookshelf. The book of World Religions, similarly, has acquired greater relevance. The point is that the names of the Great Leaders are no longer random syllables. They are the subject of play ("I'm Genghis Kahn ... aaaaahh!") and conversation. This weekend the 8 year old asked: ... until he conquered and united all the Mongol and Turkic tribes in the area."
"Papa, did all the Mongol rulers have the name 'Khan'?"
"Well, 'Khan' is actually the title for the ruler, like 'King,' actually Gengis Khan's name was Temundshin and when he was a boy his father was killed and
Followed by a conversation about which Great Leaders share the characteristic of uniting divided elements of a people. He already knew from a presentation on Qin he had done at school last year, that Qin united the Warring States to form China.
"But did you know Bismark did too, and that until 1871 there was no country 'Germany' as such?"
In other words I can talk to the kids about history in a way that is now much more meaningful for them. And they ask questions about it based on things and people encountered in the game. In any case, as far as I'm concerned it makes for more interesting conversation than the evolution of various Pokemon under the influence of diffrent engergies.
Oh, and btw, there is a pyramid in Paris, the glass one, just outside the Louvre ;)
Building the monument - the Pyramid, The Cathedral of Notre Dame, The Golden Gate Bridge, The Great Wall of China - is fun. But do you really understand its significance?
If you don't -go and find out!
My 6 and 8 year old have recently started playing CivIV. While it would be overstating the case to say that their interest in learning has been entirely sparked by the exclusively by the game (the 6 year old was already obsessed with all things Ancient Egypt), these kind of wonders especially have resulted in greater attention being paid to the kind of History documentaries I like to expose them to. Last week they watched a show called "Great Wonders of the Islamic World" with the kind of attention that was previously reserved for StarWars, TMNT, and David Attenborough Nature docos. The 6 year old is extending his obsession to Aztecs (they have pyramids too!) as a result of this game.
This has demonstrated very clearly to me that at least some games (well at least Civilization), have a valuable role to play in fostering involvement with younger children. This is not to say that education should consist solely of electronic game-playing.
I think he was referring to the current Labor government who were elected in late 2007.
Obviously.
No, every single other act since their election two years ago have already made them a bunch of arseholes.
Australia's Internet Industry Association were elected two years ago?
I too am appalled at some comments, however I value liberty of speech much higher. So what if some nutcase says something nutty?
The problem is that there are competing rights. I value the right of an individual to their own dignitas very highly. A person's reputation is something they have spent their life building. In some cases their reputation is something the person has spent many years repairing, following various youthful indescretions. In a sense, since it is the result of years of Labour, reputation can be conceived of as a species of property pertaining to that individual (inalienable though it is).
I also value freedom of conscience and speech highly. Indeed one could argue that these freedoms are a necessary part of our individual dignity. Whether or not they are that, or completely separate rights, they are clearly rights of greatest importance.
We thus have two right, neither of which imo, can simply be overridden by the other. With competing rights the problem is to find the correct balance. Here this balance involves the further problem of who should govern the limitation placed upon speech, and how we can trust them to minimise that limitation and find the proper balance. It is extremely problematic.
In the U.S., the 1st Amendment implicitly (inasmuch as it explicitly constrains the legislature, leaving, one would have imagined, the common law of defamation in place) allows some sort of balance to be struck by the courts. Personally, I found it surprising to see it invoked by the honourable Justices in the New York Times v Sullivan case, radically to restrict the reach of defamation (at least in respect to public persons). Jurisprudence, however, inevitably reflects the Zeitgeist.
its your own responsibility to determine whether there is truth to it, you should not act (in any way whatsoever) upon something that could just be slander until you have determined the truth for yourself.
You shouldn't act upon it, but people actually do. And slander is viral. One would hope that those who fail to live up to their "responsibility to determine ... [the] truth" would be the ones to suffer the consequences of that failure. However, they are not! The person who suffers is the very individual whose reputation has been vandalised.
I would much rather have ten people say lies and one person telling the truth, then everyone being forced to shut up.
Perhaps I'm too concerned with the rights of an individual victim of defamation, as against the rights of the community generally to slander and ostracise that individual?
My irony detector was obviously set too low
OK, I admit starting the passage with "Seriously though" was mischievous. OTOH, when I imply that humanity would be the poorer but for the scibblings I leave on slashdot and similar fora, I would hope the reader can see the tongue planted firmly in my cheek.
There were also traces of honesty. You are absolutely correct! As adults we ought to be taking responsibility for our actions (including speech acts). My irony was deployed to make just that point.
However, it is also true that I would write less without the level of anonymity these fora afford me. Not because I want to hurt or defame people --even anonymously this holds no special appeal --but because I wouldn't want, at some point in the future, to be held to what I write today. When I look back at what I wrote (non-anonymously) on Usenet in late 80s early 90s, I wince. Damn you Google Groups!
So I both believe we should take responsibility for what we as well as valuing my anonymity. At least I haven't got it all worked out yet. Maybe it's something along the lines of anonymity being a privilege that the law can revoke when it is used abusively ...?
The all the slander and attorney lawyers in the world can not touch you unless they can prove that at the exact time you expressed your opinion it was not in fact your true opinion but that you lied about it and falsely expressed your opinion in order to slander someone.
Speaking as a lawyer, I would caution against presuming this is sufficient, to protect yourself against "all the slander and attorney lawyers in the world."
In my jurisdiction, for instance, 'truth' (by itself) has only been a defence to defmation since 1 January 2006 (and this was, IMHO, a very poorly thought out 'reform'). Prior to that you were required to show more (eg. truth + public interest). In much of the common law word (eg UK) this is still the case. I believe that throughout most of the world, whether the defamatory publication is an honestly held opinion, is not relevant. The question is whether the 'imputation' is defamatory, and whether it is true (and, jurisdicition depending, more than merely true).
As I understand it, even in the US, the principle in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, requiring actual malice to be shown, applies only to public officials. Or do you have any better (more recent) authority which suggests otherwise?
You might find lawyers more of a threat than you imagine. ;)
Sorry - humanity would be poorer if you had to take responsibility for your own actions? Isn't that what adults are supposed to do??
WARNING: The post you are responding to may contain traces of animal products, peanuts or irony.
That [nice young woman] in New York got a court to force Google to give up the ID of someone who hurt her feelings
Great, now you've exposed Slashdot to the same liability. %}
Seriously though, this is a real concern. I for one value my anonymity. If I had to take responsibility for everything I wrote, I'd hardly write anything at all. And wouldn't humanity be the poorer for that!
Clicking OK does NOT indicate agreement on my part....
If you cross your fingers while you sign a contract, does that work too?
Well, I'm no physicist, but the months may be shorter and/or follow a different sequence "down under"
I'm no physicist either, but I am downunder. Anyhow, I don't get it, what's difficult to understand here?! Can you guys up top not count?!
She was sacked December '07 and got a job in October '08. So that would be March, June, April, November, January, August, she was out of work, no? That's six months in my book!
Sheesh, stupid topsiders!
In the end, the only thing a man has is his own life. Shouldn't he have the right to choose the way he leaves it?
Hear hear!
If I had incurable cancer and knew it would end very painfully, I'd off myself first. I'd probably go as long as they gave me morphine and then heroin for the pain tho.
I reckon an overdose of morphine or heroin (which is just morphine with an advanced delivery system), would be the preferred way to go out, period. I say this because of the stories one frequently hears of paramedics being assaulted after they administer Naloxone to a dying user. "Arsehole, you ruined my stone!" Must be a pleasant way to go if you get that angry at having your life saved. :o
We don't know what kind of mindset they have over there, towards this sort of thing.
Come again?!
Oh sorry, that was bitter irony, I almost missed that.
In 2008, China is purported to have performed 1,718 out of the 2,390 reported executions in the entire world. 72% is a pretty significant chunk. Iran's #2 with 346 (14%).
I would not want to condone state-sanctioned murder in China, Iran or anywhere else. However, in a discussion about the relative "restraint" ... cough ... if China vs Iran, of what possible relevance can the figure of percentage of world-wide executions be?
A more meaningful metric would be something like number of executions per 100,000 citizens in each particular country.
Indeed, and in fact, this is a step forward
Yes, I had to laugh when I read two tags to this story in series ... "sensible elitism." I suppose such a thing is possible.
I think a better question should be: ...
The question was rhetorial. I would presume most of us would be (rightly) outraged if our service providers took to censoring our blogs, emails, etc. At the other side of the equation, if someone has a site which takes contributions from the public, what right have we (the public|state) to restrict their right to moderate these contributions. My point was that sites/service providers like Flickr lie in a grey area between the two. And this is a case in point, (Flickr's claim IP infringment notwithstanding).
At about the time we agreed that anything of general public utility could be owned by private individuals instead of the king, the state, Big Brother or who/whatever. Long before the internet , I used to use this technology called the telephone. It ran on someone else's hardware, someone to whom I would not willingly have conded the right to monitor or restrict my communications over that technology.
We won't be getting away from the situation where private interests own hardware we rely on to communicate. The potential for conflict between their rights as property owners, and our rights as communicators will only grow. Now in the case of a corporation (which are not truly private, but an amalgam of private/state) some level of public control and restriction on how they utilise their property is easily justified. But if the hardware were owned by a private individual, a partnership or an unincorporated company, where do we draw the line with telling people how to excercise their propeitary rights. Or do we simply surrender our communicative rights?
Crap like this will become increasingly common as we move info to "the cloud". Hope it was worth saving the $25/mo. hosting fee.
Yes, I agree. The question is do we sink in the crap or clean it up, and if so, how?
But then the first amendments only really prevents government control of speach (sic)
That is very true. And this right was formulated in an age when governments, rather than corporations, posed the greatest threat to free speech. Perhaps a modern right, reflecting the changed reality, is required?
Now I don't believe the freedom of any particular publisher to determine what appears or does not appear in their publication, ought to be restrained. Freedom of speech clearly includes the freedom not to speak. OTOH where a person, say by reason of their dominance of a particular market, can in effect dictate to 3rd parties what appears in their publications, freedom of speech is dangerously undermined. I'm thinking here, for example, of magazine publishers who have to run their pre-publication copy past the Walmart censors, before they can afford to go to print.
In the case of a website like Flickr, which advertises itself as a forum where people can publish their own creations, we step into a very large grey area. If a person has their own site, should the hosting company or network provider, have the right to say what they can or cannot publish, on the basis that it is being published on that company's equipment?
Paradoxically perhaps, if the US government were to be "socialist" and provide taxpayer funded "free" social and content publishing sites, the rights of the individual users to publish what they want, including parody images of the President captioned with the word "socialism," would be safeguarded. So how does one balance the right of a content publising site (such as Flickr) to determine what appears on their site, with the freedom of expression of the users of that site?