You mean the explanation for why they ignored Perverted-Justice's reporting of actual pedophile blogs and groups for months on end, and suddently decided to fling the banhammer at a wide swath of users, in a manner contrary to the stated policy of their abuse team? Or the explanation--and no, "I was tired" doesn't count--for why they didn't release a statement for two days after the hammer fell? An explanation of why they caved in to a batch of Dominionist rednecks?
'Cause I don't see an explanation for any of those things. I see some bland corporate pablum, carefully designed not to explain a damned thing.
Yes, the FBI can partyvan you for text files. It's happened before. If I recall correctly, that was part of a sting that also caught Max Hardcore. Max Hardcore, of course, has a bajillion bucks to spend on legal defense, and is now doing just fine.
Thank you for contacting the LiveJournal Abuse Team. While we cannot discuss any particular cases except with the individuals directly involved, we will be happy to explain our policy to you. LiveJournal is committed to the principle of free speech. This means that users are allowed to post a wide variety of content, including that which others may find objectionable. This includes the theoretical discussion of, or expressed interest in illegal activity. This discussion, even at a level of detail which others may find objectionable, is not in-and-of itself illegal, and in keeping with our commitment to free speech, we will not suspend a journal this reason. Our policy does indicate that if there is reasonable belief that a journal is being used to solicit minors, the journal will be terminated. However, theoretical discussion is not in itself illegal, and should a journal owner explicitly disclaim that their discussion is theoretical, and not intended for the purpose of soliciting minors, we will not take any action.
Take that, LJ Abuse team!
Really, this is just poor administration. Nobody knows what the rules are, not even the enforcers. It would almost be better to have a strictly-enforced asinine TOS, rather than this "fuck shit up when our advertisers get jumpy" nonsense.
If they really needed you, they'd hop to whenever a paid member complained. Clearly this does not happen. You've already paid your money, and they're betting that there won't be a mass exodus of paid whiners--and, you know, they're probably right. When the next offer for ten icons instead of six comes around, and you hand out your money like a sucker, just remember to cry a little more, emo kid, the next time they offer you the shaft.
You're not their customer. You're their product. The pittance you pay them doesn't change that.
I understand that companies might be hush-hush about works in progress, but how did this article get published without even naming the one completed driver that this program has yielded? I know Greg K-H didn't say what it was, but someone could have at least asked him.
Paraphrasing Mark Pilgrim: on a long enough timeline, the utility of all non-free software approaches zero.
Free software may get orphaned as often or more often than proprietary software, but it can get un-orphaned, and that's the important thing. Businesses who run on OS/360 are an interesting example of what happens when the proprietary vendor goes to great lengths to prevent the software from becoming orphaned in the first place... but who owns the applications that those guys run? I was under the impression that IBM provided the platform, but not the applications--if I'm wrong, please do correct me. If IBM closed up shop tomorrow, how affected would they be?
Also, I think it's a bit disingenuous to compare the stability of a single private company with the stability of the open-source community as a whole--which, if you're a company willing to support a developer, is the stability of the entire programming industry.
I worked at a medical office which ran Medical Manager for many years. It did what it needed to do, sent out bills, all that stuff. However, it was vulnerable to the Y2K problem, in that the program would not accept dates past 12/31/99. The company that had made the software had been purchased by another, larger company, which wanted to sell a new, fifty thousand dollar version which would require a hardware upgrade as well, and would run on a completely different platform. It would have been cheaper to hire a programmer to make the date change, update the tables and whatever... but they didn't have that option. Vendor lock-in is a very real problem; once you give money to that vendor, you're paying for the chains that bind you to them. It's not in their interest to help you be flexible.
You'd think that a comic like this would appeal only to those of the dorky persuasion, but I think I know why it has broader appeal. (I know at least one non-dorky person who doesn't know the technical background of the jokes, but still really likes xkcd.) It's because the comic isn't really about dorky things; it uses dorky jokes to talk about themes like loneliness which even non-dorks can appreciate, and does this often enough that many non-dorks find it worth the time to read. Compare this to, for instance, Schlock Mercenary, which has its appeal pretty firmly limited to dorks.
I've had some surprisingly pleasant interactions with the police. When my car got stolen, for instance, the cop kept an eye out for it and found it out in the local ghetto. While we were waiting for the tow truck (the thieves had abandoned it with a flat tire), the following scene played out: A drunkish fellow walks by, and the cop banters with him. The guy moves off. My significant other says that the drunkish fellow seemed like a nice guy. The cop says that he was in jail for killing someone, and really isn't a nice guy at all. But a good cop knows everyone in his area. That hadn't occurred to me before, and it's the sort of thing which is never shiny or makes headlines, but is the difference between an effective and an ineffective police force.
There's also the local guy with Parkinson's who smokes a ton of pot (apparently it helps with the shakes), and the cops leave him alone because they really don't want to throw an infirm guy in his sixties in jail for toking up.
Of course, it's bettable that the cops wouldn't have been so helpful if I hadn't been white, and that is a significant problem. And the behavior of the NYPD at the Republican National Convention in '04 was absolutely shameful; people should have been fired for that, and publically. But these are problems that are solved with greater accountability and transparency.
Please try to read the news before sharing your opinion. The fired prosecutors were investigating Republican malfeasance in a number of places. Firing people in order to shield your own party from investigation is corruption.
The issue isn't that they were fired. The issue is that they were fired for nakedly partisan reasons--willingness to ignore cases against the Republican party and try to drum up scandal around Democrats, for instance--and that pretty much defines corruption. If he'd fired eight random attorneys, it would lead to some head-scratching. That's not what happened.
Besides, if no malfeasance occurred, why can't Alberto remember a damned thing?
instead of removing every attorney at the beginning of the term, why not wait til you see that their politics don't jive with your politics.
If by "jive with your politics", you mean refuse to investigate anyone in your party. US Attorneys are supposed to carry out their jobs in a nonpartisan fashion. Those who did their jobs properly were fired for it. This is corruption, and you're trying very, very hard not to see it.
I dislike Clinton's approach of firing everyone immediately no matter what their politics, the fact he removed them all tells that either he was doing favors for those who got in or only wanted people who agreed with him, either way I disagree with that policy.
As someone else pointed out, did Reagan's mass re-appointing of attorneys upon his election also suggest that do you? Do you think that every time a president brings in a new cabinet?
Which is why Washington abolished the government after the Whiskey Rebellion and we all live in Libertopia now, right?
Or maybe it means that government is prone to abuse when left unchecked, and that only systems of reciprocal accountability can prevent corruption and oppression. Imagine that.
I found a huge bug in my kitchen last fall; I took a picture and mailed it to my local university's entomology professor, who was kind enough to identify it.
Hey, it's not like the photographer has to identify the animal. And besides, people who aren't scientists can take decent pictures of pigeons, of frogs, or of squirrels; there are various forums for positively identifying plants and animals, and there's no good reason to restrict media sources to experts.
It would be nice of banks/PayPal/eBay would provide "poisoned" logins which would be used to trace users and tip off law enforcement. Of course, the 419 laws aren't very strenuously enforced, and this would be defeatable by a sufficiently anonymous proxy, so I suppose it's not a very good idea.
You'd think Interpol would work with stores: respond to these things, drop fifty bucks into a bank account and arrest the people who receive the goods--maybe that would help.
Did you miss the part where he said that no one's printing the book any more, not just no one in the United States? Why does it matter that he's not in the US, and the book wasn't published in the US? The copyright term in his situation is asinine; it's asinine here as well--just replace 1900 with 1924 and you're in the same boat.
If software was suddenly declared ineligible for copyright, there'd be no need for the GPL because no proprietary software company could prevent people with access to their source code from modifying or redistributing it...
What magical country do you live in that doesn't enforce contracts you sign with your employer, and how can I move there?
Anyway, I am saying you have no right to exclusivity. You only have the real natural right to, for lack of a better word, "authorship", simply because it is impossible for one to be a creator of something that was created by someone else. IP*** is a fallacious claim of ownership. You have no right to dictate what I can do with what I possess. My copy is my copy. Yours is yours. What you are trying to do is to recollect the smoke that was let out of the bottle. Well, you can't. Only by the use of physical force can you make such false claims.
Did someone claim that copyright is a natural right? Because if they did, that person is wrong. Copyright is a useful abstraction designed to promote the progress of science and the useful arts. Did you miss this? It gets stated pretty regularly around here. It's not a complicated claim; I know Jack Valenti has a habit of bloviating about it being a natural right, a property right, but he's wrong. No, of course it's not a natural right; we have copyright strictly for utilitarian purposes. (The length and scope of copyright protection are very real and pressing issues, but separate from its existence.) You're attacking a strawman.
**In every instance I can find IP law has always slowed developement of virtually everything until it copyright/patent expired.
France abolished copyright after the revolution, and found themselves with a mass exodus of printers, publishers and authors. If you're going to abolish copyright, I hope you have a better replacement than "all those artists will perform in the subway or something; I don't care, so long as I have my sweet, sweet MP3s!"
I should have one keyring, damn it. This isn't specifically a problem with GAIM-Encryption (and they go over why they chose not to use GPG in the FAQ*), but I have to maintain a keyring for my email, for GAIM-OTR (the encryption plugin I use), and for WASTE--and there's no good reason to do this! The PGP standard has a very robust standard for key management, which should be usable for pretty much any situation--and it is. WASTE keys work exactly like PGP keys do, only you have to import and manage them separately. What gives? Is GPG so hard to interface with that people feel compelled to reinvent the wheel? A quote about SSL channels and a penis-shaped sound wave is coming to mind here.
(Also, I see that there exists a GPG-based Gaim plugin, "gaim-e", but it hasn't been touched in five years.)
* I disagree with some of their reasons; for instance, you can import a key (and thus send someone messages) without signing the key or indicating trust of it in any fashion. A central keyserver is not a single point of failure, because it doesn't define trust relationships, and if you use the web of trust properly, it doesn't matter if someone hijacks the keyserver or not. Also, it's not that hard to put the timestamp inside the encrypted stream; while this is a matter of concern for replay attacks, there's no reason why this should discount the use of GPG's key management system entirely; inserting a timestamp and/or nonce into the IM before sending it (and possibly removing it when it's received and checked for uniqueness/sequence/that it was sent in the last ten seconds) isn't impossible.
Yes, that's the unfamiliar sensation of being inspired by your candidate, not disgusted by them. Ask your parents what it was like, 'cause nobody under thirty remembers. If Obama or Edwards wins the Democratic nomination, I'm going to be pulling the lever for the blue team without holding my nose, for the first time in memory.
Creative Commons has a Founders' Copyright project, which releases items into the public domain after fourteen (or twenty-eight) years. It's a number with some good historical backing.
Slashdot Mirror
'Cause I don't see an explanation for any of those things. I see some bland corporate pablum, carefully designed not to explain a damned thing.
Yes, the FBI can partyvan you for text files. It's happened before. If I recall correctly, that was part of a sting that also caught Max Hardcore. Max Hardcore, of course, has a bajillion bucks to spend on legal defense, and is now doing just fine.
Really, this is just poor administration. Nobody knows what the rules are, not even the enforcers. It would almost be better to have a strictly-enforced asinine TOS, rather than this "fuck shit up when our advertisers get jumpy" nonsense.
If they really needed you, they'd hop to whenever a paid member complained. Clearly this does not happen. You've already paid your money, and they're betting that there won't be a mass exodus of paid whiners--and, you know, they're probably right. When the next offer for ten icons instead of six comes around, and you hand out your money like a sucker, just remember to cry a little more, emo kid, the next time they offer you the shaft.
You're not their customer. You're their product. The pittance you pay them doesn't change that.
I understand that companies might be hush-hush about works in progress, but how did this article get published without even naming the one completed driver that this program has yielded? I know Greg K-H didn't say what it was, but someone could have at least asked him.
It would be extra nice if the Plustek OpticBook 3600 was on that list, but somehow I doubt it.
Paraphrasing Mark Pilgrim: on a long enough timeline, the utility of all non-free software approaches zero.
Free software may get orphaned as often or more often than proprietary software, but it can get un-orphaned, and that's the important thing. Businesses who run on OS/360 are an interesting example of what happens when the proprietary vendor goes to great lengths to prevent the software from becoming orphaned in the first place... but who owns the applications that those guys run? I was under the impression that IBM provided the platform, but not the applications--if I'm wrong, please do correct me. If IBM closed up shop tomorrow, how affected would they be?
Also, I think it's a bit disingenuous to compare the stability of a single private company with the stability of the open-source community as a whole--which, if you're a company willing to support a developer, is the stability of the entire programming industry.
I worked at a medical office which ran Medical Manager for many years. It did what it needed to do, sent out bills, all that stuff. However, it was vulnerable to the Y2K problem, in that the program would not accept dates past 12/31/99. The company that had made the software had been purchased by another, larger company, which wanted to sell a new, fifty thousand dollar version which would require a hardware upgrade as well, and would run on a completely different platform. It would have been cheaper to hire a programmer to make the date change, update the tables and whatever... but they didn't have that option. Vendor lock-in is a very real problem; once you give money to that vendor, you're paying for the chains that bind you to them. It's not in their interest to help you be flexible.
You'd think that a comic like this would appeal only to those of the dorky persuasion, but I think I know why it has broader appeal. (I know at least one non-dorky person who doesn't know the technical background of the jokes, but still really likes xkcd.) It's because the comic isn't really about dorky things; it uses dorky jokes to talk about themes like loneliness which even non-dorks can appreciate, and does this often enough that many non-dorks find it worth the time to read. Compare this to, for instance, Schlock Mercenary, which has its appeal pretty firmly limited to dorks.
You mean like Aram from Men in Hats? Man, I miss that.
Forfeiture Endangers American Rights (F. E. A. R.) has plenty of horrifying evidence (with illustrative anecdotes!) as to the fact that forfeiture is a bad, bad, bad idea.
I've had some surprisingly pleasant interactions with the police. When my car got stolen, for instance, the cop kept an eye out for it and found it out in the local ghetto. While we were waiting for the tow truck (the thieves had abandoned it with a flat tire), the following scene played out: A drunkish fellow walks by, and the cop banters with him. The guy moves off. My significant other says that the drunkish fellow seemed like a nice guy. The cop says that he was in jail for killing someone, and really isn't a nice guy at all. But a good cop knows everyone in his area. That hadn't occurred to me before, and it's the sort of thing which is never shiny or makes headlines, but is the difference between an effective and an ineffective police force.
There's also the local guy with Parkinson's who smokes a ton of pot (apparently it helps with the shakes), and the cops leave him alone because they really don't want to throw an infirm guy in his sixties in jail for toking up.
Of course, it's bettable that the cops wouldn't have been so helpful if I hadn't been white, and that is a significant problem. And the behavior of the NYPD at the Republican National Convention in '04 was absolutely shameful; people should have been fired for that, and publically. But these are problems that are solved with greater accountability and transparency.
Please try to read the news before sharing your opinion. The fired prosecutors were investigating Republican malfeasance in a number of places. Firing people in order to shield your own party from investigation is corruption.
The issue isn't that they were fired. The issue is that they were fired for nakedly partisan reasons--willingness to ignore cases against the Republican party and try to drum up scandal around Democrats, for instance--and that pretty much defines corruption. If he'd fired eight random attorneys, it would lead to some head-scratching. That's not what happened.
Besides, if no malfeasance occurred, why can't Alberto remember a damned thing?
I'm pretty sure he didn't have to get Senate approval to quit his job.
Which is why Washington abolished the government after the Whiskey Rebellion and we all live in Libertopia now, right?
Or maybe it means that government is prone to abuse when left unchecked, and that only systems of reciprocal accountability can prevent corruption and oppression. Imagine that.
I found a huge bug in my kitchen last fall; I took a picture and mailed it to my local university's entomology professor, who was kind enough to identify it.
Hey, it's not like the photographer has to identify the animal. And besides, people who aren't scientists can take decent pictures of pigeons, of frogs, or of squirrels; there are various forums for positively identifying plants and animals, and there's no good reason to restrict media sources to experts.
It would be nice of banks/PayPal/eBay would provide "poisoned" logins which would be used to trace users and tip off law enforcement. Of course, the 419 laws aren't very strenuously enforced, and this would be defeatable by a sufficiently anonymous proxy, so I suppose it's not a very good idea.
You'd think Interpol would work with stores: respond to these things, drop fifty bucks into a bank account and arrest the people who receive the goods--maybe that would help.
Or there's Internet Mail 2000, which is unfortunately-named but does what you're talking about. As for DNS, well, it's a mess.
Did you miss the part where he said that no one's printing the book any more, not just no one in the United States? Why does it matter that he's not in the US, and the book wasn't published in the US? The copyright term in his situation is asinine; it's asinine here as well--just replace 1900 with 1924 and you're in the same boat.
I should have one keyring, damn it. This isn't specifically a problem with GAIM-Encryption (and they go over why they chose not to use GPG in the FAQ*), but I have to maintain a keyring for my email, for GAIM-OTR (the encryption plugin I use), and for WASTE--and there's no good reason to do this! The PGP standard has a very robust standard for key management, which should be usable for pretty much any situation--and it is. WASTE keys work exactly like PGP keys do, only you have to import and manage them separately. What gives? Is GPG so hard to interface with that people feel compelled to reinvent the wheel? A quote about SSL channels and a penis-shaped sound wave is coming to mind here.
(Also, I see that there exists a GPG-based Gaim plugin, "gaim-e", but it hasn't been touched in five years.)
* I disagree with some of their reasons; for instance, you can import a key (and thus send someone messages) without signing the key or indicating trust of it in any fashion. A central keyserver is not a single point of failure, because it doesn't define trust relationships, and if you use the web of trust properly, it doesn't matter if someone hijacks the keyserver or not. Also, it's not that hard to put the timestamp inside the encrypted stream; while this is a matter of concern for replay attacks, there's no reason why this should discount the use of GPG's key management system entirely; inserting a timestamp and/or nonce into the IM before sending it (and possibly removing it when it's received and checked for uniqueness/sequence/that it was sent in the last ten seconds) isn't impossible.
Yes, that's the unfamiliar sensation of being inspired by your candidate, not disgusted by them. Ask your parents what it was like, 'cause nobody under thirty remembers. If Obama or Edwards wins the Democratic nomination, I'm going to be pulling the lever for the blue team without holding my nose, for the first time in memory.
Creative Commons has a Founders' Copyright project, which releases items into the public domain after fourteen (or twenty-eight) years. It's a number with some good historical backing.