I never said they were incompetant, but it sure would be nice to know how good they were, even if that ended up reducing their effectiveness. It is hard enough to decide who to vote for with complete information; it is impossible without. OK, end off-topicness
Um. "the left"? I don't think it's censorship is a uniquely left-wing (or uniquely right-wing) phenomenon. Sure, lots of Democrats support these laws, but plenty of Republicans do too. And it's been a long time since the Democrats have represented the left anyway.
Your example ("IBM has...; they have...") is gramatically incorrect in America and any other English-speaking country.
Grammar is determined by usage. I tried has/have (well, more or less) on IRC, and asked if anybody wanted to complain; nobody did. Certainly, if you google around, you will find lots of people mixi ng the singular and plural that way, even columnists. (random examples: http://www-1.ibm.com/linux/ http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/16270.html http://www.forbes.com/2001/01/10/0110ibm.html ht tp://www-1.ibm.com/services/innovation/abercromb ie.shtml -- search for "they have". Unfortunately, I can't find a Safire example).
Wait, I'm an idiot. They is grammatically a plural but semantically a neuter singular! So, it's not inconsistent at all. And it just happens to work out to the same text in British English, but without the nonstandard semantics on "they". Neat!
In addition, it is untrue that "companies are people in America."
In a legal sense, it is quite true -- see Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Co. for details.
...are fictitious entities
Corporations are far from fictitious -- they're as real as political parties, house parties, or dirt. Should corporations exist? In their current form? With their current rights and privileges? Off-topic in the extreme. But corporations are as real as you or I, if not as human.
That's precisely why I want to switch to British style here. Anyway, American still allows inconsistency ("IBM has...; they have..."). Just about everywhere, companies are singular entities, whether or not they are people. Anyway, if companies are people in America, why don't we say "IBM is the largest consulting company; he is also the best"? Nobody ever refers to a person as "it". Even cats and dogs generally get a he or she (even when actual sex is unknown). But not corporations.
But we are now way off-topic. ObOnTopic: Intel has been improving lately on Free Software stuff.
No, not sic. It's a British (and Australian) convention to treat a company as a group of individuals, a plural. This makes a lot more sense than American, which can't make up its mind whether companies are singular or plural. Both of the following are acceptable in American, although the first more so: "IBM is the leader in memory technology; they have just released a new 1TB memory module." "IBM is the leader in memory technology; it has just released a new 1TB memory module."
Disclaimer: my Australian sample size is 1, and my British sample size not much larger. I'm an American who is trying to switch to the British convention for obscure political reasons (I don't like the idea of companies as entities comparable to individuals -- it removes responsibility and encourages unethical behavior).
Why is.prn more specific than.org given a non-profit that distributes porn (or, in this case, hate speech)? Why is.prn more specific than.gov for a government site distributing the Starr report? It's just that you care about pornography, so that's what you consider "more specific".
Consider the following thought experiment: add in.rel (religious),.tx.us (texas, oh, wait, already exists), and.iwtbf (for people who believe that Information Wants To Be Free). Where do free porn sites in texas featuring priests go? Or texan religious sites about the dangers of porn with example porn? A texas religious educational institutions critique of a porn site? What if it's Bob Jones U, so it's also got some hate speech?
TLDs are worthless for categorization. If you want a categorized net, start your own Yahoo/Dmoz.
What about a non-profit site that sells stuff? What if it sells adult stuff?
What if a non-profit become for-profit? What about the other way around? (Yes, both happen). And.edu is reserved for 4-year colleges now... would you want DQU there? (http://www.ericsparling.freeservers.com/catalog.h tml -- grep for university). What about the site currently at www.theschool.com (a scientology school -- one student I knew there had only the following classes in 9th grade: Ethics, Drugs, Math.
Anyway, your whole plan is stupid, because drawing these lines is extremely difficult. Especially the.prn part. Where's Mapplethorpe?
What about Martin Luther? Remember that.prn was also supposed to cover hate speech. ML wrote "On The Jews And Their Lies," (hate speech if I ever saw it) but back then, that was perfectly acceptable. He also wrote the 95 theses and founded Protestantism.
Yeah, categorizing is too hard.
(BTW, what makes you expect a government site at whitehouse.com?)
Hi. I investigate licensing violations for the FSF. Please let me know what you feel Stalker is doing in violation of the GPL. You can mail me at license-violation@gnu.org. Thanks.
"Microsoft is well within their rights under Copyright law here."
No. Copyright law doesn't apply to knowledge. It doesn't apply to recipes and algorithms. It doesn't even apply to data structures if those data structures are effectively the only way to do something. Microsoft cannot claim that their copyright on a specification forbids others from using the knowledge contained in the specification in any way, shape, or form.
The Amber Spyglass, however, completely fell apart. Pullman introduced another world which was not nearly so interesting as Lyra's world or the world of Cittagaze (sp?!), and had to waste half of the book talking about it. The character of Mary added nothing to the story, and could have been cut. I would have liked to see more of the workings of Asriel's army on a lower level, and more philosophy -- just how do we know that God was to blame for the actions of the Church? How would Will react if he had learned who had been in that crystal chamber he had cut open? Etc.
The gay angels ("They're not gay. They're puppets. They don't even have legs.") were a nice touch, tho.
That's a slippery slope argument. Here's a better one:
Linux-Kernel has thousands of members, and hundreds of posts per day. Who will pay the millions of dollars per year for it to go out? Will you let it die, just to avoid spam?
No, there are *not* millions per year, and even if there were, it would *still* not mean half the population are liars.
http://www.ufonet.it/archivio/canada2.htm
According to this page, the year with the most reports of 1989-1992 was 1992, with 223 reports.
This page says there were 259 reports in 1999: http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Rampart/265 3/99med ia.htm
Let's generously assume that 1999 (the largest year mentioned on pages I found) is a fairly average year. Now, that's just Canadian reports, and there are about 30 million Canadians (http://www.statcan.ca/english/Pgdb/People/Populat ion/demo02.htm). Assuming that UFO sightings are universal around the world, that's only about 51800 cases per year. And of course, even true believer moron kooks like you know that *some* UFO sightins are nothing more than airplanes, weather baloons and the like. Since most of the world has far fewer of those than Canada, even this assumption of uniformity is extremely generous.
As for the "half of all UFO sighters are liars, therefore half of the population as a whole are liars," well, I suggest you learn something about selectivity bias. On the other hand, it is true that there are far more liars than UFO reports. The California DMV has 6000 fraud cases a year: http://www.sen.ca.gov/ftp/sen/SENATOR/PEACE /PRESS- RELEASES/040698PR.TXT And a population slightly larger than Canada's. So, extrapolating globally the same way, there *are* over a million liars (since all fraud requires deception).
"Sure maybe 40-50 percent are hoaxes, this is saying one out of every two people is a liar."
No, it's saying one out of every two *UFO reporters* is a liar. Or confused/mislead -- the person who reports the UFO need not the the person responsible for the hoax.
Any serious student of mythology will look at modern myths to make sure their theories still work. Campbell certainly didn't spurn SW-- he described it as "good, sound teaching." I don't agree with Campbell here -- I'm with Brin on what SW teaches (if on little else).
Star Wars is certainly reflective of American culture, and it has influenced it. Whether or not that's a good thing depends on your view of SW (see Brin). I would rather see SW influence the world than Starship Troopers (the book -- I have heard that the movie is significantly different). I would rather still see _Erin Brockovitch_ influence the world than SW.
I love your elitist attitude, tho. You'll go far with that.
Slashdot Mirror
I never said they were incompetant, but it sure would be nice to know how good they were, even if that ended up reducing their effectiveness. It is hard enough to decide who to vote for with complete information; it is impossible without. OK, end off-topicness
"The CIA has been very wrong in the past, but more often than not, they're right."
How do you know?
Um. "the left"? I don't think it's censorship is a uniquely left-wing (or uniquely right-wing) phenomenon. Sure, lots of Democrats support these laws, but plenty of Republicans do too. And it's been a long time since the Democrats have represented the left anyway.
Your example ("IBM has ...; they have ...") is gramatically incorrect in America and any other English-speaking country.
t tp://www-1.ibm.com/services/innovation/abercromb ie.shtml
...are fictitious entities
Grammar is determined by usage. I tried has/have (well, more or less) on IRC, and asked if anybody wanted to complain; nobody did. Certainly, if you google around, you will find lots of people mixi
ng the singular and plural that way, even columnists. (random examples:
http://www-1.ibm.com/linux/
http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/16270.html
http://www.forbes.com/2001/01/10/0110ibm.html
h
-- search for "they have". Unfortunately, I can't find a Safire example).
Wait, I'm an idiot. They is grammatically a plural but semantically a neuter singular! So, it's not inconsistent at all. And it just happens to work out to the same text in British English, but without the nonstandard semantics on "they". Neat!
Although it does not address this particular topic, you might want to refer to A Person Paper On Purity In Language.
In addition, it is untrue that "companies are people in America."
In a legal sense, it is quite true -- see Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Co. for details.
Corporations are far from fictitious -- they're as real as political parties, house parties, or dirt. Should corporations exist? In their current form? With their current rights and privileges? Off-topic in the extreme. But corporations are as real as you or I, if not as human.
That's precisely why I want to switch to British style here. Anyway, American still allows inconsistency ("IBM has ...; they have ..."). Just about everywhere, companies are singular entities, whether or not they are people. Anyway, if companies are people in America, why don't we say "IBM is the largest consulting company; he is also the best"? Nobody ever refers to a person as "it". Even cats and dogs generally get a he or she (even when actual sex is unknown). But not corporations.
But we are now way off-topic. ObOnTopic: Intel has been improving lately on Free Software stuff.
sic means "thus" in Latin. In English, it means "the person I'm quoting fucked up." Nobody uses it any other way, and usage determines meaning.
"Epson have[sic] ..."
No, not sic. It's a British (and Australian) convention to treat a company as a group of individuals, a plural. This makes a lot more sense than American, which can't make up its mind whether companies are singular or plural. Both of the following are acceptable in American, although the first more so: "IBM is the leader in memory technology; they have just released a new 1TB memory module." "IBM is the leader in memory technology; it has just released a new 1TB memory module."
Disclaimer: my Australian sample size is 1, and my British sample size not much larger. I'm an American who is trying to switch to the British convention for obscure political reasons (I don't like the idea of companies as entities comparable to individuals -- it removes responsibility and encourages unethical behavior).
Why is .prn more specific than .org given a non-profit that distributes porn (or, in this case, hate speech)? Why is .prn more specific than .gov for a government site distributing the Starr report? It's just that you care about pornography, so that's what you consider "more specific".
.rel (religious), .tx.us (texas, oh, wait, already exists), and .iwtbf (for people who believe that Information Wants To Be Free). Where do free porn sites in texas featuring priests go? Or texan religious sites about the dangers of porn with example porn? A texas religious educational institutions critique of a porn site? What if it's Bob Jones U, so it's also got some hate speech?
Consider the following thought experiment: add in
TLDs are worthless for categorization. If you want a categorized net, start your own Yahoo/Dmoz.
What about a non-profit site that sells stuff? What if it sells adult stuff?
.edu is reserved for 4-year colleges now ... would you want DQU there? (http://www.ericsparling.freeservers.com/catalog.h tml -- grep for university). What about the site currently at www.theschool.com (a scientology school -- one student I knew there had only the following classes in 9th grade: Ethics, Drugs, Math.
.prn part. Where's Mapplethorpe?
.prn was also supposed to cover hate speech. ML wrote "On The Jews And Their Lies," (hate speech if I ever saw it) but back then, that was perfectly acceptable. He also wrote the 95 theses and founded Protestantism.
What if a non-profit become for-profit? What about the other way around? (Yes, both happen). And
Anyway, your whole plan is stupid, because drawing these lines is extremely difficult. Especially the
What about Martin Luther? Remember that
Yeah, categorizing is too hard.
(BTW, what makes you expect a government site at whitehouse.com?)
"so why the FSF doesn't nit-picking them?"
We are looking into it now. Thanks for the report!
Hi. I investigate licensing violations for the FSF. Please let me know what you feel Stalker is doing in violation of the GPL. You can mail me at license-violation@gnu.org. Thanks.
Or a blind person.
That is not the case in the US.
Confusing the two is like confusing pedophilia with Catholicism.
Silence or complicity in wrongdoing is still wrongdoing.
"Microsoft is well within their rights under Copyright law here."
No. Copyright law doesn't apply to knowledge. It doesn't apply to recipes and algorithms. It doesn't even apply to data structures if those data structures are effectively the only way to do something. Microsoft cannot claim that their copyright on a specification forbids others from using the knowledge contained in the specification in any way, shape, or form.
The Amber Spyglass, however, completely fell apart. Pullman introduced another world which was not nearly so interesting as Lyra's world or the world of Cittagaze (sp?!), and had to waste half of the book talking about it. The character of Mary added nothing to the story, and could have been cut. I would have liked to see more of the workings of Asriel's army on a lower level, and more philosophy -- just how do we know that God was to blame for the actions of the Church? How would Will react if he had learned who had been in that crystal chamber he had cut open? Etc.
The gay angels ("They're not gay. They're puppets. They don't even have legs.") were a nice touch, tho.
Yeah, 'cause lmbench doesn't even run on Be!
i ve /970310/0064.html
http://www.bespecific.com/dialog/bedevtalk/arch
That's a slippery slope argument. Here's a better one:
Linux-Kernel has thousands of members, and hundreds of posts per day. Who will pay the millions of dollars per year for it to go out? Will you let it die, just to avoid spam?
No, there are *not* millions per year, and even if there were, it would *still* not mean half the population are liars.
5 3/99med ia.htm
t ion/demo02.htm).
E /PRESS- RELEASES/040698PR.TXT
http://www.ufonet.it/archivio/canada2.htm
According to this page, the year with the most
reports of 1989-1992 was 1992, with 223 reports.
This page says there were 259 reports in 1999:
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Rampart/26
Let's generously assume that 1999 (the largest year mentioned on pages I found) is a fairly average year. Now, that's just Canadian reports, and there are about 30 million Canadians (http://www.statcan.ca/english/Pgdb/People/Popula
Assuming that UFO sightings are universal around the world, that's only about 51800 cases per year. And of course, even true believer moron kooks like you know that *some* UFO sightins are nothing more than airplanes, weather baloons and the like. Since most of the world has far fewer of those than Canada, even this assumption of uniformity is extremely generous.
As for the "half of all UFO sighters are liars, therefore half of the population as a whole are liars," well, I suggest you learn something about selectivity bias. On the other hand, it is true that there are far more liars than UFO reports. The California DMV has 6000 fraud cases a year:
http://www.sen.ca.gov/ftp/sen/SENATOR/PEAC
And a population slightly larger than Canada's. So, extrapolating globally the same way, there *are* over a million liars (since all fraud requires deception).
"Sure maybe 40-50 percent are hoaxes, this is saying one out of every two people is a liar."
No, it's saying one out of every two *UFO reporters* is a liar. Or confused/mislead -- the person who reports the UFO need not the the person responsible for the hoax.
The requirement for open source is worthless. All it says is that software DRM must be "based on" open source code.
1. Based on open source includes products like IBM HTTP Server and WebTen (based on Apache). That doesn't do anyone any good.
2. Software-controlled hardware DRM is not affected. We won't be able to build Free Software drivers for any new hardware.
In simpler terms, Sun Tzu wrote:
"Thus, what is of supreme importance in war is to attack the enemy's strategy."
(Oh, now I remember where I first saw this...)
The US has similar laws -- see 17 USC sect. 121.
Is starwars.com good enough for you?
Maybe they don't have a contractual obligation -- but they *did* produce Ep2 at Fox Studios.
Any serious student of mythology will look at modern myths to make sure their theories still work. Campbell certainly didn't spurn SW-- he described it as "good, sound teaching." I don't agree with Campbell here -- I'm with Brin on what SW teaches (if on little else).
Star Wars is certainly reflective of American culture, and it has influenced it. Whether or not that's a good thing depends on your view of SW (see Brin). I would rather see SW influence the world than Starship Troopers (the book -- I have heard that the movie is significantly different). I would rather still see _Erin Brockovitch_ influence the world than SW.
I love your elitist attitude, tho. You'll go far with that.