Please igmore my lack aweful of speling grammar. Wrighting isn't something that I'm good at.
[----Fiction Mode On-----]
Hullo, I'm Will Hillard, and I have a little story to tell you.
Well, the year was 2040. I was watching TV, the news was on. Some lady was babbling on about how good it was, the new law that had been passed. Something about 'stricter enforcement of all violence-linked felony laws'. It didn't seem all that important.
Then I noticed that I had no soy milk to put in my Weaties, so I started off to the convinence store to get some more.
In the city that I lived in, there are three audio/video servalence devices per city block, but I was used to them so I payed them no mind. As I thought when they were first put in "I'm not a criminal, why should they bother me?".
On the way to the store, a man walking along next to me tripped, and I saw a small pistol in a hidden holster under his jacket.
I considered reporting it at the nearest city tip-box, but I figured that even though gun posession had been made illegal back in the For-The-Children act of 2021, him having a gun wasn't my problem. Even though I knew it was a fellony to not report someone in possesson of an illegal weapon, I figured no-one would know, and since I had ignored that law two or three times in the past with no problems I was pretty sure that even if the cops found out they wouldn't care. (Not reporting someone with possession of an illegal weapon was made a crime equal to posesson itsself [a felony] under the Enhanced Law Enforcement act of 2028)
I got to the store, got the soy milk, tucked it under my arm, and began the walk home. As I walked by a utility pole, the announcement speaker on the top said "447-8812-84: William Hillard, stop where you are standing and wait for a officer to come to you. You are under arrest.". The speaker continued to read me my Miranda Rights, and then a police officer came by and slapped a pair of handcuffs on me. (It had been required for all citizens to wear and respond to an ID number under the Anti-Terrorism act of 2008)
On the way to his patrol car. I tried to get him to tell me exactly what I was being charged with. He muttered somthing about 'with the new law you wont get off the hook easy this time', but wouldn't tell me what exactly I was 'on the hook' for.
He brought me down to the police station and thew me in a cell with 3 other people. They were in for 'jaywalking', 'misuse of public property', and 'littering'.
About 4 hours later (Me just sitting there hungry, as I had left the house while preparing breakfast), a poliece-lawyer type came by and said "447-8812-84: William Hillard, you are being charged with one count of murder, two counts of assault, and four counts of posession of an illegal weapon."
Cop-Lawyer: "Under the Crime Deterrance bill of 2032, if you are found guilty of all of those charges you will be assigned a mandatory sentance of five lifetimes."
Cop-Lawyer: "Here is a telephone, you have one phone call, I suggest you call your lawyer"
Me: "But, I don't have a lawyer!"
Cop-Lawyer: "Well then, I suggest you call someone who can get you one quickly, because your trial is tomorrow (under the Efficent Use of Public Resources act of 2034)"
Me: "I'm being tried under the EUPR? Doesn't that mean that there is no jury, just a two lawyers and a judge?"
Cop-Lawyer: "Yup, That's what happens when you commit that many violent crimes"
Me: "But I've never hurt a soul in my life!"
Cop-Lawery: "Tough rocks pal, are you going to make a call or not?"
I took the phone and called my brother Ted. He didn't sound like he could get me a lawyer in 24 hours.
-----
Scene: The next day, at my trial.
Judge: "Well, what do we have here, another repeat violent crime offender, lets get this one in prison quick"
Me: "Hey, but I've never hurt a fly!"
Judge: "ORDER! ORDER IN THE COURT! BE QUIET!"
Me: *gulp*
My-City-Assigned-Lawyer(MCAL): "Hey you, judge guy, don't you have to pound on that desk thing with the little hammer when you say that?"
Judge: "ORDER! You will adress me as 'your honor' at all times."
Judge: "This court is now in session. The procecuton will speak first."
The-Procecution-Lawyer(TPL): "Your honor, First accusation, one count of Murder I. The defendant can be seen to have witnessed the possesion of the illegal weapon, a small pistol, used a murder yesterday on tape #3495868 in the city survalence archives."
The judge types a command into a keyboard in front of him and a video displays behind him showing me walking along the day before. It showed the man tripping, it showed his gun clearly, and it showed a look of suprize on my face when I obviously saw the gun.
TPL: "That gun was used in the murder of Joe Bob Jackson yesterday, which was tried yesterday, case #49595838"
Judge: "Any defense"
MCAL: "No your honor, it's pretty obvious he saw the gun"
Me: "Hey, arn't you supposed to be defending me?"
MCAL shrugs.
Judge: "ORDER! ORDER IN THE COURT!"
Judge: "447-8812-84: William Hillard, I find you guilty of Murder I by association under the Crime Deterrance act of 2032, and find that by extention, since you are capible of murder, you must have also commited all the other crimes of which you are accused. I hereby sentance you to 500 years in a fedral high security prison"
Me: "But, but..."
Judge: "ORDER! This case is concluded, the convicted will now be dragged away to prison!"
------------------------
Well, I was dragged away to prison, all because of stupid laws. The laws that got me convicted are as follows
The Public Safety Ammendment to the constitution (2004): Any law which shall or may improve general public saftey is allowed
The Enhanced Law Enforcement act of 2028: If you see someone commit a felony and do not report it, you are also committing that felony.
Crime Deterrance act of 2032: If you posess an illegal weapon that is used to commit a felony, you are guilty of that felony. (This combined with the above, I had seen someone with a gun, hence I legally posessed that gun, it was used to commit murder, hence I had commited murder. Nice legal system, eh?)
[----Fiction Mode Off----]
The world shown above is the world that we are moving twards with our increasingly complex legal system and decrease in privacy. I personally can deal with having crime if it means we get to keep our freedom and privacy.
I believe that you have the right to believe whatever you happen to feel like believing.
As to your right to impose your beliefs on others, your children, I'm realy not sure.
My parents didn't impose their religious beliefs on me, and I'm very happy of that. I believe in the rights of others to decide their own beliefs, and if they're brainwashed into a set of beliefs at a young age then they never get that chance.
-------------------------------------
protect my children from the Religion of Atheism
I can't think of that many people who have been tortured and brutally murdered in the name of Athiesm, as for the well know organised religions...
At this point Chandon Seldon considers changing his.sig to "Don't ban guns, ban religion - It'd solve significantly more problems", but decides against it because he doesn't want *all* his posts marked as '-1 troll/flamebait'
Actually, homeschooling has relitively bad odds of producing cluefull people at this point.
A large percentage of the people who home school their children are homeschooling them so they don't get any "bad influences" while they're still impressionable. Bad Influences is defined as "Anything that might contradict or challenge their particuar version of christianity."
I don't want to get into a religious flame war on Slashdot, but children who have never heard any version of reality but their parents religion probably won't grow up very open minded.
(Clarification of my opinion: I think that Open Mindedness is good. I believe that Religion has caused more problems than all the other evils in the world combined. Please don't consider this flamebait, it's just my opinion.)
If school was run by corporate interests, and there was competition, I'd expect to see significantly higher quality more efficient education than is currently being given. That wouldn't be too hard. Have you been to a public school, any public school, recently?
And I think it's because people -- students and parents -- *let* them get away with it.
No - It's because the students and parents have no choice. The students legally must go to school, and there's hardly any restrictions on what rules a school is allowed to have.
That privitising education could only make it better!
Realy now, do you *really* think that a government (especially the crappy, inneficient, US government) could possibly do anything *better* than a corporation would do it in a compeditive, free market, enviornment?
I'll admit that calling the origional B.O. a "legit remote admin tool" would be a little bit of a streach, but BO2K is as legit as you get.
Yes, it does have certain features that go beyond just nessesity. This is because the people who built it are hackers in the true sense of the word (and probably in the other sense of the word too, but that's beside the point).
Go, download BO2K, try it out, compare it to the other remote admin tools. IMHO it's the best one out there, and it looks and acts just as professional as the others. Just because it's well designed and featurefull doesn't make it a malicous trojan.
And most of the other "remote administration tools" for Windows can hide using similar meathods (well, mabie not acting as an explorer.exe thread, but then that's just a Neat Trick(TM))
Dude, an Operating System consists of that software/data which comes on the instalation media. In the case of the "Red Hat Linux" operating system, that includes the web browser called "Netscape Communicator". In the case of "Debian GNU/Linux", it includes a program called Xaos that allows you to smoothly zoom into and out of fractals. In the case of "Microsoft Windows 98", that includes a browser called Internet Explorer 4.0 - wether it's embedded is irrelevent, and it's being embedded may make it "Anticompeditive practicies".
I know that the "Spirit of the GPL" would be, "If you can touch it, you must have access to the source". I'm not sure if that is actually expressed in the licence.
Re:Can "Free" or "Open Source" sofware be in Java
on
SGI Releases IDE
·
· Score: 1
It is possible for there to be a Free UNIX for Emacs to run on. There is no Free Java, and I'm not sure that there legally *can* be one.
To RMS, they Qt Free Edition licencing is fine. It has a similar effect to releasing Qt under the GPL --- RMS doesn't promote commercial software at all.
Also, the person/group who "Rubber Stamps" "Open Source Licences" is the OSI at opensource.org.
If anything is going to be Free, it should be that wich is required to make a program run.
If Sun wanted to, they could suddenly go "Nope, no-one can use Java any more". This is bad.
Talk to RMS about this, he could clarify the situation further.
Can "Free" or "Open Source" sofware be in Java
on
SGI Releases IDE
·
· Score: 2
I'm pretty sure that it's being in Java rules it out of the class of RMS "Free Software" as it requires propritatary software to run. (It may be an open standard, but I don't know of any Free JRE)
I'd also think this violates (at least in spirit, if not in practice) the OSI "Open Source Principles".
It doesn't really matter if it's released under and Open Source licence if it requires closed tools to run.
The GPL basically can be summed up in four points (As I understand it)
If you recieve a piece of GPL'd software without source, you have the right to request source from whoever you got the program from.
If you distribute GPL'd software, you must eithor provide the source with the distrobution, or provide the source on request to anyone who you have distributed the software too.
If you distribute GPL'd software, or modified GPL'd software, you must distribute it under the terms of the GPL, with no additional restrictions.
If you recieve GPL'd software, you always have the right to pass on that software to others under the terms of the GPL.
So, this applies to Corel as follows:
They must provide source to all GPL'd programs the distribute (to whoever, however)
They cannot restrict the redistribution of GPL'd software in their distro
Actually, technically, patents become avalible to the public *at the time of the fileing*. The public just can't legally use that data commercially until eithor it is improved and repatented or until 17 years go by.
Patenting software should mean that you *must* release the (nicely formatted and well commented) source code, so that others can take your product and improve it.
Dude. The FSF has lawyers, not just rambling old RMS =).
Also, a certain company called RedHat would tend to want to defend the GPL. Have you ever heard of SuSE, GmbH? How about Walnut Creek CDROM? Linuxcare? All of these companies woud be in a Bad Way (TM) if the GPL was non-functional.
Another thing is: If the GPL is invalid, then all software licences are invalid.
Also: What argument exactly would Corel use?
"Ahh, well, we, err, think, that, umm, because they, ahh, released the, err, source code, then, umm, it should be treated, uhh, as if it were, err, in the public domain. Yea, uhh, that's it."?
I think the GPL's on some pretty solid ground with some pretty sold backing.
This is totally lame. Censorship==bad. Always.
on
Three on Munich
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· Score: 1
Ok, I'm going to express my actual opinion on this subject. I'll agree that it's somewhat extreme, and that it most likely will offend a good number of people... tough shit. If you want your information filtered for content, don't come to Slashdot. It might warp your fragile little mind.
A rating system like this is no different from censorship. For a full explanation of why I say this, read the other posts on this thread.
I value personal freedom above all else. Especially freedom of information. We have no evidence that avalibility of information can actually harm anyone. Even kiddie porn may harm children in its production, but once it's made, it ain't hurting anyone.
How can *anyone* judge the "appropriateness" of information? Information is appropriate for a task. If I'm trying to figure out the reaction of substances to intense heat, instructions on how to make thermite are "appropriate information".
If you restrict information you restrict thought. It is not the realm of *anyone* to restrict thought. Not government. Not ISPs. Not Parents. *nobody*! (Well, I can't convincingly argue that you shouldn't restrict your own thought, but...)
Even if it could be demonstraited that being able to get (for example) bomb making instructions on the 'net tended to cause kids to make bombs and blow themselves up (there is no evidence that this is the case), that's a price that society should be willing to pay for information freedom. Heck, it's Evolution in Action. Even if a *significant percentage of the population died from the avalibility of information* I'd still think that freedom of information is more imporant than any possible effect of restricting information, and we all know that the number of people who are hurt by freedom of information is well, mabie 2/year --- worldwide.
Slashdot Mirror
Please igmore my lack aweful of speling grammar. Wrighting isn't something that I'm good at.
[----Fiction Mode On-----]
Hullo, I'm Will Hillard, and I have a little story to tell you.
Well, the year was 2040. I was watching TV, the news was on. Some lady was babbling on about how good it was, the new law that had been passed. Something about 'stricter enforcement of all violence-linked felony laws'. It didn't seem all that important.
Then I noticed that I had no soy milk to put in my Weaties, so I started off to the convinence store to get some more.
In the city that I lived in, there are three audio/video servalence devices per city block, but I was used to them so I payed them no mind. As I thought when they were first put in "I'm not a criminal, why should they bother me?".
On the way to the store, a man walking along next to me tripped, and I saw a small pistol in a hidden holster under his jacket.
I considered reporting it at the nearest city tip-box, but I figured that even though gun posession had been made illegal back in the For-The-Children act of 2021, him having a gun wasn't my problem. Even though I knew it was a fellony to not report someone in possesson of an illegal weapon, I figured no-one would know, and since I had ignored that law two or three times in the past with no problems I was pretty sure that even if the cops found out they wouldn't care. (Not reporting someone with possession of an illegal weapon was made a crime equal to posesson itsself [a felony] under the Enhanced Law Enforcement act of 2028)
I got to the store, got the soy milk, tucked it under my arm, and began the walk home. As I walked by a utility pole, the announcement speaker on the top said "447-8812-84: William Hillard, stop where you are standing and wait for a officer to come to you. You are under arrest.". The speaker continued to read me my Miranda Rights, and then a police officer came by and slapped a pair of handcuffs on me. (It had been required for all citizens to wear and respond to an ID number under the Anti-Terrorism act of 2008)
On the way to his patrol car. I tried to get him to tell me exactly what I was being charged with. He muttered somthing about 'with the new law you wont get off the hook easy this time', but wouldn't tell me what exactly I was 'on the hook' for.
He brought me down to the police station and thew me in a cell with 3 other people. They were in for 'jaywalking', 'misuse of public property', and 'littering'.
About 4 hours later (Me just sitting there hungry, as I had left the house while preparing breakfast), a poliece-lawyer type came by and said "447-8812-84: William Hillard, you are being charged with one count of murder, two counts of assault, and four counts of posession of an illegal weapon."
Cop-Lawyer: "Under the Crime Deterrance bill of 2032, if you are found guilty of all of those charges you will be assigned a mandatory sentance of five lifetimes."
Cop-Lawyer: "Here is a telephone, you have one phone call, I suggest you call your lawyer"
Me: "But, I don't have a lawyer!"
Cop-Lawyer: "Well then, I suggest you call someone who can get you one quickly, because your trial is tomorrow (under the Efficent Use of Public Resources act of 2034)"
Me: "I'm being tried under the EUPR? Doesn't that mean that there is no jury, just a two lawyers and a judge?"
Cop-Lawyer: "Yup, That's what happens when you commit that many violent crimes"
Me: "But I've never hurt a soul in my life!"
Cop-Lawery: "Tough rocks pal, are you going to make a call or not?"
I took the phone and called my brother Ted. He didn't sound like he could get me a lawyer in 24 hours.
-----
Scene: The next day, at my trial.
Judge: "Well, what do we have here, another repeat violent crime offender, lets get this one in prison quick"
Me: "Hey, but I've never hurt a fly!"
Judge: "ORDER! ORDER IN THE COURT! BE QUIET!"
Me: *gulp*
My-City-Assigned-Lawyer(MCAL): "Hey you, judge guy, don't you have to pound on that desk thing with the little hammer when you say that?"
Judge: "ORDER! You will adress me as 'your honor' at all times."
Judge: "This court is now in session. The procecuton will speak first."
The-Procecution-Lawyer(TPL): "Your honor, First accusation, one count of Murder I. The defendant can be seen to have witnessed the possesion of the illegal weapon, a small pistol, used a murder yesterday on tape #3495868 in the city survalence archives."
The judge types a command into a keyboard in front of him and a video displays behind him showing me walking along the day before. It showed the man tripping, it showed his gun clearly, and it showed a look of suprize on my face when I obviously saw the gun.
TPL: "That gun was used in the murder of Joe Bob Jackson yesterday, which was tried yesterday, case #49595838"
Judge: "Any defense"
MCAL: "No your honor, it's pretty obvious he saw the gun"
Me: "Hey, arn't you supposed to be defending me?"
MCAL shrugs.
Judge: "ORDER! ORDER IN THE COURT!"
Judge: "447-8812-84: William Hillard, I find you guilty of Murder I by association under the Crime Deterrance act of 2032, and find that by extention, since you are capible of murder, you must have also commited all the other crimes of which you are accused. I hereby sentance you to 500 years in a fedral high security prison"
Me: "But, but..."
Judge: "ORDER! This case is concluded, the convicted will now be dragged away to prison!"
------------------------
Well, I was dragged away to prison, all because of stupid laws. The laws that got me convicted are as follows
[----Fiction Mode Off----]
The world shown above is the world that we are moving twards with our increasingly complex legal system and decrease in privacy. I personally can deal with having crime if it means we get to keep our freedom and privacy.
I believe that you have the right to believe whatever you happen to feel like believing.
As to your right to impose your beliefs on others, your children, I'm realy not sure.
My parents didn't impose their religious beliefs on me, and I'm very happy of that.
I believe in the rights of others to decide their own beliefs, and if they're brainwashed into a set of beliefs at a young age then they never get that chance.
-------------------------------------
protect my children from the Religion of Atheism
I can't think of that many people who have been tortured and brutally murdered in the name of Athiesm, as for the well know organised religions...
At this point Chandon Seldon considers changing his .sig to "Don't ban guns, ban religion - It'd solve significantly more problems", but decides against it because he doesn't want *all* his posts marked as '-1 troll/flamebait'
Actually, homeschooling has relitively bad odds of producing cluefull people at this point.
A large percentage of the people who home school their children are homeschooling them so they don't get any "bad influences" while they're still impressionable. Bad Influences is defined as "Anything that might contradict or challenge their particuar version of christianity."
I don't want to get into a religious flame war on Slashdot, but children who have never heard any version of reality but their parents religion probably won't grow up very open minded.
(Clarification of my opinion: I think that Open Mindedness is good. I believe that Religion has caused more problems than all the other evils in the world combined. Please don't consider this flamebait, it's just my opinion.)
If school was run by corporate interests, and there was competition, I'd expect to see significantly higher quality more efficient education than is currently being given. That wouldn't be too hard. Have you been to a public school, any public school, recently?
And I think it's because people -- students and parents -- *let* them get away with it.
No - It's because the students and parents have no choice. The students legally must go to school, and there's hardly any restrictions on what rules a school is allowed to have.
That privitising education could only make it better!
Realy now, do you *really* think that a government (especially the crappy, inneficient, US government) could possibly do anything *better* than a corporation would do it in a compeditive, free market, enviornment?
http://users.slashdot.org/Chandon_Seldon/
Then I wouldn't have to screw around with registering a domain, and being screwed by ICANN or NSI!
Hmm, mabie e-mail redirection would be cool too...
How is it harmfull? Can you prove that it's harmfull? Sawing a kid's leg off is harmfull, that's pretty obvious, but...
I'll admit that calling the origional B.O. a "legit remote admin tool" would be a little bit of a streach, but BO2K is as legit as you get.
Yes, it does have certain features that go beyond just nessesity. This is because the people who built it are hackers in the true sense of the word (and probably in the other sense of the word too, but that's beside the point).
Go, download BO2K, try it out, compare it to the other remote admin tools. IMHO it's the best one out there, and it looks and acts just as professional as the others. Just because it's well designed and featurefull doesn't make it a malicous trojan.
And most of the other "remote administration tools" for Windows can hide using similar meathods (well, mabie not acting as an explorer.exe thread, but then that's just a Neat Trick(TM))
Dude, an Operating System consists of that software/data which comes on the instalation media. In the case of the "Red Hat Linux" operating system, that includes the web browser called "Netscape Communicator". In the case of "Debian GNU/Linux", it includes a program called Xaos that allows you to smoothly zoom into and out of fractals. In the case of "Microsoft Windows 98", that includes a browser called Internet Explorer 4.0 - wether it's embedded is irrelevent, and it's being embedded may make it "Anticompeditive practicies".
I know that the "Spirit of the GPL" would be, "If you can touch it, you must have access to the source". I'm not sure if that is actually expressed in the licence.
It is possible for there to be a Free UNIX for Emacs to run on. There is no Free Java, and I'm not sure that there legally *can* be one.
To RMS, they Qt Free Edition licencing is fine. It has a similar effect to releasing Qt under the GPL --- RMS doesn't promote commercial software at all.
Also, the person/group who "Rubber Stamps" "Open Source Licences" is the OSI at opensource.org.
Read the licence more closely, they can revoke your binary or source licence at any time.
If anything is going to be Free, it should be that wich is required to make a program run.
If Sun wanted to, they could suddenly go "Nope, no-one can use Java any more". This is bad.
Talk to RMS about this, he could clarify the situation further.
I'm pretty sure that it's being in Java rules it out of the class of RMS "Free Software" as it requires propritatary software to run. (It may be an open standard, but I don't know of any Free JRE)
I'd also think this violates (at least in spirit, if not in practice) the OSI "Open Source Principles".
It doesn't really matter if it's released under and Open Source licence if it requires closed tools to run.
But enough posters didn't seem to understand it...
The GPL basically can be summed up in four points (As I understand it)
So, this applies to Corel as follows:
(The following is under US law)
Actually, technically, patents become avalible to the public *at the time of the fileing*. The public just can't legally use that data commercially until eithor it is improved and repatented or until 17 years go by.
Patenting software should mean that you *must* release the (nicely formatted and well commented) source code, so that others can take your product and improve it.
I would expect something 64bit.
Like Linux?
Actually, notepad is truely crufty. It has filesize limits and absolutely no features. "EDIT" is a much better microsoft product.
Dude. The FSF has lawyers, not just rambling old RMS =).
Also, a certain company called RedHat would tend to want to defend the GPL. Have you ever heard of SuSE, GmbH? How about Walnut Creek CDROM? Linuxcare? All of these companies woud be in a Bad Way (TM) if the GPL was non-functional.
Another thing is: If the GPL is invalid, then all software licences are invalid.
Also: What argument exactly would Corel use?
"Ahh, well, we, err, think, that, umm, because they, ahh, released the, err, source code, then, umm, it should be treated, uhh, as if it were, err, in the public domain. Yea, uhh, that's it."?
I think the GPL's on some pretty solid ground with some pretty sold backing.
Ok, I'm going to express my actual opinion on this subject. I'll agree that it's somewhat extreme, and that it most likely will offend a good number of people... tough shit. If you want your information filtered for content, don't come to Slashdot. It might warp your fragile little mind.
A rating system like this is no different from censorship. For a full explanation of why I say this, read the other posts on this thread.
I value personal freedom above all else. Especially freedom of information. We have no evidence that avalibility of information can actually harm anyone. Even kiddie porn may harm children in its production, but once it's made, it ain't hurting anyone.
How can *anyone* judge the "appropriateness" of information? Information is appropriate for a task. If I'm trying to figure out the reaction of substances to intense heat, instructions on how to make thermite are "appropriate information".
If you restrict information you restrict thought. It is not the realm of *anyone* to restrict thought. Not government. Not ISPs. Not Parents. *nobody*! (Well, I can't convincingly argue that you shouldn't restrict your own thought, but...)
Even if it could be demonstraited that being able to get (for example) bomb making instructions on the 'net tended to cause kids to make bombs and blow themselves up (there is no evidence that this is the case), that's a price that society should be willing to pay for information freedom. Heck, it's Evolution in Action. Even if a *significant percentage of the population died from the avalibility of information* I'd still think that freedom of information is more imporant than any possible effect of restricting information, and we all know that the number of people who are hurt by freedom of information is well, mabie 2/year --- worldwide.
As my sig says....
Dude, Universities exist for the persuit of knowledge the same way governments exist to preserve freedoms --- that's not quite how it ends up working.