The Christian god didn't create the universe. A pack of lies and propaganda from an upstart deity.
No, the universe was formed from chaos, with the giants first among sentient creatures. We know that because the Eddas tell us so. The gods - Odin, Thor, Frey, etc. - came after the giants and supplanted them, kicking their sorry behinds and banishing them to lands of ice and fire.
Yessirree bob! That's what *really* happened. All this Christianity crap - "only one god, yada yada" - that came later, from a group of spastics who couldn't tolerate competition.
And when Ragnarok comes all you junior god worshippers are gonna be damned! Me, I'll be in Valhalla eating, drinking, fighting and screwing, day in and day out! A pox on the lot of you one-god clowns!
we would still become better people because all of these religions are based on the Old Testament.
Oh please, spare me this particular crock of shit. You sound like a Scientologist or Branch Davidian, insisting that if everyone followed your religion we'd all be 'better people'. Yeah, sure, take another hit from that crack pipe of yours.
when local schools have control over ciriculum, then the local citizens also have control over the schools.
And the Constitution is designed so that the majority, no matter what kind of fuckwits they represent, can't impose their wackiness on the minority. If you don't like it then change the Constitution. If you can.
None of them, even if true, would justify the rest of us being trampled by you, the minority.
Cry me a river! Because your brand of cultism isn't taught in public schools you're being oppressed! Try teaching your religious beliefs at home or in church, where my tax dollars aren't at work. Or send your kid to a religious school.
You don't have any right to dictate that my kid be indoctrinated with your religion. None. But I gather from your posts that's what really gets your goat - that you can't force your religious beliefs on the children of others. A damned good thing that is, given your complete disregard for the Constitution or the rights of others.
This is complex. Let the communities and courts decide on a case by case basis.
It's already been decided. The Constitution reigns supreme. If you don't like it, change it. But we already know it'll be a cold day in hell when you gather the support for that move, eh? Which is no doubt why you're so eager to disregard the Constitution and remand the law to local majorities of religious freaks.
No, it's precisely about rights. In a government-funded school system that uses my taxes for operation, I've every right to prevent you from employing my tax dollars to support your religion. It's that simple.
Furthermore, you have no right whatsoever to force your religion on my children. *I* decide what religious influences will be in their lives *not you*. Your 'community' doesn't have any business ramming its religious beliefs down my kids throats.
You have a choice. You and like-minded folks can start a private religious school and leave the rest of us the hell alone. It's not a hard concept to grasp. People have been doing it for quite some time now.
And, if for some reason you can't tolerate the fact that I don't want my children indoctrinated with your particular brand of religion, you always have the option of repealing the First Amendment. Go ahead. Give it a shot.
It's so nice to know that if you're rich and powerful you can use legal technicalities to commit crimes without getting prosecuted - and then brag about it on national television.
Shit...so if I want my representative to, say, actually represent me, you're saying that I need to cough up some protection money?
Look, if we're going to have a mafia-style government then I say let's vote in the real mob. They seem to be far better at the job of providing protection (especially against criminal elements who dare to victimize one of their clients) than the actual government is. It'd probably cost less, too.
Hey, and I have the freedom to blacklist his sorry ass for having the open mail relay in the first place. After all, your entire argument is predicated on freedom, and that cuts both ways, Tonto.
The cow I have is when some self-important asshole decides that he gets to modify *my* equipment, the equipment that *I* paid for, in order to protect against any possible future infringement of his copyright.
Not each download. Each download *attempt*, based on some very unscientific sampling methods. In point of fact, as yet no empirical study has been done on the matter whatsoever.
I thought the same thing. "10-12 guys? What the hell do they all do? Sit around and play Quake all day?"
I've worn alot of different hats over the last 18 years. I'm sure most people who've been in the biz have. I can do everything from laying the hardware on up to writing the code and admining the system - with a dash of business savvy thrown in when buying equipment and leasing bandwidth. I think of this as *normal* for anyone who's been around for more than a half-dozen years.
So by my calculations it looks like it takes slashdot 10-12 people to do the jobs of, say, three folks - four if you want a decent amount of vacation. All the business aspects are taken care of by VA so they don't have to worry about that, but *I* could do this for an operation this small without significantly adding to my day.
What do they do? We know that grammar, spell-checking, or getting stories factually correct has nothing to do with their jobs....
No, slashdot has no copyrights to the stories because they're almost all reprints of *actual news stories printed at other sites*. You can't copyright what amounts to a commented link.
That isn't true. You aren't liable. I don't know where you're getting your legal advice but it's time to hire some real attorneys.
The only person who's liable is the guy running Alterslash. He is, in essence, mirroring your site without permission. If he did have your permission then you *both* would be liable, but right now only he is. And this is assuming that there's something to be liable *for*, which there isn't if Alterslash is a true mirror.
In fact, other than mirroring slashdot (and mirrors are perfectly legal - do a bit of research if you need to confirm that) you boys don't have *any rights whatsoever* to grant reprint permission for the comments. Mirrors, yes - this is just load-bearing and doesn't violate copyright; but nothing else, a la Hellmouth.
That is *not* the way the legal system works, as you continue to post. Your assertions have *nothing whatsoever* to do with copyright law. I'm dumbfounded as to how you even came up with this idea in the first place. I truly hope it wasn't from an actual lawyer, as that person would be incompetent beyond rational belief.
This is crap. No ethics involved. It's incumbent on the producer, not the user, to exact payment - in whatever form. *This is a basic precept of economics*, particularly of capitalism. Please, do a little reading and enlighten yourself on the topic.
If the user, not the producer, were to have the ultimate decision on payment for the service we'd call slashdot *a charity*.
If slashdot provides a quality service worth paying for then people will pay for it and the site will live on. If, however, the only services that slashdot provides are:
- repackaging the news of other sites, often incorrectly; and
- using the posts of unpaid volunteers via forums to generate interest
and it fails as a business, then that's the way it goes.
That's capitalism, jack. Those that don't provide value are weeded out of the mix. As they should be.
Although, goddammit, immediately after I made this post I found out that another web site has reprinted three of my articles in their entirety. Bloody bastards, time to kick some more ass....
I'm definitely not a lawyer, but I was involved in a case some time ago where a web site I frequented decided to use a posted comment of mine as a front-page advertisement to lure people into hanging around. The site profited through ads, as well as some services it provided to those that were interested.
Well, I found out about this after the fact since the company didn't bother to contact me and ask my permission. When I talked to them they said that under copyright law they didn't need my ok to use my post; I'd "already implicitly consented" to it's use by posting on the forum in the first place.
As someone who's published - y'know, real, written stuff, on paper and with ink - this didn't sound at all right. So I had a lawyer look at it and she said (paraphrased) that the web site owners were full of shit. I owned the copyrigh to my posts and, as I didn't sign any contract to the contrary, my posts always remained mine and mine alone.
When served with a legal opinion the company backed down and removed my post. So I have no idea how this would've played out in court. But in this one instance the prevailing opinion was that unless I explicitly say otherwise, I own what I write.
The issue of mirrors has nothing to do with legality. Mirrors are legal. You could mirror slashdot across a thousand sites and there would be no violation of copyright.
The two points that argue against mirrors are a) the mirroring site could alter content in a malicious fashion, making users think the alterations are original material, and b) slashdot would have to share a piece of whatever miniscule ad pie they get with the people hosting the mirror.
But this doesn't change the fact that mirrors are fundamentally legal, simply representing a technical load-bearing solution to a traffic problem.
By contrast, look at our American society in the West. We have debated the issue of cloning. We have expressed grave concern over its moral implications.
Actually, "the West" hasn't "expressed grave concerns" over the moral implications of cloning. You say this as if we, a unified body of First World nations, think cloning is eeeeeeevil.
Fact is, there's a great deal of disagreement on the subject - no unity whatsoever. And as the strongest objections seem to be made by religious fanatics with no scientific background in the biological sciences, I can see why the Chinese might find much of the debate specious and rooted in Western-style religious fundamentalism.
Hell, I'm an American and that's the way I see it. Yet another bunch of clueless idiots who've seen one to many 'evil clones kill people' horror flicks and think that this is somehow going to happen in real life....
The primary reason for doing away with the electoral college is that it's possible for a president to get elected *even when his opponent is favored by a majority of the voters*. We've had two such examples in American history, the last in 2000.
The second reason for getting rid of the electoral college is that it immediately disenfranchises the minority in every state in every presidential election. That is, if 51% of the voters in the state of California vote for candidate x, and 49% vote for candidate y, then *all* of California's electoral votes go to candidate x. In essence, the votes of the group that support y were only worth anything up until the majority was determined; after that they're no longer represented in the election. In a straight 'one person one vote' system *every vote everywhere* is counted right up until the last one, to see who gets the office. And every president is *always* elected by the majority - no shenanigans like the 2000 election are possible, and nobody's brother can swing the election in a state through dubious means.
The primary reason for not doing away with the electoral college is that it makes it impossible for any party to 'win' an entire state's worth of electoral votes. Right now candidates spend 90% of their time and money in the dozen states with the most electoral votes. They do so because all they need is 51% of the population and they get that state's entire electoral college vote. Under a populist system a vote in one state would count the same as the vote in any other state, which means that campaigning in North Dakota might actually be necessary in a close election. What candidate wants to campaign in a backwater like North Dakota?
People argue that the electoral college gives more weight to states with smaller populations. Hogwash. The states with the most pull are those with the most votes. If I get 51% of the vote in California this is worth a hell of a lot more than getting 90% of the vote in four or five smaller states - because the electoral vote of California is worth so much more. If anyone needs proof of that just look to where candidates spend most of their time and money - states with small electoral votes are lucky to see the candidates *even once* during an election, while the dozen largest can look forward to multiple visits and enormous amounts of campaign spending.
Yeah, right, there are just *so many* of those nasty pirates. We know that's so because either a) someone here on slashdot said so, or b) someone here on slashdot said so and backed it with an industry-cobbled figure - no doubt impartially and empirically arrived at.
(That's sarcasm, for the impaired.)
It says more about the people making these 'everyone's a pirate' posts than it does about the pirates themselves. I've come to the conclusion that these sorts of folks believe the worst of everyone because they, themselves, are morally bereft and would, if they weren't so terrified of getting caught, do everything they accuse other people of doing. The idea that the world might be populated with a majority more ethical than themselves is something they can't tolerate. Hence the loud screaming about piracy in the first place.
Slashdot Mirror
The Christian god didn't create the universe. A pack of lies and propaganda from an upstart deity.
No, the universe was formed from chaos, with the giants first among sentient creatures. We know that because the Eddas tell us so. The gods - Odin, Thor, Frey, etc. - came after the giants and supplanted them, kicking their sorry behinds and banishing them to lands of ice and fire.
Yessirree bob! That's what *really* happened. All this Christianity crap - "only one god, yada yada" - that came later, from a group of spastics who couldn't tolerate competition.
And when Ragnarok comes all you junior god worshippers are gonna be damned! Me, I'll be in Valhalla eating, drinking, fighting and screwing, day in and day out! A pox on the lot of you one-god clowns!
Max
we would still become better people because all of these religions are based on the Old Testament.
Oh please, spare me this particular crock of shit. You sound like a Scientologist or Branch Davidian, insisting that if everyone followed your religion we'd all be 'better people'. Yeah, sure, take another hit from that crack pipe of yours.
when local schools have control over ciriculum, then the local citizens also have control over the schools.
And the Constitution is designed so that the majority, no matter what kind of fuckwits they represent, can't impose their wackiness on the minority. If you don't like it then change the Constitution. If you can.
None of them, even if true, would justify the rest of us being trampled by you, the minority.
Cry me a river! Because your brand of cultism isn't taught in public schools you're being oppressed! Try teaching your religious beliefs at home or in church, where my tax dollars aren't at work. Or send your kid to a religious school.
You don't have any right to dictate that my kid be indoctrinated with your religion. None. But I gather from your posts that's what really gets your goat - that you can't force your religious beliefs on the children of others. A damned good thing that is, given your complete disregard for the Constitution or the rights of others.
This is complex. Let the communities and courts decide on a case by case basis.
It's already been decided. The Constitution reigns supreme. If you don't like it, change it. But we already know it'll be a cold day in hell when you gather the support for that move, eh? Which is no doubt why you're so eager to disregard the Constitution and remand the law to local majorities of religious freaks.
Max
No, it's precisely about rights. In a government-funded school system that uses my taxes for operation, I've every right to prevent you from employing my tax dollars to support your religion. It's that simple.
Furthermore, you have no right whatsoever to force your religion on my children. *I* decide what religious influences will be in their lives *not you*. Your 'community' doesn't have any business ramming its religious beliefs down my kids throats.
You have a choice. You and like-minded folks can start a private religious school and leave the rest of us the hell alone. It's not a hard concept to grasp. People have been doing it for quite some time now.
And, if for some reason you can't tolerate the fact that I don't want my children indoctrinated with your particular brand of religion, you always have the option of repealing the First Amendment. Go ahead. Give it a shot.
Max
It's so nice to know that if you're rich and powerful you can use legal technicalities to commit crimes without getting prosecuted - and then brag about it on national television.
My nation is in the toilet.
Max
This isn't true. Corporations have the rights provided to them by law, but they are not protected by the Constitution. It's a fallacy to think so.
Max
Shit...so if I want my representative to, say, actually represent me, you're saying that I need to cough up some protection money?
Look, if we're going to have a mafia-style government then I say let's vote in the real mob. They seem to be far better at the job of providing protection (especially against criminal elements who dare to victimize one of their clients) than the actual government is. It'd probably cost less, too.
Max
Any film with Sandra Bullock in it is a good film. Mmmmmm, Sandra Bullock....
Max
Gilmore is free to have an open relay...and I'm free to blacklist him. Freedom all around! How much more American can you possibly get?
Max
And if I want to blacklist your fucking ass, that's my business. Screw you if you don't like it.
Max
Hey, and I have the freedom to blacklist his sorry ass for having the open mail relay in the first place. After all, your entire argument is predicated on freedom, and that cuts both ways, Tonto.
Max
So 90% of the people you hang out with are losers? I'd hardly apply this figure to the general public in this particular instance....
Max
The cow I have is when some self-important asshole decides that he gets to modify *my* equipment, the equipment that *I* paid for, in order to protect against any possible future infringement of his copyright.
*That's* where the cow part comes in.
Max
Not each download. Each download *attempt*, based on some very unscientific sampling methods. In point of fact, as yet no empirical study has been done on the matter whatsoever.
Which means that nobody *really* knows.
Max
I thought the same thing. "10-12 guys? What the hell do they all do? Sit around and play Quake all day?"
I've worn alot of different hats over the last 18 years. I'm sure most people who've been in the biz have. I can do everything from laying the hardware on up to writing the code and admining the system - with a dash of business savvy thrown in when buying equipment and leasing bandwidth. I think of this as *normal* for anyone who's been around for more than a half-dozen years.
So by my calculations it looks like it takes slashdot 10-12 people to do the jobs of, say, three folks - four if you want a decent amount of vacation. All the business aspects are taken care of by VA so they don't have to worry about that, but *I* could do this for an operation this small without significantly adding to my day.
What do they do? We know that grammar, spell-checking, or getting stories factually correct has nothing to do with their jobs....
Max
No, slashdot has no copyrights to the stories because they're almost all reprints of *actual news stories printed at other sites*. You can't copyright what amounts to a commented link.
Max
That isn't true. You aren't liable. I don't know where you're getting your legal advice but it's time to hire some real attorneys.
The only person who's liable is the guy running Alterslash. He is, in essence, mirroring your site without permission. If he did have your permission then you *both* would be liable, but right now only he is. And this is assuming that there's something to be liable *for*, which there isn't if Alterslash is a true mirror.
In fact, other than mirroring slashdot (and mirrors are perfectly legal - do a bit of research if you need to confirm that) you boys don't have *any rights whatsoever* to grant reprint permission for the comments. Mirrors, yes - this is just load-bearing and doesn't violate copyright; but nothing else, a la Hellmouth.
That is *not* the way the legal system works, as you continue to post. Your assertions have *nothing whatsoever* to do with copyright law. I'm dumbfounded as to how you even came up with this idea in the first place. I truly hope it wasn't from an actual lawyer, as that person would be incompetent beyond rational belief.
Max
This is crap. No ethics involved. It's incumbent on the producer, not the user, to exact payment - in whatever form. *This is a basic precept of economics*, particularly of capitalism. Please, do a little reading and enlighten yourself on the topic.
If the user, not the producer, were to have the ultimate decision on payment for the service we'd call slashdot *a charity*.
Max
And the real question is, "so the fuck what?"
If slashdot provides a quality service worth paying for then people will pay for it and the site will live on. If, however, the only services that slashdot provides are:
- repackaging the news of other sites, often incorrectly; and
- using the posts of unpaid volunteers via forums to generate interest
and it fails as a business, then that's the way it goes.
That's capitalism, jack. Those that don't provide value are weeded out of the mix. As they should be.
Max
Although, goddammit, immediately after I made this post I found out that another web site has reprinted three of my articles in their entirety. Bloody bastards, time to kick some more ass....
Max
I'm definitely not a lawyer, but I was involved in a case some time ago where a web site I frequented decided to use a posted comment of mine as a front-page advertisement to lure people into hanging around. The site profited through ads, as well as some services it provided to those that were interested.
Well, I found out about this after the fact since the company didn't bother to contact me and ask my permission. When I talked to them they said that under copyright law they didn't need my ok to use my post; I'd "already implicitly consented" to it's use by posting on the forum in the first place.
As someone who's published - y'know, real, written stuff, on paper and with ink - this didn't sound at all right. So I had a lawyer look at it and she said (paraphrased) that the web site owners were full of shit. I owned the copyrigh to my posts and, as I didn't sign any contract to the contrary, my posts always remained mine and mine alone.
When served with a legal opinion the company backed down and removed my post. So I have no idea how this would've played out in court. But in this one instance the prevailing opinion was that unless I explicitly say otherwise, I own what I write.
Max
The issue of mirrors has nothing to do with legality. Mirrors are legal. You could mirror slashdot across a thousand sites and there would be no violation of copyright.
The two points that argue against mirrors are a) the mirroring site could alter content in a malicious fashion, making users think the alterations are original material, and b) slashdot would have to share a piece of whatever miniscule ad pie they get with the people hosting the mirror.
But this doesn't change the fact that mirrors are fundamentally legal, simply representing a technical load-bearing solution to a traffic problem.
Max
By contrast, look at our American society in the West. We have debated the issue of cloning. We have expressed grave concern over its moral implications.
Actually, "the West" hasn't "expressed grave concerns" over the moral implications of cloning. You say this as if we, a unified body of First World nations, think cloning is eeeeeeevil.
Fact is, there's a great deal of disagreement on the subject - no unity whatsoever. And as the strongest objections seem to be made by religious fanatics with no scientific background in the biological sciences, I can see why the Chinese might find much of the debate specious and rooted in Western-style religious fundamentalism.
Hell, I'm an American and that's the way I see it. Yet another bunch of clueless idiots who've seen one to many 'evil clones kill people' horror flicks and think that this is somehow going to happen in real life....
Max
The primary reason for doing away with the electoral college is that it's possible for a president to get elected *even when his opponent is favored by a majority of the voters*. We've had two such examples in American history, the last in 2000.
The second reason for getting rid of the electoral college is that it immediately disenfranchises the minority in every state in every presidential election. That is, if 51% of the voters in the state of California vote for candidate x, and 49% vote for candidate y, then *all* of California's electoral votes go to candidate x. In essence, the votes of the group that support y were only worth anything up until the majority was determined; after that they're no longer represented in the election. In a straight 'one person one vote' system *every vote everywhere* is counted right up until the last one, to see who gets the office. And every president is *always* elected by the majority - no shenanigans like the 2000 election are possible, and nobody's brother can swing the election in a state through dubious means.
The primary reason for not doing away with the electoral college is that it makes it impossible for any party to 'win' an entire state's worth of electoral votes. Right now candidates spend 90% of their time and money in the dozen states with the most electoral votes. They do so because all they need is 51% of the population and they get that state's entire electoral college vote. Under a populist system a vote in one state would count the same as the vote in any other state, which means that campaigning in North Dakota might actually be necessary in a close election. What candidate wants to campaign in a backwater like North Dakota?
People argue that the electoral college gives more weight to states with smaller populations. Hogwash. The states with the most pull are those with the most votes. If I get 51% of the vote in California this is worth a hell of a lot more than getting 90% of the vote in four or five smaller states - because the electoral vote of California is worth so much more. If anyone needs proof of that just look to where candidates spend most of their time and money - states with small electoral votes are lucky to see the candidates *even once* during an election, while the dozen largest can look forward to multiple visits and enormous amounts of campaign spending.
Max
There are many channels, and different IRC networks. The 'leech-only' channels are far outnumbered by the 'automatic trading' channels.
Max
Yeah, right, there are just *so many* of those nasty pirates. We know that's so because either a) someone here on slashdot said so, or b) someone here on slashdot said so and backed it with an industry-cobbled figure - no doubt impartially and empirically arrived at.
(That's sarcasm, for the impaired.)
It says more about the people making these 'everyone's a pirate' posts than it does about the pirates themselves. I've come to the conclusion that these sorts of folks believe the worst of everyone because they, themselves, are morally bereft and would, if they weren't so terrified of getting caught, do everything they accuse other people of doing. The idea that the world might be populated with a majority more ethical than themselves is something they can't tolerate. Hence the loud screaming about piracy in the first place.
Max