Unconstiutional capital? When was it against the Constitution to raise money for a business? That's what capital is ya know.
Capital may have been a misused word, but it is unconstitutional for the government to take in money beyond what is "necessary and proper."
That 300M a year defense budget protects and defends your right to post here, so you are saying you'd rather fight off the terrs and other bad guys on your own?.
That implies that most actions that our military carries out are defending our freedom. I can't think of one military engagement that actually is defending our freedom.
Of course in anything that size there will be some waste, but the DOD is much better at finding it these days.
It isn't a matter of every dollar getting spent, it's a matter of too many dollars being allocated for defense.
Oh, and by the way there is no such thing as a "right to privacy", that concept is strictly a judicial extension of a right which can be taken away just as easy.
Rights are not created by the government. They cannot be taken away by the government. Furthermore, one right that I unquestionably have is the right to speak out against changes in my community that I disagree with. While this may not be as easy as a "right to privacy," it is as easy as me saying "NO" to public cameras.
The very idea that this is a debate over whether the government has the "right" to do anything undermines the deeper notion that the government is us, and if we dislike it's actions, it is incumbent upon us to change said actions as we see fit. It is our Republic, and while I have opinions about how it is performing, I am not only correct for speaking up, but I am obliged to as well.
You should expect that in public places you are going to have less privacy than in your home. The overall good of the public has to be protected in some manner with a balance to protecting privacy.
Yes, that is correct. That is why we have driver's licenses. That is why you and I don't have the right to refuse our name to the police. I believe that face scans in schools is an unworthy justification to an unmerited invasion of our right to be anonymous. I choose the slight increase of risk over the dangers of government controlled surveillance.
Was it an invasion of my privacy last night when I had to stop at a Drunk Driving Checkpoint even though I had consumed no alcoholic drinks? No, it was to try to protect the public from drunken (idiots) drivers.
I don't care if you think it was an invasion of your privacy or not. Face scans in schools are still an uwarranted disaster, and if they enter my district I'll fight them with whatever means possible.
The cameras are along the same lines of thought (but they don't work well). I would not put them IN the schools (where strangers are given a wary eye) but in places close to the school like parks, parking lots and video game places where the predators hang out.
How about tagging along? Keeping your eye on your kids is a lot better of a solution than keeping Big Brother's eye on your kids.
The idea of catching the predators before they act has merit but the implementation is flawed. I don't see this as any sort of issue for my privacy unless I have something to hide.
I don't see the jump where being cautious about my government comes to eliminating choice, but that is your call it seems.
Schools are not private property. City streets are not private property. It's not about my right to have a camera running in my house; that right is essentially undisputed. However, in our schools, and our streets, I do have a voice to say how I think they should be more or less operated. My vote is against cameras everywhere. My vote is furthermore against cameras anywhere in public (except for a few exceptions for obvious reasons).
Imagine a society where cameras are watching you everywhere. Imagine how you want your community to be. Then look, think, and excercise both your right to speak your opinion, and your right to vote.
I don't mean you per se (I'm sure you already do, please don't feel like I was talking down to you), but I want to establish my stance here. I don't like face scans, cameras, etc., for possibly naive and blind reasons. I still dislike and distrust them, and would fight such a change in my local schools were it to be an issue for me.
Remember, I never said that in the future, a corrupt government is inevitable. It is a "what if" that I feel bears enough historical precedence to oblige us to think about it. Let's just make sure things don't start heading a direction that we don't want to go.
It's not about nothing to fear. It's about giving governments the machinery for tyranny. Sure, you may trust the government with your left nut today, but tomorrow there might be some crooks in there (as unlikely as it sounds). The ability to monitor where everyone 24/7 is extremely helpful to the ability to enslave a population.
We live in a country with a massive amount of capital (unconstitutionally obtained, I might add), as well as an almost 300 million dollar a year defense budget. Even if those in Washington have the best intentions, we're setting up a future generation for tyranny.
You aren't but others were. Companies register software patents because copyright doesn't protect them from competition reimplementing their IP. Patents do.
IP altogether is really murky and lame. I'm glad OSS came around to offer an alternative to all that mess.
Nevertheless, the topic was DRM, and it isn't possible to protect digital media in a way that both enables free playback by customers, and prevents illegal duplication and distribution.
Come up with a way to use PGP as an effective and bullet-proof DRM mechanism, and you can prove us all wrong (and probably make millions off of it).
(The idea that software should be owned is largely a Bill Gates innovation)
The idea that software should be owned is part in parcel with selling software as a product. Pre-1975 programs weren't written to make money.
I love how I don't even need to say that copyrights are good, I can just say that they're necessary to a software-based business model and people jump all over me like I'm this crazy right wing zealot.
As we see from these two legal morons, on both sides. Linus makes a completely irrelevant statement on a term which is used to determine whether or not copyright infringement is criminal, and the Slashdotters eat it up with "ha, see, he even provided a link to the actual law!" Too bad the part of the law he pointed to was irrelevant.
However, the burden of proof that the GPL is unconstitional lies with SCO's legal team. Hence, even if both Linus and Darl are "attacking offtopic," only SCO is screwed (providing their legal attacks resemble their PR attacks; they could just as easily not).
Linus could have written an open letter saying that Darl's letter has really made him come to terms with copyright law, and thinks that the GPL really is unconstitutional, and SCO would be just as bad off as they are now.
I understand that you are very justified in your axe to grind with copyrights, but you're missing my point.
In the 80's and 90's, x86 hardware became so mainstream and common that software itself became a product. In order to guard that product from duplication, copyrights were needed. Proprietary software was not only the only way to make money writing software for a long time; money itself was the only possible reward one could get for writing software.
OSS created a new reward--if everyone chips in, everyone gets a free (as in beer andspeech) operating system.
Software innovation needed such encouragement during the 80's and early 90's. I didn't mean to say that all software before OSS required copyright as a motivator, merely that corporate culture required them as it entered maintstream computing. As x86 hardware became cheap and common, hardware itself was no longer as profitable as the software that could be run on it. Hence, software became a product--something that was boxed and purchased.
Please. During the Renaissance, there were natural barriers preventing what we now call copyright infringement. Furthermore, no software innovation took place during the Renaissance, since software did not exist yet.
It's far worse if they're just getting paid by the word. If they actually believe it, they're merely stating their opinions which they have every right to do. If they're just getting paid for it, then they're essentially mercenaries intentionally writing garbage with the sole intent to harm someone else or another group.
Opinions can be changed, but damage cannot be undone.
Copyrights are a good way to encourage innovation if people are unwilling to do so without financial gain. Until Open Source came along, software innovation needed such encouragement.
The Free Software movement had the right ideas, but lacked a working model for community development. OSS offered a new way to develop software; make every user that wants to take place in development do so freely.
I don't think "intellectual property" is such a bad thing, but I think OSS/FSF has offered a better solution that sits atop "capitalism" quite nicely. The pragmatist in me loves corporations; the idealist in me loves free software.
You mean, is Darl's PR team going to throw out another factless diatribe about how the GPL destroys financial incentives to innovate, and thusly violate the spirit of copyright law, or are they going to throw out another factless diatribe about how Open Source destroys financial incentives to innovate, and thusly violate the spirit of copyright law...
Linus is really speaking out. He's made some particularly scathing comments about Darl and SCO previously (I distinctly remember something rather funny about Darl believing that marriage is unconstitutional, as it cuts down on "commercial" prostitution), but this the first "on the record" comment with a good deal of meat to it.
It doesn't sound like the judges are at all swayed by SCO's legal antics, and that's only been regarding SCO showing proof of violated code. I think they'll be dead in the water before they even get to the GPL bit.
Maybe someone can explain to Darl that the GPL is designed so that people receive the value of other peoples copyrighted works in return for having made their own contributions. That is the fundamental idea of the whole license -- everything else is just legal fluff.
Not really; you don't type "gnome" and have a full blown web browser, media player, kitchen sink all-in-one app. Gnome is, essentially, a set of foundation libraries and application framework for building consistent applications that play nice together. The vanilla Gnome distribution contains many applications (a web browser, applets, gnome-panel, etc.), but Gnome is about as monolithic as a Linux distribution. Fedora or Debian may have a thousand programs on it, but that doesn't mean that they are monolithic.
What *graphics* do you see when X isn't running? That's right. TTY is for system management tasks, not for entertainment. When you want to entertain - you run your desktop. When you are not local - you run it remotely. And now it will have sound.
A lot of folks out there use X-less desktops. mplayer for example can output sound AND video to the command line (with framebuffer support), and I think the parent was afraid that if MAS were widely adopted, and integrated into X, then audio support for the command line would fade. The parent (albeit rather rudely) meant that by bundling a sound server with X, people who choose not to run X will not have sound (assuming MAS becomes popular).
What the parent failed to realize is that you can run MAS without running X (or if you can't, there's bound to be an X-less MAS server around).
Personally, I fail to see the importance of tying a sound server to the X server (even if it is merely association), but if it means the acceptance of a standard, network transparent protocol, I'm all for it. I'm sick of sound being nonstandard in Linux.
The situation gets worse with harder drugs though. Bush basically had to fess up to cocaine addiction. "I don't think the answer would send a positive message to the children of America" means 'yes.'
Also, he could have really liked smoking marijuana. Admitting to smoking it and not admitting to enjoying it can be lying all the same. By sending the message that pot isn't fun, you also alienate youth (i.e. they're not 'supposed' to like it but they do). The message you really need to send to kids is that for most people, pot is fun and presents no immediate danger, but it is folly to think that it is altogether harmless. It's true dangers lie in regular usage over time, which can completely cripple one's spirit.
To be fair, of all the miracles that religious folks attribute to their deities, INAH3 growing would be one of the more believable ones. Drug addicts have entirely different brain chemistry than non-addicts. In fact, their brains often (depending on the drug) never return to normal. Conversion to both Christianity and Islam cure them pretty consistently. Although INAH3 doesn't change after birth, addicted brains don't either.
Suppressing chemical addiction because of compelling moral belief structures would have not only harmful mental effects, but physical ones as well. Evidence shows this not to be the case. This could be apples and oranges, though (IANABS).
Also, what about bisexuals? There are homosexuals also that don't exhibit femenine traits. I'll agree with you that many homosexuals are born with their orientation dormant, but there are still many others that it would seem do suffer from psycological trauma from childhood.
My case seems to slightly improve itself with lesbians. Most lesbians that go to see psycologists at least seem to report childhood abuse. The numbers increase with bisexual women.
Slashdot Mirror
Unconstiutional capital? When was it against the Constitution to raise money for a business? That's what capital is ya know.
Capital may have been a misused word, but it is unconstitutional for the government to take in money beyond what is "necessary and proper."
That 300M a year defense budget protects and defends your right to post here, so you are saying you'd rather fight off the terrs and other bad guys on your own?.
That implies that most actions that our military carries out are defending our freedom. I can't think of one military engagement that actually is defending our freedom.
Of course in anything that size there will be some waste, but the DOD is much better at finding it these days.
It isn't a matter of every dollar getting spent, it's a matter of too many dollars being allocated for defense.
Oh, and by the way there is no such thing as a "right to privacy", that concept is strictly a judicial extension of a right which can be taken away just as easy.
Rights are not created by the government. They cannot be taken away by the government. Furthermore, one right that I unquestionably have is the right to speak out against changes in my community that I disagree with. While this may not be as easy as a "right to privacy," it is as easy as me saying "NO" to public cameras.
The very idea that this is a debate over whether the government has the "right" to do anything undermines the deeper notion that the government is us, and if we dislike it's actions, it is incumbent upon us to change said actions as we see fit. It is our Republic, and while I have opinions about how it is performing, I am not only correct for speaking up, but I am obliged to as well.
You should expect that in public places you are going to have less privacy than in your home. The overall good of the public has to be protected in some manner with a balance to protecting privacy.
Yes, that is correct. That is why we have driver's licenses. That is why you and I don't have the right to refuse our name to the police. I believe that face scans in schools is an unworthy justification to an unmerited invasion of our right to be anonymous. I choose the slight increase of risk over the dangers of government controlled surveillance.
Was it an invasion of my privacy last night when I had to stop at a Drunk Driving Checkpoint even though I had consumed no alcoholic drinks? No, it was to try to protect the public from drunken (idiots) drivers.
I don't care if you think it was an invasion of your privacy or not. Face scans in schools are still an uwarranted disaster, and if they enter my district I'll fight them with whatever means possible.
The cameras are along the same lines of thought (but they don't work well). I would not put them IN the schools (where strangers are given a wary eye) but in places close to the school like parks, parking lots and video game places where the predators hang out.
How about tagging along? Keeping your eye on your kids is a lot better of a solution than keeping Big Brother's eye on your kids.
The idea of catching the predators before they act has merit but the implementation is flawed. I don't see this as any sort of issue for my privacy unless I have something to hide.
By that argument, you have no privacy.
Schools are not private property. City streets are not private property. It's not about my right to have a camera running in my house; that right is essentially undisputed. However, in our schools, and our streets, I do have a voice to say how I think they should be more or less operated. My vote is against cameras everywhere. My vote is furthermore against cameras anywhere in public (except for a few exceptions for obvious reasons).
Imagine a society where cameras are watching you everywhere. Imagine how you want your community to be. Then look, think, and excercise both your right to speak your opinion, and your right to vote.
I don't mean you per se (I'm sure you already do, please don't feel like I was talking down to you), but I want to establish my stance here. I don't like face scans, cameras, etc., for possibly naive and blind reasons. I still dislike and distrust them, and would fight such a change in my local schools were it to be an issue for me.
Remember, I never said that in the future, a corrupt government is inevitable. It is a "what if" that I feel bears enough historical precedence to oblige us to think about it. Let's just make sure things don't start heading a direction that we don't want to go.
We live in a country with a massive amount of capital (unconstitutionally obtained, I might add), as well as an almost 300 million dollar a year defense budget. Even if those in Washington have the best intentions, we're setting up a future generation for tyranny.
Interesting read. I wholeheartedly agree with it, too.
IP altogether is really murky and lame. I'm glad OSS came around to offer an alternative to all that mess.
Come up with a way to use PGP as an effective and bullet-proof DRM mechanism, and you can prove us all wrong (and probably make millions off of it).
The idea that software should be owned is part in parcel with selling software as a product. Pre-1975 programs weren't written to make money.
I love how I don't even need to say that copyrights are good, I can just say that they're necessary to a software-based business model and people jump all over me like I'm this crazy right wing zealot.
However, the burden of proof that the GPL is unconstitional lies with SCO's legal team. Hence, even if both Linus and Darl are "attacking offtopic," only SCO is screwed (providing their legal attacks resemble their PR attacks; they could just as easily not).
Linus could have written an open letter saying that Darl's letter has really made him come to terms with copyright law, and thinks that the GPL really is unconstitutional, and SCO would be just as bad off as they are now.
In the 80's and 90's, x86 hardware became so mainstream and common that software itself became a product. In order to guard that product from duplication, copyrights were needed. Proprietary software was not only the only way to make money writing software for a long time; money itself was the only possible reward one could get for writing software.
OSS created a new reward--if everyone chips in, everyone gets a free (as in beer andspeech) operating system.
Software innovation needed such encouragement during the 80's and early 90's. I didn't mean to say that all software before OSS required copyright as a motivator, merely that corporate culture required them as it entered maintstream computing. As x86 hardware became cheap and common, hardware itself was no longer as profitable as the software that could be run on it. Hence, software became a product--something that was boxed and purchased.
Please. During the Renaissance, there were natural barriers preventing what we now call copyright infringement. Furthermore, no software innovation took place during the Renaissance, since software did not exist yet.
Opinions can be changed, but damage cannot be undone.
The Free Software movement had the right ideas, but lacked a working model for community development. OSS offered a new way to develop software; make every user that wants to take place in development do so freely.
I don't think "intellectual property" is such a bad thing, but I think OSS/FSF has offered a better solution that sits atop "capitalism" quite nicely. The pragmatist in me loves corporations; the idealist in me loves free software.
You mean, is Darl's PR team going to throw out another factless diatribe about how the GPL destroys financial incentives to innovate, and thusly violate the spirit of copyright law, or are they going to throw out another factless diatribe about how Open Source destroys financial incentives to innovate, and thusly violate the spirit of copyright law...
It doesn't sound like the judges are at all swayed by SCO's legal antics, and that's only been regarding SCO showing proof of violated code. I think they'll be dead in the water before they even get to the GPL bit.
Maybe someone can explain to Darl that the GPL is designed so that people receive the value of other peoples copyrighted works in return for having made their own contributions. That is the fundamental idea of the whole license -- everything else is just legal fluff.
Said it better than anyone on /. has :)
As far as video and audio being in sync, applications which use well-designed audio servers would seem to be able to sync on their own. I dunno.
I've definately changed my mind about this, though.
Not really; you don't type "gnome" and have a full blown web browser, media player, kitchen sink all-in-one app. Gnome is, essentially, a set of foundation libraries and application framework for building consistent applications that play nice together. The vanilla Gnome distribution contains many applications (a web browser, applets, gnome-panel, etc.), but Gnome is about as monolithic as a Linux distribution. Fedora or Debian may have a thousand programs on it, but that doesn't mean that they are monolithic.
What *graphics* do you see when X isn't running? That's right. TTY is for system management tasks, not for entertainment. When you want to entertain - you run your desktop. When you are not local - you run it remotely. And now it will have sound.
A lot of folks out there use X-less desktops. mplayer for example can output sound AND video to the command line (with framebuffer support), and I think the parent was afraid that if MAS were widely adopted, and integrated into X, then audio support for the command line would fade. The parent (albeit rather rudely) meant that by bundling a sound server with X, people who choose not to run X will not have sound (assuming MAS becomes popular).
What the parent failed to realize is that you can run MAS without running X (or if you can't, there's bound to be an X-less MAS server around).
Personally, I fail to see the importance of tying a sound server to the X server (even if it is merely association), but if it means the acceptance of a standard, network transparent protocol, I'm all for it. I'm sick of sound being nonstandard in Linux.
Of of them sounds like you'd even encourage firearm usage, the other one sounds like you actually care about civil liberties.
Hell, football and lacrosse have enough violence as it is on the field.
I'll never use Lindows, but that doesn't mean that they're distribution is lame.
Furthermore, the drug war has also virtualy eviscerated Posse Comitatus.
Also, he could have really liked smoking marijuana. Admitting to smoking it and not admitting to enjoying it can be lying all the same. By sending the message that pot isn't fun, you also alienate youth (i.e. they're not 'supposed' to like it but they do). The message you really need to send to kids is that for most people, pot is fun and presents no immediate danger, but it is folly to think that it is altogether harmless. It's true dangers lie in regular usage over time, which can completely cripple one's spirit.
They didn't buy it then, and I don't think they shoud buy it now.
Conversely, if you want to call software 'stable,' then you shouldn't put experimental features in it.
To be fair, of all the miracles that religious folks attribute to their deities, INAH3 growing would be one of the more believable ones. Drug addicts have entirely different brain chemistry than non-addicts. In fact, their brains often (depending on the drug) never return to normal. Conversion to both Christianity and Islam cure them pretty consistently. Although INAH3 doesn't change after birth, addicted brains don't either.
Suppressing chemical addiction because of compelling moral belief structures would have not only harmful mental effects, but physical ones as well. Evidence shows this not to be the case. This could be apples and oranges, though (IANABS).
Also, what about bisexuals? There are homosexuals also that don't exhibit femenine traits. I'll agree with you that many homosexuals are born with their orientation dormant, but there are still many others that it would seem do suffer from psycological trauma from childhood.
My case seems to slightly improve itself with lesbians. Most lesbians that go to see psycologists at least seem to report childhood abuse. The numbers increase with bisexual women.