the UK [...] has english as it's official language
Nope, the UK does not have an official language [1]. And there are at least 250,000 people here who don't have English as a mother-tongue. (Not claiming the original poster is likely to be one of these).
[1] Wales does have an official language, well two: Welsh and English.
the fact remains that in 1828, there were people, apparently MANY of them, using this word in this way; the definition has been around for nearly two centuries.
Yep, ok, point taken. I guess that means that RMS is fighting a hopeless battle [for a change]. I hope this [alcohol] bootlegger-turned-publisher Seagram bloke doesn't manage to equate illegal copying with *slavery* in the public consciousness, which is something he tries to do in the article.
Webster didn't invent anything in the dictionary; he/they only reported on usage.
Yep - for the actual headwords being defined. But calling "taking writings" "robbing" is an incorrect explanation of the headword because "taking writings" is not "robbery". (Unless he meant "walking off with someone's book" which I doubt).
If it's illegal, it's a crime.
Nonononononononono. There's a distinction between a breach of *civil* law, which is not a crime, and a breach of *criminal* law, which is. E.g. parking in a no-parking area is illegal but not a crime (well it isn't in this country; I presume American parking laws aren't excessively draconian).
Breaching criminal law is considered more serious than breaching civil law, so you will be acquitted in a criminal trial if there is "reasonably doubt" that you are guilty, but in a civil trial you'll only be acquitted if you're innocent "on balance of probability". Remember the whole thing about OJ Simpson being innocent of murder but guilty of wrongful death? It's this thing.
Le nom "putin" - Est-ce qu'il est si similar (a une oreille francais) du mot "putain" qu'il porte un air stupid, ou est-ce que on doit croire d'observer la ressemblance? Merci!
What does Alcoholics Anonymous have to do with privacy?
They don't keep a list of their members. The idea is that lots of alcoholics don't want the world to know about it. AA is somewhere they can learn to deal with alcoholism without society's prejudices crashing down on them when next door / the boss finds out.
email is used 99% of the time for legitimate purposes
Do you have figures for this?
I'd be interested to know the proportion of Napster users who have ever sent/recieved an (illegal) mp3 by email.
99% of activity on Napster violates current copyrights
I imagine you're probably right, but (a) will this change in the future, and (b) is this violation which would occur via other methods anyway? I suspect there's quite a lot of (b) - e.g. Seagram's not going after mp3 search engines [perhaps because they're owned by bigger companies like AOL?]
Gnutella [...] has stolen from the breakfasts of 100 million European children even its name
Hahaha since when has it been illegal to copy somebody's breakfast?! (Assuming you don't regard file transfer and toast toppings to be in the same market, that is). This guy's just talking with blind fury.
What of the extraordinary gifts of software and whole operating systems of which we sometimes read? [...] Some of the donors may regret their generosity when later they are confronted with their children's college tuition and orthodontic bills
How much is ESR worth? How much could RMS earn in a week if he wanted to? Or any of the other "big names" for that matter? He's just trying to trick us into believing that Gnutella will ruin our kids' teeth! (<rant>besides what kind of civilised society penalises my children's health and education for the fact that I am a financial failure?</rant>)
[Nicking people's IP] is suspiciously like what the Old World principle called slavery.
Ok, say what you like about RMS's view on the word "piracy". But calling it "slavery" is just bloody ridiculous.
The owner of that information has a right to control the terms under which it is used.
You probably don't think the owner should have the right to license the information to white people only. You may not think it's ok for me to sell software under a license which I can terminate whenever I want.
What I'm saying is, there is no "absolute right" to control information which you have created, it's not a black and white thing, you just choose the particular shade of grey which is the cut-off point you believe is the best.
there must be some protection against the theft of IP or the profit incentive for producing data will be seriously eroded.
But the current system also creates a huge disincentive to building on someone else's data. (You need to negotiate license fees with them, they can pull the plug on you if they want, etc.). It's not at all obvious whether current IP law actually causes more [/better] data to be produced than a simple "use it but don't claim you wrote it" IP law would.
This is incorrect on Webster's part. Illegal copying has never been a crime, never mind "robbery". (Unless you count the US law change in the last few years which makes large-scale for-profit copying criminal).
It was certainly not "robbery", in 1828, to illegally copy someone's writings.
A Pirate is one who preys on others, and takes their work and claims the profit.
You forgot about shooting/enslaving the men and raping/enslaving the women, which is how it happens today in some parts of the world. Oh, whoops, the analogy breaks down. The whole "skull-and-crossbones" cartoon stuff really trivialises an area of crime which is extremely violent and ruthless.
I was talking about the implications of his statement - that copying outside 'fair use' is not a crime
It's not a crime. It's only a civil offence, not a criminal offence. (If you do it at some huge level it is a crime in the US, but that was only made so within the last few years, and is not true elsewhere).
However, the recording industry and people like Lars use the word "crime", and it enters the public consciousness that it *is* a crime to breach copyright.
personally i am going to continue using ssh2 because i dont like anti-linux/anti-netbsd attitude of some of the openSSH developers
C'mon, this is free software, the openssh team don't control its distribution and can't rescind its license. Wheras the non-free ssh2 is in the hands of a single company who can pretty much stop all development for a given platform whenever they please. Is it really sensible to give the proprietory version more weight because a few people may have moronic streaks?
Because it concludes stereotypes based on the author's limited personal encounters and tries to make it sound like journalism?
I thought that's what journalism was. Well, you've left out "hypocrisy". But that is covered by starting your article out saying you were at a sex party then moaning about other people's untraditional sexual morals towards the end.
Don't underestimate your kids by teaching them something that you consider sub-par.
I quite agree. But graphics feels more cool when you're 10 or 11 so be sure to get them doing something interesting like that. (Mandelbrot set? Just tell them the rules they don't have to understand the maths). Also, make sure there's plenty of example code around for them. I got really frustrated when I was 10 cos I couldn't get scanf working properly. Some example code would've been great. What I would've done for some free software code like there is now! Gah, kids have it easy these days...:-)
If you never accept Jesus Christ, HELL IS WAITING FOR YOU!
What about people who never heard of Jesus, or the Bible? Are they automatically condemned? If so, what was the point in them living in the first place?
Goldbach's conjecture is a first-order statement, so by Gödel's Completeness Theorem (which is *not* the same as his Incompleteness Theorem) there is either a proof or a disproof.
A "first-order statement" is one which can be formulated without saying "For all X" or "Exists X" for any infinite set X. (It's ok to say "for all/exists x" where x is just a number, or a set element. Also I'm not stating this mathematically precisely).
Goldbach is stated as "for all x there exists y,z such that y prime and z prime and y+z=x". "y prime" is a first order statement: "for all j, j > y or exists k such that jk y".
So there *is* a (dis)?proof of Goldbach, just waiting for someone to find it.
it seems that these developers are unable to [...] think on a large enough scale to surpass Microsoft.
Hmm remember Microsoft has spent hundreds of millions on usability research. I'm not saying that an open development method can't beat that, but I don't think it will without getting some newbies/non-techies involved in the development process (giving feedback etc). The project probably needs to get a bit bigger before that can happen.
How can someone live by God if they have never read the Bible?
There are people who have no knowledge of, or access to, the Bible. You're saying that they are excluded from heaven. Should I want to go to heaven if it excludes good people like you say it does? Hell cannot truly be hell if there are people like that there.
How is this [forcing people to live outwardly Christianly] not desirable? God does not give us the freedom to act immorally, we take that freedom for ourselves by continuing to sin.
I'm interested - do you believe people go to heaven if they behave Christianly, but only because they are scared of retribution through human law? Do you believe it helps you to go to heaven to force other people not to commit outwardly-visible sins? If not, then there's no advantage in forcing people.
Why is it unacceptable to let the jury in a murder trial know that the defendant has been convicted of murder before, for example?
Because
This makes it more likely that the defendant is guilty
The above fact should be ignored
I know that sounds silly, but the legal system is not about convicting, overall, as many guilty people as possible and as few innocent people as possible. It's about trying as hard as possible not to convict an innocent person nor to acquit a guilty person in this case [Also with the former being worse than the latter]. Paradoxically, what gives the best results in each case may not give the best results overall. If justice was anything like insurance, then the poor, black, drug-addicted guy would be convicted partly by statistical evidence. Then next time he's in court, he's a poor, black, drug-addicted convicted murderer. A system which is more accurate but more unfair may not be a good thing.
Slashdot Mirror
Nope, the UK does not have an official language [1]. And there are at least 250,000 people here who don't have English as a mother-tongue. (Not claiming the original poster is likely to be one of these).
[1] Wales does have an official language, well two: Welsh and English.
Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't a dime only a few cents? So this isn't like the doubling in price which happened last September.
Yep, ok, point taken. I guess that means that RMS is fighting a hopeless battle [for a change]. I hope this [alcohol] bootlegger-turned-publisher Seagram bloke doesn't manage to equate illegal copying with *slavery* in the public consciousness, which is something he tries to do in the article.
Yep - for the actual headwords being defined. But calling "taking writings" "robbing" is an incorrect explanation of the headword because "taking writings" is not "robbery". (Unless he meant "walking off with someone's book" which I doubt).
Nonononononononono. There's a distinction between a breach of *civil* law, which is not a crime, and a breach of *criminal* law, which is. E.g. parking in a no-parking area is illegal but not a crime (well it isn't in this country; I presume American parking laws aren't excessively draconian).
Breaching criminal law is considered more serious than breaching civil law, so you will be acquitted in a criminal trial if there is "reasonably doubt" that you are guilty, but in a civil trial you'll only be acquitted if you're innocent "on balance of probability". Remember the whole thing about OJ Simpson being innocent of murder but guilty of wrongful death? It's this thing.
Le nom "putin" - Est-ce qu'il est si similar (a une oreille francais) du mot "putain" qu'il porte un air stupid, ou est-ce que on doit croire d'observer la ressemblance?
Merci!
They don't keep a list of their members. The idea is that lots of alcoholics don't want the world to know about it. AA is somewhere they can learn to deal with alcoholism without society's prejudices crashing down on them when next door / the boss finds out.
Do you have figures for this?
I'd be interested to know the proportion of Napster users who have ever sent/recieved an (illegal) mp3 by email.
I imagine you're probably right, but (a) will this change in the future, and (b) is this violation which would occur via other methods anyway? I suspect there's quite a lot of (b) - e.g. Seagram's not going after mp3 search engines [perhaps because they're owned by bigger companies like AOL?]
Ok but say "usenet" instead. Still MS and AOL would be "ringleaders" in a slavery^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hpiracy ring.
Hahaha since when has it been illegal to copy somebody's breakfast?! (Assuming you don't regard file transfer and toast toppings to be in the same market, that is).
This guy's just talking with blind fury.
How much is ESR worth? How much could RMS earn in a week if he wanted to? Or any of the other "big names" for that matter? He's just trying to trick us into believing that Gnutella will ruin our kids' teeth! (<rant>besides what kind of civilised society penalises my children's health and education for the fact that I am a financial failure?</rant>)
Ok, say what you like about RMS's view on the word "piracy". But calling it "slavery" is just bloody ridiculous.
You probably don't think the owner should have the right to license the information to white people only. You may not think it's ok for me to sell software under a license which I can terminate whenever I want.
What I'm saying is, there is no "absolute right" to control information which you have created, it's not a black and white thing, you just choose the particular shade of grey which is the cut-off point you believe is the best.
But the current system also creates a huge disincentive to building on someone else's data. (You need to negotiate license fees with them, they can pull the plug on you if they want, etc.). It's not at all obvious whether current IP law actually causes more [/better] data to be produced than a simple "use it but don't claim you wrote it" IP law would.
This is incorrect on Webster's part. Illegal copying has never been a crime, never mind "robbery". (Unless you count the US law change in the last few years which makes large-scale for-profit copying criminal).
It was certainly not "robbery", in 1828, to illegally copy someone's writings.
You forgot about shooting/enslaving the men and raping/enslaving the women, which is how it happens today in some parts of the world. Oh, whoops, the analogy breaks down. The whole "skull-and-crossbones" cartoon stuff really trivialises an area of crime which is extremely violent and ruthless.
It's not a crime. It's only a civil offence, not a criminal offence. (If you do it at some huge level it is a crime in the US, but that was only made so within the last few years, and is not true elsewhere).
However, the recording industry and people like Lars use the word "crime", and it enters the public consciousness that it *is* a crime to breach copyright.
C'mon, this is free software, the openssh team don't control its distribution and can't rescind its license. Wheras the non-free ssh2 is in the hands of a single company who can pretty much stop all development for a given platform whenever they please. Is it really sensible to give the proprietory version more weight because a few people may have moronic streaks?
I thought that's what journalism was. Well, you've left out "hypocrisy". But that is covered by starting your article out saying you were at a sex party then moaning about other people's untraditional sexual morals towards the end.
I quite agree. But graphics feels more cool when you're 10 or 11 so be sure to get them doing something interesting like that. (Mandelbrot set? Just tell them the rules they don't have to understand the maths). Also, make sure there's plenty of example code around for them. I got really frustrated when I was 10 cos I couldn't get scanf working properly. Some example code would've been great. What I would've done for some free software code like there is now! Gah, kids have it easy these days
What about people who never heard of Jesus, or the Bible? Are they automatically condemned? If so, what was the point in them living in the first place?
A "first-order statement" is one which can be formulated without saying "For all X" or "Exists X" for any infinite set X. (It's ok to say "for all/exists x" where x is just a number, or a set element. Also I'm not stating this mathematically precisely).
Goldbach is stated as "for all x there exists y,z such that y prime and z prime and y+z=x". "y prime" is a first order statement: "for all j, j > y or exists k such that jk y".
So there *is* a (dis)?proof of Goldbach, just waiting for someone to find it.
Hmm remember Microsoft has spent hundreds of millions on usability research. I'm not saying that an open development method can't beat that, but I don't think it will without getting some newbies/non-techies involved in the development process (giving feedback etc). The project probably needs to get a bit bigger before that can happen.
... but how do its features compare to those of the latest *stable* version of, er, another open-source desktop?
Please, no flamewar in this thread! I'm not sure I could stand the guilt.
Please. If 1 Christian is worth flaming, it doesn't mean you should use flames which attack Christians in general.
Yknow that the abortion rate in Kansas is fast approaching 1 per woman-lifetime?
There are people who have no knowledge of, or access to, the Bible. You're saying that they are excluded from heaven. Should I want to go to heaven if it excludes good people like you say it does? Hell cannot truly be hell if there are people like that there.
I'm interested - do you believe people go to heaven if they behave Christianly, but only because they are scared of retribution through human law? Do you believe it helps you to go to heaven to force other people not to commit outwardly-visible sins? If not, then there's no advantage in forcing people.
Because
I know that sounds silly, but the legal system is not about convicting, overall, as many guilty people as possible and as few innocent people as possible. It's about trying as hard as possible not to convict an innocent person nor to acquit a guilty person in this case [Also with the former being worse than the latter]. Paradoxically, what gives the best results in each case may not give the best results overall. If justice was anything like insurance, then the poor, black, drug-addicted guy would be convicted partly by statistical evidence. Then next time he's in court, he's a poor, black, drug-addicted convicted murderer. A system which is more accurate but more unfair may not be a good thing.