Yes,
he is being extremist here, but it's scary that he flaunts these kinds
of fantasies. From reading his "armedndangerous" site, he comes across
as a lunatic just looking and waiting for an excuse to get to shoot
someone.
That's a very strange reading of that article.
The key point of the article is that he is speaking against a
particular killing of police officer. Raymond condemns the killer as a murderer.
He's making this point in contrast with
his view that it might be acceptable to kill a police officer in certain
circumstances. Those aren't "fantasies," that's someone who is thinking about
his own moral boundaries. It's not really fair to give a blanket label to an
activity as wrong unless you've considered what you would do in every possible
similar situation. Take something as straight forward as terrorism. Lots of
people are eager to say the terrorism is never acceptable. However, if your
home country was successfully invaded by a hostile power and your military
defeated, would you be willing to strike back covertly to try and free your
country? Similarly, if you're an American, do you believe that vandalism and
property destruction for political purposes is never, ever acceptable? If
so, do you object to the Boston
Tea Party? Even if you decided that all of these cases are wrong, the
point is that you need to seriously think about them with you as the potential
subject.
After discussing many of the possible cases in which he would shoot a law
officer or military member, Raymond specifically notes "But the United States
of America has not yet reached the point at which the political mechanisms for
the defense of freedom have broken down. This judgment is not a matter of
theory but one of practice. There are not yet police at our door with legal
orders to round up the Jews, or confiscate pornography or computers or guns."
Raymond has clearly thought about these issues regarding violence against
government. This isn't the paranoid rantings of madman, it's someone putting
forth his ethics on the matter. He's clearly thought the matter through and
decided where his lines are. I don't entirely agree with Raymond's positions,
but his positions are well reasoned. The sense I get from the article is that
this is someone who is very rational, someone who doesn't hide from
uncomfortable ideas, someone I could understand.
I thoughts it strange that the Queen's Navy had been so successful at trackin' me down lately. I'll keelhaul me first mate for installing that software on my ship!
Somehow i doubt that. If i write directions to a local bar for you,
is that really something that gets copyrighted just because i wrote it?
Actually, yes. My directions are copyright by me the moment they're
transfixed in some media. Your writing them down theoretically counts.
That said, facts cannot be protected by copyright. The majority, if not the
entirety of my directions will like be facts. So if you just write down "South
on Maple Street, turn left onto Johnson (near the gas station), and go three
blocks, bar's on the left", that's darn near pure fact. However, if you
transcribe my entire directions including my idiomatic language and quirky side
notes, well, you'd have something I could definately claim copyright to.
If i
have a conversation with someone, do we exclusively own the copyright to that
conversation?
So long as it was transfixed in some form (say, I tape recorded it), sure
enough. Heck, many documentaries are filled with conversations of this sort; you'd be hard pressed to air such a thing without permission. (There is an important exception when you're reporting the conversation as news. You can't use copyright to stifle something idiotic you said to a reporter.)
I doubt that either of those examples would be something that can
be copyrighted, any more then a students notes from a class are
copyrightable.
This is actually the most obvious case. The facts that the teacher conveys
cannot be protected by copyright. The specific way in which he conveys them is
protected, assuming that it's transfixed (Say, through someone taking
near-exact shorthand, or tape recording it). The specific notes a student
takes (Assuming that it's largely their own rephrasing of the facts conveyed)
are protected by copyright for the student. There is even a very real argument
that the student's notes represent a derivative work of the teacher's class,
thus redistribution or sale could be controlled by the teacher. Some examples
are here
and here.
I don't actually agree with this point of view, but it's definately not a
crystal clear case.
All of this is, believe it or not, for your protection. Your creations are
protected, even if you didn't think to protect it in advance. The specific
examples you give are a bit silly, but it's true. Maybe during a conversation
on politics you give a brilliant rebuttable that convinces everyone that you
are right. I'd be pretty ticked off if the journalist who happened to be
recording an interview with someone else at the next table over noticed my
brilliant speech in the background of their tape, transcribes it, and passes it
off as his own work.
Hey loser- you may think it is funny to joke about shooting babies, but outside of your close-knit circle of pasty white, pear shaped, stinky nerd friends, that is not funny and it's rather offensive.
On the other hand, maybe they do, and these are just ones that slip through. It's gotta be mind-numbing reviewing these things all day.
If you're sending out this sort of message, you damn well better be shooting for 100% accuracy! Every single false positive must be investigated to assure that it never happens again.
Well, it's a nice theory at least.
The point of a DMCA letter is to notify the ISP. The ISP, to remain safe from prosecution, must take down the file in question . Even if the person who posted the file claims that it is not infringing and files a counter-claim, the ISP cannot return the file for 10 days. This amounts to a non-judicially reviewed gag order for 10 days, a horrible infringement on the first amendment.
In the worst example, several web forums were posting leaking prices from the post-thanksgiving sale at Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart wrongfully claimed copyright protection on the information (you can copyright fliers, but not the actual prices, as the prices are just facts). The people running the web site objected, but thanks to the DMCA, the posts came down for the required 10 days, coinciding with the end of the post-thanksgiving day sale. At that point, Wal-Mart declined to push the claim (they knew it was bogus) and the posts went up. A free gag order, just when Wal-Mart needed it, without any pesky checks-and-balances to protect the public.
Presumably, I could forward that information to other people and not be committing any crime, although I did not ask that question specifically, so take that part with a grain of salt.
True, but. Be careful. Forwarding the information is fine, forwarding the actual correspondance probably isn't. The correspondance is (by default thanks to the Berne Convention) protected by copyright. So if you summarize the facts from the message and pass those facts on, you're fine. If you copy the message, you might be opening yourself up to copyright infringement.
Ethically, well, that's your business. Personally, I'd follow the directions (delete the message, maybe warn the sender of the accident if I was in a good mood), unless the message represented something dangerous or criminal (accidental release of medical information, insider trading, whatever). Then I'd pass the message on to the appropriate authorities.
There's no such thing as intellectual property. There's copyright law, trademark law, and patent law.
I would suggest refining that argument. "Intellectual Property" is widely understood. The American Heritage Dictionary
includes a definition. In practice, intellectual property means "copyright, trademark, patents, and trade secrets." Arguing that it doesn't exist is going to get you ignored by some people and will waste your time playing word games with other.
Now, just because it exists doesn't mean it's a good term. As you point out, it does confuse multiple extremely different areas of law. Use of the term encourages sloppy thinking and the sort of confusion that leads to incorrect statements like "You must defend your patents, or you lose them." That's the meat of your argument, and it's a good argument. Stick to it.
IANAL, but my understanding is that when it comes to intellectual property, failure to defend that property is grounds for de facto loss of rights to that property.
You'll need to correct that understanding.
Non-enforcement is not grounds for loss of rights for copyright and patents. Non-enforcement can be grounds for reduced punishment ("I didn't know your honor, and I promise to stop immediately.") You can go years and years without enforcement, then suddenly start.
Trademarks can be invalidated if not enforced. In theory a trademark is supposed to differentiate a product. If everyone calls vinyl floor covering "linoleum," regardless of actual brand, the trademark has lost it's power.
You've probably got at least one CS professor on campus who at least dabbles in security. If you're lucky, you'll find one who specializes in it. Talk with them. They'll know about safely making security vulnerability announcements. Heck, they may encourage you to write up a paper on the vulnerability (perhaps after it has been fixed).
Citing labor laws as a reason to disallow smoking in a workplace is ridiculous because people can simply choose to work for smoking or non-smoking establishments. The people will decide.
Similarlly, labor laws that disallow running machines in dangerous ways likely to injure and kill workers are ridiculous. People can simply choose to work for non-employee mangling establishments. The same with laws that prohibit sexually harassment my employers, those chicks can find themselves a non-ass groping establishment. Don't like my unsanitary kitchen? Let people chose between sanitary and unsanitary restaurants.
Personally, I'd rather live in a country where sometimes a community (be it a township or the entire nation) decides that certain activities cost society too much. These restrictions need to be made very carefully, the risk of overregulation is very serious. You definately need an emergency valve to protect essential freedoms (the Bill of Rights does an okay job at this).
But for the love of god and all that is holy, WHY are they fighting so hard against paper records? It makes no sense.
Unfortunately paper records are nearly worthless.
Great, I've got a receipt that says I've voted for Bob Nifty. How do I know that the machine actually counted that? Or worse, what if a bug (or evilness) in the code caused 1 in 1,000 ballots to be handled wrong. I'll look at the receipt and it says "Bob Nifty", but I actually voted for "John Keen". With odds of 1 in 1,000, it's likely than some voters will never look at the receipt and notice the problem. So maybe 1 in 10 actually complains. At 1 in 10,000 complaints (basically, 1 per polling location), poll workers are likely to just chalk you up as an idiot who made a mistake. Even if they acknowledge the problem, can they really correct it? Even if they do, what about the people who never noticed because they assumed that the machine would do the right thing?
Given all that, I'm being given a paper record that I need to review (if the voter doesn't review it, the computer can just record with erroneous result in its database and print it and no one will know). What's the advantage of the computerized voting machines over just writing my choices on paper in the first place? We've still got the paper, still got the occasional need for hand recounts. All we've done is add a complicated piece of machinery between me and my vote!
Well, perhaps the paper record is completely anonymous, and I have to give it to election staff. Then, if there is a question about the validity of results, you can hand count the paper records and compare it to what the machine claims. Well, so long as a reasonably large number of people verify that the paper record that they get is correct, I guess. But what have we gained over using machine readable paper ballots? Nothing, really. Actually, we've gained additional complexity (and thus, potential problems).
Take a well designed machine readable paper ballot. My locality uses some. It's a big sheet of paper and there is a large arrow pointing directly to each candidate's name. There is an inch or inch and a half gap in the arrow. I fill in the arrow of the candidate I like. I then feed my ballot into the counter machine (which is very simple). The most important benefit is that "my vote" is an actual piece of paper that I marked. There is no machine between me and the canonical representation of my vote. If there is a concern that the counting machine is misbehaving, you can simply pull out the ballots and easily hand count them. There is no risk of someone claiming that the machine wrote the wrong candidate on the ballot since you made the mark yourself. Power outage? System failure? Break out the candles and keep voting! Just pile them up and feed them through the counting machine when you get the chance.
Computerized voting is a terrible idea. Getting paper records out of the computerized voting machines is a bandaid that destroys the meager benefits that the machines provide while failing to fundamentally fix the problem.
... he admitted in court that he and his friends are and were willing to take up arms against the U.S. and its civilians.
Where exactly do you find "take up arms against...civilians" in "Hawash pleaded guilty to conspiring to provide services to the Taliban," or "You and the others in the group were prepared to take up arms, and die as martyrs if necessary, to defend the Taliban. Is this true?" (The former from the judge, Mike responded in the affirmative.)
Stop making up fictional charges against him. At worst, he admitted to trying to take up arms in a war against US soldiers. Still pretty bad, but there is no evidence at all that he was willing or desired to harm ordinary civilians, or even US soldiers not invading Afgahnistan.
Of course, all of this assumes that Mike pled guilty because of actual guilt, not because he was convinced that he was facing being shipped off to Camp X-Ray without a trial.
If he really didn't commit the crime(s) then how can he offer up information via his buddies?
After having been held in custody for several months, denied accses to friends, family, or a lawyer, and told every day that they were going to send me off to Camp X-Ray to rot until a military tribunal decided to execute me, well, when offered the chance to plead guilty and make up evidence against other people, it might look kinda tempting.
This is exactly why holding someone without charges or access to lawyer is so terribly wrong. It creates the sort of environment that dictators like, a great place to use psychological torture on someone. I don't believe that our goverment did use torture, but I shouldn't have to believe! Government is supposed to be transparent so I can know that it's behaving correctly.
The Taliban was a revolutionary force seeking to oust the legitimate governement recognized by the rest of the world. They held no aspects of government control but operated territory under their sway ( which never even amounted to a clear majority of territory) under pure martial law. They had no civil police. No civil law for such civil police to enforce.
When outside military forces entered Afghanistan they did so in support of the recognized legitimate government which still held the northern portion of the country and said government's military forces bore the brunt of the fighting.
Erm, the Taliban sucked enough all by themselves, you don't need to make up lies about them to convince me that they were evil.
True, the Taliban was not the internationlally recognized government. But the warlords to the north weren't internationally recognized. We chose to support the warlords because we believed that they were more representative of Afgahnistan than the Taliban, but claiming that the warlords had any sort of recognition as legitimate government is silly. The warlord were running the areas under their control under martial law, just like the Taliban. Heck, the Taliban originally rose to power because they represented law and order replacing the previous lawlessness of the warlords. While the Taliban did terrible things (executions (sometimes secret) for a variety of offenses, treating women as sub-human), they did eliminate some problems (rape, widespread poppy production (for heroin)).
Hell, if the northern forces represented some sort of recognized government, why didn't we just hand the country over to them? Instead we did a great deal of work to build up support for a new government headed by Karzi. (We then abandoned them, but that's an entirely different issue.)
Now people are claiming that the US invaded Iraq to
get its oil. Yet oil production remains below pre-war levels,
and the first shipment of oil did not go just to US firms, but
was split with European firms as well (include France's
TotalFinaElf).
Okay, I don't believe the "Iraq invaded for oil" claims, but
the absolutely terrible counter arugments aren't helping
my belief.
Yes, currently oil production is below pre-war levels. Of
course, it's been less than a year. The war may officially be
over, but soldiers are still dying. Waiting a year or two for
profits is reasonable, even in today's short-sighted market.
Assuming the conspiracy to benefit US oil companies is true,
given the minimal investiment for the companies (the cost of the
invasion being paid by the US government), waiting a few years
for your free money is a wise idea.
Yes, the first shipment of oil went to a number of firms.
Again, it's still early. Given that oil production is below
pre-war levels, it's even less relevant.
Yes, we could have gotten more oil by simply dropping the
sanctions on Iraq. However, if we did, US oil interests wouldn't
have had dominant control. The oil would have been under the
control of Iraq, would could have sold access competitatively to
other countries. Now that the US is managing Iraq, US oil
interests might have an unfair advantage in getting that oil,
perhaps getting it heavily discounted.
look at him..
I don't mean to come off as a racist or anything, but seriously. when
you are in fact a terrorist, wouldn't it make sense to sharpen up a
little, maybe try and cut down on the
co-worker- thinks- im- a- terrorist- because- i- look- like- this factor?
I suspect we're being misled. It's alot easier for the media to villify someone who looks so "evil" (or at least, different). Looking around, it looks like "scruffy looking Mike" is not necessarily typical Mike. Check out
the courtroom sketch, he's just a clean shaven, balding geek. Well, maybe he just cleaned up for the court case, but he apparently also cleaned up for his wedding. And he has a nicely trimmed beard for this photograph.
I don't expect any better from Fox News, given such brilliant lines as claiming that Mike conspired "...to join the fight in Afghanistan against U.S. troops." Um, yeah. I suppose we sent our troops over to Europe during World War II because we wanted to join the fight against German troops? Certainly not because we wanted to stop German aggression, no we were specifically against the German troops. Of course, if you're honest and say that Mike might have been conspiring to defending Afghanistan from external invasion, it doesn't sound quite as evil.
Okay, maybe Mike really did try to help the Taliban, and I oppose that. However, this really doesn't point to Mike being an imminant danger to the United States. The man has an American wife and children! Mike's being made an example of because we're discovering that finding real terrorists is hard.
9/11 just woke up a bunch of idiots who had been blissfully ignorant of the
world situation. Terrorism has been an ongoing problem for a long time, the
United States is just lucky we avoided most of it for so long.
As for changing the rules, the rule in question is the Bill of Rights. "Congress
shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press." PATRIOT
Act be damned, it's still mostly a free country. I'm free to hate the
government and pass out bomb making instructions. The Constitution doesn't end
with "unless it's really hard, then you can ignore all this."
OTOH, if he wants to
overthrow the fucking government
perhaps he'd like to move to Liberia or Burma.
If you're so keen on wiping your ass with our Constitution, maybe
you'd like to move somewhere like China where they'll happily abridge your
freedom of speech.
Me, I'll stick around. Sure, it sucks that our freedoms make it harder for
police to bust criminals, let hatemongers spread their message, and let just
about any wacko get a gun. But the tradeoff is that I know I'm protected from
police abuse, I can spread good healthy messages, and I can purchase a gun to
defend myself. Our forefathers knew that freedom was dangerous, but decided that it was worth it.
Quoth McBride (or so I'm lead to believe, since SCO has already removed the incriminating page):
I am also disappointed that you have chosen litigation rather than good faith discussions with SCO about the problems inherent in Linux.
How interesting. I'm disappointed that you has chosen libel litigation rather than good faith discussions with me about your puppy kicking habit.
While we're on the topic, have you stopped beating your wife yet?
Apparently McBride is unfamiliar with the
fallacy of presupposition. (Or perhaps more accurately, begging the question) Worse, he might be perfectly familiar with it. Either way, he can kiss my ass. I wish great poverty on him, he is stunning example of how the weaknesses in how capitalism can be abused by the unethical.
If you do not agree to the terms of this EULA, you may not use or
copy the SOFTWARE, and you should promptly contact Manufacturer
for instructions on return of the unused product(s) in accordance
with Manufacturer's return policies.
It says nothing about a refund. Even if it did, the manufacturer could say their policy is not to give a refund, or only to give $10 or whatever.
Okay:
Pay for product. Check.
Receive product. Check.
Try to use product, then discover that it has license terms you are not willing to accept. Erm, I guess.
Return product in exchange for less than its value? I don't think so.
Problem one with your theory is that EULA remains a legally uncertain area. There is no nationwide definitive answer on the legality of EULAs. The second problem is that the entire reason that this comes up is that the person doesn't agree with the EULA. If I don't agree with the EULA, why should I be stuck following it to get my money back? Finally, if I purchased a copy of Windows XP from a local store, got it home, declined the license, and Microsoft attempts to pay me less, we would have a problem. In the end I've paid $cost_of_windows - $refund in exchange for nothing. That would not amuse a judge.
Breaking News: Bad searches return back results
on
Digging Holes in Google
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Apparently basic computer literacy isn't a requirement for doing technical reporting on MSN. The examples given are just silly.
They complain that a search for "flowers" mostly returns commercial sites, not information on gardening tips. What is Google supposed to do, read your mind to determine your real intention? "Flowers" might mean you want to buy some flowers, look at pictures of flowers, get information growing your own flowers, buy some flower seeds, or be looking for a company or person with the "Flowers" name. Useless. However, if you try the crazy idea of asking for what you want, amazingly you're much more likely to get the results you want. Interested in gardening tips? Don't search for "flowers", instead search for
"gardening tips". Oooh, look, lots of useful links. Interesting in flower gardening tips specifically? Unsurprisingly,
"flower gardening tips" returns a slightly different set of relevant links.
Searching for a product's model number doesn't return reviews? Again, if you want a review, maybe you should ask for a review.
Sure enough, "apex ad1200" primarily returns places to buy the DVD player, but just adding review to the search term returns useful results. (Yes, Dealtime does jump to the top of the list, but that page does have several reviews on it.)
Oh no, search for "apple" doesn't return any information on artist Fiona Apple for many pages. Maybe you should actually
search for "fiona apple"? Don't remember her first name? Try
"apple female artist" or
apple female musician" which return some good pointers (notably to her first name, which will return even better results.
"apple" doesn't get you information on the fruit? Well, step one is search refinement. Prior to Google people spent lots of time refining searches. Just because Google often does what you want doesn't mean you'll never need to refine your search. So, let's be a bit more specific. Let's try
"apple fruit" Viola, hits on the fruit. Want to learn about growing apples? How about "growing apples" Wow, more good hits.
Google doesn't index sites with non-public archives (like the New York Times? Well, duh. They also don't sneak into your house and index your tax returns.
By requiring registration to access their archives, the New York Times has effectively declined to be indexed. Expecting Google to circumvent that decision is stupid.
On the subject of Google not magically indexing everything, we get to the extremely silly complaint that doing research using Google tends to steer people only to online sources, not books. Again, duh. Similarly, if you use your local library's card catalog (or more typically, online catalog), it will only return books and magazines, not web pages. The points to two things. First, if you're doing Real Research, limiting yourself to a single source (be it online or in a library) is just dumb. Second, the internet is rising in importance, and perhaps publishing books online is a good idea.
Google is doing so well that lots of people are interested in taking potshots at it. I'm all in favor of people challenging the status quo, but try to have some real complaints.
Because people are stupid, and people like to use inaccurate and non-existent words all the time. Like "irregardless." I'm trying to educate people to use the more accurate of a choice of two inaccurate words.
A fair point.
Your use is reasonable. I'm just so full of bitterness toward the extremely wrong comparisions to "shoplifting CDs from a store," that I occasionally need to bitch about it. "The Copyright Industries" (handwave) have been working hard to control the debate by controlling the language. It's nearly impossible to rationally discuss the pros and cons of various laws when your opponent takes the language you need away. Every discussion becomes a "you're with us or against us" arguement. The slightest suggestion that perhaps copyright needs to be reevaluated is twisted into "You just want to break into record stores, beat the owner with a lead pipe, steal CDs, and maybe kick their puppy on the way out." Gaaaaaaaaaah.
My grassroots campaign to try to get people to acknowledge they are, in fact, stealing when they download music without license to that media. Join my campaign:)
My grassroots campaign is to eradicate confusion between copyright and licenses.
Sure, you can license material protected by copyright. If you're a radio station you're getting a license (typically an automatic license) to broadcast the music. If you're a publisher printing and selling CDs for a musician who hasn't sold out their copyright, you're getting a license.
However, if you're just some dude who wandered into a store and purchased a CD, you neither receive nor need a license. When you purchase that CD you are paying for that particular CD. Nothing more, nothing less. As owner of that particular CD, you can play it, reverse engineer it, sit on it, loan it out, sell it, and do lots of random stuff to it. Pretty much anything you could do with, say, a chair. (Of course, it's harder to fit the chair into your CD player.)
The only noteworthy restriction on what you can do with the CD (at least here in the United States) is to distribute copies. That right, that copyright, is granted exclusively to the creator (who can transfer that right to others). This has nothing to do with licenses any more than I need a license to use my kitchen knife (even though I can use my kitchen knife to commit crimes).
As to "stealing", there is support for using that term. But is the idea of reimbursing creators so complex, so confusing that you need to fall back on a less accurate word? "copyright infringement" is far more accurate. Why not spend your time convincing people that copyright exists for important, ethical reasons, and that infringing copyright is morally wrong?
I was just reading Jakob Nielsen's article
"PDF: Unfit for Human Consumption", and here we have a stunning example of why PDFs are the wrong solution for online reading. Five pages of text, no charts, pictures, or graphs. Just text. Just like HTML handles great.
Thanks to the web and HTML, I can have text displayed in fonts I've selected as comfortable to read, with the text automatically wrapping at a width I prefer, presented in colors that reduce my eyestrain, all presented in a single scrolling display that is easy to use on a computer screen. Thank's to PDF, I get Skeme's fonts, fixed width, no color control, and artificially seperated into physical pages.
Electronic voting machines are a bad idea. There is NO reason to use them for general voting.
By electronic voting machine, I mean a machine with a display that allows you to select candidates and keeps the tally electronically. You the voter directly interact with this machine.
Ultimately there is no way to be 100% certain that the machine is doing what
you want. The only real backup is a paper trail for a hand recount. These
machines don't offer that. Result: the machine can make up numbers and you'd
be hard pressed to tell.
Okay, so the machine can print out a verification receipt that you also
file. That solves the problem. Of course, then what has the machine gained
you? The voter still needs to verify that the printout says what it should
(and what do you do if it doesn't?). This just adds an unnecessary double
check that voters have to worry about.
You might as well just initially fill
out a paper ballot and have a machine scan it. Machine scanned paper ballots
can be simple for voters to use, simple for machines to scan, and simple for a
hand recount. If a machine doesn't like the ballot it can reject it and a poll
staff person can explain the situation ("The machine rejected your ballot. I
can force it through, but one or more of your votes might be thrown away. Or I
can shred this ballot and give you a new one. If you like, a poll staff member
can help you fill out the new ballot.") This is exactly the situation here in
Madison, Wisconsin and it works great. The ballots are really simple (there is
a two inch arrow with a one in gap in the middle pointing to each candidate's
name with, you just fill in the gap on the arrow pointing to your choice).
It's easy to fill out. It's trivial for a machine to scan (it's like the fill
in the bubble tests, but with much larger, easier to read fill in areas). The
big arrows are trivial for a hand recounter to check. You can do occasional
random hand recounts to verify that the automatic tabulators are working
correctly.
Slashdot Mirror
That's a very strange reading of that article.
The key point of the article is that he is speaking against a particular killing of police officer. Raymond condemns the killer as a murderer. He's making this point in contrast with his view that it might be acceptable to kill a police officer in certain circumstances. Those aren't "fantasies," that's someone who is thinking about his own moral boundaries. It's not really fair to give a blanket label to an activity as wrong unless you've considered what you would do in every possible similar situation. Take something as straight forward as terrorism. Lots of people are eager to say the terrorism is never acceptable. However, if your home country was successfully invaded by a hostile power and your military defeated, would you be willing to strike back covertly to try and free your country? Similarly, if you're an American, do you believe that vandalism and property destruction for political purposes is never, ever acceptable? If so, do you object to the Boston Tea Party? Even if you decided that all of these cases are wrong, the point is that you need to seriously think about them with you as the potential subject.
After discussing many of the possible cases in which he would shoot a law officer or military member, Raymond specifically notes "But the United States of America has not yet reached the point at which the political mechanisms for the defense of freedom have broken down. This judgment is not a matter of theory but one of practice. There are not yet police at our door with legal orders to round up the Jews, or confiscate pornography or computers or guns."
Raymond has clearly thought about these issues regarding violence against government. This isn't the paranoid rantings of madman, it's someone putting forth his ethics on the matter. He's clearly thought the matter through and decided where his lines are. I don't entirely agree with Raymond's positions, but his positions are well reasoned. The sense I get from the article is that this is someone who is very rational, someone who doesn't hide from uncomfortable ideas, someone I could understand.
I thoughts it strange that the Queen's Navy had been so successful at trackin' me down lately. I'll keelhaul me first mate for installing that software on my ship!
Actually, yes. My directions are copyright by me the moment they're transfixed in some media. Your writing them down theoretically counts.
That said, facts cannot be protected by copyright. The majority, if not the entirety of my directions will like be facts. So if you just write down "South on Maple Street, turn left onto Johnson (near the gas station), and go three blocks, bar's on the left", that's darn near pure fact. However, if you transcribe my entire directions including my idiomatic language and quirky side notes, well, you'd have something I could definately claim copyright to.
So long as it was transfixed in some form (say, I tape recorded it), sure enough. Heck, many documentaries are filled with conversations of this sort; you'd be hard pressed to air such a thing without permission. (There is an important exception when you're reporting the conversation as news. You can't use copyright to stifle something idiotic you said to a reporter.)This is actually the most obvious case. The facts that the teacher conveys cannot be protected by copyright. The specific way in which he conveys them is protected, assuming that it's transfixed (Say, through someone taking near-exact shorthand, or tape recording it). The specific notes a student takes (Assuming that it's largely their own rephrasing of the facts conveyed) are protected by copyright for the student. There is even a very real argument that the student's notes represent a derivative work of the teacher's class, thus redistribution or sale could be controlled by the teacher. Some examples are here and here. I don't actually agree with this point of view, but it's definately not a crystal clear case.
All of this is, believe it or not, for your protection. Your creations are protected, even if you didn't think to protect it in advance. The specific examples you give are a bit silly, but it's true. Maybe during a conversation on politics you give a brilliant rebuttable that convinces everyone that you are right. I'd be pretty ticked off if the journalist who happened to be recording an interview with someone else at the next table over noticed my brilliant speech in the background of their tape, transcribes it, and passes it off as his own work.
Oh my, yes. Can you imagine if everyone behaved that way? We might have famous writers who write books read by millions of school children doing something as tasteless as proposing the eating of babies under the claim that it's somehow "satire" and having "redeeming social value."
If you're sending out this sort of message, you damn well better be shooting for 100% accuracy! Every single false positive must be investigated to assure that it never happens again.
Well, it's a nice theory at least.
The point of a DMCA letter is to notify the ISP. The ISP, to remain safe from prosecution, must take down the file in question . Even if the person who posted the file claims that it is not infringing and files a counter-claim, the ISP cannot return the file for 10 days. This amounts to a non-judicially reviewed gag order for 10 days, a horrible infringement on the first amendment.
In the worst example, several web forums were posting leaking prices from the post-thanksgiving sale at Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart wrongfully claimed copyright protection on the information (you can copyright fliers, but not the actual prices, as the prices are just facts). The people running the web site objected, but thanks to the DMCA, the posts came down for the required 10 days, coinciding with the end of the post-thanksgiving day sale. At that point, Wal-Mart declined to push the claim (they knew it was bogus) and the posts went up. A free gag order, just when Wal-Mart needed it, without any pesky checks-and-balances to protect the public.
True, but. Be careful. Forwarding the information is fine, forwarding the actual correspondance probably isn't. The correspondance is (by default thanks to the Berne Convention) protected by copyright. So if you summarize the facts from the message and pass those facts on, you're fine. If you copy the message, you might be opening yourself up to copyright infringement.
Ethically, well, that's your business. Personally, I'd follow the directions (delete the message, maybe warn the sender of the accident if I was in a good mood), unless the message represented something dangerous or criminal (accidental release of medical information, insider trading, whatever). Then I'd pass the message on to the appropriate authorities.
I would suggest refining that argument. "Intellectual Property" is widely understood. The American Heritage Dictionary includes a definition. In practice, intellectual property means "copyright, trademark, patents, and trade secrets." Arguing that it doesn't exist is going to get you ignored by some people and will waste your time playing word games with other.
Now, just because it exists doesn't mean it's a good term. As you point out, it does confuse multiple extremely different areas of law. Use of the term encourages sloppy thinking and the sort of confusion that leads to incorrect statements like "You must defend your patents, or you lose them." That's the meat of your argument, and it's a good argument. Stick to it.
You'll need to correct that understanding.
Non-enforcement is not grounds for loss of rights for copyright and patents. Non-enforcement can be grounds for reduced punishment ("I didn't know your honor, and I promise to stop immediately.") You can go years and years without enforcement, then suddenly start.
Trademarks can be invalidated if not enforced. In theory a trademark is supposed to differentiate a product. If everyone calls vinyl floor covering "linoleum," regardless of actual brand, the trademark has lost it's power.
You've probably got at least one CS professor on campus who at least dabbles in security. If you're lucky, you'll find one who specializes in it. Talk with them. They'll know about safely making security vulnerability announcements. Heck, they may encourage you to write up a paper on the vulnerability (perhaps after it has been fixed).
Similarlly, labor laws that disallow running machines in dangerous ways likely to injure and kill workers are ridiculous. People can simply choose to work for non-employee mangling establishments. The same with laws that prohibit sexually harassment my employers, those chicks can find themselves a non-ass groping establishment. Don't like my unsanitary kitchen? Let people chose between sanitary and unsanitary restaurants.
Personally, I'd rather live in a country where sometimes a community (be it a township or the entire nation) decides that certain activities cost society too much. These restrictions need to be made very carefully, the risk of overregulation is very serious. You definately need an emergency valve to protect essential freedoms (the Bill of Rights does an okay job at this).
Unfortunately paper records are nearly worthless.
Great, I've got a receipt that says I've voted for Bob Nifty. How do I know that the machine actually counted that? Or worse, what if a bug (or evilness) in the code caused 1 in 1,000 ballots to be handled wrong. I'll look at the receipt and it says "Bob Nifty", but I actually voted for "John Keen". With odds of 1 in 1,000, it's likely than some voters will never look at the receipt and notice the problem. So maybe 1 in 10 actually complains. At 1 in 10,000 complaints (basically, 1 per polling location), poll workers are likely to just chalk you up as an idiot who made a mistake. Even if they acknowledge the problem, can they really correct it? Even if they do, what about the people who never noticed because they assumed that the machine would do the right thing?
Given all that, I'm being given a paper record that I need to review (if the voter doesn't review it, the computer can just record with erroneous result in its database and print it and no one will know). What's the advantage of the computerized voting machines over just writing my choices on paper in the first place? We've still got the paper, still got the occasional need for hand recounts. All we've done is add a complicated piece of machinery between me and my vote!
Well, perhaps the paper record is completely anonymous, and I have to give it to election staff. Then, if there is a question about the validity of results, you can hand count the paper records and compare it to what the machine claims. Well, so long as a reasonably large number of people verify that the paper record that they get is correct, I guess. But what have we gained over using machine readable paper ballots? Nothing, really. Actually, we've gained additional complexity (and thus, potential problems).
Take a well designed machine readable paper ballot. My locality uses some. It's a big sheet of paper and there is a large arrow pointing directly to each candidate's name. There is an inch or inch and a half gap in the arrow. I fill in the arrow of the candidate I like. I then feed my ballot into the counter machine (which is very simple). The most important benefit is that "my vote" is an actual piece of paper that I marked. There is no machine between me and the canonical representation of my vote. If there is a concern that the counting machine is misbehaving, you can simply pull out the ballots and easily hand count them. There is no risk of someone claiming that the machine wrote the wrong candidate on the ballot since you made the mark yourself. Power outage? System failure? Break out the candles and keep voting! Just pile them up and feed them through the counting machine when you get the chance.
Computerized voting is a terrible idea. Getting paper records out of the computerized voting machines is a bandaid that destroys the meager benefits that the machines provide while failing to fundamentally fix the problem.
Where exactly do you find "take up arms against...civilians" in "Hawash pleaded guilty to conspiring to provide services to the Taliban," or "You and the others in the group were prepared to take up arms, and die as martyrs if necessary, to defend the Taliban. Is this true?" (The former from the judge, Mike responded in the affirmative.)
Stop making up fictional charges against him. At worst, he admitted to trying to take up arms in a war against US soldiers. Still pretty bad, but there is no evidence at all that he was willing or desired to harm ordinary civilians, or even US soldiers not invading Afgahnistan.
Of course, all of this assumes that Mike pled guilty because of actual guilt, not because he was convinced that he was facing being shipped off to Camp X-Ray without a trial.
After having been held in custody for several months, denied accses to friends, family, or a lawyer, and told every day that they were going to send me off to Camp X-Ray to rot until a military tribunal decided to execute me, well, when offered the chance to plead guilty and make up evidence against other people, it might look kinda tempting.
This is exactly why holding someone without charges or access to lawyer is so terribly wrong. It creates the sort of environment that dictators like, a great place to use psychological torture on someone. I don't believe that our goverment did use torture, but I shouldn't have to believe! Government is supposed to be transparent so I can know that it's behaving correctly.
Some people have speculated that Bin Laden requested your (cheezedawg's) approval before any terrorist act.
Okay, that's silly, since "some people" in this case is "me". How about...
Some people have speculated that the US government and or Jews staged the 9-11 attacks to build up anti-Arab sentiment.
Sure, it's still silly, but in this case "some people" includes "many arabs" and even "some Americans."
Speculation is not evidence. The rest of your arguments against the Taliban were reasonable, I suggest sticking to them.
Erm, the Taliban sucked enough all by themselves, you don't need to make up lies about them to convince me that they were evil.
True, the Taliban was not the internationlally recognized government. But the warlords to the north weren't internationally recognized. We chose to support the warlords because we believed that they were more representative of Afgahnistan than the Taliban, but claiming that the warlords had any sort of recognition as legitimate government is silly. The warlord were running the areas under their control under martial law, just like the Taliban. Heck, the Taliban originally rose to power because they represented law and order replacing the previous lawlessness of the warlords. While the Taliban did terrible things (executions (sometimes secret) for a variety of offenses, treating women as sub-human), they did eliminate some problems (rape, widespread poppy production (for heroin)).
Hell, if the northern forces represented some sort of recognized government, why didn't we just hand the country over to them? Instead we did a great deal of work to build up support for a new government headed by Karzi. (We then abandoned them, but that's an entirely different issue.)
Okay, I don't believe the "Iraq invaded for oil" claims, but the absolutely terrible counter arugments aren't helping my belief.
I suspect we're being misled. It's alot easier for the media to villify someone who looks so "evil" (or at least, different). Looking around, it looks like "scruffy looking Mike" is not necessarily typical Mike. Check out the courtroom sketch, he's just a clean shaven, balding geek. Well, maybe he just cleaned up for the court case, but he apparently also cleaned up for his wedding. And he has a nicely trimmed beard for this photograph.
I don't expect any better from Fox News, given such brilliant lines as claiming that Mike conspired "...to join the fight in Afghanistan against U.S. troops." Um, yeah. I suppose we sent our troops over to Europe during World War II because we wanted to join the fight against German troops? Certainly not because we wanted to stop German aggression, no we were specifically against the German troops. Of course, if you're honest and say that Mike might have been conspiring to defending Afghanistan from external invasion, it doesn't sound quite as evil.
Okay, maybe Mike really did try to help the Taliban, and I oppose that. However, this really doesn't point to Mike being an imminant danger to the United States. The man has an American wife and children! Mike's being made an example of because we're discovering that finding real terrorists is hard.
No, no it didn't.
9/11 just woke up a bunch of idiots who had been blissfully ignorant of the world situation. Terrorism has been an ongoing problem for a long time, the United States is just lucky we avoided most of it for so long.
As for changing the rules, the rule in question is the Bill of Rights. "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press." PATRIOT Act be damned, it's still mostly a free country. I'm free to hate the government and pass out bomb making instructions. The Constitution doesn't end with "unless it's really hard, then you can ignore all this."
If you're so keen on wiping your ass with our Constitution, maybe you'd like to move somewhere like China where they'll happily abridge your freedom of speech.
Me, I'll stick around. Sure, it sucks that our freedoms make it harder for police to bust criminals, let hatemongers spread their message, and let just about any wacko get a gun. But the tradeoff is that I know I'm protected from police abuse, I can spread good healthy messages, and I can purchase a gun to defend myself. Our forefathers knew that freedom was dangerous, but decided that it was worth it.
Quoth McBride (or so I'm lead to believe, since SCO has already removed the incriminating page):
How interesting. I'm disappointed that you has chosen libel litigation rather than good faith discussions with me about your puppy kicking habit.
While we're on the topic, have you stopped beating your wife yet?
Apparently McBride is unfamiliar with the fallacy of presupposition. (Or perhaps more accurately, begging the question) Worse, he might be perfectly familiar with it. Either way, he can kiss my ass. I wish great poverty on him, he is stunning example of how the weaknesses in how capitalism can be abused by the unethical.
Okay:
Problem one with your theory is that EULA remains a legally uncertain area. There is no nationwide definitive answer on the legality of EULAs. The second problem is that the entire reason that this comes up is that the person doesn't agree with the EULA. If I don't agree with the EULA, why should I be stuck following it to get my money back? Finally, if I purchased a copy of Windows XP from a local store, got it home, declined the license, and Microsoft attempts to pay me less, we would have a problem. In the end I've paid $cost_of_windows - $refund in exchange for nothing. That would not amuse a judge.
Apparently basic computer literacy isn't a requirement for doing technical reporting on MSN. The examples given are just silly.
They complain that a search for "flowers" mostly returns commercial sites, not information on gardening tips. What is Google supposed to do, read your mind to determine your real intention? "Flowers" might mean you want to buy some flowers, look at pictures of flowers, get information growing your own flowers, buy some flower seeds, or be looking for a company or person with the "Flowers" name. Useless. However, if you try the crazy idea of asking for what you want, amazingly you're much more likely to get the results you want. Interested in gardening tips? Don't search for "flowers", instead search for "gardening tips". Oooh, look, lots of useful links. Interesting in flower gardening tips specifically? Unsurprisingly, "flower gardening tips" returns a slightly different set of relevant links.
Searching for a product's model number doesn't return reviews? Again, if you want a review, maybe you should ask for a review. Sure enough, "apex ad1200" primarily returns places to buy the DVD player, but just adding review to the search term returns useful results. (Yes, Dealtime does jump to the top of the list, but that page does have several reviews on it.)
Oh no, search for "apple" doesn't return any information on artist Fiona Apple for many pages. Maybe you should actually search for "fiona apple"? Don't remember her first name? Try "apple female artist" or apple female musician" which return some good pointers (notably to her first name, which will return even better results.
"apple" doesn't get you information on the fruit? Well, step one is search refinement. Prior to Google people spent lots of time refining searches. Just because Google often does what you want doesn't mean you'll never need to refine your search. So, let's be a bit more specific. Let's try "apple fruit" Viola, hits on the fruit. Want to learn about growing apples? How about "growing apples" Wow, more good hits.
Google doesn't index sites with non-public archives (like the New York Times ? Well, duh. They also don't sneak into your house and index your tax returns. By requiring registration to access their archives, the New York Times has effectively declined to be indexed. Expecting Google to circumvent that decision is stupid.
On the subject of Google not magically indexing everything, we get to the extremely silly complaint that doing research using Google tends to steer people only to online sources, not books. Again, duh. Similarly, if you use your local library's card catalog (or more typically, online catalog), it will only return books and magazines, not web pages. The points to two things. First, if you're doing Real Research, limiting yourself to a single source (be it online or in a library) is just dumb. Second, the internet is rising in importance, and perhaps publishing books online is a good idea.
Google is doing so well that lots of people are interested in taking potshots at it. I'm all in favor of people challenging the status quo, but try to have some real complaints.
A fair point.
Your use is reasonable. I'm just so full of bitterness toward the extremely wrong comparisions to "shoplifting CDs from a store," that I occasionally need to bitch about it. "The Copyright Industries" (handwave) have been working hard to control the debate by controlling the language. It's nearly impossible to rationally discuss the pros and cons of various laws when your opponent takes the language you need away. Every discussion becomes a "you're with us or against us" arguement. The slightest suggestion that perhaps copyright needs to be reevaluated is twisted into "You just want to break into record stores, beat the owner with a lead pipe, steal CDs, and maybe kick their puppy on the way out." Gaaaaaaaaaah.
My grassroots campaign is to eradicate confusion between copyright and licenses.
Sure, you can license material protected by copyright. If you're a radio station you're getting a license (typically an automatic license) to broadcast the music. If you're a publisher printing and selling CDs for a musician who hasn't sold out their copyright, you're getting a license.
However, if you're just some dude who wandered into a store and purchased a CD, you neither receive nor need a license. When you purchase that CD you are paying for that particular CD. Nothing more, nothing less. As owner of that particular CD, you can play it, reverse engineer it, sit on it, loan it out, sell it, and do lots of random stuff to it. Pretty much anything you could do with, say, a chair. (Of course, it's harder to fit the chair into your CD player.)
The only noteworthy restriction on what you can do with the CD (at least here in the United States) is to distribute copies. That right, that copyright, is granted exclusively to the creator (who can transfer that right to others). This has nothing to do with licenses any more than I need a license to use my kitchen knife (even though I can use my kitchen knife to commit crimes).
As to "stealing", there is support for using that term. But is the idea of reimbursing creators so complex, so confusing that you need to fall back on a less accurate word? "copyright infringement" is far more accurate. Why not spend your time convincing people that copyright exists for important, ethical reasons, and that infringing copyright is morally wrong?
Feh.
Electronic voting machines are a bad idea. There is NO reason to use them for general voting.
By electronic voting machine, I mean a machine with a display that allows you to select candidates and keeps the tally electronically. You the voter directly interact with this machine.
Ultimately there is no way to be 100% certain that the machine is doing what you want. The only real backup is a paper trail for a hand recount. These machines don't offer that. Result: the machine can make up numbers and you'd be hard pressed to tell.
Okay, so the machine can print out a verification receipt that you also file. That solves the problem. Of course, then what has the machine gained you? The voter still needs to verify that the printout says what it should (and what do you do if it doesn't?). This just adds an unnecessary double check that voters have to worry about.
You might as well just initially fill out a paper ballot and have a machine scan it. Machine scanned paper ballots can be simple for voters to use, simple for machines to scan, and simple for a hand recount. If a machine doesn't like the ballot it can reject it and a poll staff person can explain the situation ("The machine rejected your ballot. I can force it through, but one or more of your votes might be thrown away. Or I can shred this ballot and give you a new one. If you like, a poll staff member can help you fill out the new ballot.") This is exactly the situation here in Madison, Wisconsin and it works great. The ballots are really simple (there is a two inch arrow with a one in gap in the middle pointing to each candidate's name with, you just fill in the gap on the arrow pointing to your choice). It's easy to fill out. It's trivial for a machine to scan (it's like the fill in the bubble tests, but with much larger, easier to read fill in areas). The big arrows are trivial for a hand recounter to check. You can do occasional random hand recounts to verify that the automatic tabulators are working correctly.