And all things considered, the US is no worse and no better than any other country when it comes to banning things which are "undesirable"
That is true. However, the US does make the loudest noise of any country about its citizens' freedom of speech rights (the rights of americans being a topic that comes up frequently in their exported television and movies for example). So naturally the hypocrisy is more glaring, as the reality doesnt seem to live up to what is advertised. The US makes very loud and vocal claims about free speech rights in the US; none of the other countries mentioned make such vocal claims. Thats hypocrisy. Don't get me wrong, the USA is definitely one of the most "free" countries around, I'm not denying that. But hypocrisy is hypocrisy.
Banning books is banning books, just because its done by "local" government, does not mean the government isnt banning books. And they DO ban books, very easily it seems (see "Pogo, volume 11, ISBN 1-56097-339-0", page iv: "The first issue of Panic came out in December 1953, and a cartoon parody of Clement Moore's 'The Night Before Christmas' was among its features. When St Nick and his eight tiny reindeer flew into view, cartoonist Will Elder adorned the back of Santa's sleight with a 'Just Divorced' sign... This light-hearted treatment inflamed the seasonal sensibilities of the citizens of Massachesetts. Saying that the comic book desecrated Christmas, the state's Attorney General arranged for it to be banned in Boston and throughout the state.").
Apparently it really is that easy to get something banned in an entire state, and for such a ridiculous reason.
Not everyone necessarily has the means to just "drive to the next state" to get hold of a banned book, but that is besides the point: PEOPLE SHOULDNT HAVE TO - PARTICULARLY in a country that so loudly boasts abouts its citizens' freedom of speech rights.
Anyway, I don't understand your comment "the US government does not ban books", it appears to be in direct contradiction to the facts.
The legality of alcohol (assuming you are of appropriate drinking age) unambiguously increases the number of drunk-driving fatalities
Alcohol also increases aggression in many people, causes medical and psychological problems (e.g. liver problems, depression), and is addictive to some people. Some stats from http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/alcohol.htm: "There were 19,515 Alcohol-induced deaths in the United States each year, not including motor vehicle fatalities (1998)", "There were 25,192 deaths in the United States from Chronic Liver Disease and Cirrhosis (1998)", "Chronic Liver Disease and Cirrhosis is the 10th leading cause of death in the United States (1998)".. obviously alcohol kills (and ruins the lives of) a lot of people.
Yet that doesnt mean alcohol should be banned; you cant go about banning anything and everything that might cause harm to someone just because some people cant handle it properly. People should have the right to harm themselves, if they want to, but not others.
I've never quite understood society's double-standards when it comes to drugs, alcohol and tobacco are OK but other harmful addictive drugs are not ?? Of course, thats a bit off topic here.
If a website can't generate profit off the site or the sites products, it means that either (1) they're making some bad business mistakes, or (2) people are not willing to pay what they're asking. If people are not willing to pay, its because people don't want the product that badly to begin with. Web sites don't have a "right" to make money just because they're providing a service (nobody has a "right" to make money), that service has to be of enough value to its customers that they will pay enough to cover the costs of providing the service. Very few websites provide that much value, most are of the "nice, but I can live without it" variety (e.g. I like slashdot, but if it disappeared tomorrow, my apparent "demand" for the "service" would vanish just as quickly, I would just go out and do other things instead.)
Bottom line, if there isn't tangible demand for your product, you shouldn't expect to make money off the product. Thats business, you don't have a right to get income just because you worked very hard on it. How many websites can you think of that you visit regularly that you would really hate to go without? I can't think of any.
I'm not saying people shouldnt make money or try to, it would be certainly be nice if the world was such that everyone providing some decent service on the web could make a living off of it. Its just unrealistic to expect it. The web is very big, and there is substantial supply for any given demand (e.g. there are thousands of online forums, thousands of picture galleries of aircraft, hundreds of news sites, thousands of online comic strips).. so if a particular site disappears, there are always alternatives.
Quite frankly, I don't care if the web remains like that forever, I like the Internet just as it is (bandwidth problems notwithstanding). There are plenty of good sites out there that are run by people "out of the goodness of their hearts". I prefer how it is now to the idea of having the majority of the internet consisting of sites run by a few giant media conglomerates.
Most web sites need an income, but that doesn't mean they are entitled to an income. If the demand isnt enough, it isnt enough, and the web site owners will need to try something else to make money. Otherwise, its just charity.
The problem with boycotts is that only probably about 0.001% of customers care enough to participate. I'm not convinced that the resulting media attention of a boycott doesn't actually result in higher sales for a company.
Do boycotts ever actually work? I'm skeptical, I don't know of any that can be directly shown to have worked. Anyone know of any? Anyone know if "boycott adobe" actually hurt their sales? Anyone know if the intel boycott played any significant part in getting Intel to tone down its stance on the CPU ID?
But modification is one of the exclusive rights of the copyright owner
If it were entirely that simple, it would be illegal to add your own notes in a textbook.
I'm wondering, shouldn't end-users have a right to choose what they download with the bandwidth that they paid for? Should a website be allowed to force a user to download certain files if they only want to download other files? Surely not (unless users agree on such in the form of a license agreement to view the web page or something).
I'm not so sure modifying a page is the problem, I think its more about distributing what you modify. However I keep coming back to the "smart tags" thing, I really dislike the concept, but if software is allowed to change a page by removing ads ("good") why shouldnt software be allowed to change a page by adding third-party hyperlinks ("bad") ? I don't really see a difference.. if the former is OK, so should the latter be OK. Which sucks, because the "smart tag" concept makes me sick, I definitely wouldnt want people to view my page with smart tags, but I don't mind if they block the ads.
I guess though there is a difference.. I've never actually considered the ads on my website as being *part of* the "content" on the site, while my text and hyperlinks I *do* consider part of the "content". The ads can come or go but the actual content will still be the same, I personally don't see an ad banner as being an integral part of a web page.
Its not quite so simple - remember, the vast majority of ads on the Internet are fed off different servers to the site with ads on, most of them are fed from a few major advertising affiliate sites like commission junction, doubleclick etc. So every web server that wants to run this also has to collaborate with those servers, which is not necessarily so simple. If a web server is clustered it complicates matters further. It gets even harder when you consider the amout of caching/proxying typically going on in an internet session, e.g. if a page is in a browsers cache it will often not send a new request to the web server (the "ratio" you propose will almost certainly be incorrect then, as very often ads are specified as don't-cache, but the page may be cached. In addition to the browser cache, there may be a fair chain of proxies to the web site and the ad site, usually at least one proxy, sometimes more.
is how ignorant we as a people are of the rest of the world
It hasn't gone unnoticed by the rest of the world, either:) Very often there are revealing comments on/. like "Ghana is practically next door to South Africa", or responses to an article about a plan to build fiber optic connections around africa (funded by african companies no less) along the lines of "throwing pearls to pigs" and "what are these people going to do with the internet, they still talk in click languages". Another example was when a south african utility company (Eskom, one of the biggest utility companies in the world) was mentioned as being one of the main researchers of nuclear bubble reactors, there were comments like "third world countries should not be allowed to have nuclear power stations, they can't handle it" (neglecting that South Africa has built and maintained a nuclear power station without incident since the 1970s). Comments like that indicate a desire to form strong opinions about something that a person clearly knows very little about. (Lets not even go to comments about turning 3rd world countries into parking lots:)
I get the impression its a sort of deliberate arrogant ignorance, a sort of "other places in the world don't actually matter so why bother to learn" attitude. And its usually essentially impossible to even mention anything like this on/. without getting modded down instantly. Still, Americans have worked hard to attain the successes that do set them apart from so many other countries economically, and in a way it might be seen that they have a right to be a bit arrogant. But it does seem to come down to simply refusing to learn about other cultures, a willful ignorance that embodies the attitude of "who cares, other non-US people don't mean anything to the world".
Of course, thats only the general impression that the US gives of themselves outside of the US, I would hope that the majority of americans are not as arrogant as the more vocal ones.
At any rate, regarding terrorism, some parts of South Africa (particularly the Cape) have also had a problem for many years now with terrorist bombings, not as bad as places like Israel, but typically we have maybe two or three incidents a year. These are perpetrated by certain minority fringe groups. So we have everything to gain from an anti-terrorism campaign. Additionally, several South Africans also died in the WTC (one of which it seems may have been a distant relation of mine). South Africa did stand up and state that we back the anti-terrorist coalition (as have many other African countries), but I can't remember seeing any mention of any of them on CNN.
Anyway, thanks for the more positive comments:) I must admit I have never visited the states (although I plan to), so my opinions may be wrong, as I base them partially on the image that the US projects of themselves.
but there is NO harm in showing some pepsi ads on the screen while no one is at the computer
Has it occurred to you that any intended impartiality (and thus quality) of education is immediately placed at risk when the interests of a third-party are involved? Consider: (1) Do you think an education should be questioning and impartial? (2) Do you think that your education will in all cases remain questioning and impartial should a conflict of interests arise between the educators and the sponsors? (As an example, we already have educational institutions that ONLY teach Microsoft software, in exchange for donations of computers from Microsoft.)
This sort of thing happens, and will happen more and more in the future, particularly as more advertisers (and universities) start to realise that they get much better results from a highly targeted audience - that is, companies specifically related to some field sponsoring education of students within that field. That of course is nothing new, but in the past the sponsorship has been quiet and behind-the-scenes, while currently the trend is towards not only more overtly visible sponsorshop, but editorial control of the content of lectures by the sponsors. So Pepsi is not a very good example, as they probably don't have much interest in whether Linux or Windows gets used in the labs. But other sponsors will; and the Universities will accept those sponsors above Pepsi because more targeted advertising means better results which means more money.
Schools do need money of course, so this may in many cases not be a bad thing. Where do you draw the line?
Regarding the "nazi" comment: although I realise it was probably just hyperbole for effect, I kind of resent the noxious implication of an immediate association between being "anti-advertisement" and being a nazi. As I have explained, there can be valid reasons to be against this type of advertising; its a lot harder to justify the kind of fanatical white supremacy associated with nazis:)
Interestingly, South Africa is not part of the United States and its communications capabilities (or inabilities) have NOTHING to do with the original goal of the internet
Hmm.. I wasn't making any statement of the sort.. I just thought it was interesting, given the original goals of the internet ("routing around damage" etc), and the post made me think of it. Obviously those original goals now apply worldwide, not just in the US anymore.
No offense, but if you think that South Africa has any chance of being an enemy of the US, you can't know very much about it. We used to have nukes, yes, but the nuclear program was dismantled as I remember it a little over ten years ago. And in case you hadn't noticed, SA became has become a democracy during the last ten years, we have a very liberal constitution that was modelled partially after the US constitution, have a government that supports not only democracy but capitalism (which is actively in the process of privatisation of government assets), and South Africa has officially stated its support of the US in its "war on terrorism". If we're not committing specific *military* support, its because, well, we have a very weak military and given SAs own economic problems we can't exactly pull funds out of anything else. And not one South African I know of has any notion of being against the US in any sense. Whats with this isolationist nationalist stance of yours towards any country other than the US? You seem to be confusing South Africa with some of the hardline middle-east countries such as Afghanistan, although I can't imagine how you could possibly draw any connection, if you look on a map you'll notice its not even the same continent...
I don't have a problem with making our communications "dependent" (in that sense) on the well-being of the US. I'm not sure how you might have thought I was implying otherwise?? I'm all for bandwidth, the more the better.
Sheesh.. I'm afraid my imagination isn't vivid enough to think up all the strange ways people can possibly misunderstand the intent of a poster in an online forum.
to ensure a reliable method of communication in the event of an enemy attack here on US soil - and passed the test pretty well
Well.. interestingly.. in South Africa, we lost a fair chunk of international bandwidth (45 MBits, which (sadly) represents probably 20-30% of the entire country's commercial international bandwidth, if www.ispmap.org.za is anything to go by), which landed via a satellite connection in New York and ran through fiber near the WTC. It took roughly an hour or two before I could even access international sites again (compounded obviously by the "slashdotting" of many major sites). Still, thats not too bad overall. The bandwidth hasn't been replaced, so what was already horribly starved international bandwidth here is now even worse.
Of course, 45 MBits must sound horribly pitiful to developed countries:)
OK; I guess my experience has just been different. I work at a company that develops virtual reality training simulators (www.5dt.com), which technologically are fairly similar to games. Its not the sort of work where you can easily bluff, because if you don't know what you're doing, you either can't do anything at all, or you end up asking other programmers lots of questions all the time.. so its usually easy to spot which areas people lack knowledge in.
No proof? Where have you been living the past five years? Holy crap. I guess you could start with the courts "findings of fact" in the antitrust trial, but thats just the tip of the iceberg. What short memories people have. I guess you didn't read about the multiple times MS has been caught with fake grass-roots support campaigns, fake letters-to-the-editor etc. Or about the times MS has been caught writing code into their OS that either breaks competing companies programs or makes them look bad. Or about the times they've been caught buying "independent reviews". Or copying innovations from other companies and openly claiming that they were MS's innovations. Or when they attempted to "embrace and extend" Java. I guess you never noticed the "halloween document" either. Or the dirty licensing tricks they pulled with the SMB/Kerberos documents. Or when they were caught "cooking the books" in an attempt to smooth their apparent revenue growth, and fired one of their top accountants when he threatened to expose them. Or when they lied about hotmail finally having been converted to run ONLY on NT. Or when they stabbed IBM in the back after pretending be collaboratively developing OS/2. Or when they gave "discounts" to OEMs in exchange for enforcing monopolistic distribution of only Windows and no competing OSs, to the point where it was impossible at the majority of major computer vendors to even buy a PC without buying Windows. Or when there was a, uh, "bug" in IE that displayed a message box encouraging people to switch to ISPs that used Microsoft technology. Or donating computers to Universities in exchange for having the Universitys ONLY teach Microsoft software in their courses. Or when they were caught with Windows Update unknowingly sending personal information back to Microsoft (something that would be illegal in my country), and then claimed that although they had a database they "werent doing anything with it". Or when they were caught having Microsoft Word save identifying information into Word documents, which they then claimed was a "bug". The list goes on. Clearly YOU need to inform yourself. How many dirty tricks can *you* name that the Linux community has attempted to pull over the past ten years?
It amazes me how people are so willing to just "look the other way" and pretend these things don't happen, I presume just for the convenience of using Windows.
If you really believe that the Linux community has anywhere remotely near as many ethics abuses as Microsoft, then you seriously need to inform yourself. Go read up a little about even a *fraction* of the dirty tricks MS has gotten up to (and still get up to) over the past 10 years, and you might understand. Microsoft has proven their character, when they do something unethical, its "in character" for them. That is the main reason for the *apparent* hypocrisy in people being more forgiving towards the Linux community, which has in general shown itself to by and large care about ethics.
You're sick of fanatical Linux zealots? Well, I'm sick of people who defend Microsoft when they are clearly uninformed of the unethical tactics MS uses. Just arm yourself with a bit of information, dig a little bit underneath the thin rosy veil of apparent innocence and innovation that Microsoft advertising portrays. Its a funny thing, but every time MS gets caught redhanded, there is a brief media flurry, but then within a month or two everybody seems to have completely forgotten.
If there is intellectual property there it is in the original designer of the structure
Well then as I understand it the original designer of this structure was not Soren, as the structure is proprietary and undocumented and he reverse-engineered it. Given your argument, the IP belongs then to neither Soren or the RedHat developer who copied the structure. That is, of course, assuming that your argument is correct that the real IP is the structure itself.
Hmm.. I don't know about that. Programming is generally not a field you can bluff your way in, especially not with languages like C/C++, and with doing things like integrating RAID drivers into an OS kernel. I can see that you might fool management, but you can't fool your peers. Maybe for two or three weeks, but pretty quickly the other programmers will see through the bluff.
Can someone explain to me *why* a developer would strip off copyright info
Do we really know that the programmer explicitly *stripped off* the copyright info? Somehow, I doubt it. It seems more likely to me that the programmer opened up the original file and selected and copied *only the structs* etc into his own files, and that the copyright notice was probably never copied over to begin with. The programmer then either didn't even read the copyright info, or read it but later forgot about it when he delved back into the problem of trying to get the code to work.
We can't claim the copyright info was explicitly stripped off, we don't know that. Based on my own experiences as a programmer, more often than not you *only* copy the portion that you *need* (e.g. the struct), so it seems more likely to me that the copyright info never got copied and quite likely wasn't even noticed.
I think you're being rather unfair, jumping to conclusions with no evidence whatsoever that this was deliberate.
This could easily be a mistake. As a programmer myself, I can imagine I might easily make a mistake like that; when you're coding, you tend to concentrate and focus on the *code*, on the technical problem itself and its solution, and getting the stuff to work. I don't think about stuff like the copyright info etc when I program - its not part of the problem I'm focusing on, its not "real stuff", its almost like some "unnecessary administrative fluff" that has nothing to do with the actual task at hand, its an overhead. I often forget in my own code to put the copyright notices in, and none of the other programmers at work ever remember to put the works copyright notice in at all - I usually run round adding that to all the source code files afterwards, in one go near the end of a project. Programmers aren't by default thinking about "administrative overhead" stuff like software licenses, they're thinking about the problem, about structs/classes/functions/algorithms etc. Heck, many programmers don't even think much about putting human-readable comments in the code. So it seems to me far more likely that this person opened the original file and cut-n-paste the *struct*, possibly without even reading the "administrative fluff" (programmers usually being in a hurry to get something working). I doubt they copied the file and physically removed the copyright notice. Its much more likely it was the other way round, that the copyright notice never even got there because only the struct was copied over. Perhaps the guy intended to put the copyright notice back but forgot by getting distracted by the task of getting things to work.
Programmers very often work under unreasonably tight deadlines too, compounding the problem. Many programmers I know code "in a hurry".
Yes, programmers should learn that they need to think about intellectual property issues. But almost no programmers *by default* gives consideration to IP issues, that needs to be taught, and the majority of computer courses I know of either don't treat the issue at all, or have a very tiny "token" course on IP issues.
I doubt this wasn't an honest mistake, given the information I have I would give the guy the benefit of the doubt in this. I think its unfair to make public accusations on/. as if they were fact. Neither you nor I know for sure; it just seems the most *likely* to me that this was not foulplay but ignorance/carelessness. You act as if you *know* thats what happened!?! Not only is it pure conjecture, but you then go so far as to extend that conjecture to apply to ALL related developers, which is quite ridiculous. Guilt by association. Be fair; apply the "innocent until proven guilty" reasoning. Peoples lives can be ruined by someone making false public accusations that never get proven (usually paedophile-related issues, but the same principle applies in general), so just hope that should you ever fall into a situation where you've made a mistake and it doesn't make you look good that nobody like you is around publicly claiming you're guilty.
Yes, the community would be "out for blood" if this had been MS. But you hint that this is hypocrisy. Thats unfair. People would have good reason to be "out for blood" if it were MS, quite simply because Microsofts history over the past ten years has shown again and again and again that they have an extremely, um, "limited" concept of ethics. MS doesn't care if they lie and cheat and steal, they've shown this again and again. The Linux community does not have a history of ignoring ethics. Its not hypocrisy.
The government is currently stepping up efforts to control what is brought on-board airplanes
Which is why the next attack may be planting bombs on trains. Or possibly flying bombs using small planes into nuclear power stations. Or possibly dropping toxic chemicals from small planes over populated areas. Or possibly poisoning the water supply to a densely populated area. Or possibly even the 'suitcase nuke' scenario, which I'm sure Osama would gladly use if he had one because its the most likely thing to really destroy the US economy (which is one of his primary goals..)
The general problem here is that with a bit of imagination, there are many possibilities for terrorists, and its almost impossible to increase security to the level where all possible attacks can be blocked. The only real solution is to destroy religous fundamentalism - terrorism today is largely just one of the *symptoms* of fundamentalism.
Back to the topic, PGP is of course merely an extension of the existing ability (and rights) of people to have private conversations. Banning strong encryption is NOT going to stop terrorism, (a) because terrorists will still use it (if not overtly, they'll use it through e.g. steganography), (b) because terrorists will still be able to get together in a house or a park or desert or mountain cabin somewhere and discuss their plans at length, (c) because you've done nothing to curb the desire of people to commit acts of terrorism (e.g, dismantle organized religion).
So either you advocate microphones and cameras in every home, office building, car etc (the real-life equivalent of mandatory electronic communication backdoors), or you advocate the existence of technology like PGP. Either people have a right to communicate privately, or they don't, its one or the other. This stuff should have been built right into email protocols from the start, then people would expect it to be private, now people seem to see email privacy as a priviledge.
That did not stop the perpetrators of September 11th, unfortunately
Yes, it is unlikely to stop the most radical fringe. But it would have an effect on millions of other muslims whose opinions are not quite as, uh, "solidly formed" as the radical fringe. That would greatly diminish the existing public support for that fringe. Remember, public opinion is highly fickle. By reducing overall support for their "cause", you reduce (a) the number of places where the radicals can find safe harbor, (b) the number of new recruits willing to join up to Osama's army, (c) the amount and level of funding and weapons that they currently get, (d) support from other countries. In effect, you isolate the radical groups till they have little or no support and cannot continue their operations.
im sure some would want to be corrupted, but many would reject capitalism even more
Personally I think most would allow themselves to be "corrupted" in that way (I think "corrupted" is the wrong word but anyway). I base that on western christianity.. remember, christianity has very much the same teachings (e.g. "it is harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.."). And yet that doesn't stop 99.9% of western christians from living in beautiful homes, buying expensive cars, expensive home entertainment systems, making use of modern medicine, buying expensive fashionable shoes and jeans etc. Generally, I think once people are given real cushy lifestyles, its very hard to give that up, and those religous teachings start to take second place (in my opinion, if you can for example afford to spend thousands of dollars on an expensive home entertainment system, or can afford a very nice car, or if you just spent a couple thousand on leather lounge furniture that you know you didn't really need, then you would qualify as one of those "rich men" who will struggle to enter the kingdom of heaven..)
Don't forget that, as the LA Times article points out, these people do not yearn for worldly goods so the lure of (comparitive) luxury and posessions is of no value
Thats true, but I think once people get used to luxuries, it is very hard for them to give them up.
I've been wondering why Christianity has become such a "docile" religion lately (historically, Christian fanatics have had a not-unsimilar history to Islam fanatics, in terms of trying to spread their religion worldwide).. in fact many of the teachings seem to be very similar (e.g. 'it is harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven' etc in Christianity is very much like what we hear about these Islam beliefs, from the article, 'the less they have here on earth, the more they will have in the afterlife'). And yet in spite of this, not a single Christian I know of makes any effort whatsoever to shed the materialistic "trappings" in their lives. In fact, some of the most devout Christians I know are just as materialistic as anyone else, drool over expensive cars like we all do, or obsess about having a real high-quality sound system, living in a nice house, having an expensive television, DVD player etc. This always seemed hypocritical to me; it seems in modern western Christianity, Christianity always comes second, even amongst the most devout. But I would much rather live with hypocritical Christians than real fanatical muslims (I mean the fanatical ones, the terrorists who would kill you, not the ordinary ones). Sure, you have the odd US fanatic who blows up abortion clinics and murders doctors etc, but its such a tiny fringe, and their targets are so limited in scope.
Its very hard for anyone to give up not just modern comforts, but the benefits of modern medicine too. Once you have all that, it seems religion starts to take second place. Which IMHO is a good thing.. religion is too powerful a tool for manipulating people.
Slashdot Mirror
And all things considered, the US is no worse and no better than any other country when it comes to banning things which are "undesirable"
That is true. However, the US does make the loudest noise of any country about its citizens' freedom of speech rights (the rights of americans being a topic that comes up frequently in their exported television and movies for example). So naturally the hypocrisy is more glaring, as the reality doesnt seem to live up to what is advertised. The US makes very loud and vocal claims about free speech rights in the US; none of the other countries mentioned make such vocal claims. Thats hypocrisy. Don't get me wrong, the USA is definitely one of the most "free" countries around, I'm not denying that. But hypocrisy is hypocrisy.
Banning books is banning books, just because its done by "local" government, does not mean the government isnt banning books. And they DO ban books, very easily it seems (see "Pogo, volume 11, ISBN 1-56097-339-0", page iv: "The first issue of Panic came out in December 1953, and a cartoon parody of Clement Moore's 'The Night Before Christmas' was among its features. When St Nick and his eight tiny reindeer flew into view, cartoonist Will Elder adorned the back of Santa's sleight with a 'Just Divorced' sign ... This light-hearted treatment inflamed the seasonal sensibilities of the citizens of Massachesetts. Saying that the comic book desecrated Christmas, the state's Attorney General arranged for it to be banned in Boston and throughout the state.").
Apparently it really is that easy to get something banned in an entire state, and for such a ridiculous reason.
Not everyone necessarily has the means to just "drive to the next state" to get hold of a banned book, but that is besides the point: PEOPLE SHOULDNT HAVE TO - PARTICULARLY in a country that so loudly boasts abouts its citizens' freedom of speech rights.
Anyway, I don't understand your comment "the US government does not ban books", it appears to be in direct contradiction to the facts.
It's just one step from saying an artistic rendering of a real act is illegal to saying writing about it is illegal
Hmm .. wasnt the book Lolita banned in the USA, as I remember it? Or am I thinking of the (second) movie?
Anyway, the US has banned books for much less than that.
The legality of alcohol (assuming you are of appropriate drinking age) unambiguously increases the number of drunk-driving fatalities
Alcohol also increases aggression in many people, causes medical and psychological problems (e.g. liver problems, depression), and is addictive to some people. Some stats from http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/alcohol.htm: "There were 19,515 Alcohol-induced deaths in the United States each year, not including motor vehicle fatalities (1998)", "There were 25,192 deaths in the United States from Chronic Liver Disease and Cirrhosis (1998)", "Chronic Liver Disease and Cirrhosis is the 10th leading cause of death in the United States (1998)" .. obviously alcohol kills (and ruins the lives of) a lot of people.
Yet that doesnt mean alcohol should be banned; you cant go about banning anything and everything that might cause harm to someone just because some people cant handle it properly. People should have the right to harm themselves, if they want to, but not others.
I've never quite understood society's double-standards when it comes to drugs, alcohol and tobacco are OK but other harmful addictive drugs are not ?? Of course, thats a bit off topic here.
Pricing is a function of supply and demand.
If a website can't generate profit off the site or the sites products, it means that either (1) they're making some bad business mistakes, or (2) people are not willing to pay what they're asking. If people are not willing to pay, its because people don't want the product that badly to begin with. Web sites don't have a "right" to make money just because they're providing a service (nobody has a "right" to make money), that service has to be of enough value to its customers that they will pay enough to cover the costs of providing the service. Very few websites provide that much value, most are of the "nice, but I can live without it" variety (e.g. I like slashdot, but if it disappeared tomorrow, my apparent "demand" for the "service" would vanish just as quickly, I would just go out and do other things instead.)
Bottom line, if there isn't tangible demand for your product, you shouldn't expect to make money off the product. Thats business, you don't have a right to get income just because you worked very hard on it. How many websites can you think of that you visit regularly that you would really hate to go without? I can't think of any.
I'm not saying people shouldnt make money or try to, it would be certainly be nice if the world was such that everyone providing some decent service on the web could make a living off of it. Its just unrealistic to expect it. The web is very big, and there is substantial supply for any given demand (e.g. there are thousands of online forums, thousands of picture galleries of aircraft, hundreds of news sites, thousands of online comic strips) .. so if a particular site disappears, there are always alternatives.
Quite frankly, I don't care if the web remains like that forever, I like the Internet just as it is (bandwidth problems notwithstanding). There are plenty of good sites out there that are run by people "out of the goodness of their hearts". I prefer how it is now to the idea of having the majority of the internet consisting of sites run by a few giant media conglomerates.
Most web sites need an income, but that doesn't mean they are entitled to an income. If the demand isnt enough, it isnt enough, and the web site owners will need to try something else to make money. Otherwise, its just charity.
The problem with boycotts is that only probably about 0.001% of customers care enough to participate. I'm not convinced that the resulting media attention of a boycott doesn't actually result in higher sales for a company.
Do boycotts ever actually work? I'm skeptical, I don't know of any that can be directly shown to have worked. Anyone know of any? Anyone know if "boycott adobe" actually hurt their sales? Anyone know if the intel boycott played any significant part in getting Intel to tone down its stance on the CPU ID?
But modification is one of the exclusive rights of the copyright owner
If it were entirely that simple, it would be illegal to add your own notes in a textbook.
I'm wondering, shouldn't end-users have a right to choose what they download with the bandwidth that they paid for? Should a website be allowed to force a user to download certain files if they only want to download other files? Surely not (unless users agree on such in the form of a license agreement to view the web page or something).
I'm not so sure modifying a page is the problem, I think its more about distributing what you modify. However I keep coming back to the "smart tags" thing, I really dislike the concept, but if software is allowed to change a page by removing ads ("good") why shouldnt software be allowed to change a page by adding third-party hyperlinks ("bad") ? I don't really see a difference .. if the former is OK, so should the latter be OK. Which sucks, because the "smart tag" concept makes me sick, I definitely wouldnt want people to view my page with smart tags, but I don't mind if they block the ads.
I guess though there is a difference .. I've never actually considered the ads on my website as being *part of* the "content" on the site, while my text and hyperlinks I *do* consider part of the "content". The ads can come or go but the actual content will still be the same, I personally don't see an ad banner as being an integral part of a web page.
Its not quite so simple - remember, the vast majority of ads on the Internet are fed off different servers to the site with ads on, most of them are fed from a few major advertising affiliate sites like commission junction, doubleclick etc. So every web server that wants to run this also has to collaborate with those servers, which is not necessarily so simple. If a web server is clustered it complicates matters further. It gets even harder when you consider the amout of caching/proxying typically going on in an internet session, e.g. if a page is in a browsers cache it will often not send a new request to the web server (the "ratio" you propose will almost certainly be incorrect then, as very often ads are specified as don't-cache, but the page may be cached. In addition to the browser cache, there may be a fair chain of proxies to the web site and the ad site, usually at least one proxy, sometimes more.
Indeed it's probably slightly safer as it's lighter then air and so doesn't "pool" and become concentrated.
Outdoors of course :)
is how ignorant we as a people are of the rest of the world
It hasn't gone unnoticed by the rest of the world, either :) Very often there are revealing comments on /. like "Ghana is practically next door to South Africa", or responses to an article about a plan to build fiber optic connections around africa (funded by african companies no less) along the lines of "throwing pearls to pigs" and "what are these people going to do with the internet, they still talk in click languages". Another example was when a south african utility company (Eskom, one of the biggest utility companies in the world) was mentioned as being one of the main researchers of nuclear bubble reactors, there were comments like "third world countries should not be allowed to have nuclear power stations, they can't handle it" (neglecting that South Africa has built and maintained a nuclear power station without incident since the 1970s). Comments like that indicate a desire to form strong opinions about something that a person clearly knows very little about. (Lets not even go to comments about turning 3rd world countries into parking lots :)
I get the impression its a sort of deliberate arrogant ignorance, a sort of "other places in the world don't actually matter so why bother to learn" attitude. And its usually essentially impossible to even mention anything like this on /. without getting modded down instantly. Still, Americans have worked hard to attain the successes that do set them apart from so many other countries economically, and in a way it might be seen that they have a right to be a bit arrogant. But it does seem to come down to simply refusing to learn about other cultures, a willful ignorance that embodies the attitude of "who cares, other non-US people don't mean anything to the world".
Of course, thats only the general impression that the US gives of themselves outside of the US, I would hope that the majority of americans are not as arrogant as the more vocal ones.
At any rate, regarding terrorism, some parts of South Africa (particularly the Cape) have also had a problem for many years now with terrorist bombings, not as bad as places like Israel, but typically we have maybe two or three incidents a year. These are perpetrated by certain minority fringe groups. So we have everything to gain from an anti-terrorism campaign. Additionally, several South Africans also died in the WTC (one of which it seems may have been a distant relation of mine). South Africa did stand up and state that we back the anti-terrorist coalition (as have many other African countries), but I can't remember seeing any mention of any of them on CNN.
Anyway, thanks for the more positive comments :) I must admit I have never visited the states (although I plan to), so my opinions may be wrong, as I base them partially on the image that the US projects of themselves.
but there is NO harm in showing some pepsi ads on the screen while no one is at the computer
Has it occurred to you that any intended impartiality (and thus quality) of education is immediately placed at risk when the interests of a third-party are involved? Consider: (1) Do you think an education should be questioning and impartial? (2) Do you think that your education will in all cases remain questioning and impartial should a conflict of interests arise between the educators and the sponsors? (As an example, we already have educational institutions that ONLY teach Microsoft software, in exchange for donations of computers from Microsoft.)
This sort of thing happens, and will happen more and more in the future, particularly as more advertisers (and universities) start to realise that they get much better results from a highly targeted audience - that is, companies specifically related to some field sponsoring education of students within that field. That of course is nothing new, but in the past the sponsorship has been quiet and behind-the-scenes, while currently the trend is towards not only more overtly visible sponsorshop, but editorial control of the content of lectures by the sponsors. So Pepsi is not a very good example, as they probably don't have much interest in whether Linux or Windows gets used in the labs. But other sponsors will; and the Universities will accept those sponsors above Pepsi because more targeted advertising means better results which means more money.
Schools do need money of course, so this may in many cases not be a bad thing. Where do you draw the line?
Regarding the "nazi" comment: although I realise it was probably just hyperbole for effect, I kind of resent the noxious implication of an immediate association between being "anti-advertisement" and being a nazi. As I have explained, there can be valid reasons to be against this type of advertising; its a lot harder to justify the kind of fanatical white supremacy associated with nazis :)
Interestingly, South Africa is not part of the United States and its communications capabilities (or inabilities) have NOTHING to do with the original goal of the internet
Hmm .. I wasn't making any statement of the sort .. I just thought it was interesting, given the original goals of the internet ("routing around damage" etc), and the post made me think of it. Obviously those original goals now apply worldwide, not just in the US anymore.
No offense, but if you think that South Africa has any chance of being an enemy of the US, you can't know very much about it. We used to have nukes, yes, but the nuclear program was dismantled as I remember it a little over ten years ago. And in case you hadn't noticed, SA became has become a democracy during the last ten years, we have a very liberal constitution that was modelled partially after the US constitution, have a government that supports not only democracy but capitalism (which is actively in the process of privatisation of government assets), and South Africa has officially stated its support of the US in its "war on terrorism". If we're not committing specific *military* support, its because, well, we have a very weak military and given SAs own economic problems we can't exactly pull funds out of anything else. And not one South African I know of has any notion of being against the US in any sense. Whats with this isolationist nationalist stance of yours towards any country other than the US? You seem to be confusing South Africa with some of the hardline middle-east countries such as Afghanistan, although I can't imagine how you could possibly draw any connection, if you look on a map you'll notice its not even the same continent...
I don't have a problem with making our communications "dependent" (in that sense) on the well-being of the US. I'm not sure how you might have thought I was implying otherwise?? I'm all for bandwidth, the more the better.
Sheesh .. I'm afraid my imagination isn't vivid enough to think up all the strange ways people can possibly misunderstand the intent of a poster in an online forum.
to ensure a reliable method of communication in the event of an enemy attack here on US soil - and passed the test pretty well
Well .. interestingly .. in South Africa, we lost a fair chunk of international bandwidth (45 MBits, which (sadly) represents probably 20-30% of the entire country's commercial international bandwidth, if www.ispmap.org.za is anything to go by), which landed via a satellite connection in New York and ran through fiber near the WTC. It took roughly an hour or two before I could even access international sites again (compounded obviously by the "slashdotting" of many major sites). Still, thats not too bad overall. The bandwidth hasn't been replaced, so what was already horribly starved international bandwidth here is now even worse.
Of course, 45 MBits must sound horribly pitiful to developed countries :)
OK; I guess my experience has just been different. I work at a company that develops virtual reality training simulators (www.5dt.com), which technologically are fairly similar to games. Its not the sort of work where you can easily bluff, because if you don't know what you're doing, you either can't do anything at all, or you end up asking other programmers lots of questions all the time .. so its usually easy to spot which areas people lack knowledge in.
No proof? Where have you been living the past five years? Holy crap. I guess you could start with the courts "findings of fact" in the antitrust trial, but thats just the tip of the iceberg. What short memories people have. I guess you didn't read about the multiple times MS has been caught with fake grass-roots support campaigns, fake letters-to-the-editor etc. Or about the times MS has been caught writing code into their OS that either breaks competing companies programs or makes them look bad. Or about the times they've been caught buying "independent reviews". Or copying innovations from other companies and openly claiming that they were MS's innovations. Or when they attempted to "embrace and extend" Java. I guess you never noticed the "halloween document" either. Or the dirty licensing tricks they pulled with the SMB/Kerberos documents. Or when they were caught "cooking the books" in an attempt to smooth their apparent revenue growth, and fired one of their top accountants when he threatened to expose them. Or when they lied about hotmail finally having been converted to run ONLY on NT. Or when they stabbed IBM in the back after pretending be collaboratively developing OS/2. Or when they gave "discounts" to OEMs in exchange for enforcing monopolistic distribution of only Windows and no competing OSs, to the point where it was impossible at the majority of major computer vendors to even buy a PC without buying Windows. Or when there was a, uh, "bug" in IE that displayed a message box encouraging people to switch to ISPs that used Microsoft technology. Or donating computers to Universities in exchange for having the Universitys ONLY teach Microsoft software in their courses. Or when they were caught with Windows Update unknowingly sending personal information back to Microsoft (something that would be illegal in my country), and then claimed that although they had a database they "werent doing anything with it". Or when they were caught having Microsoft Word save identifying information into Word documents, which they then claimed was a "bug". The list goes on. Clearly YOU need to inform yourself. How many dirty tricks can *you* name that the Linux community has attempted to pull over the past ten years?
It amazes me how people are so willing to just "look the other way" and pretend these things don't happen, I presume just for the convenience of using Windows.
If you really believe that the Linux community has anywhere remotely near as many ethics abuses as Microsoft, then you seriously need to inform yourself. Go read up a little about even a *fraction* of the dirty tricks MS has gotten up to (and still get up to) over the past 10 years, and you might understand. Microsoft has proven their character, when they do something unethical, its "in character" for them. That is the main reason for the *apparent* hypocrisy in people being more forgiving towards the Linux community, which has in general shown itself to by and large care about ethics.
You're sick of fanatical Linux zealots? Well, I'm sick of people who defend Microsoft when they are clearly uninformed of the unethical tactics MS uses. Just arm yourself with a bit of information, dig a little bit underneath the thin rosy veil of apparent innocence and innovation that Microsoft advertising portrays. Its a funny thing, but every time MS gets caught redhanded, there is a brief media flurry, but then within a month or two everybody seems to have completely forgotten.
If there is intellectual property there it is in the original designer of the structure
Well then as I understand it the original designer of this structure was not Soren, as the structure is proprietary and undocumented and he reverse-engineered it. Given your argument, the IP belongs then to neither Soren or the RedHat developer who copied the structure. That is, of course, assuming that your argument is correct that the real IP is the structure itself.
Hmm .. I don't know about that. Programming is generally not a field you can bluff your way in, especially not with languages like C/C++, and with doing things like integrating RAID drivers into an OS kernel. I can see that you might fool management, but you can't fool your peers. Maybe for two or three weeks, but pretty quickly the other programmers will see through the bluff.
Can someone explain to me *why* a developer would strip off copyright info
Do we really know that the programmer explicitly *stripped off* the copyright info? Somehow, I doubt it. It seems more likely to me that the programmer opened up the original file and selected and copied *only the structs* etc into his own files, and that the copyright notice was probably never copied over to begin with. The programmer then either didn't even read the copyright info, or read it but later forgot about it when he delved back into the problem of trying to get the code to work.
We can't claim the copyright info was explicitly stripped off, we don't know that. Based on my own experiences as a programmer, more often than not you *only* copy the portion that you *need* (e.g. the struct), so it seems more likely to me that the copyright info never got copied and quite likely wasn't even noticed.
I think you're being rather unfair, jumping to conclusions with no evidence whatsoever that this was deliberate.
This could easily be a mistake. As a programmer myself, I can imagine I might easily make a mistake like that; when you're coding, you tend to concentrate and focus on the *code*, on the technical problem itself and its solution, and getting the stuff to work. I don't think about stuff like the copyright info etc when I program - its not part of the problem I'm focusing on, its not "real stuff", its almost like some "unnecessary administrative fluff" that has nothing to do with the actual task at hand, its an overhead. I often forget in my own code to put the copyright notices in, and none of the other programmers at work ever remember to put the works copyright notice in at all - I usually run round adding that to all the source code files afterwards, in one go near the end of a project. Programmers aren't by default thinking about "administrative overhead" stuff like software licenses, they're thinking about the problem, about structs/classes/functions/algorithms etc. Heck, many programmers don't even think much about putting human-readable comments in the code. So it seems to me far more likely that this person opened the original file and cut-n-paste the *struct*, possibly without even reading the "administrative fluff" (programmers usually being in a hurry to get something working). I doubt they copied the file and physically removed the copyright notice. Its much more likely it was the other way round, that the copyright notice never even got there because only the struct was copied over. Perhaps the guy intended to put the copyright notice back but forgot by getting distracted by the task of getting things to work.
Programmers very often work under unreasonably tight deadlines too, compounding the problem. Many programmers I know code "in a hurry".
Yes, programmers should learn that they need to think about intellectual property issues. But almost no programmers *by default* gives consideration to IP issues, that needs to be taught, and the majority of computer courses I know of either don't treat the issue at all, or have a very tiny "token" course on IP issues.
I doubt this wasn't an honest mistake, given the information I have I would give the guy the benefit of the doubt in this. I think its unfair to make public accusations on /. as if they were fact. Neither you nor I know for sure; it just seems the most *likely* to me that this was not foulplay but ignorance/carelessness. You act as if you *know* thats what happened!?! Not only is it pure conjecture, but you then go so far as to extend that conjecture to apply to ALL related developers, which is quite ridiculous. Guilt by association. Be fair; apply the "innocent until proven guilty" reasoning. Peoples lives can be ruined by someone making false public accusations that never get proven (usually paedophile-related issues, but the same principle applies in general), so just hope that should you ever fall into a situation where you've made a mistake and it doesn't make you look good that nobody like you is around publicly claiming you're guilty.
Yes, the community would be "out for blood" if this had been MS. But you hint that this is hypocrisy. Thats unfair. People would have good reason to be "out for blood" if it were MS, quite simply because Microsofts history over the past ten years has shown again and again and again that they have an extremely, um, "limited" concept of ethics. MS doesn't care if they lie and cheat and steal, they've shown this again and again. The Linux community does not have a history of ignoring ethics. Its not hypocrisy.
The government is currently stepping up efforts to control what is brought on-board airplanes
Which is why the next attack may be planting bombs on trains. Or possibly flying bombs using small planes into nuclear power stations. Or possibly dropping toxic chemicals from small planes over populated areas. Or possibly poisoning the water supply to a densely populated area. Or possibly even the 'suitcase nuke' scenario, which I'm sure Osama would gladly use if he had one because its the most likely thing to really destroy the US economy (which is one of his primary goals ..)
The general problem here is that with a bit of imagination, there are many possibilities for terrorists, and its almost impossible to increase security to the level where all possible attacks can be blocked. The only real solution is to destroy religous fundamentalism - terrorism today is largely just one of the *symptoms* of fundamentalism.
Back to the topic, PGP is of course merely an extension of the existing ability (and rights) of people to have private conversations. Banning strong encryption is NOT going to stop terrorism, (a) because terrorists will still use it (if not overtly, they'll use it through e.g. steganography), (b) because terrorists will still be able to get together in a house or a park or desert or mountain cabin somewhere and discuss their plans at length, (c) because you've done nothing to curb the desire of people to commit acts of terrorism (e.g, dismantle organized religion).
So either you advocate microphones and cameras in every home, office building, car etc (the real-life equivalent of mandatory electronic communication backdoors), or you advocate the existence of technology like PGP. Either people have a right to communicate privately, or they don't, its one or the other. This stuff should have been built right into email protocols from the start, then people would expect it to be private, now people seem to see email privacy as a priviledge.
That did not stop the perpetrators of September 11th, unfortunately
Yes, it is unlikely to stop the most radical fringe. But it would have an effect on millions of other muslims whose opinions are not quite as, uh, "solidly formed" as the radical fringe. That would greatly diminish the existing public support for that fringe. Remember, public opinion is highly fickle. By reducing overall support for their "cause", you reduce (a) the number of places where the radicals can find safe harbor, (b) the number of new recruits willing to join up to Osama's army, (c) the amount and level of funding and weapons that they currently get, (d) support from other countries. In effect, you isolate the radical groups till they have little or no support and cannot continue their operations.
im sure some would want to be corrupted, but many would reject capitalism even more
Personally I think most would allow themselves to be "corrupted" in that way (I think "corrupted" is the wrong word but anyway). I base that on western christianity .. remember, christianity has very much the same teachings (e.g. "it is harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.."). And yet that doesn't stop 99.9% of western christians from living in beautiful homes, buying expensive cars, expensive home entertainment systems, making use of modern medicine, buying expensive fashionable shoes and jeans etc. Generally, I think once people are given real cushy lifestyles, its very hard to give that up, and those religous teachings start to take second place (in my opinion, if you can for example afford to spend thousands of dollars on an expensive home entertainment system, or can afford a very nice car, or if you just spent a couple thousand on leather lounge furniture that you know you didn't really need, then you would qualify as one of those "rich men" who will struggle to enter the kingdom of heaven..)
Don't forget that, as the LA Times article points out, these people do not yearn for worldly goods so the lure of (comparitive) luxury and posessions is of no value
Thats true, but I think once people get used to luxuries, it is very hard for them to give them up.
I've been wondering why Christianity has become such a "docile" religion lately (historically, Christian fanatics have had a not-unsimilar history to Islam fanatics, in terms of trying to spread their religion worldwide) .. in fact many of the teachings seem to be very similar (e.g. 'it is harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven' etc in Christianity is very much like what we hear about these Islam beliefs, from the article, 'the less they have here on earth, the more they will have in the afterlife'). And yet in spite of this, not a single Christian I know of makes any effort whatsoever to shed the materialistic "trappings" in their lives. In fact, some of the most devout Christians I know are just as materialistic as anyone else, drool over expensive cars like we all do, or obsess about having a real high-quality sound system, living in a nice house, having an expensive television, DVD player etc. This always seemed hypocritical to me; it seems in modern western Christianity, Christianity always comes second, even amongst the most devout. But I would much rather live with hypocritical Christians than real fanatical muslims (I mean the fanatical ones, the terrorists who would kill you, not the ordinary ones). Sure, you have the odd US fanatic who blows up abortion clinics and murders doctors etc, but its such a tiny fringe, and their targets are so limited in scope.
Its very hard for anyone to give up not just modern comforts, but the benefits of modern medicine too. Once you have all that, it seems religion starts to take second place. Which IMHO is a good thing .. religion is too powerful a tool for manipulating people.