Unfortunately, religious convictions run high on both sides of the issue; I once found myself being denounced as just another conspiracist for suggesting an almost-completely bizarre theory that I made clear I didn't even accept wholeheartedly - my accuser had stopped listening way before then.
We all believe what our continued happiness needs us to believe - for some of us it's that the government is out to get us all; for others it's that the authorities are primarily benevolent; for many it's that there's a God ultimately looking out for the world, no matter what befalls it; for me it's that scepticism should start at home and spread outwards in all directions - and we get upset when those beliefs are challenged, because we have so much built on them. But what you believe is really not that important, so long as you've got there yourself, and don't want to stop anyone else from doing the same; getting upset with conspiracy theorists is as silly as getting upset with those who accept the mainstream account.
What is worth getting upset about is someone's desire to impose their own beliefs on everyone else; that impulse has nothing to do with faith or reason.
Yet even that may be an exaggeration. According to the BBC rebuttal, it simply wasn't set as a coursework, rather than the whole lesson being dropped. So since there are no details, let's indulge in some hypothesising:
Let's say that you're a history teacher and your school has a large number of Muslim pupils, and the leader of the local mosque (and his version of recent European history) commands a heck of a lot more respect than you or any of your colleagues. Not to mention that his son is one of the brightest - and most confident - kids in your class. Furthermore, your head teacher is a bit spineless, and the school itself is on the brink of being labelled a "failing school" and having central government intervene; one more bad set of league table results, and the head and half the staff are history. Set your kids a coursework on the Holocaust (or anything else controversial, but the Holocaust is the big one in History GCSE syllabi) and you know from past experience that you're likely to get such a ragbag of half-truths and distortions back that you'll have to fail a disproportionate number of those kids; in contrast, they'll probably get their teeth right into Stalinism, having enjoyed it all year and having been as staunchly anti-communist as anyone else. Clearly the easiest way out is simply not to set a Holocaust essay as a coursework - but when people start asking the school secretary why not, what's she going to tell them? Will she be privy to your reasoning, or will she just remember overhearing you say "and of course, Ibrahim keeps saying it never happened" as she was walking through the staff room that one time?
That's one way it COULD have happened. I'm not saying it DID happen that way, but it appeals to my understanding of what people are like. Unfortunately, in a world where every mistake is displayed forever in a public museum, where there is no proportion, no forgiveness, and nobody can follow a causal chain with more than one fucking LINK in it any more... this happens.
Why stop there? Clearly, every time you play a piece of music, even for yourself, you are enjoying it anew. Is it fair that you can enjoy that piece of music a thousand times, yet the artist is only rewarded for your enjoyment once? Is it fair that you can enjoy one piece of music a thousand times, and not enjoy another piece of music even once, and yet the artists are rewarded the same? Is it? Look at this picture of Chewbacca. Is that fair? Well, is it?
Except that the whole reason we're in this morass is that the majority of people seem to WANT the middle-grounders! The only way that a range of parties would end up in the Commons would be for the three (ok, 2.5) big ones to fragment into their various factions - at which point they'd all end up coalescing again to form governments and we'd be in a not entirely dissimilar position from now. And whilst having governments forced into stalemate by the death of a thousand compromises might be a good way to ensure that they don't do too much, what they do manage to agree on will end up being the lowest common denominator, ineffectual and/or populist - the very distinctiveness you're touting as a benefit of PR will be left at the doors of the Commons.
And of course, the most significant weakness of the present system - Parliamentary supremacy, which allows the executive to run amok without any legal responsibility whatsoever - would be left intact... and rendered virtually unchangeable.
Broken how? In order to exist in permanent coalition, the parties would have to get even closer to each other than they are now, and voting would become even more of a beauty contest than it is today, with nothing of substance to separate the parties - the current "moderate" (actually heavily authoritarian, pro-corporate, anti-individual, regressively-taxing) political climate would be entrenched forever. And of course, let's not forget that the main beneficiaries of proportional representation would be... the Liberal Democrats. Whodathunkit?
The current system has its share of glaring deficiencies, but proportional representation would only fix one of them - and it might just provide the means for the rest to become a whole lot worse.
And for others of us, those attributes preserved by FOSS are key criteria for awarding "best tool" status. You make your choice, I'll make mine; we don't have to think each other is correct, so long as we stay out of each other's way. Problems only arise when you start to believe that you have a right to make my choice for me, or on the flipside of that coin, when you decide that the rationale for my choice is necessarily a condemnation of yours.
Other people have gone there and reached the exact opposite conclusion - but I raise my hat to both you and those other people, because in going out there and seeing for yourself, you've demonstrated a willingness to not just sit back and take someone else's word for it - which is really all that matters in life.
The Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. A fine unbiased source you've found there. Well done. Moreover, I count 13 scientists that they claim have shifted, which compared with the 11,000 TFA mentions isn't very many.
The CS Monitor - ah yes, a fine peer-reviewed scientific journal. However, TFA states that two of the 19 populations of polar bears is rising; this article is presumably about one of them. That still leaves two falling and 15 whose status is unknown. (I'm guessing you didn't read past the titles in either case, since even the CSM article mentions that of a dozen other populations in Canada, two are known to be in decline - one by 22%.)
Whatever the truth of the matter, and I don't have a clue about that - on the strength of this showing I have no hesitation in determining that *you* aren't qualified to pass judgement.
But the GPL cements the right to redistribute in a world where copyright laws prohibit redistribution by default. Remove that prohibition on redistribution - return to a situation where redistribution can be done at will, by anyone with access to the source, heedless of authorship - and the GPL ceases to be necessary.
Remember that the value of a binary-only distribution currently lies in the ability to place restrictions on further redistribution. Without that, X may choose not to share the source of a work, or to only share it for a fee, but without the prohibition on X's first customer sticking it on their website and saying "come get it!" X will probably have a hard time actually accruing money for distribution. X could, of course, offer the binary for free whilst never revealing the source code; that is as much X's right as writing a program in secret and never sharing it at all. But what X would lose is the right to impose an artificial monopoly on distribution; whether in source or binary form, effectively X's only means of income would be the first sale. So even if X had used Y's source code, which Y had clearly stated should always be made public, the inequity that the GPL explicitly redresses (that X could do this and enforce restrictions on further redistribution completely contrary to Y's intentions) would no longer be possible.
So whilst the GPL is the best that can be done in a hostile environment, under friendlier circumstances it wouldn't even be necessary. Which renders discussion of its enforceability moot.
"And the irony of this was this is the person in charge os admissions and very vocal nationally about how high school students should worry less about their resume."
"He did nothing that people with Macs or Linux or BSD on their computer are allowed to do. Its only Windows computers that they force users to run Cisco Clean Access"...so wouldn't the legitimate way to avoid having do to so be to use a different operating system to connect with the university network, running some form of emulation software for such Windows software as his course mandates, if any?
Slashdot Mirror
The phrase "can't even give it away" springs to mind, for some reason.
Unfortunately, religious convictions run high on both sides of the issue; I once found myself being denounced as just another conspiracist for suggesting an almost-completely bizarre theory that I made clear I didn't even accept wholeheartedly - my accuser had stopped listening way before then.
We all believe what our continued happiness needs us to believe - for some of us it's that the government is out to get us all; for others it's that the authorities are primarily benevolent; for many it's that there's a God ultimately looking out for the world, no matter what befalls it; for me it's that scepticism should start at home and spread outwards in all directions - and we get upset when those beliefs are challenged, because we have so much built on them. But what you believe is really not that important, so long as you've got there yourself, and don't want to stop anyone else from doing the same; getting upset with conspiracy theorists is as silly as getting upset with those who accept the mainstream account.
What is worth getting upset about is someone's desire to impose their own beliefs on everyone else; that impulse has nothing to do with faith or reason.
Strange, on the box it looked... bigger.
Yet even that may be an exaggeration. According to the BBC rebuttal, it simply wasn't set as a coursework, rather than the whole lesson being dropped. So since there are no details, let's indulge in some hypothesising:
Let's say that you're a history teacher and your school has a large number of Muslim pupils, and the leader of the local mosque (and his version of recent European history) commands a heck of a lot more respect than you or any of your colleagues. Not to mention that his son is one of the brightest - and most confident - kids in your class. Furthermore, your head teacher is a bit spineless, and the school itself is on the brink of being labelled a "failing school" and having central government intervene; one more bad set of league table results, and the head and half the staff are history. Set your kids a coursework on the Holocaust (or anything else controversial, but the Holocaust is the big one in History GCSE syllabi) and you know from past experience that you're likely to get such a ragbag of half-truths and distortions back that you'll have to fail a disproportionate number of those kids; in contrast, they'll probably get their teeth right into Stalinism, having enjoyed it all year and having been as staunchly anti-communist as anyone else. Clearly the easiest way out is simply not to set a Holocaust essay as a coursework - but when people start asking the school secretary why not, what's she going to tell them? Will she be privy to your reasoning, or will she just remember overhearing you say "and of course, Ibrahim keeps saying it never happened" as she was walking through the staff room that one time?
That's one way it COULD have happened. I'm not saying it DID happen that way, but it appeals to my understanding of what people are like. Unfortunately, in a world where every mistake is displayed forever in a public museum, where there is no proportion, no forgiveness, and nobody can follow a causal chain with more than one fucking LINK in it any more... this happens.
Yes, but that's only because 10 of the 11 competing OSes have had *BS* somewhere in their name, some time in their past.
(Splitters.)
Why stop there? Clearly, every time you play a piece of music, even for yourself, you are enjoying it anew. Is it fair that you can enjoy that piece of music a thousand times, yet the artist is only rewarded for your enjoyment once? Is it fair that you can enjoy one piece of music a thousand times, and not enjoy another piece of music even once, and yet the artists are rewarded the same? Is it? Look at this picture of Chewbacca. Is that fair? Well, is it?
The irony being that when her records are played in the UK, where you (and I) are commenting from, she does get a royalty...
Except that the whole reason we're in this morass is that the majority of people seem to WANT the middle-grounders! The only way that a range of parties would end up in the Commons would be for the three (ok, 2.5) big ones to fragment into their various factions - at which point they'd all end up coalescing again to form governments and we'd be in a not entirely dissimilar position from now. And whilst having governments forced into stalemate by the death of a thousand compromises might be a good way to ensure that they don't do too much, what they do manage to agree on will end up being the lowest common denominator, ineffectual and/or populist - the very distinctiveness you're touting as a benefit of PR will be left at the doors of the Commons.
And of course, the most significant weakness of the present system - Parliamentary supremacy, which allows the executive to run amok without any legal responsibility whatsoever - would be left intact... and rendered virtually unchangeable.
Broken how? In order to exist in permanent coalition, the parties would have to get even closer to each other than they are now, and voting would become even more of a beauty contest than it is today, with nothing of substance to separate the parties - the current "moderate" (actually heavily authoritarian, pro-corporate, anti-individual, regressively-taxing) political climate would be entrenched forever. And of course, let's not forget that the main beneficiaries of proportional representation would be... the Liberal Democrats. Whodathunkit?
The current system has its share of glaring deficiencies, but proportional representation would only fix one of them - and it might just provide the means for the rest to become a whole lot worse.
Ouch, that was unlucky! They only shout banal insults at most people.
On the bright side, these policies are having some effect on their behaviour. One of them was probably filming it...
And for others of us, those attributes preserved by FOSS are key criteria for awarding "best tool" status. You make your choice, I'll make mine; we don't have to think each other is correct, so long as we stay out of each other's way. Problems only arise when you start to believe that you have a right to make my choice for me, or on the flipside of that coin, when you decide that the rationale for my choice is necessarily a condemnation of yours.
If it makes you feel better, there could have been a bank involved.
I think that the association between Michael Bolton and criminal records is well understood by everyone.
Other people have gone there and reached the exact opposite conclusion - but I raise my hat to both you and those other people, because in going out there and seeing for yourself, you've demonstrated a willingness to not just sit back and take someone else's word for it - which is really all that matters in life.
The Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. A fine unbiased source you've found there. Well done. Moreover, I count 13 scientists that they claim have shifted, which compared with the 11,000 TFA mentions isn't very many.
The CS Monitor - ah yes, a fine peer-reviewed scientific journal. However, TFA states that two of the 19 populations of polar bears is rising; this article is presumably about one of them. That still leaves two falling and 15 whose status is unknown. (I'm guessing you didn't read past the titles in either case, since even the CSM article mentions that of a dozen other populations in Canada, two are known to be in decline - one by 22%.)
Whatever the truth of the matter, and I don't have a clue about that - on the strength of this showing I have no hesitation in determining that *you* aren't qualified to pass judgement.
Why would they need to sue?
On the grounds that it's a business method?
"You'll see through our bullshit" would seem to be a pretty good translation.
That's a perfectly natural reaction. I still do it today.
What I don't do, though, is contact a major news network and complain that the chair tripped me up and that chairs are unsafe by their nature.
But the GPL cements the right to redistribute in a world where copyright laws prohibit redistribution by default. Remove that prohibition on redistribution - return to a situation where redistribution can be done at will, by anyone with access to the source, heedless of authorship - and the GPL ceases to be necessary.
Remember that the value of a binary-only distribution currently lies in the ability to place restrictions on further redistribution. Without that, X may choose not to share the source of a work, or to only share it for a fee, but without the prohibition on X's first customer sticking it on their website and saying "come get it!" X will probably have a hard time actually accruing money for distribution. X could, of course, offer the binary for free whilst never revealing the source code; that is as much X's right as writing a program in secret and never sharing it at all. But what X would lose is the right to impose an artificial monopoly on distribution; whether in source or binary form, effectively X's only means of income would be the first sale. So even if X had used Y's source code, which Y had clearly stated should always be made public, the inequity that the GPL explicitly redresses (that X could do this and enforce restrictions on further redistribution completely contrary to Y's intentions) would no longer be possible.
So whilst the GPL is the best that can be done in a hostile environment, under friendlier circumstances it wouldn't even be necessary. Which renders discussion of its enforceability moot.
"And the irony of this was this is the person in charge os admissions and very vocal nationally about how high school students should worry less about their resume."
At least she was consistent, then.
Oops, that'll teach me to trust Google over my own memory.
"He did nothing that people with Macs or Linux or BSD on their computer are allowed to do. Its only Windows computers that they force users to run Cisco Clean Access" ...so wouldn't the legitimate way to avoid having do to so be to use a different operating system to connect with the university network, running some form of emulation software for such Windows software as his course mandates, if any?
Du hexe hasen!
And suddenly I know exactly how the original photo came about...