Christians do so, their arguments are rejected a priori, because they are Christian, not because they are flawed.
That's not what this is about. It's people who clearly are motivated by religious principle who pretend that they are talking purely as scientists. Creationists at least are honest. ID proponents are just hypocritical liars.
It seems an odd emphasis to call it a "secret" mailing list. It wasn't public, but does that make it sinister? Surely administrators are allowed to communicate with each other without making their emails public?
Some Register journalists seem to have a grudge against Wikipedia and take every opportunity to run it down -- and if you think I'm a Wikipedian acolyte, I just casually, anonymously, edit articles as I come across errors. I've had a few busybodies revert my edits, declaring them "vandalism", so I'm aware that there are "injustices" done, but on the whole I think it works.
2) Is it really a good idea to be sending laptops to children with no electricity?
As opposed to what? And obviously, the laptops are not being parachuted into villages with no support. The schools where they are being distributed have servers (and electricity). Read about the deployment in Uruguay.
It's also been suggested that although getting sick from your drinking water is indeed quite unpleasant, that you'll end up with an immune system that's much stronger overall as a result.
Bullshit. Heard of cholera? Dysentery? Bilharzia? Typhoid? No one is stronger for having these, if they survive. I had typhoid once in Indonesia, it took 6 months to get over it. Would you condemn millions to die in infancy for this fatuous neo-Darwinist theory? Try mixing some sewage with your Evian and see how you go.
But why is it opt out when every other media is opt in?
1) "Every other media is opt in" -- not true. Fair use applies for most media, allowing summaries and brief quotes without permission, which is what this is about. E.g.: Watch your TV news and you'll often see video taken from other TV news shows, clearly often without explicit permission -- does any US station pay Al Jazeera when they use their video?
2) The web has always been "opt-out". Thus if you change this assumption, the vast majority of web pages, with no expressed policy, would be excluded from search engines.
Which does not preclude him from being a fundamentalist. His fathering nine children rather suggests that. But even if he isn't, he obviously is a man of strong Christian beliefs. If you could name an atheist who believed in ID, I'd be astonished.
evolutionary theory does have some serious logical problems,
Let me say here that I disagree, but won't spend the next 400 posts arguing the point. Just advising that this point is disputed.
ID - as articulated - could mean that life on this planet was not the result of God, but rather, intelligent space aliens.
Name one ID proponent who sincerely believes this. Every single one of them is a fundamental Christian. Creationists invented ID as a response to constitutional prohibitions of teaching religion -- and when we say "religion", again it's only fundamental Christianity. I don't think you'll find any Muslims, Jews, let alone Buddhists or Hindus, who buy into ID.
You can equally well get a +5 mod for both "pro-American" and "anti-American" posts. Unless they're outright trollish (and sometimes even then).
There are a lot more Americans than others posting, and modding. And if you challenge them on their more jingoistic statements you often find yourself modded to -1 Troll. For instance, a disaster in my country brought a series of tasteless "jokes" at the expense of the dead, "+5 Funny", recycling tired stereotypes. Complaining about the improproety of that got me slapped down.
nd we don't know what online communities she posted on. She could very well have been spouting all kinds of nonsense and generally making an ass of herself.
OK, I just came across a copy of the email at scienceblog:
Dear Austin-area friends of NCSE,
I thought that you might like to know that Barbara Forrest will be speaking on "Inside Creationism's Trojan Horse" in Austin on November 2, 2007. Her talk, sponsored by the Center for Inquiry Austin, begins at 7:00 p.m. in the Monarch Event Center, Suite 3100, 6406 North IH-35 in Austin. The cost is $6; free to friends of the Center.
In her talk, Forrest will provide a detailed report on her expert testimony in the Kitzmiller v. Dover School Board trial as well as an overview of the history of the "intelligent design" movement. Forrest is a Professor of Philosophy in the Department of History and Political Science at Southeastern Louisiana University; she is also a member of NCSE's board of directors.
She wasn't sacked because she published an anti-ID opinion. She was sacked because she published ANY opinion
While the the Slashdot summary suggests that, ("apparently"...), the NYT article does not say she expressed any opinion on the subject. Perhaps there was an implication she supported the person whose seminar she announced.
She could very well have been spouting all kinds of nonsense and generally making an ass of herself.
If so, I think it would have been mentioned. Obviously someone was out to get her and would have used all the evidence they could. You can't assume she was "spouting nonsense" without a shred of proof.
The second is that her job is very political and stepping on the wrong toe can easily get you canned.
Someone in her position is going to be acutely aware of that and how every word she says is on the record. She (and I) probably thought it was not outside her responsibilities to announce a seminar.
She apparently circulated an e-mail that was critical of ID
Not according to TFA.
The move came shortly after she forwarded an e-mail message announcing a presentation by Barbara Forrest, an author of Creationisms Trojan Horse. The book argues that creationist politics are behind the movement to get intelligent design theory taught in public schools. Ms. Comer sent the message to several people and a few online communities.
Now one might certainly deduce that she wasn't enamoured with ID, but she did not "apparently" criticise ID. She announced a talk by someone who probably does, though. Which is not the same thing as stating it was her opinion.
How anyone can argue with a straight face that ID is anything but "Creationism in a new suit" is beyond me. Every single ID proponent was, and I'm sure still is, a Creationist. Their literature has been shown to be creationist tracts with a search-and-replace applied.
Why the hell are these stories headlined "porn thieves", "Stealing porn"? Nothing was "stolen" from anyone. Files were copied. The customers very likely downloaded them free. (I know I can find gigabytes of free porn in minutes; I don't know why anyone would actually pay for it).
So what was the "crime" committed again? Invasion of customers' privacy? Why not say that? No one is talking about the losses of the poor porn producers, so why even mention it.
That's a funny sort of opinion to post on Slashdot, where if you don't avoid offending the groupthink, you soon aren't able to post at all.
Bullshit. For all its faults, there are certainly plenty of opinionated people on both (or more) sides of most contentious issues. Look at the flame fests when "evolution" or "Gun rights" are mentioned. Plenty of +5 rated posts on both sides. And you can support OR piss on Microsoft, Apple or Linux and find support for your view.
Just look at this thread where all these wacky Ron Paul supporters have made a bunch of off-topic posts promoting their candidate, yet are still not modded down.
About the only thing guaranteed to get you modded down is if your (foreign) country is attacked by some redneck American and you complain about it, or worse, retaliate. Then you will be attacked and modded down quickly enough. As you may guess, that has happened to me often enough; yet still I have "excellent karma" from my other posts so always start at +2.
I've actually dealt with real world copyright contracts and disputes.
I don't see how you can possibly know that
According to TFA, it was 200 lines posted in a newsgroup, by the author. That pretty much shows how much he valued it. It would be easy to show a court that whole newsgroups are devoted to similar sharing, in the real sense, when the person offering the code created it. Copyright cases do take into account the value of the thing being copied, and particularly any loss sustained by the creator. In this case, no loss could be shown, and his posting it in a newsgroup without any copyright notice precludes him from claiming statutory damages.
Why would he make it up?
To get on Slashdot. Same as any "FP!" idiot. As I said, you would be insane to expose this to the world, as it will be now on record forever after.
Just look at older "Ask Slashdot" posts and tell me how many you think are embellished if not completely fictional. A high percentage of stories with sources turn out to be lies, hoaxes, or completely misrepresented, let alone these anonymous little anecdotes.
As for your advice, you're advocating breaking the law
What law, in particular? I know a little about copyright law. I'm pretty sure if it came to court, damages if any would be minimal considering the way the orignal author openly published his code. Of course, just going to court would be immensely time consuming and expensive, so it's a situation to be avoided if at all possible. Because of that, I'd just talk to the guy who used the code and if he didn't want to do anything about it, I'd send him a memo to put it on the record that he was responsible.
As for your "it's all just a fairy tale" theory, that sounds like someone who's never seen a colleague get screwed because of something like this even though it wasn't really their fault
I didn't say that this situation could not have occurred. But it strains my credulity to believe that it happened to the poster. If it had, he would be a compete idiot to share it with the world on "Ask Slashdot". He would be almost sure to lose his job now whatever he does, as he's publically admitted liability and just about invited a law suit from someone who would have otherwise been totally unaware of the situation. If he existed.
In any case, if the situation is not resolved quickly and appropriately, I would be planning on finding another job as soon as possible, since you really don't want to get caught up in any potential legal action
It's 200 lines of code someone published, deliberately, without any copyright or other notice. While that is not quite the same as public domain, the author has very little claim to anything aside from attribution.
That "even the comments are the same" suggests the guy who copied it wasn't trying to cover his tracks. Every Comp Sci student knows that when copying someone else's homework you change the comments and variable names at least. In other words, forget about it. No one was hurt, nothing was "stolen". If it comes to light, play dumb.
But when I read some of these "Ask Slashdot" scenarios, I often suspect they're carefully constructed fairy tales, made up to provoke controversy, not to solve a real world problem. Since the poster has gone public with this posting, he would be in deep shit should he do anything except make a full report of it to his superiors. And making this embarrassing transgression public would probably mean the end of his career. But as I said, likely none of this is real.
No, they didn't. Courts don't say someone is "probably guilty".
Guess you didn't read the FTS let alone the FTA.
WTF is "FTS" and "FTA"? Get your TLAs clear.
If you trust the Slashdot summary, "you must be new here", as we old hands say.
And TFA says:
However, in a pre-ruling, Judge Oren Schwartz said that the blog's content raised suspicions of criminal conduct,
"suspicion"/= "probably"
Which he possibly didn't read
True, but that's a different issue.
You said he could not have defended himself and remained anonymous. He wasn't given much of a chance, but he DID have that option.
That's a fine and dandy answer to my second statement. Now how about my first statement?
I have no comment on that. If you want alternatives; get a laptop and hook up to open wifi points. Don't use use your neighbour's, the Gestapo would just kick down doors till they found you.
I live in an apartment and only have one choice of ISP. What do you suggest I do? I also edit Wikipedia a lot, and Wikipedia has banned most Tor IPs. What do you suggest I do?
Your edits at Wikipedia are logged anyway. So what would be the pont of using Tor? If you make a lot of edits you must surely have an account -- if only to defend your edits against reversion and being declared a "vandal" by some officious Wikitwat.
Google ultimately did the right thing. Questions of alleged criminal activity were in play
Courts should decide if criminal allegations are true. Google has an obligation to their client, the blogger (regardless of whether it was a paid or free account, Google was selling ads on his pages). To violate his privacy should have required a court order.
What happens when the person being slandered is denied the ability to stop it using the courts because there isn't enough evidence to justify revealing the IP address but the slander continues. How would you feel if this was happening to you and google declined to hep without a court order? How long would this take and can the damage ever be repaired?
Saying "the person being slandered" begs the question of whether slander has been committed.
If a court determines slander has been committed, the court will order the owner of the IP to be revealed, and presumably punished. Any "damages" can then be pursued in a civil suit. You seem to be arguing that you should have the right to demand the identity of anyone who you claim to have slandered you without regard for any standards of proof.
I wonder why these days any American Uni would want their intellecual property transmitted over google.cn routers?
I can't imagine how that could happen unless the recipient was actually in China. In which case, China controls the ISPs and you have no hope of privacy. Regardless, sending unencrypted email anywhere to anyone is just hoping that no one en route wants to snoop. Ten years ago I installed a PGP plugin to my email client. But I gave it up when I migrated to my next system, because absolutely no one I was corresponding with was interested in encryption, no matter how "one-click" simple. Even now, when the US government openly spies on every message in the US, and probably most messages in the world, no one seems bothered. But they raise a fuss about street cams that might show them scratching their ass in public....
Anyway, the moral is, if you want privacy and security, spend 10 minutes and install your own PGP. You don't have to trust Google, Microsoft, your ISP or the government, just trust Phil Zimmerman.
It's not a false dichotomy, you can only spend the same money once.
It's not the same money. Much of the investment in OLPC is from high tech companies, which would not be contributing to more "mundane" causes if not for the OLPC. And government investment would go to other IT projects if not this one; that's the point of TFA, Intel and Microsoft are taking shares of the pie. If not for OLPC, probably MORE would (or will) be spent on these.
And if you still insist on the "one pot" theory, why not complain about the millions of dollars spent on Mercedes Benz for government ministers in impoverished countries? Billions spent on weapons? Fortunes spent on cosmetics? More billions spent on cigarettes and alcohol? Why pick on the OLPC to pick up the tab?
Slashdot Mirror
That's not what this is about. It's people who clearly are motivated by religious principle who pretend that they are talking purely as scientists. Creationists at least are honest. ID proponents are just hypocritical liars.
Actually, that was my point.
Some Register journalists seem to have a grudge against Wikipedia and take every opportunity to run it down -- and if you think I'm a Wikipedian acolyte, I just casually, anonymously, edit articles as I come across errors. I've had a few busybodies revert my edits, declaring them "vandalism", so I'm aware that there are "injustices" done, but on the whole I think it works.
As opposed to what? And obviously, the laptops are not being parachuted into villages with no support. The schools where they are being distributed have servers (and electricity). Read about the deployment in Uruguay.
It's also been suggested that although getting sick from your drinking water is indeed quite unpleasant, that you'll end up with an immune system that's much stronger overall as a result.
Bullshit. Heard of cholera? Dysentery? Bilharzia? Typhoid? No one is stronger for having these, if they survive. I had typhoid once in Indonesia, it took 6 months to get over it. Would you condemn millions to die in infancy for this fatuous neo-Darwinist theory? Try mixing some sewage with your Evian and see how you go.
1) "Every other media is opt in" -- not true. Fair use applies for most media, allowing summaries and brief quotes without permission, which is what this is about. E.g.: Watch your TV news and you'll often see video taken from other TV news shows, clearly often without explicit permission -- does any US station pay Al Jazeera when they use their video?
2) The web has always been "opt-out". Thus if you change this assumption, the vast majority of web pages, with no expressed policy, would be excluded from search engines.
Which does not preclude him from being a fundamentalist. His fathering nine children rather suggests that. But even if he isn't, he obviously is a man of strong Christian beliefs. If you could name an atheist who believed in ID, I'd be astonished.
evolutionary theory does have some serious logical problems,
Let me say here that I disagree, but won't spend the next 400 posts arguing the point. Just advising that this point is disputed.
Name one ID proponent who sincerely believes this. Every single one of them is a fundamental Christian. Creationists invented ID as a response to constitutional prohibitions of teaching religion -- and when we say "religion", again it's only fundamental Christianity. I don't think you'll find any Muslims, Jews, let alone Buddhists or Hindus, who buy into ID.
There are a lot more Americans than others posting, and modding. And if you challenge them on their more jingoistic statements you often find yourself modded to -1 Troll. For instance, a disaster in my country brought a series of tasteless "jokes" at the expense of the dead, "+5 Funny", recycling tired stereotypes. Complaining about the improproety of that got me slapped down.
OK, I just came across a copy of the email at scienceblog:
To which Ms Comer added (spouted?) "FYI".
Nonsense?
While the the Slashdot summary suggests that, ("apparently"...), the NYT article does not say she expressed any opinion on the subject. Perhaps there was an implication she supported the person whose seminar she announced.
If so, I think it would have been mentioned. Obviously someone was out to get her and would have used all the evidence they could. You can't assume she was "spouting nonsense" without a shred of proof.
The second is that her job is very political and stepping on the wrong toe can easily get you canned.
Someone in her position is going to be acutely aware of that and how every word she says is on the record. She (and I) probably thought it was not outside her responsibilities to announce a seminar.
Not according to TFA.
Now one might certainly deduce that she wasn't enamoured with ID, but she did not "apparently" criticise ID. She announced a talk by someone who probably does, though. Which is not the same thing as stating it was her opinion.How anyone can argue with a straight face that ID is anything but "Creationism in a new suit" is beyond me. Every single ID proponent was, and I'm sure still is, a Creationist. Their literature has been shown to be creationist tracts with a search-and-replace applied.
So what was the "crime" committed again? Invasion of customers' privacy? Why not say that? No one is talking about the losses of the poor porn producers, so why even mention it.
Bullshit. For all its faults, there are certainly plenty of opinionated people on both (or more) sides of most contentious issues. Look at the flame fests when "evolution" or "Gun rights" are mentioned. Plenty of +5 rated posts on both sides. And you can support OR piss on Microsoft, Apple or Linux and find support for your view.
Just look at this thread where all these wacky Ron Paul supporters have made a bunch of off-topic posts promoting their candidate, yet are still not modded down.
About the only thing guaranteed to get you modded down is if your (foreign) country is attacked by some redneck American and you complain about it, or worse, retaliate. Then you will be attacked and modded down quickly enough. As you may guess, that has happened to me often enough; yet still I have "excellent karma" from my other posts so always start at +2.
I've actually dealt with real world copyright contracts and disputes.
I don't see how you can possibly know that
According to TFA, it was 200 lines posted in a newsgroup, by the author. That pretty much shows how much he valued it. It would be easy to show a court that whole newsgroups are devoted to similar sharing, in the real sense, when the person offering the code created it. Copyright cases do take into account the value of the thing being copied, and particularly any loss sustained by the creator. In this case, no loss could be shown, and his posting it in a newsgroup without any copyright notice precludes him from claiming statutory damages.
Why would he make it up?
To get on Slashdot. Same as any "FP!" idiot. As I said, you would be insane to expose this to the world, as it will be now on record forever after.
Just look at older "Ask Slashdot" posts and tell me how many you think are embellished if not completely fictional. A high percentage of stories with sources turn out to be lies, hoaxes, or completely misrepresented, let alone these anonymous little anecdotes.
What law, in particular? I know a little about copyright law. I'm pretty sure if it came to court, damages if any would be minimal considering the way the orignal author openly published his code. Of course, just going to court would be immensely time consuming and expensive, so it's a situation to be avoided if at all possible. Because of that, I'd just talk to the guy who used the code and if he didn't want to do anything about it, I'd send him a memo to put it on the record that he was responsible.
As for your "it's all just a fairy tale" theory, that sounds like someone who's never seen a colleague get screwed because of something like this even though it wasn't really their fault
I didn't say that this situation could not have occurred. But it strains my credulity to believe that it happened to the poster. If it had, he would be a compete idiot to share it with the world on "Ask Slashdot". He would be almost sure to lose his job now whatever he does, as he's publically admitted liability and just about invited a law suit from someone who would have otherwise been totally unaware of the situation. If he existed.
It's 200 lines of code someone published, deliberately, without any copyright or other notice. While that is not quite the same as public domain, the author has very little claim to anything aside from attribution.
That "even the comments are the same" suggests the guy who copied it wasn't trying to cover his tracks. Every Comp Sci student knows that when copying someone else's homework you change the comments and variable names at least. In other words, forget about it. No one was hurt, nothing was "stolen". If it comes to light, play dumb.
But when I read some of these "Ask Slashdot" scenarios, I often suspect they're carefully constructed fairy tales, made up to provoke controversy, not to solve a real world problem. Since the poster has gone public with this posting, he would be in deep shit should he do anything except make a full report of it to his superiors. And making this embarrassing transgression public would probably mean the end of his career. But as I said, likely none of this is real.
Guess you didn't read the FTS let alone the FTA.
WTF is "FTS" and "FTA"? Get your TLAs clear.
If you trust the Slashdot summary, "you must be new here", as we old hands say.
And TFA says:
"suspicion"Which he possibly didn't read
True, but that's a different issue.
You said he could not have defended himself and remained anonymous. He wasn't given much of a chance, but he DID have that option.
No, they didn't. Courts don't say someone is "probably guilty".
So unless you want the person to have a civil (or even worse criminal) case decided and judged without the person present, they need to be identified.
No, RTFA. The court gave the blogger the option of hiring a lawyer to defend him, while he remained anonymous.
This is a case where in all probability, the person did commit slander.
Based on your careful reading of the evidence, no doubt. Your Hebrew must be better than mine.
I have no comment on that. If you want alternatives; get a laptop and hook up to open wifi points. Don't use use your neighbour's, the Gestapo would just kick down doors till they found you.
Your edits at Wikipedia are logged anyway. So what would be the pont of using Tor? If you make a lot of edits you must surely have an account -- if only to defend your edits against reversion and being declared a "vandal" by some officious Wikitwat.
Courts should decide if criminal allegations are true. Google has an obligation to their client, the blogger (regardless of whether it was a paid or free account, Google was selling ads on his pages). To violate his privacy should have required a court order.
Speaking from my personal moral viewpoint.
Saying "the person being slandered" begs the question of whether slander has been committed.
If a court determines slander has been committed, the court will order the owner of the IP to be revealed, and presumably punished. Any "damages" can then be pursued in a civil suit. You seem to be arguing that you should have the right to demand the identity of anyone who you claim to have slandered you without regard for any standards of proof.
I can't imagine how that could happen unless the recipient was actually in China. In which case, China controls the ISPs and you have no hope of privacy. Regardless, sending unencrypted email anywhere to anyone is just hoping that no one en route wants to snoop. Ten years ago I installed a PGP plugin to my email client. But I gave it up when I migrated to my next system, because absolutely no one I was corresponding with was interested in encryption, no matter how "one-click" simple. Even now, when the US government openly spies on every message in the US, and probably most messages in the world, no one seems bothered. But they raise a fuss about street cams that might show them scratching their ass in public....
Anyway, the moral is, if you want privacy and security, spend 10 minutes and install your own PGP. You don't have to trust Google, Microsoft, your ISP or the government, just trust Phil Zimmerman.
It's not the same money. Much of the investment in OLPC is from high tech companies, which would not be contributing to more "mundane" causes if not for the OLPC. And government investment would go to other IT projects if not this one; that's the point of TFA, Intel and Microsoft are taking shares of the pie. If not for OLPC, probably MORE would (or will) be spent on these.
And if you still insist on the "one pot" theory, why not complain about the millions of dollars spent on Mercedes Benz for government ministers in impoverished countries? Billions spent on weapons? Fortunes spent on cosmetics? More billions spent on cigarettes and alcohol? Why pick on the OLPC to pick up the tab?