The terms confused me for a long time, but the dictionaries are pretty consistent.
Perhaps you are confused, because you obviously haven't looked at them.
Many dictionaries support a range of definitions for atheism, not just those who believe God doesn't exist, but also those who reject belief, disbelieve, with some going so far as to cover anyone lacking belief. There are at least three definitions of "atheism":
* Lack of belief (also called implicit) * Rejection of belief (also called explicit weak) * Belief in non-existence (also called explicit strong).
http://www.answers.com/atheism gives "Disbelief in or denial", and lists that separate to "The doctrine that there is no God or gods"; Philosophy Dictionary says "Either the lack of belief that there exists a god, or the belief that there exists none".
And I don't know of any dictionary that supports your definition of agnosticism. Agnosticism means that you either don't know if God exists, or you claim God's existence is unknowable. See http://www.answers.com/agnosticism : "The belief that there can be no proof either that God exists or that God does not exist." Even if we did only accept the "strong" definition of atheism, it is still completely incorrect to misuse "agnostic" to mean a lack of belief. Instead, we'd just end up with no word for people who didn't believe in God - hardly a useful situation.
But most people who say they are Atheist are actually Agnostic and are just not using the standard English definitions.
They're not using the definitions that you made up, you mean. In reality, most people who claim they are agnostic are actually atheists, as shown by my dictionary refererences.
But who cares - the point is that they don't believe in God, that's more important than quibbling over definitions. It astonishes me how eager agnostics (at least, I bet you are?) are to criticise people who identify as atheists, and either claim they are using the wrong word, or absurdly claim that they are "in the same boat as the theist". On the contrary, it is agnostics who believe something without evidence (i.e., the claim that God cannot be proven nor disproven).
Correct - and it's still true that these definitions are not a "middle ground" between theism and atheism. You can be an agnostic and atheist - you can even be an agnostic theist.
But unfortunately many people do not understand the definitions you give, and I think that's what the OP was getting at: the people who admit they don't believe in God, but claim that they aren't atheists, instead claiming that they exist in some middle limbo ground, neither believing nor not believing, somehow existing between theism and atheism. Perhaps it's because of the stigma to do with the label "atheism", but I feel that the more people who distance themselves from atheism (despite not believing in god), the easy it is to stigmatise atheism. Worse are those who add to the criticism themselves, claiming absurdities such as "atheism is just as bad as theism", and thinking that they occupy some magical superior high horse between the two.
You never get this sort of thing with anything else, such as ghosts, UFOs or unicorns. People say they believe or they don't - none of this cowardly "Well I don't believe in fairies... but I don't disbelieve, therefore I'm still better than both those who believe, and those who don't believe in fairies!"
His argument is that as long as there is *just one* adequate quality photo of George Clooney under a free license, then the NYT and everyone else will use that for evermore, destroying any market for other photos.
If that's true, he ought to be glad that Wikipedia photos are "bad"...
But I also suspect that 'premium' publishers will want to feed their customers' demand for different shots. A typical reader will soon notice that every time George Clooney is mentioned, the same photo is used.
It's like claiming that no one should write a free OS or browser, because it'll destroy the market for software.
No, you're not. That makes no more sense than even saying "If you release your work as closed source no-redistribution allowed, you're 'effectively' giving up your copyright, because you can't take it back from them".
Of course not, if any company or individual doesn't want to give their stuff away, then they don't have to.
And equally there's no point anyone whining that there aren't any photos of that company on Wikipedia.
(To the OP: I don't see the problem. Anyone is free to photograph the building from outside in public. If you mean inside, I'm not sure anything is lost by not having such images on Wikipedia.)
But that catches anyone taking a copy of Wikipedia articles, whether it's the mirrors, or someone reusing it for other purposes. They now have to go through every file to see whether it's under the free licence or not.
If such a dual system was going to be used, I'd argue that the free version should always take priority and be the default. Anyhow, under the current system there's nothing stopping someone putting an external link to a page with a photo - the "free" requirement doesn't apply to content on external links.
I'm not sure what happened there. If it's released under a free licence such as CC, it should be acceptable for anyone to include on an article. There's no need to reassign copyrights to anyone.
As well as mirrors, what about releasing offline versions, e.g., on DVD? Allowing commercial use is important too, as it means support from companies who can do things that wouldn't otherwise be possible on a purely voluntary basis - they can charge to cover costs.
To put it another way, ask yourself why Linux is released under the licence it is, and not under one that disallows redistribution, or commercial use. If a big company says that they're going to be putting Linux on the shelves of high street stores, or including it on their Netbooks, is the first response of Linux fans to complain about unfair use of their work?
And how many Wikipedia volunteers would contribute their time and effort, if Wikipedia was owned by Wikimedia, and only released on a very restrictive licence?
Indeed - and conversely, photographers care more about being able to retain restrictive licences, rather than high quality pictures.
As well as fully agreeing with Wikipedia's stance, to be honest I don't see the problem anyway: if a celebrity is bothered that there's an awful picture of them, then that's all the more encouragement for them to donate a free image:) Similarly with fans, if they're annoyed at a poor quality picture of their favourite celebrity.
The fundamental problem here is not Wikipedia, but that almost all celebrity pictures are copyrighted and released under non-free licences. I've wondered if there's a different attitude among photographers and programmers - even among non-professionals (i.e., "amateurs" in the literal sense of the term, but where they treat it as a serious hobby and do produce good quality work), in my experience I've come across the attitude that even though they work for free, they do not want to release even a single picture under a licence that allows commercial use. Compare that with programming, where many are happy to produce open source software that is high quality, and allows commercial use (indeed, you get arguments about GPL vs BSD, about whether even the GPL is too restrictive...)
Similarly for professional work. If I do work as a programmer, even under contract, it goes without saying that the person paying me money gets the copyright of the work I produce. But try hiring a photographer for an event such as a wedding - AIUI, typically the photographer retains the copyright (and so strictly speaking, a married couple would be breaking the law to photocopy their own wedding photos).
Flash drives have the advantage of their small size. No one wants to lug an external hard disk around with them, and discs don't fit in one's pocket either. So what good is your hard disk back up system when your house burns down, is flooded, or burgled?
The answer is to use a range of devices - just because I have a 500GB drive doesn't mean that all data on that disk is equally important. I can use a second hard disk for most data (e.g., videos, mp3s), and then an 8GB drive (which costs, ooh, about £5 - hardly a "ludicrous" cost) is more than ample to store the things that I couldn't lose, such as my source code, personal photos etc.
+5 for a straw man argument? It's not about replacing face to face training, it's a step before that. I would imagine it adds to what's currently practiced on a faceless dummy, or just reading a textbook, or being lectured at.
If you want to learn to be a doctor - go to a real medical school
What - like Imperial College, London? You talk as if people are replacing medical schools with schools solely existing in Second Life, which would be absurd.
Slashdot is so predictable. Anything involving certain topics such as Second Life, Wikipedia or Facebook automatically draws criticism, independent of actual facts or evidence. Yes, obviously we should trust a random guy on Slashdot over medical experts in one of the top Universities, perhaps in the world. If the same new story reported a University using a virtual simulator that didn't involve Second Life, I bet you wouldn't have made these comments.
You said "my source". Someone else's source isn't your source.
Anyhow, the point you are attempting to (badly) make is entirely redundant, as it was covered by the OP. BSD gives people more freedom in what to distribute, whilst the GPL is better at preserving freedom. Personally I use whichever licence serves my needs best - if I choose the GPL, I don't need whiners complaining to me that they can't take my code and close source it.
The point is that if you did that, he wouldn't be claiming the right to wipe the files off of the recipients' hard drives. The correct response would be to sue you.
In this case, no one would care if Amazon were being sued. And indeed, there's a good question - if 24 mp3s are worth $1.92 million in fines, why aren't Amazon being sued millions or even billions for distributing a large number of files without permission, for profit? The fact that they've later deleted the files from people's devices doesn't make it okay, they've still broken the law.
Nope, the Berne Convention just specifies at least 50 years after death. So that only requires it be kept in copyright until 2000, and could now be public domain. The problem is that the US and many other countries have extended the term even longer.
Someone inevitably brings this up everytime there's an article about the UK. But there are also news reports of other, also worrying infringement of people's liberties, going on in the US. So how come the handguns never stop them? Has there ever been a case where people got out their guns, and the police said "Oh dear, we'll back down then and ignore them"? Or does it just end up in bloodshed, with the citizens being either shot dead, or arrested for far more serious offences?
Don't get me wrong, I do agree with the principle of bearing arms to defend against the Government, but I don't see that this would prevent things happening such as those in the article. What are you expecting them to do, shoot down the helicopter?
Yes, Cambridge UK, somewhere outside of the US. Given that TFA was about something happening in the UK, I didn't feel the need to qualify it when discussing the topic...
Indeed, that too is very worrying. I'd argue these issues are connected as well - many grassroots political activism and protests grow from people who are connected via social networks. If you can break up people being able to meet up for pleasure, you break up any potential for political activism too. People don't go on a protest because they read about it on Slashdot or the news or wherever, no matter how enraged they are - they go on a protest because they hear about it from their friends, and it's all the same people they know who go along to them. Consider, the large numbers of people protesting this law would have I imagine been made up of the people who attended raves.
Slashdot Mirror
The terms confused me for a long time, but the dictionaries are pretty consistent.
Perhaps you are confused, because you obviously haven't looked at them.
Many dictionaries support a range of definitions for atheism, not just those who believe God doesn't exist, but also those who reject belief, disbelieve, with some going so far as to cover anyone lacking belief. There are at least three definitions of "atheism":
* Lack of belief (also called implicit)
* Rejection of belief (also called explicit weak)
* Belief in non-existence (also called explicit strong).
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/40634/atheism - "The varieties of atheism are numerous, but all atheists reject such a set of beliefs."
http://www.answers.com/atheism gives "Disbelief in or denial", and lists that separate to "The doctrine that there is no God or gods"; Philosophy Dictionary says "Either the lack of belief that there exists a god, or the belief that there exists none".
And I don't know of any dictionary that supports your definition of agnosticism. Agnosticism means that you either don't know if God exists, or you claim God's existence is unknowable. See http://www.answers.com/agnosticism : "The belief that there can be no proof either that God exists or that God does not exist." Even if we did only accept the "strong" definition of atheism, it is still completely incorrect to misuse "agnostic" to mean a lack of belief. Instead, we'd just end up with no word for people who didn't believe in God - hardly a useful situation.
Also see http://atheism.about.com/od/aboutagnosticism/a/atheism.htm .
But most people who say they are Atheist are actually Agnostic and are just not using the standard English definitions.
They're not using the definitions that you made up, you mean. In reality, most people who claim they are agnostic are actually atheists, as shown by my dictionary refererences.
But who cares - the point is that they don't believe in God, that's more important than quibbling over definitions. It astonishes me how eager agnostics (at least, I bet you are?) are to criticise people who identify as atheists, and either claim they are using the wrong word, or absurdly claim that they are "in the same boat as the theist". On the contrary, it is agnostics who believe something without evidence (i.e., the claim that God cannot be proven nor disproven).
Claiming God is unknowable certainly sounds an "act of faith" to me, far more so than those who simply reject belief in God.
I actually put a distance from a friend who was a bit too committed to convert me to atheism
Question: Do you believe in God, yes or no?
If no, I'm not sure why he was trying to convert you. If yes, stop hiding that you're a theist.
Correct - and it's still true that these definitions are not a "middle ground" between theism and atheism. You can be an agnostic and atheist - you can even be an agnostic theist.
But unfortunately many people do not understand the definitions you give, and I think that's what the OP was getting at: the people who admit they don't believe in God, but claim that they aren't atheists, instead claiming that they exist in some middle limbo ground, neither believing nor not believing, somehow existing between theism and atheism. Perhaps it's because of the stigma to do with the label "atheism", but I feel that the more people who distance themselves from atheism (despite not believing in god), the easy it is to stigmatise atheism. Worse are those who add to the criticism themselves, claiming absurdities such as "atheism is just as bad as theism", and thinking that they occupy some magical superior high horse between the two.
You never get this sort of thing with anything else, such as ghosts, UFOs or unicorns. People say they believe or they don't - none of this cowardly "Well I don't believe in fairies ... but I don't disbelieve, therefore I'm still better than both those who believe, and those who don't believe in fairies!"
I would like to take this moment to remind everyone how fucking cool humanity is for landing a man on the moon.
And if we want to give credit where credit's due - let's remember how fucking cool NASA were.
His argument is that as long as there is *just one* adequate quality photo of George Clooney under a free license, then the NYT and everyone else will use that for evermore, destroying any market for other photos.
If that's true, he ought to be glad that Wikipedia photos are "bad"...
But I also suspect that 'premium' publishers will want to feed their customers' demand for different shots. A typical reader will soon notice that every time George Clooney is mentioned, the same photo is used.
It's like claiming that no one should write a free OS or browser, because it'll destroy the market for software.
No, you're not. That makes no more sense than even saying "If you release your work as closed source no-redistribution allowed, you're 'effectively' giving up your copyright, because you can't take it back from them".
By "effectively", you mean "not at all".
Of course not, if any company or individual doesn't want to give their stuff away, then they don't have to.
And equally there's no point anyone whining that there aren't any photos of that company on Wikipedia.
(To the OP: I don't see the problem. Anyone is free to photograph the building from outside in public. If you mean inside, I'm not sure anything is lost by not having such images on Wikipedia.)
But that catches anyone taking a copy of Wikipedia articles, whether it's the mirrors, or someone reusing it for other purposes. They now have to go through every file to see whether it's under the free licence or not.
If such a dual system was going to be used, I'd argue that the free version should always take priority and be the default. Anyhow, under the current system there's nothing stopping someone putting an external link to a page with a photo - the "free" requirement doesn't apply to content on external links.
You mean the museum that is leeching and trying to control public domain material?
And your "except" makes no sense. Wikimedia uses free images, and those images are free in the US. So their stance is entirely consistent.
you can't specify that only that particular copy at that particular resolution is CC. It is all or nothing.
Of course you can. If I release one image under CC, that doesn't affect other images. Even if one was a derivative work of the other.
It's not copyright infringement - the photographer owns the copyright.
There may perhaps be relevant other laws, such as model rights.
He meant there are plenty of sites where you can find high quality images, regardless of copyright or licence status.
If your goal is to find images under clear licences, then that's what Wikipedia does provide.
I'm not sure what happened there. If it's released under a free licence such as CC, it should be acceptable for anyone to include on an article. There's no need to reassign copyrights to anyone.
As well as mirrors, what about releasing offline versions, e.g., on DVD? Allowing commercial use is important too, as it means support from companies who can do things that wouldn't otherwise be possible on a purely voluntary basis - they can charge to cover costs.
To put it another way, ask yourself why Linux is released under the licence it is, and not under one that disallows redistribution, or commercial use. If a big company says that they're going to be putting Linux on the shelves of high street stores, or including it on their Netbooks, is the first response of Linux fans to complain about unfair use of their work?
And how many Wikipedia volunteers would contribute their time and effort, if Wikipedia was owned by Wikimedia, and only released on a very restrictive licence?
Indeed - and conversely, photographers care more about being able to retain restrictive licences, rather than high quality pictures.
As well as fully agreeing with Wikipedia's stance, to be honest I don't see the problem anyway: if a celebrity is bothered that there's an awful picture of them, then that's all the more encouragement for them to donate a free image :) Similarly with fans, if they're annoyed at a poor quality picture of their favourite celebrity.
The fundamental problem here is not Wikipedia, but that almost all celebrity pictures are copyrighted and released under non-free licences. I've wondered if there's a different attitude among photographers and programmers - even among non-professionals (i.e., "amateurs" in the literal sense of the term, but where they treat it as a serious hobby and do produce good quality work), in my experience I've come across the attitude that even though they work for free, they do not want to release even a single picture under a licence that allows commercial use. Compare that with programming, where many are happy to produce open source software that is high quality, and allows commercial use (indeed, you get arguments about GPL vs BSD, about whether even the GPL is too restrictive...)
Similarly for professional work. If I do work as a programmer, even under contract, it goes without saying that the person paying me money gets the copyright of the work I produce. But try hiring a photographer for an event such as a wedding - AIUI, typically the photographer retains the copyright (and so strictly speaking, a married couple would be breaking the law to photocopy their own wedding photos).
For a simple solution if you have a Mac, just get an external drive and use Time Machine.
Completely useless if your computer is nicked, or damaged through fire, flood etc.
Flash drives have the advantage of their small size. No one wants to lug an external hard disk around with them, and discs don't fit in one's pocket either. So what good is your hard disk back up system when your house burns down, is flooded, or burgled?
The answer is to use a range of devices - just because I have a 500GB drive doesn't mean that all data on that disk is equally important. I can use a second hard disk for most data (e.g., videos, mp3s), and then an 8GB drive (which costs, ooh, about £5 - hardly a "ludicrous" cost) is more than ample to store the things that I couldn't lose, such as my source code, personal photos etc.
+5 for a straw man argument? It's not about replacing face to face training, it's a step before that. I would imagine it adds to what's currently practiced on a faceless dummy, or just reading a textbook, or being lectured at.
If you want to learn to be a doctor - go to a real medical school
What - like Imperial College, London? You talk as if people are replacing medical schools with schools solely existing in Second Life, which would be absurd.
Slashdot is so predictable. Anything involving certain topics such as Second Life, Wikipedia or Facebook automatically draws criticism, independent of actual facts or evidence. Yes, obviously we should trust a random guy on Slashdot over medical experts in one of the top Universities, perhaps in the world. If the same new story reported a University using a virtual simulator that didn't involve Second Life, I bet you wouldn't have made these comments.
You said "my source". Someone else's source isn't your source.
Anyhow, the point you are attempting to (badly) make is entirely redundant, as it was covered by the OP. BSD gives people more freedom in what to distribute, whilst the GPL is better at preserving freedom. Personally I use whichever licence serves my needs best - if I choose the GPL, I don't need whiners complaining to me that they can't take my code and close source it.
The point is that if you did that, he wouldn't be claiming the right to wipe the files off of the recipients' hard drives. The correct response would be to sue you.
In this case, no one would care if Amazon were being sued. And indeed, there's a good question - if 24 mp3s are worth $1.92 million in fines, why aren't Amazon being sued millions or even billions for distributing a large number of files without permission, for profit? The fact that they've later deleted the files from people's devices doesn't make it okay, they've still broken the law.
Nope, the Berne Convention just specifies at least 50 years after death. So that only requires it be kept in copyright until 2000, and could now be public domain. The problem is that the US and many other countries have extended the term even longer.
Oops yes - either "let's remember", or "let's not forget".
I agree entirely about legalising drugs.
Someone inevitably brings this up everytime there's an article about the UK. But there are also news reports of other, also worrying infringement of people's liberties, going on in the US. So how come the handguns never stop them? Has there ever been a case where people got out their guns, and the police said "Oh dear, we'll back down then and ignore them"? Or does it just end up in bloodshed, with the citizens being either shot dead, or arrested for far more serious offences?
Don't get me wrong, I do agree with the principle of bearing arms to defend against the Government, but I don't see that this would prevent things happening such as those in the article. What are you expecting them to do, shoot down the helicopter?
Yes, Cambridge UK, somewhere outside of the US. Given that TFA was about something happening in the UK, I didn't feel the need to qualify it when discussing the topic...
Indeed, that too is very worrying. I'd argue these issues are connected as well - many grassroots political activism and protests grow from people who are connected via social networks. If you can break up people being able to meet up for pleasure, you break up any potential for political activism too. People don't go on a protest because they read about it on Slashdot or the news or wherever, no matter how enraged they are - they go on a protest because they hear about it from their friends, and it's all the same people they know who go along to them. Consider, the large numbers of people protesting this law would have I imagine been made up of the people who attended raves.