Well sure, it'd be nice to set up these kinds of guides/tutorials. But the point is that people who are working on an open source project themselves usually aren't going to be interested in providing step-by-step guides for newbies, and I don't think it's reasonable in general to expect open source programmers to do this when they're main purpose is getting the product written.
And remember - the whole advantage of open source is you're free to do this yourself. If you want to help people learn, then there's nothing stopping you taking an existing open source project, and writing all the guides, tutorials and explanation for it.
But then again, if you can already compile and write simple programs, you don't need someone to hold your hand for the basic stuff. Just go exploring yourself - download an open source project, see how it works, play around with it yourself. I've done this myself, and it's interesting to see how other people do things.
I occasionally get emails for help regarding one of my open source projects. I'm happy to answer questions, but there's only so much I can do (e.g., one guy saying he didn't understand programming very well, and wanted me to explain the entire project so he could learn... I pointed him to some tutorial sites instead).
None of this has any relevance to my original post.
Are you claiming that "distributing" is worse than stealing?
My point was that the argument "damages for X should be based on what the company would have charged to let you do X" is flawed. It doesn't matter whether X is copying, distributing, stealing, or throwing tomatoes at people. Rebutting such an argument does not imply that the various possibilities of X are identical. It's an analogy. Nowhere have I claimed, or implied, that copyright infringement is the same thing as stealing, nor claimed that she is being fined for stealing. Indeed I'd be the first one to disagree that they are the same. I haven't claimed that she is being fined for copying either, since my original post was built on the point that they are different things.
Do you agree with dirk's argument, and disagree with mine? Or are you just quibbling with my post for another reason?
My point is that even if we said copying is as bad as stealing, there's still no way we can reach a figure of $1.92 million. If we agree that copying is less bad than stealing, then there's even less grounds for suggesting she pay $1.92 million in the first plce.
I get tired of saying this, but the penalty for distributing a CD should have nothing to do with the cost of buying a CD or MP3. This would be appropriate if she was accused of downloading one copy, but she is accused of uploading. The issue is she assuming the right to distribute a CD or MP3, so the penalty should be based upon what the RIAA would charge to gain the rights to distribute the songs.
Whilst it's fair to say that the cost of damages may be more than a single downloading, it's not true that it should be based on what the RIAA would charge.
Consider, even if we compare to actual theft, the damages for stealing my car are not "the amount I would charge for hiring my car", it's "the value of my car". I.e., the amount should still be a fair measure of the value, and not dictated by the RIAA.
To demonstrate the flaw more obviously, what about cases where the copyright owner does not licence his work at all? Perhaps someone accidently copies Linux without providing the source, or a company includes your personal photos in an advertising campaign. According to your logic, the copyright holder could say "Well actually, the cost to licence this work is a million billion dollars"...
So the value should be based on damages, and hence should be an estimate of how many people have downloaded it. In this case - even if it were true that every download is a lost sale, are we seriously suggesting that she had 1.92 million people download from her? That amount of money is surely comparable to the amounts that an album might make in total! (Anyone have some figures?)
Obviously, the price they quote for the trial would have to backed up by facts (what have they actually charged for these or similar songs for instance) so they aren't able to just make up ridiculous amounts.
But what if someone does have "ridiculous" amounts? Perhaps they're just disproportionate, they have no business skills, they don't care, or as in my examples, they don't wish anyone to licence it under those terms anyway, so they can put the figure as high as they like?
Indeed, even for the RIAA, this would apply. Clearly, they have no intention of letting you put up files for free, no matter how much you pay! This would only be possible if they charge per number of downloads (in which case, it would be equivalent to what I suggest above). There would be no evidence for a figure, because they don't allow people such a licence anyway - of if they did, it would be ludicrously high simply because they don't want anyone to do it otherwise.
You are also forgetting that if such a law was implemented, people would be quick to provide evidence of "costs", just in case. The RIAA would have a blanket "it costs a million billion dollars to licence this with no limitations whatsoever" to catch filesharers - whatever costs for other licencing they do would always have extra limitations, so wouldn't apply.
but it would be a fair way to estimate what the actual damage was.
As my examples show, there is no reason to think that these are in any way comparable to the actual damage.
Having said that, I would agree that it would be an upper bound - if those figures are less than $1.92 million, then it's ludicrous to fine her that much. But you either won't find evidence for such a cost, or if you do, it'll be stupidly high anyway.
"can" not "must". I presume there's an "up to" there.
You know, if the law allows leeway in what the court can do, then I think it's fair game to criticise and challenge the court's decision to do so. And yes, we can call it retarded.
The "scientific method" relies upon an initial (and usually unacknowledged) hypothesis. This hypothesis is usually acquired non-scientifically - ie, basic human observation and, more often than not, intuition.
By what definition of "scientific" are you using to determine whether a method is scientific? How is making observations, and using our brains to spot patterns, unscientific?
What alternative method would you propose in its place, that is "scientific"?
Acting on these observations happened long before we had a "method" for it
As I stated, the scientific method was something that was formulated gradually over hundreds of years - the fact that people like Newton were doing it before we formally had a name for the process doesn't change the point.
and I've no doubt Newton, Galileo, and Einstein had to start with an initial "oh, gee, look at that" which was contrary to the contemporary thought of the day.
And? Yes, the scientific method was contrary to the contemporary thought of Newton and Galileo's day. Not Einstein's, though.
As for my initial post, as to how the scientific method is bunk: most of modern science in several disciplines is based off of a handful of unverified (and improbable/impossible) postulations which have been accepted as a verified belief (what scientific communities so often presumptuously refer to as 'fact').
Okay, let's have some examples. Are you just talking about historians and archaelogy, or are you including physics, chemistry and biology in this?
You'll have to explain more about what you mean with glaciers, or the pyramids? What theories are there, that you somehow know to be wrong?
So that's what I mean by the 'scientific method' being bunk. It's very often abused and incorrectly 'used'
Wait, those are two entirely different claims. There's "the scientific method is bunk", and "the scientific method is fine, but scientists often don't use it or follow it properly". Which is it?
You've got to test your theories and assumptions or you're not doing science
Testing theories and assumptions is part of the scientific method. Yes, that's the point.
Yes, I believe in intelligent design
Right, I should have guessed.
that's because I've seen too many counter-examples invalidating the contemporary theories. If those contemporary theories were correct, you would not have to try to shoehorn a new discovery into it
Examples?
If your theory does not cover a condition, you need to find a new theory.
Yes, this is exactly what happens with science. E.g., Newtonian Gravitation being replaced with Einstein's General Relativity.
Everyone loves freedom. The problem is that some have a different definition, e.g., "We have to lock these people up without charge, to protect our freedom!"
* Always leave someone on watch when you go to sleep, even when safely in a house in a big city. * Always make sure to search dead bodies and take their belongings, because you can make more money from selling the twenty axes you can fit in your bag, than actually doing your job. * On a similar note, if there's no one looking, make sure you loot anything and everything that isn't nailed down to the floor. * Search every room for secret doors, and always say that you're going to listen before opening a door. * Shopkeepers are invincible. Don't even try starting any trouble.
Of course, it won't be Trey Parker, or anyone showing it in the UK, who gets done. It'll be the guy who has the clip on his computer when the police raid his home for some irrelevant other thing that he's not guilty of (or perhaps he sends his PC in for repair). "What's this? Child porn! It doesn't matter that the original was legal to produce, you're obviously some kind of pervert."
There will come a day when computers can render people in an ultra photo-realistic sexual manner. Will these computer generated images be deemed "illegal" and "immoral"? QUICK, they are such a threat to society! Men act out their fantasies and we can't have that! Let's ignore why they want to do that in the first place -- and tempt them with the real thing since the virtual thing is "illegal."
Indeed - and they're already calling for that. The UK already passed a law on "realistic" fictional child porn (1994), and now even unrealistic images such as those in Second Life is being cited for a ban on all sorts of unrealistic images, whether it's people using an avatar that looks "childlike" (despite being played by an adult), or even adults doing cyber-S&M.
As another oddity: the law on "child" porn (or as it should be known, under-18 porn), has a defence for married couples. The new law on drawings - despite the insistence from the Government and lobbyists that this is merely applying existing child porn to drawings - doesn't have this defence. So, you can have sex with your wife, take a photograph of your wife, but making a sexy drawing of her will be illegal!
In fact, a 17 year old drawing a naughty picture of his or herself will mean they face a three year prison sentence. So much for protecting children! Child charities such as the NSPCC may claim they are trying to help children, but Dr Zoe Hilton wants your children locked up for drawing a picture of themselves.
I entirely agree - even if we accepted that there should be a law on fictional child porn (which I don't), how on earth is an image, where the sexual features are clearly adult, counted as child porn? That's not fictional child porn, it's adult porn.
If the argument is that getting off on a child's face is wrong, then are we going to criminalise all images of children? (I suspect that Miley was hardly shy of being photographed in the public eye, when it came to following her million dollar career...) And if the argument is that we're criminalising the person because we think he was fantasising about Miley, then we've clearly crossed the line into Thought Crime.
Before you argue that this is still a protected right, please consider this. If the accused in this case had swapped the children's heads onto clothed adult bodies doing nothing particularly sexual, and then swapped those images into ads for cigarettes, and those images had actually been used, he could have been prosecuted on any of several counts.
Yes, and if he'd have taken an axe and used it to chop off a child's head, he could have been prosecuted on any of several counts. But he didn't, so your point is irrelevant.
The bolded bit is the crucial bit - he didn't do that. There is no law against possession of such an image. In fact, I doubt that even publication is okay(?) - AIUI, the laws regulate commercial advertising. I doubt anyone would have a problem against laws on using people's images without their consent in advertising - this is obviously an issue of model rights, and has bugger all to do with the issue of criminalising possession of images as "child porn".
Even if sexually related speech should have all the protections of other speech, sexual aspects shouldn't give such speech more protection than we would give to philosophical, scientific, or political speech.
Well that's a nice straw man - who is saying we should give more protections?
Even if doing something with photoshop or old fashioned scissors isn't over the line, we need the law to look at what happens if such images go public and determine where the line really is.
Model rights? Defamation? Regulation of commercial advertising?
There are plenty of sensible laws. Criminalising possession is not one of them, especially classifying it as something as demonised as "child porn". And if nothing else, it's an insult to the children who are abused out there - suggesting that their horror is no different to someone doing a photoshop job to your image, when you're a figure in the public eye, who's made millions from their fame.
Indeed, if you read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miley_Cyrus#Entrepreneurship , you'll see that she's happy to publish erotic images of herself, to push her career. But when someone photoshops an image of her in private, unpublished, that's equivalent to abusing her? I don't think so.
This case is living proof that secrets can get out, even if you protect them jealously.
It only got out because of the law.
But even now, has she seen the image? Note, if she were to have the image, she herself would be guilty of possessing child porn.
(It's not clear to me why a teenager would be icked at being placed on an adult's body - I'd argue that it would be the adult who would be more icked...)
No, that doesn't answer his question. We're not saying that some central company-checked site is bad for applications. The question is why that should be the only place to get applications.
Plenty of phones/networks have application stores, just like Apple. The difference is that you as a user get to choose whether you use that application store, or risk going elsewhere (not that I think it's that much of a risk - imagine applying this argument to desktop PCs? Do you seriously think that every application should have to be vetted by Apple or Microsoft?) With the Iphone, it's Apple who make that choice for you.
If you want these restrictions to go away stop buying the devices, and educate everyone who'll listen about why YOU won't touch them, then let them make up their own minds.
Yes exactly, we should inform people of the restrictions... which is exactly what stories like this are about.
I fully agree that people shouldn't buy Iphones if they don't like this. So how about Slashdot starts covering the rest of the phone industry, instead of the one niche player that we get daily stories about?
We don't need 2 slashdot stories per week about this.
We don't need 2 slashdot stories per week (or more) on the Iphone full stop, I agree. I don't see why the "hacked" stories are anything special.
That's offensive to people who are into those things, to suggest that they would use the Iphone. Apple preventing people from running apps is not consensual behaviour, for starters...
A device that has to be hacked to get basic features working is "Just Works"? Well yes, I suppose it "Just works" in that it makes phone calls, and anything else is a bonus. I would hope that the standard here on Slashdot for high end expensive phones is something that can do more than just working.
I want a phone that Just Works, Out Of The Box. No messing about with hacks, it's as bad as fiddling around with extra cables... I get "device freedom, works, and does a whole lot more" with my Motorola V980 phone (which is a cheap years old phone, nothing special).
I've nothing against the Iphone - I just find it odd that the features that are trumpted as being its advantages are actually the things that are its major disadvantages (similar with the claims about its UI - when it misses something as fundamental as copy/paste). I mean, I can understanding giving up one feature because it is better in other areas (well, kind of - when those features are available as standard on even cheap phones, it seems odd to give them up when you're spending vastly more, but anyway), but that's not what I see happening here.
For IT work, I'd hire someone who spent 2 years exploring their chosen field at home or at a lower level job and can explain topics in detail, rather than a graduate of a 4 year institution with their warm fuzzy diploma and no clue of how to really do the work.
This is a classic bias comparison - you're comparing two groups, but also starting out by defining that one is better than the other. You can't then conclude that one is therefore better than the other - that's a circular argument.
E.g., I might as well say "I'd hire someone who has never had any education and can explain everything in detail, than someone who's been to University, done a PhD, spent years working in the industry, and has no clue how to do their work"!
You can't generalise from your bias anecdote, and then making a generalisation. Anecdotes aren't evidence, and correlation isn't causation.
Slashdot Mirror
Well sure, it'd be nice to set up these kinds of guides/tutorials. But the point is that people who are working on an open source project themselves usually aren't going to be interested in providing step-by-step guides for newbies, and I don't think it's reasonable in general to expect open source programmers to do this when they're main purpose is getting the product written.
And remember - the whole advantage of open source is you're free to do this yourself. If you want to help people learn, then there's nothing stopping you taking an existing open source project, and writing all the guides, tutorials and explanation for it.
But then again, if you can already compile and write simple programs, you don't need someone to hold your hand for the basic stuff. Just go exploring yourself - download an open source project, see how it works, play around with it yourself. I've done this myself, and it's interesting to see how other people do things.
I occasionally get emails for help regarding one of my open source projects. I'm happy to answer questions, but there's only so much I can do (e.g., one guy saying he didn't understand programming very well, and wanted me to explain the entire project so he could learn ... I pointed him to some tutorial sites instead).
Since when? Are you confusing phones with com badges from Star Trek, perhaps?
And even leaving aside that point, why does that grant the right for the police to seize records without a warrant?
None of this has any relevance to my original post.
Are you claiming that "distributing" is worse than stealing?
My point was that the argument "damages for X should be based on what the company would have charged to let you do X" is flawed. It doesn't matter whether X is copying, distributing, stealing, or throwing tomatoes at people. Rebutting such an argument does not imply that the various possibilities of X are identical. It's an analogy. Nowhere have I claimed, or implied, that copyright infringement is the same thing as stealing, nor claimed that she is being fined for stealing. Indeed I'd be the first one to disagree that they are the same. I haven't claimed that she is being fined for copying either, since my original post was built on the point that they are different things.
Do you agree with dirk's argument, and disagree with mine? Or are you just quibbling with my post for another reason?
Well yes, I entirely agree :)
My point is that even if we said copying is as bad as stealing, there's still no way we can reach a figure of $1.92 million. If we agree that copying is less bad than stealing, then there's even less grounds for suggesting she pay $1.92 million in the first plce.
I get tired of saying this, but the penalty for distributing a CD should have nothing to do with the cost of buying a CD or MP3. This would be appropriate if she was accused of downloading one copy, but she is accused of uploading. The issue is she assuming the right to distribute a CD or MP3, so the penalty should be based upon what the RIAA would charge to gain the rights to distribute the songs.
Whilst it's fair to say that the cost of damages may be more than a single downloading, it's not true that it should be based on what the RIAA would charge.
Consider, even if we compare to actual theft, the damages for stealing my car are not "the amount I would charge for hiring my car", it's "the value of my car". I.e., the amount should still be a fair measure of the value, and not dictated by the RIAA.
To demonstrate the flaw more obviously, what about cases where the copyright owner does not licence his work at all? Perhaps someone accidently copies Linux without providing the source, or a company includes your personal photos in an advertising campaign. According to your logic, the copyright holder could say "Well actually, the cost to licence this work is a million billion dollars"...
So the value should be based on damages, and hence should be an estimate of how many people have downloaded it. In this case - even if it were true that every download is a lost sale, are we seriously suggesting that she had 1.92 million people download from her? That amount of money is surely comparable to the amounts that an album might make in total! (Anyone have some figures?)
Obviously, the price they quote for the trial would have to backed up by facts (what have they actually charged for these or similar songs for instance) so they aren't able to just make up ridiculous amounts.
But what if someone does have "ridiculous" amounts? Perhaps they're just disproportionate, they have no business skills, they don't care, or as in my examples, they don't wish anyone to licence it under those terms anyway, so they can put the figure as high as they like?
Indeed, even for the RIAA, this would apply. Clearly, they have no intention of letting you put up files for free, no matter how much you pay! This would only be possible if they charge per number of downloads (in which case, it would be equivalent to what I suggest above). There would be no evidence for a figure, because they don't allow people such a licence anyway - of if they did, it would be ludicrously high simply because they don't want anyone to do it otherwise.
You are also forgetting that if such a law was implemented, people would be quick to provide evidence of "costs", just in case. The RIAA would have a blanket "it costs a million billion dollars to licence this with no limitations whatsoever" to catch filesharers - whatever costs for other licencing they do would always have extra limitations, so wouldn't apply.
but it would be a fair way to estimate what the actual damage was.
As my examples show, there is no reason to think that these are in any way comparable to the actual damage.
Having said that, I would agree that it would be an upper bound - if those figures are less than $1.92 million, then it's ludicrous to fine her that much. But you either won't find evidence for such a cost, or if you do, it'll be stupidly high anyway.
"can" not "must". I presume there's an "up to" there.
You know, if the law allows leeway in what the court can do, then I think it's fair game to criticise and challenge the court's decision to do so. And yes, we can call it retarded.
The "scientific method" relies upon an initial (and usually unacknowledged) hypothesis. This hypothesis is usually acquired non-scientifically - ie, basic human observation and, more often than not, intuition.
By what definition of "scientific" are you using to determine whether a method is scientific? How is making observations, and using our brains to spot patterns, unscientific?
What alternative method would you propose in its place, that is "scientific"?
Acting on these observations happened long before we had a "method" for it
As I stated, the scientific method was something that was formulated gradually over hundreds of years - the fact that people like Newton were doing it before we formally had a name for the process doesn't change the point.
and I've no doubt Newton, Galileo, and Einstein had to start with an initial "oh, gee, look at that" which was contrary to the contemporary thought of the day.
And? Yes, the scientific method was contrary to the contemporary thought of Newton and Galileo's day. Not Einstein's, though.
As for my initial post, as to how the scientific method is bunk: most of modern science in several disciplines is based off of a handful of unverified (and improbable/impossible) postulations which have been accepted as a verified belief (what scientific communities so often presumptuously refer to as 'fact').
Okay, let's have some examples. Are you just talking about historians and archaelogy, or are you including physics, chemistry and biology in this?
You'll have to explain more about what you mean with glaciers, or the pyramids? What theories are there, that you somehow know to be wrong?
So that's what I mean by the 'scientific method' being bunk. It's very often abused and incorrectly 'used'
Wait, those are two entirely different claims. There's "the scientific method is bunk", and "the scientific method is fine, but scientists often don't use it or follow it properly". Which is it?
You've got to test your theories and assumptions or you're not doing science
Testing theories and assumptions is part of the scientific method. Yes, that's the point.
Yes, I believe in intelligent design
Right, I should have guessed.
that's because I've seen too many counter-examples invalidating the contemporary theories. If those contemporary theories were correct, you would not have to try to shoehorn a new discovery into it
Examples?
If your theory does not cover a condition, you need to find a new theory.
Yes, this is exactly what happens with science. E.g., Newtonian Gravitation being replaced with Einstein's General Relativity.
Oh noes! Not ... guys who look like girls! How confusing that must be for poor little you!
Everyone loves freedom. The problem is that some have a different definition, e.g., "We have to lock these people up without charge, to protect our freedom!"
I learnt my haggling skills from Monty Python...
What did I learn from RPGs?
* Always leave someone on watch when you go to sleep, even when safely in a house in a big city.
* Always make sure to search dead bodies and take their belongings, because you can make more money from selling the twenty axes you can fit in your bag, than actually doing your job.
* On a similar note, if there's no one looking, make sure you loot anything and everything that isn't nailed down to the floor.
* Search every room for secret doors, and always say that you're going to listen before opening a door.
* Shopkeepers are invincible. Don't even try starting any trouble.
Indeed - and the episode Proper Condom Use shows Cartman wanking off a dog (Red Rocket!). This would come under one of the clauses in the planned UK law for criminalising cartoon "child" images ( http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/graphic-artists-condemn-plans-to-ban-erotic-comics-1652270.html ).
Of course, it won't be Trey Parker, or anyone showing it in the UK, who gets done. It'll be the guy who has the clip on his computer when the police raid his home for some irrelevant other thing that he's not guilty of (or perhaps he sends his PC in for repair). "What's this? Child porn! It doesn't matter that the original was legal to produce, you're obviously some kind of pervert."
There will come a day when computers can render people in an ultra photo-realistic sexual manner. Will these computer generated images be deemed "illegal" and "immoral"? QUICK, they are such a threat to society! Men act out their fantasies and we can't have that! Let's ignore why they want to do that in the first place -- and tempt them with the real thing since the virtual thing is "illegal."
Indeed - and they're already calling for that. The UK already passed a law on "realistic" fictional child porn (1994), and now even unrealistic images such as those in Second Life is being cited for a ban on all sorts of unrealistic images, whether it's people using an avatar that looks "childlike" (despite being played by an adult), or even adults doing cyber-S&M.
Same in the UK. And not just some mistake in the law, the law on child porn was explicitly raised in 2003.
Soon, it will also be illegal to possess a drawing of a 17 year old even though you can legally do it for real.
As another oddity: the law on "child" porn (or as it should be known, under-18 porn), has a defence for married couples. The new law on drawings - despite the insistence from the Government and lobbyists that this is merely applying existing child porn to drawings - doesn't have this defence. So, you can have sex with your wife, take a photograph of your wife, but making a sexy drawing of her will be illegal!
In fact, a 17 year old drawing a naughty picture of his or herself will mean they face a three year prison sentence. So much for protecting children! Child charities such as the NSPCC may claim they are trying to help children, but Dr Zoe Hilton wants your children locked up for drawing a picture of themselves.
I entirely agree - even if we accepted that there should be a law on fictional child porn (which I don't), how on earth is an image, where the sexual features are clearly adult, counted as child porn? That's not fictional child porn, it's adult porn.
If the argument is that getting off on a child's face is wrong, then are we going to criminalise all images of children? (I suspect that Miley was hardly shy of being photographed in the public eye, when it came to following her million dollar career...) And if the argument is that we're criminalising the person because we think he was fantasising about Miley, then we've clearly crossed the line into Thought Crime.
This reminds me of the law that the UK is passing ( http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/graphic-artists-condemn-plans-to-ban-erotic-comics-1652270.html ) that explicitly covers not just images appearing to be under-18s, but also *adults*, if they have some "predominant features" of someone under 18.
So pass a law to do with publication.
Before you argue that this is still a protected right, please consider this. If the accused in this case had swapped the children's heads onto clothed adult bodies doing nothing particularly sexual, and then swapped those images into ads for cigarettes, and those images had actually been used, he could have been prosecuted on any of several counts.
Yes, and if he'd have taken an axe and used it to chop off a child's head, he could have been prosecuted on any of several counts. But he didn't, so your point is irrelevant.
The bolded bit is the crucial bit - he didn't do that. There is no law against possession of such an image. In fact, I doubt that even publication is okay(?) - AIUI, the laws regulate commercial advertising. I doubt anyone would have a problem against laws on using people's images without their consent in advertising - this is obviously an issue of model rights, and has bugger all to do with the issue of criminalising possession of images as "child porn".
Even if sexually related speech should have all the protections of other speech, sexual aspects shouldn't give such speech more protection than we would give to philosophical, scientific, or political speech.
Well that's a nice straw man - who is saying we should give more protections?
Even if doing something with photoshop or old fashioned scissors isn't over the line, we need the law to look at what happens if such images go public and determine where the line really is.
Model rights? Defamation? Regulation of commercial advertising?
There are plenty of sensible laws. Criminalising possession is not one of them, especially classifying it as something as demonised as "child porn". And if nothing else, it's an insult to the children who are abused out there - suggesting that their horror is no different to someone doing a photoshop job to your image, when you're a figure in the public eye, who's made millions from their fame.
Indeed, if you read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miley_Cyrus#Entrepreneurship , you'll see that she's happy to publish erotic images of herself, to push her career. But when someone photoshops an image of her in private, unpublished, that's equivalent to abusing her? I don't think so.
This case is living proof that secrets can get out, even if you protect them jealously.
It only got out because of the law.
But even now, has she seen the image? Note, if she were to have the image, she herself would be guilty of possessing child porn.
(It's not clear to me why a teenager would be icked at being placed on an adult's body - I'd argue that it would be the adult who would be more icked...)
Yes, we have to take into account the time dilation aspect of the reality distortion field ;)
Spatial distortion may account for the screen area measurements, too.
No, that doesn't answer his question. We're not saying that some central company-checked site is bad for applications. The question is why that should be the only place to get applications.
Plenty of phones/networks have application stores, just like Apple. The difference is that you as a user get to choose whether you use that application store, or risk going elsewhere (not that I think it's that much of a risk - imagine applying this argument to desktop PCs? Do you seriously think that every application should have to be vetted by Apple or Microsoft?) With the Iphone, it's Apple who make that choice for you.
If you want these restrictions to go away stop buying the devices, and educate everyone who'll listen about why YOU won't touch them, then let them make up their own minds.
Yes exactly, we should inform people of the restrictions ... which is exactly what stories like this are about.
I fully agree that people shouldn't buy Iphones if they don't like this. So how about Slashdot starts covering the rest of the phone industry, instead of the one niche player that we get daily stories about?
We don't need 2 slashdot stories per week about this.
We don't need 2 slashdot stories per week (or more) on the Iphone full stop, I agree. I don't see why the "hacked" stories are anything special.
That's offensive to people who are into those things, to suggest that they would use the Iphone. Apple preventing people from running apps is not consensual behaviour, for starters...
A device that has to be hacked to get basic features working is "Just Works"? Well yes, I suppose it "Just works" in that it makes phone calls, and anything else is a bonus. I would hope that the standard here on Slashdot for high end expensive phones is something that can do more than just working.
I want a phone that Just Works, Out Of The Box. No messing about with hacks, it's as bad as fiddling around with extra cables... I get "device freedom, works, and does a whole lot more" with my Motorola V980 phone (which is a cheap years old phone, nothing special).
I've nothing against the Iphone - I just find it odd that the features that are trumpted as being its advantages are actually the things that are its major disadvantages (similar with the claims about its UI - when it misses something as fundamental as copy/paste). I mean, I can understanding giving up one feature because it is better in other areas (well, kind of - when those features are available as standard on even cheap phones, it seems odd to give them up when you're spending vastly more, but anyway), but that's not what I see happening here.
If you didn't like it, tough shit. ... Get fucked.
Got out the wrong side of bed, did we?
Also, if you are not willing to pay the fee to watch it (or listen to it), you are not entitled to.
Well, he would be entitled to if the law is changed through democratic means, as this article is about.
For IT work, I'd hire someone who spent 2 years exploring their chosen field at home or at a lower level job and can explain topics in detail, rather than a graduate of a 4 year institution with their warm fuzzy diploma and no clue of how to really do the work.
This is a classic bias comparison - you're comparing two groups, but also starting out by defining that one is better than the other. You can't then conclude that one is therefore better than the other - that's a circular argument.
E.g., I might as well say "I'd hire someone who has never had any education and can explain everything in detail, than someone who's been to University, done a PhD, spent years working in the industry, and has no clue how to do their work"!
You can't generalise from your bias anecdote, and then making a generalisation. Anecdotes aren't evidence, and correlation isn't causation.
Or how about this: read the fucking paper book instead!
Indeed, I hear this BOOK thing is the latest craze in new technology.