I'm sure that when they proposed and passed that law, they downplayed the terrorism part, and emphasised how it also had other parts that had nothing to do with terrorism. They wouldn't think of referring to all of it as "anti-terrorism legislation", or focusing on how terrorism needs to be stopped in a sneaky attempt to support the Act.
I think you have a tinfoil hat if you think that this law will only ever be used for to tackle terrorism (the evidence on previous laws passed in the name of fighting terrorism show this won't be the case), and that only terrorists (as opposed to suspects) will ever have their email and browsing habits observed (unlikely, since this isn't for convicted terrorists, and it's unclear that if they will even need a court warrant to listen in on somebody).
And I don't see how someone's intentions matter - if I'm creeped out that a stranger in the Government is allowed to read email or texts to my girlfriend for example, what the Government's intentions were hardly makes a difference.
Even if you trust the Government - and every random guy who works for it - what about all future Governments?
Then there are other factors, such as the information being leaked to people other than the Government - the UK Government has repeatedly shown that it is unable to keep sensitive information private. Not to mention the immense cost of this.
I entirely agree - that's two articles in a row now that's not been about actual news, but news - based on rumour - that they might make some announcement in future. Why not just wait until the actual news itself?
There are enough perfectly good articles about actual news that get rejected - why take up valuable space on the page with posts based on rumour about vaporware, that will either turn out to be dupes if the thing's released, or false if it's not?
(On another note, anyone noticed tagging recently seems to be broken in any browser except Firefox? I now have to wait for that to load, in order to tag the article "Vaporware"...)
Microsoft have contributed to open source, and they include some open source stuff in Windows, but it would be ridiculous to claim that Windows is "largely an open source OS".
Except you can get small Windows PCs. They're not so common, because most people aren't interested in them, but I've seen more of them about in stores than Macs.
Or just get a far smaller laptop, if you're happy with laptop components. The Mac "Mini" just seems the worst of both worlds - laptop parts, but without the portability.
Just who do you think you're trying to kid?
Who are you trying to kid? I fail to see how a "Mini" can impress a "n00b", given how commonplace laptops are these days (many of them far more powerful than a so-called "Mini").
If popularity is all that matters, then IE must be the best browser. Funny how Firefox fans suddenly aren't so keen to follow this logic when it comes to IE? You can't have it both ways.
I use the browser that I like most. I was using Opera before Firefox even existed, and long before it became trendy not to use IE. The fact that more people use Firefox than Opera is no more relevant to me than the fact that more people use IE.
So Open Source is great - but why is it only Opera that draws this criticism? By that reasoning, Apple should be disliked too, for example - but I don't see you posting this comment to every Apple story.
That's $16.70 each 100 GB - I bet that both: the player is more expensive that this external HD and each disk is more expensive that $16.70.
Yes, it is now (in fact the drives don't even exist, I presume). But that's rather short sighted.
Historically, the price of discs of a fixed size has fallen to the point of being very cheap each. Meanwhile, whilst hard drive capacities increase, the cost of the cheapest drive does not decrease.
Consider, what you said may well have been true when CDs or DVDs were first conceived. But can I now walk into a shop and pick myself up a stack of 700MB or 4.5GB hard drives for a few pence each?
Backing up to media has the advantage of extra redundancy (I'd rather my data is stored on a new disc everytime I do a backup, rather than just a single drive, which might die, or get stolen/destroyed along with your main drive). Discs are more portable, making it easier to send to other people, or carry with you for extra protection (i.e., offsite backup when you're not at home).
Also there is the point that the cost of discs goes down, whilst hard drives instead increase in capacity rather than getting cheaper, so although it's not cost effective now, it may well be in future.
I mean, if you have 700MB or 4.5GB you want to store on a separate device, do you use a cheap disc, or go out and by a 700MB or 4.5GB hard disk?
If you can read the source then the source is open.
Okay, if we're allowed to use a phrase in a way that isn't the common usage of it, how about if I released a software without making the source available (or perhaps I only showed a few snippets), and still claimed it to be Open Source? And by "allowed", I don't mean "legally allowed", I mean "Would you consider that to be a correct usage of the term 'Open Source'?".
(Note, I am not talking about the word "open" alone, which has many meanings - the point here is the term "Open Source", which is a term popularised by the Open Source movement.)
Discussions that not all Open Source is completely without restrictions are not relevant, as the term does not imply that.
OSI and Microsoft differ on the interpretation but what gives the OSI the right to define laws? If I understand it correctly, the trademark on the term 'Open Source' was allowed to lapse so they cannot enforce its usage.
Again, you have diverted the issue into one of legality, which is not what is being discussed. My post, and the posts above, have made it clear that we're not saying it is illegal, just that their usage of the term is just plain incorrect.
We are free to point out that Microsoft's interpretation and usage of the phrase 'open source' differs from that understood by many people to be the correct interpretation. So point it out but that does not mean that Microsoft is doing anything illegal, simply that it is playing dirty and is attempting to confuse the market as to the 'correct' definition.
Erm yes, that's exactly what my post said:
"So we are in agreement - I don't see where the poster you replied to claimed that Microsoft were breaking the law by doing this. In fact, a poster earlier up in the thread explicitly said that this "is certainly within their rights", the point being that this isn't "open source"."
You appear to be trying to argue against a straw man argument that claims that Microsoft is breaking the law. But I'm not claiming that, and I don't see anyone who is in this thread.
The article completely misses the point - yes, there exist people who don't follow traditional religions, and still believe superstitious nonsense, but atheists who criticise religious belief (the so-called "New Atheist campaign", whatever that is - that term alone is enough to make it clear this source can't be trusted) equally criticise belief in any kind of superstition. Dawkins emphatically makes this point - indeed, it's something that others criticise him for, that he targets all kinds of irrationality rather than focusing on fundamentalists.
The article suggests that if people stopped becoming Christians, they'd become more superstitious - this claim is irrelevant, since most atheists are not people who simply oppose Christianity, they usually criticise all superstitious belief.
It's also flawed to suggest that non-Christians are more likely to be superstitious because of those questions - this ignores that Christian beliefs themselves are superstition. The stories that are a core belief of Christianity rate pretty highly as superstition!
Moreover, in the US, atheists are a minority. So those of us who reject all superstitious nonsense are outnumbered by those who don't, thus the responses of atheists will not make much difference to the responses of the non-Christian group.
The article makes a false comparison by drawing a division between "Christian superstitious beliefs" and "non-Christian superstitious beliefs", and then makes the logical fallacy of grouping the latter with atheism. You might as well say "Non-Christians are more likely to believe in a non-christian religion, therefore if we did what atheists said and stopped believing in Christians, we'd end up with even more religious people". It makes no sense.
Indeed - oddly it usually happens the other way around, i.e., people will admit they don't believe in any kind of God, but are reluctant to identify as atheists.
Must be nice to not have to work and be able to spend 24 hrs a day with your kids, watching their every move. Unfortunately, many of us don't have that much free time.
I wonder how parents coped before the Internet came along?
I wasn't allowed a TV in my room until I reached a certain age. The idea of allowing a child to have unrestricted unsupervised Internet access I find insane - sure, I've nothing against if you want to do that, but don't go crying if the child then sees something you didn't want them to.
This issue has nothing to do with finding the time to supervise kids, just as that wouldn't be an excuse for allowing your child to go to a bar on their own. There are plenty of method to keep children occupied without requiring an Internet connection - in fact, the amount of toys, resources and so on available for children today is I suspect far greater than it was in the past, even if you cut out the Internet.
(Now, I have nothing against this story if it is just about providing tools for parents - I'm just referring to the general claim about parents not having time to supervise their kids on the Internet, as if somehow kids were supposed to be on the Internet in the first place.)
which places no legal obligations upon Microsoft whatsoever.
If Microsoft have a legal right to do this, we have a legal right to criticise it, and point out that their software is not open source. The legality is beside the point.
If I released software that was not allowed to be redistributed at all, and claimed it was "open source", are you telling me you'd agree, and defend me against people who disagreed, on the grounds that there is no law preventing me from doing so?
If I did such a thing, people would be entirely correct to point out I was using the term incorrectly, no different to if I claimed my software was free (as in beer) when I was charging money for it, or if I claimed it ran on Linux when actually it only ran on Windows.
We may not like it - indeed, I most certainly do not
So we are in agreement - I don't see where the poster you replied to claimed that Microsoft were breaking the law by doing this. In fact, a poster earlier up in the thread explicitly said that this "is certainly within their rights", the point being that this isn't "open source".
If all the trivial Iphone stories we get count as "news", even when they're just based on rumour, then yes, I think a one-off story about a brand new product counts as news.
Except that would make the numbers (and definitely of gender) utterly meaningless if people could simply choose what to call themselves.
No one's claiming that.
The premise of the whole point is that there are fewer famous biological females.
Is it though? I don't think it's clear that the difference must be due to genetic differences, as opposed to nurture or other social factors.
(FWIW, I can still see some point in highlighting a person as being transsexual, as it helps identify possibile differences. For example, the person might have done their famous work before transitioning, or it may be a factor that they were brought up as a particular gender - e.g., boys are more likely to be encouraged to use computers than girls - even though they have now transitioned. OTOH, there's hardly enough data to draw any conclusions - only a handful of women, and with only one of the trans. It doesn't seem worth the bother and complication to mark her out separately.)
Genetic gender is the only reasonable definition to use.
Except this is not straightforward either, due to conditions such as intersex.
Has everyone one of the people on that list had a genetic test? I doubt it.
If I comb my hair and think that I now look attractive, that doesn't mean I'm not still ugly.
Wait, you're saying if that someone's appearance changes so that they're attractive, they're still ugly? What sort of definition is that?
Sure, no one has to acknowledge a particular gender. If I was creating a chart of Slashdot users, I could put you in the male or female category, as I choose. But at the same time, I can't complain if others dispute that choice.
And indeed, this works both ways - if someone categorises transwomen as women (or transmen as men, come to that), there's no point whining about it just because you disagree.
Honestly, what is this - a list of 200 programmers, and people have to make fun because one of them happens to be transsexual?
Slashdot Mirror
Read the article? Here on Slashdot?
Are your eyes broken? The OP stated "OS X", not Darwin, which is the kernel that it uses. OS X is not at all open source.
OS X is just a kernel now, is it? Of course I know the kernel is open source, but OS X isn't "largely an open source OS">
I'm sure that when they proposed and passed that law, they downplayed the terrorism part, and emphasised how it also had other parts that had nothing to do with terrorism. They wouldn't think of referring to all of it as "anti-terrorism legislation", or focusing on how terrorism needs to be stopped in a sneaky attempt to support the Act.
I think you have a tinfoil hat if you think that this law will only ever be used for to tackle terrorism (the evidence on previous laws passed in the name of fighting terrorism show this won't be the case), and that only terrorists (as opposed to suspects) will ever have their email and browsing habits observed (unlikely, since this isn't for convicted terrorists, and it's unclear that if they will even need a court warrant to listen in on somebody).
And I don't see how someone's intentions matter - if I'm creeped out that a stranger in the Government is allowed to read email or texts to my girlfriend for example, what the Government's intentions were hardly makes a difference.
Even if you trust the Government - and every random guy who works for it - what about all future Governments?
Then there are other factors, such as the information being leaked to people other than the Government - the UK Government has repeatedly shown that it is unable to keep sensitive information private. Not to mention the immense cost of this.
I entirely agree - that's two articles in a row now that's not been about actual news, but news - based on rumour - that they might make some announcement in future. Why not just wait until the actual news itself?
There are enough perfectly good articles about actual news that get rejected - why take up valuable space on the page with posts based on rumour about vaporware, that will either turn out to be dupes if the thing's released, or false if it's not?
(On another note, anyone noticed tagging recently seems to be broken in any browser except Firefox? I now have to wait for that to load, in order to tag the article "Vaporware"...)
Link to the OS X source download, please?
Microsoft have contributed to open source, and they include some open source stuff in Windows, but it would be ridiculous to claim that Windows is "largely an open source OS".
Except you can get small Windows PCs. They're not so common, because most people aren't interested in them, but I've seen more of them about in stores than Macs.
Or just get a far smaller laptop, if you're happy with laptop components. The Mac "Mini" just seems the worst of both worlds - laptop parts, but without the portability.
Just who do you think you're trying to kid?
Who are you trying to kid? I fail to see how a "Mini" can impress a "n00b", given how commonplace laptops are these days (many of them far more powerful than a so-called "Mini").
Opera is bloatware?
Opera 9.6 size: 5.4MB
Firefox 3 size: 7MB. And that's not including all the extensions needed to duplicate Opera's built-in functionality.
Ah, a quick snipe at its lack of popularity.
If popularity is all that matters, then IE must be the best browser. Funny how Firefox fans suddenly aren't so keen to follow this logic when it comes to IE? You can't have it both ways.
I use the browser that I like most. I was using Opera before Firefox even existed, and long before it became trendy not to use IE. The fact that more people use Firefox than Opera is no more relevant to me than the fact that more people use IE.
So Open Source is great - but why is it only Opera that draws this criticism? By that reasoning, Apple should be disliked too, for example - but I don't see you posting this comment to every Apple story.
Go on, try it - I bet you'd be modded down.
That's $16.70 each 100 GB - I bet that both: the player is more expensive that this external HD and each disk is more expensive that $16.70.
Yes, it is now (in fact the drives don't even exist, I presume). But that's rather short sighted.
Historically, the price of discs of a fixed size has fallen to the point of being very cheap each. Meanwhile, whilst hard drive capacities increase, the cost of the cheapest drive does not decrease.
Consider, what you said may well have been true when CDs or DVDs were first conceived. But can I now walk into a shop and pick myself up a stack of 700MB or 4.5GB hard drives for a few pence each?
Backing up to media has the advantage of extra redundancy (I'd rather my data is stored on a new disc everytime I do a backup, rather than just a single drive, which might die, or get stolen/destroyed along with your main drive). Discs are more portable, making it easier to send to other people, or carry with you for extra protection (i.e., offsite backup when you're not at home).
Also there is the point that the cost of discs goes down, whilst hard drives instead increase in capacity rather than getting cheaper, so although it's not cost effective now, it may well be in future.
I mean, if you have 700MB or 4.5GB you want to store on a separate device, do you use a cheap disc, or go out and by a 700MB or 4.5GB hard disk?
That's 150GB/hour...
If you can read the source then the source is open.
Okay, if we're allowed to use a phrase in a way that isn't the common usage of it, how about if I released a software without making the source available (or perhaps I only showed a few snippets), and still claimed it to be Open Source? And by "allowed", I don't mean "legally allowed", I mean "Would you consider that to be a correct usage of the term 'Open Source'?".
(Note, I am not talking about the word "open" alone, which has many meanings - the point here is the term "Open Source", which is a term popularised by the Open Source movement.)
Discussions that not all Open Source is completely without restrictions are not relevant, as the term does not imply that.
OSI and Microsoft differ on the interpretation but what gives the OSI the right to define laws? If I understand it correctly, the trademark on the term 'Open Source' was allowed to lapse so they cannot enforce its usage.
Again, you have diverted the issue into one of legality, which is not what is being discussed. My post, and the posts above, have made it clear that we're not saying it is illegal, just that their usage of the term is just plain incorrect.
We are free to point out that Microsoft's interpretation and usage of the phrase 'open source' differs from that understood by many people to be the correct interpretation. So point it out but that does not mean that Microsoft is doing anything illegal, simply that it is playing dirty and is attempting to confuse the market as to the 'correct' definition.
Erm yes, that's exactly what my post said:
"So we are in agreement - I don't see where the poster you replied to claimed that Microsoft were breaking the law by doing this. In fact, a poster earlier up in the thread explicitly said that this "is certainly within their rights", the point being that this isn't "open source"."
You appear to be trying to argue against a straw man argument that claims that Microsoft is breaking the law. But I'm not claiming that, and I don't see anyone who is in this thread.
The article completely misses the point - yes, there exist people who don't follow traditional religions, and still believe superstitious nonsense, but atheists who criticise religious belief (the so-called "New Atheist campaign", whatever that is - that term alone is enough to make it clear this source can't be trusted) equally criticise belief in any kind of superstition. Dawkins emphatically makes this point - indeed, it's something that others criticise him for, that he targets all kinds of irrationality rather than focusing on fundamentalists.
The article suggests that if people stopped becoming Christians, they'd become more superstitious - this claim is irrelevant, since most atheists are not people who simply oppose Christianity, they usually criticise all superstitious belief.
It's also flawed to suggest that non-Christians are more likely to be superstitious because of those questions - this ignores that Christian beliefs themselves are superstition. The stories that are a core belief of Christianity rate pretty highly as superstition!
Moreover, in the US, atheists are a minority. So those of us who reject all superstitious nonsense are outnumbered by those who don't, thus the responses of atheists will not make much difference to the responses of the non-Christian group.
The article makes a false comparison by drawing a division between "Christian superstitious beliefs" and "non-Christian superstitious beliefs", and then makes the logical fallacy of grouping the latter with atheism. You might as well say "Non-Christians are more likely to believe in a non-christian religion, therefore if we did what atheists said and stopped believing in Christians, we'd end up with even more religious people". It makes no sense.
This alone shows that the study is screwed up.
Indeed - oddly it usually happens the other way around, i.e., people will admit they don't believe in any kind of God, but are reluctant to identify as atheists.
Must be nice to not have to work and be able to spend 24 hrs a day with your kids, watching their every move. Unfortunately, many of us don't have that much free time.
I wonder how parents coped before the Internet came along?
I wasn't allowed a TV in my room until I reached a certain age. The idea of allowing a child to have unrestricted unsupervised Internet access I find insane - sure, I've nothing against if you want to do that, but don't go crying if the child then sees something you didn't want them to.
This issue has nothing to do with finding the time to supervise kids, just as that wouldn't be an excuse for allowing your child to go to a bar on their own. There are plenty of method to keep children occupied without requiring an Internet connection - in fact, the amount of toys, resources and so on available for children today is I suspect far greater than it was in the past, even if you cut out the Internet.
(Now, I have nothing against this story if it is just about providing tools for parents - I'm just referring to the general claim about parents not having time to supervise their kids on the Internet, as if somehow kids were supposed to be on the Internet in the first place.)
which places no legal obligations upon Microsoft whatsoever.
If Microsoft have a legal right to do this, we have a legal right to criticise it, and point out that their software is not open source. The legality is beside the point.
If I released software that was not allowed to be redistributed at all, and claimed it was "open source", are you telling me you'd agree, and defend me against people who disagreed, on the grounds that there is no law preventing me from doing so?
If I did such a thing, people would be entirely correct to point out I was using the term incorrectly, no different to if I claimed my software was free (as in beer) when I was charging money for it, or if I claimed it ran on Linux when actually it only ran on Windows.
We may not like it - indeed, I most certainly do not
So we are in agreement - I don't see where the poster you replied to claimed that Microsoft were breaking the law by doing this. In fact, a poster earlier up in the thread explicitly said that this "is certainly within their rights", the point being that this isn't "open source".
Yes, clearly we can't trust the Wikipedia article, because an anonymous comment on a random web forum says so.
If all the trivial Iphone stories we get count as "news", even when they're just based on rumour, then yes, I think a one-off story about a brand new product counts as news.
Except that would make the numbers (and definitely of gender) utterly meaningless if people could simply choose what to call themselves.
No one's claiming that.
The premise of the whole point is that there are fewer famous biological females.
Is it though? I don't think it's clear that the difference must be due to genetic differences, as opposed to nurture or other social factors.
(FWIW, I can still see some point in highlighting a person as being transsexual, as it helps identify possibile differences. For example, the person might have done their famous work before transitioning, or it may be a factor that they were brought up as a particular gender - e.g., boys are more likely to be encouraged to use computers than girls - even though they have now transitioned. OTOH, there's hardly enough data to draw any conclusions - only a handful of women, and with only one of the trans. It doesn't seem worth the bother and complication to mark her out separately.)
Genetic gender is the only reasonable definition to use.
Except this is not straightforward either, due to conditions such as intersex.
Has everyone one of the people on that list had a genetic test? I doubt it.
PC Zealots were the worst back then.
If I comb my hair and think that I now look attractive, that doesn't mean I'm not still ugly.
Wait, you're saying if that someone's appearance changes so that they're attractive, they're still ugly? What sort of definition is that?
Sure, no one has to acknowledge a particular gender. If I was creating a chart of Slashdot users, I could put you in the male or female category, as I choose. But at the same time, I can't complain if others dispute that choice.
And indeed, this works both ways - if someone categorises transwomen as women (or transmen as men, come to that), there's no point whining about it just because you disagree.
Honestly, what is this - a list of 200 programmers, and people have to make fun because one of them happens to be transsexual?
You're right that no one should give a damn - why should it matter to qualify them with "transsexual"? But evidently some people do seem to care.
For some reason I expected a bit more tolerance on Slashdot, but evidently it's like being in the playground...