Also, you don't need to spend an additional £90+ for another piece of plastic to cover what you already have.
I don't mind having things like credit cards or passports. I do object to being forced to have an ID card, to the immense cost, and being put on the database that goes with it.
And what the --- does dressing differently have to do with "being clean?" I think you have a very bizarre picture of diverse people.
Exactly. Talking about Goths, there's an important point here - most of the arguments presented here in favour of things like wearing suits and short hair have been based around the idea that it is synonymous with making an effort about your appearance, and looking clean and tidy.
Yet take a group of people who stereotypically spend far more time on their looks and dress than most people - and yet they're still lumped with the "untidy poorly-dressed shouldn't-be-employed" people!
This makes it clear that the issue isn't really with looking tidy or making an effort, but instead requiring people to change their appearance to fit a particular look (a look which is inherentely sexist too - for example, no one would dare make these "long hair is untidy" comments of women, after all...)
You misunderstand what the word means. Discrimination, by definition, means choosing someone based on qualities other than individual merit.
By picking the most suited candidate, you are not discriminating.
Of course, the sort of discrimination you are talking about is the illegal sort, the common ones being race, religion, national origin, sex, etc... no where on there will you see long hair, nor would a case where your religion requires long hare go anywhere.
But it would certainly be sex discrimination if they don't apply the same policy to women (talking of which, I'd make that point to many of the comments in this thread - I must have missed that ponytails or long hair have somehow become equivalent to "untidy", clearly they aren't considered that for half of the population at least).
Uh, it's not new on Mac OS, either. Mac OS 1 had drag&drop installs in 1984... when did Amiga come out again?
I never said it was new on MacOS, or first on AmigaOS; rather it was the original post that seemed to imply this was some wonderful new feature on OS X. And as an aside, that it was on classic Mac OS in 1984 isn't any credit to OS X, since they are completely different OSs on a technical level. There's no need to quibble about who got there first - the fact that classic MacOS also had this years before OS X just invalidates the original poster's point even further.
Of course, OS X *does* also have an installer, and installed apps, so it kind of defeats the purpose, but go figure.
Drag-and-drop install is nothing new I'm afraid - certainly this was common on the Amiga years ago. Indeed, this sort of thing is entirely possible under Windows - the question is whether it's worth doing this.
I can think of at least two reasons for requiring installation for non-simple applications - being able to share libraries, and only having to install what the user needs. How are these handled in MacOS X's system?
Now I see that the shared library issue is discussed elsewhere in this thread - I can see the argument that diskspace is cheap, I suppose, and that outweights the risk of conflicts (though Windows has given library sharing a bad name - it's not a bad idea when done properly). But that's a choice that the application makes, it's not something which should be fixed in stone by the OS.
I mean, seriously - are you trying to tell me that someone who says "I don't believe in God" is not actually saying they don't believe God exists?
Of course I'm not trying to say that, I said no such thing. The issue was whether it's equivalent to asserting that God doesn't exist.
Question - would you say that "not believing" requires the same amount of "faith" as believing in something does?
That's the issue here. I'm fine with considering "not believing in X" is equivalent to "asserting X doesn't exist", as long as we agree that this isn't anywhere near the same thing as those who "assert X does exist". The problem is this group of theists who insist that because I don't believe in, say, invisible goblins, I'm comparable to those who do believe such things.
The point is that disbelief isn't the same as asserting that it doesn't exist. There are many things I don't believe in, but I may still be open to the possibility of their existence - in which case, I don't make any assertion that they don't exist.
I seem to agree with your post (if you mean that "Steve" is in the right), so I'm not sure why you are saying my earlier post was wrong.
My point of view is that disbelief means "lack of belief", which is different to claiming that something doesn't exist. c_forq's point of view seemed to be that disbelief was equivalent to claiming that there is no God (i.e., "James"' point of view).
By that logic, most of technology isn't really offering anything new (e.g., webpages could be done on paper, email could be done through letters).
But that wasn't the point I was addressing - the point was made was that there is no technological difference between then and now, when in fact there is.
So when's the holy day for the Religion of Atheism then?
I hope it's not Sunday, else that would clash with my Religion of People Who Don't Believe in Invisible Elephants holy day.
Anyhow, I'm not sure how what you said relates to the post you replied to. The idea of trying to get religion taught as science appears to be mainly something that Christian Creationists are doing - not those of other religions, and certainly not agnostics and/or atheists.
And I have to agree that atheism is pretty much a religion (just like religion can't prove there is a good atheism can't prove there isn't a job).
Strawman. Many atheists do not claim there is no god (I presume that's what you meant to say). Furthermore, even for those that do, this belief does not mean a religion, since religion is not defined in terms of belief in God
Deists believe in God, but they are not religious. Buddhists often do not believe in God, but they are religious. Religion, by definition, either means an organised system of worship for a deity, or a set of beliefs based on the teachings of a spiritual leader.
Agnoistic is what all the non-religious should be.
And many atheists are agnostic.
At least, assuming you mean in the sense of "Doesn't know if there is a God". Agnostic can also mean "Claims that we can't know if there is a God", and by your misguided "a belief equals religion" idea, that would make agnosticism a religion too!
Not quite - there's also a huge advantage in having people on the same site/community. Even if you were a computer whiz who could run a blog on his own homepage, and even if there were the same number of people online 10 years ago or more, you still have the problem of getting them to read your site easily. These sites can make that easier (e.g., LiveJournal's "friends" page), not to mention technologies such as RSS which weren't around back then.
No doubt people were saying exactly the same thing about the web in general over 10 years ago.
The point isn't to read pages at random. The point about these sorts of sites is that it's easier to keep track of those people you are interested in (e.g., friends), rather than hopping about randomly like you have to do on the web in general.
Only you're wrong. By possesing simulated computer images (or artist renderings) of children in sex acts you can be prosecuted under obscenity laws. Not only that but you can be prosecuted for possesing pictures of real adults who look like they're under 18 under obscenity laws.
We know that that's what the law is, but the point is that there is no value in making such things illegal, as you originally said. Examples such as those involving actual children can be covered on the basis that it's illegal to fund a criminal act. There is no need to extend this to any images considered "obscene", and indeed it's unclear why such a test should be based on community standards. I hope no one would say that child abuse should be allowed if it's accepted in a particular community!
Saying that it "harms yourself or your community" is a pure unfounded assertion, and nonsensical (how are others harmed?) Saying that it fuels actual violent acts is also speculation, and not justification for locking up someone who has never and does never commit a violent act. It's all very well saying "exploitation of women", but it would be illegal for a woman to possess such material also.
But for the love of god please recognize that obscenity laws only cover sex acts forbidden by law.
It's illegal to look underage and have sex in the US, even though they're all consenting adults? If that's true, then things are worse than I thought...
The only true advantage I see to this is that Google gives you a LOT more disk space for free
Even then, I seem to remember that Xoom offered "unlimited" webspace. They're no longer around, but the point is that even increased space isn't anything new.
In my humble opinion, copyright should be nontransferable, and should belong solely to the original creator of a work, or to every individual involved in the joint creation of a work. It's fine for the copyright holder(s) to exclusively license their work(s) to a corporation, even for free, but the right for them to terminate the license at will (despite any contractual wording to the contrary) should be built into law.
For a joint work, do you mean that any of the individual authors can terminate the licence at any time, or that they all have to agree to that?
The former strikes me as a bad idea. Software companies, as well as open source products, would have huge problems if some years later a former programmer decided to terminate his licence.
Either way, there are still further problems. No one would ever want to licence anything if it could be immediately terminated. It would damage open source - I wouldn't dare use GPL code in my software, or use something from Wikipedia, out of fear that the licence could be changed arbitrarily at any point in the future.
I don't know if I've misunderstood what you're saying - it would be a fine system to keep copyrights with the individual authors, but not being able to licence it in any practical way would be a worse system than what we have now.
How would adults contact their ISPs to re-enable the content?
I agree it's a bad idea, but hopefully a sensible ISP would offer some automated way of doing this through their website.
My mobile phone company blocks material by default too (I don't know if this is normal), but I could enable it through their webpage (bizarrely enough, I had to do this to access a webpage for some Java IRC client - bad filtering is of course another problem with this).
Annoyingly, I had to pay a non-refundable £1 charge to "prove" I was an adult - they claimed they'd refund me with £2 of talk time which would be fair enough, but they haven't! Okay, it's only £1, but it's the principle of both having to pay for things I'm already paying for, and the fact that they lied. This raises another possible issue, namely that ISPs might decide to charge a fee for whatever reason.
Why is it that everyone always goes on about it being better to use open source when the issue is Opera or Firefox, yet MacOS X is worshipped here on Slashdot, and no one would ever dare criticise it on that point.
So this license is in fact making demands of it's own.
You are free to ignore those demands. You're free to ignore the demands of an EULA. But if you break copyright law, you're in trouble. The law has no place for "good" and "evil", but it does have a concept of what is covered by copyright law, and what isn't.
From the article, the ruling doesn't seem to be based around "a licence is binding, even if you haven't read it", but rather that he has an obligation to make sure he has permission for publication - i.e., comply with copyright law: "In case of doubt as to the applicability and the contents of the License, it [defendant] should have requested authorization for publication from the copyright holder of the photos (Curry). Audax has failed to perform such a detailed investigation, and has assumed too easily thet publication of the photos was allowed."
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However, it's not going to have any lasting effect, it's just another document to fill in. Life's full of those anyway.
It'll be a pretty damn expensive document.
You don't need a licence to exist though.
Also, you don't need to spend an additional £90+ for another piece of plastic to cover what you already have.
I don't mind having things like credit cards or passports. I do object to being forced to have an ID card, to the immense cost, and being put on the database that goes with it.
And what the --- does dressing differently have to do with "being clean?" I think you have a very bizarre picture of diverse people.
Exactly. Talking about Goths, there's an important point here - most of the arguments presented here in favour of things like wearing suits and short hair have been based around the idea that it is synonymous with making an effort about your appearance, and looking clean and tidy.
Yet take a group of people who stereotypically spend far more time on their looks and dress than most people - and yet they're still lumped with the "untidy poorly-dressed shouldn't-be-employed" people!
This makes it clear that the issue isn't really with looking tidy or making an effort, but instead requiring people to change their appearance to fit a particular look (a look which is inherentely sexist too - for example, no one would dare make these "long hair is untidy" comments of women, after all...)
You misunderstand what the word means. Discrimination, by definition, means choosing someone based on qualities other than individual merit.
By picking the most suited candidate, you are not discriminating.
Of course, the sort of discrimination you are talking about is the illegal sort, the common ones being race, religion, national origin, sex, etc... no where on there will you see long hair, nor would a case where your religion requires long hare go anywhere.
But it would certainly be sex discrimination if they don't apply the same policy to women (talking of which, I'd make that point to many of the comments in this thread - I must have missed that ponytails or long hair have somehow become equivalent to "untidy", clearly they aren't considered that for half of the population at least).
Uh, it's not new on Mac OS, either. Mac OS 1 had drag&drop installs in 1984... when did Amiga come out again?
I never said it was new on MacOS, or first on AmigaOS; rather it was the original post that seemed to imply this was some wonderful new feature on OS X. And as an aside, that it was on classic Mac OS in 1984 isn't any credit to OS X, since they are completely different OSs on a technical level. There's no need to quibble about who got there first - the fact that classic MacOS also had this years before OS X just invalidates the original poster's point even further.
Of course, OS X *does* also have an installer, and installed apps, so it kind of defeats the purpose, but go figure.
So it isn't "fixed in stone" by the OS after all?
Drag-and-drop install is nothing new I'm afraid - certainly this was common on the Amiga years ago. Indeed, this sort of thing is entirely possible under Windows - the question is whether it's worth doing this.
I can think of at least two reasons for requiring installation for non-simple applications - being able to share libraries, and only having to install what the user needs. How are these handled in MacOS X's system?
Now I see that the shared library issue is discussed elsewhere in this thread - I can see the argument that diskspace is cheap, I suppose, and that outweights the risk of conflicts (though Windows has given library sharing a bad name - it's not a bad idea when done properly). But that's a choice that the application makes, it's not something which should be fixed in stone by the OS.
I mean, seriously - are you trying to tell me that someone who says "I don't believe in God" is not actually saying they don't believe God exists?
Of course I'm not trying to say that, I said no such thing. The issue was whether it's equivalent to asserting that God doesn't exist.
Question - would you say that "not believing" requires the same amount of "faith" as believing in something does?
That's the issue here. I'm fine with considering "not believing in X" is equivalent to "asserting X doesn't exist", as long as we agree that this isn't anywhere near the same thing as those who "assert X does exist". The problem is this group of theists who insist that because I don't believe in, say, invisible goblins, I'm comparable to those who do believe such things.
The point is that disbelief isn't the same as asserting that it doesn't exist. There are many things I don't believe in, but I may still be open to the possibility of their existence - in which case, I don't make any assertion that they don't exist.
I seem to agree with your post (if you mean that "Steve" is in the right), so I'm not sure why you are saying my earlier post was wrong.
My point of view is that disbelief means "lack of belief", which is different to claiming that something doesn't exist. c_forq's point of view seemed to be that disbelief was equivalent to claiming that there is no God (i.e., "James"' point of view).
By that logic, most of technology isn't really offering anything new (e.g., webpages could be done on paper, email could be done through letters).
But that wasn't the point I was addressing - the point was made was that there is no technological difference between then and now, when in fact there is.
Yes, "disbelief". That doesn't contradict what I said.
Also you should look up what agnostic means.
So when's the holy day for the Religion of Atheism then?
I hope it's not Sunday, else that would clash with my Religion of People Who Don't Believe in Invisible Elephants holy day.
Anyhow, I'm not sure how what you said relates to the post you replied to. The idea of trying to get religion taught as science appears to be mainly something that Christian Creationists are doing - not those of other religions, and certainly not agnostics and/or atheists.
And I have to agree that atheism is pretty much a religion (just like religion can't prove there is a good atheism can't prove there isn't a job).
Strawman. Many atheists do not claim there is no god (I presume that's what you meant to say). Furthermore, even for those that do, this belief does not mean a religion, since religion is not defined in terms of belief in God
Deists believe in God, but they are not religious. Buddhists often do not believe in God, but they are religious. Religion, by definition, either means an organised system of worship for a deity, or a set of beliefs based on the teachings of a spiritual leader.
Agnoistic is what all the non-religious should be.
And many atheists are agnostic.
At least, assuming you mean in the sense of "Doesn't know if there is a God". Agnostic can also mean "Claims that we can't know if there is a God", and by your misguided "a belief equals religion" idea, that would make agnosticism a religion too!
I'm struggling to think of an Internet meme that went from funny to downright annoying as quickly as the FSM.
I wish Creationism was just an Internet meme.
Not quite - there's also a huge advantage in having people on the same site/community. Even if you were a computer whiz who could run a blog on his own homepage, and even if there were the same number of people online 10 years ago or more, you still have the problem of getting them to read your site easily. These sites can make that easier (e.g., LiveJournal's "friends" page), not to mention technologies such as RSS which weren't around back then.
No doubt people were saying exactly the same thing about the web in general over 10 years ago.
The point isn't to read pages at random. The point about these sorts of sites is that it's easier to keep track of those people you are interested in (e.g., friends), rather than hopping about randomly like you have to do on the web in general.
Consider upgrading from ME to XP then. (And, talking of XP, it also has faster boot times than 2000.)
Who said that something was impossible?
The earlier poster clearly was talking in terms of our current (or near-future) technology.
Only you're wrong. By possesing simulated computer images (or artist renderings) of children in sex acts you can be prosecuted under obscenity laws. Not only that but you can be prosecuted for possesing pictures of real adults who look like they're under 18 under obscenity laws.
We know that that's what the law is, but the point is that there is no value in making such things illegal, as you originally said. Examples such as those involving actual children can be covered on the basis that it's illegal to fund a criminal act. There is no need to extend this to any images considered "obscene", and indeed it's unclear why such a test should be based on community standards. I hope no one would say that child abuse should be allowed if it's accepted in a particular community!
Saying that it "harms yourself or your community" is a pure unfounded assertion, and nonsensical (how are others harmed?) Saying that it fuels actual violent acts is also speculation, and not justification for locking up someone who has never and does never commit a violent act. It's all very well saying "exploitation of women", but it would be illegal for a woman to possess such material also.
But for the love of god please recognize that obscenity laws only cover sex acts forbidden by law.
It's illegal to look underage and have sex in the US, even though they're all consenting adults? If that's true, then things are worse than I thought...
The only true advantage I see to this is that Google gives you a LOT more disk space for free
Even then, I seem to remember that Xoom offered "unlimited" webspace. They're no longer around, but the point is that even increased space isn't anything new.
I agree with the rest of your post, but:
but apparently that is what the majority of the British voters want as their political leader.
Remember that he doesn't need (and didn't get) a majority of the votes - thirty-something percent was enough.
In my humble opinion, copyright should be nontransferable, and should belong solely to the original creator of a work, or to every individual involved in the joint creation of a work. It's fine for the copyright holder(s) to exclusively license their work(s) to a corporation, even for free, but the right for them to terminate the license at will (despite any contractual wording to the contrary) should be built into law.
For a joint work, do you mean that any of the individual authors can terminate the licence at any time, or that they all have to agree to that?
The former strikes me as a bad idea. Software companies, as well as open source products, would have huge problems if some years later a former programmer decided to terminate his licence.
Either way, there are still further problems. No one would ever want to licence anything if it could be immediately terminated. It would damage open source - I wouldn't dare use GPL code in my software, or use something from Wikipedia, out of fear that the licence could be changed arbitrarily at any point in the future.
I don't know if I've misunderstood what you're saying - it would be a fine system to keep copyrights with the individual authors, but not being able to licence it in any practical way would be a worse system than what we have now.
How would adults contact their ISPs to re-enable the content?
I agree it's a bad idea, but hopefully a sensible ISP would offer some automated way of doing this through their website.
My mobile phone company blocks material by default too (I don't know if this is normal), but I could enable it through their webpage (bizarrely enough, I had to do this to access a webpage for some Java IRC client - bad filtering is of course another problem with this).
Annoyingly, I had to pay a non-refundable £1 charge to "prove" I was an adult - they claimed they'd refund me with £2 of talk time which would be fair enough, but they haven't! Okay, it's only £1, but it's the principle of both having to pay for things I'm already paying for, and the fact that they lied. This raises another possible issue, namely that ISPs might decide to charge a fee for whatever reason.
Why is it that everyone always goes on about it being better to use open source when the issue is Opera or Firefox, yet MacOS X is worshipped here on Slashdot, and no one would ever dare criticise it on that point.
So this license is in fact making demands of it's own.
You are free to ignore those demands. You're free to ignore the demands of an EULA. But if you break copyright law, you're in trouble. The law has no place for "good" and "evil", but it does have a concept of what is covered by copyright law, and what isn't.
From the article, the ruling doesn't seem to be based around "a licence is binding, even if you haven't read it", but rather that he has an obligation to make sure he has permission for publication - i.e., comply with copyright law: "In case of doubt as to the applicability and the contents of the License, it [defendant] should have requested authorization for publication from the copyright holder of the photos (Curry). Audax has failed to perform such a detailed investigation, and has assumed too easily thet publication of the photos was allowed."