OK, so I expressed myself badly - I'm not advocating removing the right to appeal at all. What I was saying, in the context of this particular news story, is that someone who has been proven to have downloaded dodgy material, but is appealing on the technicality that he didn't "make" it (even though he has admitted to obtaining it) shouldn't be able to appeal on those grounds.
My point is that laws needs to change to reflect the fact that possession isn't the same as "making" and therefore, if someone admits or is found - beyond doubt - to have purposefully obtained such material, that person wouldn't be able to appeal on the grounds, quite correctly IMO, that he hasn't "made" the material.
In 1999, the one time pop star, Gary Glitter, was convicted in the UK of "Making Indecent photographs of children". I believe he didn't even burn the images to disk - just the fact that he'd downloaded them was enough for him,by UK law, to have "made" them.
So, while I can see the logic behind someone burning material to cd/dvd being held to have "made" it, I suspect that in both cases, in the UK and the USA, the laws being used date from the time when to be in possession of such material, a person would have to actually literally make it - i.e. take photographs, develop them etc.
The laws probably need updating, but the spirit behind the letter remains unchanged. The trouble is, that there are implications for illegal music/movie downloads too.
I think the laws need to be revisited - especially so that paedophiles have no grounds for appeal.
'He hijacked somewhere in the area of half a million computer systems
One assumes these were all systems running MS Windows? Firewalls, spyware detection software, alternatives to IE and Outlook express - the world needs educating.
Inbgres was "competitive" right through the 90's to the early part of this decade. That's competitive with Oracle, Sybase and Informix. That means it's in a completely different class to MYSQL and Postgres.
But then inspection of the code shows its quality to be low
Code quality low?? Are you kidding?
Ingres was right up there with Oracle (and Informix and Sybase) ten years ago. The company who owned it, ASK group, went bust and CA pick up Ingres. As was usual when CA picked up a product, all the Ingres customers sought alternatives - usually Oracle or Informix.
Ingres has fallen this low due to soley to CAs Management(mismanagement?) of the product. Don't know what the current licence is like, but the other open source DBMS's could benefit from the Ingres codebase.
(Of course, an insanely great product doesn't necessarily mean a good quality codebase,but given what it was/is, the code had to be high quality otherwise ASK and CA wouldn't have been able to maintain it)
What does that mean? I 'm genuinely interested, because water falls free from the sky, we're surrounded by it, so what's the problem with water usage?
Surely it's only a matter of cleaning water to make it fit for human consumption and then cleaning it again before it's returned to the environment? Isn't it?
We can can do this because we're a pure GPL'd application and so can easily collaborate with other Freely licensed applications like link-grammar,gtkmathview and itex2mml
Translation:
We can can do this because we're a pure Stallman'd application and so can easily collaborate with other Stallman licensed applications like link-grammar,gtkmathview and itex2mml.
Doesn't sound so free when you say it like that, does it?;)
Pervasive and EnterpriseDB are going up against Oracle. We don't want to be in that space, we don't want to take the heat from Oracle. If you're working in a zoo you don't want to be the one who has to brush the teeth of the lion.
That should nip the "MySQL is a replacement for Oracle under all circumstances" posts that always appear whenever MySQL is discussed on slashdot. It should, but it won't.
OIn a different note, isn't the "Ikea of databases" space already a little overcrowded? There's Firebird, McKoi, One$DB/Daffodil DB, Cloudscape, Postgres etc. Guess MySQL already pretty much own that space, so this is just a reaffirmation that they're sticking to their knitting. Doing what they do best. Very wise.
Many countries, particularly developing ones, have become increasingly concerned about the U.S. control, which stems from the country's role in creating the Internet
Well, so long as Al Gore agrees he ought to have some say in who controls it - after all he did invent it.
I'm not sure what the status of informix is these days, but Ingres is free to use.
The background to this (without being verbose) is that ten years ago, the big 4 DBMSs were; Oracle, Ingres, Sybase and Informix - practically in that order. They all pretty much had the same feature set. For various reasons (which are too long and tedious to go into now) Informix has ended up with IBM, Ingres went to CA who abused it and then turned it loose last year, Sybase is entrenched in Financial applications and has managed to survive and Oracle is...well...Oracle.
Point is, Ingres is a top product, probably is still major league and it doesn't have expensive licencing associated with it. You should check it out.
I used to work for a consultancy which has offices around throughout Europe. The only people who had desktop machines were secretaries and admin staff who typically went to the same desk with the same phone every day.
The consultants needed to be flexible because we'd be assigned to different projects which could be in any of the company offices or on the customers site, so we all had laptops and "hot-desked". IIRC The laptops were leased from HP and were updated every three years.
I left before wireless comms became the norm, but before I left it was possible for me to sit almost anywhere in a company office be connected to the corporate LAN and do my work - so long as it was at a desk!
Local wired networks are the last mile in offices!
nd then when you ask them to program something, they have no idea what they are doing. All they've learned to do is drop UI controls on a canvas, and fill in the onclick events with simple statements. Sometimes writing IF statements and WHILE loops are too much for these guys.
What offends you most - the fact that these people don't know much about the sacred scientific art of programming, or that they don't need to know?
There's a lot to be said for efficiency and productivity. Not at any cost of course, but still, a lot to be said.
Nobody is forcing the artists to sign with the record companies
Well, it's very difficult for an artist to gain exposure without a marketing machine (charts, paper and web avertising, billboards for the "big" artists ).
Unfourtanately, the people who provide that service - usually out of advances against projected sales - also tend to own the distribution rights (and possibly broadcast and play rights) to the work being promoted.
So, for an artist to be sucessful, they may percieve that they need to be "signed" to a lebel.
Personally, I wouldn't have a problem with this arrangement - except that the artists are sometimes not paid and more importantly, as a consumer, the record companies can dictate how I use the product they licence.
Also, consider how recording companies as opposed to artists and consumers, have benefitted from the following situations;
The move from wax LPs to CDs.
The failure of Digital Audio Tape to be used for digital audio
an upstart that is attempting to establish a legal peer-to-peer music company
Well what a surprise
The recording industry reasserts control over the means of distribution, benefitting not the artists and the consumers, but the big recording companies who own the artists and control the consumers.
This is what happened with Napster and the end game for the RIAA and MPAA etc is to be controlling all means of distribiution of electronic media via the internet.
It's worked with DVDs and CDs to an extent.
If they lowered the price of albums and gave consumers what they want, maybe people wouldn't engage so much in illegal file sharing.
Whilst the motives appear to be virtuous, the possible implications of the scheme are serious and the benefits extremely dubious.
Exactly - especially when this is coupled - as it inevitably will be - with the national ID card.
I'm tired of the current government thinking that technology is an infallible silver bullet.
On the other hand, if the procurement and implementation are handled with the usual time/money wasting ineptness, maybe the database and the id card schemes will fail.
'mainstream' use of open source in IT environments may be 5 years away
$#!+, I must be living in the future @ work. Eclipse, Tomcat, Rehat and Suse, big brave talk about ditching Oracle for postgres - Open Source tooling being first choice every time.
OK, a big part of it is down to $$$, but that's not all of it.
Slashdot Mirror
OK, so I expressed myself badly - I'm not advocating removing the right to appeal at all. What I was saying, in the context of this particular news story, is that someone who has been proven to have downloaded dodgy material, but is appealing on the technicality that he didn't "make" it (even though he has admitted to obtaining it) shouldn't be able to appeal on those grounds.
My point is that laws needs to change to reflect the fact that possession isn't the same as "making" and therefore, if someone admits or is found - beyond doubt - to have purposefully obtained such material, that person wouldn't be able to appeal on the grounds, quite correctly IMO, that he hasn't "made" the material.
In 1999, the one time pop star, Gary Glitter, was convicted in the UK of "Making Indecent photographs of children". I believe he didn't even burn the images to disk - just the fact that he'd downloaded them was enough for him,by UK law, to have "made" them.
bbc story
So, while I can see the logic behind someone burning material to cd/dvd being held to have "made" it, I suspect that in both cases, in the UK and the USA, the laws being used date from the time when to be in possession of such material, a person would have to actually literally make it - i.e. take photographs, develop them etc.
The laws probably need updating, but the spirit behind the letter remains unchanged. The trouble is, that there are implications for illegal music/movie downloads too.
I think the laws need to be revisited - especially so that paedophiles have no grounds for appeal.
'He hijacked somewhere in the area of half a million computer systems
One assumes these were all systems running MS Windows? Firewalls, spyware detection software, alternatives to IE and Outlook express - the world needs educating.
:)
You're absolutely correct. How social inequality is addressed is, however, another very contentious issue.
Inbgres was "competitive" right through the 90's to the early part of this decade. That's competitive with Oracle, Sybase and Informix. That means it's in a completely different class to MYSQL and Postgres.
But then inspection of the code shows its quality to be low
Code quality low?? Are you kidding?
Ingres was right up there with Oracle (and Informix and Sybase) ten years ago. The company who owned it, ASK group, went bust and CA pick up Ingres. As was usual when CA picked up a product, all the Ingres customers sought alternatives - usually Oracle or Informix.
Ingres has fallen this low due to soley to CAs Management(mismanagement?) of the product. Don't know what the current licence is like, but the other open source DBMS's could benefit from the Ingres codebase.
(Of course, an insanely great product doesn't necessarily mean a good quality codebase,but given what it was/is, the code had to be high quality otherwise ASK and CA wouldn't have been able to maintain it)
From the letter to the Hebrews, Chapter 1
1God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets,
2Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds
That means that there's nothing left to be said.
What does that mean? I 'm genuinely interested, because water falls free from the sky, we're surrounded by it, so what's the problem with water usage?
Surely it's only a matter of cleaning water to make it fit for human consumption and then cleaning it again before it's returned to the environment? Isn't it?
Go on, indulge me here.
It reads as if he dictated it, someone else typed and edited it - hence the short sentences.
Jon Lech Johansen, the 21-year-old Norwegian media hacker nicknamed DVD Jon, is moving to San Diego
So he'll be within prosecutable/persecutable range of the DCMA, then.
We can can do this because we're a pure GPL'd application and so can easily collaborate with other Freely licensed applications like link-grammar,gtkmathview and itex2mml
;)
Translation:
We can can do this because we're a pure Stallman'd application and so can easily collaborate with other Stallman licensed applications like link-grammar,gtkmathview and itex2mml.
Doesn't sound so free when you say it like that, does it?
...and change the name too. I suggest Monarchs Mission, every cloak has an Ag lining...
If you lived in a civilised country, that would be cheque
;0)
Pervasive and EnterpriseDB are going up against Oracle. We don't want to be in that space, we don't want to take the heat from Oracle. If you're working in a zoo you don't want to be the one who has to brush the teeth of the lion.
That should nip the "MySQL is a replacement for Oracle under all circumstances" posts that always appear whenever MySQL is discussed on slashdot. It should, but it won't.
OIn a different note, isn't the "Ikea of databases" space already a little overcrowded? There's Firebird, McKoi, One$DB/Daffodil DB, Cloudscape, Postgres etc. Guess MySQL already pretty much own that space, so this is just a reaffirmation that they're sticking to their knitting. Doing what they do best. Very wise.
Whichever idiot modded my parent comment a troll needs to get a humour transplant. Sheesh.
Many countries, particularly developing ones, have become increasingly concerned about the U.S. control, which stems from the country's role in creating the Internet
Well, so long as Al Gore agrees he ought to have some say in who controls it - after all he did invent it.
You forgot Ingres and Informix.
I'm not sure what the status of informix is these days, but Ingres is free to use.
The background to this (without being verbose) is that ten years ago, the big 4 DBMSs were; Oracle, Ingres, Sybase and Informix - practically in that order. They all pretty much had the same feature set. For various reasons (which are too long and tedious to go into now) Informix has ended up with IBM, Ingres went to CA who abused it and then turned it loose last year, Sybase is entrenched in Financial applications and has managed to survive and Oracle is...well...Oracle.
Point is, Ingres is a top product, probably is still major league and it doesn't have expensive licencing associated with it. You should check it out.
I used to work for a consultancy which has offices around throughout Europe. The only people who had desktop machines were secretaries and admin staff who typically went to the same desk with the same phone every day.
The consultants needed to be flexible because we'd be assigned to different projects which could be in any of the company offices or on the customers site, so we all had laptops and "hot-desked". IIRC The laptops were leased from HP and were updated every three years.
I left before wireless comms became the norm, but before I left it was possible for me to sit almost anywhere in a company office be connected to the corporate LAN and do my work - so long as it was at a desk!
Local wired networks are the last mile in offices!
Love it! Love it! ROFL!!!
"I put on my robe and wizard hat.."
Classic.
nd then when you ask them to program something, they have no idea what they are doing. All they've learned to do is drop UI controls on a canvas, and fill in the onclick events with simple statements. Sometimes writing IF statements and WHILE loops are too much for these guys.
What offends you most - the fact that these people don't know much about the sacred scientific art of programming, or that they don't need to know?
There's a lot to be said for efficiency and productivity. Not at any cost of course, but still, a lot to be said.
Well, it's very difficult for an artist to gain exposure without a marketing machine (charts, paper and web avertising, billboards for the "big" artists ).
Unfourtanately, the people who provide that service - usually out of advances against projected sales - also tend to own the distribution rights (and possibly broadcast and play rights) to the work being promoted.
So, for an artist to be sucessful, they may percieve that they need to be "signed" to a lebel.
Personally, I wouldn't have a problem with this arrangement - except that the artists are sometimes not paid and more importantly, as a consumer, the record companies can dictate how I use the product they licence. Also, consider how recording companies as opposed to artists and consumers, have benefitted from the following situations;
an upstart that is attempting to establish a legal peer-to-peer music company
Well what a surprise
The recording industry reasserts control over the means of distribution, benefitting not the artists and the consumers, but the big recording companies who own the artists and control the consumers.
This is what happened with Napster and the end game for the RIAA and MPAA etc is to be controlling all means of distribiution of electronic media via the internet.
It's worked with DVDs and CDs to an extent.
If they lowered the price of albums and gave consumers what they want, maybe people wouldn't engage so much in illegal file sharing.
Whilst the motives appear to be virtuous, the possible implications of the scheme are serious and the benefits extremely dubious.
Exactly - especially when this is coupled - as it inevitably will be - with the national ID card.
I'm tired of the current government thinking that technology is an infallible silver bullet.
On the other hand, if the procurement and implementation are handled with the usual time/money wasting ineptness, maybe the database and the id card schemes will fail.
...quick OPEN SOURCE BEoS!! Wait..this isn't OsNews.com, is it?
'mainstream' use of open source in IT environments may be 5 years away
$#!+, I must be living in the future @ work. Eclipse, Tomcat, Rehat and Suse, big brave talk about ditching Oracle for postgres - Open Source tooling being first choice every time.
OK, a big part of it is down to $$$, but that's not all of it.