I thought Slashdot was against copyright protections, so what do you guys care? You've never cared about private property or intellectual property rights before. Or have the Nerds-On-High decreed that you should make exceptions for religious groups?
Don't get me wrong, I think these people clearly ripped off someone elses work and should pay out the ass, but I don't think this community has any credibility on this. In order to avoid repeating myself, I just refer you to this post.
Considering that current law states that copyright is valid until 70 years after the author's death, that copyright will expire in 2036.
Of course, since there's this other person who also died in 1966, the copyright period will probably be extended before it expires.
Well, since Jesus is God, Jesus died when crucified at some time around the year 30, and the copyright law doesn't state that copyrights are reinstated on resurrection, the copyright has expired long ago.
Note that this is totally unrelated to the Linux vs. GNU/Linux debate. The name of the license is "GNU General Public License", or "GNU GPL" for short. It's not the only GPL in existence (there's also the Affero GPL), so it's important to correctly qualify it.
Well, a simple way to make that sort of propaganda non-working is if Harvard doesn't demand withdrawal of the video, just demands that the creationist video
clearly states, at the beginning of the video, that the images are taken from that Harvard video (identifying it enough that interested viewers can locate the original), but the text was changed, and
just as clearly state that the views promoted by that modified video are not the same as those promoted by the original one.
That is, allow the modified video, as long as it clearly says it's a modified video, what the original one was, and what they changed.
Perhaps some kind of DRM on harvard's videos is in order ?
No.
Are slashdot writers truly this hypocritical ? If nobody gets to enforce copyright (especially not riaa) then why does slashdot get to ?
That's not hypocritical. They didn't just copy the Harvard video, they stripped the copyright statement! That's plagarism. Note that even the most liberal OSS licenses (e.g. the two-clause BSD) still maintain that you are not allowed to remove the copyright notice. And I doubt you'll find many slashdotters who would claim that plagiarism should be allowed.
If they had just copied and distributed the Harvard video, I'm sure not many people here would have objected.
I'm a scientist. If you make copies of my articles and propagate them, I'm happy. If you take my articles, change a few things, remove my name and add yours, I'm angry.
Lots of places treat frequent customers better, not many make it a point to treat infrequent customers worse.
They are the same thing. Not really. If originally all your customers had the same service, but now the service to the good ones gets improved without affecting the service for bad customers, that's better service to good customers. If OTOH the service for bad customers gets worse, that's worse service to bad customers. Of course both may happen at the same time (e.g. if you treat the good customers better without spending more on service, the other customers will typically be treated worse as a result).
We can think of terrorists much in the way we think of "trolls" on an Internet forum. Essentially, they both perform acts intended to annoy other people, to the point that the targets end up overreacting in such a way that hurts themselves. In the Internet world, comparing the evolution of Slashdot versus GameFAQs shows the right way and the wrong way of handing such folks.
Take Slashdot. Support for community-wide discussion was enabled, and soon enough, there were "trolls". After some experimentation, a community-based moderation system was set up. So nowadays the "trolls" can post all they want, but the community will ensure that such comments are moderated down. So in general, the "trolls" are ignored, and even marginalized, without compromising the ability of Slashdot users to freely discuss a very wide variety of issues. Best of all, those who want to read what the "trolls" write are free to do so, if they browse at -1.
Of course, Slashdot trolls don't kill people. Terrorists do. Now you might say "just ignore the killing, and it won't bother you", but I don't consider that a good attitude. Moreover, you can quite effectively protect you from inadvertently reading troll posts by just setting the score threshold high enough. There's no corresponding "death threshold" to set in order to protect yourself from being inadvertently killed by terrorists.
Yes, it is important not to over-react to terrorists. But just ignoring them isn't the right answer either.
Indeed. If the original cipher supported more block sizes, then the paranoid type could conclude that the standard only contains those block sizes the NSA found vulnerable, and excludes the truly secure ones. Thus the paranoid would feel safer using those block sizes which didn't make it into the standard.
Of course the trusting type would argue the other way round: The other block sizes might have been excluded because they were found not to be secure (but without telling so, because the enemy shouldn't be warned about which sizes not to use).
Unless they have the private key, of course. It should be trivial for Skype to get the private keys: After all, both the software and the protocol are proprietary; it would be trivial for them to include sending the private key to Skype's servers.
Well, a moon in geosynchronous orbit might be unusual, but it's certainly not ours (otherwise you'd never see the moon raising or sinking). Our moon just shows bound rotation (well, for now; at some time in the far future earth will indeed be slowed down enough by the moon's tidal forces to also show bound rotation in respect to the moon, and then the moon's orbit will indeed be geostationary).
Why shouldn't books be endless blobs of paragraph after paragraph after paragraph? Paragraphs? Why that? Indeed, why should you even have line breaks? After all, the concept of lines comes from the old limitation of book pages. Nowadays with computer screens you could write your text simply in a single, horizontally scrolled line. Lines and paragraphs are anachronisms!
Crap. From their "about" page:
Additionaly everytime when you enter a non-md5 hash string into the search field, the md5 result for that search strings gets stored in our database for future use. Thanks for warning me. I tested to see if my password was in there... it is now!!! Well, to type your password anywhere but on your password prompt is just plain silly. In addition to being stored there, it was also transmitted in plaintext over the net, nicely packaged with your IP...
Slashdot Mirror
Don't get me wrong, I think these people clearly ripped off someone elses work and should pay out the ass, but I don't think this community has any credibility on this. In order to avoid repeating myself, I just refer you to this post.
Considering that current law states that copyright is valid until 70 years after the author's death, that copyright will expire in 2036.
Well, since Jesus is God, Jesus died when crucified at some time around the year 30, and the copyright law doesn't state that copyrights are reinstated on resurrection, the copyright has expired long ago.Of course, since there's this other person who also died in 1966, the copyright period will probably be extended before it expires.
No, it's not just the GPL. It's the GNU GPL.
Note that this is totally unrelated to the Linux vs. GNU/Linux debate. The name of the license is "GNU General Public License", or "GNU GPL" for short. It's not the only GPL in existence (there's also the Affero GPL), so it's important to correctly qualify it.
That is, allow the modified video, as long as it clearly says it's a modified video, what the original one was, and what they changed.
No.
That's not hypocritical. They didn't just copy the Harvard video, they stripped the copyright statement! That's plagarism. Note that even the most liberal OSS licenses (e.g. the two-clause BSD) still maintain that you are not allowed to remove the copyright notice. And I doubt you'll find many slashdotters who would claim that plagiarism should be allowed.
If they had just copied and distributed the Harvard video, I'm sure not many people here would have objected.
I'm a scientist. If you make copies of my articles and propagate them, I'm happy. If you take my articles, change a few things, remove my name and add yours, I'm angry.
They are the same thing. Not really. If originally all your customers had the same service, but now the service to the good ones gets improved without affecting the service for bad customers, that's better service to good customers. If OTOH the service for bad customers gets worse, that's worse service to bad customers. Of course both may happen at the same time (e.g. if you treat the good customers better without spending more on service, the other customers will typically be treated worse as a result).
The smiley at the end of my post?
German development of submarine warfare started before the Nazis came into power, so Godwin doesn't apply here.
Of course, Slashdot trolls don't kill people. Terrorists do. Now you might say "just ignore the killing, and it won't bother you", but I don't consider that a good attitude. Moreover, you can quite effectively protect you from inadvertently reading troll posts by just setting the score threshold high enough. There's no corresponding "death threshold" to set in order to protect yourself from being inadvertently killed by terrorists.
Yes, it is important not to over-react to terrorists. But just ignoring them isn't the right answer either.
And if you need a bomb, you buy a Sony battery.
And how would you most easily buy the hammer? Yes, that's right, over the net. See?
They have a public CVS server with their current attack plans?
But
You mean because your finger went too much to the left?
Communist!
Indeed. If the original cipher supported more block sizes, then the paranoid type could conclude that the standard only contains those block sizes the NSA found vulnerable, and excludes the truly secure ones. Thus the paranoid would feel safer using those block sizes which didn't make it into the standard.
Of course the trusting type would argue the other way round: The other block sizes might have been excluded because they were found not to be secure (but without telling so, because the enemy shouldn't be warned about which sizes not to use).
Unless they have the private key, of course. It should be trivial for Skype to get the private keys: After all, both the software and the protocol are proprietary; it would be trivial for them to include sending the private key to Skype's servers.
Indeed, adults use Devillose's law instead.
I think I should get a patent on replying to Slashdot comments by repeating the content of the post answered to, except for replacing "a" with "the".
Well, a moon in geosynchronous orbit might be unusual, but it's certainly not ours (otherwise you'd never see the moon raising or sinking). Our moon just shows bound rotation (well, for now; at some time in the far future earth will indeed be slowed down enough by the moon's tidal forces to also show bound rotation in respect to the moon, and then the moon's orbit will indeed be geostationary).
What about playing Civilization in real time?