But giving those documents to the media is tantamount to giving
it to the world any fool would know that. You would have to be
mind numbingly stupid to not know that all hostile nations would
instantly have access to the full list of documents if you give
them to ANY media source.
Luckily for the world, your paranoid fantasies do not match
reality. Disclosing to a reliable media source is the
time-honored way of responsibly reporting government malfeasance.
In your fantasy world where a responsible press does not exist
then there is no way for the press to act as a check on the
government because only "stupid fools" would trust the press.
My personal answer is no, and that any one who acts on that is
too far gone and that they need criminally punished. And that is
the judgment call we as a society have made.
I'm glad you agree with Manning on this essential point. What
we should do about the war crimes and government malfeasance
he disclosed is a judgment call that we as a society
have to make. It is impossible for us to make
the call unless some brave soul reports the crimes. You want
war crimes and atrocities to be committed by your government,
with your tax dollars, in your name, fine. I DON'T.
But unless someone like Manning exposes these crimes then I
have no choice in the matter and we as a society have no
choice in the matter.
Laws are in place so that, that fringe element is not allowed to
run amok. Laws are in place so that, that fringe element is not
allowed to run amok.
Exactly! When a fringe element has run amok and is breaking
laws and committing war crimes with impunity, someone brave
soul has to report it. That's what Manning did. In your
twisted, paranoid, fantasy version of reality there is no
way for someone to responsibly report war crimes because even
the most responsible disclosure is stupid and foolish.
If you were a soldier and you witnessed flagrant war crimes and
violations of the Constitution by your superiors, what would
you do? Would you
uphold your oath to support and defend the Constitution
by "stupidly and foolishly" reporting the war crimes to the
news media or would you take the Nuremberg Defense and turn
a blind eye to the war crimes all around you?
Most of the people arguing for manning have failed to defend the mass
dumping of *all* that information.
[...] He didn't need to dump 250k
of docs to make his point.
Manning's defenders don't don't defend it because it Manning didn't do it.
He didn't do a mass dump. He released documents to news organizations so
those organization would vet them and release only what was proper to be
released. That was the responsible thing to do under the circumstances.
It's true that one of those organizations screwed up and released
a private key that let everyone see all the documents but that
was clearly not Manning's fault. No one defends that mistake.
No one thinks it was right for all the documents to be released
to the public.
As a practical matter, it would have been impossible for Manning
to do it much differently. Once the leaks started, his access
would soon be terminated. He knew for sure a lot of the information
was damning. He scooped up more than he could personally vet and
gave it to people who were in a better position to do the vetting.
That's exactly the way it is supposed to be done.
You might want to try to blame Manning for choosing the wrong people
to trust. Since most of the main stream media have stopped doing
their jobs as journalist and have instead become sycophants to the
people in power, Manning did not have a wide range of choice about
whom to trust with his information.
Onyxruby, you are so full of it, you could make a killing
as a fertilizer whole seller.
1) Going through the "proper channels"
There were previous NSA whistle blowers who did follow
proper channels. Their lives were made hell and their
leaks did not get out. One of them, Thomas Drake,
had this to say about Snowden:
I differed as a whistleblower to Snowden only in this respect: in
accordance with the Intelligence Community Whistleblower
Protection Act, I took my concerns up within the chain of
command, to the very highest levels at the NSA, and then to
Congress and the Department of Defense. I understand why Snowden
has taken his course of action, because he's been following this
for years: he's seen what's happened to other whistleblowers like
me.
[...] But as I found out later, none of the material evidence I
disclosed went into the official record. It became a state secret
even to give information of this kind to the 9/11 investigation.
The material evidence that Snowden was able to provide, only by
going outside the proper channels, was essential for
refuting the sea of lies that have been emanating from the
highest levels of the NSA.
Those flagrant lies to Congress and the American public are one
of the reasons Snowden chose the path he did. Whistle blower
programs only work if the violations being reported are small and
don't extend to the highest levels. Are you seriously suggesting
that the director of the NSA would have allowed the release of
material evidence that would have outed himself as a liar to
Congress and the American people? That is certainly not what
happened with the previous NSA whistle blowers. And without the
material evidence it is just the word of an unknown underling
versus the word of the director of the NSA.
2) The route of maximum damage
Snowden did not release any information directly to the
public nor did he give any information to enemies or allies of
the US. What he did do was release limited information to a
legitimate news organization and let them decide what should be
released to the public. This is widely recognized as the
responsible course of action. For your claim against Snowden to
be true then the Washington Post, The Guardian, Germany's
Der Spiegel, and
Brazil's
O Globo must all be in on the conspiracy to cause maximum
political damage. Just like your suggestion about going through
proper channels, this claim of yours is not credible.
If you were in Snowden's position and had evidence that the NSA
was lying to Congress and the American people about vast
Unconstitutional spying networks, what would you do? Your idea
of "going through the proper channels" is an obvious non-starter.
The most responsible thing to do is exactly what Snowden did,
release some of the information to a legitimate news organization
and let them vet it to make sure it is both safe to release to
the public and newsworthy.
3) Ad hominem attacks on Snowden's character
I believe a citation request is warranted for your attacks on
Snowden's character. Everyone who I know of who has had
personal contact with Snowden has given nothing but the highest
praise when discussing his character. They are all convinced he
is only doing this for the noblest of reasons; not out of ego and
in an attempt to damage the US.
Your post consists of nothing but obvious outright lies and
baseless character assassination. Sadly, it typifies the
mainstream coverage of the NSA spying scandal. If you want to
see for yourself how the vetting process worked and see
appraisals of Snowden's character from people who were in
I'm very pro-open source but it appears that the fear from the
Internal Revenue Service was that companies were figuring out
ways to dodge taxes by moving developers to 501(c)(3) or
501(c)(6) organizations and then paying them in "donations" after
the software was released thereby avoiding some federal and state
income taxes to what normally would be their regular employees.
Hold on sparky. Since we are talking about open source software,
the software released is presumably open source and thus a
donation to the world. Since this is an actual donation what's
so wrong with counting it as a donation for tax purposes?
I think companies should get a tax break on the salaries
of their employees who develop open source software that is made
public even if that software is also used commercially.
The CIA made a historic mistake in encouraging Islamic groups from all over the
world to come to Afghanistan. The U.S. provided $3 billion for building up
these Islamic groups, and it accepted Pakistan's demand that they should decide
how this money should be spent.
The old associations between the intelligence agencies continue. The CIA still
has close links with the ISI (Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence).
Today that money and those weapons have helped build up the Taliban, Harrison
said. The Taliban are not just recruits from 'madrassas' (Muslim theological
schools) but are on the payroll of the ISI. The Taliban are now "making a
living out of terrorism."
Tell that to the friends and family of Aaron Swartz.
Given the reality that the average American now commits multiple felonies every
day, investigation is precisely retaliation. As
Paul Craig Roberts explains:
The criminal justice (sic) system today consists of a process whereby a defendant is coerced into admitting to a crime in order to escape more severe punishment for maintaining his innocence. Many of the crimes for which people are imprisoned never occurred. They are made up crimes created by the process of negotiation to close a case.
[...] Prosecutors have lost sight of innocence and guilt. What we have today is a conveyor belt that convicts almost everyone who is charged. [...] A defendant that incurs the prosecutor's ire is certain to be framed on far more serious charges than a negotiated plea.
Harvey Silverglate
estimates that the average American commits three felonies per day:
Silverglate believes that we are in danger of becoming a society in which prosecutors alone become judges, juries and executioners because the threat of high sentences make it too costly for even innocent people to resist the prosecutorial pressure.
But if you keep ignoring the minor bug fixes to solely focus on the critical
stuff, you'll NEVER get the minor things fixed.
Linus was not suggesting that minor bugs fixes should be ignored
in perpetuity. There is a time and a place for everything. He
was saying that the release candidates are not the time nor the
place for these minor bug fixes. The time and place for those
is the next release.
And frankly, cleaning up code so it's better for the next guy
shouldn't ever be a problem either.
Please get a clue. There are most certainly times when cleaning
up code for the next person is definitely a problem. A release
candidate is the prime example of when such needless changes
are a problem.
But at some point, someone needs to drill it in Linus's head
that Linux isn't "his" anymore. Not solely anyway.
Linus is simply doing his job, a large part of which consists
of herding cats. It is obvious that his previous, less flamboyant,
attempts to get this particular point across failed. Just
because Linus is right about Linux kernel development and you
are dead wrong doesn't make me an uber fan-boy worshiper. Nor
does it make me a condoner of murder.
If you were familiar with the case you would know that one of
Oracle's main arguments in its appeal is that APIs are currently
protected by copyright and Alsup's ruling (against making
APIs copyrightable) has upset the status quo. Yes, IMO Oracle's
lawyers should be severely sanctioned for tying up the courts
with such utter rubbish, but they haven't been (yet) so this
is what the fight is about.
Given this context, these Amici Curiae briefs make perfect sense.
Oracle is lying through its teeth about what the current
state of affairs is in order to swindle the court and make
a quick buck. It was almost essential for people to refute
Oracle's BS&F lies in order to keep the legal battle grounded
in reality.
The law firm BS&F has been filing bogus lawsuits like this
for ten years now. They started by getting paid $20 million
for the Microsoft funded SCO attacks against FOSS. They
will continue to clog the courts with their BS & FUD until
it is no longer economically profitable for them to do so.
I think they should be fined $20 million (or more) for their
cumulative egregious behavior over the past 10 years and
that money should be used to compensate those who have
been injured by their shenanigans. You need to catch them
in the act and punish them right away or they will never
learn.
In his most recent book, Liberty and Justice for Some, Glenn
Greenwald posits that the flagrant, unpunished, lawlessness in high
places which is currently destroying democracy in the United States
started with Ford's pardon of Nixon. The other half of Greenwald's
argument is that for everyone else, there is no liberty or justice
because the government is no longer obeying the Constitution or
following due process.
The subject of this Slashdot article is a perfect example of the
second half of Greenwald's argument. In a few short words the
GP neatly tied it with the first half. That's why, for me,
it was funny and enjoyable and it made me think.
when the government does it, that means that it is not unreasonable.
Richard Milhous Nixon (who was forced to resign from the
presidency of the United States due to his many flagrantly
illegal acts) said:
Well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.
Please don't speak for me and please don't include me in the group
"everyone". I don't think the GP was being fucking retarded and
counterproductive. Even though this is Slashdot, the GP's wit was
not lost to all readers.
Microsoft here. You remember all the nasty, sneaky, dirty
tricks we've pulled over the years? Well, our latest trick
is to make front groups who claim our competitors are now
using those same tricks.
If you are talking about the current president (or the previous
president) and the endless extra-judicial drone wars and the
endless extra-judicial war crimes and the endless extra-judicial
incarcerations then I completely agree with you. These actions
always create more enemies than they destroy. Without these
actions and without the US support of hated dictators around
the world, there would be no need for the fictitious war on
terror.
OTOH, Bradley Manning was trying to let the American people
know about some of these atrocities committed in their name and with
their tax dollars. Without disclosures like this, all the bad stuff
done by the US government stays secret and will never be stopped.
Is that really the path you want to take?
If you have already given up on the Constitution and the rule of
law, then sure, Manning needs to be punished in order to maintain
the power of the lawless US government in order to "keep us safe".
For people who still think Democracy can only live and thrive under
the rule of law then Manning acted as a selfless patriot. He
put himself in a position of great physical and psychological
danger in order to try to protect Democracy in the USA.
The atrocities and abuses he exposed are extremely damaging
to the US. The acts themselves are far more damaging than
the exposure of the acts to the American people. The people
who are on the receiving end of the attrocites, (and/or
their loved ones) already know about them. That's why
they keep fighting back.
If the types of behavior Manning exposed are not
curtailed then the so-called war on terror will never end.
Even as a society, you are only as sick as your secrets.
If you feel "wrongly accused" then there is a $35 'review
fee' to see precisely what you are accused of. It's refunded
if you win, but if the Copyright Alert System is so sure of
itself then why charge at all? Why not let individuals know
what they are accused of without this stipulation that the
fee is to stop "frivolous appeals?"
You actually have to pay money to see what this non-government
cabal is accusing you of? It costs them next to nothing to
tell you what the exact accusation is. It's just a few more
bytes in the warning email or in a web page linked to by the
email. I could maybe understand having to pay a fee to
contest the charges but it is truly Kafkaesque to have to
pay a fee just to find out what the charges are.
Functions are for the most part not copyrightable, but the creative expression
of the overall program may be.
The powers of evil are trying to make APIs copyrightable. APIs consist
of function declarations.
Their evil plan is to destabilize the entire software industry
by making it illegal for people who are not working for large
corporations to program.
The Armageddon they're striving for with their stupid patent
wars against Google will look like small potatoes once they're
allowed to copyright APIs. Patents only last 20 years. In
the USA copyright is forever. While allowing APIs to be
patented may be evil, it is far less evil than letting them
be copyrighted.
Of course, in order to destabilization the entire software industry
they are trying to trick some stupid judges into believing that
Judge Alsup's well reasoned ruling which maintains the status quo
would destabilization the entire software industry.
Alsup is far from stupid. Let's hope some of his wisdom rubs
off on the judges in the higher courts who read his ruling.
Shame on all of the people who are trying to hoodwink the nation
with this nonsense. Especially shame on Eugene Spafford who
really should know better. I had no idea he turned to the dark
side.
And what about when the people doing this purchase a dozen subsidized phones,
unlock them and resell them, and then simply refuse to pay the fee for
breaching the contract? Or what if they use a fake credit card for the initial
purchase? Or use a valid credit card, then simply stop paying it and leave the
CC company and the carrier to try to chase after them with collection agencies
to get, at most, pennies on the dollar?
Are you fcking serious? They will get royally screwed just like when serfs
anywhere try to get a little bit of money back from the rich.
There are plenty of things to worry about in the world but one of the few
things we don't have to worry about is the ability of large corporations
to put the screws to the little guy. Look at the robo-signing fiasco.
Thousands of people (or more) have lost their homes and all the
investment they put into them without ever having missed a payment.
The very last thing we need is yet another way for large corporations
to screw the average person.
Someone wanting an unlocked phone can simply buy an unlocked phone. All of the
carriers happily sell them. This is just about people wanting a free discount.
Yes, as long as everyone has perfect foresight of what will happen in
the future and how their contract will get changed without their consent
then what you say may be true. OTOH, in the real world this makes
about as much sense as your concern about giving corporations yet
another means of screwing individuals.
Slashdot Mirror
The Empire is not wearing any clothes!
But giving those documents to the media is tantamount to giving it to the world any fool would know that. You would have to be mind numbingly stupid to not know that all hostile nations would instantly have access to the full list of documents if you give them to ANY media source.
Luckily for the world, your paranoid fantasies do not match reality. Disclosing to a reliable media source is the time-honored way of responsibly reporting government malfeasance. In your fantasy world where a responsible press does not exist then there is no way for the press to act as a check on the government because only "stupid fools" would trust the press.
My personal answer is no, and that any one who acts on that is too far gone and that they need criminally punished. And that is the judgment call we as a society have made.
I'm glad you agree with Manning on this essential point. What we should do about the war crimes and government malfeasance he disclosed is a judgment call that we as a society have to make. It is impossible for us to make the call unless some brave soul reports the crimes. You want war crimes and atrocities to be committed by your government, with your tax dollars, in your name, fine. I DON'T. But unless someone like Manning exposes these crimes then I have no choice in the matter and we as a society have no choice in the matter.
Laws are in place so that, that fringe element is not allowed to run amok. Laws are in place so that, that fringe element is not allowed to run amok.
Exactly! When a fringe element has run amok and is breaking laws and committing war crimes with impunity, someone brave soul has to report it. That's what Manning did. In your twisted, paranoid, fantasy version of reality there is no way for someone to responsibly report war crimes because even the most responsible disclosure is stupid and foolish.
If you were a soldier and you witnessed flagrant war crimes and violations of the Constitution by your superiors, what would you do? Would you uphold your oath to support and defend the Constitution by "stupidly and foolishly" reporting the war crimes to the news media or would you take the Nuremberg Defense and turn a blind eye to the war crimes all around you?
Most of the people arguing for manning have failed to defend the mass dumping of *all* that information.
[...] He didn't need to dump 250k of docs to make his point.
Manning's defenders don't don't defend it because it Manning didn't do it. He didn't do a mass dump. He released documents to news organizations so those organization would vet them and release only what was proper to be released. That was the responsible thing to do under the circumstances.
It's true that one of those organizations screwed up and released a private key that let everyone see all the documents but that was clearly not Manning's fault. No one defends that mistake. No one thinks it was right for all the documents to be released to the public.
As a practical matter, it would have been impossible for Manning to do it much differently. Once the leaks started, his access would soon be terminated. He knew for sure a lot of the information was damning. He scooped up more than he could personally vet and gave it to people who were in a better position to do the vetting. That's exactly the way it is supposed to be done.
You might want to try to blame Manning for choosing the wrong people to trust. Since most of the main stream media have stopped doing their jobs as journalist and have instead become sycophants to the people in power, Manning did not have a wide range of choice about whom to trust with his information.
So, you can't run Linux on it.
No wonder it's not selling.
You should know it does't work to power subway trains!
FTFW
Onyxruby, you are so full of it, you could make a killing as a fertilizer whole seller.
1) Going through the "proper channels"
There were previous NSA whistle blowers who did follow proper channels. Their lives were made hell and their leaks did not get out. One of them, Thomas Drake, had this to say about Snowden:
I differed as a whistleblower to Snowden only in this respect: in accordance with the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act, I took my concerns up within the chain of command, to the very highest levels at the NSA, and then to Congress and the Department of Defense. I understand why Snowden has taken his course of action, because he's been following this for years: he's seen what's happened to other whistleblowers like me.
[...] But as I found out later, none of the material evidence I disclosed went into the official record. It became a state secret even to give information of this kind to the 9/11 investigation.
The material evidence that Snowden was able to provide, only by going outside the proper channels, was essential for refuting the sea of lies that have been emanating from the highest levels of the NSA.
Those flagrant lies to Congress and the American public are one of the reasons Snowden chose the path he did. Whistle blower programs only work if the violations being reported are small and don't extend to the highest levels. Are you seriously suggesting that the director of the NSA would have allowed the release of material evidence that would have outed himself as a liar to Congress and the American people? That is certainly not what happened with the previous NSA whistle blowers. And without the material evidence it is just the word of an unknown underling versus the word of the director of the NSA.
2) The route of maximum damage
Snowden did not release any information directly to the public nor did he give any information to enemies or allies of the US. What he did do was release limited information to a legitimate news organization and let them decide what should be released to the public. This is widely recognized as the responsible course of action. For your claim against Snowden to be true then the Washington Post, The Guardian, Germany's Der Spiegel, and Brazil's O Globo must all be in on the conspiracy to cause maximum political damage. Just like your suggestion about going through proper channels, this claim of yours is not credible.
If you were in Snowden's position and had evidence that the NSA was lying to Congress and the American people about vast Unconstitutional spying networks, what would you do? Your idea of "going through the proper channels" is an obvious non-starter. The most responsible thing to do is exactly what Snowden did, release some of the information to a legitimate news organization and let them vet it to make sure it is both safe to release to the public and newsworthy.
3) Ad hominem attacks on Snowden's character
I believe a citation request is warranted for your attacks on Snowden's character. Everyone who I know of who has had personal contact with Snowden has given nothing but the highest praise when discussing his character. They are all convinced he is only doing this for the noblest of reasons; not out of ego and in an attempt to damage the US.
Your post consists of nothing but obvious outright lies and baseless character assassination. Sadly, it typifies the mainstream coverage of the NSA spying scandal. If you want to see for yourself how the vetting process worked and see appraisals of Snowden's character from people who were in
I'm very pro-open source but it appears that the fear from the Internal Revenue Service was that companies were figuring out ways to dodge taxes by moving developers to 501(c)(3) or 501(c)(6) organizations and then paying them in "donations" after the software was released thereby avoiding some federal and state income taxes to what normally would be their regular employees.
Hold on sparky. Since we are talking about open source software, the software released is presumably open source and thus a donation to the world. Since this is an actual donation what's so wrong with counting it as a donation for tax purposes?
I think companies should get a tax break on the salaries of their employees who develop open source software that is made public even if that software is also used commercially.
in Afghanistan, the world did nothing when a small group of religious troops start to take over, killing and controlling everything.
Not everyone sat by and did nothing. The US funded and helped foster the Taliban, according to Selig Harrison from the Woodrow Wilson International Centre :
The CIA made a historic mistake in encouraging Islamic groups from all over the world to come to Afghanistan. The U.S. provided $3 billion for building up these Islamic groups, and it accepted Pakistan's demand that they should decide how this money should be spent.
The old associations between the intelligence agencies continue. The CIA still has close links with the ISI (Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence).
Today that money and those weapons have helped build up the Taliban, Harrison said. The Taliban are not just recruits from 'madrassas' (Muslim theological schools) but are on the payroll of the ISI. The Taliban are now "making a living out of terrorism."
From the web page of one of the authors: Acoustic echoes reveal room shape (pdf).
Being investigated is not retaliation.
Tell that to the friends and family of Aaron Swartz.
Given the reality that the average American now commits multiple felonies every day, investigation is precisely retaliation. As Paul Craig Roberts explains:
The criminal justice (sic) system today consists of a process whereby a defendant is coerced into admitting to a crime in order to escape more severe punishment for maintaining his innocence. Many of the crimes for which people are imprisoned never occurred. They are made up crimes created by the process of negotiation to close a case. [...] Prosecutors have lost sight of innocence and guilt. What we have today is a conveyor belt that convicts almost everyone who is charged. [...] A defendant that incurs the prosecutor's ire is certain to be framed on far more serious charges than a negotiated plea.
Harvey Silverglate estimates that the average American commits three felonies per day:
Silverglate believes that we are in danger of becoming a society in which prosecutors alone become judges, juries and executioners because the threat of high sentences make it too costly for even innocent people to resist the prosecutorial pressure.
But if you keep ignoring the minor bug fixes to solely focus on the critical stuff, you'll NEVER get the minor things fixed.
Linus was not suggesting that minor bugs fixes should be ignored in perpetuity. There is a time and a place for everything. He was saying that the release candidates are not the time nor the place for these minor bug fixes. The time and place for those is the next release.
And frankly, cleaning up code so it's better for the next guy shouldn't ever be a problem either.
Please get a clue. There are most certainly times when cleaning up code for the next person is definitely a problem. A release candidate is the prime example of when such needless changes are a problem.
But at some point, someone needs to drill it in Linus's head that Linux isn't "his" anymore. Not solely anyway.
Linus is simply doing his job, a large part of which consists of herding cats. It is obvious that his previous, less flamboyant, attempts to get this particular point across failed. Just because Linus is right about Linux kernel development and you are dead wrong doesn't make me an uber fan-boy worshiper. Nor does it make me a condoner of murder.
If you were familiar with the case you would know that one of Oracle's main arguments in its appeal is that APIs are currently protected by copyright and Alsup's ruling (against making APIs copyrightable) has upset the status quo. Yes, IMO Oracle's lawyers should be severely sanctioned for tying up the courts with such utter rubbish, but they haven't been (yet) so this is what the fight is about.
Given this context, these Amici Curiae briefs make perfect sense. Oracle is lying through its teeth about what the current state of affairs is in order to swindle the court and make a quick buck. It was almost essential for people to refute Oracle's BS&F lies in order to keep the legal battle grounded in reality.
The law firm BS&F has been filing bogus lawsuits like this for ten years now. They started by getting paid $20 million for the Microsoft funded SCO attacks against FOSS. They will continue to clog the courts with their BS & FUD until it is no longer economically profitable for them to do so. I think they should be fined $20 million (or more) for their cumulative egregious behavior over the past 10 years and that money should be used to compensate those who have been injured by their shenanigans. You need to catch them in the act and punish them right away or they will never learn.
Air will kill people dead [sic] as well if injected instead of inhaled.
Is it funny?
Yes.
Does it make you think?
Yes.
Is it enjoyable?
Yes. Of course, YMMVG on all three points.
In his most recent book, Liberty and Justice for Some, Glenn Greenwald posits that the flagrant, unpunished, lawlessness in high places which is currently destroying democracy in the United States started with Ford's pardon of Nixon. The other half of Greenwald's argument is that for everyone else, there is no liberty or justice because the government is no longer obeying the Constitution or following due process.
The subject of this Slashdot article is a perfect example of the second half of Greenwald's argument. In a few short words the GP neatly tied it with the first half. That's why, for me, it was funny and enjoyable and it made me think.
The GP said:
when the government does it, that means that it is not unreasonable.
Richard Milhous Nixon (who was forced to resign from the presidency of the United States due to his many flagrantly illegal acts) said:
Well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.
Please don't speak for me and please don't include me in the group "everyone". I don't think the GP was being fucking retarded and counterproductive. Even though this is Slashdot, the GP's wit was not lost to all readers.
Microsoft here. You remember all the nasty, sneaky, dirty tricks we've pulled over the years? Well, our latest trick is to make front groups who claim our competitors are now using those same tricks.
Well I think they meant viral.
I wish I had mod points for you.
Our current crop of crap blog software would die. And good riddens.
Many riddens died ...
He most certainly was aiding the enemy, [...]
If you are talking about the current president (or the previous president) and the endless extra-judicial drone wars and the endless extra-judicial war crimes and the endless extra-judicial incarcerations then I completely agree with you. These actions always create more enemies than they destroy. Without these actions and without the US support of hated dictators around the world, there would be no need for the fictitious war on terror.
OTOH, Bradley Manning was trying to let the American people know about some of these atrocities committed in their name and with their tax dollars. Without disclosures like this, all the bad stuff done by the US government stays secret and will never be stopped. Is that really the path you want to take?
If you have already given up on the Constitution and the rule of law, then sure, Manning needs to be punished in order to maintain the power of the lawless US government in order to "keep us safe". For people who still think Democracy can only live and thrive under the rule of law then Manning acted as a selfless patriot. He put himself in a position of great physical and psychological danger in order to try to protect Democracy in the USA.
The atrocities and abuses he exposed are extremely damaging to the US. The acts themselves are far more damaging than the exposure of the acts to the American people. The people who are on the receiving end of the attrocites, (and/or their loved ones) already know about them. That's why they keep fighting back. If the types of behavior Manning exposed are not curtailed then the so-called war on terror will never end. Even as a society, you are only as sick as your secrets.
From the 2nd fine article:
If you feel "wrongly accused" then there is a $35 'review fee' to see precisely what you are accused of. It's refunded if you win, but if the Copyright Alert System is so sure of itself then why charge at all? Why not let individuals know what they are accused of without this stipulation that the fee is to stop "frivolous appeals?"
You actually have to pay money to see what this non-government cabal is accusing you of? It costs them next to nothing to tell you what the exact accusation is. It's just a few more bytes in the warning email or in a web page linked to by the email. I could maybe understand having to pay a fee to contest the charges but it is truly Kafkaesque to have to pay a fee just to find out what the charges are.
Functions are for the most part not copyrightable, but the creative expression of the overall program may be.
The powers of evil are trying to make APIs copyrightable. APIs consist of function declarations.
Their evil plan is to destabilize the entire software industry by making it illegal for people who are not working for large corporations to program. The Armageddon they're striving for with their stupid patent wars against Google will look like small potatoes once they're allowed to copyright APIs. Patents only last 20 years. In the USA copyright is forever. While allowing APIs to be patented may be evil, it is far less evil than letting them be copyrighted.
Of course, in order to destabilization the entire software industry they are trying to trick some stupid judges into believing that Judge Alsup's well reasoned ruling which maintains the status quo would destabilization the entire software industry. Alsup is far from stupid. Let's hope some of his wisdom rubs off on the judges in the higher courts who read his ruling.
Shame on all of the people who are trying to hoodwink the nation with this nonsense. Especially shame on Eugene Spafford who really should know better. I had no idea he turned to the dark side.
And what about when the people doing this purchase a dozen subsidized phones, unlock them and resell them, and then simply refuse to pay the fee for breaching the contract? Or what if they use a fake credit card for the initial purchase? Or use a valid credit card, then simply stop paying it and leave the CC company and the carrier to try to chase after them with collection agencies to get, at most, pennies on the dollar?
Are you fcking serious? They will get royally screwed just like when serfs anywhere try to get a little bit of money back from the rich.
There are plenty of things to worry about in the world but one of the few things we don't have to worry about is the ability of large corporations to put the screws to the little guy. Look at the robo-signing fiasco. Thousands of people (or more) have lost their homes and all the investment they put into them without ever having missed a payment.
The very last thing we need is yet another way for large corporations to screw the average person.
Someone wanting an unlocked phone can simply buy an unlocked phone. All of the carriers happily sell them. This is just about people wanting a free discount.
Yes, as long as everyone has perfect foresight of what will happen in the future and how their contract will get changed without their consent then what you say may be true. OTOH, in the real world this makes about as much sense as your concern about giving corporations yet another means of screwing individuals.
Isn't Google making money via advertising on youtube with all the posted videos that are infringing on copyrights?
"Oh noes! Google is teh evil because they don't take down enough YouTube videos."
Previously on Slashdot:
"Oh noes! Google is teh evil because they take down too many YouTube videos".
Give me a break.