Granting immunity after the fact is not ex post facto. Ex post facto means to make something illegal after the act has been done
Strictly speaking, that isn't true. Retroactive legality, aka "amnesty" is a class of ex post facto law, though they aren't as universally considered unconstitutional. And if you're making the distinction between "immunity" and "legality", then removing immunity isn't changing legality either.
Whichever theory is correct in this instance (that the acts were legal at the time, or the acts were made legal later), making them illegal now would be a violation of the ex post facto provision and should not be pursued.
Actually that matters hugely. Ex post facto is about making something illegal relative to when the act was committed. Act was illegal when committed, act is illegal after new law is passed, law is not ex post facto. The whole point of prohibiting ex post facto laws is so that you don't do something that according to the law at the time is legal, and then they make that formerly legal act an illegal one and punish you for it.
Well when the act was illegal at the time, and equally illegal later, then nothing has changed and that's not ex post facto. The fact that there was a brief period after the illegal act was committed where it was legal makes no difference. The telcos did not commit these acts during that period. It was not legal when they did it. It was a crime.
It would be the height of tyranny for Congress to change its collective mind now and go after them.
No. The height of tyranny was giving corporations a pass for breaking the law -- not a law against freeing slaves, or against women voting, but a law and a Constitutional Amendment against spying on the American people without warrants. Granting amnesty for acts of tyranny is tyranny! Undoing that tyranny is not tyranny, it is the opposite of tyranny!
As I say in another post, I'm not really convinced that we should spend a lot of effort prosecuting the crimes of the last 8 years. I'm not sure it's productive. But I'm 100% certain that it is wrong to retroactively make those actions legal. They should and must remain illegal. This bill will make them remain illegal. It was an act of tyranny to make them legal, not just retroactively but into the future as well. Undoing that is the correct action, your arguments otherwise are completely backwards. Whether we prosecute those crimes is another matter.
I'm willing to forgive, but not to whitewash. I will not accept making their crimes into not-crimes. That is heinous and wrong.
In order for companies to function, they need some predictability. Congress' granting retroactive immunity to the telcos set a bad precedent. But having done so, revoking it also sets a bad precedent.
No, it sets a good precedent -- don't think you can break the law, and then have Congress retroactively cover your ass, because it won't stick. You want predictability? How about "obey the law as written, not as you hope it might be in the future"?
Undoing the damage done by retroactive immunity is a good thing.
On the other hand, is it ever late too late to seek justice?
No, but... *shrug* The question is, among all the injustices done during the previous administration which will go unpunished, is it so important to punish this one? I'm not really sure. Frankly I tend towards the line of thinking that says "lets move on". It was a crazy time. We, as a nation, were crazy. A lot of people did bad things and ultimately I think most of them at some level believed they were doing good. Not just "I was following orders", but "I was following orders in order to Save America".
I dunno. I'm very much against retroactive immunity, but at the same time I'm not so sure how diligently we should pursue prosecution for every violation of the law in the last 8 years. I am much more concerned with making sure it doesn't happen again in the future, and I'm not a big believer in punishment as a deterrent for future crimes. No criminal thinks they are going to get caught, and for a lot of the crimes in question the perps probably really believed they were not committing crimes. I'm not sure seeking justice in these cases is, you know, productive.
The actions the telecoms took were legal under the PATRIOT act
No, they weren't. Not even USAPATRIOT authorizes unlimited spying on domestic sources with no warrant. And nobody in the government has ever even claimed that the actions were legal under USAPATRIOT. The only statutory legal justification for the program would have been FISA and they did not go through FISA. The only claim on legality they ever made was AG Gonzales' legal theory that the President can ignore any law he wants as long as he thinks it's really important for national security that he do so -- a legal theory with what I will generously call "flaws".
Not even John Ashcroft thought the surveillance program was legal, and he was a huge proponent of USAPATRIOT. Does that not tell you something?
That's why Congress had to retroactively make those actions legal. That is the ex post facto law. Undoing an ex post facto law is not, itself, ex post facto.
"causality of motion" (whatever that means, if anything)
It means "I don't understand Conservation of Energy, and think not understanding something means you can act like it doesn't exist."
It's a physics troll, kind of a cross between Electric Universe and Time Cube. He's been posting essentially the same message and blog link for a while now.
While the linked "physics rebel" blog does not have a more convincing answer among its diatribe and handwaving, that rebel is correct to point out that practically all physics is based on an axiom like inertia/momentum. Which is a matter of faith, as much as "god moves it" was.
No. The only "axiom" in science is that the universe is self-consistent and can be understood by empirical observation. Yes that's a matter of "faith", but it is a faith that has born practical results. It would difficult to explain how that isn't true, yet we are still able to have this conversation.
The question being asked is simply "why does the position continue to change, when there's nothing continuing to change it?" The implied question, that shows the conflict between that one and yours, is "how is velocity the fundamental state, but position is not as fundamental?" I haven't seen a good one yet.
They're both fundamental. There is something to continue to change position, the velocity since that's what velocity is. Why wouldn't position continue to change? Why would these two fundamental and intimately connected properties suddenly become disconnected? Why is this so inexplicable? With no velocity, an object does not change position. With velocity, it does. Once it has the property of a changing position, and the property of kinetic energy, why would that property vanish?
I would ask you why you believe an object at rest would stay at rest, but that's actually the same question: "why does velocity remain constant?"
And yes it's mysterious that it does, but so is everything else about the universe.
Springs at least store energy that can release over time, which could continue to impulse an object into continued sustained motion at velocity.
It's fine that you were being snarky, but do not talk to me about a spring supplying energy as a possible explanation for why an object moves at constant velocity. An impulse is an acceleration. Every time you or the rebelscience crackpot talk about how inexplicable it is that an object could continue to move at constant velocity without any "force" or "energy" being applied to do so, it just screams "I have no idea what I'm talking about!" A change in position on its own does not require nor imply a change in energy. These words mean things, measurable physical quantities, and you're garbling them up and asking why the garbled mess doesn't make sense.
But still, let me cut past all the abused physics terminology and get to the heart of the matter where I do actually see where you're coming from.
Ultimately, science knows no "reason" why momentum is conserved, or why energy is conserved. So philosophically, that's a completely open question, that's true. It's about as interesting to me as the equally open question of why "position" exists, or why "existence" exists, or if it really does exist. Or, for that matter, the equally unexplained question of why an object at rest doesn't suddenly zip across the universe at the speed of light. There is no "reason" for any of this that we know of.
But at the end of the day I'm an experimentalist, and Conservation of Momentum and Conservation of Energy are two of the most commonly, thoroughly, and minutely tested and experimented theories in existence. Once we upgraded these theories with Relativity and E=mc^2, their predictive power jumped into Super-Saiyan mode. They've survived every massive upheaval of the way we view the universe, and continue to only serve us better and better.
In another post you said that conservation of momentum was a matter of faith. It's not, at least not at that level. The only faith I or anyone else need have is the belief that the universe can be understood via experiment. That's a leap of faith to be sure, but it's served humanity well enough to allow us to have this conversation. And if you make that leap, the leap of faith that the universe is explicable at all, then Conservation of Momentum is not just another arbitrary axiom. It's as true as anything in the universe can ever be "proven" to be true.
So if you doubt it, then you need to either come up with an answer to the unanswerable philosophical questions of existence itself, or you need some evidence. And there is no evidence against it, and a vast swirling universe of evidence for it.
Not as an explanation for continued motion after the initial impulse has ended.
Why does that need an explanation? An "impluse", i.e. a force, is a change in momentum. When you stop applying the "impluse", the momentum stops changing.
The question that needs answering is: Why would momentum suddenly and inexplicably vanish? Why would an object that is moving and experiencing no force stop? What happened to the energy imparted to the object?
Springs aren't sufficient for anything... they apply forces... as in accelerations...
Without even realizing it, the real question being asked here is "what is the difference between velocity and acceleration?" as if it's just an assumption that they aren't the same.
The grandparent is an idiot who has read too much science fiction, but his ideas are theoretically sound. The practical problems are huge, however, not 'just around the corner'.
Um, no. The only idea that is correct is that you will not be harmed by acceleration if every particle in your body is accelerated equally (or nearly equally). That doesn't mean you can "ignore" inertia in general. He ignores inertia, specifically Conservation of Momentum, plus Conservation of Energy, in order to come up with his crackpot theories. None of it passes the theoretical smell test. Practical problems don't enter into it.
All the same, 3b is one of three options. You are not required to publish the code to any third party unless you opt not to follow either 3a or 3c.
Yeah, that was my mistake. It's funny I've actually read the GPL like a hundred times but can still fail at some of the details. I guess part of the reason is that if you really are trying to comply, it's so easy that most of the details don't matter much.:)
One interesting thing though, is that since they clearly did not accompany the binary distribution with source ruling out 3a, and since they are commercial, that rules out 3c, so their only choice for compliance would be 3b.
Of course practically speaking I'm sure the plaintiffs would be fine with just receiving the source themselves and calling it an instance of 3a. It's in our interest to make complying with the GPL painless even for the non-compliant.:)
It was pretty suspicious at the time, could have just been a goof by their PR dept.
A goof or an overreach or maybe at one time it really was the goal, before Miyamoto decided what he really wanted to do and they realized they should stick to their usual $200 price point. Who knows what that incarnation of "Revolution" was supposed to be back when it was akin to the Ginger/IT/Segway?:)
Wait, when did they say that? In all the discussions prior to the beginning of this generation, every piece of scuttlebutt said that the Wii/Revolution would debut at $200, largely because that's the price every other N home console had debuted at. If there had been any kind of statement about an expected price, then some fanboy of some console would have brought it up.
I'd be interested if you had a link. But that price point, and announcing such, seems very un-Nintendo.
No, he's completely serious. Nintendo sells their hardware for a profit, always have and always will. When you bought your GC for $100 that was late in the console's life and it cost less than $100 to make. When the GC was launched at $200, it cost less than $200 to make. All they do is games -- they can't afford to subsidize their gaming business with money from other sectors like Sony and MS.
In fact, it's only recently that selling hardware at a loss became popular. For most of its life, the PS2 was sold at a profit. Xbox was the exception last time, as Sony/Big N hilariously revealed.
Of course Nintendo also likes game royalties, and thus charges what the market will bear for games. But no, selling hardware at a loss and making it up with games isn't their business model. Profiting off of hardware, then profiting off of games is their business model.
You do realize that 9-11 was ordered by a guy living in Afghanistan, under the protection of the Taliban, right? You can say what you want about Iraq, but going to war in Afghanistan was IN RESPONSE to us being attacked. It was hardly random.
Completely with you on this one. There's a reason we had most of the world's support (or at least understanding) for invading Afghanistan, and it wasn't just that our image was better at the time. There is no conceivable Commander in Chief -- Al Gore, even Ralph Nader -- who wouldn't have put our forces' boots on the ground in Afghanistan in response. Even freaking Canada thought it was a cause worth spilling blood over (that and they're in NATO).
It's too bad the Iraq debacle distracted us so much from the justified war. Before it began, I was worried the Admin. would see Afghanistan through rose-colored glasses and assume it'd be a cakewalk. Turns out they took "The Graveyard of Empires" seriously, and took very pragmatic steps like befriending the Northern Alliance and all the warlords immediately. No, it was in Iraq that all my worst fears became reality, and even worse took vital attention and resources away from Afghanistan. I doubt we'd be out of Afghanistan today, but a lot of the reason the Taleban has kept resurging is because we didn't have the resources to hold the territory we kept taking from them. The very fact that I'm talking about a conflict where "taking territory" is even a relevant concept, but we wasted our army in an urban insurgency hellhole, just depresses me.
Ah yes, thanks, I forgot about the "one of" clause.
I really don't see how that makes my post 'FUD' as all these others are claiming, especially since a link to a website containing the source -- even if it isn't your website, it just contains your modifications -- is sufficient.
The GPL intentionally does not impose the burden for modifiers to positively disseminate their "Corresponding Source" to anyone other than those to whom they have already incurred the burden of distributing the binaries.
GPLv2 section 3b. If you don't convey the source directly with the object code, you must convey a written offer valid for any third party to send them the source code upon request.
I had forgotten that this was an "or" clause, but it is in the GPL, so maybe you should read it too?
And this isn't FUD for anyone who wasn't already terrified of the GPL. Why is conveying a link to a website with the source such an onerous burden? Especially when that link can simply be to whatever CVS repository the open source project normally works from, assuming you committed your changes to it? Seriously.
Ze GPL needs testing so badly. Zus far it has only been tested in ze legal depart'ments of business, and not in ze legal courts.
That first sentence is not really true, and not only because the second sentence is also untrue. The GPL may not have been tested extensively, but it has been tried in courts around the globe. But since there really isn't any reason no think that it would be ruled invalid, that testing isn't necessary. There's a reason it's been tested so few times -- all those legal departments, all those lawyers of various degrees of sleaziness, can find no basis on which to challenge it which they think would pass the judicial smell test. Even though they and their clients would have every reason to trump something up. The few that have tried to challenge the validity of the license have failed spectacularly.
A lot of their customers will be Dear Old Ladies who call their ISP when they have lost the little bit of paper their daughter wrote the password on.... the password isn't protecting anything of value anyway.
Fine. So relax the password rules and let her use her daughter's middle name as her password. That's better than storing passwords in plaintext. There's no reason to do that.
The police are the enforcers of the law. It blows my mind that people blame the lowest guy on the ladder for laws and policies. Joe Cop isnt writing state and federal law.... If you ever got off your high horse and talked to some cops you might have many share the same attitudes you do.
That's true. And as an example of how it can work, the Travis County Sheriff's Department lobbied for a Texas law that would allow them to simply write tickets for misdemeanor possession rather than having to arrest the offender -- though arrest is still an option at officer's discretion. The dept. thought that mandatory marijuana arrests were wasting too much of the department's time and resources -- not exactly a pro-legalization stance, but it does mirror the common complaint that arresting tokers is excessive and wasteful when there are more serious crimes the police could be focusing on.
Considering you are in a democracy you are just as guilty as anyone else for these laws being in existance.
Because they decided not to go into politics, run for state senate and win, and write a new law that is approved by congress? What if they were in one of several states that had a decriminalization proposition on the ballot, they voted for it, but it still lost. That's their fault how? Insufficient lobbying?
I think it's pretty obvious that even in a democracy not everyone is equally responsible for the state of the law.:P
Slashdot Mirror
Granting immunity after the fact is not ex post facto. Ex post facto means to make something illegal after the act has been done
Strictly speaking, that isn't true. Retroactive legality, aka "amnesty" is a class of ex post facto law, though they aren't as universally considered unconstitutional. And if you're making the distinction between "immunity" and "legality", then removing immunity isn't changing legality either.
Whichever theory is correct in this instance (that the acts were legal at the time, or the acts were made legal later), making them illegal now would be a violation of the ex post facto provision and should not be pursued.
Actually that matters hugely. Ex post facto is about making something illegal relative to when the act was committed. Act was illegal when committed, act is illegal after new law is passed, law is not ex post facto. The whole point of prohibiting ex post facto laws is so that you don't do something that according to the law at the time is legal, and then they make that formerly legal act an illegal one and punish you for it.
Well when the act was illegal at the time, and equally illegal later, then nothing has changed and that's not ex post facto. The fact that there was a brief period after the illegal act was committed where it was legal makes no difference. The telcos did not commit these acts during that period. It was not legal when they did it. It was a crime.
It would be the height of tyranny for Congress to change its collective mind now and go after them.
No. The height of tyranny was giving corporations a pass for breaking the law -- not a law against freeing slaves, or against women voting, but a law and a Constitutional Amendment against spying on the American people without warrants. Granting amnesty for acts of tyranny is tyranny! Undoing that tyranny is not tyranny, it is the opposite of tyranny!
As I say in another post, I'm not really convinced that we should spend a lot of effort prosecuting the crimes of the last 8 years. I'm not sure it's productive. But I'm 100% certain that it is wrong to retroactively make those actions legal. They should and must remain illegal. This bill will make them remain illegal. It was an act of tyranny to make them legal, not just retroactively but into the future as well. Undoing that is the correct action, your arguments otherwise are completely backwards. Whether we prosecute those crimes is another matter.
I'm willing to forgive, but not to whitewash. I will not accept making their crimes into not-crimes. That is heinous and wrong.
That makes a lot of sense. Glad they didn't go that route; it never would have taken off. Someone at Nintendo probably said "Um, guys? Sega?"
In order for companies to function, they need some predictability. Congress' granting retroactive immunity to the telcos set a bad precedent. But having done so, revoking it also sets a bad precedent.
No, it sets a good precedent -- don't think you can break the law, and then have Congress retroactively cover your ass, because it won't stick. You want predictability? How about "obey the law as written, not as you hope it might be in the future"?
Undoing the damage done by retroactive immunity is a good thing.
On the other hand, is it ever late too late to seek justice?
No, but... *shrug* The question is, among all the injustices done during the previous administration which will go unpunished, is it so important to punish this one? I'm not really sure. Frankly I tend towards the line of thinking that says "lets move on". It was a crazy time. We, as a nation, were crazy. A lot of people did bad things and ultimately I think most of them at some level believed they were doing good. Not just "I was following orders", but "I was following orders in order to Save America".
I dunno. I'm very much against retroactive immunity, but at the same time I'm not so sure how diligently we should pursue prosecution for every violation of the law in the last 8 years. I am much more concerned with making sure it doesn't happen again in the future, and I'm not a big believer in punishment as a deterrent for future crimes. No criminal thinks they are going to get caught, and for a lot of the crimes in question the perps probably really believed they were not committing crimes. I'm not sure seeking justice in these cases is, you know, productive.
The actions the telecoms took were legal under the PATRIOT act
No, they weren't. Not even USAPATRIOT authorizes unlimited spying on domestic sources with no warrant. And nobody in the government has ever even claimed that the actions were legal under USAPATRIOT. The only statutory legal justification for the program would have been FISA and they did not go through FISA. The only claim on legality they ever made was AG Gonzales' legal theory that the President can ignore any law he wants as long as he thinks it's really important for national security that he do so -- a legal theory with what I will generously call "flaws".
Not even John Ashcroft thought the surveillance program was legal, and he was a huge proponent of USAPATRIOT. Does that not tell you something?
That's why Congress had to retroactively make those actions legal. That is the ex post facto law. Undoing an ex post facto law is not, itself, ex post facto.
"causality of motion" (whatever that means, if anything)
It means "I don't understand Conservation of Energy, and think not understanding something means you can act like it doesn't exist."
It's a physics troll, kind of a cross between Electric Universe and Time Cube. He's been posting essentially the same message and blog link for a while now.
While the linked "physics rebel" blog does not have a more convincing answer among its diatribe and handwaving, that rebel is correct to point out that practically all physics is based on an axiom like inertia/momentum. Which is a matter of faith, as much as "god moves it" was.
No. The only "axiom" in science is that the universe is self-consistent and can be understood by empirical observation. Yes that's a matter of "faith", but it is a faith that has born practical results. It would difficult to explain how that isn't true, yet we are still able to have this conversation.
The question being asked is simply "why does the position continue to change, when there's nothing continuing to change it?" The implied question, that shows the conflict between that one and yours, is "how is velocity the fundamental state, but position is not as fundamental?" I haven't seen a good one yet.
They're both fundamental. There is something to continue to change position, the velocity since that's what velocity is. Why wouldn't position continue to change? Why would these two fundamental and intimately connected properties suddenly become disconnected? Why is this so inexplicable? With no velocity, an object does not change position. With velocity, it does. Once it has the property of a changing position, and the property of kinetic energy, why would that property vanish?
I would ask you why you believe an object at rest would stay at rest, but that's actually the same question: "why does velocity remain constant?"
And yes it's mysterious that it does, but so is everything else about the universe.
Springs at least store energy that can release over time, which could continue to impulse an object into continued sustained motion at velocity.
It's fine that you were being snarky, but do not talk to me about a spring supplying energy as a possible explanation for why an object moves at constant velocity. An impulse is an acceleration. Every time you or the rebelscience crackpot talk about how inexplicable it is that an object could continue to move at constant velocity without any "force" or "energy" being applied to do so, it just screams "I have no idea what I'm talking about!" A change in position on its own does not require nor imply a change in energy. These words mean things, measurable physical quantities, and you're garbling them up and asking why the garbled mess doesn't make sense.
But still, let me cut past all the abused physics terminology and get to the heart of the matter where I do actually see where you're coming from.
Ultimately, science knows no "reason" why momentum is conserved, or why energy is conserved. So philosophically, that's a completely open question, that's true. It's about as interesting to me as the equally open question of why "position" exists, or why "existence" exists, or if it really does exist. Or, for that matter, the equally unexplained question of why an object at rest doesn't suddenly zip across the universe at the speed of light. There is no "reason" for any of this that we know of.
But at the end of the day I'm an experimentalist, and Conservation of Momentum and Conservation of Energy are two of the most commonly, thoroughly, and minutely tested and experimented theories in existence. Once we upgraded these theories with Relativity and E=mc^2, their predictive power jumped into Super-Saiyan mode. They've survived every massive upheaval of the way we view the universe, and continue to only serve us better and better.
In another post you said that conservation of momentum was a matter of faith. It's not, at least not at that level. The only faith I or anyone else need have is the belief that the universe can be understood via experiment. That's a leap of faith to be sure, but it's served humanity well enough to allow us to have this conversation. And if you make that leap, the leap of faith that the universe is explicable at all, then Conservation of Momentum is not just another arbitrary axiom. It's as true as anything in the universe can ever be "proven" to be true.
So if you doubt it, then you need to either come up with an answer to the unanswerable philosophical questions of existence itself, or you need some evidence. And there is no evidence against it, and a vast swirling universe of evidence for it.
Get your ass to an NEO! (just doesn't have the same right to it)
Just refer to the NEO in question as "The One", and I'm sure you'll be able get some people excited about it.
We must find The One!
Not as an explanation for continued motion after the initial impulse has ended.
Why does that need an explanation? An "impluse", i.e. a force, is a change in momentum. When you stop applying the "impluse", the momentum stops changing.
The question that needs answering is: Why would momentum suddenly and inexplicably vanish? Why would an object that is moving and experiencing no force stop? What happened to the energy imparted to the object?
Springs aren't sufficient for anything... they apply forces... as in accelerations...
Without even realizing it, the real question being asked here is "what is the difference between velocity and acceleration?" as if it's just an assumption that they aren't the same.
The grandparent is an idiot who has read too much science fiction, but his ideas are theoretically sound. The practical problems are huge, however, not 'just around the corner'.
Um, no. The only idea that is correct is that you will not be harmed by acceleration if every particle in your body is accelerated equally (or nearly equally). That doesn't mean you can "ignore" inertia in general. He ignores inertia, specifically Conservation of Momentum, plus Conservation of Energy, in order to come up with his crackpot theories. None of it passes the theoretical smell test. Practical problems don't enter into it.
All the same, 3b is one of three options. You are not required to publish the code to any third party unless you opt not to follow either 3a or 3c.
Yeah, that was my mistake. It's funny I've actually read the GPL like a hundred times but can still fail at some of the details. I guess part of the reason is that if you really are trying to comply, it's so easy that most of the details don't matter much. :)
One interesting thing though, is that since they clearly did not accompany the binary distribution with source ruling out 3a, and since they are commercial, that rules out 3c, so their only choice for compliance would be 3b.
Of course practically speaking I'm sure the plaintiffs would be fine with just receiving the source themselves and calling it an instance of 3a. It's in our interest to make complying with the GPL painless even for the non-compliant. :)
That's what I was thinking. This sounds about like "Honda's answer to self-inflicted groin injuries!"
It was pretty suspicious at the time, could have just been a goof by their PR dept.
A goof or an overreach or maybe at one time it really was the goal, before Miyamoto decided what he really wanted to do and they realized they should stick to their usual $200 price point. Who knows what that incarnation of "Revolution" was supposed to be back when it was akin to the Ginger/IT/Segway? :)
Wait, when did they say that? In all the discussions prior to the beginning of this generation, every piece of scuttlebutt said that the Wii/Revolution would debut at $200, largely because that's the price every other N home console had debuted at. If there had been any kind of statement about an expected price, then some fanboy of some console would have brought it up.
I'd be interested if you had a link. But that price point, and announcing such, seems very un-Nintendo.
No, he's completely serious. Nintendo sells their hardware for a profit, always have and always will. When you bought your GC for $100 that was late in the console's life and it cost less than $100 to make. When the GC was launched at $200, it cost less than $200 to make. All they do is games -- they can't afford to subsidize their gaming business with money from other sectors like Sony and MS.
In fact, it's only recently that selling hardware at a loss became popular. For most of its life, the PS2 was sold at a profit. Xbox was the exception last time, as Sony/Big N hilariously revealed.
Of course Nintendo also likes game royalties, and thus charges what the market will bear for games. But no, selling hardware at a loss and making it up with games isn't their business model. Profiting off of hardware, then profiting off of games is their business model.
that's one ugly airship. it looks like some fatass sitting on a toilet, squeezing out a turd (cabin).
So... would that be a log cabin?
You do realize that 9-11 was ordered by a guy living in Afghanistan, under the protection of the Taliban, right? You can say what you want about Iraq, but going to war in Afghanistan was IN RESPONSE to us being attacked. It was hardly random.
Completely with you on this one. There's a reason we had most of the world's support (or at least understanding) for invading Afghanistan, and it wasn't just that our image was better at the time. There is no conceivable Commander in Chief -- Al Gore, even Ralph Nader -- who wouldn't have put our forces' boots on the ground in Afghanistan in response. Even freaking Canada thought it was a cause worth spilling blood over (that and they're in NATO).
It's too bad the Iraq debacle distracted us so much from the justified war. Before it began, I was worried the Admin. would see Afghanistan through rose-colored glasses and assume it'd be a cakewalk. Turns out they took "The Graveyard of Empires" seriously, and took very pragmatic steps like befriending the Northern Alliance and all the warlords immediately. No, it was in Iraq that all my worst fears became reality, and even worse took vital attention and resources away from Afghanistan. I doubt we'd be out of Afghanistan today, but a lot of the reason the Taleban has kept resurging is because we didn't have the resources to hold the territory we kept taking from them. The very fact that I'm talking about a conflict where "taking territory" is even a relevant concept, but we wasted our army in an urban insurgency hellhole, just depresses me.
Ah yes, thanks, I forgot about the "one of" clause.
I really don't see how that makes my post 'FUD' as all these others are claiming, especially since a link to a website containing the source -- even if it isn't your website, it just contains your modifications -- is sufficient.
Nothing I said would apply to software in the public domain.
The GPL intentionally does not impose the burden for modifiers to positively disseminate their "Corresponding Source" to anyone other than those to whom they have already incurred the burden of distributing the binaries.
GPLv2 section 3b. If you don't convey the source directly with the object code, you must convey a written offer valid for any third party to send them the source code upon request.
I had forgotten that this was an "or" clause, but it is in the GPL, so maybe you should read it too?
And this isn't FUD for anyone who wasn't already terrified of the GPL. Why is conveying a link to a website with the source such an onerous burden? Especially when that link can simply be to whatever CVS repository the open source project normally works from, assuming you committed your changes to it? Seriously.
Ze GPL needs testing so badly. Zus far it has only been tested in ze legal depart'ments of business, and not in ze legal courts.
That first sentence is not really true, and not only because the second sentence is also untrue. The GPL may not have been tested extensively, but it has been tried in courts around the globe. But since there really isn't any reason no think that it would be ruled invalid, that testing isn't necessary. There's a reason it's been tested so few times -- all those legal departments, all those lawyers of various degrees of sleaziness, can find no basis on which to challenge it which they think would pass the judicial smell test. Even though they and their clients would have every reason to trump something up. The few that have tried to challenge the validity of the license have failed spectacularly.
That is, as the French say, "Le hint".
No, not to all, only to their clients.
Not according to the GPL. If you distribute GPL software to anyone, then you must extend the offer of source code to all third parties.
Learn to quote properly. Also, tl;dr.
Wall of text crits you for 50 damage.
You have been killed by Wall of text.
Excellent!
Flawless victory!
A lot of their customers will be Dear Old Ladies who call their ISP when they have lost the little bit of paper their daughter wrote the password on.... the password isn't protecting anything of value anyway.
Fine. So relax the password rules and let her use her daughter's middle name as her password. That's better than storing passwords in plaintext. There's no reason to do that.
The police are the enforcers of the law. It blows my mind that people blame the lowest guy on the ladder for laws and policies. Joe Cop isnt writing state and federal law.... If you ever got off your high horse and talked to some cops you might have many share the same attitudes you do.
That's true. And as an example of how it can work, the Travis County Sheriff's Department lobbied for a Texas law that would allow them to simply write tickets for misdemeanor possession rather than having to arrest the offender -- though arrest is still an option at officer's discretion. The dept. thought that mandatory marijuana arrests were wasting too much of the department's time and resources -- not exactly a pro-legalization stance, but it does mirror the common complaint that arresting tokers is excessive and wasteful when there are more serious crimes the police could be focusing on.
Considering you are in a democracy you are just as guilty as anyone else for these laws being in existance.
Because they decided not to go into politics, run for state senate and win, and write a new law that is approved by congress? What if they were in one of several states that had a decriminalization proposition on the ballot, they voted for it, but it still lost. That's their fault how? Insufficient lobbying?
I think it's pretty obvious that even in a democracy not everyone is equally responsible for the state of the law. :P
why dont these people move
And that's not even worthy of a response. :P