'However, I am worried if we have another Clinton presidency. It is common knowledge that they used the FBI to dig up dirt on political opponents. Now it is coming to light the they intercepted wireless phone calls of political opponents to listen in. At least this administration lets you know they are doing it.'
I highly doubt there has been an administration that hasn't done it to be honest. But there was a time when they did so in shadows afraid of the power wielded by the people. Bush and company have just shown that no matter how outraged the people they have been disarmed and no longer have the spine to retaliate even if they had not.
No matter how much flowery language and fine ideas we wrap it up in, today is no different than the feudal times. All power is derived from force, the people have been disarmed (does some idiot believe that the arms mentioned the in the second amendment weren't intended to refer to military capable weapons?) and all units of government and military capable of wielding force are under the jurisdiction of the executive. The last hope of putting a stop to this madness and putting the executive in check is for the individual states to act, they still have their own police and military forces.
'and cable records can only be retrieved upon a court order'
Are they saying that comcast will hand over identity and ip records WITHOUT a court order? The only 'balanced' policy would be to turn over nothing to law enforcement without a court order and even then to oppose the order if possible.
'Sure, but that is because having the police enter my house is intrusive. They track mud in, can drop anything anywhere and say that they found it there.'
The same is true of tapping my phone lines, it requires a warrant and for good reason. The same is true of requesting my DNA. You do not give the police or any investigating authority any intelligence voluntarily because when they are investigating you they are your enemy. It is estimated based on after the fact DNA testing that 30% of the people in prison are innocent, think about that.
'A quote from an email is not.'
You are mistaken.
'Besides, these guys are not looking for prosecution, they are looking to identify and bust terrorism cells. They are looking to stop the next terrorist attack.'
That is particularly naive. They may be looking for terrorism, but they are certainly looking for political dissidents.
'Besides, even the SS didn't really need to evesdrop.'
But they did. Even the SS didn't have infinite manpower. It is easier to have computers scan millions of phone calls, email, and web traffic than to kick down a million doors. You are also a lot less likely to meet any sort of armed resistance.
'Do you think that if the feds are monitoring your line, they are just going to say, "Damn! He's encrypted. Let's move on to the next." I'm going to guess not. If anything, seeing that you email is encrypted might be enough to peak their interest to make you MORE watched, not less.'
You are probably right, IF you have been tagged by authorities and they have reason to believe you've committed a crime or great reason to want to snoop in on you then they will probably scrutinize you more closely if you have encryption. However, encryption represents a substantial barrier. There is no 'bypass encryption' button at the FBI, it takes serious computer and manpower to read messages when strong encryption has been used. While statistically small, there are a lot of people using encryption and the feds can't just investigate all of them, they have mass surveillance programs snooping on internet traffic and encryption is effectively opting out of those. You've just taken the odds of you being a false positive in these programs and reduced it to zero.
Using enough resources the feds can get around your encryption but it isn't cheap or easy, they aren't going to do it unless they already strongly believe you are a serious threat. If you are innocent then you should have nothing to fear from encryption.
'This also takes precious manpower away from the people who are trying to stop the next terror attack in the US.'
Enough with this nonsense already. The current executive branch and law enforcement represent a far greater terrorist threat to the people of the United States than any foreign group. Law enforcement and the executive branch as a whole are throwing away the freedoms that represent the backbone of this nation and doing so with nothing more than the hollow promise that we should be more terrified of someone else than of them. This line of thinking also shows support for the current religious wars the executive is engaging in and the previous support of religious wars that have excited foreign extremists against the US in the first place.
'Regardless of you political opinions, I don't see how anyone could think that impeding these guys is a good thing.'
Law enforcement are literally individuals who want to dictate how you should behave at gunpoint. These are not the good guys, they have never been the good guys, and they never will be the good guys. These guys existing makes for a good threat that stops otherwise honest people from crossing the line but we don't really want these vicious and incompetent authorities to actually act. The bad guys aren't as bad as the authorities.
'Me on the other hand, I don't care. There is nothing incriminating in my email beyond sending stupid YouTube links to a buddy or bitching to the wife about who chooses whats for dinner. I'm really not interesting enough for the Feds to care about. Please take no offense when I say that I doubt anyone else here is either.'
What is in my mail is beside the point. I know several people who are afraid to discuss the political climate on the telephone or internet because they are afraid of retribution. I am not just speaking of those who like conspiracy stories, I am talking about normal everyday people. People like my mother and grandmother.
'If a team I'm on creates an icon like Mickey Mouse, I wouldn't want others to use said icon without my consent.'
Of course you wouldn't. There are lots of things I wouldn't want or would want, unfortunately, not every call is mine to make.
'If they did, they could destroy the value of the icon.'
The icon has innate value, we are discussing the artificial value that is given in the form of copyright.
'If you think that a copyright holder is acting too much in their self-interest in terms of profits, then just boycott them.'
Or I could recognize that there is no particular reason to grant them a copyright in the first place.
'Remember, just because something's out there doesn't mean you have to have it.'
Remember just because you had an idea doesn't mean you own it or have the right to prevent anyone else from having it.
You do not have a RIGHT to your ideas or to prevent others from benefiting from them. Ideas are not property, copying is the building block that defines life and occurs at every level of life and nature. In a world without copying you couldn't produce new skin cells, a baby couldn't inherit its mother's eyes, and only one family would live in houses. Ideas are also not unique, in fact all ideas are the inevitable result of given input. No matter who you assassinated a printing press type device would be have been created, operating systems would have been developed, a pointing and selection device, languages developed, etc. There is nothing natural about copyright, copyright and patent is not needed for development to occur and the world won't grind to a halt without them. It is natural and good for me to look around me, see what is good and try to duplicate that good in my own life, it doesn't stop being natural and right when technology allows me to duplicate those good things perfectly and effortlessly.
It is not selfish to see good things and want them if I can have them without taking from others (as opposed to stealing which deprives others of their things). It is selfish to try to control others by preventing access to ideas that benefit us all.
'Isn't creating a law with the purpose of using it for one thing (going after commercial pirates) and then using it for something else (going after people who pirate for no money and instead personal uses) something we hate here at slashdot?'
First of all this has nothing to do with piracy. Second, the law was designed to go after those who use an organizational structure to pursue crime. It might have been the mob who was in the sights of the government when passing these laws but there are more so called 'legitimate' corporate conspiracies than 'illegitimate' and the 'legitimate' crime syndicates need to be brought to justice just as the organized crime of old.
Although the whole piracy reference was a nice plea to emotion I think you'll find that Slashdotters don't feel those laws are being used inappropriately but instead feel that laws which create a class of users that could be called pirates are bad regardless of how they are applied. Copyright and Patent laws have outlived their usefulness, anything that supports that archaic and obsolete system or its enforcement is bad.
Apparently I've missed them. I haven't seen any bugs in Ubuntu that aren't in every distribution using the packages. The actual Ubuntu specific parts are more stable and functional than I've seen in any other distribution.
'Think its a coincidence that Ubuntu is the most popular Linux distro, and it just happens to be the most dumbed down?'
I think you are giving Ubuntu an unfair shake here. Yes Ubuntu simplifies most common tasks and has very sane defaults for most applications out of the box but it manages to do that without sacrificing flexibility and utility anywhere. It's crazy to me that people are still using plain old debian when Ubuntu does everything Debian does as well or better, it is basically a debian superset.
I have used many distributions, Linux from scratch, gentoo, redhatian, debianish, and of course slack. I am comfortable performing any administration task in any of them. Using Ubuntu leaves me the flexibility to change or customize anything on the system but allows me to get from fresh install to fully configured system in dramatically less time than other distributions. People are using Ubuntu mostly for desktops but I use it for servers as well.
I have no interest in systems that are difficult or hard just for the sake of being so. In a system like Ubuntu you keep all the strengths of Linux as a platform and gain the advantages being able to quickly and easily configure most aspects of the system (or in most cases, not having to configure because the system uses sane defaults that more or less match what you would have set anyway).
Windows and MacOS are systems that have been dumbed down at the expense of flexibility and configurability, Ubuntu is not.
Copyright assignment to those in control of the project is a good thing. It consolidates interest, makes it possible to make licensing decisions and changes in the future, and allows the project to be defended legally.
It is also probably time for an OO fork. Forking is not evil or bad, forking is powerful and must be used with caution but it is the ultimate power the community has. I'm not especially surprised that Sun spent all that time previously talking about the evils of forks, it is only fitting since Sun intends to control anything they contribute with an iron fist. The project is stagnant, not because people don't contribute but because Sun doesn't accept changes or only wants certain features in StarOffice.
There should probably be a fork if we want to see something useful arise from OO but it shouldn't be run by Novell or Sun or IBM or any other corporation. A fork should be run by the community, for the community. A community run foundation or non-profit should be at its head with a no sale of the codebase clause in its charter. If Novell wants to donate the bandwidth then so be it.
True, copyright assignment is just good sense. The real issue is that Sun can't be trusted to be the copyright holder. For one they hold the project in their talons under an iron grip when the project should be in the hands of the community. For another, Sun blatantly does exactly what everyone fears when assigning copyright, they take your code and sell it as proprietary software.
Languages aren't dying out, people are consolidating their means of communication. That isn't 'alarming' its a breath of fresh air. Multiple languages only developed in the first place due to isolation it is time to consolidate. There will still probably be local variations of a the common tongue.
Now if only we could get the damn cubans and mexicans migrating to the US to stop speaking spanish and start calling themselves americans.
The use 'male geek culture' is nothing more than an attempt to take a large number of individuals who share no commonality except working in somewhat related professions and using a stereotype to blame those individuals for the troubles of others individuals who want to find someone to blame for their own inability to succeed professionally.
I am a white male geek who only sees legitimacy in grouping by gender in matters related to sex, whose ancestors neither owned nor partipated in any slave trades, whose family is dirt poor and apparently missed out on the part where they were supposed to have benefited economically and thus owe people who haven't been repressed in the slightest an advantage despite having never repressed anyone.
Just because a number of individuals who happened to share a characteristic said and/or did bad things to others who happened to share a characteristic doesn't you can group me in if I happen to share a characteristic with the former or that you are entitled to anything simply because you share a characteristic with the later.
The entire affirmative action crap needs called out as well. Forget simple reverse discrimination. Even if I had benefited because of the discrimination of others (which I sure as hell didn't), so what? I am no more responsible than a security company that gains new customers because robbers target those without security. The CURRENT society discriminates based on wealth, some of us weren't born with any, some were born with plenty. Unless you want to read a story book it really doesn't matter what history led to us being born poor or wealthy, that is our lot in life and you be a lot more successful in making the best of it if you stop asking for handouts and a leg up and start making your own opportunities.
'If Frank as enough Money/Power...he can make up for a LOT of lack of sexiness.'
Apparently you forgot that we are talking about IT workers here. Frank believes he is ultra powerful because he has root, but outside his terminal Frank has no money and no power and is laughed at by 'cool' third graders.
'The Military Commissions Act does not apply to US citizens, permanent residents, or persons with a valid legal status within the United States. Only US citizens have a right to Habeas Corpus (Gonzales' ridiculous statements on the issue aside).'
That's a rather odd stance. The Consititution says that says that ALL the constitutional rights apply to all men. They are granted by god and held to be self evident (which is contradicted by the fact that these self evident rights are stated).
'And less power to the guy who designs Ferraris for a living.'
Actually, less power to the company that exploits the guy who designs Ferraris for a living. That of course is a good thing, since they currently have several orders of magnitude more power than they are entitled to. There are also alternative business models they could adopt.
Actually, the Ferrari duplicator would eliminate the need for that company and the Ferrari designer would probably end up with a VERY substantial pay raise.
'IIRC, his contract is going to be up soon anyways, and if this is how he feels his company is treating him I doubt he'll sign a new one. With the innovative storytelling he's done with Year Zero, and essentially making open-source music by releasing the original recording data so that anyone can remix it, it'll be interesting to see how he goes about releasing new music without a large distribution network that the major label gives him.'
He still has a large distribution network, its called the internet. Artists don't see any significant amount of that huge CD price, they make their money from concerts, thats why they tour constantly.
'Tolkien's world is famous because of its immense depth and detail. Lord of the Rings is good writing because while you get a sense of all the depth and detail, its history, and its complexity.'
Sorry but Tolkien wasn't the greatest story teller, he was an innovator and the Lord of the Rings was great for being an innovation. The actual story itself compares well to other fantasy works and remains among the greats but is hardly the best. The complexity and detail you speak of do not compare with what Robert Jordan painted.
Only someone who has read the WoT a few times can truely understand and appreciate the story. Jordan doesn't just paint a complex and intricate picture of the world, he paints a CONSISTENT complex and intricate picture of the world. When Min is first introduced and it mentions a few examples of images she saw off hand, those images foretold minor events that unfolded in 'side stories' as much as 10 books and thousands of pages later.
The first misunderstanding that people have is thinking the Wheel of Time is a series, its not. The WoT is really one book that has been released in segments. The second is that its enough to just read through it, you couldn't possibly grasp the story with one quick read through. The Wheel of Time is not a story written for a casual reader and will not be easily digested by that crowd.
'What is the Wheel of Time about exactly? Its not really about anything because its about everything. And its not about everything because its spends to much time focused on the minutia of individuals. It tries to paint a forest by telling you the story of every tree. And in the end you have neither a good sense of the forest, nor any decent connection to any particular trees.'
That simply isn't true. The Wheel of Time is telling a very specific story and it only paints the trees that are of some significance in that story. There are dozens of major and semi major characters but there isn't one who is fleshed out significantly for no reason at all, all of them play a part in the bigger picture.
'And in the end you have neither a good sense of the forest, nor any decent connection to any particular trees.'
If you give the story the attention it deserves you will have an excellent knowledge of the forest that couldn't be attained any other way and you have a deep connection to the individual trees. Not only that, but you know the job was done correctly because your connection with given trees is proportionate to their importance. You understand how characters think and could predict their actions in a given situation in the same manner you could predict those of a close friend. Not only that, but you care about the characters. Your heart stops when the source is cleaned, throughout the tail you mentally grasp, cry, laugh, and get excited in the suspense.
Seriously, I might understand with random people but I have trouble believing there is someone with technical skill who doesn't appreciate the need for a detailed understanding of the component pieces and their interaction to TRULY appreciate the big picture.
I'll save you some trouble, if you are the type who wants to read through a book and then toss it on a shelf to gather dust the Wheel of Time isn't for you. If you want that kind of passive entertainment you are better off just watching a movie. You have to work for it to appreciate the WoT but once you do, you will find a masterpiece that is second to none.
* invented roughly two dozen different languages, with free borrowings from one another and a historical development of language and dialects over time
This was a waste of time, the languages added absolutely nothing to the story. They were there just to be there.
* invented the history of a world on a grand scale from its very beginning
A scale that pales in comparison to that which Jordan created. It lacks the depth and the detail. Tolkien wrapped you up in the wonder of the story but Jordan created a world you could believe. I never had any particular attachment with any character in Tolkien's world because he never really developed a character in a way you could relate to or understand.
* wrote some detailed stories covering very small periods within the above
Tolkien skipped huge swaths of the story, instead letting entire adventures go with a few words of summary.
* finished each individual story
True, The wheel of time is really one book. A very long, intricate and delicate masterpiece that Tolkien couldn't have managed in his wildest dreams.
* could write
Yes, not nearly so well as dozens of fantasy authors who have followed, including Jordan but he could write. Lord of the Rings is a great tale but what sets it apart is that at the time it was an innovative story that took fantasy to a new level. The actual story itself is among the greats but not the best of them and not alone in that class.
That's a pretty rough criticism of a man who wrote a story that would humble Tolkien himself. While it may be difficult to follow the individual plots of dozens of major and semi-major characters, that is a shortcoming of the readers mind and not the author.
'Funny, but when I think back to the pre-OSX Macs back in the 1990's, I remember unstable, propriety, and incredibly overpriced hardware.'
I take it you were a PC guy then eh?;) You had the proprietary and incredibly overpriced part right but the hardware was fast and rock solid. The PowerPC processor handily outperformed the x86 except toward the end. The x86 guys would bring out the old megahertz myth but the PowerPC chips always consumed less energy and were faster. They had superior memory, a superior bus design (though toward the end it needed updated), used SCSI drives in place of IDE.
Toward of the end of Apple using it the technology was becoming dated and instead of updating the technology they just switched over to inferior commodity PC technology instead. The only reason the PowerPC kept up as long as it did was because IBM did the development and updating for them. Those expensive prices were supposed to be because Apple developed their own proprietary technology but ultimately, Apple didn't develop any of the core technologies they used and proved unable to continue developing the technology into the future. As they replaced each piece they had let development of the technology stagnate enough that everyone welcomed the change. That doesn't mean the technology itself didn't have more potential than the PC stuff.
Apple sells PC's now and they are still expensive. They are still relying on technology they didn't develop (both in their hardware and software). Nothing has changed except their credibility in claiming they need to charge a higher price for their now commodity systems.
I remember quite clearly that once upon a time non-commercial use meant that you didn't charge anyone for the material. It has always been the norm for the person redistributing the materials to serve ads on the sites to cover their expenses and if they can make a buck or two then more power to them. It isn't a sin to make a profit, as long as they provide a clean, easy to use, and accessible repository of content at no charge then they are empowering the internet by hosting more content for the masses. If they use ads in a way that is a pain the tail, the license allows you to build a new site to supplant them.
All the sudden this mentality has changed. I think it mostly started with copyright owners going after Youtube for profiting off their content. You can't control the media industry's hysteria on this but surely the community can recognize that the current model of the internet can't work without distinguishing how the content itself is being served from how the ads on the page are being served.
I realize the GPL doesn't prohibit a charge but just the same if the local bookstore had a big rack and banners saying they were giving out free Ubuntu DVD's I certainly wouldn't call that commercial use. They are giving the DVD's out for free and helping to spread awareness; if someone happens to buy a book while picking up a DVD then I'm happy for the bookstore.
'If SCO was dissolved the case against IBM would disappear.'
That would be a bad thing, we don't want the IBM case to disappear, we want IBM have a very strong favorable ruling. Any other outcome means this was all a waste of time with no precedents set.
'many years ago i was both a pc and a mac tech, and this is pre os x. i knew then and there that apple had superior hardware, but an inferior operating system. i thought if they could just get a better os, they would take everything over. well, they got a better os, but the only taking over they have done is to this up and coming generation of trendy dipshit kids.'
I saw the same thing. They improved the OS (essentially by slapping Apple interfaces on another OS but who cares) but they switched their hardware over to the PC stuff crap. Piece by piece they adopted a PCI bus, sdram, ide, pc video hardware, and now even pc processors. Mac's are no longer mac's, they are PC's running a primarily PC-Developed operating system that has an Apple interface on top.
Slashdot Mirror
'However, I am worried if we have another Clinton presidency. It is common knowledge that they used the FBI to dig up dirt on political opponents. Now it is coming to light the they intercepted wireless phone calls of political opponents to listen in. At least this administration lets you know they are doing it.'
I highly doubt there has been an administration that hasn't done it to be honest. But there was a time when they did so in shadows afraid of the power wielded by the people. Bush and company have just shown that no matter how outraged the people they have been disarmed and no longer have the spine to retaliate even if they had not.
No matter how much flowery language and fine ideas we wrap it up in, today is no different than the feudal times. All power is derived from force, the people have been disarmed (does some idiot believe that the arms mentioned the in the second amendment weren't intended to refer to military capable weapons?) and all units of government and military capable of wielding force are under the jurisdiction of the executive. The last hope of putting a stop to this madness and putting the executive in check is for the individual states to act, they still have their own police and military forces.
'and cable records can only be retrieved upon a court order'
Are they saying that comcast will hand over identity and ip records WITHOUT a court order? The only 'balanced' policy would be to turn over nothing to law enforcement without a court order and even then to oppose the order if possible.
'Sure, but that is because having the police enter my house is intrusive. They track mud in, can drop anything anywhere and say that they found it there.'
The same is true of tapping my phone lines, it requires a warrant and for good reason. The same is true of requesting my DNA. You do not give the police or any investigating authority any intelligence voluntarily because when they are investigating you they are your enemy. It is estimated based on after the fact DNA testing that 30% of the people in prison are innocent, think about that.
'A quote from an email is not.'
You are mistaken.
'Besides, these guys are not looking for prosecution, they are looking to identify and bust terrorism cells. They are looking to stop the next terrorist attack.'
That is particularly naive. They may be looking for terrorism, but they are certainly looking for political dissidents.
'Besides, even the SS didn't really need to evesdrop.'
But they did. Even the SS didn't have infinite manpower. It is easier to have computers scan millions of phone calls, email, and web traffic than to kick down a million doors. You are also a lot less likely to meet any sort of armed resistance.
'Do you think that if the feds are monitoring your line, they are just going to say, "Damn! He's encrypted. Let's move on to the next." I'm going to guess not. If anything, seeing that you email is encrypted might be enough to peak their interest to make you MORE watched, not less.'
You are probably right, IF you have been tagged by authorities and they have reason to believe you've committed a crime or great reason to want to snoop in on you then they will probably scrutinize you more closely if you have encryption. However, encryption represents a substantial barrier. There is no 'bypass encryption' button at the FBI, it takes serious computer and manpower to read messages when strong encryption has been used. While statistically small, there are a lot of people using encryption and the feds can't just investigate all of them, they have mass surveillance programs snooping on internet traffic and encryption is effectively opting out of those. You've just taken the odds of you being a false positive in these programs and reduced it to zero.
Using enough resources the feds can get around your encryption but it isn't cheap or easy, they aren't going to do it unless they already strongly believe you are a serious threat. If you are innocent then you should have nothing to fear from encryption.
'This also takes precious manpower away from the people who are trying to stop the next terror attack in the US.'
Enough with this nonsense already. The current executive branch and law enforcement represent a far greater terrorist threat to the people of the United States than any foreign group. Law enforcement and the executive branch as a whole are throwing away the freedoms that represent the backbone of this nation and doing so with nothing more than the hollow promise that we should be more terrified of someone else than of them. This line of thinking also shows support for the current religious wars the executive is engaging in and the previous support of religious wars that have excited foreign extremists against the US in the first place.
'Regardless of you political opinions, I don't see how anyone could think that impeding these guys is a good thing.'
Law enforcement are literally individuals who want to dictate how you should behave at gunpoint. These are not the good guys, they have never been the good guys, and they never will be the good guys. These guys existing makes for a good threat that stops otherwise honest people from crossing the line but we don't really want these vicious and incompetent authorities to actually act. The bad guys aren't as bad as the authorities.
'Me on the other hand, I don't care. There is nothing incriminating in my email beyond sending stupid YouTube links to a buddy or bitching to the wife about who chooses whats for dinner. I'm really not interesting enough for the Feds to care about. Please take no offense when I say that I doubt anyone else here is either.'
What is in my mail is beside the point. I know several people who are afraid to discuss the political climate on the telephone or internet because they are afraid of retribution. I am not just speaking of those who like conspiracy stories, I am talking about normal everyday people. People like my mother and grandmother.
'If a team I'm on creates an icon like Mickey Mouse, I wouldn't want others to use said icon without my consent.'
Of course you wouldn't. There are lots of things I wouldn't want or would want, unfortunately, not every call is mine to make.
'If they did, they could destroy the value of the icon.'
The icon has innate value, we are discussing the artificial value that is given in the form of copyright.
'If you think that a copyright holder is acting too much in their self-interest in terms of profits, then just boycott them.'
Or I could recognize that there is no particular reason to grant them a copyright in the first place.
'Remember, just because something's out there doesn't mean you have to have it.'
Remember just because you had an idea doesn't mean you own it or have the right to prevent anyone else from having it.
You do not have a RIGHT to your ideas or to prevent others from benefiting from them. Ideas are not property, copying is the building block that defines life and occurs at every level of life and nature. In a world without copying you couldn't produce new skin cells, a baby couldn't inherit its mother's eyes, and only one family would live in houses. Ideas are also not unique, in fact all ideas are the inevitable result of given input. No matter who you assassinated a printing press type device would be have been created, operating systems would have been developed, a pointing and selection device, languages developed, etc. There is nothing natural about copyright, copyright and patent is not needed for development to occur and the world won't grind to a halt without them. It is natural and good for me to look around me, see what is good and try to duplicate that good in my own life, it doesn't stop being natural and right when technology allows me to duplicate those good things perfectly and effortlessly.
It is not selfish to see good things and want them if I can have them without taking from others (as opposed to stealing which deprives others of their things). It is selfish to try to control others by preventing access to ideas that benefit us all.
'Isn't creating a law with the purpose of using it for one thing (going after commercial pirates) and then using it for something else (going after people who pirate for no money and instead personal uses) something we hate here at slashdot?'
First of all this has nothing to do with piracy. Second, the law was designed to go after those who use an organizational structure to pursue crime. It might have been the mob who was in the sights of the government when passing these laws but there are more so called 'legitimate' corporate conspiracies than 'illegitimate' and the 'legitimate' crime syndicates need to be brought to justice just as the organized crime of old.
Although the whole piracy reference was a nice plea to emotion I think you'll find that Slashdotters don't feel those laws are being used inappropriately but instead feel that laws which create a class of users that could be called pirates are bad regardless of how they are applied. Copyright and Patent laws have outlived their usefulness, anything that supports that archaic and obsolete system or its enforcement is bad.
'A more buggy superset.'
Apparently I've missed them. I haven't seen any bugs in Ubuntu that aren't in every distribution using the packages. The actual Ubuntu specific parts are more stable and functional than I've seen in any other distribution.
'Think its a coincidence that Ubuntu is the most popular Linux distro, and it just happens to be the most dumbed down?'
I think you are giving Ubuntu an unfair shake here. Yes Ubuntu simplifies most common tasks and has very sane defaults for most applications out of the box but it manages to do that without sacrificing flexibility and utility anywhere. It's crazy to me that people are still using plain old debian when Ubuntu does everything Debian does as well or better, it is basically a debian superset.
I have used many distributions, Linux from scratch, gentoo, redhatian, debianish, and of course slack. I am comfortable performing any administration task in any of them. Using Ubuntu leaves me the flexibility to change or customize anything on the system but allows me to get from fresh install to fully configured system in dramatically less time than other distributions. People are using Ubuntu mostly for desktops but I use it for servers as well.
I have no interest in systems that are difficult or hard just for the sake of being so. In a system like Ubuntu you keep all the strengths of Linux as a platform and gain the advantages being able to quickly and easily configure most aspects of the system (or in most cases, not having to configure because the system uses sane defaults that more or less match what you would have set anyway).
Windows and MacOS are systems that have been dumbed down at the expense of flexibility and configurability, Ubuntu is not.
Copyright assignment to those in control of the project is a good thing. It consolidates interest, makes it possible to make licensing decisions and changes in the future, and allows the project to be defended legally.
It is also probably time for an OO fork. Forking is not evil or bad, forking is powerful and must be used with caution but it is the ultimate power the community has. I'm not especially surprised that Sun spent all that time previously talking about the evils of forks, it is only fitting since Sun intends to control anything they contribute with an iron fist. The project is stagnant, not because people don't contribute but because Sun doesn't accept changes or only wants certain features in StarOffice.
There should probably be a fork if we want to see something useful arise from OO but it shouldn't be run by Novell or Sun or IBM or any other corporation. A fork should be run by the community, for the community. A community run foundation or non-profit should be at its head with a no sale of the codebase clause in its charter. If Novell wants to donate the bandwidth then so be it.
True, copyright assignment is just good sense. The real issue is that Sun can't be trusted to be the copyright holder. For one they hold the project in their talons under an iron grip when the project should be in the hands of the community. For another, Sun blatantly does exactly what everyone fears when assigning copyright, they take your code and sell it as proprietary software.
*slithers away*
Languages aren't dying out, people are consolidating their means of communication. That isn't 'alarming' its a breath of fresh air. Multiple languages only developed in the first place due to isolation it is time to consolidate. There will still probably be local variations of a the common tongue.
Now if only we could get the damn cubans and mexicans migrating to the US to stop speaking spanish and start calling themselves americans.
The use 'male geek culture' is nothing more than an attempt to take a large number of individuals who share no commonality except working in somewhat related professions and using a stereotype to blame those individuals for the troubles of others individuals who want to find someone to blame for their own inability to succeed professionally.
I am a white male geek who only sees legitimacy in grouping by gender in matters related to sex, whose ancestors neither owned nor partipated in any slave trades, whose family is dirt poor and apparently missed out on the part where they were supposed to have benefited economically and thus owe people who haven't been repressed in the slightest an advantage despite having never repressed anyone.
Just because a number of individuals who happened to share a characteristic said and/or did bad things to others who happened to share a characteristic doesn't you can group me in if I happen to share a characteristic with the former or that you are entitled to anything simply because you share a characteristic with the later.
The entire affirmative action crap needs called out as well. Forget simple reverse discrimination. Even if I had benefited because of the discrimination of others (which I sure as hell didn't), so what? I am no more responsible than a security company that gains new customers because robbers target those without security. The CURRENT society discriminates based on wealth, some of us weren't born with any, some were born with plenty. Unless you want to read a story book it really doesn't matter what history led to us being born poor or wealthy, that is our lot in life and you be a lot more successful in making the best of it if you stop asking for handouts and a leg up and start making your own opportunities.
'If Frank as enough Money/Power...he can make up for a LOT of lack of sexiness.'
Apparently you forgot that we are talking about IT workers here. Frank believes he is ultra powerful because he has root, but outside his terminal Frank has no money and no power and is laughed at by 'cool' third graders.
'The Military Commissions Act does not apply to US citizens, permanent residents, or persons with a valid legal status within the United States. Only US citizens have a right to Habeas Corpus (Gonzales' ridiculous statements on the issue aside).'
That's a rather odd stance. The Consititution says that says that ALL the constitutional rights apply to all men. They are granted by god and held to be self evident (which is contradicted by the fact that these self evident rights are stated).
'And less power to the guy who designs Ferraris for a living.'
Actually, less power to the company that exploits the guy who designs Ferraris for a living. That of course is a good thing, since they currently have several orders of magnitude more power than they are entitled to. There are also alternative business models they could adopt.
Actually, the Ferrari duplicator would eliminate the need for that company and the Ferrari designer would probably end up with a VERY substantial pay raise.
'IIRC, his contract is going to be up soon anyways, and if this is how he feels his company is treating him I doubt he'll sign a new one. With the innovative storytelling he's done with Year Zero, and essentially making open-source music by releasing the original recording data so that anyone can remix it, it'll be interesting to see how he goes about releasing new music without a large distribution network that the major label gives him.'
He still has a large distribution network, its called the internet. Artists don't see any significant amount of that huge CD price, they make their money from concerts, thats why they tour constantly.
'Tolkien's world is famous because of its immense depth and detail. Lord of the Rings is good writing because while you get a sense of all the depth and detail, its history, and its complexity.'
Sorry but Tolkien wasn't the greatest story teller, he was an innovator and the Lord of the Rings was great for being an innovation. The actual story itself compares well to other fantasy works and remains among the greats but is hardly the best. The complexity and detail you speak of do not compare with what Robert Jordan painted.
Only someone who has read the WoT a few times can truely understand and appreciate the story. Jordan doesn't just paint a complex and intricate picture of the world, he paints a CONSISTENT complex and intricate picture of the world. When Min is first introduced and it mentions a few examples of images she saw off hand, those images foretold minor events that unfolded in 'side stories' as much as 10 books and thousands of pages later.
The first misunderstanding that people have is thinking the Wheel of Time is a series, its not. The WoT is really one book that has been released in segments. The second is that its enough to just read through it, you couldn't possibly grasp the story with one quick read through. The Wheel of Time is not a story written for a casual reader and will not be easily digested by that crowd.
'What is the Wheel of Time about exactly? Its not really about anything because its about everything. And its not about everything because its spends to much time focused on the minutia of individuals. It tries to paint a forest by telling you the story of every tree. And in the end you have neither a good sense of the forest, nor any decent connection to any particular trees.'
That simply isn't true. The Wheel of Time is telling a very specific story and it only paints the trees that are of some significance in that story. There are dozens of major and semi major characters but there isn't one who is fleshed out significantly for no reason at all, all of them play a part in the bigger picture.
'And in the end you have neither a good sense of the forest, nor any decent connection to any particular trees.'
If you give the story the attention it deserves you will have an excellent knowledge of the forest that couldn't be attained any other way and you have a deep connection to the individual trees. Not only that, but you know the job was done correctly because your connection with given trees is proportionate to their importance. You understand how characters think and could predict their actions in a given situation in the same manner you could predict those of a close friend. Not only that, but you care about the characters. Your heart stops when the source is cleaned, throughout the tail you mentally grasp, cry, laugh, and get excited in the suspense.
Seriously, I might understand with random people but I have trouble believing there is someone with technical skill who doesn't appreciate the need for a detailed understanding of the component pieces and their interaction to TRULY appreciate the big picture.
I'll save you some trouble, if you are the type who wants to read through a book and then toss it on a shelf to gather dust the Wheel of Time isn't for you. If you want that kind of passive entertainment you are better off just watching a movie. You have to work for it to appreciate the WoT but once you do, you will find a masterpiece that is second to none.
lets look at that a little closer.
Tolkien
* invented roughly two dozen different languages, with free borrowings from one another and a historical development of language and dialects over time
This was a waste of time, the languages added absolutely nothing to the story. They were there just to be there.
* invented the history of a world on a grand scale from its very beginning
A scale that pales in comparison to that which Jordan created. It lacks the depth and the detail. Tolkien wrapped you up in the wonder of the story but Jordan created a world you could believe. I never had any particular attachment with any character in Tolkien's world because he never really developed a character in a way you could relate to or understand.
* wrote some detailed stories covering very small periods within the above
Tolkien skipped huge swaths of the story, instead letting entire adventures go with a few words of summary.
* finished each individual story
True, The wheel of time is really one book. A very long, intricate and delicate masterpiece that Tolkien couldn't have managed in his wildest dreams.
* could write
Yes, not nearly so well as dozens of fantasy authors who have followed, including Jordan but he could write. Lord of the Rings is a great tale but what sets it apart is that at the time it was an innovative story that took fantasy to a new level. The actual story itself is among the greats but not the best of them and not alone in that class.
That's a pretty rough criticism of a man who wrote a story that would humble Tolkien himself. While it may be difficult to follow the individual plots of dozens of major and semi-major characters, that is a shortcoming of the readers mind and not the author.
'Funny, but when I think back to the pre-OSX Macs back in the 1990's, I remember unstable, propriety, and incredibly overpriced hardware.'
;) You had the proprietary and incredibly overpriced part right but the hardware was fast and rock solid. The PowerPC processor handily outperformed the x86 except toward the end. The x86 guys would bring out the old megahertz myth but the PowerPC chips always consumed less energy and were faster. They had superior memory, a superior bus design (though toward the end it needed updated), used SCSI drives in place of IDE.
I take it you were a PC guy then eh?
Toward of the end of Apple using it the technology was becoming dated and instead of updating the technology they just switched over to inferior commodity PC technology instead. The only reason the PowerPC kept up as long as it did was because IBM did the development and updating for them. Those expensive prices were supposed to be because Apple developed their own proprietary technology but ultimately, Apple didn't develop any of the core technologies they used and proved unable to continue developing the technology into the future. As they replaced each piece they had let development of the technology stagnate enough that everyone welcomed the change. That doesn't mean the technology itself didn't have more potential than the PC stuff.
Apple sells PC's now and they are still expensive. They are still relying on technology they didn't develop (both in their hardware and software). Nothing has changed except their credibility in claiming they need to charge a higher price for their now commodity systems.
I remember quite clearly that once upon a time non-commercial use meant that you didn't charge anyone for the material. It has always been the norm for the person redistributing the materials to serve ads on the sites to cover their expenses and if they can make a buck or two then more power to them. It isn't a sin to make a profit, as long as they provide a clean, easy to use, and accessible repository of content at no charge then they are empowering the internet by hosting more content for the masses. If they use ads in a way that is a pain the tail, the license allows you to build a new site to supplant them.
All the sudden this mentality has changed. I think it mostly started with copyright owners going after Youtube for profiting off their content. You can't control the media industry's hysteria on this but surely the community can recognize that the current model of the internet can't work without distinguishing how the content itself is being served from how the ads on the page are being served.
I realize the GPL doesn't prohibit a charge but just the same if the local bookstore had a big rack and banners saying they were giving out free Ubuntu DVD's I certainly wouldn't call that commercial use. They are giving the DVD's out for free and helping to spread awareness; if someone happens to buy a book while picking up a DVD then I'm happy for the bookstore.
'If SCO was dissolved the case against IBM would disappear.'
That would be a bad thing, we don't want the IBM case to disappear, we want IBM have a very strong favorable ruling. Any other outcome means this was all a waste of time with no precedents set.
'many years ago i was both a pc and a mac tech, and this is pre os x. i knew then and there that apple had superior hardware, but an inferior operating system. i thought if they could just get a better os, they would take everything over. well, they got a better os, but the only taking over they have done is to this up and coming generation of trendy dipshit kids.'
I saw the same thing. They improved the OS (essentially by slapping Apple interfaces on another OS but who cares) but they switched their hardware over to the PC stuff crap. Piece by piece they adopted a PCI bus, sdram, ide, pc video hardware, and now even pc processors. Mac's are no longer mac's, they are PC's running a primarily PC-Developed operating system that has an Apple interface on top.
'They never promise linux to run on iPods.'
'Apple-haters would just jump in and use this as an excuse to bash Apple.'
Sounds like a valid reason to be annoyed with apple to me.