According to whom? The NSA isn't supposed to do police stuff. The last time I heard of the NSA publicly commenting on what they do or don't do was when a congressional oversight committee was convened to investigate whether they have been wiretapping citizens without warrants. The NSA's only comment to the oversight committee was that subjecting itself to oversight would risk national security. They didn't turn over paperwork or show up for the hearing.
I don't recall there being much media coverage after that, it just sort of went away.
Give it some time to get out of school. You open more lines of credit than you think. If you have utilities then you have a line of credit for each. The same is true if you are the one who pays for the place you live in, whether you rent or own. Oh yeah, don't forget your cell phone and/or telephone and cable.
This doesn't only block new lines of credit, it also blocks credit checks. That means you better not need to job hunt, transfer utilities, get a new cellphone, get or update insurance, or try to find a new apartment.
You know what else I love? I love the way they are the vile communist evil secret east german police who spied on their citizens and foreign leaders. Yet our own wonderful friendly giant FBI keeps every scrap of information it gathers on private citizens and the CIA does the same for foreign leaders. Hell, our own secret police (the NSA) probably does both.
Exactly, why is these guys having the information any better than German secret police? Most of this information is probably private and better off lost.
'Once you leave your mother's basement and discover that females do exist in other forms than internet porn and men pretending to be women in chat rooms, you might begin to understand. Until then, AC, there is little other help I can offer you.'
Of course all of us in committed relationships and who are married understand. But is it worth it? Would it be better to be single with a few dollars in your pocket? Of course, we all know that having sex with attractive women without a committed relationship is a very expensive proposition. It really isn't much less expensive than just hiring a fine escort. The fine escort probably puts out less and takes more precaution (not that we enjoy the precaution). Plus the fine ass escort probably doubles as a model so you can claim bragging rights when you show centerfold pics of the chick you nailed last night to your buddies.
Before someone talks about having to pay for it, wait a few years. You will discover that gorgeous women aren't stupid, they know everyone wants them and they get enough offers to be choosy. No matter how you cut it you will pay for it. Hell, even if you are in a committed relationship you pay for it. What difference does it make if you spend the money on them or just give them the cash?
Come now, if the game is in German it doesn't really count. Only things released and published natively in English have a chance of breaking the quality barrier.
Why do we still have all these backwoods languages anyway?
'This is cool and all, but unless we plan on manipulating those genes in Apes and three years later accepting simian dominance of our world I can't see how this impacts anyone but grant writers.'
It seems that it could be useful for medical research. The more human we can make the apes the closer their responses to various test drugs and procedures are to our own.
'What now? What rights do they have? do we allow them to work in mines and nuclear plants? are they disposable? or better yet: are humans (homo sapiens) less disposable?'
Are humans less disposable? Of course not. Humans are no more or less disposable than the plants in our flower gardens. Life is life, the vegetarians are closer to this realization then most, they just stopped with a comparison to animals. We have a built in evolution mechanism that causes us to relate more closely with things that are genetically similar to ourselves (we also have an intellect that can sometimes consciously override instinct in some cases). Our parents and offspring before other family, other family before others, people before other mammals, mammals before other animals, animals before plants, plants before viruses and bacteria, etc.
What rights do they have? The same right we have, the right to do what we can and will. Everything else is a romantic notion subject to the mercy of those with the most might.
'What if we produce a subspecies (I think that line is awfully close), are responsible for its care and preventing its extinction?'
Are we responsible for the care and preventing the extinction of robots? What difference does it make if the components are biological?
'You would be able to use the disassembled code, but without the accompanying documentation and source, it would be much harder.'
Agreed. Of course there is no reason that everyone who currently publishes code wouldn't continue to do so. You WOULD magically see an end to incompatible licenses since nobody would need licenses anymore.
'Think how much trouble the Wine folks are having getting Wine to work completely, even knowing the header files and function definitions they must implement.'
Think how much less trouble they would be having if they didn't have to perform each step of the reverse engineering in a clean room type environment. Software is built in layers. Once the underlying layers were implemented the wine team could actually take the existing source unmodified and drop it in place (they would have to fix the calls to outside code of course).
'And you propose to use (stripped, optimized, obfuscated) binary without even that level of assistance?'
I think you will find that the processes that turn these binaries into difficult to work with messes can be undone to a large extent when everyone programmer in the world suddenly has an interest in seeing it so.
'I apologize if this is an uncharitable interpretation of your argument, but I couldn't find anything more solid to poke at.'
Its called misdirection. The scandals in the mainstream press exist only to distract you from the real corruption. The real corruption doesn't make the news. Bills are spun one way and actually do something different or they include dozens of completely unrelated special interest provisions in the fine print. The real corruption isn't in the white house, its in congress. Not that congressmen are less dirty there are just more of them. The president is a big central figure whose primary purpose is to keep you from looking too closely at any congressmen.
You can't patent an idea either. You can only patent your implementation of an idea. Before it became impractical to store them all the patent office used to require a working prototype of your invention to prove it wasn't merely an idea.
'I don't think it would be possible to enforce the particular flavour of sharing currently enabled by the GPL with no copyright.'
Nonsense, it would be impossible to avoid GPL style sharing without copyright. Without copyright I can literally disassemble your code and use the output in my program. I no longer need you to grant me permission. Everyone's code would be open because anyone with the skills to utilize the code can extract the literal code from the executable.
'if you're a genuine copyright abolitionist, you'd support BSD instead'
Why? BSD code means that you can take my code and use it to make a billion dollars and/or become famous but not give me squat in return. The GPL is a way of making sure that everyone else plays nice as well. After all, people are greedy bastards and their natural inclination is to not share in kind. Since this is unacceptable the GPL makes them share in kind. Without copyright law technology makes them share in kind.
'I contacted Raymond about the issue, and he tells Ars that he was acting under Library of Congress Regulation 112, which says that "the use of the Library's name, explicitly or implicitly to endorse a product or service, or materials in any publication is prohibited, except as provided for in this Regulation."'
Reading the rest of the article explains that this guy is claiming that a comparison WAS an endorsement. This regulation is intended to assure that nobody can fraudulently claim the LOC endorses their product. This guy is criticizing their project, not claiming the LOC endorses his project.
Private entities can usually sue you if you publicly criticize them in a way that causes a measurable negative impact. Public entities can not. Public entities are held to a different standard because freedom of speech requires that citizens be able to publicly criticize the government.
The LOC has determined that preventing people from fraudulently claiming the LOC endorses them to be neccesary to carry out its charter. Therefore, it gave itself permission to stop people.
The library of congress is not a private organization. Anything it owns is public property, including its logo. I'm pretty sure it will be discovered that the only time this guy really has the right to stop a citizen is if that citizen is using the name and/or logo in a fraudulent manner. For instance, a false claim that the LOC endorses his product.
'There is at best a 50/50 split between genetic and environment for pure intelligence'
Have any credible and compelling sources to back that up? Or is it a fact you have made up on the spot? Personally I wouldn't credit genetics with that much. I think all individuals without a head injury or mental retardation have within a small margin the same physical capacity for intellect. I think a great deal of base mental formation occurs before you've formed enough to steer that formation. If you have bright parents they will engage your intellect and feed your mind.
'Genetics will tell you very little about a job applicant'
Indeed, I am sure this will play a role in how many companies choose to utilize them and the pricing of testing. The only thing I think genetics will tell you about an applicant is the likelihood developing medical problems that will conflict with the job. No employer is going to hire a mason who has the genes that cause disc problems to occur. They will also likely be able to recognize mental retardation of various sorts.
It almost sounds like you think genetics will be the sole tool used to create an entire personality profile. That would be silly, genetics don't tell you how someone will behave and any measure of intelligence that can be gauged by genetics will be useless because it doesn't tell you how well that raw potential has been utilized.
'One in which Gore won in '00, and our present world. In our present world, third parties, while having no chance for the presidency, have gotten media attention. In the alternate world, some things would be the same, but others (Iraq, "War on Terror", No Child Left Behind, Clear Skies Initiative, etc and so on) would be *very* different.'
This is where we disagree. I think that more or less the same actual results would have occurred but the bills might have a slightly different spin on them. Actually, the result could have been even worse. The left is just as dirty and corrupt as the right.
'What do yo plan do in 2008? Leave the country on its current course in order to make noise for your third-party? Or attempt to keep the worst candidate from taking power?'
Third parties aren't a pet hobby with only two real candidates. There is no 'worst' candidate. Either major party candidate winning is a disaster for this nation. Even a third party that doesn't recognize the need for a MAJOR overhaul of our government and an immediate and drastic redistribution of power wouldn't do any good (although it might slow the corruption slightly).
That sounds like quite the pain in the ass. Just the same, it should be in the repository and the other pieces can be dependencies. Install Ubuntu server, enable repositories, apt-get update, apt-get install zimbra. At that point all the dependencies work themselves out and a basic functional zimbra with the most commonly needed configuration comes out of the box. After another 10 minutes or less of tweaking you have a zimbra server. AND you can run other services on it if you are putting it in an office with 10-20 users instead of 50,000!
They could go the easy route and have the package conflict with other MTA's (all that other stuff can just run on alternative ports). I know, I know, sounds like a great idea. Why don't I get right on that? *grumble grumble*
'And we could have screened Stephen Hawking from ever getting into college, after all what could such a soon to be cripple ever contribute to society.'
Colleges are for the betterment of the individual not society, which is why the individual pays the college to go there. Why would a college screen for physical impairment anyway? It doesn't even make sense.
'If enough people are pissed off and know about the solutions then once in a while we can get something done as a community.'
I'm pretty sure that fantasy was dispelled during Vietnam and again in Iraq. Once, long ago, the people had a measure of power because the citizenry was armed. Now, the people have been disarmed (except maybe the gangs) and the government has centralized its power. If the government isn't kind enough to respect the wishes of the people, the peoples only recourse is to ask again nicely in another political process. You could counter with voting but I guarantee you will only see major party candidates and they have no interest in alternative power succeeding. The left will pay it lip service but will only pass token bills and use them to bury more bought and paid for legislation from the copyright regimes.
'Just wish people didn't argue the politics incessantly without offering solutions.'
Our forefathers could tell you and recognized in the second amendment. There is only one solution and people have neither the power nor the stomach for it anymore. We will give up all our freedoms and let corporate interests enslave us completely before we have the grit for a civil war here.
Slashdot Mirror
$10 bucks say they try to find a way to add copy protection into the chip as well.
'Oh no, we'll be invading the privacy of some dead/near-death OAPs!'
We are talking about East Germany, not Nazi Germany. There could be dirt on people in their twenties in those files.
According to whom? The NSA isn't supposed to do police stuff. The last time I heard of the NSA publicly commenting on what they do or don't do was when a congressional oversight committee was convened to investigate whether they have been wiretapping citizens without warrants. The NSA's only comment to the oversight committee was that subjecting itself to oversight would risk national security. They didn't turn over paperwork or show up for the hearing.
I don't recall there being much media coverage after that, it just sort of went away.
Give it some time to get out of school. You open more lines of credit than you think. If you have utilities then you have a line of credit for each. The same is true if you are the one who pays for the place you live in, whether you rent or own. Oh yeah, don't forget your cell phone and/or telephone and cable.
This doesn't only block new lines of credit, it also blocks credit checks. That means you better not need to job hunt, transfer utilities, get a new cellphone, get or update insurance, or try to find a new apartment.
You know what else I love? I love the way they are the vile communist evil secret east german police who spied on their citizens and foreign leaders. Yet our own wonderful friendly giant FBI keeps every scrap of information it gathers on private citizens and the CIA does the same for foreign leaders. Hell, our own secret police (the NSA) probably does both.
Exactly, why is these guys having the information any better than German secret police? Most of this information is probably private and better off lost.
'Once you leave your mother's basement and discover that females do exist in other forms than internet porn and men pretending to be women in chat rooms, you might begin to understand. Until then, AC, there is little other help I can offer you.'
Of course all of us in committed relationships and who are married understand. But is it worth it? Would it be better to be single with a few dollars in your pocket? Of course, we all know that having sex with attractive women without a committed relationship is a very expensive proposition. It really isn't much less expensive than just hiring a fine escort. The fine escort probably puts out less and takes more precaution (not that we enjoy the precaution). Plus the fine ass escort probably doubles as a model so you can claim bragging rights when you show centerfold pics of the chick you nailed last night to your buddies.
Before someone talks about having to pay for it, wait a few years. You will discover that gorgeous women aren't stupid, they know everyone wants them and they get enough offers to be choosy. No matter how you cut it you will pay for it. Hell, even if you are in a committed relationship you pay for it. What difference does it make if you spend the money on them or just give them the cash?
Thats cool but if you are picking everything, then how is it evolution?
Come now, if the game is in German it doesn't really count. Only things released and published natively in English have a chance of breaking the quality barrier.
Why do we still have all these backwoods languages anyway?
I wouldn't hold my breath for an OS X release after buying a mac nobody can afford spore. I am hoping a Linux release is around the corner.
'This is cool and all, but unless we plan on manipulating those genes in Apes and three years later accepting simian dominance of our world I can't see how this impacts anyone but grant writers.'
It seems that it could be useful for medical research. The more human we can make the apes the closer their responses to various test drugs and procedures are to our own.
'What now? What rights do they have? do we allow them to work in mines and nuclear plants? are they disposable? or better yet: are humans (homo sapiens) less disposable?'
Are humans less disposable? Of course not. Humans are no more or less disposable than the plants in our flower gardens. Life is life, the vegetarians are closer to this realization then most, they just stopped with a comparison to animals. We have a built in evolution mechanism that causes us to relate more closely with things that are genetically similar to ourselves (we also have an intellect that can sometimes consciously override instinct in some cases). Our parents and offspring before other family, other family before others, people before other mammals, mammals before other animals, animals before plants, plants before viruses and bacteria, etc.
What rights do they have? The same right we have, the right to do what we can and will. Everything else is a romantic notion subject to the mercy of those with the most might.
'What if we produce a subspecies (I think that line is awfully close), are responsible for its care and preventing its extinction?'
Are we responsible for the care and preventing the extinction of robots? What difference does it make if the components are biological?
'You would be able to use the disassembled code, but without the accompanying documentation and source, it would be much harder.'
:)
Agreed. Of course there is no reason that everyone who currently publishes code wouldn't continue to do so. You WOULD magically see an end to incompatible licenses since nobody would need licenses anymore.
'Think how much trouble the Wine folks are having getting Wine to work completely, even knowing the header files and function definitions they must implement.'
Think how much less trouble they would be having if they didn't have to perform each step of the reverse engineering in a clean room type environment. Software is built in layers. Once the underlying layers were implemented the wine team could actually take the existing source unmodified and drop it in place (they would have to fix the calls to outside code of course).
'And you propose to use (stripped, optimized, obfuscated) binary without even that level of assistance?'
I think you will find that the processes that turn these binaries into difficult to work with messes can be undone to a large extent when everyone programmer in the world suddenly has an interest in seeing it so.
'I apologize if this is an uncharitable interpretation of your argument, but I couldn't find anything more solid to poke at.'
By all means poke away.
Sorry, replace navy with military. My own experiences subconsciously twist my words sometimes.
This is what happens when we have women and homosexuals in the navy. Now even the robots are treated like fluffy bunnies.
Its called misdirection. The scandals in the mainstream press exist only to distract you from the real corruption. The real corruption doesn't make the news. Bills are spun one way and actually do something different or they include dozens of completely unrelated special interest provisions in the fine print. The real corruption isn't in the white house, its in congress. Not that congressmen are less dirty there are just more of them. The president is a big central figure whose primary purpose is to keep you from looking too closely at any congressmen.
'Why should it? You can't copyright an idea.'
You can't patent an idea either. You can only patent your implementation of an idea. Before it became impractical to store them all the patent office used to require a working prototype of your invention to prove it wasn't merely an idea.
'I don't think it would be possible to enforce the particular flavour of sharing currently enabled by the GPL with no copyright.'
Nonsense, it would be impossible to avoid GPL style sharing without copyright. Without copyright I can literally disassemble your code and use the output in my program. I no longer need you to grant me permission. Everyone's code would be open because anyone with the skills to utilize the code can extract the literal code from the executable.
'if you're a genuine copyright abolitionist, you'd support BSD instead'
Why? BSD code means that you can take my code and use it to make a billion dollars and/or become famous but not give me squat in return. The GPL is a way of making sure that everyone else plays nice as well. After all, people are greedy bastards and their natural inclination is to not share in kind. Since this is unacceptable the GPL makes them share in kind. Without copyright law technology makes them share in kind.
From TFA,
'I contacted Raymond about the issue, and he tells Ars that he was acting under Library of Congress Regulation 112, which says that "the use of the Library's name, explicitly or implicitly to endorse a product or service, or materials in any publication is prohibited, except as provided for in this Regulation."'
Reading the rest of the article explains that this guy is claiming that a comparison WAS an endorsement. This regulation is intended to assure that nobody can fraudulently claim the LOC endorses their product. This guy is criticizing their project, not claiming the LOC endorses his project.
Private entities can usually sue you if you publicly criticize them in a way that causes a measurable negative impact. Public entities can not. Public entities are held to a different standard because freedom of speech requires that citizens be able to publicly criticize the government.
The LOC has determined that preventing people from fraudulently claiming the LOC endorses them to be neccesary to carry out its charter. Therefore, it gave itself permission to stop people.
The library of congress is not a private organization. Anything it owns is public property, including its logo. I'm pretty sure it will be discovered that the only time this guy really has the right to stop a citizen is if that citizen is using the name and/or logo in a fraudulent manner. For instance, a false claim that the LOC endorses his product.
'There is at best a 50/50 split between genetic and environment for pure intelligence'
Have any credible and compelling sources to back that up? Or is it a fact you have made up on the spot? Personally I wouldn't credit genetics with that much. I think all individuals without a head injury or mental retardation have within a small margin the same physical capacity for intellect. I think a great deal of base mental formation occurs before you've formed enough to steer that formation. If you have bright parents they will engage your intellect and feed your mind.
'Genetics will tell you very little about a job applicant'
Indeed, I am sure this will play a role in how many companies choose to utilize them and the pricing of testing. The only thing I think genetics will tell you about an applicant is the likelihood developing medical problems that will conflict with the job. No employer is going to hire a mason who has the genes that cause disc problems to occur. They will also likely be able to recognize mental retardation of various sorts.
It almost sounds like you think genetics will be the sole tool used to create an entire personality profile. That would be silly, genetics don't tell you how someone will behave and any measure of intelligence that can be gauged by genetics will be useless because it doesn't tell you how well that raw potential has been utilized.
'One in which Gore won in '00, and our present world. In our present world, third parties, while having no chance for the presidency, have gotten media attention. In the alternate world, some things would be the same, but others (Iraq, "War on Terror", No Child Left Behind, Clear Skies Initiative, etc and so on) would be *very* different.'
This is where we disagree. I think that more or less the same actual results would have occurred but the bills might have a slightly different spin on them. Actually, the result could have been even worse. The left is just as dirty and corrupt as the right.
'What do yo plan do in 2008? Leave the country on its current course in order to make noise for your third-party? Or attempt to keep the worst candidate from taking power?'
Third parties aren't a pet hobby with only two real candidates. There is no 'worst' candidate. Either major party candidate winning is a disaster for this nation. Even a third party that doesn't recognize the need for a MAJOR overhaul of our government and an immediate and drastic redistribution of power wouldn't do any good (although it might slow the corruption slightly).
That sounds like quite the pain in the ass. Just the same, it should be in the repository and the other pieces can be dependencies. Install Ubuntu server, enable repositories, apt-get update, apt-get install zimbra. At that point all the dependencies work themselves out and a basic functional zimbra with the most commonly needed configuration comes out of the box. After another 10 minutes or less of tweaking you have a zimbra server. AND you can run other services on it if you are putting it in an office with 10-20 users instead of 50,000!
They could go the easy route and have the package conflict with other MTA's (all that other stuff can just run on alternative ports). I know, I know, sounds like a great idea. Why don't I get right on that? *grumble grumble*
'And we could have screened Stephen Hawking from ever getting into college, after all what could such a soon to be cripple ever contribute to society.'
Colleges are for the betterment of the individual not society, which is why the individual pays the college to go there. Why would a college screen for physical impairment anyway? It doesn't even make sense.
'If enough people are pissed off and know about the solutions then once in a while we can get something done as a community.'
I'm pretty sure that fantasy was dispelled during Vietnam and again in Iraq. Once, long ago, the people had a measure of power because the citizenry was armed. Now, the people have been disarmed (except maybe the gangs) and the government has centralized its power. If the government isn't kind enough to respect the wishes of the people, the peoples only recourse is to ask again nicely in another political process. You could counter with voting but I guarantee you will only see major party candidates and they have no interest in alternative power succeeding. The left will pay it lip service but will only pass token bills and use them to bury more bought and paid for legislation from the copyright regimes.
'Just wish people didn't argue the politics incessantly without offering solutions.'
Our forefathers could tell you and recognized in the second amendment. There is only one solution and people have neither the power nor the stomach for it anymore. We will give up all our freedoms and let corporate interests enslave us completely before we have the grit for a civil war here.