As far as the homeless, or dare I refer to them as bums without offending someone, well most of them tend to choose that sort of life. Some people are always going to want to avoid society, avoid responsibility, and avoid work. To some the choice of living a poor life with a shorter life expectancy etc is their choice.
Hardly. I spent a few months homeless back in the 80's - trust me, anyone who can get out of that lifestyle will. The people who are chronically homeless are almost universally mentally ill, substance dependent, or both. These are people who are too fucked up to choose anything.
Finally, capitalism works. In a true capitalistic marketplace, having unnecessary, artificial conditions wouldn't be benefitial to the seller, since other sellers could enter the market without such fluff conditions and make the sale.
Wow. Your talking about copyright law, which is an artificial monopoly. Your 100% free trade would work just fine if copyright did not create an artificial monopoly which is why there are laws spelling out what can and can't be done with copyrighted works If people enter into contracts (Real contracts that are signed) then other conditions can be imposed, so long as that contract is entered into with the copyright holder. But if I go and buy a copy of M$ Office at Best Buy, both the quid pro quo, and the contract is only between myself and Best Buy - not M$ - thus they can impose no coditions because I have entered into no contract with them THIS IS WHY THERE ARE LAWS THAT DEFINE WHAT CAN AND CANNOT BE DONE WITH COPYRIGHTED WORKS.
You didn't click any of the links, did you ? If you had, you'd realize that AKMA has degrees from Yale Divinity School, Duke, etc - hardly the UCF. He's a professor of New Testament at Seabury-Western Theological Seminary.
I know this is slashdot, but could you try not to discredit people before you RTFA ?
Languages that don't have variable length strings make me choke.
Ada-95 has variable length strings. The standard package Ada.Strings.Unbounded is chock full of them. OTOH, the standard Ada library is seriously lacking in containers.
With Voyager, you knew they were went off into the middle of nowhere and you knew that they wanted to get home and that eventually they probably would.
Voyager was Gilligan's Island in space. You knew that if they ever got off the island, the series was over.
They can only work inside the widget toolkit layer and below. People (developers!) are not going to switch the toolkits their applications use.
I guess this is why we all still use Motif;-) This is not meant to be a drop-in replacement for X - its intended to replace X in the future - once it has gained a critical mass of applications. Whether or not this will actually happen is debatable. If future developments *have* to be compatible with the present, no real innovation will ever happen.
Having SCO on your resume would not have ruled someone out as a candidate in my mind, but the question "What do you think of what your company is doing?" would certainly have been asked.
If I were hiring a coder, I would not care one way or the other what he thought about what his company was doing. Its not his job. Just like I don't care if he's a Republican, Democrat, Libertarian or Communist... steering company policy wasn't his job where he was, and it won't be his job if I hire him. I look for people who can do the job that they are hired to do, not second guess company policy, or demand that every decision pass their ethical muster. The company I work for has done things that I disagreed with, they have rectified some of them, and not others. If I quit every job where something that doesn't pass my ethical muster happened, I'd be living in a box, unable to even work at McD's.
The way autorun operates on these discs serves to cause the effect of a CD one can not copy. It does not have to effectively prevent circumvention, which in the colloquial sense of the word, anyone would consider to be part of what "effective" copy protection is in the fist place
This scheme may not meet the definition of "effective" because it is not a copy-protection scheme on a Mac, Linux, *BSD, etc. - It depends on Windows - IANAL, but it seems to me that in order to be effective, it would have to function (without interference, of course), on all computers that can read the media.
chrisd's company evidently has a higher standard of ethics for its employees than you have for yourself
My own personal code of ethics says that my children are more important (to me) than anyone else's. I sure as hell wouldn't quit a job without another in hand for any reason. Whatever ethical choices I might make, knowing my children have a safe place to live, and food to eat tells me I made the right choice.
And for those who only saw "Starship Troopers" and never read the book, PLEASE don't judge the author by the movie, because that movie was truly horrendous.
Hey now, granted, the movie has very little to do with the book, but on the plus side, it has more Giant Bugs, Explosions, and Dina Meyer (Naked !) and a lot less "History and Moral Philosophy".
I used to work with a several guys from Iran. I was talking with one of them about religion one day when he said, very softly, "Sometimes I think, Fuck the Prophet". I told him that this was America, he could say "Fuck the Prophet" as loudly as he wanted to. His response "No I can't, I may have to go back to Iran someday".
This guy, as well as the other Iranians that I worked with both hated and feared the government of Iran. But mostly feared.
No one can disprove God's existence. I can't disprove the existence of Leprechauns either, but that doesn't mean I go looking for gold at the end of a rainbow.
The unending search for truth through science is a humanistic attempt to place one's self above God and finally be "free" from Him.
That's an awfully general statment there. If what you mean is that revealed religion is the only access to "God", then which one are you talking about.
In order for someone to disprove God's existence they would have to be omniscient and omnipresent.
Why ? Deists have produced some interesting "proofs" of a "Greatest Conceivable Being" (google it yourself) but these have nothing to do with disproof. BTW the GCB may have nothing to do with the "God" of the 1611 KJV.
It sounds like you resent science. Scientists typically are not trying to prove, or disprove the existence of god, God or the GCB. They work only by what can be observed. And you are correct, scientists are neither omniscient, omnipotent, nor omnipresent; if those qualities are required you must go to someone who claims to have a revelation from a being that is. Who would that be Moses ? Mohammed ? Jesus ? Siddhartha ? Zarathushtra ?
Yes, we need dark energy. The question is what dark energy is, if it's somehow connected to "dark matter", the superstring theory or whatever, or if it even exist.
Dark matter and energy remind me of the "epicycles" postulated by medieval astronomers to explain the motions of the planets around the earth. The need for such postulations went away once they realized that the earth AND the planets they were observing went around the sun.
But what is a child ? It turns out that the definition is very different in different countries. What is an art photograph of a 17 year old adult in one country is vile exploitation in another. The vilification here based on the word child must be associated with a definition of a child. While all civilized countries agree that sexual representations of pre-pubescent persons (a definition of children) is abhorent, they disagree radically in the post-pubescent category. The law that typically defines who is and is not a child is the law that defines who can (based on age) enter into a contract. Think about that when you look at a picture that shows boobs from the UK - She could be 16 - and you could be a kiddie-porn dealer.
how can I apply FreeNet to misusing GPL'd software for my own benefit?
And just how do suppose you will do that ? Freenet only allows the transfer of information; The GPL requires transfer of information - inhibiting that transfer of information is a violation of the GPL. What are you talking about; distributing "illegal" binary copies of Emacs ? And to whoever moderated this troll "interesting" - go stand in the corner and think about what you've done.
I was surprised that such arrangements were legal when I first heard of them
They probably weren't (after sometime in the '70s). However, if everybody in the neighborhood agrees with them, no "undesirables" ever show up, etc. it'll never see the inside of a courtroom. What it does do is make a "club" of people who keep the "undesirables" out by social pressure/manipulation.
If you buy a house in certain ritzy neighborhoods the purchase contract requires that you not sell the house to anyone of certain 'undesirable' ethnicities
If you're in the USA, I wouldn't try enforcing that in court - housing discrimination due to race is illegal. Combine this with the fact that a contract with an illegal provision is invalid (except in the case in which both parties agree that the contract is "separable", which means only the illegal provision is invalid. Separability can be struck down by a judge though, so watch out). This could make the whole contract invalid. Ritzy neighborhoods hate that.
Regardless, trademarks must be "vigorously defended" or they slip into the public domain. This may just be an attempt on the part of Hormel to ensure that SPAM does not slip into the public domain.
The DMCA prevents circumvention of encryption, which is what they'd be doing.
Absolutely NOT. The DMCA prevents circumvention of a Copy Protection method. This is NOT a copy protection method. The problem with so called "illegal" modchips is that they contain some MicroSoft code, and hence violate traditional copyright law. IANAL, but as far as I can see, a method for running an unsigned block of code violates NOTHING, so long as it does not contain MS code.
The big problem with this is, that without some "authority" moderating use of the "common" bandwidth, manufacturers of comm hardware have every incentive to build devices that hog bandwith, and other common resources, until the whole system becomes unusable.
While I don't happen to have an AIX license lying about, you can be certain that a humungous services company like IBM indemnifies its customers from claims from other companies that are the result of using an IBM product. IBM has everything to gain by taking the blame here; corporate customers would NEVER forget being held liable for an IBM product they bought.
The thing you miss ( and I HATE defending SCO here) is that if the code is there --- It constitutes IP theft, which is the actionable part of the whole thing.
Not true. A very likely source for that code is that it came from Unix code which was covered by the BSDi/UC Berkeley lawsuit and has been entered into the public domain. Loads of code in Linux has come from BSD, which in turn came from UNIX, just like SCO's code. But a judge has already taken care of that code - it's known to be good. But so long as noone can check (because of the NDA), noone will know. Or it could have been copied the other way, and now SCO's code is GPL'ed;-)
Hold on now ! Copyright is a temporary monopoly granted an author/artist etc. as opposed to it belonging to the public to begin with. Its us (collectively) granting the favor here, not the other way around. What's proposed here is simply another kind of copyright limitation, of the the kind that already exist. Given that, in the US, copyrights can only be granted for "limited times", the public ARE owed the works (eventually), this law just redefines eventually.
Slashdot Mirror
As far as the homeless, or dare I refer to them as bums without offending someone, well most of them tend to choose that sort of life. Some people are always going to want to avoid society, avoid responsibility, and avoid work. To some the choice of living a poor life with a shorter life expectancy etc is their choice.
Hardly. I spent a few months homeless back in the 80's - trust me, anyone who can get out of that lifestyle will. The people who are chronically homeless are almost universally mentally ill, substance dependent, or both. These are people who are too fucked up to choose anything.
-- Rich
Finally, capitalism works. In a true capitalistic marketplace, having unnecessary, artificial conditions wouldn't be benefitial to the seller, since other sellers could enter the market without such fluff conditions and make the sale.
Wow. Your talking about copyright law, which is an artificial monopoly. Your 100% free trade would work just fine if copyright did not create an artificial monopoly which is why there are laws spelling out what can and can't be done with copyrighted works If people enter into contracts (Real contracts that are signed) then other conditions can be imposed, so long as that contract is entered into with the copyright holder. But if I go and buy a copy of M$ Office at Best Buy, both the quid pro quo, and the contract is only between myself and Best Buy - not M$ - thus they can impose no coditions because I have entered into no contract with them THIS IS WHY THERE ARE LAWS THAT DEFINE WHAT CAN AND CANNOT BE DONE WITH COPYRIGHTED WORKS.
-- Rich
You didn't click any of the links, did you ?
If you had, you'd realize that AKMA has degrees from Yale Divinity School, Duke, etc - hardly the UCF. He's a professor of New Testament at Seabury-Western Theological Seminary.
I know this is slashdot, but could you try not to discredit people before you RTFA ?
-- Rich
Languages that don't have variable length strings make me choke.
Ada-95 has variable length strings.
The standard package Ada.Strings.Unbounded is chock full of them. OTOH, the standard Ada library is seriously lacking in containers.
-- Rich
With Voyager, you knew they were went off into the middle of nowhere and you knew that they wanted to get home and that eventually they probably would.
Voyager was Gilligan's Island in space. You knew that if they ever got off the island, the series was over.
-- Rich
They can only work inside the widget toolkit layer and below. People (developers!) are not going to switch the toolkits their applications use.
;-) This is not meant to be a drop-in replacement for X - its intended to replace X in the future - once it has gained a critical mass of applications. Whether or not this will actually happen is debatable. If future developments *have* to be compatible with the present, no real innovation will ever happen.
I guess this is why we all still use Motif
-- Rich
Having SCO on your resume would not have ruled someone out as a candidate in my mind, but the question "What do you think of what your company is doing?" would certainly have been asked.
... steering company policy wasn't his job where he was, and it won't be his job if I hire him. I look for people who can do the job that they are hired to do, not second guess company policy, or demand that every decision pass their ethical muster. The company I work for has done things that I disagreed with, they have rectified some of them, and not others. If I quit every job where something that doesn't pass my ethical muster happened, I'd be living in a box, unable to even work at McD's.
If I were hiring a coder, I would not care one way or the other what he thought about what his company was doing. Its not his job. Just like I don't care if he's a Republican, Democrat, Libertarian or Communist
-- Rich
The way autorun operates on these discs serves to cause the effect of a CD one can not copy. It does not have to effectively prevent circumvention, which in the colloquial sense of the word, anyone would consider to be part of what "effective" copy protection is in the fist place
This scheme may not meet the definition of "effective" because it is not a copy-protection scheme on a Mac, Linux, *BSD, etc. - It depends on Windows - IANAL, but it seems to me that in order to be effective, it would have to function (without interference, of course), on all computers that can read the media.
-- Rich
chrisd's company evidently has a higher standard of ethics for its employees than you have for yourself
My own personal code of ethics says that my children are more important (to me) than anyone else's. I sure as hell wouldn't quit a job without another in hand for any reason. Whatever ethical choices I might make, knowing my children have a safe place to live, and food to eat tells me I made the right choice.
-- Rich
And for those who only saw "Starship Troopers" and never read the book, PLEASE don't judge the author by the movie, because that movie was truly horrendous.
Hey now, granted, the movie has very little to do with the book, but on the plus side, it has more Giant Bugs, Explosions, and Dina Meyer (Naked !) and a lot less "History and Moral Philosophy".
-- Rich
I used to work with a several guys from Iran. I was talking with one of them about religion one day when he said, very softly, "Sometimes I think, Fuck the Prophet". I told him that this was America, he could say "Fuck the Prophet" as loudly as he wanted to. His response "No I can't, I may have to go back to Iran someday".
This guy, as well as the other Iranians that I worked with both hated and feared the government of Iran. But mostly feared.
--- Rich
No one can disprove God's existence.
I can't disprove the existence of Leprechauns either, but that doesn't mean I go looking for gold at the end of a rainbow.
The unending search for truth through science is a humanistic attempt to place one's self above God and finally be "free" from Him.
That's an awfully general statment there. If what you mean is that revealed religion is the only access to "God", then which one are you talking about.
In order for someone to disprove God's existence they would have to be omniscient and omnipresent.
Why ? Deists have produced some interesting "proofs" of a "Greatest Conceivable Being" (google it yourself) but these have nothing to do with disproof. BTW the GCB may have nothing to do with the "God" of the 1611 KJV.
It sounds like you resent science. Scientists typically are not trying to prove, or disprove the existence of god, God or the GCB. They work only by what can be observed. And you are correct, scientists are neither omniscient, omnipotent, nor omnipresent; if those qualities are required you must go to someone who claims to have a revelation from a being that is. Who would that be Moses ? Mohammed ? Jesus ? Siddhartha ? Zarathushtra ?
-- Rich
Yes, we need dark energy. The question is what dark energy is, if it's somehow connected to "dark matter", the superstring theory or whatever, or if it even exist.
Dark matter and energy remind me of the "epicycles" postulated by medieval astronomers to explain the motions of the planets around the earth. The need for such postulations went away once they realized that the earth AND the planets they were observing went around the sun.
-- Rich
Child Pornography is NOT speech.
But what is a child ? It turns out that the definition is very different in different countries. What is an art photograph of a 17 year old adult in one country is vile exploitation in another. The vilification here based on the word child must be associated with a definition of a child. While all civilized countries agree that sexual representations of pre-pubescent persons (a definition of children) is abhorent, they disagree radically in the post-pubescent category. The law that typically defines who is and is not a child is the law that defines who can (based on age) enter into a contract. Think about that when you look at a picture that shows boobs from the UK - She could be 16 - and you could be a kiddie-porn dealer.
-- Rich
how can I apply FreeNet to misusing GPL'd software for my own benefit?
And just how do suppose you will do that ? Freenet only allows the transfer of information; The GPL requires transfer of information - inhibiting that transfer of information is a violation of the GPL. What are you talking about; distributing "illegal" binary copies of Emacs ? And to whoever moderated this troll "interesting" - go stand in the corner and think about what you've done.
-- Rich
I was surprised that such arrangements were legal when I first heard of them
They probably weren't (after sometime in the '70s). However, if everybody in the neighborhood agrees with them, no "undesirables" ever show up, etc. it'll never see the inside of a courtroom. What it does do is make a "club" of people who keep the "undesirables" out by social pressure/manipulation.
-- Rich
If you buy a house in certain ritzy neighborhoods the purchase contract requires that you not sell the house to anyone of certain 'undesirable' ethnicities
If you're in the USA, I wouldn't try enforcing that in court - housing discrimination due to race is illegal. Combine this with the fact that a contract with an illegal provision is invalid (except in the case in which both parties agree that the contract is "separable", which means only the illegal provision is invalid. Separability can be struck down by a judge though, so watch out). This could make the whole contract invalid. Ritzy neighborhoods hate that.
-- Rich
Regardless, trademarks must be "vigorously defended" or they slip into the public domain. This may just be an attempt on the part of Hormel to ensure that SPAM does not slip into the public domain.
-- Rich
The DMCA prevents circumvention of encryption, which is what they'd be doing.
Absolutely NOT. The DMCA prevents circumvention of a Copy Protection method. This is NOT a copy protection method. The problem with so called "illegal" modchips is that they contain some MicroSoft code, and hence violate traditional copyright law. IANAL, but as far as I can see, a method for running an unsigned block of code violates NOTHING, so long as it does not contain MS code.
-- Rich
The big problem with this is, that without some "authority" moderating use of the "common" bandwidth, manufacturers of comm hardware have every incentive to build devices that hog bandwith, and other common resources, until the whole system becomes unusable.
-- Rich
While I don't happen to have an AIX license lying about, you can be certain that a humungous services company like IBM indemnifies its customers from claims from other companies that are the result of using an IBM product. IBM has everything to gain by taking the blame here; corporate customers would NEVER forget being held liable for an IBM product they bought.
-- Rich
The thing you miss ( and I HATE defending SCO here) is that if the code is there --- It constitutes IP theft, which is the actionable part of the whole thing.
;-)
Not true. A very likely source for that code is that it came from Unix code which was covered by the BSDi/UC Berkeley lawsuit and has been entered into the public domain. Loads of code in Linux has come from BSD, which in turn came from UNIX, just like SCO's code. But a judge has already taken care of that code - it's known to be good. But so long as noone can check (because of the NDA), noone will know. Or it could have been copied the other way, and now SCO's code is GPL'ed
-- Rich
What is Hara-Kiri?!
Hara-Kiri is Japanese for "belly-splitting and refers to the method of seppuku (ritual suicide) used by male samurai.
-- Rich
The public are not OWED the works at all.
Hold on now ! Copyright is a temporary monopoly granted an author/artist etc. as opposed to it belonging to the public to begin with. Its us (collectively) granting the favor here, not the other way around. What's proposed here is simply another kind of copyright limitation, of the the kind that already exist. Given that, in the US, copyrights can only be granted for "limited times", the public ARE owed the works (eventually), this law just redefines eventually.
-- Rich
Do the Foxfire books talk about making moonshine?
Yes. Definitely.
-- Rich