No, the majority does not rule. The whole point of the American constitution is that the majority does not have the right to infringe upon the rights of the minority.
I agree with you in part. However, the constitution primarily protects the people from the tyranny of the powerful few. Democracy is truly mob-rule in it's pure form. We just don't have a pure democracy, we have a representative democracy. I guess the primary benefit of that is that it moderates change over time.
Yes it can and yes, it does. Have you not noticed the frequent overturning of religiously-inspired laws? Or do you think those are the "evil activist judges" who are out to destroy religion?
What our government "can" do and what it was "designed" to do are to different things, now aren't they? I have noticed, and sometimes it is absolutely appropriate that they have done. Sometimes they have gone too far, and sometimes not far enough.
Ultimately, I think the U.S. Supreme Court is full of flawed human beings, just like congress, the whitehouse... They can and do make mistakes, but their role is still very important.
Abortion? Not without a constitutional amendment.
Murder? That was illegal in most societies long before Judaism emerged.
Divorce and adultery? Debatable on divorce. Adultery is illegal in many areas because it's seen as a violation of a legally binding contract with a spouse.
Drugs? We'll see how much longer that lasts.
Alcohol? They needed a constitutional amendment last time, and they'd need one again.
Fornication? No, they couldn't make that illegal. Not without scrapping the entire constitution.
Euthanasia? See murder, but this is subject to change.
Stem cell research? Just because you can doesn't mean you should. Religious nutjobs are winning this one, and it's costing lives every day.
Most of these laws can't be passed, or rather wouldn't be upheld in court. The laws they pass are indeed partially inspired by religious views, but I have hope that they'll recover soon.
I'm not saying these things *should* be made illegal. I'm just saying that with the right circumstances, the majority could prevail on any of these things. One person's injustice is another's justice.
Just because the supreme court of today might strike something down, doesn't mean it will tomorrow. Hell, abortion has been illegal for a majority of our country's history. Slavery and racial discrimination legal for another large part.
Our secular government, can and will be on the wrong side of moral issues. But I guess that is all subjective, now isn't it?
Our current president and things like guantanamo bay, suspension of habeas corpus during this war and past wars are good examples of how our protections are not iron clad. It doesn't take a complete dismantling of our government to lose or get returned a fundamental right. It only takes the action, or lack there of, of the majority.
...until some religious majority gets enough political power to silence and jail those who would question their religious beliefs. But thanks for trumpeting the rights we have courtesy of a secular society which created a secular government which you now wish to dismantle and turn into an oppressive Christian Hate Machine.
If you think the founding father's weren't "religious nutjobs", then you haven't read anything they wrote.
They didn't seek to snuff our religion in government, and form a "secular society". Grow up. They simply wanted to form a government that was limited in power, and not explicitly religious in nature. They did this by forbidding the establishment of a national religion, but our national congress. That encouraged freedom of religion by inclusion. The slight difference that you seem to advocate is you wish to have all people be equal by making all people equally oppressed. That is just my first impression, I obviously don't k
Yes, but you see, we UNDERSTAND we're a minority, and simply want the majority of people's ACTUAL views to govern what goes on in the world. Whereas the religious nutjobs among us want their views stuffed down everyone's throat. I say do what you want in church, but keep it out of my schools, courthouses, and city halls.
Really the crux of the problem is that most religion isn't just rutual performed on sacred days in churches.
For most learned religious, these beliefs extend to all the moral foundation, ideals, and philosophical (not speaking of science here) understanding of the world around them that make up their whole nature. IE: beliefs about right vs. wrong, nature of humanity (human dignity and rights), obligations to fellow man...
The whole POINT of democratic government is some consensus of a larger group "stuffed down everyone's throat". The majority rules.
The U.S. Constitution forbids congress from establishing a state religion, but it doesn't and can't prevent religious majorities from imposing their moral/philosophical ideals upon the minority.
They could for instance make illegal abortion, murder, divorce and adultery, drugs and alcohol, fornication, euthanasia, stem-cell research...
These laws could be passed by people whose motives stem primarily from their religious beliefs, and that is ok. Religion is part of who they are, and guides their world-view. The beauty of this country is that you or anyone else has the right to disagree and voice your disagreement.
And the fact that Christians are a minority in the world.
Actually...
The Christian population in the world has been estimated at approximately 2.1 Billion people. Collectively, this represents the largest religion cumulatively in the world. In one sense you are right, as this is certainly a 33% minority of the entire human race.
However, the entirely non-religious account for approximately 16% of the world population, but are apparently reported (by themselves and totally objectively of course) to have 99% of the intelligence and education world-wide.;-p
Hilariously, while 84% of the world's population are considered (apparently) hopelessly ignorant and stupid, the other 16% still seem to believe simultaneously that humanity's problems can be solved through democratic governance.
MR. OLSON [For Microsoft]: The '580 patent is a program, as I understand it, that's married to a computer, has to be married to a computer in order to be patented.
JUSTICE SCALIA: You can't patent, you know, on-off, on-off code in the abstract, can you? MR. OLSON: That's correct, Justice Scalia.
JUSTICE SCALIA: There needs to be a device.
MR. OLSON: An idea or a principle, two plus two equals four can't be patented. It has to be put together with a machine and made into a usable device.
Can it not be argued, then, that program authors cannot be sued for patent infringement? They only write programs "in the abstract", they don't combine it with any device, neither explicitly nor implicitly. That's done by the end user at the time of running the program. Of course, as such, such an argument wouldn't protect the end user, but is a programmer really vulnerable to software patents?
The other parties that are vulnerable are hardware vendors and system OEMs that offer to pre-load FLOSS on their hardware. Dell/HP/IBM and their like will generally avoid clear-cut legal liabilities. They marry a device to software as a normal part of their business model.
Take the Blackberry as an example of married software and hardware that infringes patents. If someone else wrote the software, RIM still has the liability because they did the combining of software and hardware into a device.
Does anyone know if there has been a case of an end-user being sued for patent infringement?
The most positive thing to prevent this from actually happening is the decline of the floppy disk. However, many modern BIOS can and do boot from USB thumb drives. Is it possible to write the boot sector on a USB drive in Vista?
Is it that unlikely that a kernel-driver could be exploited? Worm + kernel-driver exploit could mean boot sector access.
Or hey, download this CD of cute screen-savers... Only need to reboot one time to finish the installation...
I don't know, I'm just thinking out of the "box".
The core BitTorrent protocol uses TCP, so the UDP technique the article describes won't work. (As far as I know, there's no corresponding technique for doing something similar with TCP.)
There's been a bit of work on various UDP protocol replacements for BitTorrent, but nothing that's really gained any cohesion that I'm aware of. So, when it comes to BitTorrent, no, there really isn't much work on making such a technique work.
There might be other P2P platforms that do attempt to do something like the technique described in the article, but the official BitTorrent protocol uses TCP and therefore can't use the technique.
I don't think that would necessarily be a problem. You could leave the current protocol as it stands and "bolt-on" the UDP scheme. I don't know anything about the particulars of the protocol, but I would think you could add a preference to a bittorrent client to allow it to both participate in traditional bittorrent exchanges with normal seeders, as well as attempt UDP port exchanges by using the TCP connections with existing seeders.
You could have the client "test the waters" so to speak with a seeder, to see if it has the bolt-on code to help exchange UDP ports with other NAT-bound leechers. If the code responds, then you start establishing UDP connections through port exchanges with that seeder, else you just treat it like a traditional torrent seeder. That way, in the interum, you aren't breaking the current torrent protocol, but could actually get an added bonus of other "virtual-seeders" on UDP.
I am surprised to hear that torrent is TCP based in the first place. It seems like needless overhead, when the checksumming ensured data reliability anyway. But short of a complete reimplementation of torrent with UDP (with community support), I would think it would make more sense to extend the current protocol (not in the microsoft way:)
I'm impressed, this is really good stuff. The article describes a general technique that can be used to trick most firewalls into believing that a UDP connection has already been established. Is this technique being used or considered by any P2P apps? I've run into the situation several times where I'm firewalled, and the only seeder of a torrent is too.
I was impressed with this technique too. Perhaps the third party for a protocol such at bittorrent could use the seeders as UDP port mediators. It would be pretty easy to determine if the traditional listening port range was being filtered, and then the other seeding peers could do the UDP port exchanges for peers behind NAT firewalls. I don't think having a centralized trust is an issue here, because the whole concept relies on checksums anyway.
Of course I don't intimately understand how the protocol works in terms of discovery of other peers, so I could be talking out of my ass. Feel free to ridicule me if any of you know different.
The only place I could see this falling apart is the added overhead of establishing the scheme for *every* peer that wants to connect to your machine. The handshake to get each other's UDP ports would have to take place on some seeder *each* time a new peer came online, and each new host would somehow need to know which seeder was going to help exchange UDP ports. You would need an election, kind of like the master computer browser election on a NetBIOS PTP network. Perhaps you could handle this in tiers, allowing each "master browser" to handle a certain number of host UDP port exchanges.
Just think if this worked though. It would mean no more leechers!
Certainly you're not one of the brave hackers that didn't stop developing linux in the early days despite of the severe lack of drivers.
These days you can boot linux anywhere. But you know, there was a time (not that far ago) when Linux (and BSDs) didn't support almost anything. Those people really believed in open source, and they didn't mind spending many hours of their life reverse-engineering obscure hardware. They also didn't mind selling their incompatible hardware and buying linux-compatible hardware in order to run their wonderful open source OS.
And you plan to to switch windows if the linux developers plan to ban propietary modules. You aren't switching your graphics card and buying a linux-compatible one (something you can fix with money). You just plan to switch windows.
We're lucky that the early open source hackers weren't like you - if they had switched to windows every time they found a barrier we wouldn't have open source operative systems today. Linux has got big without the help of propietary drivers and despite of the ridiculous hardware support and the one way of getting even bigger is following the same path. We don't need propietary drivers, fuck them.
While I won't abandoning Linux for such a reason, many companies, including the one I work for (which has about 50% Windows and 50% GNU/Linux) might. VMWare, for instance, is an important application for us and is one that requires binary kernel modules to function. All of our VMWare boxes could end up on Windows (God forbid) if this were to happen, or at the very least VMware would fork the kernel for their version of Linux. It is unlikely that such a move would force VMWare's hand and that they would release their code in a GPL compatible way to be included in the kernel.
I for one agree with Linus. I think the kernel module system is basically a binary interface to the kernel. You aren't linking or run-time linking with the kernel code in the traditional sense. I admit it is very grey-area indeed, as there could be an argument for exactly that with shared-object libraries. But I think we should all agree that at least it isn't the whole-sale selling out of the kernel to allow this grey-area.
The principled part of me agrees with you, but there are many users of the kernel that weren't here for the early and painful days (when they had to walk both ways to school, up-hill, in the snow, barefoot, you pansies). The community is clearly torn between the RMS types who value the promotion of freedom of free software (such as GNU/Linux) over the promotion of the technology, and those like Linus who err on the pragmatic side for the purpose of promoting the technology.
I think there is room for both types in our community.
And you sir, are short sighted. The ethereal presentation of music as you describe (stream of 0s and 1s that can be deleted or created at will and on demand) is actually more traditional and ancient than its current digital manifestation, my insulting friend. Throughout all human history, with the exception of the dawn of the industrial revolution and its novel method of encapsulating sensory (auditory in this case) information to physical media (a short period indeed relative to human history), the temporal "existence" of music was fleeting. One had to be present to hear it, whether it be around a campfire, in a pub, a church, or in a concert hall. In that way, it was accessible to all walks of life, both as "partaker" and "participant", and wasn't artificially presented as being anyone's personal property. It was sound and inherently free.
As to whether or not I'm deluded or not, I think it is fair to say you are not in the position to judge, particularly based on such a short (and one way) discourse. I will say I disagree with you. Listening to music is an engaging activity for myself, and others. You are partaking yes, but *also* participating. You are participating by experiencing our world and incorporating those experiences into your being and spirit, and sharing those experiences with those around us. That is a fundamental part and reason for liberty.
Do I believe artists should be able to make a living from their craft? Certainly, I do. Do I think that should be accomplished by creating a legal toll-booth that all have to pass to experience culture? Hell fucking no.
I think there are other means of rewarding artists. I also think that this is a demonstratable fact. I need not mention how many countless people have pointing out that they have both downloaded to sample music before purchase, and they have paid to attend concerts of their favorite artists, as well as to download and experience music which they otherwise would not have given the time of day, let alone "pay" for. This gives not only popular artists a fair chance of compensation for their work, but also exposes us to artists who are not getting marketing exposier from the recording industry juggernauts.
As for your point on being "poor and underprivileged" is invalidated by the ownership of a personal computer and access to broadband internet access, are you kidding? Certainly any American, even a hobo on the street could be demonstrated to be wealthy when compared to the poorest of the world. The same could be said for any individual of any western nation. But the disparity between any common American that is file sharing, and the wealthiest pop star or record industry executive makes that relativity irrelevant. The power, political influence, and access to elements of human culture of those powerful individuals and organizations is artificial.
If we have the technical means for all the world to experience human culture at zero marginal cost, I think it is immoral to withhold it. To suggest that the world would then let its most cherished and famous artist starve as reward for their work is deluded as well, as you say. No famous artist is, or ever will be excluded from wealth and privelege, regardless of the particular system we use to compensate them. For me, at least, the current one is outdated and immoral given our technical capabilities.
I say we let it burn and see what arises from its ashes.
I'll quote Eben Moglen of FSF fame: "If I can provide to everyone all goods of intellectual value or beauty, for the same price that I can provide the first copy of those works to anyone, why is it ever moral to exclude anyone from anything? If you could feed everyone on earth at the cost of baking one loaf and pressing a button, what would be the moral case for charging more for bread than some people could afford to pay?"
I agree wholeheartedly. The record industry is struggling to keep alive a system that is artificial and long past due to be replaced. We as humans need to decide for ourselves how we will partake of human culture. The record industry will either adapt or die. Vilifying the masses of poor and unprivileged as "pirate" (someone who robs at sea or plunders the land from the sea without having a commission from any sovereign nation; murderers and rapists) for the "crime" of participating in human culture without paying to current powers is merely propaganda.
The inherent inequity in the current system which awards very few at the expense of many, and excludes artificially the majority of the human race from its own culture is wrong, and must be fought by any means. I not only take the position that is is not immoral to file share, but that it is our duty to file share. Just as it was our fore-father's duty to fight the tyranny of distant royalty which usurped our human liberties, it is our duty to stand opposed to the immoral laws of our nation that remove our liberties to share with our fellow man.
The fact that there are big winners with our currently system is overshadowed by the fact that there are a vast majority of losers.
Thanks for the clarification on the sperm issue - though now I'm back to finding the Catholics to be puzzling again:) I'm not sure what they find so special about conception - I mean, that is also an arbitrary line, though one with a nifty name. I mean, there are a lot of important stages in fetal development. Why not choose the implantation on the uterine wall? Or the first division of the embryo? What is so special about the sperm entering the egg? Why is that "life", but not the sperm or the egg individually? I guess it could just be that conception is the very first moment that your DNA is complete, but again, this is just one step in the whole process. Half a you is not a you but half a you attached to half a you is a you:)
Sure thing, my pleasure. One of my favorite statements is "there are no absolutes". The irony inherrant in that statement isn't lost on me.
It isn't that "life" so to speak doesn't exist before conception, and I find that conception is absolutely not arbitrary. It is just that that life (sperm and egg cells) isn't a unique and whole human-being. The sperm and egg cells have but one purpose, and that is to join and become a new being. Their evolutionary purpose is clear, to all scientist, scholar, historian, and layman. To me, I don't understand the distinction that people make from conception on. Is a single cell fertilized egg particularly emotion invoking? No, I think not. I would tend to agree with you. Certainly a dog evokes more emotion.
I'm merely suggesting that morals are about more than feelings. I don't believe a 90 year old man with late-stage emphazema(sp?) is less important or human than a 10 year old boy. I also don't believe a severly mentally retarded woman is less human than someone without such a defect. In both cases, emotionally speaking, if one had to choose between one or the other in a life or death situation, you can guess who most people would choose.
But would it be immoral to choose the less "desirable" person? And yet, we as a society are indeed being programmed to think that the emotional impact of a death makes that death more grave. Vice versa, the lack of feeling for someone's death must mean that that gravity of their death is minimal.
Do people honestly think that a homicide detective gets emotionally involved in every murder investigation? Which murder do you think that detective is going to spend more attention to, the murder of a 8 year old girl, or the before mentioned 90 year old man on his death bed?
I think most people will agree that we humans can and do alter the "value" of human life based on circumstance. I think it is a flaw in our nature, if we are truly claiming to be beings guided by any sort of "morality" or natural law. Just some things to think about.
Mr Davidson, founder of the Harley Davidson Company, died and went to heaven for judgement. At the gates, St. Peter told Mr Davidson, "since you've been such a good man and your motorcycles have changed the world, your reward is, you can hang out with anyone you want in Heaven."
Mr Davidson thought about it for a minute and then said, "I want to hang out with God. I have a question for Him".
St. Peter took Mr Davidson to the Throne Room and introduced him to God. He then asked God, "Aren't you the inventor of women?" God Said, "Ah, yes. Indeed I am".
"Well," said Mr Davidson, "Professional to professional, you have some major design flaws in your design."
1- There's too much inconsistency in the front-end protrusion. 2- It chatters constantly at high speeds. 3- Most of the rear ends are too soft and wobble too much. 4- The intake is placed way too close to the exhaust. 5- Plus the monthly down time and aggravation are outrageous, and don't even get me started talking about the maintenance costs.
"Hmmmm, you do raise some good points" replied God, "Lets have a wee look." God went to his Celestial super computer, typed in a few things and waited for the results. After a moment God said, "Well, it may be true that my invention seems to be flawed, but according to these numbers, more men ride my invention than yours.."
Still with me? If I'm sitting here, minding my own business, and suddenly the +10 Ultra Sword of Power pops into my hands, and there is no mechanism within the laws of the universe that would allow a +10 Ultra Sword of Power to pop into my hands, then I have proof that God exists.
Actually, 200 years after the +10 Ultra Sword of Power shows up, there will be athiest scientists formulating reasonable theories to discount the +10 Ultra Sword of Power as being, "just a really good sword made by a really good blacksmith", or nobody will be able to prove it actually ever existed (regardless of the 2 billion people who are part of a religion based on it's appearance)
By the by, there are thousand upon thousands of stories of mirculous happenings throughout history that science can not explain. But, ultimately, without having first hand knowlege of these events, scientists (like the rest of us) have to choose to believe or not believe. People who claim miraculous happening in the present day are generally considered good candidates for lithium, regardless of evident or lack thereof to prove their claim.
What can I say, atheism is the religion of choice for the 21st century, and it is that religion that convenes The Inquisitions these days. And unlike the Spanish Inquisition, it *is* expected.
First of all, in case you all didn't notice. Pope John Paul II died, therefore is not the current pope. So, it isn't appropriate to refer to him as "The Pope", unless you mean to suggest that he had this conversation with his spirit, in which case I doubt he would be so brash in the recounting of it.
Second of all, this whole story is based on an anecdote which leads up to a joke punchline. I highly doubt Stevie H. ever spoke to John Paul II, let alone have this particular alleged conversation.
Third of all, there has been countless examples of John Paul II saying that science was a very good thing, and that no science would ultimately lead to something that contradicted truth. An one example check out his words. In fact, his predecessor, Pope Pius XII, stated in his 1950 encyclical Humani Generis that the theory of evolution contradicted in no way with the teachings of the Catholic Church, Pope Leo XIII also stated in his encyclical Providentissimus Deus that "truth can not contradict truth", and John Paul II seconded that motion.
I would suggest everyone is out of date in their understanding of the Catholic Church's stance on science.
Let's not make/. a platform for anti-catholic bigotry (not uncommon in puritanical cultures). It is already a platform for agnostics and atheists to spout off about how ignorant and stupid religious people are, and with the arrogance of a teenager about how smart and well-educated *they* are.
As a Catholic myself, I and my whole family have always been taught that the pursuit of science can only *help* us understand the universe and the world around us, and that this ultimately will help us to know and understand the nature of God. What science can't teach us, but philosophy (and yes religion) can, is how to live our lives or gain a sense of morality.
The assertion that has already been made I see by at least one/.'er in thread to this story, is that science can somehow be sufficient for us to discover our moral compass. I disagree with this assertion. Science is inherently neutral on moral grounds, neither good nor bad, only seeking knowledge. It is what we do with the knowledge that makes it good or evil.
Lastly, every good Catholic knows that what the pope says about science is irrelevent. In fact, the doctrine of papal infallibility pertains to the singular domain of faith and morals, not science, not fact, not popular opinion, and not politics. Even if John Paul II "personally" discouraged Stevie H. from pursuing his line of scientific hypothesis (which I doubt), he has already officially encouraged it in a dogmatic way (a much more potent way).
mentioned this case in reference to the patent issue with the iPod. Apple will be less likely, as well as other victims of patent troll companies, to settle under the threat of a court injunction. I heard this on the way to work this morning from some NPR analysts who were commenting following this ruling.
I see this as a small victory for patent reform. Perhaps this aspect of patent law will help to make the U.S. a little less litigious, or at least less frivilously so. I will just love to see these patent troll companies get their due.
The fact remains that, folks like my parents who still do not understand the setup.exe convention in windows, even though it has existed for the whole time they have both used computers, will be daunted by complexity regardless of usability design.
You can't build computers simply enough for folks who have no interest in learning about them. Their is no free as in "free from complexity" with computers. Computers are not toasters. They do not turn bread into toast with the press of a button. They are complex electronic tools. While a hammer is a tool with one appropriate use, the computer is a tool with infinite uses. With this endless utility comes endless possibilities for complexity.
It is a false to say computers should be free from complexity. Simplicity should exist where simplicity *can* and where simplicity *works*. While efforts to improve usability are far from fruitless, it is also important to recognize once and for all that computers will never be free from complexity, nor should they.
This is not not an elitist issue any more that it is an elitist issue that people learn reading, writing, or arithmetic. It is a literacy issue, plain and simple. If the world at large is required or desires the use of computers, then the public *must* become computer literate, and not as an after-thought. "Click-click-click spoon feed me" functionality should exist when it *can*, but by no means should it be a requirement for usability design.
Just like any other skill worth learning, you will get rewards in proportion to the amount of effort you put forth with computers. People who want to be able to use computers with no training, and with no attempts to learn or become literate in their understanding of them *should* face difficulty. Just as someone who has no desire to learn to read *should* face difficulty in our society. Take some responsibility people.
FOSS is about freedom to use the computer you bought, and not be forced to comply with some other entity's (Microsoft or other proprietary software vendors) idea for how you should be able to use your computer. FOSS allows me to use an operating system that fits my needs, software that fits my needs, and unlocks infinite possibilities to me for knowledge and utility. It removes the artificial barriers to use the tool I purchased, that belongs to me, and not them.
When I was growing up, my possible knowledge of my computer was very limited. If I wanted to learn how to program (which I did), and wanted to see how programs were made, I was out of luck. It was a closed world, because unless my parents were able to afford many books and compiler software (which they could not), I was locked out. If I wanted to read the code of the programs I used (which I did), so to gain a better understanding of how my computer worked, I was out of luck, as it was not provided and was not permitted. My choices were binary or nothing. If my device driver didn't work with my operating system, there was no recourse for me, because neither I nor the technical community had access to the knowledge of how this software worked.
FOSS has opened those doors. It has recreated the computer, and made it possible for it to be fresh and new again. Now my knowledge of my computer is limited only by my will. I can put forth effort and be rewarded with knowledge, which for a lover of learning means a dream come true. FOSS is the international library of computer knowledge, and one that is appropriately up-to-date, where our physical libraries are not.
People who harp constantly on the progress of this or that feature, or this or that look or feel, or this or that difference with the conventional proprietary software package miss the whole point. Design features, look and feel, and usability are of mere circumstance. With FOSS, these things can be changed, they can be improved, and they can be added. The freedom exists for those who would just reach out and take it to make these improvements, and the community at whole benefit
Given that the video is in Windows Media Video format, and that everybody at Slashdot is supposed to run a unix of some kind (Linux, OS X, etc), how are we supposed to watch this?
Why don't we see more H.264 videos? KILL WMV AND RM! KILL THEM! WITH A CHAIR!
I watched it, and I'm using Fedora Core 3.
I'm using MPlayer with win32 binary codecs. Check it out here.
I would like to know why you think trademarks are related to creativity. Patents and copyrights cover creative expression, trademarks are about using extant or new words to brand your product. Ford didn't create the word Mustang, but they have a trademark on automobiles of that name. Apple didn't create the word "Macintosh", but they have a trademark on personal computers of that name. Adobe is a generic word for undried mud bricks, but try and market software under that name.
This makes good sense, except that we aren't talking about two distinct contexts of "super-hero", one ordinary and one related to trade. In contention is the term super-hero to describe a story of a fictional character with super-human "powers". If these two companies didn't start using this term first in that context, then their trademark shouldn't be allowed, IMHO.
If they did use it first, then we may be looking at a trademark distortion by the general public. For example, people commonly used the term Xerox to mean copier once upon a time. Many southerners use the term Coke to mean soda. Some people say Kleenex to mean tissue paper. The outrage comes from the fact that all of these names are obviously used for branding, and are clear trademarks, where super-hero is not.
I think of marvel or dc characters as members of the class "super-hero", just as Coke is of the class "soda", Xerox is of the class "copier", and Kleenex is of the class "tissue paper". If I make up a fictional character named "Gumdrop man" who shoots bullet speed gum-drops from his eyes and fights crime, and I describe him to people on the street, people will classify that character as a super-hero (or a lame-ass stupid super-hero.) If I then proceed to say, "You understand, this is not a Marvel or DC Comics owned character, but my own creation," you would be hard pressed to find anyone (except a Marvel or DC attorney) that is going to say, "Oh, well in that case, your lame-ass character is really a 'hero', not a 'super-hero'."
Compilation for the source is sometimes a bad idea if certification concerns are an issue for your business.
In the enterprise environment, IT departments can typically have service contracts with software vendors and support consultants. These contracts typically require an "un-tainted" kernel at a minimum, defined as the vendor packaged binary distribution.
For our Oracle support contract, we must have a specific formula of one binary distro OS (untainted kernel and libraries) to match a specific Oracle DB binary, etc. As soon as the support company (oracle) finds evidence that you "rolled your own", you just threw your support contract funds out the window.
On the other hand, binary distribution of software is not always safe either. For instance, with RedHat support contracts, if you load a kernel module that isn't certified by RedHat for your binary kernel (for instance to support a filesystem that Redhat doesn't support by default, or a proprietary hardware driver), your kernel is flagged as "tainted" and your contract on that machine is void until you can standardize back to certified binaries.
At least in this scenario, an administrator should practice care when deciding to compile any binary. If you want to be on the safe side, follow common Unix conventions of installing under/usr/local/bin,/usr/local/sbin, and/usr/local/lib for software and libraries you have compiled. Don't install software that loads kernel modules, unless you can be sure it is a certified binary. Ensure that you can install proprietary binaries under/opt.
Never install a recompiled binary overtop of a file that in registered with a package management database if you intend to use the package management system in the future. It will cause a lot of needless headache when bugs start happening.
The parent is not entirely flame-bait IMHO. While passionate, we all know that this topic is bound to spur passionate posts.
I would like to respond.
The question I pose is: By what means does greater self-awareness merit any sense of morality at all? By reducing humanity to purely biological matter or mammals, we admit that by nature's perspective there is no means. We would be saying that we should be governed only by natures laws.
Anthropologically speaking, our "greater self-awareness" enables human culture to exist, and morality manifests itself in different cultures in different ways. Surely you wouldn't say that a culture that practices infanticide and mandatory euthanasia is moral! However subjectively speaking, no one should be able to make any judgement on these activities on any basis other than concensus of the largest set of self-aware meat bags. So, all that is needed to change immoral to moral is a shift in consensus.
As for the pathetic belief in "god", I'm afraid world-wide you are far in the minority. I would reason that cultural definitions of things like murder stem in there most basic parts not from greater self-awareness, but from a self-awareness and corporate-awareness of human beings as being far more valuable than ordinary meat-bags. Many times this awareness is based on the perception that man is unique. Your assertion that humanity is not unique is also not shared by the majority of the world. What is in question is what make our uniqueness valuable. Is it intelligence, self-awareness, evolutionary progress, or is it a dignity endowed by our Creator in the inheritence of an eternal soul?
Without the intrinsic dignity of humanity, survival of the fittest is also the most "moral" course for the race (ensured survival).
Pro-lifer's speak much of the culture of death. The culture of death is a culture that does not recognize the uniqueness of the human being and therefore creates a morality that is subject to the shifting whims of the populus to the expense of some innocents that have been defined as inconvenient, unwanted, useless, or undesirable.
I for one find more hope in the possibility of a Creator God to bring some absolutes into this murky picture of subjective morality, lest you or I be on the wrong side of the consensus some day.
I use C# and the CLI , theyre ECMA specified.
I wont use MS's fantasy web shit either, use SOAP, its standard.
But I will use C# and the CLI.
Standard in this case doesn't mean free from IP protection such as patents. In fact, Microsoft chose the ECMA specifically because of the ECMA's policy on patent. They will accept any standard, including patented IP.
Here's the General Declaration:
The General Assembly of Ecma shall not approve recommendations of Standards which are covered by patents when such patents will not be licensed by their owners on a reasonable and non-discriminatory basis.
You may be subject to any license that Microsoft wishes, and licensing fees for use of the CLI,.net, etc.
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No, the majority does not rule. The whole point of the American constitution is that the majority does not have the right to infringe upon the rights of the minority.
I agree with you in part. However, the constitution primarily protects the people from the tyranny of the powerful few. Democracy is truly mob-rule in it's pure form. We just don't have a pure democracy, we have a representative democracy. I guess the primary benefit of that is that it moderates change over time.
Yes it can and yes, it does. Have you not noticed the frequent overturning of religiously-inspired laws? Or do you think those are the "evil activist judges" who are out to destroy religion?
What our government "can" do and what it was "designed" to do are to different things, now aren't they? I have noticed, and sometimes it is absolutely appropriate that they have done. Sometimes they have gone too far, and sometimes not far enough.
Ultimately, I think the U.S. Supreme Court is full of flawed human beings, just like congress, the whitehouse... They can and do make mistakes, but their role is still very important.
Abortion? Not without a constitutional amendment. Murder? That was illegal in most societies long before Judaism emerged. Divorce and adultery? Debatable on divorce. Adultery is illegal in many areas because it's seen as a violation of a legally binding contract with a spouse. Drugs? We'll see how much longer that lasts. Alcohol? They needed a constitutional amendment last time, and they'd need one again. Fornication? No, they couldn't make that illegal. Not without scrapping the entire constitution. Euthanasia? See murder, but this is subject to change. Stem cell research? Just because you can doesn't mean you should. Religious nutjobs are winning this one, and it's costing lives every day.
Most of these laws can't be passed, or rather wouldn't be upheld in court. The laws they pass are indeed partially inspired by religious views, but I have hope that they'll recover soon.
I'm not saying these things *should* be made illegal. I'm just saying that with the right circumstances, the majority could prevail on any of these things. One person's injustice is another's justice.
Just because the supreme court of today might strike something down, doesn't mean it will tomorrow. Hell, abortion has been illegal for a majority of our country's history. Slavery and racial discrimination legal for another large part.
Our secular government, can and will be on the wrong side of moral issues. But I guess that is all subjective, now isn't it?
Our current president and things like guantanamo bay, suspension of habeas corpus during this war and past wars are good examples of how our protections are not iron clad. It doesn't take a complete dismantling of our government to lose or get returned a fundamental right. It only takes the action, or lack there of, of the majority.
...until some religious majority gets enough political power to silence and jail those who would question their religious beliefs. But thanks for trumpeting the rights we have courtesy of a secular society which created a secular government which you now wish to dismantle and turn into an oppressive Christian Hate Machine.
If you think the founding father's weren't "religious nutjobs", then you haven't read anything they wrote.
They didn't seek to snuff our religion in government, and form a "secular society". Grow up. They simply wanted to form a government that was limited in power, and not explicitly religious in nature. They did this by forbidding the establishment of a national religion, but our national congress. That encouraged freedom of religion by inclusion. The slight difference that you seem to advocate is you wish to have all people be equal by making all people equally oppressed. That is just my first impression, I obviously don't k
Yes, but you see, we UNDERSTAND we're a minority, and simply want the majority of people's ACTUAL views to govern what goes on in the world. Whereas the religious nutjobs among us want their views stuffed down everyone's throat. I say do what you want in church, but keep it out of my schools, courthouses, and city halls.
Really the crux of the problem is that most religion isn't just rutual performed on sacred days in churches.
For most learned religious, these beliefs extend to all the moral foundation, ideals, and philosophical (not speaking of science here) understanding of the world around them that make up their whole nature. IE: beliefs about right vs. wrong, nature of humanity (human dignity and rights), obligations to fellow man...
The whole POINT of democratic government is some consensus of a larger group "stuffed down everyone's throat". The majority rules.
The U.S. Constitution forbids congress from establishing a state religion, but it doesn't and can't prevent religious majorities from imposing their moral/philosophical ideals upon the minority.
They could for instance make illegal abortion, murder, divorce and adultery, drugs and alcohol, fornication, euthanasia, stem-cell research...
These laws could be passed by people whose motives stem primarily from their religious beliefs, and that is ok. Religion is part of who they are, and guides their world-view. The beauty of this country is that you or anyone else has the right to disagree and voice your disagreement.
Actually...
The Christian population in the world has been estimated at approximately 2.1 Billion people. Collectively, this represents the largest religion cumulatively in the world. In one sense you are right, as this is certainly a 33% minority of the entire human race.
However, the entirely non-religious account for approximately 16% of the world population, but are apparently reported (by themselves and totally objectively of course) to have 99% of the intelligence and education world-wide. ;-p
Hilariously, while 84% of the world's population are considered (apparently) hopelessly ignorant and stupid, the other 16% still seem to believe simultaneously that humanity's problems can be solved through democratic governance.
Just FYI
The other parties that are vulnerable are hardware vendors and system OEMs that offer to pre-load FLOSS on their hardware. Dell/HP/IBM and their like will generally avoid clear-cut legal liabilities. They marry a device to software as a normal part of their business model.
Take the Blackberry as an example of married software and hardware that infringes patents. If someone else wrote the software, RIM still has the liability because they did the combining of software and hardware into a device.
Does anyone know if there has been a case of an end-user being sued for patent infringement?
The most positive thing to prevent this from actually happening is the decline of the floppy disk. However, many modern BIOS can and do boot from USB thumb drives. Is it possible to write the boot sector on a USB drive in Vista? Is it that unlikely that a kernel-driver could be exploited? Worm + kernel-driver exploit could mean boot sector access. Or hey, download this CD of cute screen-savers... Only need to reboot one time to finish the installation... I don't know, I'm just thinking out of the "box".
Are we about to see the dawn of a new day for the Boot Sector Virus?
I don't think that would necessarily be a problem. You could leave the current protocol as it stands and "bolt-on" the UDP scheme. I don't know anything about the particulars of the protocol, but I would think you could add a preference to a bittorrent client to allow it to both participate in traditional bittorrent exchanges with normal seeders, as well as attempt UDP port exchanges by using the TCP connections with existing seeders.
You could have the client "test the waters" so to speak with a seeder, to see if it has the bolt-on code to help exchange UDP ports with other NAT-bound leechers. If the code responds, then you start establishing UDP connections through port exchanges with that seeder, else you just treat it like a traditional torrent seeder. That way, in the interum, you aren't breaking the current torrent protocol, but could actually get an added bonus of other "virtual-seeders" on UDP.
I am surprised to hear that torrent is TCP based in the first place. It seems like needless overhead, when the checksumming ensured data reliability anyway. But short of a complete reimplementation of torrent with UDP (with community support), I would think it would make more sense to extend the current protocol (not in the microsoft way
Just some thoughts.
I was impressed with this technique too. Perhaps the third party for a protocol such at bittorrent could use the seeders as UDP port mediators. It would be pretty easy to determine if the traditional listening port range was being filtered, and then the other seeding peers could do the UDP port exchanges for peers behind NAT firewalls. I don't think having a centralized trust is an issue here, because the whole concept relies on checksums anyway.
Of course I don't intimately understand how the protocol works in terms of discovery of other peers, so I could be talking out of my ass. Feel free to ridicule me if any of you know different.
The only place I could see this falling apart is the added overhead of establishing the scheme for *every* peer that wants to connect to your machine. The handshake to get each other's UDP ports would have to take place on some seeder *each* time a new peer came online, and each new host would somehow need to know which seeder was going to help exchange UDP ports. You would need an election, kind of like the master computer browser election on a NetBIOS PTP network. Perhaps you could handle this in tiers, allowing each "master browser" to handle a certain number of host UDP port exchanges.
Just think if this worked though. It would mean no more leechers!
While I won't abandoning Linux for such a reason, many companies, including the one I work for (which has about 50% Windows and 50% GNU/Linux) might. VMWare, for instance, is an important application for us and is one that requires binary kernel modules to function. All of our VMWare boxes could end up on Windows (God forbid) if this were to happen, or at the very least VMware would fork the kernel for their version of Linux. It is unlikely that such a move would force VMWare's hand and that they would release their code in a GPL compatible way to be included in the kernel.
I for one agree with Linus. I think the kernel module system is basically a binary interface to the kernel. You aren't linking or run-time linking with the kernel code in the traditional sense. I admit it is very grey-area indeed, as there could be an argument for exactly that with shared-object libraries. But I think we should all agree that at least it isn't the whole-sale selling out of the kernel to allow this grey-area.
The principled part of me agrees with you, but there are many users of the kernel that weren't here for the early and painful days (when they had to walk both ways to school, up-hill, in the snow, barefoot, you pansies). The community is clearly torn between the RMS types who value the promotion of freedom of free software (such as GNU/Linux) over the promotion of the technology, and those like Linus who err on the pragmatic side for the purpose of promoting the technology.
I think there is room for both types in our community.
And you sir, are short sighted. The ethereal presentation of music as you describe (stream of 0s and 1s that can be deleted or created at will and on demand) is actually more traditional and ancient than its current digital manifestation, my insulting friend. Throughout all human history, with the exception of the dawn of the industrial revolution and its novel method of encapsulating sensory (auditory in this case) information to physical media (a short period indeed relative to human history), the temporal "existence" of music was fleeting. One had to be present to hear it, whether it be around a campfire, in a pub, a church, or in a concert hall. In that way, it was accessible to all walks of life, both as "partaker" and "participant", and wasn't artificially presented as being anyone's personal property. It was sound and inherently free.
As to whether or not I'm deluded or not, I think it is fair to say you are not in the position to judge, particularly based on such a short (and one way) discourse. I will say I disagree with you. Listening to music is an engaging activity for myself, and others. You are partaking yes, but *also* participating. You are participating by experiencing our world and incorporating those experiences into your being and spirit, and sharing those experiences with those around us. That is a fundamental part and reason for liberty.
Do I believe artists should be able to make a living from their craft? Certainly, I do. Do I think that should be accomplished by creating a legal toll-booth that all have to pass to experience culture? Hell fucking no.
I think there are other means of rewarding artists. I also think that this is a demonstratable fact. I need not mention how many countless people have pointing out that they have both downloaded to sample music before purchase, and they have paid to attend concerts of their favorite artists, as well as to download and experience music which they otherwise would not have given the time of day, let alone "pay" for. This gives not only popular artists a fair chance of compensation for their work, but also exposes us to artists who are not getting marketing exposier from the recording industry juggernauts.
As for your point on being "poor and underprivileged" is invalidated by the ownership of a personal computer and access to broadband internet access, are you kidding? Certainly any American, even a hobo on the street could be demonstrated to be wealthy when compared to the poorest of the world. The same could be said for any individual of any western nation. But the disparity between any common American that is file sharing, and the wealthiest pop star or record industry executive makes that relativity irrelevant. The power, political influence, and access to elements of human culture of those powerful individuals and organizations is artificial.
If we have the technical means for all the world to experience human culture at zero marginal cost, I think it is immoral to withhold it. To suggest that the world would then let its most cherished and famous artist starve as reward for their work is deluded as well, as you say. No famous artist is, or ever will be excluded from wealth and privelege, regardless of the particular system we use to compensate them. For me, at least, the current one is outdated and immoral given our technical capabilities.
I say we let it burn and see what arises from its ashes.
I'll quote Eben Moglen of FSF fame:
"If I can provide to everyone all goods of intellectual value or beauty, for the same price that I can provide the first copy of those works to anyone, why is it ever moral to exclude anyone from anything? If you could feed everyone on earth at the cost of baking one loaf and pressing a button, what would be the moral case for charging more for bread than some people could afford to pay?"
I agree wholeheartedly. The record industry is struggling to keep alive a system that is artificial and long past due to be replaced. We as humans need to decide for ourselves how we will partake of human culture. The record industry will either adapt or die. Vilifying the masses of poor and unprivileged as "pirate" (someone who robs at sea or plunders the land from the sea without having a commission from any sovereign nation; murderers and rapists) for the "crime" of participating in human culture without paying to current powers is merely propaganda.
The inherent inequity in the current system which awards very few at the expense of many, and excludes artificially the majority of the human race from its own culture is wrong, and must be fought by any means. I not only take the position that is is not immoral to file share, but that it is our duty to file share. Just as it was our fore-father's duty to fight the tyranny of distant royalty which usurped our human liberties, it is our duty to stand opposed to the immoral laws of our nation that remove our liberties to share with our fellow man.
The fact that there are big winners with our currently system is overshadowed by the fact that there are a vast majority of losers.
Sure thing, my pleasure. One of my favorite statements is "there are no absolutes". The irony inherrant in that statement isn't lost on me.
It isn't that "life" so to speak doesn't exist before conception, and I find that conception is absolutely not arbitrary. It is just that that life (sperm and egg cells) isn't a unique and whole human-being. The sperm and egg cells have but one purpose, and that is to join and become a new being. Their evolutionary purpose is clear, to all scientist, scholar, historian, and layman. To me, I don't understand the distinction that people make from conception on. Is a single cell fertilized egg particularly emotion invoking? No, I think not. I would tend to agree with you. Certainly a dog evokes more emotion.
I'm merely suggesting that morals are about more than feelings. I don't believe a 90 year old man with late-stage emphazema(sp?) is less important or human than a 10 year old boy. I also don't believe a severly mentally retarded woman is less human than someone without such a defect. In both cases, emotionally speaking, if one had to choose between one or the other in a life or death situation, you can guess who most people would choose.
But would it be immoral to choose the less "desirable" person? And yet, we as a society are indeed being programmed to think that the emotional impact of a death makes that death more grave. Vice versa, the lack of feeling for someone's death must mean that that gravity of their death is minimal.
Do people honestly think that a homicide detective gets emotionally involved in every murder investigation? Which murder do you think that detective is going to spend more attention to, the murder of a 8 year old girl, or the before mentioned 90 year old man on his death bed?
I think most people will agree that we humans can and do alter the "value" of human life based on circumstance. I think it is a flaw in our nature, if we are truly claiming to be beings guided by any sort of "morality" or natural law. Just some things to think about.
Here are a whole bunch of quotes from prominent early christian (1st centuty on) http://www.byzantines.net/misc/ABORTION.HTM/
Mr Davidson, founder of the Harley Davidson Company, died and went to heaven for judgement. At the gates, St. Peter told Mr Davidson, "since you've been such a good man and your motorcycles have changed the world, your reward is, you can hang out with anyone you want in Heaven."
Mr Davidson thought about it for a minute and then said, "I want to hang out with God. I have a question for Him".
St. Peter took Mr Davidson to the Throne Room and introduced him to God.
He then asked God, "Aren't you the inventor of women?"
God Said, "Ah, yes. Indeed I am".
"Well," said Mr Davidson, "Professional to professional, you have some major design flaws in your design."
1- There's too much inconsistency in the front-end protrusion.
2- It chatters constantly at high speeds.
3- Most of the rear ends are too soft and wobble too much.
4- The intake is placed way too close to the exhaust.
5- Plus the monthly down time and aggravation are outrageous, and don't even get me started talking about the maintenance costs.
"Hmmmm, you do raise some good points" replied God, "Lets have a wee look."
God went to his Celestial super computer, typed in a few things and waited for the results. After a moment God said, "Well, it may be true that my invention seems to be flawed, but according to these numbers, more men ride my invention than yours.."
First of all, in case you all didn't notice. Pope John Paul II died, therefore is not the current pope. So, it isn't appropriate to refer to him as "The Pope", unless you mean to suggest that he had this conversation with his spirit, in which case I doubt he would be so brash in the recounting of it.
/. a platform for anti-catholic bigotry (not uncommon in puritanical cultures). It is already a platform for agnostics and atheists to spout off about how ignorant and stupid religious people are, and with the arrogance of a teenager about how smart and well-educated *they* are.
/.'er in thread to this story, is that science can somehow be sufficient for us to discover our moral compass. I disagree with this assertion. Science is inherently neutral on moral grounds, neither good nor bad, only seeking knowledge. It is what we do with the knowledge that makes it good or evil.
Second of all, this whole story is based on an anecdote which leads up to a joke punchline. I highly doubt Stevie H. ever spoke to John Paul II, let alone have this particular alleged conversation.
Third of all, there has been countless examples of John Paul II saying that science was a very good thing, and that no science would ultimately lead to something that contradicted truth. An one example check out his words. In fact, his predecessor, Pope Pius XII, stated in his 1950 encyclical Humani Generis that the theory of evolution contradicted in no way with the teachings of the Catholic Church, Pope Leo XIII also stated in his encyclical Providentissimus Deus that "truth can not contradict truth", and John Paul II seconded that motion.
I would suggest everyone is out of date in their understanding of the Catholic Church's stance on science.
Let's not make
As a Catholic myself, I and my whole family have always been taught that the pursuit of science can only *help* us understand the universe and the world around us, and that this ultimately will help us to know and understand the nature of God. What science can't teach us, but philosophy (and yes religion) can, is how to live our lives or gain a sense of morality.
The assertion that has already been made I see by at least one
Lastly, every good Catholic knows that what the pope says about science is irrelevent. In fact, the doctrine of papal infallibility pertains to the singular domain of faith and morals, not science, not fact, not popular opinion, and not politics. Even if John Paul II "personally" discouraged Stevie H. from pursuing his line of scientific hypothesis (which I doubt), he has already officially encouraged it in a dogmatic way (a much more potent way).
mentioned this case in reference to the patent issue with the iPod. Apple will be less likely, as well as other victims of patent troll companies, to settle under the threat of a court injunction. I heard this on the way to work this morning from some NPR analysts who were commenting following this ruling.
I see this as a small victory for patent reform. Perhaps this aspect of patent law will help to make the U.S. a little less litigious, or at least less frivilously so. I will just love to see these patent troll companies get their due.
The fact remains that, folks like my parents who still do not understand the setup.exe convention in windows, even though it has existed for the whole time they have both used computers, will be daunted by complexity regardless of usability design.
You can't build computers simply enough for folks who have no interest in learning about them. Their is no free as in "free from complexity" with computers. Computers are not toasters. They do not turn bread into toast with the press of a button. They are complex electronic tools. While a hammer is a tool with one appropriate use, the computer is a tool with infinite uses. With this endless utility comes endless possibilities for complexity.
It is a false to say computers should be free from complexity. Simplicity should exist where simplicity *can* and where simplicity *works*. While efforts to improve usability are far from fruitless, it is also important to recognize once and for all that computers will never be free from complexity, nor should they.
This is not not an elitist issue any more that it is an elitist issue that people learn reading, writing, or arithmetic. It is a literacy issue, plain and simple. If the world at large is required or desires the use of computers, then the public *must* become computer literate, and not as an after-thought. "Click-click-click spoon feed me" functionality should exist when it *can*, but by no means should it be a requirement for usability design.
Just like any other skill worth learning, you will get rewards in proportion to the amount of effort you put forth with computers. People who want to be able to use computers with no training, and with no attempts to learn or become literate in their understanding of them *should* face difficulty. Just as someone who has no desire to learn to read *should* face difficulty in our society. Take some responsibility people.
FOSS is about freedom to use the computer you bought, and not be forced to comply with some other entity's (Microsoft or other proprietary software vendors) idea for how you should be able to use your computer. FOSS allows me to use an operating system that fits my needs, software that fits my needs, and unlocks infinite possibilities to me for knowledge and utility. It removes the artificial barriers to use the tool I purchased, that belongs to me, and not them.
When I was growing up, my possible knowledge of my computer was very limited. If I wanted to learn how to program (which I did), and wanted to see how programs were made, I was out of luck. It was a closed world, because unless my parents were able to afford many books and compiler software (which they could not), I was locked out. If I wanted to read the code of the programs I used (which I did), so to gain a better understanding of how my computer worked, I was out of luck, as it was not provided and was not permitted. My choices were binary or nothing. If my device driver didn't work with my operating system, there was no recourse for me, because neither I nor the technical community had access to the knowledge of how this software worked.
FOSS has opened those doors. It has recreated the computer, and made it possible for it to be fresh and new again. Now my knowledge of my computer is limited only by my will. I can put forth effort and be rewarded with knowledge, which for a lover of learning means a dream come true. FOSS is the international library of computer knowledge, and one that is appropriately up-to-date, where our physical libraries are not.
People who harp constantly on the progress of this or that feature, or this or that look or feel, or this or that difference with the conventional proprietary software package miss the whole point. Design features, look and feel, and usability are of mere circumstance. With FOSS, these things can be changed, they can be improved, and they can be added. The freedom exists for those who would just reach out and take it to make these improvements, and the community at whole benefit
I watched it, and I'm using Fedora Core 3. I'm using MPlayer with win32 binary codecs. Check it out here.
This makes good sense, except that we aren't talking about two distinct contexts of "super-hero", one ordinary and one related to trade. In contention is the term super-hero to describe a story of a fictional character with super-human "powers". If these two companies didn't start using this term first in that context, then their trademark shouldn't be allowed, IMHO.
If they did use it first, then we may be looking at a trademark distortion by the general public. For example, people commonly used the term Xerox to mean copier once upon a time. Many southerners use the term Coke to mean soda. Some people say Kleenex to mean tissue paper. The outrage comes from the fact that all of these names are obviously used for branding, and are clear trademarks, where super-hero is not.
I think of marvel or dc characters as members of the class "super-hero", just as Coke is of the class "soda", Xerox is of the class "copier", and Kleenex is of the class "tissue paper". If I make up a fictional character named "Gumdrop man" who shoots bullet speed gum-drops from his eyes and fights crime, and I describe him to people on the street, people will classify that character as a super-hero (or a lame-ass stupid super-hero.) If I then proceed to say, "You understand, this is not a Marvel or DC Comics owned character, but my own creation," you would be hard pressed to find anyone (except a Marvel or DC attorney) that is going to say, "Oh, well in that case, your lame-ass character is really a 'hero', not a 'super-hero'."
Compilation for the source is sometimes a bad idea if certification concerns are an issue for your business.
/usr/local/bin, /usr/local/sbin, and /usr/local/lib for software and libraries you have compiled. Don't install software that loads kernel modules, unless you can be sure it is a certified binary. Ensure that you can install proprietary binaries under /opt.
In the enterprise environment, IT departments can typically have service contracts with software vendors and support consultants. These contracts typically require an "un-tainted" kernel at a minimum, defined as the vendor packaged binary distribution.
For our Oracle support contract, we must have a specific formula of one binary distro OS (untainted kernel and libraries) to match a specific Oracle DB binary, etc. As soon as the support company (oracle) finds evidence that you "rolled your own", you just threw your support contract funds out the window.
On the other hand, binary distribution of software is not always safe either. For instance, with RedHat support contracts, if you load a kernel module that isn't certified by RedHat for your binary kernel (for instance to support a filesystem that Redhat doesn't support by default, or a proprietary hardware driver), your kernel is flagged as "tainted" and your contract on that machine is void until you can standardize back to certified binaries.
At least in this scenario, an administrator should practice care when deciding to compile any binary. If you want to be on the safe side, follow common Unix conventions of installing under
Never install a recompiled binary overtop of a file that in registered with a package management database if you intend to use the package management system in the future. It will cause a lot of needless headache when bugs start happening.
Cheers!
... the Patriot Act being used to enforce copyright.
The parent is not entirely flame-bait IMHO. While passionate, we all know that this topic is bound to spur passionate posts.
I would like to respond.
The question I pose is: By what means does greater self-awareness merit any sense of morality at all? By reducing humanity to purely biological matter or mammals, we admit that by nature's perspective there is no means. We would be saying that we should be governed only by natures laws.
Anthropologically speaking, our "greater self-awareness" enables human culture to exist, and morality manifests itself in different cultures in different ways. Surely you wouldn't say that a culture that practices infanticide and mandatory euthanasia is moral! However subjectively speaking, no one should be able to make any judgement on these activities on any basis other than concensus of the largest set of self-aware meat bags. So, all that is needed to change immoral to moral is a shift in consensus.
As for the pathetic belief in "god", I'm afraid world-wide you are far in the minority. I would reason that cultural definitions of things like murder stem in there most basic parts not from greater self-awareness, but from a self-awareness and corporate-awareness of human beings as being far more valuable than ordinary meat-bags. Many times this awareness is based on the perception that man is unique. Your assertion that humanity is not unique is also not shared by the majority of the world. What is in question is what make our uniqueness valuable. Is it intelligence, self-awareness, evolutionary progress, or is it a dignity endowed by our Creator in the inheritence of an eternal soul?
Without the intrinsic dignity of humanity, survival of the fittest is also the most "moral" course for the race (ensured survival).
Pro-lifer's speak much of the culture of death. The culture of death is a culture that does not recognize the uniqueness of the human being and therefore creates a morality that is subject to the shifting whims of the populus to the expense of some innocents that have been defined as inconvenient, unwanted, useless, or undesirable.
I for one find more hope in the possibility of a Creator God to bring some absolutes into this murky picture of subjective morality, lest you or I be on the wrong side of the consensus some day.
the Internet is an internet. Maybe they found another one?
They will accept any standard, including patented IP.
Here's the General Declaration: You may be subject to any license that Microsoft wishes, and licensing fees for use of the CLI,