What? Because Europe is only 3 countries now? Funny, here I was thinking that the EU alone consisted of 25 countries, with a few additional European countries not even being in the EU.
You may indeed be wrong. Your name just one example, but you could as easily have chosen any of the democracies in North West Europe or Scandinavia -- off the top of my head, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Denmark, Sweden and Norway have multi-party democracies, and are all considered stable democracies.
This does of course not imply that two-party democracies can't be stable, or would be less stable, but I can imagine they might lead to the kind of polarisation that can be observed in the United States.
In addition, he said he's OK with the concept of security via obscurity but doesn't believe that secrecy is a good approach to securing the Linux kernel.
"I believe that 'security through obscurity' can actually be one valid level of security (after all, in the extreme case, that's all a password ever really is)," Torvalds wrote.
While not disclosing security holes might grant some amount of security, security through obscurity is probably one of the least useful methods of security -- as a sibling post said, black-hats may already have exploited the hole, and the embargo prevents you from even knowing you're vulnerable.
Besides, wasn't one of the ideas behind the security of F/OSS that there would be more white-hats looking for exploits and patching
them than there were black-hats looking to maliciously exploit them? I don't think embargoing security holes really meshes with that philosophy.
True. Anyway, having looked it up on Wikipedia, for as much as that can be considered an accurate source, I'll concede that in the US, IP is indeed classed as property (though it is in some ways more limited than tangible property). Sorry for the confusion.
And that entry demonstrates that according to the defenition of stealing accepted by basically every english-speaking person (for non legal use) is very appropriate here.
I'll agree that this is a casual conversation, but I would beg to differ that the legal meaning is not relevant. After all, we're discussing a lawsuit here. Also, I don't really believe there is any consensus regarding the use of the word 'theft' for copyright infringement on Slashdot.
Perhaps you'd want to check legal definitions, and not a dictionary. Intellectual property is not, in fact, property, just something similar to it (because property is by defintion something tangible -- a CD is property, but the information contained on it isn't)
(Note, IANAL, and this is based on my knowledge of Dutch law, but most of the basic stuff regarding property and IP seems to be pretty much the same in the Western world anyway)
The Nazis weren't Christians. Christians are, by definition, followers of the teachings of Jesus Christ. That in and of itself is enough to refute you. However, I can go on to point out that the Nazis were atheistic.
Not quite. Atheists, by definition, believe there is no higher deity. Hitler, and most Nazis (and Germans in general, for that matter) certainly believed in a deity -- in fact, the Christian one.
Actually, you have. Konqueror works with Rabobank's online banking. I haven't tried Mozilla or Firefox recently, as it used to give some problems, but I've heard from other people that it works as well.
IIRC the European Court is in Strassbourg. The International Criminal Court (and the Yugoslavia Tribunal, and probably some other tribunals, too) is in The Hague.
Once, there were black and white TVs. There was MosaicTV, and NetscapeTV. They worked well with all stations of that time, but, well, they were only black and white. One of the movie theatre chains, MicroMovie, didn't even think TVs would ever catch on.
But they did.
And MicroMovie decided they wanted a piece of the pie, and made a TV as well, MicroTV. They changed the frequencies ever so slightly, so their TV worked with the current channels, but also with channels on slightly different frequency bands. Note that channels were not supposed to broadcast on those bands, but because of MicroMovie's monopoly, people started using MicroTV's weird nonstandard frequencies, which effectively killed NetscapeTV.
Now, fast forward to the colour era, along comes MozillaTV and OperaTV. They work really well with the standard TV frequencies, still used by most everyone, and they can automatically skip commercials. However, there are still some sites, such as banks, which insist on using the nonstandard MicroMovie frequencies, and so look noisy on non-MicroTVs.
Of course, channels are filled with commercials these days, and MicroTVs have a tendency to allow strangers access to your living room right through the TV screen, so by all rights people should use MozillaTV or OperaTV, but most people still don't do this because of MicroMovies' lockin.
Moral: if you're an embracing-and-extending monopolist, you can get away with virtually everything, and people will still use your product.
But the point is, the Dutch court doesn't rule about the validness of Microsoft's claim in an English-speaking country, and obviously they can't. LindowsOS is, or should be, a valid name in the US and the UK, where windows is a common word.
However, it is irrelevant to the Dutch case where Microsoft is based, because if they had been a Dutch company, they would have won the case as well, and you can't go around applying the law selectively based on where a company is based in trademark cases.
For the record, while I think Microsoft has a valid case in non-English speaking countries, I'm not a Microsoft fan or user, and I think that the part of the ruling where Dutch users aren't allowed to visit lindows.com is censorship. But that aside
In fact, yes, the Dutch word for 'window' in the GUI sense is not 'window', but 'venster' (cf, fenestre). The word 'window' is recognized as a word for the GUI element, at least by the technically-inclined, but I'm not sure about it's recognition by laypeople.
Obviously, if I were to market an OS in the United States called CorvassSoft Vensters (tm), I would (or should) probably have a pretty good trademark case against a company calling their product LenstersOS.
"All the power lies with the (unelected) commission."
The commision would be chosen by the national governments. While I agree that that's not direct democracy, nothing really is these days. Government coalitions in multi-party systems are not chosen by the voters either, and neither is, for instance, the US president, chosen by the electors.
Now, that doesn't mean they can't be corrupt -- I'm not about to argue that American politicians can be corrupt while European politicans can't be, nor vice versa, but my point is direct democracy is wishful thinking in nations/unions the size of the US or the EU anyway.
"What is scary about the EU is that its not a democracy and there are no checks or balances unlike Australia or the United States."
Strange. Last time I checked the European Parliament was chosen by democratic means. Of course, the rest of the EU government is not, AFAIK, but that's pretty much the same as the US and Australia (well, the US chooses its president, and you can see what that's got them)
"[...], please keep in mind that every one of the Camp X-ray inmates were captured during operations in which they were fighting our troops."
Yeah, that makes them prisoners of war. Unless the US is still at war with Afghanistan (not sure they've ever declared war properly, but that's not really the point), the Geneva convention says they have to be released -- it's not a crime to lose a war, or even fight in one, after all (certainly not if you didn't start the war).
Slashdot Mirror
What? Because Europe is only 3 countries now? Funny, here I was thinking that the EU alone consisted of 25 countries, with a few additional European countries not even being in the EU.
You may indeed be wrong. Your name just one example, but you could as easily have chosen any of the democracies in North West Europe or Scandinavia -- off the top of my head, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Denmark, Sweden and Norway have multi-party democracies, and are all considered stable democracies.
This does of course not imply that two-party democracies can't be stable, or would be less stable, but I can imagine they might lead to the kind of polarisation that can be observed in the United States.
As Linus says:
In addition, he said he's OK with the concept of security via obscurity but doesn't believe that secrecy is a good approach to securing the Linux kernel.
"I believe that 'security through obscurity' can actually be one valid level of security (after all, in the extreme case, that's all a password ever really is)," Torvalds wrote.
While not disclosing security holes might grant some amount of security, security through obscurity is probably one of the least useful methods of security -- as a sibling post said, black-hats may already have exploited the hole, and the embargo prevents you from even knowing you're vulnerable.
Besides, wasn't one of the ideas behind the security of F/OSS that there would be more white-hats looking for exploits and patching them than there were black-hats looking to maliciously exploit them? I don't think embargoing security holes really meshes with that philosophy.
only old games play people?
True. Anyway, having looked it up on Wikipedia, for as much as that can be considered an accurate source, I'll concede that in the US, IP is indeed classed as property (though it is in some ways more limited than tangible property). Sorry for the confusion.
And that entry demonstrates that according to the defenition of stealing accepted by basically every english-speaking person (for non legal use) is very appropriate here.
I'll agree that this is a casual conversation, but I would beg to differ that the legal meaning is not relevant. After all, we're discussing a lawsuit here. Also, I don't really believe there is any consensus regarding the use of the word 'theft' for copyright infringement on Slashdot.
Hey, look what I found here. A CD. Gee, I wonder who made that. Oh, and there, a music cassette. I wonder who comes up with these things.
(Hint)
Perhaps you'd want to check legal definitions, and not a dictionary. Intellectual property is not, in fact, property, just something similar to it (because property is by defintion something tangible -- a CD is property, but the information contained on it isn't)
(Note, IANAL, and this is based on my knowledge of Dutch law, but most of the basic stuff regarding property and IP seems to be pretty much the same in the Western world anyway)
The Nazis weren't Christians. Christians are, by definition, followers of the teachings of Jesus Christ. That in and of itself is enough to refute you. However, I can go on to point out that the Nazis were atheistic.
Not quite. Atheists, by definition, believe there is no higher deity. Hitler, and most Nazis (and Germans in general, for that matter) certainly believed in a deity -- in fact, the Christian one.
Actually, Warren Spector was the lead designer for the original Deus Ex, not Harvey Smith.
I'm sure it is, but it's still as incorrect as using England to refer to the UK.
Actually, you have. Konqueror works with Rabobank's online banking. I haven't tried Mozilla or Firefox recently, as it used to give some problems, but I've heard from other people that it works as well.
IIRC the European Court is in Strassbourg. The International Criminal Court (and the Yugoslavia Tribunal, and probably some other tribunals, too) is in The Hague.
Nice try. Let's try again:
Once, there were black and white TVs. There was MosaicTV, and NetscapeTV. They worked well with all stations of that time, but, well, they were only black and white. One of the movie theatre chains, MicroMovie, didn't even think TVs would ever catch on.
But they did.
And MicroMovie decided they wanted a piece of the pie, and made a TV as well, MicroTV. They changed the frequencies ever so slightly, so their TV worked with the current channels, but also with channels on slightly different frequency bands.
Note that channels were not supposed to broadcast on those bands, but because of MicroMovie's monopoly, people started using MicroTV's weird nonstandard frequencies, which effectively killed NetscapeTV.
Now, fast forward to the colour era, along comes MozillaTV and OperaTV. They work really well with the standard TV frequencies, still used by most everyone, and they can automatically skip commercials. However, there are still some sites, such as banks, which insist on using the nonstandard MicroMovie frequencies, and so look noisy on non-MicroTVs.
Of course, channels are filled with commercials these days, and MicroTVs have a tendency to allow strangers access to your living room right through the TV screen, so by all rights people should use MozillaTV or OperaTV, but most people still don't do this because of MicroMovies' lockin.
Moral: if you're an embracing-and-extending monopolist, you can get away with virtually everything, and people will still use your product.
But the point is, the Dutch court doesn't rule about the validness of Microsoft's claim in an English-speaking country, and obviously they can't. LindowsOS is, or should be, a valid name in the US and the UK, where windows is a common word.
However, it is irrelevant to the Dutch case where Microsoft is based, because if they had been a Dutch company, they would have won the case as well, and you can't go around applying the law selectively based on where a company is based in trademark cases.
For the record, while I think Microsoft has a valid case in non-English speaking countries, I'm not a Microsoft fan or user, and I think that the part of the ruling where Dutch users aren't allowed to visit lindows.com is censorship. But that aside
In fact, yes, the Dutch word for 'window' in the GUI sense is not 'window', but 'venster' (cf, fenestre). The word 'window' is recognized as a word for the GUI element, at least by the technically-inclined, but I'm not sure about it's recognition by laypeople.
Obviously, if I were to market an OS in the United States called CorvassSoft Vensters (tm), I would (or should) probably have a pretty good trademark case against a company calling their product LenstersOS.
Now, that doesn't mean they can't be corrupt -- I'm not about to argue that American politicians can be corrupt while European politicans can't be, nor vice versa, but my point is direct democracy is wishful thinking in nations/unions the size of the US or the EU anyway.
"What is scary about the EU is that its not a democracy and there are no checks or balances unlike Australia or the United States." Strange. Last time I checked the European Parliament was chosen by democratic means. Of course, the rest of the EU government is not, AFAIK, but that's pretty much the same as the US and Australia (well, the US chooses its president, and you can see what that's got them)
"[...], please keep in mind that every one of the Camp X-ray inmates were captured during operations in which they were fighting our troops."
Yeah, that makes them prisoners of war. Unless the US is still at war with Afghanistan (not sure they've ever declared war properly, but that's not really the point), the Geneva convention says they have to be released -- it's not a crime to lose a war, or even fight in one, after all (certainly not if you didn't start the war).