Yup, every EULA I've ever read (and I've read a lot of them) includes a section where the distributor reserves the right to sever the license agreement, thus nullifying the ability of the user to continue legal use of the software.
Yeah, my gaming experience probably mirrors yours quite well. The last new game I bought was something like 7 years ago. Decent non-FPS games are almost non-existent anymore. Interestingly enough, I actually use the Pirate Bay website to check what sorts of games are popular to see if anything jumps out that may be worth buying. As the years have passed, the list is dominated increasingly by the same game with updated models and occasionally a slightly tweaked or rebuilt with no real purpose (all-new! revolutionary!) engine.
While they may see more derision as being "cop lite," they have all the issues (pro and con, internal and external) of any other average police force. They have much more in common with a given police force anywhere else than they do with private security guards.
Hit submit too soon; I also agree with your particular analysis of which is worse. I'm not necessarily sure that it will truly matter to the cop though. It's amazing what people can rationalize, especially when they are on the defensive. His opinion that he was "right" is more likely to be reinforced by the negative reception of his actions. After all, anyone who's not a cop can't understand the delicate balance required. As an aside, the latter is true in many respects, but is used as a mechanism to deflect legitimate criticism too often to be worth listening to.
He'll likely go on to work in another police department somewhere, all the while under the perception that what he did was perfectly acceptable. Everyone he works with is likely to believe the same.
An example of the above is the recent conviction of a police officer named Karl Thompson in my city. He was found guilty of improper use of force and of lying to investigators regarding the circumstances; the man beaten died in custody because of improper restraint. The fact that he was even tried, let alone convicted, says a lot. Cops are almost never held to criminal account for their actions. The example in this isn't any of the above though. Upon his conviction, a number of the members of the local police force publicly saluted him as he exited the courtroom. Despite cameras providing clear evidence of what happened, the other members of the police force were behind him all the way. It didn't matter that he beat a man on the word of a witness who admittedly only "thought" he might have done "something" (no actual statement of what she thought he did was ever made). It didn't matter that he actively lied and colluded with the city prosecutor to cover up the fact that the only footage shown of the incident was the one camera that couldn't clearly see what happened. It didn't matter that his actions resulted in the death of a man who "only wanted a Snickers bar" (his last words before dying). All that mattered was that he was a cop, and he couldn't do any wrong.
Oh, and the reason he gave for beating him? He didn't drop the soda bottle he was carrying in the time it took the officer to finish saying the words and him reaching baton-distance of the man (something like 3-4 seconds).
I've never met someone in law enforcement who didn't have at least a minor streak of sadistic tendencies. That's not to say they don't exist, but if they do they're a tiny minority in my experience.
Animals are not treated humanely in many places, and many places that used slavery treated them quite well. It was neither skirting, nor was the issue overlooked.
"Open source" is a very specific descriptor. Just because the ecosystem of a particular project is not very open does not change the definition of "open source." It's not a nitpick to call a grape a grape, even if it's part of the bigger fruit salad "picture."
That's not necessarily true. Just because the source is available doesn't mean that the combination of hardware and compiled binary will allow you to access it once the binary is installed.
This point of view (and the corresponding one from a linguistic view of descriptors not necessarily being absolute) is the reason why math people and language people frequently don't see eye-to-eye.
Words and their definitions are mutable, and there is absolutely no reason to believe that will change. Understanding and accepting that is a part of learning to communicate with as few errors as possible. Refusing to recognize that does not help progress, it hinders it. It does so in exactly the same way "new math" hinders mathematical learning: you are attempting to fit the topic into a model that is inherently antithetical to the foundation of that topic.
I would disagree with that. Without keeping domestic animals penned, they are prone to wandering off on their own. The smarter domestic animals will frequently go out of their way to escape confinement if they figure out how to do so, since they don't fear any consequences from their actions when not directly confronted with someone keeping them in line.
Human slavery, on the other hand, has historically been a successful system for controlling populations without actually locking them up. The only time those systems really collapsed were when the population in control of the slavery changed socially or were overruled by outside influence. There are certainly exceptions to that (Europeans stopped enslaving Native North Americans when it became obvious they could not torture them into working), but in general it's been true throughout human history.
Wow, I didn't know there were people who actually believed that and were willing to own that belief publicly.
I'm glad Athenian democracy died, and hope it never again arises. People in groups are dumb, panicky animals, and are not to be trusted.
The majority needs to be protected from the minority, but the reverse is equally true. Neither should be able to entirely dominate and control the lives of the other.
All property is is 'bans'. Property ownership is the right to prevent others from using something. That's all it is. Everyone has a basic inherent right to do anything to anything, and property laws allow people to restrict others from doing things to specific objects. If you own a piece of property, you can prevent others from living there, if you own a car, you can prevent others from using it.
^ This.
The problem today is that most people seem to believe "rights" are about being allowed to do something. This could not be further from the truth. A "right" is something others have no (well, little, but the explanation of the difference should be obvious) legitimate authority to prevent you from doing. The former implies that the "allowance" may be revoked as a matter of course by legislating it is restricted or no longer allowed at all. The latter is explicit in that it is something the law can only legitimately infringe in very specific/enumerated/limited ways.
Intellectual property is a compromise, because it limits the rights of others to produce identical (or nearly so) works derived from the same idea. It was intended to protect those people who originated novel ideas for a limited time so that they could have a chance to profit from time spent on otherwise unprofitable work. It was a means to prevent parasites from taking an idea and mass-producing it without consideration of the initial expenses involved in creating and developing the idea to the exclusion of other profitable endeavors. Without it, many creators could not necessarily expect to recoup the time spent not making money to support themselves while developing their idea. The compromise was that, after a limited time, anyone could use the idea and profit from it, at which point the inventor could either be content to live on a smaller profit margin or go back to the workshop and come up with something else novel.
Now, however, we have the situation where ideas are owned and/or controlled by immortal entities who are too powerful to punish for wrongdoing and have too much influence to be controlled in any other meaningful way. They now have pushed the limits of copyright to the point where things entering the public domain are thoroughly used up, with little benefit to anyone but historians.
Not having a Facebook account interferes with interstate commerce by preventing advertisers from accessing data about your personal life. It is now mandated that all US citizens have a Facebook account and post regularly on it.
The above might be assumed to be an absurdity, but the logic behind it is an argument the DoJ is currently arguing before the Supreme Court. Congress already has had the authority to prevent personal use and consumption upheld. They can fine farmers for producing any crop for personal use. The first controlling case regarding that interpretation of the Interstate Commerce Clause was not even drug-related; it was about growing wheat for personal consumption (Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U.S. 111 (1942)). Soon, they'll be able to fine people for failure to purchase a product. With current case law, there will be no limit to that power, even if the use of it is currently voluntarily limited to the single issue at hand. It will be expanded.
Trainability (and/or compliance) and intelligence are not the same thing. Elephants are typically incredibly smart, but can be compelled to obey orders with minimal threat. It's actually easier to train an elephant than it is to train a horse, probably because they are more intelligent, rather than less.
The same can be said of humans once they're "broken."
Horses, like people, have a broad range of intelligence amongst individuals. Just because you spent (I'm reading into your post something you didn't actually say, but seemed implied) a lot of time around stupid horses doesn't make all horses stupid. I've spent a significant amount of time around a large number of horses, and am of the opposite opinion from yours regarding their average intelligence.
Would the carpenter be as apt to produce as many chairs if it required almost zero effort or investment to duplicate his creations?
For better or worse, the consequences of creating a physical item and an intellectual one are not comparable. Trying to compare them is naive, at best.
This is not to say the process has not devolved into a very abusive form, but there are serious consequences to the entire fabric of intellectual creation if it is to be treated identically to physical creation. Like many things, there will be people with different ideas regarding whether one set of consequences are preferable to another. Taking a side doesn't make anyone right, because both sides have legitimate arguments.
Arguing for no control is as extreme as arguing for perpetual control. Neither side is balanced, and both are extraordinarily selfish. Those arguing for no control are just as bad as the corporations who want to profit in perpetuity from every work they can acquire.
Nevertheless, the statement was incorrect. Where broad ambiguities are built into many laws because it is difficult to cover all aspects of a given topic without creating abusable loopholes, the actual scope of application regarding a specific law is frequently created by the courts where no specifics existed before.
Yes, there are important differences, but that does not change the fundamental point that courts do create law. With regard to common law, they are in fact expected to create law. It's a feature, not a bug.
Slashdot Mirror
Yup, every EULA I've ever read (and I've read a lot of them) includes a section where the distributor reserves the right to sever the license agreement, thus nullifying the ability of the user to continue legal use of the software.
Yeah, my gaming experience probably mirrors yours quite well. The last new game I bought was something like 7 years ago. Decent non-FPS games are almost non-existent anymore. Interestingly enough, I actually use the Pirate Bay website to check what sorts of games are popular to see if anything jumps out that may be worth buying. As the years have passed, the list is dominated increasingly by the same game with updated models and occasionally a slightly tweaked or rebuilt with no real purpose (all-new! revolutionary!) engine.
In all of the places I'm aware of, yes.
While they may see more derision as being "cop lite," they have all the issues (pro and con, internal and external) of any other average police force. They have much more in common with a given police force anywhere else than they do with private security guards.
Hit submit too soon; I also agree with your particular analysis of which is worse. I'm not necessarily sure that it will truly matter to the cop though. It's amazing what people can rationalize, especially when they are on the defensive. His opinion that he was "right" is more likely to be reinforced by the negative reception of his actions. After all, anyone who's not a cop can't understand the delicate balance required. As an aside, the latter is true in many respects, but is used as a mechanism to deflect legitimate criticism too often to be worth listening to.
He'll likely go on to work in another police department somewhere, all the while under the perception that what he did was perfectly acceptable. Everyone he works with is likely to believe the same.
An example of the above is the recent conviction of a police officer named Karl Thompson in my city. He was found guilty of improper use of force and of lying to investigators regarding the circumstances; the man beaten died in custody because of improper restraint. The fact that he was even tried, let alone convicted, says a lot. Cops are almost never held to criminal account for their actions. The example in this isn't any of the above though. Upon his conviction, a number of the members of the local police force publicly saluted him as he exited the courtroom. Despite cameras providing clear evidence of what happened, the other members of the police force were behind him all the way. It didn't matter that he beat a man on the word of a witness who admittedly only "thought" he might have done "something" (no actual statement of what she thought he did was ever made). It didn't matter that he actively lied and colluded with the city prosecutor to cover up the fact that the only footage shown of the incident was the one camera that couldn't clearly see what happened. It didn't matter that his actions resulted in the death of a man who "only wanted a Snickers bar" (his last words before dying). All that mattered was that he was a cop, and he couldn't do any wrong.
Oh, and the reason he gave for beating him? He didn't drop the soda bottle he was carrying in the time it took the officer to finish saying the words and him reaching baton-distance of the man (something like 3-4 seconds).
Ah, having re-read in that context I see my mistake.
They had to wait for the salary offers to come in from the lobbying jobs they're looking at after their stint with the FCC is up.
I've never met someone in law enforcement who didn't have at least a minor streak of sadistic tendencies. That's not to say they don't exist, but if they do they're a tiny minority in my experience.
The incident in question was a cop, not a rent-a-cop, so this really has no bearing on my comment.
Animals are not treated humanely in many places, and many places that used slavery treated them quite well. It was neither skirting, nor was the issue overlooked.
"Open source" is a very specific descriptor. Just because the ecosystem of a particular project is not very open does not change the definition of "open source." It's not a nitpick to call a grape a grape, even if it's part of the bigger fruit salad "picture."
What, exactly, do you mean by "this?"
That's not necessarily true. Just because the source is available doesn't mean that the combination of hardware and compiled binary will allow you to access it once the binary is installed.
Not to disagree with the outrage expressed, but:
Has this guy ever been pepper sprayed or beaten up before?
Yes, he has. It's part of the training in the use of pepper spray by police forces. He's been sprayed at least once in the face with it.
This point of view (and the corresponding one from a linguistic view of descriptors not necessarily being absolute) is the reason why math people and language people frequently don't see eye-to-eye.
Words and their definitions are mutable, and there is absolutely no reason to believe that will change. Understanding and accepting that is a part of learning to communicate with as few errors as possible. Refusing to recognize that does not help progress, it hinders it. It does so in exactly the same way "new math" hinders mathematical learning: you are attempting to fit the topic into a model that is inherently antithetical to the foundation of that topic.
I would disagree with that. Without keeping domestic animals penned, they are prone to wandering off on their own. The smarter domestic animals will frequently go out of their way to escape confinement if they figure out how to do so, since they don't fear any consequences from their actions when not directly confronted with someone keeping them in line.
Human slavery, on the other hand, has historically been a successful system for controlling populations without actually locking them up. The only time those systems really collapsed were when the population in control of the slavery changed socially or were overruled by outside influence. There are certainly exceptions to that (Europeans stopped enslaving Native North Americans when it became obvious they could not torture them into working), but in general it's been true throughout human history.
Wow, I didn't know there were people who actually believed that and were willing to own that belief publicly.
I'm glad Athenian democracy died, and hope it never again arises. People in groups are dumb, panicky animals, and are not to be trusted.
The majority needs to be protected from the minority, but the reverse is equally true. Neither should be able to entirely dominate and control the lives of the other.
All property is is 'bans'. Property ownership is the right to prevent others from using something. That's all it is. Everyone has a basic inherent right to do anything to anything, and property laws allow people to restrict others from doing things to specific objects. If you own a piece of property, you can prevent others from living there, if you own a car, you can prevent others from using it.
^ This.
The problem today is that most people seem to believe "rights" are about being allowed to do something. This could not be further from the truth. A "right" is something others have no (well, little, but the explanation of the difference should be obvious) legitimate authority to prevent you from doing. The former implies that the "allowance" may be revoked as a matter of course by legislating it is restricted or no longer allowed at all. The latter is explicit in that it is something the law can only legitimately infringe in very specific/enumerated/limited ways.
Intellectual property is a compromise, because it limits the rights of others to produce identical (or nearly so) works derived from the same idea. It was intended to protect those people who originated novel ideas for a limited time so that they could have a chance to profit from time spent on otherwise unprofitable work. It was a means to prevent parasites from taking an idea and mass-producing it without consideration of the initial expenses involved in creating and developing the idea to the exclusion of other profitable endeavors. Without it, many creators could not necessarily expect to recoup the time spent not making money to support themselves while developing their idea. The compromise was that, after a limited time, anyone could use the idea and profit from it, at which point the inventor could either be content to live on a smaller profit margin or go back to the workshop and come up with something else novel.
Now, however, we have the situation where ideas are owned and/or controlled by immortal entities who are too powerful to punish for wrongdoing and have too much influence to be controlled in any other meaningful way. They now have pushed the limits of copyright to the point where things entering the public domain are thoroughly used up, with little benefit to anyone but historians.
Maybe BP is buying BT to learn how to throttle pipes when they lose control of the flow rate.
I hate walking along the beach and stepping into a blob of random bits. You never know what exactly is inside it.
Not having a Facebook account interferes with interstate commerce by preventing advertisers from accessing data about your personal life. It is now mandated that all US citizens have a Facebook account and post regularly on it.
The above might be assumed to be an absurdity, but the logic behind it is an argument the DoJ is currently arguing before the Supreme Court. Congress already has had the authority to prevent personal use and consumption upheld. They can fine farmers for producing any crop for personal use. The first controlling case regarding that interpretation of the Interstate Commerce Clause was not even drug-related; it was about growing wheat for personal consumption (Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U.S. 111 (1942)). Soon, they'll be able to fine people for failure to purchase a product. With current case law, there will be no limit to that power, even if the use of it is currently voluntarily limited to the single issue at hand. It will be expanded.
What's even more important is why PETA isn't concerned about Luke Skywalker using a Tauntaun as a sleeping bag.
That's an unfortunate URL to post on /., as it will probably receive few click-throughs due to fears of actually being a link to Goatse.
Just sayin'.
Trainability (and/or compliance) and intelligence are not the same thing. Elephants are typically incredibly smart, but can be compelled to obey orders with minimal threat. It's actually easier to train an elephant than it is to train a horse, probably because they are more intelligent, rather than less.
The same can be said of humans once they're "broken."
Horses, like people, have a broad range of intelligence amongst individuals. Just because you spent (I'm reading into your post something you didn't actually say, but seemed implied) a lot of time around stupid horses doesn't make all horses stupid. I've spent a significant amount of time around a large number of horses, and am of the opposite opinion from yours regarding their average intelligence.
Would the carpenter be as apt to produce as many chairs if it required almost zero effort or investment to duplicate his creations?
For better or worse, the consequences of creating a physical item and an intellectual one are not comparable. Trying to compare them is naive, at best.
This is not to say the process has not devolved into a very abusive form, but there are serious consequences to the entire fabric of intellectual creation if it is to be treated identically to physical creation. Like many things, there will be people with different ideas regarding whether one set of consequences are preferable to another. Taking a side doesn't make anyone right, because both sides have legitimate arguments.
Arguing for no control is as extreme as arguing for perpetual control. Neither side is balanced, and both are extraordinarily selfish. Those arguing for no control are just as bad as the corporations who want to profit in perpetuity from every work they can acquire.
Nevertheless, the statement was incorrect. Where broad ambiguities are built into many laws because it is difficult to cover all aspects of a given topic without creating abusable loopholes, the actual scope of application regarding a specific law is frequently created by the courts where no specifics existed before.
Yes, there are important differences, but that does not change the fundamental point that courts do create law. With regard to common law, they are in fact expected to create law. It's a feature, not a bug.