Spider should absolutely be on the list! With the third Lady Sally book still unsold and currently busy writing sequels to his "inherited" Heinlein book, there's hopefully more to come. Utterly different SF, but worth reading.
Another former soldier here. From a country which learned that war means your country is in ruins afterwards - and you will probably have lost someone you love. War is more than just sending heroes out to foreign countries to kill the "bad guys".
Of course, I would expect everybody up to NCO level to be against the conventions, as it makes their life more difficult. Working to international conventions requires judgement and thinking. But of course, life would be much easier if you could fire at civilians at will, use land mines, chemical weapons, napalm and many other toys.
I've seen the video. In addition, I read the official report, which is ALSO available online. Look for "INVESTIGATION INTO CIVILIAN CASUALTIES RESULTING FROM AN ENGAGEMENT ON 12 JULY 2007 IN THE NEW BAGHDAD DISTRICT OF BAGHDAD, IRAQ
Report of Investigation UP AR 15-6 MAJ , Investigating Officer 2ND BRIGADE COMBAT TEAM 2ND INFANTRY DIVISION (MND-B)"
The official report shows the following in Exhibit O: AK found on the ground. RPG-7 photo redacted, nothing to be seen.
In Exhibit R, we see photos which appear to be taken by the journalist before being shot at. You can recognize in detail a US HMMWV in telephoto range.
So, yes, there was at least an AK rifle and the helicopter crew might have at least good reason to see that a RPG attack was imminent. Exhibit C mentions "Probable Telephoto lens", but is this obvious to trigger-happy kids in a gunship? I doubt it. Plus they don't want to be responsible for the results of not taking action.
(Read paragraph 6 on page 12 of 43.)
The helicopter crew reports and requests permission to fire.
So far, this is more or less an unavoidable chain of events. Most likely a mistake, but given the circumstances, understandable.
But...
Have we learned to shoot at wounded combatants? At people trying to help the wounded? Which are obviously not returning fire?
Not the question here. The (assumed) literary value of a copy/paste novel wouldn't be reduced in any way by some kind of attribution. In fact, it would even be improved.
So why admit to major plagiarism only after being caught?
September 11 was an impressive move in asymmetric warfare. We are still suffering from the attack - just try to board a plane. Was it something novel? Yes. Did it help the attacker's cause? Yes. Did they play by (what we consider to be) the rules? No.
Society has rules. For warfare and for literature.
*sigh* It is one thing to quote a well-known work. It is another one to have a well-known father in literarture and creating a copy/paste novel, stealing from lesser-known bloggers and bands. This is not about taking inspiration from other authors. Also not about quoting, either literally (as seen in science) or as an easy-to-get reference, such as an in-joke. This is not Pratchett's Sam Vimes using a swamp dragon as a weapon, in a hilarious Dirty Harry quote. Also not Blade Runner quoting Metropolis. This is "Oh cool. I'll copy and paste this and make it my own because noone will notice."
Hegemann cannot even remember some major passages of her OWN book, as demonstrated in a recent talk show. No wonder - copy and paste will not leave as strong an impression in someones memory as doing it yourself.
Seriously. There are a lot of web sites comparing text from both sources. And yes, it IS a ripoff.
Not to mention that this group pf people will elect each other.
Bingo. You defined Germany's Adminipedia perfectly.
One example: Article reverted with dubious cause. Person who did the original change asked for a reason for the revert. Answer? "Because I can."
Second one: Article about an aspect of physics. Person with degree in physics corrects article, quoting publication in peer-reviewed, accepted magazine. Reverted due to "no reference given".
Unlike Usenet, Wikipedia in some areas IS run by a cabal.
If that made any sense, you wouldn't be allowed to buy nails in the first place. Prohibiting certain breeds of dogs keeps unarmed citizens safe - remember that, in the "good old times", cyclists in the countryside would carry revolvers to protect them from dogs...
When I was still doing systems and network management, administrators had full, unlimited access. Yes, this means what you think it does. External or internal administrators WILL read all your data, the crooks will sell it to the highest bidder. It is simple to bribe one local administrator, which is all you need.
Expect this to happen. Outsourcing is not the issue. Misplaced trust is.
Your data is yours to protect. If it is important enough, make sure it is encrypted. I'd get professional advice on that - it is easy to do wrong. (Would you expect your copier to be a security risk?)
Re:percentage of GPLd projects is irrelevant
on
Leaving the GPL Behind
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Many business types can't get their brain around the concept of cooperation.
...while many hobbyists don't understand business. A lot of the discussion above reminded me of tree-hugging eco zealots. Living in their small, limited world, believing in what they do, even if they studied liberal arts (and try to turn "life sciences" into liberal arts).
Let me give you an example: A great platform for working with microcontrollers is the Arduino. Google it, if necessary. It is open, you expect open source software with any shields (hardware addons) you can buy and developing applications interacting with the real world is a lot of fun. People built model plane USVs with GPS control and 3D printers with Arduino. Even some non-free spinoffs exist, but noone is really upset about them.
Great fun, useful, brilliant environment built on free soft- and hardware.
Now let's have a look at Mr. Liu. He runs a very small company (jyetech) that produces a very, very cheap, very simple oscilloscope. I own one - and for the things I do with it, it is more than adequate.
You could download the documentation and schematics from his website and build yourself that scope with a little thinking. (To find that it is actually cheaper to buy a kit or a completed device.)
But what about the software? Should be free, shoudn't it?
Someone actually wrote his own software for the scope from scratch. Mr. Liu didn't mind - but HIS software is HIS property. In a forum post somewhere, he explains the reasoning, which I cannot literally quote, but it goes like this: "In China, a lot of stuff is copied. And bigger companies can build the scope cheaper and sell it more easily. I would be out of business. The competitors can build the hardware, but cannot write the software, and so far, my logo in the boot loader has kept the scope from being stolen."
It sounds a little like security by obscurity - but Mr. Liu seems to know his local competition. Now who would want to force feed the GPL to Mr. Liu because "all software must be free"?
I have never understood why news about kidnapped reporters is kept in the strictest confidence, whereas the media pretty much never offer the same to a member of the public who is not a part of the media fraternity.
A valid point and I agree. But towards the side of not publishing. This also includes the Wikipedia issue. Some information should not be published - yet.
The time-value of reporting it early at the risk of death of the subject is not.
LOL. You should have a word with them. Tell them all those "breaking news", "live on the spot", "this just in"s are unimportant....
Grandparent IS correct. The limit in the "right" of the public to up-to-date information is limited by the right of whoevery is involved is endangered. I know that a lot of people do not really care that policemen or fire fighters die for the public's entertainment in the evening news, but it is sickening.
The Abu Ghraib abuse photos are the most obvious example — imagine NYT and wire-agencies respecting a Bush administration's request not to publish them so as not to "negatively affect" the US military's mission — and cost a lot of lives...
What else are the media and Wikipedia valiantly suppressing right now for the "greater good"?..
Publishing these photos saved a lot of lives and had an influence on the policies of a country that still claims to be a democracy.
It would have different to publish a story like "There is an unprotected, but well hidden field hospital near city X in Iraq. We wonder why the US armed forces are not stationing guards there."
"Reporter X has been kidnapped" is information. But is it worth knowing six months in advance, risking to have him killed? Why should you need to know? What could it possibly help you to know? Are you a relative? Then you know...
"The land of the free is sending people to torture prisoners" is also information.
But let's be clear - an American, especially a reporter, traveling to Afghanistan is in fact agreeing to be kidnapped and killed.
Nope... He has to take a much higher risk that all of these posters fighting against "censorship", most of which never left their home country in their life.
But it is one thing risking your life (in this case even in the attempt to get information out - for everybody). It is another thing to die because someone sentenced you to death from a comfortable chair somewhere before adjusting his pocket protector...
Rhetorics. Look. By killing yourself, you could have saved us all from having to read your reply.
Some people have to take risks because it is their job. The people complaining against censorship would be the first to yell if no reporters went into taliban country.
If a fireman dies because he did his job, will you tell everybody that it was HIS fault, because he shouldn't have done his job?
Luckily enough, the fraction with the brain cells won this time.
Are you willing to die to fight censorship in Wikipedia?
Obviously, as you are willingly sentencing someone innocent to death by your policy.
Data on Wikipedia was temporarily withheld to protect something pretty important - a human life. No problem to publish the information, once he was safe.
If this bit of sanity ever leaves Wikipedia (and yes, there is some pond scum who didn't care and who put their opinion over the life of someone innocent, I will personally start lobbying to fight Wikipedia and ask others to do the same.
I have seen what passes as a bookstore in some parts of the world. Instead of 1 copy each of 50000 books, they have 500 copies each of 100 books, divided in three categories: Bestsellers (by the National Enquirer Bestseller List), tea table books (big, heavy, loads of pictures, subjects including cars, blondes and weapons), the last category being everything else. The Autobiography of a musician barely in his/her 20s wouldn't surprise me. But want a beginner's electronics text book? Even in an average quality book shop? I tried. The neighborhood book shop (about 2.5 copies of 20000 books) keeps a whole shelf full of books about angels. The astronomy section consists of four books, none of which I'd recommend. There is a shelf full of computer books, none of them with an animal on the cover. One shelf full of diet books. No electroncs at all...
So - if not for the Internet, there would be no Amazon.
(In my opinion, you need both. Books AND Internet. And they supplement each other well.)
Slashdot Mirror
Spider should absolutely be on the list!
With the third Lady Sally book still unsold and currently busy writing sequels to his "inherited" Heinlein book, there's hopefully more to come. Utterly different SF, but worth reading.
Fourthed!
"Major Snorkum will bend the cake!"
Another former soldier here. From a country which learned that war means your country is in ruins afterwards - and you will probably have lost someone you love. War is more than just sending heroes out to foreign countries to kill the "bad guys".
Of course, I would expect everybody up to NCO level to be against the conventions, as it makes their life more difficult. Working to international conventions requires judgement and thinking. But of course, life would be much easier if you could fire at civilians at will, use land mines, chemical weapons, napalm and many other toys.
I've seen the video. In addition, I read the official report, which is ALSO available online.
Look for
"INVESTIGATION INTO CIVILIAN
CASUALTIES RESULTING FROM AN
ENGAGEMENT ON 12 JULY 2007 IN
THE NEW BAGHDAD DISTRICT OF
BAGHDAD, IRAQ
Report of Investigation UP AR 15-6
MAJ , Investigating Officer
2ND BRIGADE COMBAT TEAM
2ND INFANTRY DIVISION (MND-B)"
The official report shows the following in Exhibit O:
AK found on the ground.
RPG-7 photo redacted, nothing to be seen.
In Exhibit R, we see photos which appear to be taken by the journalist before being shot at. You can recognize in detail a US HMMWV in telephoto range.
So, yes, there was at least an AK rifle and the helicopter crew might have at least good reason to see that a RPG attack was imminent. Exhibit C mentions "Probable Telephoto lens", but is this obvious to trigger-happy kids in a gunship? I doubt it. Plus they don't want to be responsible for the results of not taking action.
(Read paragraph 6 on page 12 of 43.)
The helicopter crew reports and requests permission to fire.
So far, this is more or less an unavoidable chain of events. Most likely a mistake, but given the circumstances, understandable.
But...
Have we learned to shoot at wounded combatants? At people trying to help the wounded? Which are obviously not returning fire?
There's the war crime.
Not the question here. The (assumed) literary value of a copy/paste novel wouldn't be reduced in any way by some kind of attribution. In fact, it would even be improved.
So why admit to major plagiarism only after being caught?
September 11 was an impressive move in asymmetric warfare. We are still suffering from the attack - just try to board a plane. Was it something novel? Yes. Did it help the attacker's cause? Yes. Did they play by (what we consider to be) the rules? No.
Society has rules. For warfare and for literature.
*sigh* It is one thing to quote a well-known work. It is another one to have a well-known father in literarture and creating a copy/paste novel, stealing from lesser-known bloggers and bands. This is not about taking inspiration from other authors. Also not about quoting, either literally (as seen in science) or as an easy-to-get reference, such as an in-joke.
This is not Pratchett's Sam Vimes using a swamp dragon as a weapon, in a hilarious Dirty Harry quote. Also not Blade Runner quoting Metropolis. This is "Oh cool. I'll copy and paste this and make it my own because noone will notice."
Hegemann cannot even remember some major passages of her OWN book, as demonstrated in a recent talk show. No wonder - copy and paste will not leave as strong an impression in someones memory as doing it yourself.
Seriously. There are a lot of web sites comparing text from both sources. And yes, it IS a ripoff.
We'll use Google translate to translate one of the samples here:
http://www.gefuehlskonserve.de/axolotl-roadkill-alles-nur-geklaut-05022010.html
Axolotl Roadkill, page 23:
"I have a fever, problems with coordinationn, [one part per 1000] in the overheated blood ..."
Strobe, page 106:
"I have a degree fever, and barely [one part per 1000] alcohol in the overheated blood."
By the way - she copied from more than one source.
Damn. Mod my post down. I shouldn't have done such a name calling to a teen girl.
Make this "Stupid, ignorant, thieving teen girl" and mod him up.
Be proud :)
The best part of business trips to the UK is watching BBC. Superb, compared to the stuff in most other countries.
Nope... This feature is more than just time-based, at least in German Wikipedia.
Mind checking facts before bullshitting? :)
Not to mention that this group pf people will elect each other.
Bingo. You defined Germany's Adminipedia perfectly.
One example: Article reverted with dubious cause. Person who did the original change asked for a reason for the revert. Answer? "Because I can."
Second one: Article about an aspect of physics. Person with degree in physics corrects article, quoting publication in peer-reviewed, accepted magazine. Reverted due to "no reference given".
Unlike Usenet, Wikipedia in some areas IS run by a cabal.
If that made any sense, you wouldn't be allowed to buy nails in the first place. Prohibiting certain breeds of dogs keeps unarmed citizens safe - remember that, in the "good old times", cyclists in the countryside would carry revolvers to protect them from dogs...
When I was still doing systems and network management, administrators had full, unlimited access. Yes, this means what you think it does. External or internal administrators WILL read all your data, the crooks will sell it to the highest bidder. It is simple to bribe one local administrator, which is all you need.
Expect this to happen. Outsourcing is not the issue. Misplaced trust is.
Your data is yours to protect. If it is important enough, make sure it is encrypted.
I'd get professional advice on that - it is easy to do wrong. (Would you expect your copier to be a security risk?)
Many business types can't get their brain around the concept of cooperation.
Let me give you an example: A great platform for working with microcontrollers is the Arduino. Google it, if necessary. It is open, you expect open source software with any shields (hardware addons) you can buy and developing applications interacting with the real world is a lot of fun. People built model plane USVs with GPS control and 3D printers with Arduino. Even some non-free spinoffs exist, but noone is really upset about them.
Great fun, useful, brilliant environment built on free soft- and hardware.
Now let's have a look at Mr. Liu. He runs a very small company (jyetech) that produces a very, very cheap, very simple oscilloscope. I own one - and for the things I do with it, it is more than adequate.
You could download the documentation and schematics from his website and build yourself that scope with a little thinking. (To find that it is actually cheaper to buy a kit or a completed device.)
But what about the software? Should be free, shoudn't it?
Someone actually wrote his own software for the scope from scratch. Mr. Liu didn't mind - but HIS software is HIS property. In a forum post somewhere, he explains the reasoning, which I cannot literally quote, but it goes like this:
"In China, a lot of stuff is copied. And bigger companies can build the scope cheaper and sell it more easily. I would be out of business. The competitors can build the hardware, but cannot write the software, and so far, my logo in the boot loader has kept the scope from being stolen."
It sounds a little like security by obscurity - but Mr. Liu seems to know his local competition. Now who would want to force feed the GPL to Mr. Liu because "all software must be free"?
COBOL has COMPUTE (which will give you +, -, * and /.)
But STRING and UNSTRING in C?
The SchrÃdinger effect :)
Wikipedia should report information, not influence it, which might have happened in that case.
I have never understood why news about kidnapped reporters is kept in the strictest confidence, whereas the media pretty much never offer the same to a member of the public who is not a part of the media fraternity.
A valid point and I agree. But towards the side of not publishing. This also includes the Wikipedia issue. Some information should not be published - yet.
Superb, thanks!
Wikipedia should publish history, not change it.
LOL. You should have a word with them. Tell them all those "breaking news", "live on the spot", "this just in"s are unimportant....
Grandparent IS correct. The limit in the "right" of the public to up-to-date information is limited by the right of whoevery is involved is endangered. I know that a lot of people do not really care that policemen or fire fighters die for the public's entertainment in the evening news, but it is sickening.
The Abu Ghraib abuse photos are the most obvious example — imagine NYT and wire-agencies respecting a Bush administration's request not to publish them so as not to "negatively affect" the US military's mission — and cost a lot of lives...
What else are the media and Wikipedia valiantly suppressing right now for the "greater good"?..
Publishing these photos saved a lot of lives and had an influence on the policies of a country that still claims to be a democracy.
It would have different to publish a story like "There is an unprotected, but well hidden field hospital near city X in Iraq. We wonder why the US armed forces are not stationing guards there."
"Reporter X has been kidnapped" is information. But is it worth knowing six months in advance, risking to have him killed? Why should you need to know? What could it possibly help you to know? Are you a relative? Then you know...
"The land of the free is sending people to torture prisoners" is also information.
Compare.
But let's be clear - an American, especially a reporter, traveling to Afghanistan is in fact agreeing to be kidnapped and killed.
Nope... He has to take a much higher risk that all of these posters fighting against "censorship", most of which never left their home country in their life.
But it is one thing risking your life (in this case even in the attempt to get information out - for everybody). It is another thing to die because someone sentenced you to death from a comfortable chair somewhere before adjusting his pocket protector...
It is a very thin if you start to believe that any life is worth censorship.
You must be pretty thick to believe that this kind of withholding information is comparable to broadband government censorship.
Rhetorics. Look. By killing yourself, you could have saved us all from having to read your reply.
Some people have to take risks because it is their job. The people complaining against censorship would be the first to yell if no reporters went into taliban country.
If a fireman dies because he did his job, will you tell everybody that it was HIS fault, because he shouldn't have done his job?
Luckily enough, the fraction with the brain cells won this time.
Are you willing to die to fight censorship in Wikipedia?
Obviously, as you are willingly sentencing someone innocent to death by your policy.
Data on Wikipedia was temporarily withheld to protect something pretty important - a human life. No problem to publish the information, once he was safe.
If this bit of sanity ever leaves Wikipedia (and yes, there is some pond scum who didn't care and who put their opinion over the life of someone innocent, I will personally start lobbying to fight Wikipedia and ask others to do the same.
*sigh* Point taken...
I have seen what passes as a bookstore in some parts of the world. Instead of 1 copy each of 50000 books, they have 500 copies each of 100 books, divided in three categories: Bestsellers (by the National Enquirer Bestseller List), tea table books (big, heavy, loads of pictures, subjects including cars, blondes and weapons), the last category being everything else. The Autobiography of a musician barely in his/her 20s wouldn't surprise me. But want a beginner's electronics text book? Even in an average quality book shop? I tried. The neighborhood book shop (about 2.5 copies of 20000 books) keeps a whole shelf full of books about angels. The astronomy section consists of four books, none of which I'd recommend. There is a shelf full of computer books, none of them with an animal on the cover. One shelf full of diet books. No electroncs at all...
So - if not for the Internet, there would be no Amazon.
(In my opinion, you need both. Books AND Internet. And they supplement each other well.)
1: Become a famous published author.
2: Sneak into libraries all across the country and secretly autograph all your books, thereby increasing their value.
3: Write a book afterwards about doing this.
4: GOTO 2
5: PROFIT!!!
GOTO considered harmful...