No lawyer in his right mind would argue that the lack of a robots.txt file on a website means you have granted an unrestricted non-exclusive license to republish any data from the website.
I agree completely -- the fact that you uploaded it is what granted the permission, not the lack of a robots.txt file.
We know that greenhouse gases contribute to it (hence their name); obviously, getting rid of greenhouse gases would therefore contribute to stopping or reversing it. Besides, either humanity can influence the climate, or it can't. If it can, then it can influence it in the other direction too. If it can't, well, we're screwed. However, since we don't know the answer yet we should still try (as the cost of averting disaster (see next item) is worth it).
if we don't we're all going to die
Of course we're not "all going to die," but it's almost certain that it would cause a huge inconvenience (i.e., economic disaster) to the human race if we had to re-arrange our whole civilization because our coastal cities flooded and rainfall and temperature patterns shifted (causing the distribution of arable land to change).
As George Will pointed out in a recent column (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16960409/site/newswee k/), "Over the millennia, the planet has warmed and cooled for reasons that are unclear but clearly were unrelated to SUVs."
No, Will's not a climatologist. But no special education is required to figure out that if X happened before Y ever existed, you can't blame X on Y.
Again, this is irrelevant. Who cares what caused global warming?
Here's an analogy: the dinosaurs didn't cause a big asteroid to smash into the Earth and wipe them out, yet they're still dead. If they had seen it coming, do you think it would have made sense for them to stand around saying "well, it's not our fault, so we shouldn't do anything about it?"
What it comes down to, is a trade-off. In this particular instance, it's a trade of a known value (economic development and knowledge that has produced so much wealth) for an unknown value (trying to fix something that may be impossible to fix that might not have been caused by us, even though fixing it may be unnecessary or even harmful). What sane, moral individual would make such a trade-off?
"Unknown value?" "Impossible, unnecessary or even harmful to fix?" I hate to break it to you, but even if we don't "know" the exact value we can still estimate it, and the current estimates seem pretty damn big. We can also make educated guesses about whether it's impossible, unnecessary or harmful to fix, and those guesses are generally negative (i.e., it is possible, necessary, and beneficial to fix).
That's right, the environmentalists, who insist on interfering with the most efficient and effective distribution method possible: the free market.
Okay, we'll blame people who insist on interfering with the free market. So that would also include the corn lobby, the pesticide lobby, charities, people who want the U.S. to provide any sort of foreign aid, militant organizations and other assorted hoodlums in those impoverished countries, the U.N., the concept of government itself, etc.
Happy now?
And organic agriculture can produce plenty of food, sure, if you're willing to settle for cutting down more rainforest to compensate for the lowered crop yields.
First of all, you're going to have to cite a source on that before I believe you. Second, the point I was trying to make was that the world produces enough food even with lower yields, but it doesn't get to the people who need it because of gluttony, waste and politics.
Yeah, it's a much more scalable solution for the kernel to continue to include every single driver for every single piece of hardware in existence.
Yes, it is more scalable that way! You know why? Because a big chunk of what kernel developers do is re-organize the code to create better abstractions and reduce duplication. If every bit of hardware had it's own separate driver you'd have a huge mess (like on Windows) as opposed to the managed mess we have now.
Besides, the only really scalable solution would be for hardware makers to design to a standard (e.g. make their hardware act like a generic device of type foo), so that all devices of the same kind can use the same driver.
(There's also the subplot: Slashdotters buy into RMS's doctrine that software be "free", so they want to apply that to all IP regardless of the feelings of the creators.)
And you seem to buy into the RIAA fascists' doctrine that the creators have some kind of God-given Right to profit from their so-called "IP." Here's a news flash: they don't. Copyright only exists "to promote the progress of science and the useful arts," yet it has mutated into an abomination that hinders that progress instead. Therefore, it should be abolished with prejudice.
Perhaps what's immoral is upholding copyright, not violating it!
They want something for free, because they're freeloaders.
So what? Even if they are freeloaders, they're still not going to buy the thing, and the RIAA still isn't going to make any money!
In fact, the only people that could possibly matter to the RIAA are not freeloaders by definition, because they're the only ones with any possibility of buying its products!
Disruptive technologies -- like the Internet -- tend to do things like that. But does that mean we should legislate all the disruptiveness out of them? NO! What it means is that we should re-evaluate our laws to see if they even still make sense, let alone continue to work for the greater good. That's how a little thing called progress happens.
But I don't see why, if I forget to lock my door or choose not to bother, it should be legal for someone to take all my stuff.
There's a difference between forgetting to lock your door and broadcasting your stuff to the entire world! A more appropriate analogy would be that you left all your shit in a box in the middle of Times Square, with a sign saying "take me!"
If you can't cache content, then you can't search it.
So what? Then it's just illegal to search -- simple as that! Google and every other search engine should be dismantled, fees should be instituted to compensate the copyright holder for every hyperlink, users should be charged micropayments for every website they access, and routers shouldn't be allowed to store any packets! After all, the creators of every bit of content on the Internet had better be paid for their "art!" OMG, think of the COPYRIGHT HOLDERS!1!!1
And of course, the fact that such outdated thinking would cripple (and is crippling) the world's economy is entirely irrelevant.
There is another possibility: the church of "I won't believe in global warming until it's proven experimentally (but what I don't realize is that by then it'll be to late)."
Environmentalists are happy to kill people by banning everything from pesticides to genetically engineered foods, no matter how badly starving countries need these things.
Bullshit. The world has plenty of food (even if it were grown organically), it's just not distributed correctly.
It as gotten so bad that "consensus" (something antithetical to the scientific method) is now being pushed as a reason why we should all believe that man and man alone is responsible for Global warming!
This problem is inherent in the study of climate, because the scientific method is only really useful if you can devise an experiment to test your hypothesis. Obviously we can't actually do that with the climate because if the experiment fails we're all dead (and we don't have a spare planet to act as the control anyway), so relying on educated guesses by the scientists (in the form of simulations, statistical studies, etc.) is all we can do. Now, since most scientists (i.e., the ones actually qualified to study climate who aren't being paid by the oil industry) have come to a consensus, we really have no choice but to believe them.
Besides, hasn't even the oil industry admitted that it believes climate change is occurring (and is only arguing about what caused it)? If that's the case, then what we all need to realize is that it doesn't matter why it's happening, because it would suck for humanity regardless.
Let me remind you of the examples given in the post I was replying to:
I wish to know the phone number to your family so that I may inform them of your constant molestation of the young boy who lives near your house. Or maybe get one of your female co-workers to claim you sexual harassed her.
Those are statements of fact, therefore the slander laws would apply.
That's what slander lawsuits are for: they still allow the person to express his free speech in the first place, but hold him responsible for the consequences of it.
While Pastafarianism sells a few T-Shirts, and gives y'all a laugh, no one would seriously consider "converting" to that "religion".
Blasphemer! ; )
I mean would it be so bad to couch the principals in terminology acceptable for "the masses", without actually twisting the the truth?
Can't be done. Most people flock to religion specifically to avoid the truth: they want to believe in an afterlife, for example, because it makes them feel less bad about how their real life sucks.
The reality of the world is that things boil down to politics, and that means saying something like "Our idea of God is the eternal pursuit of knowledge" or some such. Not an in-your-face "God doesn't exist". Do you see the difference?
First of all, Of course God, the FSM, exists! I know so, for I have been touched by His Noodly Appendage (but not in that way, you pervert!).
Second, people would see straight through the kind of thing you're proposing, and it wouldn't work. Religions (at least monotheistic ones) need a bit of in-your-face attitude (usually provided by a pretty big dose of "everybody else is wrong and we're right") to be compelling.
By the way, if I'm not mistaken your "God is the eternal pursuit of knowledge" idea describes Buddhism. You might want to look into that.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree completely -- the fact that you uploaded it is what granted the permission, not the lack of a robots.txt file.
Irrelevant to the sitation.
We know that greenhouse gases contribute to it (hence their name); obviously, getting rid of greenhouse gases would therefore contribute to stopping or reversing it. Besides, either humanity can influence the climate, or it can't. If it can, then it can influence it in the other direction too. If it can't, well, we're screwed. However, since we don't know the answer yet we should still try (as the cost of averting disaster (see next item) is worth it).
Of course we're not "all going to die," but it's almost certain that it would cause a huge inconvenience (i.e., economic disaster) to the human race if we had to re-arrange our whole civilization because our coastal cities flooded and rainfall and temperature patterns shifted (causing the distribution of arable land to change).
Again, this is irrelevant. Who cares what caused global warming?
Here's an analogy: the dinosaurs didn't cause a big asteroid to smash into the Earth and wipe them out, yet they're still dead. If they had seen it coming, do you think it would have made sense for them to stand around saying "well, it's not our fault, so we shouldn't do anything about it?"
"Unknown value?" "Impossible, unnecessary or even harmful to fix?" I hate to break it to you, but even if we don't "know" the exact value we can still estimate it, and the current estimates seem pretty damn big. We can also make educated guesses about whether it's impossible, unnecessary or harmful to fix, and those guesses are generally negative (i.e., it is possible, necessary, and beneficial to fix).
Okay, we'll blame people who insist on interfering with the free market. So that would also include the corn lobby, the pesticide lobby, charities, people who want the U.S. to provide any sort of foreign aid, militant organizations and other assorted hoodlums in those impoverished countries, the U.N., the concept of government itself, etc.
Happy now?
First of all, you're going to have to cite a source on that before I believe you. Second, the point I was trying to make was that the world produces enough food even with lower yields, but it doesn't get to the people who need it because of gluttony, waste and politics.
Yes, it is more scalable that way! You know why? Because a big chunk of what kernel developers do is re-organize the code to create better abstractions and reduce duplication. If every bit of hardware had it's own separate driver you'd have a huge mess (like on Windows) as opposed to the managed mess we have now.
Besides, the only really scalable solution would be for hardware makers to design to a standard (e.g. make their hardware act like a generic device of type foo), so that all devices of the same kind can use the same driver.
Hey, that's mostly Microsoft's fault (for designing how their OS handles time stupidly).
No kidding!
Q: What's the only advantage radio still has compared to my iPod?
A: Traffic reports.
And you seem to buy into the RIAA fascists' doctrine that the creators have some kind of God-given Right to profit from their so-called "IP." Here's a news flash: they don't. Copyright only exists "to promote the progress of science and the useful arts," yet it has mutated into an abomination that hinders that progress instead. Therefore, it should be abolished with prejudice.
Perhaps what's immoral is upholding copyright, not violating it!
So what? Even if they are freeloaders, they're still not going to buy the thing, and the RIAA still isn't going to make any money!
In fact, the only people that could possibly matter to the RIAA are not freeloaders by definition, because they're the only ones with any possibility of buying its products!
No, they're both valid verbs -- "to effect" means "to cause" (strange, yes -- but true). So this:
can be replaced by this:
without any change in meaning.
Disruptive technologies -- like the Internet -- tend to do things like that. But does that mean we should legislate all the disruptiveness out of them? NO! What it means is that we should re-evaluate our laws to see if they even still make sense, let alone continue to work for the greater good. That's how a little thing called progress happens.
Well, maybe it should!
There's a difference between forgetting to lock your door and broadcasting your stuff to the entire world! A more appropriate analogy would be that you left all your shit in a box in the middle of Times Square, with a sign saying "take me!"
You did "opt in," by broadcasting your shit on the Internet in the first place!
Don't like it? Don't upload it! Why is that simple concept so fucking hard to understand?!
I mean, jeez -- don't you realize that what you're saying is equivalent to yelling in my ear and then complaining that I heard you?
So what? Then it's just illegal to search -- simple as that! Google and every other search engine should be dismantled, fees should be instituted to compensate the copyright holder for every hyperlink, users should be charged micropayments for every website they access, and routers shouldn't be allowed to store any packets! After all, the creators of every bit of content on the Internet had better be paid for their "art!" OMG, think of the COPYRIGHT HOLDERS!1!!1
And of course, the fact that such outdated thinking would cripple (and is crippling) the world's economy is entirely irrelevant.
That should have happened here in the US too, and would have if Microsoft weren't a neo-conservative fascist's wet dream!
I'll even dispute that! What service do those portals provide that couldn't be done equally well or better by some kind of "wikijournal?"
There is another possibility: the church of "I won't believe in global warming until it's proven experimentally (but what I don't realize is that by then it'll be to late)."
Has it really? When?
Bullshit. The world has plenty of food (even if it were grown organically), it's just not distributed correctly.
This problem is inherent in the study of climate, because the scientific method is only really useful if you can devise an experiment to test your hypothesis. Obviously we can't actually do that with the climate because if the experiment fails we're all dead (and we don't have a spare planet to act as the control anyway), so relying on educated guesses by the scientists (in the form of simulations, statistical studies, etc.) is all we can do. Now, since most scientists (i.e., the ones actually qualified to study climate who aren't being paid by the oil industry) have come to a consensus, we really have no choice but to believe them.
Besides, hasn't even the oil industry admitted that it believes climate change is occurring (and is only arguing about what caused it)? If that's the case, then what we all need to realize is that it doesn't matter why it's happening, because it would suck for humanity regardless.
Let me remind you of the examples given in the post I was replying to:
Those are statements of fact, therefore the slander laws would apply.
Hey, shut up -- my last Latin class was 6 years ago!
Besides, it was supposed to be funny...
Civis Romanus sum, vos agrestis non molliter!
That's what slander lawsuits are for: they still allow the person to express his free speech in the first place, but hold him responsible for the consequences of it.
Blasphemer! ; )
Can't be done. Most people flock to religion specifically to avoid the truth: they want to believe in an afterlife, for example, because it makes them feel less bad about how their real life sucks.
First of all, Of course God, the FSM, exists! I know so, for I have been touched by His Noodly Appendage (but not in that way, you pervert!).
Second, people would see straight through the kind of thing you're proposing, and it wouldn't work. Religions (at least monotheistic ones) need a bit of in-your-face attitude (usually provided by a pretty big dose of "everybody else is wrong and we're right") to be compelling.
By the way, if I'm not mistaken your "God is the eternal pursuit of knowledge" idea describes Buddhism. You might want to look into that.