Why would we care about SAT scores? They have nothing to do with education. Actually, the Western concept of school (a teacher running kids down a conveyor belt of rote memorization) doesn't have anything to do with education either--but that's another story.
Personally I'd like to see less military oriented public funds research and more commercial interests.
But the biggest technological advances come from the military. Corporate interests always seek to get the job done cheaply. This usually just means tweaking existing technologies for more economical use. The military is always looking for the most significant advantage over the enemy, no matter what the cost. This means they are more likely to try new ideas without concern over cost or *immediate* benefit.
I tried and it worked mostly alright. *HOWEVER* when I try to mount a FAT32 partition, it oopses. Plus, when I attempt to shutdown or reboot, it hangs when trying to umount. Other than that, it seems to be OK.;-)
A move like this would probably hurt Microsoft. It would eliminate a reason for needing to run Windows
I'm not so sure. I don't think most people who run Office for Windows are all of a sudden going to run Linux because Office is ported to it. Only people who are already interested in Linux would be able to use it.
Did any significant number of users jump ship when Office was ported to Mac OS? (That's not rhetorical--I really don't know the answer.)
Except in many of the action and comedy plays, our William did take the time to actually develop a character or two.
This is an excellent observation. What makes a work of art great is *not* that it doesn't have popular appeal. It's the extra time and effort spent in crafting a more thoughful product out of the basic material. If it works well on several levels at once, it's good.
No matter what you think of intellectual property the fact remains that it's the law of the land.
From the wording of Article I, Section 8 of the Constituion, Copyright and Patent are *not* property rights but rather are monopoly rights.
I really don't think you can actually try and argue that a port does not exist. If it does not exist why are you scanning it? what are you scanning?
Nothing, really. I mean, it isn't a piece of silicon or a wire. It's just a software construct. You can't point to a place in physical space and say, "That's port 80."
Even in the one in a billion chance that a judge actually bought that argument you can not argue that the bandwidth you took up didn't exist, that my CPU didn't exist,
It can't take *that* much bandwidth or CPU time to check a port. It should be negligible.
my hard drive didn't exist or that my time didn't exists.
Checking a port wouldn't have any effect on your hard drive. Shouldn't take any of your time, either. Really, I still don't see it doing any damage.
I've never used it so I can't comment. But the NeXTSTEP GUI was *definitely* better than anything else ever created and it certainly didn't win in the marketplace. Bad marketing and a bad attitude from Jobs did it in.
Even intangible things like ideas, concepts, songs, plans, etc are considered property and have legal status of ownership.
Uh, no they don't. The concept of "Intellectual Property" is a complete misreading of the Constitution. The only thing granted is a monopoly power. It's quite clear that intangibles were never intended to be granted the status of property.
Furthermore the port exists only because a machine exists. That machine is mine, the post is on the machine and therefore the port is mine.
My argument is still that a port *doesn't exist*. It is an abstract entity.
Bullcrap, with all distros having completely different startup scripts
Hardly any user-land software should be messing with your init scripts. And don't all the distros use sysvinit now? (Slackware used to use BSD init but I thought they switched over...)
and just about everything in/etc with exception of some "high level" files
Again, applications shouldn't be messin' with your/etc. (Hell, even you probably don't need to go playing around in your/etc directory too much. And I don't think there's *that* much difference between the essential conf files.)
Another thing, every distro comes with different versions of libs which makes nearly impossible to release dynamically linked apps.
That's why you always have various versions of glibc on your system. Even libc5. If nothing else, you just offer a binary for the different main glibc releases. This is done quite often. Most other libraries are stable enough for binary consistency. And don't tell me you've never seen a Windows proggie that doesn't require a certain version of the Visual Basic runtime?
In addition to all this, the wide distribution of source code makes binary compatibility a very minor issue. You could say that source code is the cure that fixes the binary compatibility disease.
Compared to linux Win32 binary compatibility is a heaven.
There's a reason for that: Microsoft never fixes their architecture, no matter how badly it needs it. This is the primary problem with the Windows series: the original architecture was very poorly designed but they couldn't fix it because of all the binary-only applications out there. With Free Software, we don't have to worry about this so much since the source code is available. Just recompile and you're set! And if you don't feel comfortable doing this, just wait for someone to do it for you (like Red Hat, Debian, or SuSE).
If you prefer Windows or Mac OS, go for it! MOSX is especially nice and has a great set of devlopment frameworks (Cocoa) and a fantastic object oriented language (Objective C).
Of course, people might start writing Free Software for MOSX and then you'd have to use something else. Kinda sucks, doesn't it?
You state that if the law is too one sided, then that is a recipe for fewer lawsuits. You offer no proof. I can very easily claim the _opposite_ is true. The more unfair (one-sided)a law is, the more people will fight it (more lawsuits).
I don't know about the validity of his other points but I do know that very few people will take up a lawsuit on account of an unfair law because of the extreme expense involved.
A port isn't tangible (unlike a disk drive, for example) and therefore has no legal status of ownership. (Nor logical status of ownership, as far as I'm concerned.)
You can't do damage by checking the status of a port.
Re:So, do we dismantle representative democracy th
on
Harm From The Hague
·
· Score: 1
You argue that government -- by it's inherent nature -- makes bad laws.
DMCA, anyone? The Kyoto protocol? Encryption laws? The Executive Orders amendment? Even though not literally "laws," most judicial review results in twisted government actions that misuse Constitutional powers (the commerce clause is a big one for this). Fact is, people are easily misled by politicians. Politicians are easily misled by corporations and special interests. Ergo, government takes stupid (and often, corrupt) actions (not just enacting legislation--forgot to make that distinction earlier).
You argue that local jurisdictions allow an escape route for refugees.
Not sure how you mean "refugees." Anyway, I'm referring to the above assertion (government making dumb laws). If South Carolina (the state in which I currently reside) makes some really stupid law that I find to be wrong, I can go to a more enlightened state (and hope that it isn't a stupid Federal law). Same thing with nations. In fact, one of the most horrible things about oppressive regimes isn't the persecution--it's that you can't leave if you don't like it! The flip side of this, of course, is if a corporation doesn't like the child labor laws in one country, they can go to another. This is your argument and, believe me, it does have merit. I just happen to feel that third world nations that allow practices like this will have to experience a moral change of their own (and it's mainly a cultural and social problem, *not* a regulatory problem).
And you argue -- on ideological grounds alone -- that the larger the jurisdiction the "the stupider the actions of government become."
It's not on ideological grounds. It's based on common sense and observation. How can someone who doesn't live in my community know what is right for me? Furthermore, even if they *are* right for me, who's to say that they're right for someone in the next county or state? Differences in culture, economics, natural resources, and so on dictate beyond a doubt that what is just perfect for one group will be destructive for another! And politicians who represent a large number of people can't possibly keep up the close relationships necessary to have a proper understanding of the effect of legislation. We see this all the time in the US. What do legislators *really* know about the effects their actions have on farmers, artists, software developers, construction workers, and so on? They have very little day to day contact with the people who actually matter. And this would become even worse with a global government!
But you don't argue exactly with what we should replace government.
I'm not arguing that we should replace government with anything. It's a necessary evil. I'm simply arguing that government should be severely restricted in both power and scope.
I certainly won't claims nationalistic pride in the behavior of US policymakers (especially our foreign policy), but I'll gladly argue that many of our federal programs have done substantial good throughout the society.
Of course they have. But at what cost? Many people seem willing to ignore the Constitution if it appears to offer a quick fix for a social problem. (I say "appears to offer" because it rarely ever actually solves the problem since it usually turns out to be a social one that can only be solved through bottom-up social change.) Now, don't get me wrong, many federal actions (rather than programs) are good. And the FDA (which you cite) is a regulatory agency. All I'm suggesting is that attempting to fix social problems with government solutions doesn't work. One of the best examples is speeding. When most people think that there is nothing wrong with speeding, it doesn't really matter what the government says. The only way to stop people from speeding is to convince them that it is wrong (and/or dangerous). It's a social problem.
Discrimination was like this, too. Even though the government was able to twist the commerce clause to nail a few people for their actions, it didn't do any good because so many people were racists. (And the commerce clause went on to become a favorite of every whacko that wanted to throw a monkey wrench into the works.) What *really* changed things was the effort of activists and orators like MLK. These days, *far* fewer people hold racist views than did just 30 years ago because people were repeatedly faced with excellent arguments that demonstrated the immorality of racism.
For some good examples of government power imploding and leaving a vacuum see Somalia, Russia, Georgia... gangsterism institutionalized.
True. But again, this is the result of social corruption in those places. Where the people are corrupt, businesses, government, and private institutions are corrupt. Why? Because these organizations consist of the people!
While I don't argue that elected government is without corruption, I do argue that it's the only leverage citizens have against total domination by the wealthy and powerful.
I agree in part: government is almost the only way citizens have of avenging themselves of, and defending themselves from, the evil actions of others. I say, "almost" because if someone attacks me, I have the right to self defense in addition to the help the police might give me if I'm lucky enough to have them on the scene. I broaden it because not all crimes are committed by the wealthy and powerful. Many crimes are committed by the poor as well. I really must admit that I don't understand the absolute hatred many have for the wealthy. They aren't all a bunch of evil wankers, you know.
When you see the HMO, Nuclear power, RIAA and MPAA industries lobbying congress for legal indemnification from lawsuits
While this is correct, I have to add one small caveat: many businesses *are* morally run and sometimes *do* need government protection against attacks. Furthermore, government regulation can hurt the honest small businessman just as much or more than the huge multi-national corporation.
All in all, I'm: (1) less trustful of government than business; (2) cognizant of the fact that many nations aren't culturally or socially ready for Western morality; and (3) further cognizant that social change is more important than legal change.
Clearly, we're arguing about different things. I'm looking at this from the DeCSS perspective of attempting to "outlaw a tool that *could* be used for immoral purposes." You're looking at it as trespassing. On that count, I would say that actually *launching* some kind of attack should definitely be illegal. But I fail to see a port as property. Perhaps we should agree to disagree?;-)
Is that so hard to understand? Why do you feel like you should be able to do whatever you want to my machine?
Since when does a portscan damage your machine? This is the crux of the argument. I simply don't see a port as being property. Now, your machine is property--but the port? I just can't see it that way.
I am a musician (and yes, I have a degree in it--I'm not a hobbyist) so I don't have to.
Tell them that from now on there will no protection for whatever they create.
There will still be protection if we return to the original concept of Copyright outlined in the Constitution. It just won't be a property right and it won't last forever.
Tell them that the books they write will be protected only "for a short time."
The bit about "for limited times" is in the Constitution (Article I, Section 8). Go read it.
I doubt many of them would go for that...
It doesn't matter what we like. It matters what the Constitution says.
Slashdot Mirror
Why would we care about SAT scores? They have nothing to do with education. Actually, the Western concept of school (a teacher running kids down a conveyor belt of rote memorization) doesn't have anything to do with education either--but that's another story.
Or Politically Correct software. ;-)
But the biggest technological advances come from the military. Corporate interests always seek to get the job done cheaply. This usually just means tweaking existing technologies for more economical use. The military is always looking for the most significant advantage over the enemy, no matter what the cost. This means they are more likely to try new ideas without concern over cost or *immediate* benefit.
Do you realize that you've just gained 16 karma points by being drunk? Not bad, eh?
Wow. If *that's* all it is, I should be swimming in women by now! ;-)
I tried and it worked mostly alright. *HOWEVER* when I try to mount a FAT32 partition, it oopses. Plus, when I attempt to shutdown or reboot, it hangs when trying to umount. Other than that, it seems to be OK. ;-)
I'm not so sure. I don't think most people who run Office for Windows are all of a sudden going to run Linux because Office is ported to it. Only people who are already interested in Linux would be able to use it.
Did any significant number of users jump ship when Office was ported to Mac OS? (That's not rhetorical--I really don't know the answer.)
Isn't 2000 based on NT (and therefore, VMS)? That's just a guess--I don't know for sure.
Yeah, well, got any suggestions?
This is an excellent observation. What makes a work of art great is *not* that it doesn't have popular appeal. It's the extra time and effort spent in crafting a more thoughful product out of the basic material. If it works well on several levels at once, it's good.
From the wording of Article I, Section 8 of the Constituion, Copyright and Patent are *not* property rights but rather are monopoly rights.
I really don't think you can actually try and argue that a port does not exist. If it does not exist why are you scanning it? what are you scanning?
Nothing, really. I mean, it isn't a piece of silicon or a wire. It's just a software construct. You can't point to a place in physical space and say, "That's port 80."
Even in the one in a billion chance that a judge actually bought that argument you can not argue that the bandwidth you took up didn't exist, that my CPU didn't exist,
It can't take *that* much bandwidth or CPU time to check a port. It should be negligible.
my hard drive didn't exist or that my time didn't exists.
Checking a port wouldn't have any effect on your hard drive. Shouldn't take any of your time, either. Really, I still don't see it doing any damage.
I've never used it so I can't comment. But the NeXTSTEP GUI was *definitely* better than anything else ever created and it certainly didn't win in the marketplace. Bad marketing and a bad attitude from Jobs did it in.
Maybe, dunno. There are very few lawyers standing up against the DMCA. (But there are a few...)
Uh, no they don't. The concept of "Intellectual Property" is a complete misreading of the Constitution. The only thing granted is a monopoly power. It's quite clear that intangibles were never intended to be granted the status of property.
Furthermore the port exists only because a machine exists. That machine is mine, the post is on the machine and therefore the port is mine.
My argument is still that a port *doesn't exist*. It is an abstract entity.
Hardly any user-land software should be messing with your init scripts. And don't all the distros use sysvinit now? (Slackware used to use BSD init but I thought they switched over...)
and just about everything in /etc with exception of some "high level" files
Again, applications shouldn't be messin' with your /etc. (Hell, even you probably don't need to go playing around in your /etc directory too much. And I don't think there's *that* much difference between the essential conf files.)
Another thing, every distro comes with different versions of libs which makes nearly impossible to release dynamically linked apps.
That's why you always have various versions of glibc on your system. Even libc5. If nothing else, you just offer a binary for the different main glibc releases. This is done quite often. Most other libraries are stable enough for binary consistency. And don't tell me you've never seen a Windows proggie that doesn't require a certain version of the Visual Basic runtime?
In addition to all this, the wide distribution of source code makes binary compatibility a very minor issue. You could say that source code is the cure that fixes the binary compatibility disease.
Compared to linux Win32 binary compatibility is a heaven.
There's a reason for that: Microsoft never fixes their architecture, no matter how badly it needs it. This is the primary problem with the Windows series: the original architecture was very poorly designed but they couldn't fix it because of all the binary-only applications out there. With Free Software, we don't have to worry about this so much since the source code is available. Just recompile and you're set! And if you don't feel comfortable doing this, just wait for someone to do it for you (like Red Hat, Debian, or SuSE).
If you prefer Windows or Mac OS, go for it! MOSX is especially nice and has a great set of devlopment frameworks (Cocoa) and a fantastic object oriented language (Objective C).
Of course, people might start writing Free Software for MOSX and then you'd have to use something else. Kinda sucks, doesn't it?
I don't know about the validity of his other points but I do know that very few people will take up a lawsuit on account of an unfair law because of the extreme expense involved.
He's probably thinking of the Carib. They contracted European illnesses (that they had no defense for) very quickly.
Superior technologies often lose. It's just a matter of marketing and timing. Remember Betamax? Where is it now?
DMCA, anyone? The Kyoto protocol? Encryption laws? The Executive Orders amendment? Even though not literally "laws," most judicial review results in twisted government actions that misuse Constitutional powers (the commerce clause is a big one for this). Fact is, people are easily misled by politicians. Politicians are easily misled by corporations and special interests. Ergo, government takes stupid (and often, corrupt) actions (not just enacting legislation--forgot to make that distinction earlier).
You argue that local jurisdictions allow an escape route for refugees.
Not sure how you mean "refugees." Anyway, I'm referring to the above assertion (government making dumb laws). If South Carolina (the state in which I currently reside) makes some really stupid law that I find to be wrong, I can go to a more enlightened state (and hope that it isn't a stupid Federal law). Same thing with nations. In fact, one of the most horrible things about oppressive regimes isn't the persecution--it's that you can't leave if you don't like it! The flip side of this, of course, is if a corporation doesn't like the child labor laws in one country, they can go to another. This is your argument and, believe me, it does have merit. I just happen to feel that third world nations that allow practices like this will have to experience a moral change of their own (and it's mainly a cultural and social problem, *not* a regulatory problem).
And you argue -- on ideological grounds alone -- that the larger the jurisdiction the "the stupider the actions of government become."
It's not on ideological grounds. It's based on common sense and observation. How can someone who doesn't live in my community know what is right for me? Furthermore, even if they *are* right for me, who's to say that they're right for someone in the next county or state? Differences in culture, economics, natural resources, and so on dictate beyond a doubt that what is just perfect for one group will be destructive for another! And politicians who represent a large number of people can't possibly keep up the close relationships necessary to have a proper understanding of the effect of legislation. We see this all the time in the US. What do legislators *really* know about the effects their actions have on farmers, artists, software developers, construction workers, and so on? They have very little day to day contact with the people who actually matter. And this would become even worse with a global government!
But you don't argue exactly with what we should replace government.
I'm not arguing that we should replace government with anything. It's a necessary evil. I'm simply arguing that government should be severely restricted in both power and scope.
I certainly won't claims nationalistic pride in the behavior of US policymakers (especially our foreign policy), but I'll gladly argue that many of our federal programs have done substantial good throughout the society.
Of course they have. But at what cost? Many people seem willing to ignore the Constitution if it appears to offer a quick fix for a social problem. (I say "appears to offer" because it rarely ever actually solves the problem since it usually turns out to be a social one that can only be solved through bottom-up social change.) Now, don't get me wrong, many federal actions (rather than programs) are good. And the FDA (which you cite) is a regulatory agency. All I'm suggesting is that attempting to fix social problems with government solutions doesn't work. One of the best examples is speeding. When most people think that there is nothing wrong with speeding, it doesn't really matter what the government says. The only way to stop people from speeding is to convince them that it is wrong (and/or dangerous). It's a social problem.
Discrimination was like this, too. Even though the government was able to twist the commerce clause to nail a few people for their actions, it didn't do any good because so many people were racists. (And the commerce clause went on to become a favorite of every whacko that wanted to throw a monkey wrench into the works.) What *really* changed things was the effort of activists and orators like MLK. These days, *far* fewer people hold racist views than did just 30 years ago because people were repeatedly faced with excellent arguments that demonstrated the immorality of racism.
For some good examples of government power imploding and leaving a vacuum see Somalia, Russia, Georgia... gangsterism institutionalized.
True. But again, this is the result of social corruption in those places. Where the people are corrupt, businesses, government, and private institutions are corrupt. Why? Because these organizations consist of the people!
While I don't argue that elected government is without corruption, I do argue that it's the only leverage citizens have against total domination by the wealthy and powerful.
I agree in part: government is almost the only way citizens have of avenging themselves of, and defending themselves from, the evil actions of others. I say, "almost" because if someone attacks me, I have the right to self defense in addition to the help the police might give me if I'm lucky enough to have them on the scene. I broaden it because not all crimes are committed by the wealthy and powerful. Many crimes are committed by the poor as well. I really must admit that I don't understand the absolute hatred many have for the wealthy. They aren't all a bunch of evil wankers, you know.
When you see the HMO, Nuclear power, RIAA and MPAA industries lobbying congress for legal indemnification from lawsuits
While this is correct, I have to add one small caveat: many businesses *are* morally run and sometimes *do* need government protection against attacks. Furthermore, government regulation can hurt the honest small businessman just as much or more than the huge multi-national corporation.
All in all, I'm: (1) less trustful of government than business; (2) cognizant of the fact that many nations aren't culturally or socially ready for Western morality; and (3) further cognizant that social change is more important than legal change.
Clearly, we're arguing about different things. I'm looking at this from the DeCSS perspective of attempting to "outlaw a tool that *could* be used for immoral purposes." You're looking at it as trespassing. On that count, I would say that actually *launching* some kind of attack should definitely be illegal. But I fail to see a port as property. Perhaps we should agree to disagree? ;-)
Well, an artist would do something because they have an artistic drive. It seems rather obvious to me that Metallica is only interested in money.
Since when does a portscan damage your machine? This is the crux of the argument. I simply don't see a port as being property. Now, your machine is property--but the port? I just can't see it that way.
I am a musician (and yes, I have a degree in it--I'm not a hobbyist) so I don't have to.
Tell them that from now on there will no protection for whatever they create.
There will still be protection if we return to the original concept of Copyright outlined in the Constitution. It just won't be a property right and it won't last forever.
Tell them that the books they write will be protected only "for a short time."
The bit about "for limited times" is in the Constitution (Article I, Section 8). Go read it.
I doubt many of them would go for that...
It doesn't matter what we like. It matters what the Constitution says.
I assume that ABC is different in Australia? Here, it's one of the big commercial networks.