M$ has attacked directy or through proxies the entire Open Source Software movement. *WRONG*
M$ principally is attacking Linux. M$ really couldn't give a rat's ass about the rest right now. OSS applications they (perhaps) mistakenly don't view as a threat to their business. Office file formats are essentially a de facto standard in most of the business world, blah blah blah. What these OSS applications have done is make Linux a viable alternative. Rightly or wrongly M$ figures if they can kill the head (kernel) the body will die...
Okay then, given that M$ wants Linux dead, and badly, shouldn't that open the door for some silver tongued devil to convince M$ that *BSD is also the enemy of Linux, and that the enemy of my enemy is my friend? Would it be that hard a case to make? After all, all those years of toiling quietly with BSD, never threatening M$, or anyone else for that matter. Then along comes Linux, and all of a sudden BSD is the red-headed step-child. Then haul out the numerous BSD/Linux jihad posts, toss in some tasty Stahlman quotes (there have to be some, let's face it, the guy is a shotgun, not a sniper rifle...) Take the whole mess, wrap it up with a goodly amount of spin (the last thing M$ expects from our communities, and quite possibly the only thing they respect anymore...) and go with hat in hand, and dagger carefully concealed behind the back...
Possible, maybe, likely, never. But you got admit, the irony would be delicious...
I'd agree, if he was comparing Gnome and KDE. But we aren't talking about DEs, we're talking about term emulators. If I have to load that cruft to run a term emulator it is overhead that another term emulator does not need. If we want to talk about term emulators integrating with the rest of the DE fine, but it is a perfectly valid concern when we talk about term emulators.
I don't think Xlibs is so much the issue though, it is a constant to any XFree based system, so unless we talking about some other windowing system this is a constant for all, and can be safely ignored.
Who deserves modding down, the guy who knows he's going off-topic, and states as much, or the folk who reply to the off-topic portion of the post?
Not casting stones, but I allways think it amusing that a poster can correctly predict his down modding, and it never seems to extend to those people who justify the off-topic post with replies...
I just think it is funny, especially since you siezed on the portion (in retrospect, I honestly didn't even consider the corollary) and if anything, you'll probably get modded up, even though you replied to something off-topic, which in turn spawned this (which diverges even farther from the topic)
Maybe I'll put together a bunch of shite like this for an O'Reilly book......Maybe "An Introduction to Slashdot Moderation and Rebuttal."
Of course, you have to announce the release on slashdot, which ought to be an interesting series of posts in and of itself...
Mod me Down, way off-topic: But, doesn't it make more sense to enforce the two minutes between postings only within the same parent post?
I mean hell, if I reply to a post in A, then goto reply to a post in B, that seems to indicate that I'm probably not in a flame war, which is ostensibly why the speed bump was put there.
Unfortunately, just like a real speed bump, it is more an inconvenience to those who it isn;t aimed at than those it is.
Besides, is two minutes really going to make that much of a difference to the flame-war artist? Maybe if the form cleared itself, and he/she had to author the thing from scratch again...
The funny part is in the legal information they specifically bar you from ditributing such software via their service.
You also indeminify them against repsonsibility for any such infestation should any other user break that guideline.
And, if you really think you got a legal leg on them, think again, you'd have to pursue such a claim in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, which, unless the legal strata has changed, means your basically trying to paddle up a river of shit with your bare hands.
Personally, knowing it came from the fine folk who brought us Kazaa (hell it ieven will accept your acceptance of the Kazaa license agreement in lieu of a seperate one...) I'll keep it the hell away from my machines, thanunk-you.
Finally an article on something different from GNOME/KDE/any other GUI.
Not really, all he talks about are gnome-terminal and konsole...
Given, most of the rest are rxvt spiced up, with eye candy thrown in.
But if the grumpy editor wants to hold forth on memory usage, I would suggest he consider the overhead the gnome and kde libraries impose in order to use their terminal emulator...
I've seen too many "experts" suggest that simply cutting the PC-half of the cable, making certain to avoid any of the harmonic points would disrupt the standing wave and elimate the virus copy. THIS IS NOT TRUE.
Allthough less common in this day and age, it used to be fairly common to advise using the router side of the cable. This plainly is not the solution, and this advice (rightly) seems to have gone the way of the dodo.
Lastly there is an urban myth which states that using a 20 foot cable, knotted prior to connecting to the router and then cut on the computer side of the knot would prevent the standing wave from establishing in the PC side of the cable. This is not the case, allthough it does appear to modify the standing wave, forcing it to a frequency which could induce a sumpathetic wave in other cables in close proximity, including fiber optic cable...
If you make the ISP the final arbiters of what can and cannot be displayed on the Web, then you have to expect this kind of thing, no?
What exactly is the thought process here? Ignoring the debatable need for censorship, since it is occuring, regardless of any one person's utopian ideals, why the hell would anyone rationally choose to put such power in the hands of corporations?
There is ample reason to believe that coporations will chase the buck, and that motivation is completely divergent from the responsible execution of the responsibilities that have devolved to them.
The fact of the matter is, the ISP is vulnerable where the private individual is not. ISP's don't have principles, other than the prusuit of profit, and as such make poor arbiters of content. Any individual/organization with the moxie and money can wield undue influnce over the content an ISP hosts via fiscal and legal pressure. The actual content in question is secondary to the issue of maintaining revenue or avoiding litigation. Particularly in the US.
Given, the issue is not an easy one to resolve, but I have to question the ultility of standing on the sidelines pointing and screaming foul, no fair when corporations act as corporations will. If there is any blame to be laid, it is not on the ISPs, they are grudgingly filling a role they did not ask for, nor one they are suited to. Ultimately, enforcement would be their balliwick, but enforcement is a far cry from judgement, and to date the two have been inextricably tied together.
Instead of even trying to find the right solution, we took the expedient solution, again. Ultimately all this article points out is that (again) the expedient is not up to the task. Unfortunately, I suspect all that will happen is another expedient.
There is a SERIOUS issue at the core here. Until we stop sticking our heads in the sand and insist that there is not a problem, we will probably carry one in true human fashion, flitting from expedient to expedient. So long as we choose to solve the issue that way, why are we continually suprised when it doesn't work?
Seriously, I mean it. You will find many distro's that will run...
Having said that, I suspect the problem is what you are trying to run on the distro. Yes, KDE/Gnome is going to be a pain on your Thinkpad, but those are applications, not Operating Systems.
Herein is the point our kind author forgot. Gnome/KDE/XFCE/WMaker/ad infinitum are NOT Operating Systems. They are applications, and even in the Windoze world there are applications which will have requirements above and beyond those of the OS. No-one is blaming M$ for the fact that The FPS to end all FPS's needs a Gig of memory and a P IV Extreme to run when Windows needs far less. By the same token the illustrious author needs to refrain from tarring and feathering the distro's for the work of app developers.
Being a zealot (just ask the intranet guys where I work......after all, I'm the one that calls executing Visual Studio "going to work on the short bus...") there is a disturbing trend in mainstream reporting with a pro-linux-sounding-bent. That is they tend to prop up this myth that somehow Linux has made inroads into the server market at Microsoft's expense...
While perhaps understandable, not strictly true... Most of that share of the server market was taken away from Genetic Unix deployments, not Windows NT deployments. My employer is probably an excellent example of how this process occurs....
The first Linux box to get his foot in the door was a mail server. In our case, it was an addition to the server closet, but in the absence of Linux, would have gone to *shudder* another SCO box. Later that grew into a proxy, shortly thereafter a nameserver, then the timeserver.
In most cases, Linux was used as a cheap alternative to Genetic Unix to provide useful but not mission-critical services. Eventually that changed. The single largest mission critical application in the company now runs on Linux. That seems likely to continue into the future as well.
However, a Genetic Unix (HP/UX) still is the platform of choice for the DBMS folk. The majority of data still resides on proprietary iron and code.
The majority of the user base, still M$ dependent, a consequence of which our Intranet folk (You know, the guys who ride to work on the short bus...) are the only reason *any* Microsoft product resides in the data centre.
If anything, we are behind the times, it is hard to make the case for proprietary iron in our environment... It is hard to make a case for Microsoft's extortionary licensing practices in our environment.
Having said all that, this is a promising opportunity to at least partially displace Microsoft... But the challenge is very different this pass, getting into the data center in many cases was the ability to provide, at a lower cost, some desirable service, in many cases only one. To break into the average home data center means the ability to provide, at a lower cost, a number of services, in a tightly integrated package.
It's a very different challenge, one which Linux's current development has left it ill-suited to meet.
By and large, as a community we are better equipped to fight each other in the desktop wars than we are to provide a unified front against Windows. Or, is it that Microsoft isn't a worthy enough opponent, so fight the worthy opponents first?
Ultimately, is it a worthwhile goal? To beat Windows on the desktop is liable to require beating them at their own game. Hell folks, how many of us take Lindows seriously? And they aren't even close to beating Microsoft at their own game.
For the Linux distro that does manage to beat Microsoft at their own game, I suggest a name change to Judas/UX, or maybe Judix? You'll get your 30 pieces of silver for sure, but you'll also get to be a pariah...
Think of it as a confirmation dialog. When you get to the counter and the pimple faced clerk says, "Three hundred and eighteen dollars." you should hear:
"You are about to install Calculus 251. This courseware has been certified by (INSERT_NAME) University. Installing some courseware could be hazardous to your brain. Your parents deny all responsibility for the consequences should you install third party courseware. Continue with the installation of Calculus 251?"
Removing the cost for treeware is poor courseware design, as it introduces the danger of making poor choices without warning of the potential ramifications.
Of course, there is that significant portion of humanity which clicks yes, and then spends countless hours sorting out the damage from higgledy-piggledy courseware installation. The poster certainly falls into this category...
The best part though, I used it to justify SMS server to my boss at the time... I told my boss if he thought it was so funny he could take the corporate olfactory tour the next time. Three weeks later a rack showed up on my desk labeled "SMS Server"...
No the point you fail to understand is that the content of speech can be enough to create assault.
First off, the gun scenario completely goes off the deep end. Pointing a gun is a threat of force in and of itself, regardless of what you say while doing so. If I say "Nice teeth, wish I had a set like that." while pointing a gun to your head are you any more or less comfortable than if I had said God hates/.ers./.ers deserve to die." I suspect not.
Secondly, if you think about it you can find phrases which are threatening without being accompanied by naked force. I know of one case where a bouncer in SC was charged with assault on the basis of a comment made to a client. At the time I was totally shocked, I don't remember the outcome, but no-one tried to pretend that the threat the bouncer made was covered by free speech, not even the Defense attorney...
Third, you show me where you are granted unrestricted freedom of speech. Don't say the constitution, there is nothing in that document which would lead anyone to believe that reasonable limits do not apply. There is tons of precedent for this viewpoint as well. Those rights guaranteed you by the constitution are granted equally to everyone. This means that your right to Free Speech does not supercede any right granted to any other individual. Even if that was the only limit on Free Speech, it is a pretty big limit, but one which is necessary for any Free society to function.
Unrestricted freedom is merely another way of saying a lack of law. And a lack of law is nothing more than anarchy. Anarchy is not a stable means by which to govern a society, never has been, never will. There has never been an enlightened populace that could sustain anarchy without devolving to mere disorder. When folks like yourself go on about no abridging of the rights to free speech just leads me to despair that there ever will be a populace capable of such a feat.
Which begs the question, since unrestricted Free speech has never been guaranteed you, have you ever given any thought as to why that might be the case? Have you ever considered the implications of unrestricted free speech? The internet is as close as has ever come in the history of organized societies, is that really a model we want to emulate? Do we really want a society modeled on that? Is unlimited free speech worth the rest of the tripe that blooms in its presence?
The point of my parting shot from the previous rebuttal I think was missed. I (albeit clumsily) was not trying to imply that you were trying to prevent me from exercising my right. I was poking fun at the fact that Free Speech is less the issue here than the content of that speech. You allready are capable of seperating the right from the content, why is it so hard to extend that further? You've objected to my content without trying to abrogate my rights. That, I have to admire. But, if you can make that distinction, why do you have such trouble with the concept that the content could obviate the rights?
Language is a powerful tool, it allows us to express such concepts as free speech. It also allows us to express a whole host of less savoury concepts. If you can seperate my rights from my content, which you have, why can you not come to the logical conclusion? That being that language is also powerful enough to create situations where the content obviates the protection.
There is an inherent extremism in the way you present your ideas which makes me nervous. Extremism allways makes me nervous. Etremists are the people who allways seem to get smacked iun the face with reality. Extremists are the ones who pursue a goal ruthlessly, even when it is apparent that the goal is no longer worthwhile. Extremists tend to be incapable and intolerant of compromise, and generally have a huge blindspot about the consequences their success could have. We've gone through three exchanges now, and you still are trying to refute the (active in both our c
Whose rights were violated by Keegstra's Holocaust denial? Every person of the Jewish faith in Canada. Which rights? How about:
2a) freedom of conscience and religion
7) Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.
and
12) Everyone has the right not to be subjected to any cruel and unusual treatment or punishment.
Think any of those are far-fetched? Talk to a lawyer, I think you might be surprised. I agree, common sense says nothing needs done about Keegstra, he's a crackpot and anyone with common sense knows it. Well so-called common sense is anything but common, and when have the words sense and law not constituted anything but an oxymoron?
But, let's discuss your last statement for a moment...
Again, from the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms:
1) The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.
The very first substative statement in that document quite clearly indicates that these rights are guaranteed "only to such reasonable limits..." Even the body granting you those rights in the act of granting them makes no pretension that they are granted without limits. Mr. Slippery, if you are reading this, the same essential concept is embodied in the language used in the US corollary of this document. In short, your right to Free Speech was never granted as an absolute right, it was granted with limits in place, and the right reserved to put into place new limits down the road. I point this out because it clearly makes the case that you aren;t agitating for something guaranteed in law, but for something specifically proscribed by law.
Apparently the drafters of these documents agree with the cause and effect relationship, but not that this is a problem. I suspect it is because they have a complete view of the situation of which your statement only reflects half. The other half of that statement runs a little like:
Societies which do not place limits on their citizen's core freedoms cease to be societies.
Without limits on rights and freedoms, the situation becomes anarchy. Really a law is nothing more than government abridging activites you otherwise would have the freedom to engage in.
The fundamental problem aknowledged by the Charter and ignored by Mr. Slippery is that the situation is not one of absolutes, which shouldn;t be a surprise, since absolutes are rarely viable in the real world.
The traditional office chair (the ones what have some modicum of stuffing anyways) are fart batteries! So the day after chili you switch chairs as soon as the guy in the cubicle next to you goes for a coffee or whatever. Shit yourself to your hearts content and switch chairs back. As soon as your victim sits down the fart potential stored in the battery becomes a kinetic fart wafting up to your victims nose. A whoopee cushion gone bad!
I have to ask, do you actually read what you write?
Do you know the difference between assault and battery? By definition one is a law which can put you in a cage for saying X (X in this case being the expression of a threat of physical violence) and the other is a law which can put you in a cage for carrying out X. But both are equally valid CRIMINAL statutes the courts have supported thousands upon thousands of times. Does this law abridge free speech? NO! Because your speech was no longer protected the instant your exercising of that freedom impinged on another's rights. Don't believe me, talk to a lawyer.
As you point out, I have a right to not be threatened or harassed, allthough the wording rarely is that clear. Doesn;t that preclude you from threatening or harassing me while you are exercising your right to free speech? If it doesn't what is the point of my having that right?
It is painfully obvious that your impression of rights is that you get to enjoy them, period. Fortunately that isn't the case. Your rights comes with attendant responsibilities. One of these is that you do not violate the rights of others while exercising your own. This, like everything else in the real world is not a situation of black and white. Rather it's 32-bit grey-scale. Anyone who tries to make these things black and white issues is at best lying to themselves. I leave at worst as an exercise for the reader who sees grey.
But don't take my word for it, talk to a lawyer, I suspect that not only will you get much the same that you've allready gotten here, you'll get lots of real world cases to demonstrably prove that viewing the issue in black and white is not only impossible, but undesirable too.
In any case, I don't see why you are getting so worked up, for someone who professes to love free speech so much you sure do get worked up when someone else exercises it...
I'm not saying anything about having a poorly considered opinion. First off there is nothing to be done about it, nor does it affect anyone in and of itself.
However, diseminating that opinion can be unlawful, if such communication falls under the applicable statutes...
Where you hit the head is by recognizing that it is not a hard and fast rule. Jim Keegstra got into it by trying to teach that the Holocaust never happened. Without getting into the specifics of the particular case, we can both agree that is a very different thing than a comedian using racial material in his act. My point is that friend Mr. Slippery doesn't see that difference. To him both a to be equally protected by free speech, because to him free speech is an absolute. That such a position is infantile should be manifest.
In keeping with this flexibility of viewpoint, aren't there cases where advocating something is tantamount to doing it? Aren;t there other cases where the line between them perhpas shouldn;t be there? Doesn't a statement like that overlook the relationship between those who for example advocate child porn and those who create it? Surely the problem of the later is exacerbated by the advocacy of the former? Without that advocacy, wether expressed actively by being a consumer of such items, or passively, like friend Mr. Slippery, who defends the supposed rights of the advocates to continue to materially support the abrogation of others rights.
Bottom line, it isn't black and white, not even 256, but many, many shades of grey, anyone who tries to make it black and white is at best deluded, and at worst trying to delude you.
So instead of telling yourself that you are buying a book, tell yourself your buying the results of someone's research.
Your assertion applies to 99.9% of non-fiction published in the last five years anyways, but people continue to buy the books. Ever occur to you that the compilation and presentation of all that free material in a coherent informative package is something of worth in and of itself?
In point of fact you do the author a tremendous diservice by trivializing the work in such a fashion. Let me propose a little experiment, you take tomorrow with google, a few hours with LaTex the next day, and none of us will hold our breath waiting for your publishing contract. See the point? You hypothesize that creation of the work is nothing more than collecting stuff off websites amd stuffing it into a pdf. I'm suggesting that would never have been published. First off, most websites give professional editors fits, if you want to make an editor think you're incompetent, then stick wsith the plan you suggest. If you want to thought of as a writer, understand that most of the job is going to be taking that flood of google results and turning it into material fit for the printed page.
But wait, there is more... What about those websites that google turned up? That site that talks about teaching your TiVo to fetch your pipe and slippers for example. Did that site try to present the information clearly and completely, or did the author assume a bunch of knowledge on your part? Were any procedures provided likewise described? While I don't doubt that all the info is available, is it all consumable?
Like the other reply to this, I also have to ask if it is as trivial as you pretend, where is your Hacker's cookbook? And I'm guessing your Pullitzer prize is in the mail? I for one recognize that it isn;t that simple, and I have neither the time nor the temprament to undertake such an activity. Will I buy his book? No. Like you I will go to google and undertake essentially the same process you would, or the author did. However, I don't disparage the process, or that the author has obviated it for those willing to pay for the privilege. I personally feel that the process is part of the experience, and often the source of new ideas to explore. However, that in no way imparts any license to disparage the author's work, or to trivialize the process by which it was created, since it is essentially a macrocosm of the process each of us would apply to that same material. The difference being that when you or I do it, we do it for an audience of one, an audience, I hasten to add, we are intimately familiar with. The author undergoes that process for an audience of far larger than one, and without the benefit of familiarity.
Now re-read your first post, is this a skill you think you really have? Is that how you preent information effectively? Hell, and your audience was just/. members, a group you have some familiarity with....
To update an aphorism:
Those who can, do. Those who can't criticize the former on/.
How is the Canadian law a violation of free speech?
Remember a right is only a right until it abrogates the rights of another. I would say publishing something for example that says all (insert racial/religious/cultural group here) is less than human and only deserving of persecution and death is a pretty clear violation of that target groups rights...
Therefore the law acts to protect rights and freedoms by abrogation by improper exercising of rights by another. This is a central tenent of every successful free society. It exists because the architects of those societies have been sophisiticated enough to understand that rights and freedoms must have boundaries, that without such boundaries the resulting society is nothing more than anarchy. That is what results from unbounded rights and freedoms, that is why in every free society through history these boundaries exist. Not to piss you off, but because those boundaries are necessary to ensure that every person is afforded equal access to those rights, and does not have their rights violated by another over-applying their rights.
As for civil vs. criminal, that is why I tend to use the term unlawful. Wether criminal or civil is less of a concern than wether the behaviour is limited by legislation, which it is. Free speech is limited by those laws which define libel/slander and define the recourses for those who engage in libel and slander. The fact that such an affair is civil does not make it unlawful.
The fact of the matter is that people far more insightful than you appear to be put these checks and balances on freedoms for a reason, perhaps you ought to spend more time analyzing the why of that decision rather than lamenting that decision. Descend from your ivory tower and watch how the world really works rather than trying to overlay your skewed view of what should be on what is. Your position is no better than the position at the opposite end of the spectrum, both are equally disconnected from reality, and neither has been successful in the real world...
Privacy rights were specifically what I was thinking of. A better example would be the upskirt sites what feature surreptitious photos, since that clearly implies the privacy issue.
I think though the trying to make a distinction between creation and distribution is not worthwhile, and implies, for example that distributing child porn is less offensive than creating it. It propogates a myth that being a consumer of questionable content is somehow less evil than being the creator. I'm not sure that we should be comfortable with this...
As for laws against distribution vs laws for possession, is there really a need? After all, there are only two ways to obtain the material. The first is to produce it yourself, which obviously has a large number of legal repercussions attached. Or to obtain such proscribed material from another, who through their action or inaction aided and abetted in the commission of a crime. It also overlooks the fact that possession is a requirement for distribution by one party and a consequence of distribution for the other.
How exactly is A-B supposed to know when you buy other brands than theirs?
I mean I can see their systems updating every time a six pack of Bud goes off the shelf, but how are the A-B computers supposed to know you just bought a six pack of Coors...
Slashdot Mirror
Now wait, let's think for a sec:
M$ principally is attacking Linux. M$ really couldn't give a rat's ass about the rest right now. OSS applications they (perhaps) mistakenly don't view as a threat to their business. Office file formats are essentially a de facto standard in most of the business world, blah blah blah. What these OSS applications have done is make Linux a viable alternative. Rightly or wrongly M$ figures if they can kill the head (kernel) the body will die...
Okay then, given that M$ wants Linux dead, and badly, shouldn't that open the door for some silver tongued devil to convince M$ that *BSD is also the enemy of Linux, and that the enemy of my enemy is my friend? Would it be that hard a case to make? After all, all those years of toiling quietly with BSD, never threatening M$, or anyone else for that matter. Then along comes Linux, and all of a sudden BSD is the red-headed step-child. Then haul out the numerous BSD/Linux jihad posts, toss in some tasty Stahlman quotes (there have to be some, let's face it, the guy is a shotgun, not a sniper rifle...) Take the whole mess, wrap it up with a goodly amount of spin (the last thing M$ expects from our communities, and quite possibly the only thing they respect anymore...) and go with hat in hand, and dagger carefully concealed behind the back...
Possible, maybe, likely, never. But you got admit, the irony would be delicious...
I'm pretty sure Jesus used Aramaic, either that or Mel Gibson has a lot of 'splaining to do...
I don't think Xlibs is so much the issue though, it is a constant to any XFree based system, so unless we talking about some other windowing system this is a constant for all, and can be safely ignored.
Who deserves modding down, the guy who knows he's going off-topic, and states as much, or the folk who reply to the off-topic portion of the post?
Not casting stones, but I allways think it amusing that a poster can correctly predict his down modding, and it never seems to extend to those people who justify the off-topic post with replies...
I just think it is funny, especially since you siezed on the portion (in retrospect, I honestly didn't even consider the corollary) and if anything, you'll probably get modded up, even though you replied to something off-topic, which in turn spawned this (which diverges even farther from the topic)
Maybe I'll put together a bunch of shite like this for an O'Reilly book... ...Maybe "An Introduction to Slashdot Moderation and Rebuttal."
Of course, you have to announce the release on slashdot, which ought to be an interesting series of posts in and of itself...
Mod me Down, way off-topic: But, doesn't it make more sense to enforce the two minutes between postings only within the same parent post?
I mean hell, if I reply to a post in A, then goto reply to a post in B, that seems to indicate that I'm probably not in a flame war, which is ostensibly why the speed bump was put there.
Unfortunately, just like a real speed bump, it is more an inconvenience to those who it isn;t aimed at than those it is.
Besides, is two minutes really going to make that much of a difference to the flame-war artist? Maybe if the form cleared itself, and he/she had to author the thing from scratch again...
Yeah, I allready said, mod me down...
The funny part is in the legal information they specifically bar you from ditributing such software via their service.
You also indeminify them against repsonsibility for any such infestation should any other user break that guideline.
And, if you really think you got a legal leg on them, think again, you'd have to pursue such a claim in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, which, unless the legal strata has changed, means your basically trying to paddle up a river of shit with your bare hands.
Personally, knowing it came from the fine folk who brought us Kazaa (hell it ieven will accept your acceptance of the Kazaa license agreement in lieu of a seperate one...) I'll keep it the hell away from my machines, thanunk-you.
Given, most of the rest are rxvt spiced up, with eye candy thrown in.
But if the grumpy editor wants to hold forth on memory usage, I would suggest he consider the overhead the gnome and kde libraries impose in order to use their terminal emulator...
Why pass unenforceable legislation which has a good chance of making matters worse?
For once it looks like a responsible decision has been made, lets not mistakenly equate that with doing nothing.
Imagine the screaming you would have done had they tried and failed miserably, or tried and made things worse.
I've seen too many "experts" suggest that simply cutting the PC-half of the cable, making certain to avoid any of the harmonic points would disrupt the standing wave and elimate the virus copy. THIS IS NOT TRUE.
Allthough less common in this day and age, it used to be fairly common to advise using the router side of the cable. This plainly is not the solution, and this advice (rightly) seems to have gone the way of the dodo.
Lastly there is an urban myth which states that using a 20 foot cable, knotted prior to connecting to the router and then cut on the computer side of the knot would prevent the standing wave from establishing in the PC side of the cable. This is not the case, allthough it does appear to modify the standing wave, forcing it to a frequency which could induce a sumpathetic wave in other cables in close proximity, including fiber optic cable...
Or check the link down in the status bar...
If you make the ISP the final arbiters of what can and cannot be displayed on the Web, then you have to expect this kind of thing, no?
What exactly is the thought process here? Ignoring the debatable need for censorship, since it is occuring, regardless of any one person's utopian ideals, why the hell would anyone rationally choose to put such power in the hands of corporations?
There is ample reason to believe that coporations will chase the buck, and that motivation is completely divergent from the responsible execution of the responsibilities that have devolved to them.
The fact of the matter is, the ISP is vulnerable where the private individual is not. ISP's don't have principles, other than the prusuit of profit, and as such make poor arbiters of content. Any individual/organization with the moxie and money can wield undue influnce over the content an ISP hosts via fiscal and legal pressure. The actual content in question is secondary to the issue of maintaining revenue or avoiding litigation. Particularly in the US.
Given, the issue is not an easy one to resolve, but I have to question the ultility of standing on the sidelines pointing and screaming foul, no fair when corporations act as corporations will. If there is any blame to be laid, it is not on the ISPs, they are grudgingly filling a role they did not ask for, nor one they are suited to. Ultimately, enforcement would be their balliwick, but enforcement is a far cry from judgement, and to date the two have been inextricably tied together.
Instead of even trying to find the right solution, we took the expedient solution, again. Ultimately all this article points out is that (again) the expedient is not up to the task. Unfortunately, I suspect all that will happen is another expedient.
There is a SERIOUS issue at the core here. Until we stop sticking our heads in the sand and insist that there is not a problem, we will probably carry one in true human fashion, flitting from expedient to expedient. So long as we choose to solve the issue that way, why are we continually suprised when it doesn't work?
Seriously, I mean it. You will find many distro's that will run...
Having said that, I suspect the problem is what you are trying to run on the distro. Yes, KDE/Gnome is going to be a pain on your Thinkpad, but those are applications, not Operating Systems.
Herein is the point our kind author forgot. Gnome/KDE/XFCE/WMaker/ad infinitum are NOT Operating Systems. They are applications, and even in the Windoze world there are applications which will have requirements above and beyond those of the OS. No-one is blaming M$ for the fact that The FPS to end all FPS's needs a Gig of memory and a P IV Extreme to run when Windows needs far less. By the same token the illustrious author needs to refrain from tarring and feathering the distro's for the work of app developers.
While perhaps understandable, not strictly true... Most of that share of the server market was taken away from Genetic Unix deployments, not Windows NT deployments. My employer is probably an excellent example of how this process occurs....
The first Linux box to get his foot in the door was a mail server. In our case, it was an addition to the server closet, but in the absence of Linux, would have gone to *shudder* another SCO box. Later that grew into a proxy, shortly thereafter a nameserver, then the timeserver.
In most cases, Linux was used as a cheap alternative to Genetic Unix to provide useful but not mission-critical services. Eventually that changed. The single largest mission critical application in the company now runs on Linux. That seems likely to continue into the future as well.
However, a Genetic Unix (HP/UX) still is the platform of choice for the DBMS folk. The majority of data still resides on proprietary iron and code.
The majority of the user base, still M$ dependent, a consequence of which our Intranet folk (You know, the guys who ride to work on the short bus...) are the only reason *any* Microsoft product resides in the data centre.
If anything, we are behind the times, it is hard to make the case for proprietary iron in our environment... It is hard to make a case for Microsoft's extortionary licensing practices in our environment.
Having said all that, this is a promising opportunity to at least partially displace Microsoft... But the challenge is very different this pass, getting into the data center in many cases was the ability to provide, at a lower cost, some desirable service, in many cases only one. To break into the average home data center means the ability to provide, at a lower cost, a number of services, in a tightly integrated package.
It's a very different challenge, one which Linux's current development has left it ill-suited to meet.
By and large, as a community we are better equipped to fight each other in the desktop wars than we are to provide a unified front against Windows. Or, is it that Microsoft isn't a worthy enough opponent, so fight the worthy opponents first?
Ultimately, is it a worthwhile goal? To beat Windows on the desktop is liable to require beating them at their own game. Hell folks, how many of us take Lindows seriously? And they aren't even close to beating Microsoft at their own game.
For the Linux distro that does manage to beat Microsoft at their own game, I suggest a name change to Judas/UX, or maybe Judix? You'll get your 30 pieces of silver for sure, but you'll also get to be a pariah...
Posting on slashdot with the title "DO NOT SLASHDOT..." is oxymoron in action...
Damn 2 minute limit, what if I'm only funny two minutes at a time?Removing the cost for treeware is poor courseware design, as it introduces the danger of making poor choices without warning of the potential ramifications.
Of course, there is that significant portion of humanity which clicks yes, and then spends countless hours sorting out the damage from higgledy-piggledy courseware installation. The poster certainly falls into this category...
That was how I discovered it as well...
The best part though, I used it to justify SMS server to my boss at the time... I told my boss if he thought it was so funny he could take the corporate olfactory tour the next time. Three weeks later a rack showed up on my desk labeled "SMS Server"...
First off, the gun scenario completely goes off the deep end. Pointing a gun is a threat of force in and of itself, regardless of what you say while doing so. If I say "Nice teeth, wish I had a set like that." while pointing a gun to your head are you any more or less comfortable than if I had said God hates /.ers. /.ers deserve to die." I suspect not.
Secondly, if you think about it you can find phrases which are threatening without being accompanied by naked force. I know of one case where a bouncer in SC was charged with assault on the basis of a comment made to a client. At the time I was totally shocked, I don't remember the outcome, but no-one tried to pretend that the threat the bouncer made was covered by free speech, not even the Defense attorney...
Third, you show me where you are granted unrestricted freedom of speech. Don't say the constitution, there is nothing in that document which would lead anyone to believe that reasonable limits do not apply. There is tons of precedent for this viewpoint as well. Those rights guaranteed you by the constitution are granted equally to everyone. This means that your right to Free Speech does not supercede any right granted to any other individual. Even if that was the only limit on Free Speech, it is a pretty big limit, but one which is necessary for any Free society to function.
Unrestricted freedom is merely another way of saying a lack of law. And a lack of law is nothing more than anarchy. Anarchy is not a stable means by which to govern a society, never has been, never will. There has never been an enlightened populace that could sustain anarchy without devolving to mere disorder. When folks like yourself go on about no abridging of the rights to free speech just leads me to despair that there ever will be a populace capable of such a feat.
Which begs the question, since unrestricted Free speech has never been guaranteed you, have you ever given any thought as to why that might be the case? Have you ever considered the implications of unrestricted free speech? The internet is as close as has ever come in the history of organized societies, is that really a model we want to emulate? Do we really want a society modeled on that? Is unlimited free speech worth the rest of the tripe that blooms in its presence?
The point of my parting shot from the previous rebuttal I think was missed. I (albeit clumsily) was not trying to imply that you were trying to prevent me from exercising my right. I was poking fun at the fact that Free Speech is less the issue here than the content of that speech. You allready are capable of seperating the right from the content, why is it so hard to extend that further? You've objected to my content without trying to abrogate my rights. That, I have to admire. But, if you can make that distinction, why do you have such trouble with the concept that the content could obviate the rights?
Language is a powerful tool, it allows us to express such concepts as free speech. It also allows us to express a whole host of less savoury concepts. If you can seperate my rights from my content, which you have, why can you not come to the logical conclusion? That being that language is also powerful enough to create situations where the content obviates the protection.
There is an inherent extremism in the way you present your ideas which makes me nervous. Extremism allways makes me nervous. Etremists are the people who allways seem to get smacked iun the face with reality. Extremists are the ones who pursue a goal ruthlessly, even when it is apparent that the goal is no longer worthwhile. Extremists tend to be incapable and intolerant of compromise, and generally have a huge blindspot about the consequences their success could have. We've gone through three exchanges now, and you still are trying to refute the (active in both our c
2a) freedom of conscience and religion
7) Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.
and
12) Everyone has the right not to be subjected to any cruel and unusual treatment or punishment.
Think any of those are far-fetched? Talk to a lawyer, I think you might be surprised. I agree, common sense says nothing needs done about Keegstra, he's a crackpot and anyone with common sense knows it. Well so-called common sense is anything but common, and when have the words sense and law not constituted anything but an oxymoron?
But, let's discuss your last statement for a moment...
Again, from the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms:
1) The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.
The very first substative statement in that document quite clearly indicates that these rights are guaranteed "only to such reasonable limits..." Even the body granting you those rights in the act of granting them makes no pretension that they are granted without limits. Mr. Slippery, if you are reading this, the same essential concept is embodied in the language used in the US corollary of this document. In short, your right to Free Speech was never granted as an absolute right, it was granted with limits in place, and the right reserved to put into place new limits down the road. I point this out because it clearly makes the case that you aren;t agitating for something guaranteed in law, but for something specifically proscribed by law.
Apparently the drafters of these documents agree with the cause and effect relationship, but not that this is a problem. I suspect it is because they have a complete view of the situation of which your statement only reflects half. The other half of that statement runs a little like:
Societies which do not place limits on their citizen's core freedoms cease to be societies.
Without limits on rights and freedoms, the situation becomes anarchy. Really a law is nothing more than government abridging activites you otherwise would have the freedom to engage in.
The fundamental problem aknowledged by the Charter and ignored by Mr. Slippery is that the situation is not one of absolutes, which shouldn;t be a surprise, since absolutes are rarely viable in the real world.
The traditional office chair (the ones what have some modicum of stuffing anyways) are fart batteries! So the day after chili you switch chairs as soon as the guy in the cubicle next to you goes for a coffee or whatever. Shit yourself to your hearts content and switch chairs back. As soon as your victim sits down the fart potential stored in the battery becomes a kinetic fart wafting up to your victims nose. A whoopee cushion gone bad!
Do you know the difference between assault and battery? By definition one is a law which can put you in a cage for saying X (X in this case being the expression of a threat of physical violence) and the other is a law which can put you in a cage for carrying out X. But both are equally valid CRIMINAL statutes the courts have supported thousands upon thousands of times. Does this law abridge free speech? NO! Because your speech was no longer protected the instant your exercising of that freedom impinged on another's rights. Don't believe me, talk to a lawyer.
As you point out, I have a right to not be threatened or harassed, allthough the wording rarely is that clear. Doesn;t that preclude you from threatening or harassing me while you are exercising your right to free speech? If it doesn't what is the point of my having that right?
It is painfully obvious that your impression of rights is that you get to enjoy them, period. Fortunately that isn't the case. Your rights comes with attendant responsibilities. One of these is that you do not violate the rights of others while exercising your own. This, like everything else in the real world is not a situation of black and white. Rather it's 32-bit grey-scale. Anyone who tries to make these things black and white issues is at best lying to themselves. I leave at worst as an exercise for the reader who sees grey.
But don't take my word for it, talk to a lawyer, I suspect that not only will you get much the same that you've allready gotten here, you'll get lots of real world cases to demonstrably prove that viewing the issue in black and white is not only impossible, but undesirable too.
In any case, I don't see why you are getting so worked up, for someone who professes to love free speech so much you sure do get worked up when someone else exercises it...
I'm not saying anything about having a poorly considered opinion. First off there is nothing to be done about it, nor does it affect anyone in and of itself.
However, diseminating that opinion can be unlawful, if such communication falls under the applicable statutes...
Where you hit the head is by recognizing that it is not a hard and fast rule. Jim Keegstra got into it by trying to teach that the Holocaust never happened. Without getting into the specifics of the particular case, we can both agree that is a very different thing than a comedian using racial material in his act. My point is that friend Mr. Slippery doesn't see that difference. To him both a to be equally protected by free speech, because to him free speech is an absolute. That such a position is infantile should be manifest.
In keeping with this flexibility of viewpoint, aren't there cases where advocating something is tantamount to doing it? Aren;t there other cases where the line between them perhpas shouldn;t be there? Doesn't a statement like that overlook the relationship between those who for example advocate child porn and those who create it? Surely the problem of the later is exacerbated by the advocacy of the former? Without that advocacy, wether expressed actively by being a consumer of such items, or passively, like friend Mr. Slippery, who defends the supposed rights of the advocates to continue to materially support the abrogation of others rights.
Bottom line, it isn't black and white, not even 256, but many, many shades of grey, anyone who tries to make it black and white is at best deluded, and at worst trying to delude you.
Your assertion applies to 99.9% of non-fiction published in the last five years anyways, but people continue to buy the books. Ever occur to you that the compilation and presentation of all that free material in a coherent informative package is something of worth in and of itself?
In point of fact you do the author a tremendous diservice by trivializing the work in such a fashion. Let me propose a little experiment, you take tomorrow with google, a few hours with LaTex the next day, and none of us will hold our breath waiting for your publishing contract. See the point? You hypothesize that creation of the work is nothing more than collecting stuff off websites amd stuffing it into a pdf. I'm suggesting that would never have been published. First off, most websites give professional editors fits, if you want to make an editor think you're incompetent, then stick wsith the plan you suggest. If you want to thought of as a writer, understand that most of the job is going to be taking that flood of google results and turning it into material fit for the printed page.
But wait, there is more... What about those websites that google turned up? That site that talks about teaching your TiVo to fetch your pipe and slippers for example. Did that site try to present the information clearly and completely, or did the author assume a bunch of knowledge on your part? Were any procedures provided likewise described? While I don't doubt that all the info is available, is it all consumable?
Like the other reply to this, I also have to ask if it is as trivial as you pretend, where is your Hacker's cookbook? And I'm guessing your Pullitzer prize is in the mail? I for one recognize that it isn;t that simple, and I have neither the time nor the temprament to undertake such an activity. Will I buy his book? No. Like you I will go to google and undertake essentially the same process you would, or the author did. However, I don't disparage the process, or that the author has obviated it for those willing to pay for the privilege. I personally feel that the process is part of the experience, and often the source of new ideas to explore. However, that in no way imparts any license to disparage the author's work, or to trivialize the process by which it was created, since it is essentially a macrocosm of the process each of us would apply to that same material. The difference being that when you or I do it, we do it for an audience of one, an audience, I hasten to add, we are intimately familiar with. The author undergoes that process for an audience of far larger than one, and without the benefit of familiarity.
Now re-read your first post, is this a skill you think you really have? Is that how you preent information effectively? Hell, and your audience was just /. members, a group you have some familiarity with....
To update an aphorism:
Those who can, do. Those who can't criticize the former on /.
Remember a right is only a right until it abrogates the rights of another. I would say publishing something for example that says all (insert racial/religious/cultural group here) is less than human and only deserving of persecution and death is a pretty clear violation of that target groups rights...
Therefore the law acts to protect rights and freedoms by abrogation by improper exercising of rights by another. This is a central tenent of every successful free society. It exists because the architects of those societies have been sophisiticated enough to understand that rights and freedoms must have boundaries, that without such boundaries the resulting society is nothing more than anarchy. That is what results from unbounded rights and freedoms, that is why in every free society through history these boundaries exist. Not to piss you off, but because those boundaries are necessary to ensure that every person is afforded equal access to those rights, and does not have their rights violated by another over-applying their rights.
As for civil vs. criminal, that is why I tend to use the term unlawful. Wether criminal or civil is less of a concern than wether the behaviour is limited by legislation, which it is. Free speech is limited by those laws which define libel/slander and define the recourses for those who engage in libel and slander. The fact that such an affair is civil does not make it unlawful.
The fact of the matter is that people far more insightful than you appear to be put these checks and balances on freedoms for a reason, perhaps you ought to spend more time analyzing the why of that decision rather than lamenting that decision. Descend from your ivory tower and watch how the world really works rather than trying to overlay your skewed view of what should be on what is. Your position is no better than the position at the opposite end of the spectrum, both are equally disconnected from reality, and neither has been successful in the real world...
I think though the trying to make a distinction between creation and distribution is not worthwhile, and implies, for example that distributing child porn is less offensive than creating it. It propogates a myth that being a consumer of questionable content is somehow less evil than being the creator. I'm not sure that we should be comfortable with this...
As for laws against distribution vs laws for possession, is there really a need? After all, there are only two ways to obtain the material. The first is to produce it yourself, which obviously has a large number of legal repercussions attached. Or to obtain such proscribed material from another, who through their action or inaction aided and abetted in the commission of a crime. It also overlooks the fact that possession is a requirement for distribution by one party and a consequence of distribution for the other.
I mean I can see their systems updating every time a six pack of Bud goes off the shelf, but how are the A-B computers supposed to know you just bought a six pack of Coors...