The ninth ammendment does not specify a right to privacy. So in order for the ninth to protect it, it must be one of your pre-existing rights. Unfortunately, it isn't. At least not in the sense that most people think it is.
A natural right is one that does not require any coercion to utilize. You have the right to life because your act of living does not compel anyone. You have the right to free speech because your act of speaking does not compel anyone. But privacy is not so clear cut. Your right to privacy within your own home does not require any coercion. But is this a right distinct from your right of property? But what about your right to remain anonymous while in a public square? In order to activate this right you have to coerce others into secrecy. Therefore it is not a natural right. Barbara Streisand's habit of suing aerial photographers is not natural.
When you think it through, every natural right of privacy is merely an instance of a pre-existing property right. You have the right of privacy in your bedroom because you own (or are renting) your bedroom. You cannot expect the same level of privacy while sleeping in a public park. I think the very notion of a right to privacy is dangerous, because it implies that some "unnatural" rights should be accorded the same status as natural rights.
what I really want before wiping windows off my box is a throrough HW compatibility list
See the Hardware Notes page. This page is for 5.2.1 because 5.3 is still in beta, but you can get the latest page off of CVS or on the beta ISO.
While this page isn't thorough, it should meet most people's needs. Thoroughness would require a vastly larger document. For example, not every USB flash drive is listed, but 9999 out of the 10,000 available will work with FreeBSD out of the box.
If you have hardware that is not mentioned, then ask about it on a support forum.
Was he one of the exceptions I mentioned? No rule of thumb is ever 100% accurate, but my personal experience tells me that the more experienced the coder the more likely it is that their code will be readable. This is experience in coding, not mere longevity. My boss who was coding twenty years ago but hasn't coded in the last fifteen doesn't count.
But the RISC enterprise server is not. As long as you have those, it makes sense to have $3000 RISC workstations for the economies of single-vendor support. Especially when those workstations have twice the quality of a half priced Dell or HP workstation.
Easy solution. Just send a signal to the area's JumpShift(tm) booths and within a few minutes the entire mob will be incarcerated in the municipal stadium to be processed by the ARM.
Funny, I did the same thing with my last Intel based PC running FreeBSD. Drag over home directory from NFS. Done!
Of course not all of the application got copied over, nor did system-wide configurations. But it was the same with your Mac if you would be honest. Not every Mac app is installed to a specific user's desktop, and not every Mac configuration is user specific.
Well of course! You don't run before you learn to walk. You don't build the roof before you lay the foundation. While the basics have been around for over a decade, users still demand them. They're not going to accept an automobile that won't drive, no matter how advanced the emission control system is.
The 2204 election will be challenged in a court of law if Bush wins. The Democrats are already planning to do this.
I was at a party last night, and being in San Fransisco, it was assumed I was a loyal Kerry supporter. So they invited me to a fundraiser next week for a legal challenge fund. "For every dollar we raise, that's one more dollar we can use in the campaign instead of having to save for the challenge." This was the first I had ever heard of this fund, so I inquired more about it.
To many this fund may come as no surprise. But to a lot of us it's a shocking display of politics at its worst. Active fund raising parties are being held NOW for funds that will almost certainly be used in a challenge! It was made clear to me that a legal challenge WILL be issued if Bush wins the election, and it might even be issued before the polls eve close. Florida is the normal target state, but other states were mentioned as well.
p.s. I am not a Bush supporter. When I explained to the inviters that I was a Libertarian, they didn't care, because they assumed I was going to vote for Kerry anyway. When I explained further that I still wasn't going to vote for him, they started looking at me like something dead the cat drug in.
I know a few Quakers, and have even attended some meetings. While it is true that every good Quaker will do his or her best to do what they believe is right, they don't all necessarily act consistantly. Just like the rest of us:-)
Getting involved in politics is certainly not out of place. But seeking to impose a political opinion upon another is a different matter. And that's what voting is. You're voting on who will be Caesar, on who will wield the scepter of force. I just can't see my Quaker friends voting in any non-voluntary governmental system. This doesn't mean that they're anarchists, just that they have themselves rejected the use of force for offense or defense as a personal choice.
Actually my experience is that you can tell how junior a programmer is by their style. While their styles will vary greatly, old timers will almost uniformly prefer an easy-for-others-to-read style. There are of course exceptions. Some junior programmers have been exposed to professors/managers/reviewers who won't accept unreadable code, and some senior programmers got tagged as "heroes" and have never had to maintain someone elses code.
Offtopic question time. Prior to a year ago, gay marriage wasn't an issue. Then *boom* the SF Mayor did something controversial and the whole world is calling conservative americans evil nasty fscks for opposing gay marriages. My offtopic question(s) are:
Where were all the pro-gay-marriage politicians before last year? Where were the elected officials scrambling to be the first on the block to have gay marriages? Why is the US the only country being called a primitive throwback for not having gay marriage? What nations had gay marriage last year? This year?
In my opinion, what most people want is a responsive desktop, not necassiarly a fast one.
That's the Mac. I was using my friends powerbook the other week to build a Mac package for a piece of software. That interface is so nice and responsive. Even with all the eye candy. It sure seems powerful!
Then I started to build Qt. Sheesh! The thing's a pig! It took me three hours to build Qt on the powerbook when it normally takes me only a half hour on my PC.
Moral of the story: if you have a responsive interface you can get away with a slower system.
Then get your citizenship! Sheesh. We can talk about making citizenship easier, about eliminating obstacles in your way. Heck, I might even agree with you. But you're not going to convince me of your right to vote just because you live here. "It's not fair" isn't a good enough reason.
It doesn't matter if you're a resident. That's not the point. I am a resident in my apartment complex, but I don't get the right to vote on the running of the complex. I don't get to vote to determine who gets the landscaping contract this year.
It is a matter of equality. Remember when wemen, blacks, low income people etc. could not vote? Was it right? Why are non-citizens any worse?
Let's take this to the extreme (since giving the vote to non-citizens is already extreme). Why not give the vote to non-citizens that DO NOT reside in this country? Are they any worse than resident non-citizens? Of course they aren't. If this is a matter of equality, then nonresident citizens of other nations should be allowed to vote here. Or what about non-humans? Pretty soon we can have everyone vote in every nation's elections.
If you were a guest in a family's house would you demand a say in that family's finances? Hospitality does not extend that far in my book, even if those finances affect you as a guest. As a non-citizen resident, you are a guest in this nation. You should expect the common hospitality accorded by custom to guests, but you still have no say in how your hosts manage their affairs.
Maybe because becoming a US citizen means renouncing your original citizenship?
But you want to keep your original citizenship because you want to keep voting in your original country? That doesn't make sense. If you feel you have the right to vote here because you live here, then you should also feel you no longer have the right to vote there because you no longer live there.
I think it is now becoming conventional wisdom among the American Left that America politics as a whole has moved rightwards (more conservative) in the last 30 years.
I think I know where you're coming from, but it's an erroneous perception. The US electorate has become more mainstream, but the mainstream itself has moved to the left. Thus you see the far left moving towards the center, but you're not seeing the center and the right moving towards the left.
Every hear the adage "a liberal can become a conservative in twenty years without once changing an opinion? (or something like that). That doesn't mean that the country is moving to the right, but in the opposite direction. The *labels* may be shifting to the right but the actual policies are shifting to the left. The size and scope of government in ALL areas has increased steadily through all administrations regardless of whether they were labelled liberal or conservative. If Bush were living in the sixties with the exact same policies he would be considered a radical leftist. If Kennedy were living today with the exact same policies he would be considered a right wing nut.
The civil war was an "us versus them" war. Since the south had slavery and the north did not, people naturally assume the war was about slavery. But what if the south didn't have slavery? Would teachers then indoctrinate their students that the civil war was about cotton and mint juleps?
I just don't understand you motivation. Why would you want to vote yet NOT want to be a citizen. Is it simply because the citizenship test is too hard? You already get our public schooling. You already get our welfare (in many locales). Is seems the only thing you're missing by not being a citizen is the right to vote and the right to run for office. Will you next be arguing that you should be able to run for office since "I live here, I pay taxes, I respect local laws. Should not I have the right to run for city council?"
In other words, only vote Green when there is no chance for the Democrats to lose? I think my respect for the Green party just plummeted several notches.
Don't rewrite the GPL to suit how you wish it was, interpret it as it is and go from there
Not quite. Instead you need to interpret copyright law. The GPL always takes second place to copyright law because A) it is not a contract; B) it specifically references copyright law.
It comes down to a difference in opinion, as copyright law is completely silent on this issue, and no court has ruled one way or the other. The author the GPL FAQ has a vested interest in the broadest possible interpretation of the GPL, and frankly I would be stunned if they interpreted it any other way. But there opinion, no matter how well informed, is still an opinion. Larry Rosen has made some very good arguments for the opposite opinion.
GNU's arguments even admit that their interpretation is merely their opinion. They also base their argument on "shared address space", which seems to me to be a quite arbitrary boundary. Every system call to the kernel at least in part runs in a shared address space with the application, but no one in their right mind considers all applications to be derivative works of the kernel. Even without Linus' license exception that's a silly notion. Or what about debuggers? Does this mean it violates the GPL to attach a proprietary debugger to a GPL process?
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, you can get everything with Ports, but you have to compile it!
If you don't want to compile ports, then use prebuilt packages! Why is this so hard of a concept to understand?
The ninth ammendment does not specify a right to privacy. So in order for the ninth to protect it, it must be one of your pre-existing rights. Unfortunately, it isn't. At least not in the sense that most people think it is.
A natural right is one that does not require any coercion to utilize. You have the right to life because your act of living does not compel anyone. You have the right to free speech because your act of speaking does not compel anyone. But privacy is not so clear cut. Your right to privacy within your own home does not require any coercion. But is this a right distinct from your right of property? But what about your right to remain anonymous while in a public square? In order to activate this right you have to coerce others into secrecy. Therefore it is not a natural right. Barbara Streisand's habit of suing aerial photographers is not natural.
When you think it through, every natural right of privacy is merely an instance of a pre-existing property right. You have the right of privacy in your bedroom because you own (or are renting) your bedroom. You cannot expect the same level of privacy while sleeping in a public park. I think the very notion of a right to privacy is dangerous, because it implies that some "unnatural" rights should be accorded the same status as natural rights.
what I really want before wiping windows off my box is a throrough HW compatibility list
See the Hardware Notes page. This page is for 5.2.1 because 5.3 is still in beta, but you can get the latest page off of CVS or on the beta ISO.
While this page isn't thorough, it should meet most people's needs. Thoroughness would require a vastly larger document. For example, not every USB flash drive is listed, but 9999 out of the 10,000 available will work with FreeBSD out of the box.
If you have hardware that is not mentioned, then ask about it on a support forum.
Was he one of the exceptions I mentioned? No rule of thumb is ever 100% accurate, but my personal experience tells me that the more experienced the coder the more likely it is that their code will be readable. This is experience in coding, not mere longevity. My boss who was coding twenty years ago but hasn't coded in the last fifteen doesn't count.
The $25,000 RISC workstation is dead
But the RISC enterprise server is not. As long as you have those, it makes sense to have $3000 RISC workstations for the economies of single-vendor support. Especially when those workstations have twice the quality of a half priced Dell or HP workstation.
Easy solution. Just send a signal to the area's JumpShift(tm) booths and within a few minutes the entire mob will be incarcerated in the municipal stadium to be processed by the ARM.
Funny, I did the same thing with my last Intel based PC running FreeBSD. Drag over home directory from NFS. Done!
Of course not all of the application got copied over, nor did system-wide configurations. But it was the same with your Mac if you would be honest. Not every Mac app is installed to a specific user's desktop, and not every Mac configuration is user specific.
Well of course! You don't run before you learn to walk. You don't build the roof before you lay the foundation. While the basics have been around for over a decade, users still demand them. They're not going to accept an automobile that won't drive, no matter how advanced the emission control system is.
The 2204 election will be challenged in a court of law if Bush wins. The Democrats are already planning to do this.
I was at a party last night, and being in San Fransisco, it was assumed I was a loyal Kerry supporter. So they invited me to a fundraiser next week for a legal challenge fund. "For every dollar we raise, that's one more dollar we can use in the campaign instead of having to save for the challenge." This was the first I had ever heard of this fund, so I inquired more about it.
To many this fund may come as no surprise. But to a lot of us it's a shocking display of politics at its worst. Active fund raising parties are being held NOW for funds that will almost certainly be used in a challenge! It was made clear to me that a legal challenge WILL be issued if Bush wins the election, and it might even be issued before the polls eve close. Florida is the normal target state, but other states were mentioned as well.
p.s. I am not a Bush supporter. When I explained to the inviters that I was a Libertarian, they didn't care, because they assumed I was going to vote for Kerry anyway. When I explained further that I still wasn't going to vote for him, they started looking at me like something dead the cat drug in.
I know a few Quakers, and have even attended some meetings. While it is true that every good Quaker will do his or her best to do what they believe is right, they don't all necessarily act consistantly. Just like the rest of us :-)
Getting involved in politics is certainly not out of place. But seeking to impose a political opinion upon another is a different matter. And that's what voting is. You're voting on who will be Caesar, on who will wield the scepter of force. I just can't see my Quaker friends voting in any non-voluntary governmental system. This doesn't mean that they're anarchists, just that they have themselves rejected the use of force for offense or defense as a personal choice.
Maybe he bought into the pop slogan of "anyone but Bush", and is now convinced that voting is more important than his religious principles. A shame.
Actually my experience is that you can tell how junior a programmer is by their style. While their styles will vary greatly, old timers will almost uniformly prefer an easy-for-others-to-read style. There are of course exceptions. Some junior programmers have been exposed to professors/managers/reviewers who won't accept unreadable code, and some senior programmers got tagged as "heroes" and have never had to maintain someone elses code.
Offtopic question time. Prior to a year ago, gay marriage wasn't an issue. Then *boom* the SF Mayor did something controversial and the whole world is calling conservative americans evil nasty fscks for opposing gay marriages. My offtopic question(s) are:
Where were all the pro-gay-marriage politicians before last year? Where were the elected officials scrambling to be the first on the block to have gay marriages? Why is the US the only country being called a primitive throwback for not having gay marriage? What nations had gay marriage last year? This year?
In my opinion, what most people want is a responsive desktop, not necassiarly a fast one.
That's the Mac. I was using my friends powerbook the other week to build a Mac package for a piece of software. That interface is so nice and responsive. Even with all the eye candy. It sure seems powerful!
Then I started to build Qt. Sheesh! The thing's a pig! It took me three hours to build Qt on the powerbook when it normally takes me only a half hour on my PC.
Moral of the story: if you have a responsive interface you can get away with a slower system.
"Today on Slashdot, some guy's blog where he calls Bush an idiot..."
Then get your citizenship! Sheesh. We can talk about making citizenship easier, about eliminating obstacles in your way. Heck, I might even agree with you. But you're not going to convince me of your right to vote just because you live here. "It's not fair" isn't a good enough reason.
It doesn't matter if you're a resident. That's not the point. I am a resident in my apartment complex, but I don't get the right to vote on the running of the complex. I don't get to vote to determine who gets the landscaping contract this year.
I keep mine in my pocket. Why hang it around my neck? It's not jewelry!
It is a matter of equality. Remember when wemen, blacks, low income people etc. could not vote? Was it right? Why are non-citizens any worse?
Let's take this to the extreme (since giving the vote to non-citizens is already extreme). Why not give the vote to non-citizens that DO NOT reside in this country? Are they any worse than resident non-citizens? Of course they aren't. If this is a matter of equality, then nonresident citizens of other nations should be allowed to vote here. Or what about non-humans? Pretty soon we can have everyone vote in every nation's elections.
If you were a guest in a family's house would you demand a say in that family's finances? Hospitality does not extend that far in my book, even if those finances affect you as a guest. As a non-citizen resident, you are a guest in this nation. You should expect the common hospitality accorded by custom to guests, but you still have no say in how your hosts manage their affairs.
Maybe because becoming a US citizen means renouncing your original citizenship?
But you want to keep your original citizenship because you want to keep voting in your original country? That doesn't make sense. If you feel you have the right to vote here because you live here, then you should also feel you no longer have the right to vote there because you no longer live there.
I think it is now becoming conventional wisdom among the American Left that America politics as a whole has moved rightwards (more conservative) in the last 30 years.
I think I know where you're coming from, but it's an erroneous perception. The US electorate has become more mainstream, but the mainstream itself has moved to the left. Thus you see the far left moving towards the center, but you're not seeing the center and the right moving towards the left.
Every hear the adage "a liberal can become a conservative in twenty years without once changing an opinion? (or something like that). That doesn't mean that the country is moving to the right, but in the opposite direction. The *labels* may be shifting to the right but the actual policies are shifting to the left. The size and scope of government in ALL areas has increased steadily through all administrations regardless of whether they were labelled liberal or conservative. If Bush were living in the sixties with the exact same policies he would be considered a radical leftist. If Kennedy were living today with the exact same policies he would be considered a right wing nut.
The civil war was an "us versus them" war. Since the south had slavery and the north did not, people naturally assume the war was about slavery. But what if the south didn't have slavery? Would teachers then indoctrinate their students that the civil war was about cotton and mint juleps?
I just don't understand you motivation. Why would you want to vote yet NOT want to be a citizen. Is it simply because the citizenship test is too hard? You already get our public schooling. You already get our welfare (in many locales). Is seems the only thing you're missing by not being a citizen is the right to vote and the right to run for office. Will you next be arguing that you should be able to run for office since "I live here, I pay taxes, I respect local laws. Should not I have the right to run for city council?"
In other words, only vote Green when there is no chance for the Democrats to lose? I think my respect for the Green party just plummeted several notches.
Don't rewrite the GPL to suit how you wish it was, interpret it as it is and go from there
Not quite. Instead you need to interpret copyright law. The GPL always takes second place to copyright law because A) it is not a contract; B) it specifically references copyright law.
It comes down to a difference in opinion, as copyright law is completely silent on this issue, and no court has ruled one way or the other. The author the GPL FAQ has a vested interest in the broadest possible interpretation of the GPL, and frankly I would be stunned if they interpreted it any other way. But there opinion, no matter how well informed, is still an opinion. Larry Rosen has made some very good arguments for the opposite opinion.
GNU's arguments even admit that their interpretation is merely their opinion. They also base their argument on "shared address space", which seems to me to be a quite arbitrary boundary. Every system call to the kernel at least in part runs in a shared address space with the application, but no one in their right mind considers all applications to be derivative works of the kernel. Even without Linus' license exception that's a silly notion. Or what about debuggers? Does this mean it violates the GPL to attach a proprietary debugger to a GPL process?