I'm going to offer a word of caution here. The Federal order doesn't mean they cannot prosecute, it just means resources are going to be directed away from prosecuting cases where the possession complies with state laws for medical use. Where this can and will bite you or your roommate (depending on if he is still with us or not), is when they come across some other violation and then pile this on top of it.
If I remember right, medical possession is less the 50 kilograms and less the 50 plants which is the lowest federal charge (that I can remember). But the federal prosecutor has the ability to determine the possession as a simple possession for personal use and waive criminal charges in favor of a civil penalty of up to a 10,000 dollar fine. The guidelines for personal use are controlled by the federal AG and should be somewhere on their website. Last I heard, all medical possession limits were under this personal use limits so you might not have been in as much trouble as you initially thought. However, if they want to be a dick to you for whatever reason, they can ignore that and go for all they can get.
This new promise not to prosecute is just that, a non-binding promise not backed by any laws and the rule still applies, if they want to be a dick to you, well, they can. Now I'm going to jump to conspiracies and this is only meant to offer a think about it scenario, I have no indication outside of cynicism that anything I suggest will actually happen. But suppose you were a medical Marijuana user who protested Obama's health care plans as either not being enough or going too far. Now suppose people were listening to you and you were gaining large amounts of support. Opps, now this promise can disappear because no law has been changed and you can effectivly be silenced. Suppose this outrage was over something else? Maybe something like the global warming treaty currently being made and set to be discussed in Copenhagen soon. Maybe it's the surrendering certain amounts of sovereignty to foreign governments or the payments to third world nations you do not like. Opps where is that promise now?
I guess the point I'm making is that you shouldn't let your guard down. Political bodies are not above prosecuting over politics. Things from tax audits to annoyances to discredit the opposition seem to be fair game in out modern political climate. Get yourself a safe with a combination lock and store your medical stuff in it so the cop needs a warrant to find it. Just do not get blazing obvious about it in case someone is being a dick and you get caught up in it. Only a change in federal law can protect you completely and I do not thing that will happen soon.
What makes you think it would have any impact on fuel consumption at all? I mean seriously, we do not have thermostatic regulators on cars that vary the work of the compressors. They simply charge to a certain amount, release once the pressure it there and the AC in the car runs. With the aerodynamics of modern cars, it's actually cheaper-more fuel efficient to keep the windows rolled up and run the AC instead of rolling them down.
Nothing in modern car technology suggests that there would be any fuel savings from a measure like this. The only benefit might be the seats not being hot when you get into a car. However, less need for AC only means that the venting controls will mix less or more fresh air across the diffuser/exchanger in order to maintain a comfortable temperature. It's not like in a house when the AC simply won't run as much.
And no, no one needs to travel into the future to know it wouldn't create any fuel savings. In fact, it's probably going to create a situation where more fuel is used with the creation and transport of the filtering material. But we already have technology like this in place with no noticeable fuel consumption improvements. Some of the more expensive luxury cars already place films like this on the windows and it's basically the same concept as extremely tinted windows which is pretty much outlawed in most states. The simplest cursory look would have already shown these lawmakers how futile their effort is in this regard. I suspect the regulation is either someone taking a payoff from a company attempting to profit from this or some gullible idiot in California government bought into the marketing hype, couldn't tell the difference between how cars and homes operate, and decided to push it in the same manner that Blind CEOs attempt to implement the more costly solutions that do not work because the marketing had shiny bells and whistles. And yes, I have seen CEOs and CIOs spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on software packages that do nothing but duplicate existing functionality with no benefit other then some sales presentation and a stake dinner the rep took him out for. I'm almost to the impression that the CA government are rejects considered too extreme for a Dilbert cartoon.
I would probably never bring the spirit up in a serious scientific sense unless it was an attempt to explain or understand the placebo effect with medical treatment and enter into the power of the mind or in some attempt to understand someone's actions. Both of those fall into the cross category of science and philosophy. I bring it up to show the working hypocrisy of some people but that's not a scientific enjoyment, it's just point to the pot calling the kettle black. You might bring it up even more and that's probably alright. There is a book called the "God part of the brain" that makes the case that our brains are sort of hardwired to believe in a god which delves into the scientific and philosophical aspect of this same subject. I don't know if it would interest you or not.
The people you describe end up doing the same things without consciously knowing it. They are supplanting the same philosophical questions and ideals with abiogeneses, evolution theory as a whole, the big bang and so on. Instead of calling it religion or philosophy, the claim it's science and undeniably true so they can avoid asking the question and simply state it's a certain way. Since there is no empirical evidence of either, they are exerting an enormous amount of faith in the unknown magical thinking of others who creatively constructed their own story to explain what they saw. You sort of need to baby these people because their findings of the false hood of their theories will crush them more so then someone finding out their god doesn't exist.
I'm often finding myself pointing out the hypocrisy people who attempt to slam someone over the spirit or other philosophical questions. You should see how militant they get over it when you simply point out that they are in essence doing the same things they criticism others over and they are generally doing it over the same topics. Well, you probably already have seen how they get. I'm not sure I can offer any advice on how to treat them without alienating yourself even more. One way might be to ask how it conflicts with the science. Here is a hint, even if your a strict creationist, your ideals will be in conflict with less then one percent of science and scientific theory as a whole. I work with some people who are extremely religion and swearing offends them, I work with some people who are pro something and statements opposite of theirs offends them, I worked with one guy who is a registered sex offender because his 18 year old girlfriend who just graduated high school when he was 22 turned out to be 16 when her parents found out she was pregnant so making fun of pedophiles was bad too. I just avoid the subjects when I'm around them. If the people your talking about are that bad, just avoid it around them and if it gets too bad, maybe tell them to knock it off. Perhaps you can say they are talking bad about your best friend or a family member when they make fun of others to boost their own egos and self worth.
Either way, it perfectly natural to wonder about things like that. I applaud your efforts at not abandoning something you feel strong about just to avoid confrontation. It's really sad that it has degenerated down to an us against them situation where we are freaks if we do not conform to the majority. It's not a one or the other, there is room for both in their own right.
Good, now your feeling better about your pathetic self and won't kill yourself today. Keep it going as long as you can. I'm here for you brother. I'm willing to read your insults and asshattery and your making shit up just so you can feel better about yourself just so you do not sink lower and harm yourself.
That's right, your a winner and everyone else is a looser. Keep saying that to yourself and you just might believe it one of these days.
Sure they can. But that doesn't mean that the loss the claim is in any way representative of the revenues they would have gained had their copyright not been infringed.
Your right but at the same time, because of the infringement, it is a real loss.
And if you go around raping and torturing defenseless grandmothers and then brag about it in public, then people are going to spit on you as you walk by. I just thought I'd drop that in, since we seem to be making purely hypothetical comments that nevertheless seem to suggest the other person might be engaged in wholly reprehensible activity.
OK, we can work with that. Suppose I make the case for why that behavior is proper. Surely worse things have happened. Eventually, some people will stop spitting and maybe start doing and the laws will get changed making it legal. If I keep those justifications to myself, then I will be prosecuted/persecuted without anything coming of my actions. I mean your missing the entire point. If there is actually a good reason for the behavior or is the law is immoral/unconscionable, then claiming so would require an explanation.
I did nothing of the sort. My point was that you can't morally justify the BSA's slanted and deceptive presentation of the numbers is morally justified by citing the legality of their accounting procedures. Now since that point, you have appear to have explained that you meant to use the terms "fair" and "justified" in a purely legal sense. That was, as I said, the clarification I wanted initially. If you want to go back that far, then it's a mystery to me why we're still having, this discussion.
Ok, so I didn't understand you the way you wanted. It actually is morally justified because the current laws claim someone is entitles to payment for each copy and distribution. Once that happens, the companies the BSA represents is owed that compensation. This has nothing to do with the fact that most of the pirate never would have purchased the product. Look at it this way, you sell apples along side the road. Ten people pass buy before you sell one apple. You have ten apples. Now, if 2 of those ten people steal an apple, then your out 2 apples for ever sale of one apple. You are owed the cost of those two apples just as you are owed the cost of the third apple which is purchased legitimately. It doesn't matter if the two who took the apples without paying would never have purchased them, they are gone the deed is done. Now do not get hung up on the differences between apples and copyright. For all intents and purposes, they are the same here because the law (including international law) creates a legal right as property that makes them the same as apples in this context.
Now you do not think that is moral or justified yet you have not explained why. Following the laws do not make the laws moral or justified, it's just if your going to act morally, then you need to follow the same rules as others until you can justify not doing so. IF you somehow think the laws aren't justified or moral, then make your case. What I said was nothing about the laws themselves but the environment they create. And in that environment, the accounting of losses based on pirated software is moral and justified just as much as it would be for the apple salesman who has apples stolen does. It doesn't matter that he wouldn't have sold the same volume of product, what matters is the volume is gone or in use and the law says he is entitles to compensation for it.
Every idea starts out as made up shit. But there's a big difference between shit that's just made up and is never processed any further, and shit that's made up, critically examined, compared with reality, revised as needed, and abandoned when it can't be made to conform to the known facts.
I'm not sure how that is very different then what happens everywhere. I mean the creation verses evolution argument isn't one of facts but ideology surrounding the facts. The entire young earth creationist movement is not exactly applied universally among all creationist yet they have seemed to work out about as many kinks in geology and so on as traditional science has. Either one or two of the worlds largest oil deposits were found by Young earth scientist using the young earth BS they cooked up to support their ideology. If they have a parallel process that seems just as effective, then by not examining it, you are basically not critically comparing it, not comparing it with reality, not revising the existing methodology or science, and not making the ideas conform to known facts. It seems that they are being rejected because it isn't what mainstream science wants it to be or because of a competing ideology attached to it.
But have we bred cows that can eat meat? This experiment greatly expanded the range of changes that can be conclusively proven to occur, and examining the frozen samples will allow us to examine the details of how those changes occurred.
No, not that I'm aware of. But they have bred cows and sheep that can eat grains and cereals that others will not eat or gain nutritional benefit from. I forget the name of the plant but it was considered poisonous to cattle and sheep several hundred years ago and now it's a drought staple because it needs very little water and will flourish in dried up grazing lands naturally.
He wasn't jumped for his belief in god, he was jumped for his odd comment about Darwin's way of thinking. Granted is was in response to a similar remark about creationists, but please don't pretend that he was just innocently stating a personal belief.
He was mixing facts for a personal belief. You see, seeing god everywhere isn't a bad thing- yet he made it out to be. That's the rubbish that made the first part of his post to be foolish and false. Here is why, science is about understanding the natural environment around us. Theism is philosophical and addresses the mind and spirit which also explains some of the deeper questions like why are we here, where did we come from and so on. Those are two entirely separate fields which do not speak of each other at all except for a small few pieces that this article didn't even remotely address. Even the creation verses evolution theories are bunk because we have no empirical evidence of either yet simple explanations from limited dead languages or interpretations of other evidence pieced together in order to create an ideology. And yes, we have never observes natural evolution to the point of speciation yet most creationist willingly accept the idea of evolution as in adaptations. In fact, if you critically think about the ideas of speciation, then you almost have to drop the conclusions presented by sites like Talk origins and others promoting the evolution over god crap.
Nothing in the article suggests anything about a god or not and it should have never been brought up. This whole thread was little more then people attempting to feel better about themselves by putting other down. I just stepped in and pointed to the hypocrisy or a vain attempt. You are who you are and if someone isn't happy about that, they need to change who they are, not attempt to put others down in order to feel better about themselves.
No, the fact is that your trolling and attempting to make more out of nothing. You mentioned that stating the execs from various organizations were prosecuted when Bush was president is praise, What facts were one sided there? None were asshat. You then attempted to make a mountain out of a mole hill with mentioning the prosecutor firings in order to deflect from the facts that Bush's SEC did go after people. If anyone is attempting to present biased information, it is you. Your simply trolling and can't even stay on topic to do so. Then after you have to jump around topics to make a non-existent point, you resort to name calling and talking about my sexuality or my mother. Your parent must be seriously proud of your mental prowls there. I mean seriously, do you have to resort to name calling or insults to my family just to make your point? It sounds to me like your grasping at things there really bad.
Perhaps this is a sign of deep problems you have within yourself and with your own life. If your life is so pathetic that you feel the need to put me down or put my mother down when you have never met either of us, then I guess I can allow you to raise your delusional self worth by doing so in order to stop you from looking at yourself really close and deciding the only proper thing to do is to commit suicide. SO go ahead and troll, insult whoever you want. If that's what it's going to take to make you feel better about yourself and not take your own life, then I will not object. But you should think about getting some professional help before you sink into the squallier of a life you have any further and actually hurt yourself. I say this because even the pathetic among us need a chance too. That chance is staring you in the face, you have the ability to not be pathetic and not need to put others down just so you can look in a mirror at yourself.
But you do extend logic past the empirical evidence which is the same as making shit up.
This E.coli experiment does nothing to show speciation or anything other then evolution on a micro-scale is possible. But hell, we have known that for centuries.
How you can jump and fault someone over a belief in god because of this is just inane. There is no logic behind it and you have made the first part of your post out to be false.
That isn't praise, it's the facts. Since when is stating the facts praise? I guess you were impressed or something and in your mind thought Bush deserved praise that you twisted tolling mind simply couldn't allow to happen.
But hey, when your retort consists of calling me gay, we know who has the problem. Like I said earlier, go troll somewhere else.
Your pretty ignorant indeed. It seems that your doing what your accusing me of. Your excusing Clinton in order to bash Bush when neither is relevant. You even seem to be perpetuating BS in order to make it stick. Here is a more accurate accounting of what happened At least I didn't praise Bush, like you are Clinton.
And yes, Clinton came into office with him and/or his friends being investigated for corruption. Well, Hillary and her gang anyways. It's no different and you attempting to make it so has no reflection on reality. Clinton acted on political reasons, Bush did to. It's their right as a sitting president to do so. That's why there are independent investigations and independent counsels that are used when investigating the administration.
Only to the extent that I don't believe you can morally justify the BSA's slanted and disingenuous loss estimations simply by pointing out that the numbers are supported by current law. If you want to have the "copyright infringement is immoral!/oh no it isn't!/oh yes it is!" argument, there are plenty other people on this board who'll be glad to oblige you. I'm interested here in the orthogonality of Law and Morality here.
Well, so far the only person to object to my comments on that was you and some asshat with mod points. Under the current system, as I have stated in the past, once something is pirated, the copyright/patent holder are at a loss which they can count as a loss.
I do not need your sanction for my actions to be moral. Neither yours, nor that of anyone else. That's my point.
And my point is that if you want me or anyone else to look at you as anything other then immoral or a thief, then you need to explain your actions. If you want to be a pirate and take other people's property without payment, good for you. Just do not expect sympathy for your actions when your entire premise is hidden.
Indeed. But the support of others does affect the morality of the action. As far as morality goes, whether or not something is "unconscionable" will always be a purely personal judgement. To believe otherwise is to abdicate your responsibility for right action
Sure it's going to be a personal judgment. The problem is that if you only justify it to yourself, then nothing gets changed and you can't claim a moral argument to anyone buy yourself. You spent quite a bit of time attempting to convince me a moral argument could be made but failed because you never presented one.
You mean because they weren't prosecuting illegal aliens? It's not more of a scandal then Clinton firing all the justice department prosecutors and replacing them when he first got in office.
I hope you realize that the Ds and Rs do not really decide who investigates what or who get prosecuted or not. Puting politics in this is rather short sighted and as far as the money trail goes, that's generally in shaping laws, not investigating violations of the laws.
However, if you know of a memo or something where an administration said do not prosecute or do not investigate this person or these charges or this corruption, I would really like to see it and it would lend more credit to your position. Until then, I guess we can just say that it was
Here is a few little facts to back up what's being said. In 1998, there were 50 SEC Commission Opinions & Orders. In 2003 there was 70. in 2004 and 2008 47 with 48 in 2007. in contrast, 2009 has seen only 25 as of October 2. If there are 16 actions by the end of the year as there was in the last quarter of 2008, that would bring the D total up to 41 and put them right on par with Bush and Clinton.
Face it, the only real difference here is publicity and you being made aware of more. I know you probably want to think your side it doing more or the other side was doing less in order to validate your political ideology or something but it just isn't true.
You do not get the house unless you buy it. What you get is the source code for the house. It's supposed to be availible on one of the linked websites. Instead of running
Why would he be thinking of Indiana. Indiana didn't pass the law, the law was simply purposed and shot down. For some reason, he actually thinks California will follow through on it.
There is a way to solve the issues without ever going to those points. A simple law that says no ISP can purposely limits traffic on their networks to speeds below what was advertised and sold to the customers sending or receiving the internet traffic.
That eliminates the entire idea of slowing others traffic down in expectancy of payments as well as slowing services down in order to promote their own services. Maybe add something about not being able to exclude communication protocols or tier them and make sure all speeds are accurately advertised and presented to the customer.
This will eliminate ISP's selling 1.5 meg bandwidth potential as 3 megs and slowing customers down when traffic gets heavy. It will also allow devoid Cable operators the opportunity to slow you tube and other sites like Hulu down in preference to selling channels on their outside systems. If they do not deliver their speeds, then people will demand an alternative.
It also allows companies to sell 3 meg services and offer 8 megs when the network is light on traffic. People will see that as getting more but not going below what they purchased.
And yet, when misunderstandings do occur, it always seems to be the other person's fault, doesn't it? There's never the least particle of responsibility attaches to your good self. Maybe your comunication skills are so massively above those of mortals that the difference, whilst finite, might as well be infinite for all practical purposes?
As I said in the part of my reply that you didn't copy, I did state on several occasions that following the rules/law was moral and that didn't make the rules moral. I do not see how when I explicitly stated something, you not getting it is my fault. Please explain that one to me.
Strictly speaking, you didn't. You said things like "morality means following the law". And since "means" is frequently used to mean "is the same thing as" then those of us with less than godlike communication skills might be forgiven thinking that was what you actually meant. Well, not by you, obviously. Just by normal people.
Following the law means moral. The law being the law does not mean moral. I'm not sure how clearer it can be. I have never linked following the law with the law being moral, that's nothing but a construct you attempted to inject. If you really want to get picky about what things mean, then lets start from the beginning where I said
You are morally bound to act lawfully until the law is unconscionable is a pretty easy term that follows along with what you just said. If you can find something convincingly unconscionable about the current law, then plead your case. If you cannot, then morally you would be wrong to violate the law.
Further on that same page, you will find where I said
I can go on with more if you would like. I'm pretty sure that was enough to allow anyone to understand what was being said.
In any event, that's still dodging the issue. You can say that we have a moral obligation to follow the law (something which I don't entirely concede) but that still doesn't tell us anything about the moral nature of the action that is the subject of the legislation. Passing a law against mouth-to-mouth resuscitation would not by itself make saving lives into an immoral act.
Again, I do not think your understanding the principle here. You are morally required to play by the same rules as everyone else or the legal rules that effect and govern you until those rules become somehow immoral/unconscionable. If you think mouth to mouth resuscitation is critical to saving lives and the law banning it is immoral, then it's up to you to state or justify why it's immoral when you violate the law or encourage someone else to do so. Laws can be immoral but if you do not know why they are, then you have no standing to make the claim. You are not the church lady from Saturday Night Live, and her arbitrary declarations of morality was a joke, not a serious declaration of morals.
Thank you. That, good sir, has been my point since the very beginning. I believe I've may have mentioned quite frequently. Sadly, I don't have your Olympian skills, and so I expect that your failure to notice this over the last five or six exchanges will turn out to be my fault as well. I'll try not to let it dent my self esteem too badly.
No, they weren't de-emphasized. They just weren't as publicized. The last administration went after the CEO's of Tyco, worldcom, enron, and several other companies for insider trading and the equivalent of embezzlement. If anything, they concentrated too much on the big fish and failed to see the smaller fish growing.
I think your generalizing too much. Financial fraud generally has a harsh sentencing because the very nature of trust that needs to be in place when getting into those positions. This isn't really the same as all white color crimes where some mid-level manager is embezzling a couple grand a month or takes liberal use of the company car, or makes loans to himself and never repays them. That would be included in white collar crimes. What happened here is that securities were exchanged in ways the law considered illegal undermining the credibility of our financial system as well as effect a larger amount of people. They generally treat that more seriously then getting busted for stealing office supplies. The government takes the positions that the financial institutions have to be honest and trustworthy.
I don't really see Stallman's term as being "give back" though. Give forward maybe but not back.
If I down load your program, I can make changes and run them without ever releasing the changes. I can also sell the changes and only give them to my customers. There is no guarantee that you would ever get them back an no obligation under the GPL to make them availible to you unless I chose to distribute the source separate from the binary. In fact, you may be forced to purchase your program with my changes from me just to get the changes back. Of course I can't control down stream users but if they do not distribute, that may be your only option.
You see, there has been a shift in some people from making sure who you give the code to has the same freedoms you had to a if you use my code, you have to give back. Unfortunately, giving back has just been a side effect of community participation and not the GPL. People who find themselves concerned with just the "giving back" are probably going to be better served by another license.
*sigh* You try to be nice to someone, meet them half way, and what do you get? I guess my fallible mortal brain just failed to wrap itself around the majestey of your perfect communication.
I never said my communications were perfect, however, I did state on several occasions that following the rules/law was moral and that didn't make the rules moral.
Well, quite. Dude, you're all over the place on this. Are you sure you've thought this through properly?
I'm not all over the place, your just not willing to acknowledge that water flows down hill and are attempting to treat the trip upstream with the same amount of effort downstream. The problem is that they are different and will require different amounts of force. You can float on the current down stream where you need to add something to go up.
Now, as we are going directions with that analogy, you must acknowledge the directions in which morality and the law coexist. Morality means following the law until it becomes immoral for you to do so. The law is neither moral or immoral on it's own. Seriously, a+b!=b+a as in the amount of effort to go downstream is the same as morality containing following the law, but the you have to applies effort to go upstream which is to say that law being moral is totally different.
Still doesn't work though. Suppose you one day visit a third world dictatorship, and while you are there El Presedente passes a law requiring you to report your friend to the police for something utterly arbitrary. Bearing in mind that El Prez often makes his critics disappear without trace, do you really want to run opinion polls and focus groups before you feel you can morally ignore this latest dictat?
You do not need to run opinion polls or focus groups. You are the one making the decisions whether to follow the law or not. You are the one who is deciding whether to report your friend or not. It all sits within your own morals and what you think is unconscionable or not. That doesn't mean you will not get into trouble if you fail to follow the law, it just means you have a choice to make based around your values. If your successful in justifying your position, then you may end up getting the law changed or not have it apply to you in certain circumstances. It's like the Quakers in WWII, they were against killing at all costs so while they were still drafted and served, as consciousness objectors, they had clerical jobs and did things where they wouldn't be in the position of life or death.
So I guess the question here is "justify to whom?"
First, you have to justify it to yourself. If you do no know why a law is immoral, then you have no moral right to not follow it. Second, you need to justify it to anyone you pretend to tell that the law is not moral. And if you violate the law and get caught, you have to justify it to your prosecutors.
Laws are immoral all the time. People justify breaking them all the time. From the underground rail road to the freedom fighters of the revolutionary war to the french resistance of WWII or the families hiding jews in their attic because they knew of the horrors waiting for them. They justified breaking the laws to themselves, to their families, and as history eventually showed, they justified their actions to the world even though it took a while and many people were prosecuted, killed, imprisoned, and had other bad things happen to them.
However, a lot of times, those justifications are utter rubbish. Dragging a man to his death behind a pickup truck just because he was black and they were bored isn't moral. Yet people did it. Following the law and not killing or assaulting someone is the moral thing to do. You have to justify why the law isn't moral to yourself then to others as your actions unfold.
Thanks for the information on windows for work groups. It's been a while and I was just getting into the behind the scenes part back then.
But yea, that was the point I was going for, software as a service isn't a new concept that didn't exist way back when the GPL was created. For whatever reason, it's a concern now when it wasn't then and at minimum, we should acknowledge that a change or shift in concerns with it happened between the GPLv2 and v3.
I did some checking, your basically right in that windows didn't get native winsock or TCP/IP support until 1994 with an add on that later became the win95 tcp stack.
The winsock package was more or less an application layer between the programs and network drivers like the TCP/IP driver. IBM and 3com produced third party NDIS drivers and winsock layers that allowed networking in dos as well as in windows for work groups before microsoft officially supported it.
However this still doesn't detract from the fact that computers were dialing in to slip accounts and ppp accounts long before the TCP/IP driver was implemented. I mean I remember getting in trouble in the mid to late 1980's for running the phone bill up dialing into BBS's across the country on my commodore 128. And that was basically software running on the server with just screen/keystroke info passing back and forth through a terminal program called common sense. In fact, Quantum Computer Services (later renames AOL) offered an online service for the commodore 64 that ran online games and so on as far back as 1984 IIRC and Dad had an account. It's about the only time I would openly admit to using Aol on purpose outside of getting my mail servers de-listed as spam.
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I'm going to offer a word of caution here. The Federal order doesn't mean they cannot prosecute, it just means resources are going to be directed away from prosecuting cases where the possession complies with state laws for medical use. Where this can and will bite you or your roommate (depending on if he is still with us or not), is when they come across some other violation and then pile this on top of it.
If I remember right, medical possession is less the 50 kilograms and less the 50 plants which is the lowest federal charge (that I can remember). But the federal prosecutor has the ability to determine the possession as a simple possession for personal use and waive criminal charges in favor of a civil penalty of up to a 10,000 dollar fine. The guidelines for personal use are controlled by the federal AG and should be somewhere on their website. Last I heard, all medical possession limits were under this personal use limits so you might not have been in as much trouble as you initially thought. However, if they want to be a dick to you for whatever reason, they can ignore that and go for all they can get.
This new promise not to prosecute is just that, a non-binding promise not backed by any laws and the rule still applies, if they want to be a dick to you, well, they can. Now I'm going to jump to conspiracies and this is only meant to offer a think about it scenario, I have no indication outside of cynicism that anything I suggest will actually happen. But suppose you were a medical Marijuana user who protested Obama's health care plans as either not being enough or going too far. Now suppose people were listening to you and you were gaining large amounts of support. Opps, now this promise can disappear because no law has been changed and you can effectivly be silenced. Suppose this outrage was over something else? Maybe something like the global warming treaty currently being made and set to be discussed in Copenhagen soon. Maybe it's the surrendering certain amounts of sovereignty to foreign governments or the payments to third world nations you do not like. Opps where is that promise now?
I guess the point I'm making is that you shouldn't let your guard down. Political bodies are not above prosecuting over politics. Things from tax audits to annoyances to discredit the opposition seem to be fair game in out modern political climate. Get yourself a safe with a combination lock and store your medical stuff in it so the cop needs a warrant to find it. Just do not get blazing obvious about it in case someone is being a dick and you get caught up in it. Only a change in federal law can protect you completely and I do not thing that will happen soon.
What makes you think it would have any impact on fuel consumption at all? I mean seriously, we do not have thermostatic regulators on cars that vary the work of the compressors. They simply charge to a certain amount, release once the pressure it there and the AC in the car runs. With the aerodynamics of modern cars, it's actually cheaper-more fuel efficient to keep the windows rolled up and run the AC instead of rolling them down.
Nothing in modern car technology suggests that there would be any fuel savings from a measure like this. The only benefit might be the seats not being hot when you get into a car. However, less need for AC only means that the venting controls will mix less or more fresh air across the diffuser/exchanger in order to maintain a comfortable temperature. It's not like in a house when the AC simply won't run as much.
And no, no one needs to travel into the future to know it wouldn't create any fuel savings. In fact, it's probably going to create a situation where more fuel is used with the creation and transport of the filtering material. But we already have technology like this in place with no noticeable fuel consumption improvements. Some of the more expensive luxury cars already place films like this on the windows and it's basically the same concept as extremely tinted windows which is pretty much outlawed in most states. The simplest cursory look would have already shown these lawmakers how futile their effort is in this regard. I suspect the regulation is either someone taking a payoff from a company attempting to profit from this or some gullible idiot in California government bought into the marketing hype, couldn't tell the difference between how cars and homes operate, and decided to push it in the same manner that Blind CEOs attempt to implement the more costly solutions that do not work because the marketing had shiny bells and whistles. And yes, I have seen CEOs and CIOs spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on software packages that do nothing but duplicate existing functionality with no benefit other then some sales presentation and a stake dinner the rep took him out for. I'm almost to the impression that the CA government are rejects considered too extreme for a Dilbert cartoon.
I would probably never bring the spirit up in a serious scientific sense unless it was an attempt to explain or understand the placebo effect with medical treatment and enter into the power of the mind or in some attempt to understand someone's actions. Both of those fall into the cross category of science and philosophy. I bring it up to show the working hypocrisy of some people but that's not a scientific enjoyment, it's just point to the pot calling the kettle black. You might bring it up even more and that's probably alright. There is a book called the "God part of the brain" that makes the case that our brains are sort of hardwired to believe in a god which delves into the scientific and philosophical aspect of this same subject. I don't know if it would interest you or not.
The people you describe end up doing the same things without consciously knowing it. They are supplanting the same philosophical questions and ideals with abiogeneses, evolution theory as a whole, the big bang and so on. Instead of calling it religion or philosophy, the claim it's science and undeniably true so they can avoid asking the question and simply state it's a certain way. Since there is no empirical evidence of either, they are exerting an enormous amount of faith in the unknown magical thinking of others who creatively constructed their own story to explain what they saw. You sort of need to baby these people because their findings of the false hood of their theories will crush them more so then someone finding out their god doesn't exist.
I'm often finding myself pointing out the hypocrisy people who attempt to slam someone over the spirit or other philosophical questions. You should see how militant they get over it when you simply point out that they are in essence doing the same things they criticism others over and they are generally doing it over the same topics. Well, you probably already have seen how they get. I'm not sure I can offer any advice on how to treat them without alienating yourself even more. One way might be to ask how it conflicts with the science. Here is a hint, even if your a strict creationist, your ideals will be in conflict with less then one percent of science and scientific theory as a whole. I work with some people who are extremely religion and swearing offends them, I work with some people who are pro something and statements opposite of theirs offends them, I worked with one guy who is a registered sex offender because his 18 year old girlfriend who just graduated high school when he was 22 turned out to be 16 when her parents found out she was pregnant so making fun of pedophiles was bad too. I just avoid the subjects when I'm around them. If the people your talking about are that bad, just avoid it around them and if it gets too bad, maybe tell them to knock it off. Perhaps you can say they are talking bad about your best friend or a family member when they make fun of others to boost their own egos and self worth.
Either way, it perfectly natural to wonder about things like that. I applaud your efforts at not abandoning something you feel strong about just to avoid confrontation. It's really sad that it has degenerated down to an us against them situation where we are freaks if we do not conform to the majority. It's not a one or the other, there is room for both in their own right.
Good, now your feeling better about your pathetic self and won't kill yourself today. Keep it going as long as you can. I'm here for you brother. I'm willing to read your insults and asshattery and your making shit up just so you can feel better about yourself just so you do not sink lower and harm yourself.
That's right, your a winner and everyone else is a looser. Keep saying that to yourself and you just might believe it one of these days.
Your right but at the same time, because of the infringement, it is a real loss.
OK, we can work with that. Suppose I make the case for why that behavior is proper. Surely worse things have happened. Eventually, some people will stop spitting and maybe start doing and the laws will get changed making it legal. If I keep those justifications to myself, then I will be prosecuted/persecuted without anything coming of my actions. I mean your missing the entire point. If there is actually a good reason for the behavior or is the law is immoral/unconscionable, then claiming so would require an explanation.
Ok, so I didn't understand you the way you wanted. It actually is morally justified because the current laws claim someone is entitles to payment for each copy and distribution. Once that happens, the companies the BSA represents is owed that compensation. This has nothing to do with the fact that most of the pirate never would have purchased the product. Look at it this way, you sell apples along side the road. Ten people pass buy before you sell one apple. You have ten apples. Now, if 2 of those ten people steal an apple, then your out 2 apples for ever sale of one apple. You are owed the cost of those two apples just as you are owed the cost of the third apple which is purchased legitimately. It doesn't matter if the two who took the apples without paying would never have purchased them, they are gone the deed is done. Now do not get hung up on the differences between apples and copyright. For all intents and purposes, they are the same here because the law (including international law) creates a legal right as property that makes them the same as apples in this context.
Now you do not think that is moral or justified yet you have not explained why. Following the laws do not make the laws moral or justified, it's just if your going to act morally, then you need to follow the same rules as others until you can justify not doing so. IF you somehow think the laws aren't justified or moral, then make your case. What I said was nothing about the laws themselves but the environment they create. And in that environment, the accounting of losses based on pirated software is moral and justified just as much as it would be for the apple salesman who has apples stolen does. It doesn't matter that he wouldn't have sold the same volume of product, what matters is the volume is gone or in use and the law says he is entitles to compensation for it.
I'm not sure how that is very different then what happens everywhere. I mean the creation verses evolution argument isn't one of facts but ideology surrounding the facts. The entire young earth creationist movement is not exactly applied universally among all creationist yet they have seemed to work out about as many kinks in geology and so on as traditional science has. Either one or two of the worlds largest oil deposits were found by Young earth scientist using the young earth BS they cooked up to support their ideology. If they have a parallel process that seems just as effective, then by not examining it, you are basically not critically comparing it, not comparing it with reality, not revising the existing methodology or science, and not making the ideas conform to known facts. It seems that they are being rejected because it isn't what mainstream science wants it to be or because of a competing ideology attached to it.
No, not that I'm aware of. But they have bred cows and sheep that can eat grains and cereals that others will not eat or gain nutritional benefit from. I forget the name of the plant but it was considered poisonous to cattle and sheep several hundred years ago and now it's a drought staple because it needs very little water and will flourish in dried up grazing lands naturally.
He was mixing facts for a personal belief. You see, seeing god everywhere isn't a bad thing- yet he made it out to be. That's the rubbish that made the first part of his post to be foolish and false. Here is why, science is about understanding the natural environment around us. Theism is philosophical and addresses the mind and spirit which also explains some of the deeper questions like why are we here, where did we come from and so on. Those are two entirely separate fields which do not speak of each other at all except for a small few pieces that this article didn't even remotely address. Even the creation verses evolution theories are bunk because we have no empirical evidence of either yet simple explanations from limited dead languages or interpretations of other evidence pieced together in order to create an ideology. And yes, we have never observes natural evolution to the point of speciation yet most creationist willingly accept the idea of evolution as in adaptations. In fact, if you critically think about the ideas of speciation, then you almost have to drop the conclusions presented by sites like Talk origins and others promoting the evolution over god crap.
Nothing in the article suggests anything about a god or not and it should have never been brought up. This whole thread was little more then people attempting to feel better about themselves by putting other down. I just stepped in and pointed to the hypocrisy or a vain attempt. You are who you are and if someone isn't happy about that, they need to change who they are, not attempt to put others down in order to feel better about themselves.
No, the fact is that your trolling and attempting to make more out of nothing. You mentioned that stating the execs from various organizations were prosecuted when Bush was president is praise, What facts were one sided there? None were asshat. You then attempted to make a mountain out of a mole hill with mentioning the prosecutor firings in order to deflect from the facts that Bush's SEC did go after people. If anyone is attempting to present biased information, it is you. Your simply trolling and can't even stay on topic to do so. Then after you have to jump around topics to make a non-existent point, you resort to name calling and talking about my sexuality or my mother. Your parent must be seriously proud of your mental prowls there. I mean seriously, do you have to resort to name calling or insults to my family just to make your point? It sounds to me like your grasping at things there really bad.
Perhaps this is a sign of deep problems you have within yourself and with your own life. If your life is so pathetic that you feel the need to put me down or put my mother down when you have never met either of us, then I guess I can allow you to raise your delusional self worth by doing so in order to stop you from looking at yourself really close and deciding the only proper thing to do is to commit suicide. SO go ahead and troll, insult whoever you want. If that's what it's going to take to make you feel better about yourself and not take your own life, then I will not object. But you should think about getting some professional help before you sink into the squallier of a life you have any further and actually hurt yourself. I say this because even the pathetic among us need a chance too. That chance is staring you in the face, you have the ability to not be pathetic and not need to put others down just so you can look in a mirror at yourself.
But you do extend logic past the empirical evidence which is the same as making shit up.
This E.coli experiment does nothing to show speciation or anything other then evolution on a micro-scale is possible. But hell, we have known that for centuries.
How you can jump and fault someone over a belief in god because of this is just inane. There is no logic behind it and you have made the first part of your post out to be false.
That isn't praise, it's the facts. Since when is stating the facts praise? I guess you were impressed or something and in your mind thought Bush deserved praise that you twisted tolling mind simply couldn't allow to happen.
But hey, when your retort consists of calling me gay, we know who has the problem. Like I said earlier, go troll somewhere else.
At the same place you falsely accused me of praising Bush. Now go troll somewhere else idiot.
Your pretty ignorant indeed. It seems that your doing what your accusing me of. Your excusing Clinton in order to bash Bush when neither is relevant. You even seem to be perpetuating BS in order to make it stick. Here is a more accurate accounting of what happened At least I didn't praise Bush, like you are Clinton.
And yes, Clinton came into office with him and/or his friends being investigated for corruption. Well, Hillary and her gang anyways. It's no different and you attempting to make it so has no reflection on reality. Clinton acted on political reasons, Bush did to. It's their right as a sitting president to do so. That's why there are independent investigations and independent counsels that are used when investigating the administration.
Well, so far the only person to object to my comments on that was you and some asshat with mod points. Under the current system, as I have stated in the past, once something is pirated, the copyright/patent holder are at a loss which they can count as a loss.
And my point is that if you want me or anyone else to look at you as anything other then immoral or a thief, then you need to explain your actions. If you want to be a pirate and take other people's property without payment, good for you. Just do not expect sympathy for your actions when your entire premise is hidden.
Sure it's going to be a personal judgment. The problem is that if you only justify it to yourself, then nothing gets changed and you can't claim a moral argument to anyone buy yourself. You spent quite a bit of time attempting to convince me a moral argument could be made but failed because you never presented one.
You mean because they weren't prosecuting illegal aliens? It's not more of a scandal then Clinton firing all the justice department prosecutors and replacing them when he first got in office.
I hope you realize that the Ds and Rs do not really decide who investigates what or who get prosecuted or not. Puting politics in this is rather short sighted and as far as the money trail goes, that's generally in shaping laws, not investigating violations of the laws.
However, if you know of a memo or something where an administration said do not prosecute or do not investigate this person or these charges or this corruption, I would really like to see it and it would lend more credit to your position. Until then, I guess we can just say that it was
Here is a few little facts to back up what's being said. In 1998, there were 50 SEC
Commission Opinions & Orders. In 2003 there was 70. in 2004 and 2008 47 with 48 in 2007. in contrast, 2009 has seen only 25 as of October 2. If there are 16 actions by the end of the year as there was in the last quarter of 2008, that would bring the D total up to 41 and put them right on par with Bush and Clinton.
Face it, the only real difference here is publicity and you being made aware of more. I know you probably want to think your side it doing more or the other side was doing less in order to validate your political ideology or something but it just isn't true.
You do not get the house unless you buy it. What you get is the source code for the house. It's supposed to be availible on one of the linked websites. Instead of running
You will have to run something more like
Why would he be thinking of Indiana. Indiana didn't pass the law, the law was simply purposed and shot down. For some reason, he actually thinks California will follow through on it.
There is a way to solve the issues without ever going to those points. A simple law that says no ISP can purposely limits traffic on their networks to speeds below what was advertised and sold to the customers sending or receiving the internet traffic.
That eliminates the entire idea of slowing others traffic down in expectancy of payments as well as slowing services down in order to promote their own services. Maybe add something about not being able to exclude communication protocols or tier them and make sure all speeds are accurately advertised and presented to the customer.
This will eliminate ISP's selling 1.5 meg bandwidth potential as 3 megs and slowing customers down when traffic gets heavy. It will also allow devoid Cable operators the opportunity to slow you tube and other sites like Hulu down in preference to selling channels on their outside systems. If they do not deliver their speeds, then people will demand an alternative.
It also allows companies to sell 3 meg services and offer 8 megs when the network is light on traffic. People will see that as getting more but not going below what they purchased.
As I said in the part of my reply that you didn't copy, I did state on several occasions that following the rules/law was moral and that didn't make the rules moral. I do not see how when I explicitly stated something, you not getting it is my fault. Please explain that one to me.
Following the law means moral. The law being the law does not mean moral. I'm not sure how clearer it can be. I have never linked following the law with the law being moral, that's nothing but a construct you attempted to inject. If you really want to get picky about what things mean, then lets start from the beginning where I said
No, they weren't de-emphasized. They just weren't as publicized. The last administration went after the CEO's of Tyco, worldcom, enron, and several other companies for insider trading and the equivalent of embezzlement. If anything, they concentrated too much on the big fish and failed to see the smaller fish growing.
I think your generalizing too much. Financial fraud generally has a harsh sentencing because the very nature of trust that needs to be in place when getting into those positions. This isn't really the same as all white color crimes where some mid-level manager is embezzling a couple grand a month or takes liberal use of the company car, or makes loans to himself and never repays them. That would be included in white collar crimes. What happened here is that securities were exchanged in ways the law considered illegal undermining the credibility of our financial system as well as effect a larger amount of people. They generally treat that more seriously then getting busted for stealing office supplies. The government takes the positions that the financial institutions have to be honest and trustworthy.
Perhaps it wasn't known until later and after the fact. A lot of laws that are broken do not get discovered until well after the fact.
I don't really see Stallman's term as being "give back" though. Give forward maybe but not back.
If I down load your program, I can make changes and run them without ever releasing the changes. I can also sell the changes and only give them to my customers. There is no guarantee that you would ever get them back an no obligation under the GPL to make them availible to you unless I chose to distribute the source separate from the binary. In fact, you may be forced to purchase your program with my changes from me just to get the changes back. Of course I can't control down stream users but if they do not distribute, that may be your only option.
You see, there has been a shift in some people from making sure who you give the code to has the same freedoms you had to a if you use my code, you have to give back. Unfortunately, giving back has just been a side effect of community participation and not the GPL. People who find themselves concerned with just the "giving back" are probably going to be better served by another license.
I never said my communications were perfect, however, I did state on several occasions that following the rules/law was moral and that didn't make the rules moral.
I'm not all over the place, your just not willing to acknowledge that water flows down hill and are attempting to treat the trip upstream with the same amount of effort downstream. The problem is that they are different and will require different amounts of force. You can float on the current down stream where you need to add something to go up.
Now, as we are going directions with that analogy, you must acknowledge the directions in which morality and the law coexist. Morality means following the law until it becomes immoral for you to do so. The law is neither moral or immoral on it's own. Seriously, a+b!=b+a as in the amount of effort to go downstream is the same as morality containing following the law, but the you have to applies effort to go upstream which is to say that law being moral is totally different.
You do not need to run opinion polls or focus groups. You are the one making the decisions whether to follow the law or not. You are the one who is deciding whether to report your friend or not. It all sits within your own morals and what you think is unconscionable or not. That doesn't mean you will not get into trouble if you fail to follow the law, it just means you have a choice to make based around your values. If your successful in justifying your position, then you may end up getting the law changed or not have it apply to you in certain circumstances. It's like the Quakers in WWII, they were against killing at all costs so while they were still drafted and served, as consciousness objectors, they had clerical jobs and did things where they wouldn't be in the position of life or death.
First, you have to justify it to yourself. If you do no know why a law is immoral, then you have no moral right to not follow it. Second, you need to justify it to anyone you pretend to tell that the law is not moral. And if you violate the law and get caught, you have to justify it to your prosecutors.
Laws are immoral all the time. People justify breaking them all the time. From the underground rail road to the freedom fighters of the revolutionary war to the french resistance of WWII or the families hiding jews in their attic because they knew of the horrors waiting for them. They justified breaking the laws to themselves, to their families, and as history eventually showed, they justified their actions to the world even though it took a while and many people were prosecuted, killed, imprisoned, and had other bad things happen to them.
However, a lot of times, those justifications are utter rubbish. Dragging a man to his death behind a pickup truck just because he was black and they were bored isn't moral. Yet people did it. Following the law and not killing or assaulting someone is the moral thing to do. You have to justify why the law isn't moral to yourself then to others as your actions unfold.
Thanks for the information on windows for work groups. It's been a while and I was just getting into the behind the scenes part back then.
But yea, that was the point I was going for, software as a service isn't a new concept that didn't exist way back when the GPL was created. For whatever reason, it's a concern now when it wasn't then and at minimum, we should acknowledge that a change or shift in concerns with it happened between the GPLv2 and v3.
I did some checking, your basically right in that windows didn't get native winsock or TCP/IP support until 1994 with an add on that later became the win95 tcp stack.
The winsock package was more or less an application layer between the programs and network drivers like the TCP/IP driver. IBM and 3com produced third party NDIS drivers and winsock layers that allowed networking in dos as well as in windows for work groups before microsoft officially supported it.
However this still doesn't detract from the fact that computers were dialing in to slip accounts and ppp accounts long before the TCP/IP driver was implemented. I mean I remember getting in trouble in the mid to late 1980's for running the phone bill up dialing into BBS's across the country on my commodore 128. And that was basically software running on the server with just screen/keystroke info passing back and forth through a terminal program called common sense. In fact, Quantum Computer Services (later renames AOL) offered an online service for the commodore 64 that ran online games and so on as far back as 1984 IIRC and Dad had an account. It's about the only time I would openly admit to using Aol on purpose outside of getting my mail servers de-listed as spam.