I wouldn't say I retract my statement, but I'm willing to bet a court would agree with you over me. Some reasons that may not be, however, include a more qualified definition of 'person' under the New York penal code (more qualified, than, say, the New York uniform commercial code), that gives some ambiguity as to when 'person' applies to governmental entities and when it doesn't, and that the general rules of construction and application of penal law are not strictly construed, a fact opens the possibility that it could be seen as "promoting justice effecting the object of the law" to allow a trivial offense to pass by when it is political speech in the context of a huge political rally.
As for the child molestor comment, that seems a bit of strawman. As another poster has pointed out, that is libel; further, this guy wasn't attacking a private citizen, he was talking about a public figure, and we all know you can talk all sorts of awful about public figures. Further, from TFA, it sounds like this guy was avoiding writing obscene or otherwise inflammatory material. And if you came to my house and wrote Bush 2004, or whatever, on the sidewalk, I'd probably erase it with a hose, or write something like "anybody but" above it, or something like that, and wouldn't be an asshole about it. I would certainly hope that you wouldn't be arrested for it.
As for you not wanting to see your city's downtown covered in political speech, I guess we just disagree. I like seeing political speech, and I wish there were more of it all over the place, especially in public places. As for commercial speech: where do you live? I want to move there so I can live in a place that isn't plastered with commercial speech.
'his' referred to the parent poster, not the cyclist. sorry. anyways, it wasn't on someone's house, it didn't belong to 'someone else', it was on a public sidewalk in the context of a political convention.
John Kerry has explained his position on this, and it does involve a subtlety, but it is completely valid. He voted to authorize the president to use military force in Iraq. He did not vote to send troops into Iraq. The difference is significant, because the authority to use the military gives the president leverage in negotiations, in this case, in convincing Saddam to allow the inspectors unfettered access to whatever they needed. Prior to the passage of that resolution, Bush said war would be used as a last resort, only when absolutely necessary. We now know this was not true. Please note I am not giving Kerry a pass on this vote; if he trusted that this president would keep his word, he was a fool, and if voted because he was afraid for his political career, then he was a coward.
The top 25% of taxpayers pay 83% of the taxes
Look at you own numbers. The top 25% includes people making just over $56,000 a year. Let's talk instead about the top 1% of the population. By 2010, this bracket, which pays 34% of the taxes (your number), will have received over 50% of the tax cut, while the next 19%, which pays ~45% of the taxes (the brackets between the charts don't line up perfectly) only gets 18% of the tax cut. Granted, these numbers are from a group against the tax cuts, but its hard to find numbers from pro-tax cut organizations. If you have any opposing numbers, I would love to see them, but in the meantime the data tells me the rich are getting one hell of a deal.
Name five you've lost.
Other posters have covered this. Apparently I don't have the right to be in the president's line of sight unless I support him (or least don't overtly oppose him.)
Coalition to fight in Iraq included more countries this time than in '91.
This is a great argument, because it's a number that can be easily verified, and because it involves a bash on France. It's completely insignificant, though. The lack of support manifests itself not in how many countries decided to provide some token of material support, but in how unpopular that material support was in so many of those countries, and in all the others. We have the biggest, baddest military on the planet, and as such material support is only gravy compared to the respect and admiration of people around the globe. Without the latter, we fall to pieces when China, the EU, and India wake up and realize they don't need us anymore.
Again, name five [about women's rights]
I'll name some social issues in general, though not all are women's rights. Bush wants to remove a woman's right to decide with her doctor the best course of action for her own health. I'm not just talking about abortion, either. One of the methods by which this administration is trying to achieve the eventual overturning of Roe v. Wade is to begin recognizing a fetus as having rights under the law. A nice side effect is that a woman, under some proposed manifestations of this strategy, may not have the right to get certain medical care if it poses even a remote threat to her pregnancy. Bush is in favor of an amendment to the Constitution that imposes a particular religious view's concept of a proper marriage on the entire citizenry of the United States. Bush has given the public schools an unfunded mandate and brought the federal government's involvement in local schools to unprecedented levels (great move for a party whose platform used to include the dismantlement of the DOE). Bush has fostered a political environment that brands dissenters as Unamerican, as if the conservative right has a monopoly on patriotism... there are more, but this is getting long.
how many of the past presidents were in the midst of a recession when a major act of terrorism struck?
Not too many. You're right, he's gotten way too much flack for the economy. By the same token, he can't take nearly as much credit as he claims for the subsequent recovery.
but it wasn't his house. it was a public sidewalk outside a huge political convention.
how hypothetical a strawman can we construct? what if it were the moon? or the sun? what if was your young daughter's inner eyelid? how would you feel then?/p.
can they stop traffic? sure. hell, traffic is stopped everyday at five around here anyways. maybe the supreme court could mandate restrictions against SUVs, trucks, trailers, moving vans, and old people, just so the rest of us can keep moving. they've already gotten rid of bikes. (as an aside, i keep a bumper sticker on the back of my bike: "i'm not impeding traffic, i AM traffic.")
spray paint walls of public buildings? hmm. i dunno. that's a good one to ask. you know, hewn marble kept pristine and engraved with catchy slogans is a cultural marker more than a feature contributing to the intrinsic value of the building. were we sad about the berlin wall being covered in graffiti? i wasn't; in fact, a heavily painted section of that wall is hung up in a museum where i live. personally, i want my public buildings to be kept clean, but then, i don't have a reason to make them otherwise.
come into business and disrupt it? no, that's no good. stay outside of the business and disrupt it, you're more visible that way. as long as you are peaceable about it, you're fine in my book (the constitution! see how that works? i use a cliche, "fine in my book", and then i say what my book is, and it kind of means something! haha!) and i see you as a market force. let the market decide if it wants to ignore some protestors and give that place its business even if they do kill bunnies for fun, or whatever.
enter your home? not if we're also keeping the second amendment alive.
the bottom line is, legislation is getting out of control. fine, society needs order... but how much order? i think arresting a man for chalking a sidewalk outside a massive political rally is too much order. i think if someone yelled fire in a movie theater most people would ignore it until they smelled smoke (have you ever been in a room where the smoke detector goes off? nobody moves and when they do its to beat the living hell out of the blaring loud thing on the wall. the response to someone yelling 'fire' in a theater would be sort of the same.)
as for protecting the protestors: all that is fine. if a protest group asks for protection, by all means, give it to them. but you're really going out on a limb if you think this guy being arrested under time, place, and manner restrictions had anything to do with public safety. (an errant gust of wind may cause a sparrow to cough! arrest that man!)
(By the way, i read your entire post before calling you Orwellian.)
the legal definition of "corporation" is given here. it says nothing about a corporation's right to levy taxes or to pass legally binding ordinances. while a city shares many traits of a corporation, it is not a corporation proper, but is a "municipal corporation," and its status under the law is much different than that of other corporations. i'm sure there is a law in place to address what this guy did (in fact, you found it, it's the next in your list!), but this one ain't it. i said nothing about it being okay because it was public property, i just said this particular law doesn't apply.
as for my house and what gets chalked on it, therein lies the distinction. it's MY house. this man did what he did in public space. also, you bring up the definition of damage, so let's run with that: 1.loss of value? nope. it's just chalk, and it washes away. 2.impairment of usefulness? nope, unless it's some crazy kind of chalk i've never seen, you can still walk on it.
as for your point that this is an issue of enforcement, not necessarily letter of the law legality, makes me have two thoughts: first, why have such poorly written laws that their applicability is up to the personal judgement of the guy with the gun? isn't that what codified law is intended to avoid? and second, if a child playing hopscotch outside their home is given wide leeway, why isn't political speech outside of a political convention? it seems to me that this, of all places, is where if it were going to happen, it should happen.
S-145.30: it was public property so this statute doesn't apply. read it again.
10-117: fine, got him. but the language of this is so broad that it does, in fact, apply to children drawing hopscotch squares on the street, and it isn't apples and oranges, at least in the eyes of this statute. your beef at the end seems to be with the method of delivery, but these statutes say nothing about that... so it sounds like you want to legislate on the fly, based on a perceived but non-codified distinction. that's not right.
S 145.60: he used water soluble chalk, an indication that he was making an effort to do no damage whatsoever, and as such, this does not apply.
the first amendment is for protestors as the second amendment is for gun-rights advocates. sure, case law is well established, stating that free speech can be restricted on the basis of time, place, and manner, but should it be? the constituion is pretty straightforward about it: "no law... abridging the freedom of speech... or the right of the people peacably to assemble..." nothing there about time or place, and the only limit on manner is that it be 'peacably'. so, a time, place, and manner restriction sounds alot like an abridgement, and maybe it shouldn't be there.
we spent so much time in civics class learning about the constitution and how it has been passed down to today through amendments and court decisions, but we never really focused on the 'should haves' of those changes. saying something shouldn't be abridged is a strong statement, but it just gets glossed over as people are more and more willing to tolerate government interference because it serves them well in the short term.
you just compared water-soluble chalk, which can be removed with a hose in thirty seconds, to exterior latex paint, on the basis that they are both non-permanent. while we're getting technical about the meaning of the term 'non-permanent', we should go ahead and point out that laser engraving in diamond isn't permanent, either, as eventually the sun will explode in a great supernova and consume the earth.
also, there is a bit of a difference between writing racial epithets on a minority person's home in six foot letters (this is a threat, intended to intimidate), and writing temporary, profanity-free messages on a public sidewalk in the context of a huge political convention (this is a protest, intended to convey a political message).
finally, the example you give is that of an officer failing to act to help a victim of a violent crime, as if this were evidence that we would truly rather have an officer react than otherwise. while in the case of an assualt this is true, it misses the point because it is not generalizable to cases where the supposed offense is both nonviolent and political in nature. i would say that i want the threshold for arrest in this case to be significantly higher, to the point of deferring to free speech in the case of any doubt, than for violent crime.
this man should not have been arrested, and the protesters at the democratic convention should not have been caged. the level to which free speech is being corralled and curtailed in contemporary society is frightening, and i wish the commitment to the citizenry's right to loud and widespread nonviolent protest would transcend all political boundaries. it's a heritage we all share and all need to work to protect and reinvigorate.
Mod this flamebait if you need to... but you are such an asshat. You need a degree to become a paid, hired code monkey for a company. If you want to be creative, if you want to create your own product, your own company, or your own beautiful shining wonderfulness of whatever sort, you are more than free to do so. In fact, you should do it, you'll be a lot happier that way, and you'll be creating opportunities to employ your fellow men, etc, etc.
American society does reward self-starters who have good ideas and are able to put them into practice. It also rewards average people who are willing to keep their heads down and their nose to the grindstone and work for the above mentioned people. It also has a way of not rewarding self-aggrandizing do-nothings whose major complaint is that the world has somehow overlooked their shining brilliance. I think the system works fine.
Just a little note, the point of "Roger and Me" was to illustrate how a huge company like GM could become the economic foundation of an entire community, and could trigger the utter collapse of that community without paying any heed to the human costs. Whether the people Moore showed being evicted ever worked for GM or not is irrelevent; the imagery served to illustrate the human costs the entire community was forced to pay.
This is a nice statement. Thank you for your insight, for linking us to an editorial that doesn't even pretend to accurately represent the claims of the opposition, as well as for citing the actions of an extremist as though they were universally sanctioned by those bastard greens, and also for making some silly little statement about recycling.
Environmentalists are a broadbased, multipartisan, highly disjoint group of people who only share the belief that the environment has intrinsic value and should not be treated as a corporate liability. It's idiotic to claim the actions of any individual or individual group are representative of the ideology as a whole. Remember when the recent virus attacks were pinned on the Linux community? Didn't feel too good, did it?
Anyways, about environmentalists being tools: Who exactly am I being tooled by when I support dropping oil subsidies in favor of renewable energy sources? Where are the puppeteers holding my strings when I say I'd rather have a greenspace than a crappy stripmall that's going to fail in five years? And who's signing my check when I maintain that polluters ought to be responsible for the cost of cleaning (or even preventing) that pollution as a normal cost of their business? I'd rather not be called a tool by someone who quotes Fox News editorials, thanks.
The computer isn't given the benefit of looking at the actual code? What are you talking about? If the compiler were designed to read into code for things like while(true) loops, this would be solved?
Allright, tell me how to write the compiler to catch this:
int i=1; int x=new_x();//random int x>1 int y=new_y(x);//random int 0<y<x while(i%x != 0) { x=new_x();//random int x>1 y=new_y(x);//random int 0<y<x i=(x*i)+(x-y); } printf("halt");
Will halt ever print? Should I ask my computer? Maybe in a few years when processors are waaay faster and we have those fancy "while(true)"-proof compilers?
I said, "not all brains for all problems", meaning the point of impossibility could lie in the particular brain or in the particular problem. A better way to make the point would have been:
There exist programs such that a human can say the program would halt on some input, where a computer would not be able to determine whether the program would halt under some input.
But despite the awkward wording, the point, that there are problems humans can solve which computers are proven incapable of solving, still stands.
Dude, your brain can figure out if a program will halt on a given input (obviously not all brains for all problems, but point still stands.) A computer can't, and will never be able to with our current models. It's called the halting problem, look it up. There are many problems like this... computers are great tools but they aren't the holy grail of problem solving. Sorry.
Actually, there are theoretical reasons why it shouldn't be possible for a computer to break these things, at least quickly enough to be useful to spammers. That's why these things are being used.
It's not just a matter of taking the time to pop out the code, either. Non-industrial grade commercial OCR software right now pretty well sucks. It can look at images rendered in black and white above 300dpi and give you back about 90% readable text, provided you don't care about formatting and there are no other foreign entities in the scan field. And it's not like these systems are weekend warrior projects. It's an active field of research.
It takes a while for a computer to recognize visual patterns. OCR uses shortcuts. It makes assumptions about fonts used, about letter positions, about possible words, basically, it makes the assumption that the text is a real message laid out in a way where it wants to be read. So when the image is being purposefully formed to trick the system...
Example: the link in the parent. You can't hone in on the shapes of the letters by finding boundaries between colors, because the background has all the colors of the letters, and all the letters are different colors, so you have to spend time branching off course, realizing you made a mistake, and backtracking... you can't predict the positions of the letters because they're all staggered randomly, so you have to spend time parsing the image to find concentrations of color... you can't use dictionaries to make predictions, because they aren't words, they're just random sequences.
It definitely possible to eventually get a proper translation of the image, but after how long? How does that help spammers, which is the point?
With your document still up and running in Word, remove the floppy and replace with another, different floppy, maybe one with some important files on it.
"Save" (not "Save as..", just "Save") and see what happens.
You may not have to "mount" and "unmount" but it's not like these operations don't exist in Windows. The difference is that Windows will hide this operation from the user, much like "automount" tries to do on Linux. Another difference is that because the operation is hidden, users aren't aware it's an issue. I work in a campus lab, and just yesterday one of the profs did this exact sequence of steps and lost alot of work... oops.
Yeah, finally! You would have thought RedHat or IBM or AT&T or Novell or SOMEBODY would have stood up by now and said, "maybe these SCO people are being a little disorderly." It's always good that we can rely on the Germans to stand up for what's right.
No. What they're saying is that all the software they use that has been produced with the GPL in mind will not be compatible with the new clause in the 1.1 license. Which, yeah, sucks. But nobody has to throw anything out, nobody has to break the law. They just have to add a line of text to any splashscreens that thank other third parties without mentioning XFree86.
So the advertising clause stuff isn't a separate issue, it's the whole (minor and blown way out of proportion) issue. It's a bit of a burden, but in the end, it isn't a big deal. Just a line of text...
And what do we get from it? People are talking about forking the project! Banishing XFree86 software! There's no way that demand for an action like that stems directly and exclusively from this little license change; there has to be some other major contributing factor(s). Like I said before, I really don't know the details of all that, but I know there are already alternative x servers out there...
Anyways, rather than give us all this kruft about how the new license is dangerous in the eyes of the free, just say you think the software is bloated and ugly, and while it was okay to use while we didn't have to say thanks, now that we have to rewrite some splashes we'll move on. But now that we've noticed there's nobody ready to move to, we'll just bitch and hope you change your mind.
Okay, here's another example. I write the KillerAppIncredibleInterface that extends your KillerApp into widespread use in GUIland. As I am completely faithful to the terms of the GPL, which you have released KillerApp under, you have complete and full credit given to you in the source code, which I readily give to anyone who asks.
Unfortunately (for you), my KAII proves so popular that people wind up forgetting all about the underlying program. Every time my KAII starts up, I display a huge splashscreen that says Powered By Calambracky Goodness, and say nothing at all about the fact that I depend entirely on you. Sure, all the people "in the know" know it, but I mean, come on. Linux now rules the desktop, and all Joe User knows is the RPM he just installed gives him a pretty GUI with Calambrac written all over it. So, my brand gets built on your work. This is going to be a huge issue as Linux crosses into the mainstream; I think XFree86 is just getting ahead of the game.
I also think that you're misinterpreting the fundamental issue with this new license. "Is not compatible with the GPL" here means that a piece of software could meet the requirements of the GPL and not satisfy the 1.1 requirements. If it were the other issue, that is, BSD-ness of the license, then the previous XFree86 licenses would have to have been chucked out, as well. In this instance, it is strictly that distributed binaries have to give props out to the XFree86 team if they give props at all, which potentially means that alot of people have to edit their splashscreens. And as of right now, XFree isn't even releasing client side stuff under this license, so that's not even an issue.
Re:So they stick to the new license...
on
XFree86 4.4 Released
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
XFree86 isn't claiming GPL compatibility. They say so in their FAQ. GPL compatibility is beside the point.
The point is, "What constitutes 'free as in freedom'?" Is it only the GPL? I don't know, maybe I was so wrapped up in jamming on the idea of open and available source code that I missed the memo. I think the BSD licenses are free, and not weak. I think any license that says, here, take it... sounds pretty free. But then, I'm young, and haven't spent years thinking of clever names like "copyleft".
After reading the actual license in contention, you have to admit that what they are asking for is hardly an infringement on the core principles of free software, esp. if you were okay with their previous license. The annoying part extends a request for credit to binary distributions, as has long been requested in the case of source code distributions, and then only if you're already extending credit to someone else, but it in no way hinders any of the privileges afforded by other 'free' software.
I mean, this is what distributions are justifying their decision to exclude XFree86 software on? They don't want to add a line of text giving credit where it's due? Other posters have suggested that there may be some politics involved; it sounds a lot more plausible, though I don't know any of the details of all that. In the meantime though, let's get another SCO story, or talk about how much Microsoft sucks, or maybe rap about Taco Bell vs. Taco Bueno. This seems pretty weak in comparison.
Re:So they stick to the new license...
on
XFree86 4.4 Released
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
yeah, so here's what we have to thank the FSF and RMS for protecting us from:
Version 1.1 of XFree86 Project License.
Copyright (C) 1994-2004 The XFree86 Project, Inc.
All rights reserved.
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicence, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions, and the following disclaimer.
Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution, and in the same place and form as other copyright, license and disclaimer information.
The end-user documentation included with the redistribution, if any, must include the following acknowledgment: "This product includes software developed by The XFree86 Project, Inc (http://www.xfree86.org/) and its contributors", in the same place and form as other third-party acknowledgments. Alternately, this acknowledgment may appear in the software itself, in the same form and location as other such third-party acknowledgments.
Except as contained in this notice, the name of The XFree86 Project, Inc shall not be used in advertising or otherwise to promote the sale, use or other dealings in this Software without prior written authorization from The XFree86 Project, Inc.
THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED ``AS IS'' AND ANY EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE XFREE86 PROJECT, INC OR ITS CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
come on, this is the great threat to freedom? you have to include a line of text acknowldeging XFree86 where you already acknowledge other people? please. let's focus on something that matters.
Slashdot Mirror
it was public space, so in a sense, yes.
I wouldn't say I retract my statement, but I'm willing to bet a court would agree with you over me. Some reasons that may not be, however, include a more qualified definition of 'person' under the New York penal code (more qualified, than, say, the New York uniform commercial code), that gives some ambiguity as to when 'person' applies to governmental entities and when it doesn't, and that the general rules of construction and application of penal law are not strictly construed, a fact opens the possibility that it could be seen as "promoting justice effecting the object of the law" to allow a trivial offense to pass by when it is political speech in the context of a huge political rally.
As for the child molestor comment, that seems a bit of strawman. As another poster has pointed out, that is libel; further, this guy wasn't attacking a private citizen, he was talking about a public figure, and we all know you can talk all sorts of awful about public figures. Further, from TFA, it sounds like this guy was avoiding writing obscene or otherwise inflammatory material. And if you came to my house and wrote Bush 2004, or whatever, on the sidewalk, I'd probably erase it with a hose, or write something like "anybody but" above it, or something like that, and wouldn't be an asshole about it. I would certainly hope that you wouldn't be arrested for it.
As for you not wanting to see your city's downtown covered in political speech, I guess we just disagree. I like seeing political speech, and I wish there were more of it all over the place, especially in public places. As for commercial speech: where do you live? I want to move there so I can live in a place that isn't plastered with commercial speech.
'his' referred to the parent poster, not the cyclist. sorry. anyways, it wasn't on someone's house, it didn't belong to 'someone else', it was on a public sidewalk in the context of a political convention.
John Kerry would have
John Kerry has explained his position on this, and it does involve a subtlety, but it is completely valid. He voted to authorize the president to use military force in Iraq. He did not vote to send troops into Iraq. The difference is significant, because the authority to use the military gives the president leverage in negotiations, in this case, in convincing Saddam to allow the inspectors unfettered access to whatever they needed. Prior to the passage of that resolution, Bush said war would be used as a last resort, only when absolutely necessary. We now know this was not true. Please note I am not giving Kerry a pass on this vote; if he trusted that this president would keep his word, he was a fool, and if voted because he was afraid for his political career, then he was a coward.
The top 25% of taxpayers pay 83% of the taxes
Look at you own numbers. The top 25% includes people making just over $56,000 a year. Let's talk instead about the top 1% of the population. By 2010, this bracket, which pays 34% of the taxes (your number), will have received over 50% of the tax cut, while the next 19%, which pays ~45% of the taxes (the brackets between the charts don't line up perfectly) only gets 18% of the tax cut. Granted, these numbers are from a group against the tax cuts, but its hard to find numbers from pro-tax cut organizations. If you have any opposing numbers, I would love to see them, but in the meantime the data tells me the rich are getting one hell of a deal.
Name five you've lost.
Other posters have covered this. Apparently I don't have the right to be in the president's line of sight unless I support him (or least don't overtly oppose him.)
Coalition to fight in Iraq included more countries this time than in '91.
This is a great argument, because it's a number that can be easily verified, and because it involves a bash on France. It's completely insignificant, though. The lack of support manifests itself not in how many countries decided to provide some token of material support, but in how unpopular that material support was in so many of those countries, and in all the others. We have the biggest, baddest military on the planet, and as such material support is only gravy compared to the respect and admiration of people around the globe. Without the latter, we fall to pieces when China, the EU, and India wake up and realize they don't need us anymore.
Again, name five [about women's rights]
I'll name some social issues in general, though not all are women's rights. Bush wants to remove a woman's right to decide with her doctor the best course of action for her own health. I'm not just talking about abortion, either. One of the methods by which this administration is trying to achieve the eventual overturning of Roe v. Wade is to begin recognizing a fetus as having rights under the law. A nice side effect is that a woman, under some proposed manifestations of this strategy, may not have the right to get certain medical care if it poses even a remote threat to her pregnancy. Bush is in favor of an amendment to the Constitution that imposes a particular religious view's concept of a proper marriage on the entire citizenry of the United States. Bush has given the public schools an unfunded mandate and brought the federal government's involvement in local schools to unprecedented levels (great move for a party whose platform used to include the dismantlement of the DOE). Bush has fostered a political environment that brands dissenters as Unamerican, as if the conservative right has a monopoly on patriotism... there are more, but this is getting long.
how many of the past presidents were in the midst of a recession when a major act of terrorism struck?
Not too many. You're right, he's gotten way too much flack for the economy. By the same token, he can't take nearly as much credit as he claims for the subsequent recovery.
good post, man. good post.
but it wasn't his house. it was a public sidewalk outside a huge political convention.
how hypothetical a strawman can we construct? what if it were the moon? or the sun? what if was your young daughter's inner eyelid? how would you feel then?/p.
it's not in your face, dogg, it's under yo' feet!
To answer your questions:
can they stop traffic? sure. hell, traffic is stopped everyday at five around here anyways. maybe the supreme court could mandate restrictions against SUVs, trucks, trailers, moving vans, and old people, just so the rest of us can keep moving. they've already gotten rid of bikes. (as an aside, i keep a bumper sticker on the back of my bike: "i'm not impeding traffic, i AM traffic.")
spray paint walls of public buildings? hmm. i dunno. that's a good one to ask. you know, hewn marble kept pristine and engraved with catchy slogans is a cultural marker more than a feature contributing to the intrinsic value of the building. were we sad about the berlin wall being covered in graffiti? i wasn't; in fact, a heavily painted section of that wall is hung up in a museum where i live. personally, i want my public buildings to be kept clean, but then, i don't have a reason to make them otherwise.
come into business and disrupt it? no, that's no good. stay outside of the business and disrupt it, you're more visible that way. as long as you are peaceable about it, you're fine in my book (the constitution! see how that works? i use a cliche, "fine in my book", and then i say what my book is, and it kind of means something! haha!) and i see you as a market force. let the market decide if it wants to ignore some protestors and give that place its business even if they do kill bunnies for fun, or whatever.
enter your home? not if we're also keeping the second amendment alive.
the bottom line is, legislation is getting out of control. fine, society needs order... but how much order? i think arresting a man for chalking a sidewalk outside a massive political rally is too much order. i think if someone yelled fire in a movie theater most people would ignore it until they smelled smoke (have you ever been in a room where the smoke detector goes off? nobody moves and when they do its to beat the living hell out of the blaring loud thing on the wall. the response to someone yelling 'fire' in a theater would be sort of the same.)
as for protecting the protestors: all that is fine. if a protest group asks for protection, by all means, give it to them. but you're really going out on a limb if you think this guy being arrested under time, place, and manner restrictions had anything to do with public safety. (an errant gust of wind may cause a sparrow to cough! arrest that man!)
(By the way, i read your entire post before calling you Orwellian.)
the legal definition of "corporation" is given here. it says nothing about a corporation's right to levy taxes or to pass legally binding ordinances. while a city shares many traits of a corporation, it is not a corporation proper, but is a "municipal corporation," and its status under the law is much different than that of other corporations. i'm sure there is a law in place to address what this guy did (in fact, you found it, it's the next in your list!), but this one ain't it. i said nothing about it being okay because it was public property, i just said this particular law doesn't apply.
as for my house and what gets chalked on it, therein lies the distinction. it's MY house. this man did what he did in public space. also, you bring up the definition of damage, so let's run with that: 1.loss of value? nope. it's just chalk, and it washes away. 2.impairment of usefulness? nope, unless it's some crazy kind of chalk i've never seen, you can still walk on it.
as for your point that this is an issue of enforcement, not necessarily letter of the law legality, makes me have two thoughts: first, why have such poorly written laws that their applicability is up to the personal judgement of the guy with the gun? isn't that what codified law is intended to avoid? and second, if a child playing hopscotch outside their home is given wide leeway, why isn't political speech outside of a political convention? it seems to me that this, of all places, is where if it were going to happen, it should happen.
S-145.30: it was public property so this statute doesn't apply. read it again. 10-117: fine, got him. but the language of this is so broad that it does, in fact, apply to children drawing hopscotch squares on the street, and it isn't apples and oranges, at least in the eyes of this statute. your beef at the end seems to be with the method of delivery, but these statutes say nothing about that... so it sounds like you want to legislate on the fly, based on a perceived but non-codified distinction. that's not right. S 145.60: he used water soluble chalk, an indication that he was making an effort to do no damage whatsoever, and as such, this does not apply.
the first amendment is for protestors as the second amendment is for gun-rights advocates. sure, case law is well established, stating that free speech can be restricted on the basis of time, place, and manner, but should it be? the constituion is pretty straightforward about it: "no law... abridging the freedom of speech... or the right of the people peacably to assemble..." nothing there about time or place, and the only limit on manner is that it be 'peacably'. so, a time, place, and manner restriction sounds alot like an abridgement, and maybe it shouldn't be there.
we spent so much time in civics class learning about the constitution and how it has been passed down to today through amendments and court decisions, but we never really focused on the 'should haves' of those changes. saying something shouldn't be abridged is a strong statement, but it just gets glossed over as people are more and more willing to tolerate government interference because it serves them well in the short term.
you just compared water-soluble chalk, which can be removed with a hose in thirty seconds, to exterior latex paint, on the basis that they are both non-permanent. while we're getting technical about the meaning of the term 'non-permanent', we should go ahead and point out that laser engraving in diamond isn't permanent, either, as eventually the sun will explode in a great supernova and consume the earth.
also, there is a bit of a difference between writing racial epithets on a minority person's home in six foot letters (this is a threat, intended to intimidate), and writing temporary, profanity-free messages on a public sidewalk in the context of a huge political convention (this is a protest, intended to convey a political message).
finally, the example you give is that of an officer failing to act to help a victim of a violent crime, as if this were evidence that we would truly rather have an officer react than otherwise. while in the case of an assualt this is true, it misses the point because it is not generalizable to cases where the supposed offense is both nonviolent and political in nature. i would say that i want the threshold for arrest in this case to be significantly higher, to the point of deferring to free speech in the case of any doubt, than for violent crime.
this man should not have been arrested, and the protesters at the democratic convention should not have been caged. the level to which free speech is being corralled and curtailed in contemporary society is frightening, and i wish the commitment to the citizenry's right to loud and widespread nonviolent protest would transcend all political boundaries. it's a heritage we all share and all need to work to protect and reinvigorate.
Mod this flamebait if you need to... but you are such an asshat. You need a degree to become a paid, hired code monkey for a company. If you want to be creative, if you want to create your own product, your own company, or your own beautiful shining wonderfulness of whatever sort, you are more than free to do so. In fact, you should do it, you'll be a lot happier that way, and you'll be creating opportunities to employ your fellow men, etc, etc.
American society does reward self-starters who have good ideas and are able to put them into practice. It also rewards average people who are willing to keep their heads down and their nose to the grindstone and work for the above mentioned people. It also has a way of not rewarding self-aggrandizing do-nothings whose major complaint is that the world has somehow overlooked their shining brilliance. I think the system works fine.
Just a little note, the point of "Roger and Me" was to illustrate how a huge company like GM could become the economic foundation of an entire community, and could trigger the utter collapse of that community without paying any heed to the human costs. Whether the people Moore showed being evicted ever worked for GM or not is irrelevent; the imagery served to illustrate the human costs the entire community was forced to pay.
Environmentalists are a broadbased, multipartisan, highly disjoint group of people who only share the belief that the environment has intrinsic value and should not be treated as a corporate liability. It's idiotic to claim the actions of any individual or individual group are representative of the ideology as a whole. Remember when the recent virus attacks were pinned on the Linux community? Didn't feel too good, did it?
Anyways, about environmentalists being tools: Who exactly am I being tooled by when I support dropping oil subsidies in favor of renewable energy sources? Where are the puppeteers holding my strings when I say I'd rather have a greenspace than a crappy stripmall that's going to fail in five years? And who's signing my check when I maintain that polluters ought to be responsible for the cost of cleaning (or even preventing) that pollution as a normal cost of their business? I'd rather not be called a tool by someone who quotes Fox News editorials, thanks.
Allright, tell me how to write the compiler to catch this:
Will halt ever print? Should I ask my computer? Maybe in a few years when processors are waaay faster and we have those fancy "while(true)"-proof compilers?
There exist programs such that a human can say the program would halt on some input, where a computer would not be able to determine whether the program would halt under some input.
But despite the awkward wording, the point, that there are problems humans can solve which computers are proven incapable of solving, still stands.Dude, your brain can figure out if a program will halt on a given input (obviously not all brains for all problems, but point still stands.) A computer can't, and will never be able to with our current models. It's called the halting problem, look it up. There are many problems like this... computers are great tools but they aren't the holy grail of problem solving. Sorry.
It's not just a matter of taking the time to pop out the code, either. Non-industrial grade commercial OCR software right now pretty well sucks. It can look at images rendered in black and white above 300dpi and give you back about 90% readable text, provided you don't care about formatting and there are no other foreign entities in the scan field. And it's not like these systems are weekend warrior projects. It's an active field of research.
It takes a while for a computer to recognize visual patterns. OCR uses shortcuts. It makes assumptions about fonts used, about letter positions, about possible words, basically, it makes the assumption that the text is a real message laid out in a way where it wants to be read. So when the image is being purposefully formed to trick the system...
Example: the link in the parent. You can't hone in on the shapes of the letters by finding boundaries between colors, because the background has all the colors of the letters, and all the letters are different colors, so you have to spend time branching off course, realizing you made a mistake, and backtracking... you can't predict the positions of the letters because they're all staggered randomly, so you have to spend time parsing the image to find concentrations of color... you can't use dictionaries to make predictions, because they aren't words, they're just random sequences.
It definitely possible to eventually get a proper translation of the image, but after how long? How does that help spammers, which is the point?
The porn site workaround is genius, though...
- Insert a floppy into a Windows machine.
- Start up Word and type up whatever.
- "Save as..." to the floppy drive.
- With your document still up and running in Word, remove the floppy and replace with another, different floppy, maybe one with some important files on it.
- "Save" (not "Save as..", just "Save") and see what happens.
You may not have to "mount" and "unmount" but it's not like these operations don't exist in Windows. The difference is that Windows will hide this operation from the user, much like "automount" tries to do on Linux. Another difference is that because the operation is hidden, users aren't aware it's an issue. I work in a campus lab, and just yesterday one of the profs did this exact sequence of steps and lost alot of work... oops.Yeah, finally! You would have thought RedHat or IBM or AT&T or Novell or SOMEBODY would have stood up by now and said, "maybe these SCO people are being a little disorderly." It's always good that we can rely on the Germans to stand up for what's right.
So the advertising clause stuff isn't a separate issue, it's the whole (minor and blown way out of proportion) issue. It's a bit of a burden, but in the end, it isn't a big deal. Just a line of text...
And what do we get from it? People are talking about forking the project! Banishing XFree86 software! There's no way that demand for an action like that stems directly and exclusively from this little license change; there has to be some other major contributing factor(s). Like I said before, I really don't know the details of all that, but I know there are already alternative x servers out there...
Anyways, rather than give us all this kruft about how the new license is dangerous in the eyes of the free, just say you think the software is bloated and ugly, and while it was okay to use while we didn't have to say thanks, now that we have to rewrite some splashes we'll move on. But now that we've noticed there's nobody ready to move to, we'll just bitch and hope you change your mind.
Unfortunately (for you), my KAII proves so popular that people wind up forgetting all about the underlying program. Every time my KAII starts up, I display a huge splashscreen that says Powered By Calambracky Goodness, and say nothing at all about the fact that I depend entirely on you. Sure, all the people "in the know" know it, but I mean, come on. Linux now rules the desktop, and all Joe User knows is the RPM he just installed gives him a pretty GUI with Calambrac written all over it. So, my brand gets built on your work. This is going to be a huge issue as Linux crosses into the mainstream; I think XFree86 is just getting ahead of the game.
I also think that you're misinterpreting the fundamental issue with this new license. "Is not compatible with the GPL" here means that a piece of software could meet the requirements of the GPL and not satisfy the 1.1 requirements. If it were the other issue, that is, BSD-ness of the license, then the previous XFree86 licenses would have to have been chucked out, as well. In this instance, it is strictly that distributed binaries have to give props out to the XFree86 team if they give props at all, which potentially means that alot of people have to edit their splashscreens. And as of right now, XFree isn't even releasing client side stuff under this license, so that's not even an issue.
XFree86 isn't claiming GPL compatibility. They say so in their FAQ. GPL compatibility is beside the point.
The point is, "What constitutes 'free as in freedom'?" Is it only the GPL? I don't know, maybe I was so wrapped up in jamming on the idea of open and available source code that I missed the memo. I think the BSD licenses are free, and not weak. I think any license that says, here, take it... sounds pretty free. But then, I'm young, and haven't spent years thinking of clever names like "copyleft".
After reading the actual license in contention, you have to admit that what they are asking for is hardly an infringement on the core principles of free software, esp. if you were okay with their previous license. The annoying part extends a request for credit to binary distributions, as has long been requested in the case of source code distributions, and then only if you're already extending credit to someone else, but it in no way hinders any of the privileges afforded by other 'free' software.
I mean, this is what distributions are justifying their decision to exclude XFree86 software on? They don't want to add a line of text giving credit where it's due? Other posters have suggested that there may be some politics involved; it sounds a lot more plausible, though I don't know any of the details of all that. In the meantime though, let's get another SCO story, or talk about how much Microsoft sucks, or maybe rap about Taco Bell vs. Taco Bueno. This seems pretty weak in comparison.
Version 1.1 of XFree86 Project License.
Copyright (C) 1994-2004 The XFree86 Project, Inc.
All rights reserved.
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicence, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED ``AS IS'' AND ANY EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE XFREE86 PROJECT, INC OR ITS CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
come on, this is the great threat to freedom? you have to include a line of text acknowldeging XFree86 where you already acknowledge other people? please. let's focus on something that matters.