LiveCDs are lies. For example, every Ubuntu live CD in the past 3 years has worked with my wireless card on my laptop. However, every single version since then has not worked with my wireless card once installed to the HDD.
After 3 years of being on #ubuntu on Freenode and getting tons of help that yielded no positive results, but a ton of confused supporters, I gave up.
You tell me why something works with the live CD, but the second I click "install to HDD" it doesn't work anymore. It's ridiculous.
That's not really true, and it depends on what side you're on. For example, the US didn't grant copyright to works originating in foreign countries until it joined the Berne Convention in, I think, 1989. Then it did, and also extended copyright retroactively to foreign works through the URAA. Thus, through international law, if you're a "content owner," when the US adopted the international framework, the laws became stronger.
On the other hand, the public's right to use the expressions as they wish became weaker.
So, as I said, it depends on what side of the law you're on.
I'm working on a letter to them pointing out that I'd been planning on buying an iPod Touch until I heard about this, but now I'm looking for alternative media players. I may just settle with my laptop, since it had great battery life and I've already got a player that works for when I need to be really portable.
Well, not to do insinuate anything but merely point out the pointlessness of that argument: you might say that a country which has not illegalized murder is more free than the US, but that doesn't mean the country with legal murder is better. In fact, you might say the US citizen is more free, because he doesn't have to worry about someone murdering him with impunity.
It should be as easy to buy judges as it is to buy congressmen.
Federal judges have life tenure unless they do something really stupid (like accept bribes). They have no need for election money (unlike Congress critters), so I think it's harder to bribe federal judges.
Also, what federal judges do is extremely academic. Sure, they might be able to somehow hide their bribery in cerebral language, but I get the feeling from reading their writings that most of them are interested in treating the cases before them with a high level of scholarship.
Basically, I'm saying that I trust (federal) judges before I trust any other politician. Hell, I'm not even sure I'd consider federal judges politicians since none of them have to run for office. Wikipedia (bastion of accuracy that it is) pretty much doesn't, and I agree.
Ignoring Schon's point that the current state of Canadian law is that even uploading is permitted (or the respondent to Schon's comment above), any time you are using a torrent, you are uploading, not just when you're completed the download.
This is why torrent "downloaders" have gotten notices while Kazaa downloaders haven't (only Kazaa uploaders have gotten the notices, I believe).
If you don't win whilst being yourself, then you have lost!
I agree, if you don't win, then you have lost. That's sort of a tautology.
Let's try four combinations: (1) win while being yourself: win, obviously (2) lose while being not-yourself: lose, obviously (3) lose while being yourself: lose, unless your ultimate goal is to accomplish remaining-the-same (4) win while being not-yourself: win, unless your ultimate goal is to accomplish remaining-the-same
Now, if you meant that victory is nullified by the non-yourself-ness, then I disagree. I believe a balancing test is more effective here: if you have two goals, A and B, which are (practically) mutually exclusive, you must choose to accomplish one or the other, or accomplish neither.
Beyond that, if Stallman's self-ness is defined by how he dresses, well, doesn't that make him Paris Hilton? Humans are defined by what they value and how they think, not how they dress (although businessmen use appearance as a criterion, sadly). If Stallman really wants goal A (libresoft), he has to be prepared to give up goal B (the goal of dressing like a hippie). If dressing the way he does is only part of his persona, then dressing up every once in a while to meet with business leaders would not be changing who he is substantially enough to warrant moral qualms.
Your quote is extremely idealistic. Stallman has the same problem, it seems. He thinks he can hang out with Chavez and still win over businesses in the US. He thinks he can dress like (let's face it) a slob and still win over businesses in the US.
I used to be a strong supporter of Stallman, but I believe a lack of pragmatism could be his downfall (and I say that in a strictly voodoo hand-waving way).
Also, what's the deal with everyone criticizing his personal appearance? What does that have to do with anything? When did "fair looks" become the be-all end-all of everything.
He's practically the leader of a goddamn political movement, and if he is to accomplish he goals, he ought to know he needs to attract more than just developers to his cause. He needs to get the people on his side, and he needs to get businesses on his side. He needs to get every person he can on his side, and that means playing politics.
"Normal" people and businesses do not respond well to what they perceive as sloppiness.
Listen, I'm as sloppy as the next geek, but I realize that when I step into a meeting with someone, I will be judged on my appearance whether its right or wrong. People will base their opinions of what I say partially on my appearance, and if I'm unkempt, people will assume that I have the same amount of pride in my work as I do in my appearance. That is to say, almost nothing.
I fail to understand why geeks don't realize that if you want to win over society to your side, you can't look like a goddamn hippie while doing it.
I believe that one reason Stallman has more respect in the geek community than in the people-who-deal-with-software-but-aren't-geeks community is because geeks place so much less importance on appearance than businessmen do.
And lets face it: Major libre development is now done at least partially on big business's dime. Ubuntu? Business. Fedora? Business. Linux Foundation? Fujitsu, HP, Hitachi, IBM, Intel, NEC, Novell, Oracle, AMD, Cisco, Motorola, Siemens, Sun, Google, Mitsubishi, Nokia, etc. OpenOffice? Sun is the chief contributor to OpenOffice.org. X? Well, until X.org Foundation was created, the stewards were vendors. Now there is the Foundation. Well, let's look at the board: SUSE/Novell, Sun, Red Hat, Intel, and Nokia all have employees on the board.
I'm not saying that libre software (libresoft?) couldn't exist without big business, but I am saying that it would have progressed much more slowly without it.
GP was saying that, because the blog said that anyone who believes a way different than the blogger must have been "tainted" by college professors, the blog is pointless to read. GP was saying nothing about the merits of anyone's beliefs other than that of the blogger who seems to quick to insult everyone who doesn't agree 100% with his platform.
I actually use that for short python scripts. When I've just learned something new from the language and want to try my hand at it, I usually take the first attempt via copy con.
On a related note, for one-liners, why not echo LINE OF CODE >> filename.ext?
No we won't. I just tried to post the complete text of Hamlet in this comment via Project Gutenberg, and Slashdot doesn't allow it (no explanation was given, just an error that there was no discussion to comment on). It seems it is too long or something.
Calculate the odds of the plane crashing, multiply by the odds of a crash occurring over a residential area when flying South through North America, multiply by the odds of the FAA not being alerted by the pilots before the crash occurs, multiply by the odds of the crash occurring over a playground, multiply by the odds of children being around at the time of the crash, multiply by the chance of the missiles cracking and there being a radiation leak, multiply by the chance of the kids going towards the cracked missiles rather than away, multiply by the chance the radiation gives one of the kids radiation poisoning.
Now calculate the chance that the kid gets run over or cracks his head while playing.
You're comparing the wrong two things. You shouldn't be comparing the odds of your child being radioactively poisoned against the odds of your child injuring himself while playing regularly.
Instead, you should be comparing the social benefits of flying planes with nuclear weapons across the US against the social harm of doing so. That's the real question here, since it seems the consensus is that this didn't happen by accident.
this is the perfect law - nobody will ever break it. They should next pass laws against faster than light travel, going back in time, resurrection, speaking to the dead etc.
I was a time-travelling, necromancing being composed entirely of superphotons in a previous life, you insensitive clod!
Suppose I have a tune in my head, and I'd like to discover whether it's something I "composed" myself or is a tune whose copyright is owned by someone. How do I do this?
If you independently discover/create an artistic work that has already been created, you have not violated its copyright. The opposite is only true of patents. I'd like to quote my intellectual propertly law textbook regarding copyright:
The independent development of a similar or even identical work is perfectly legal
Well, what you describe I wouldn't define as loyalty.
Then you have a different concept of "loyalty" than a great many people.
Yes, of course you want to help out your friends and family before other people, especially when they are threatened... I guess some people would call that 'loyalty', but that makes it sound like some kind of virtuous act that somebody would rather not do
I think a lot of people would call that loyalty, including dictionaries and encyclopedias. Jumping in a river to save someone is perhaps exactly that type of activity a rational person might avoid out of self-interest. You cannot just redefine a word to mean what is convenient for you and expect everyone else to know what you are talking about. Every other person in the audience ought to be expected to understand a word to mean what it does in common parlance unless you've predefined the word for them.
When you say that a certain thing is not loyalty according to you, that means very little when dictionaries, encyclopedias, and plain common parlance disagree with you. If you want to redefine "loyalty" to mean something else, you need to assert so before you state the opinion that what you believe to be loyalty but is not in fact what most people believe to be loyalty (of course, assuming the democratic Wikipedia or non-democratic dictionary is a reflection of what people believe loyalty to be) is outdated.
I would jump in that river to save a total stranger. Just because it's the right thing to do.
You're right. If there is very little danger to oneself, I suspect a person would act to save another out of common humanity. However, I'd wager a great many people would not if we enhance the matter: What if the river was at freezing point, and there was only a 1% chance of saving the person (in which case you might die in the process), and a 99% chance of you both dying? And there were polar bears with lasers and shit? Would you still do it? I think I've found a hypo where a great many people would not risk their own lives. That being said, loyalty would require saving the friend, based on the definition of "loyalty" (unless we assume that the friend's ultimate desire is for you to save yourself at any cost, and thus loyalty might require not risking one's own life).
The only time when your 'loyalty' would be tested is in exactly the kind of case where we expect you to be 'disloyal' in a rule-of-law society
Or in any other type of society, since loyalty can never be tested except where an opportunity for it to be erased has presented itself. I mean, what you said there was practically a tautology. In fact, the only time anything can be tested is when there is an opportunity for the opposite condition to arise. Sort of the definition of "to test" and all that.
As I said, and believe I demonstrated in examples, there are many instances where loyalty (as defined by dictionaries and encyclopedias) can be tested without legality entering the debate at all. You merely said, "Well, that's not loyalty because I say it's not," and I'm afraid that is not a sufficient argument in my opinion.
Reflections? I'm having fun with this philosophical debate.
But if one shop includes the VAT in the listing, and you see two stores selling the same product, but one for a hundred dollars more, which store will you go to? Including the VAT in your advertisements would be economic suicide.
Loyalty is a moral that . . . really goes contrary to the rule of law.
You make the assumption that every question of loyalty (and by extension, every question in existence) is a question of law. Suppose you work for a scientist who really needs your help. However, you leave to work on a project with someone else. You have committed no legally wrong action. However, you have not been loyal to the scientist, and I feel that we would be remiss to not condemn the action of the defector against the glory of the almighty dollar.
Suppose a bully is making fun of your friend. You can either back up your friend, or you can abandon your friend. Defending your friend has nothing to do with legal issues (as defamation law would not apply in a schoolyard setting, thank God). However, our society would seriously suck if we did not value loyalty to one's bullied friend.
Suppose you fall in the river and are going to drown. Nowhere in the US does a person have a responsibility to save a person from harm (barring a few limited exceptions, such as if the person created/escalated the dangerous situation or has some sort of "special relationship" with you such as doctor-patient or husband-wife that is applicable). However, should we not value the loyalty a friend displays in jumping in to rescue you simply because we are a nation of laws?
Your proposed society is a frightening place, and I would not wish to live there.
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Wouldn't an unorganized hard drive be simplest, because you have all files in one folder? That would, after all, be the least complex filetree.
LiveCDs are lies. For example, every Ubuntu live CD in the past 3 years has worked with my wireless card on my laptop. However, every single version since then has not worked with my wireless card once installed to the HDD.
After 3 years of being on #ubuntu on Freenode and getting tons of help that yielded no positive results, but a ton of confused supporters, I gave up.
You tell me why something works with the live CD, but the second I click "install to HDD" it doesn't work anymore. It's ridiculous.
That's not really true, and it depends on what side you're on. For example, the US didn't grant copyright to works originating in foreign countries until it joined the Berne Convention in, I think, 1989. Then it did, and also extended copyright retroactively to foreign works through the URAA. Thus, through international law, if you're a "content owner," when the US adopted the international framework, the laws became stronger.
On the other hand, the public's right to use the expressions as they wish became weaker.
So, as I said, it depends on what side of the law you're on.
I'm working on a letter to them pointing out that I'd been planning on buying an iPod Touch until I heard about this, but now I'm looking for alternative media players. I may just settle with my laptop, since it had great battery life and I've already got a player that works for when I need to be really portable.
Well, not to do insinuate anything but merely point out the pointlessness of that argument: you might say that a country which has not illegalized murder is more free than the US, but that doesn't mean the country with legal murder is better. In fact, you might say the US citizen is more free, because he doesn't have to worry about someone murdering him with impunity.
Also, what federal judges do is extremely academic. Sure, they might be able to somehow hide their bribery in cerebral language, but I get the feeling from reading their writings that most of them are interested in treating the cases before them with a high level of scholarship.
Basically, I'm saying that I trust (federal) judges before I trust any other politician. Hell, I'm not even sure I'd consider federal judges politicians since none of them have to run for office. Wikipedia (bastion of accuracy that it is) pretty much doesn't, and I agree.
Ignoring Schon's point that the current state of Canadian law is that even uploading is permitted (or the respondent to Schon's comment above), any time you are using a torrent, you are uploading, not just when you're completed the download.
This is why torrent "downloaders" have gotten notices while Kazaa downloaders haven't (only Kazaa uploaders have gotten the notices, I believe).
Let's try four combinations:
(1) win while being yourself: win, obviously
(2) lose while being not-yourself: lose, obviously
(3) lose while being yourself: lose, unless your ultimate goal is to accomplish remaining-the-same
(4) win while being not-yourself: win, unless your ultimate goal is to accomplish remaining-the-same
Now, if you meant that victory is nullified by the non-yourself-ness, then I disagree. I believe a balancing test is more effective here: if you have two goals, A and B, which are (practically) mutually exclusive, you must choose to accomplish one or the other, or accomplish neither.
Beyond that, if Stallman's self-ness is defined by how he dresses, well, doesn't that make him Paris Hilton? Humans are defined by what they value and how they think, not how they dress (although businessmen use appearance as a criterion, sadly). If Stallman really wants goal A (libresoft), he has to be prepared to give up goal B (the goal of dressing like a hippie). If dressing the way he does is only part of his persona, then dressing up every once in a while to meet with business leaders would not be changing who he is substantially enough to warrant moral qualms.
Your quote is extremely idealistic. Stallman has the same problem, it seems. He thinks he can hang out with Chavez and still win over businesses in the US. He thinks he can dress like (let's face it) a slob and still win over businesses in the US.
I used to be a strong supporter of Stallman, but I believe a lack of pragmatism could be his downfall (and I say that in a strictly voodoo hand-waving way).
"Normal" people and businesses do not respond well to what they perceive as sloppiness.
Listen, I'm as sloppy as the next geek, but I realize that when I step into a meeting with someone, I will be judged on my appearance whether its right or wrong. People will base their opinions of what I say partially on my appearance, and if I'm unkempt, people will assume that I have the same amount of pride in my work as I do in my appearance. That is to say, almost nothing.
I fail to understand why geeks don't realize that if you want to win over society to your side, you can't look like a goddamn hippie while doing it.
I believe that one reason Stallman has more respect in the geek community than in the people-who-deal-with-software-but-aren't-geeks community is because geeks place so much less importance on appearance than businessmen do.
And lets face it: Major libre development is now done at least partially on big business's dime. Ubuntu? Business. Fedora? Business. Linux Foundation? Fujitsu, HP, Hitachi, IBM, Intel, NEC, Novell, Oracle, AMD, Cisco, Motorola, Siemens, Sun, Google, Mitsubishi, Nokia, etc. OpenOffice? Sun is the chief contributor to OpenOffice.org. X? Well, until X.org Foundation was created, the stewards were vendors. Now there is the Foundation. Well, let's look at the board: SUSE/Novell, Sun, Red Hat, Intel, and Nokia all have employees on the board.
I'm not saying that libre software (libresoft?) couldn't exist without big business, but I am saying that it would have progressed much more slowly without it.
GP was saying that, because the blog said that anyone who believes a way different than the blogger must have been "tainted" by college professors, the blog is pointless to read. GP was saying nothing about the merits of anyone's beliefs other than that of the blogger who seems to quick to insult everyone who doesn't agree 100% with his platform.
Learn to use logic, man.
I actually use that for short python scripts. When I've just learned something new from the language and want to try my hand at it, I usually take the first attempt via copy con.
On a related note, for one-liners, why not echo LINE OF CODE >> filename.ext?
No we won't. I just tried to post the complete text of Hamlet in this comment via Project Gutenberg, and Slashdot doesn't allow it (no explanation was given, just an error that there was no discussion to comment on). It seems it is too long or something.
Instead, you should be comparing the social benefits of flying planes with nuclear weapons across the US against the social harm of doing so. That's the real question here, since it seems the consensus is that this didn't happen by accident.
And for the unenlightened (pun intended) among us, such a returning person is called a Bodhisattva.
Your IT department has never heard of Ubuntu? Wow, I have seriously overestimated the intelligence of sysadmins, I guess.
When you say that a certain thing is not loyalty according to you, that means very little when dictionaries, encyclopedias, and plain common parlance disagree with you. If you want to redefine "loyalty" to mean something else, you need to assert so before you state the opinion that what you believe to be loyalty but is not in fact what most people believe to be loyalty (of course, assuming the democratic Wikipedia or non-democratic dictionary is a reflection of what people believe loyalty to be) is outdated.You're right. If there is very little danger to oneself, I suspect a person would act to save another out of common humanity. However, I'd wager a great many people would not if we enhance the matter: What if the river was at freezing point, and there was only a 1% chance of saving the person (in which case you might die in the process), and a 99% chance of you both dying? And there were polar bears with lasers and shit? Would you still do it? I think I've found a hypo where a great many people would not risk their own lives. That being said, loyalty would require saving the friend, based on the definition of "loyalty" (unless we assume that the friend's ultimate desire is for you to save yourself at any cost, and thus loyalty might require not risking one's own life).Or in any other type of society, since loyalty can never be tested except where an opportunity for it to be erased has presented itself. I mean, what you said there was practically a tautology. In fact, the only time anything can be tested is when there is an opportunity for the opposite condition to arise. Sort of the definition of "to test" and all that.
As I said, and believe I demonstrated in examples, there are many instances where loyalty (as defined by dictionaries and encyclopedias) can be tested without legality entering the debate at all. You merely said, "Well, that's not loyalty because I say it's not," and I'm afraid that is not a sufficient argument in my opinion.
Reflections? I'm having fun with this philosophical debate.
But if one shop includes the VAT in the listing, and you see two stores selling the same product, but one for a hundred dollars more, which store will you go to? Including the VAT in your advertisements would be economic suicide.
Suppose a bully is making fun of your friend. You can either back up your friend, or you can abandon your friend. Defending your friend has nothing to do with legal issues (as defamation law would not apply in a schoolyard setting, thank God). However, our society would seriously suck if we did not value loyalty to one's bullied friend.
Suppose you fall in the river and are going to drown. Nowhere in the US does a person have a responsibility to save a person from harm (barring a few limited exceptions, such as if the person created/escalated the dangerous situation or has some sort of "special relationship" with you such as doctor-patient or husband-wife that is applicable). However, should we not value the loyalty a friend displays in jumping in to rescue you simply because we are a nation of laws?
Your proposed society is a frightening place, and I would not wish to live there.