Are there others besides "fucking" and possibly "freaking"?
According to a linguistics professor I had in college, "fucking" is the only one. However, I'm sure she meant "fucking" and its relatives, such as "freaking," "friggin," and "bloody."
However, you know how people say "a whole nother ballgame." I have a theory that this is really "awholenother," with "whole" being an infix which is not placed at syllabic boundaries (an|oth|er), since there is no such word as "nother." This would be the only case of "whole" being an infix that I know of. But IANAL (I am not a linguist).
...that the article is inaccurate, because I'd really like to say (to join in with other Slashdotters in showing off bilingual skills): Nihongo wo manande yokatta. (Ninchishou tte yokunai kara)
Sometimes the idea that my english/american is most likely better (barring accent, but could be trained) than half of the people speaking it as a native language scares me.
Well, that depends on what you define as "better." Do you mean "can read high literature," "can coin new slang which sounds like an English-speaker would have," or do you mean "can apply unwritten linguistic patterns to new-to-you sequences?" For example, you may be able to read Ulysses by Joyce and enjoy it (while many Americans cannot), but can you tell me the difference between "absofuckinglutely" and "abfuckingsolutely," which sounds more correct, and then tell me where you would insert "fucking" into "librarian" to preserve the feel of a native speaker? That is how one ought to define "better." I'm sure you really meant to say that your command of English may be superior in literary understanding to other Americans.
I apologize for so much emphasis on "fucking," but I find that the native usage of one of English's very few infixes is fascinating.
And for anyone curious, the first language A Beautiful Mind is using in his post is Hungarian.
I didn't see anything above me because I read at +4 and comment plenty of time after the article is posted in order to have useful posts already modded up. Since I didn't see anything modded up correcting this mistake (and believe me, it's a pretty big mistake in the grand scheme of stop-this-fucking-flag), I posted a correction (also, since/.ers don't RTFA, the correction was necessary.
Apparently any discrepency in how things are decided is considered an insult by both sides...
It's not an insult. It's a mistake with great ramifications: the next election comes around, and Slashdotters recall that the GOP started this broadcast flag legislation. "Well, then I'll vote (D) instead." Now they'd be voting for the people who instantiated the bill. And I'm no (R), so don't be making your snide "Ohhh...Republicans must also take offense at this" ramarks. I'm against giving any party more false FUD to sling.
HOLY FUCK, SCUTTLEMONKEY. Didn't the internet community just bitch about Fox claiming that Mark Foley was a Democrat, and now this?
Let me set this straight for you: Both Biden and Feinstein are DEMOCRATS. Neither are members of the GOP. I'm just pissed about this, because the US elects the Democrats into power presumably for change, and then it's business as usual with the Broadcast Flag. Feinstein is the Democratic senior senator from California (Hollywood, etc.) and Biden is a senator from Delaware, where nearly all corporations in the US are incorporated (legally "born"). Big surprise that these two would be snorting coke of the MPAA's thighs like they are now.
How the hell could you fuck something like this up?
On a related note, Ron Paul has formed an exploratory committee for the '08 election. I've written to him before asking him his opinion, and he opposes the broadcast flag. If we get a president in who opposes the flag, we can have a safety net in the Executive Branch.
Unless MS is doing this deliberately, it's not negligent.
While I agree with your sentiment that OS vendors should not be held liable for certain problems unless they are negligent, you got the definition of negligence very wrong. Negligence does not come from purposeful behavior. Instead, negligence is when a party misses the legal standard for protection of other parties against the actions of others having intent to do harm when it reasonably should have protected them.
Simply put, negligence applies when a party has been negligent;)
For example: a mother who pours Draino down her child's throat is not negligent. She's a murderer. She would be negligent if she left Draino in the child's room after cleaning the sink in the child's bathroom, and then the child drank it (well, that would be up to the jury to decide, but in any case, I was just trying to demonstrate how purposefulness is not a necessary condition for negligence).
I was under the impression that Ford's character was not a great guy in What Lies Beneath, but I've never seen it, so I can't be sure. He's also gearing up for another Indiana Jones pic, isn't he?
However, Ford has kinda been typecast as the FBI CIA USPS XYZPDQ Übermensch. He plays a character a tiny bit blase who saves the day with his Fordiness. I wonder if he even gets offered roles other than those...
He could do little indie films (independent, not Indiana), I suppose. He is Harrison Ford. What up-and-coming filmmaker would turn down the opportunity to cast Ford as a gay homeless TV salesman from Thailand and rip apart the universe with that juxtaposition?
Actually, there are no such things as natural rights.
That's up for debate. For example, if the Judeochristian God does exist, I guarantee you natural rights exist. I'm sure that other religions guarantee natural rights as well. Beyond that, philosophers still argue over whether natural rights exist or not, so it's not as cut and dry as you make it out to be.
I'd spend a little more time debating this here, but literally my desktop computer just stopped working, and my resume is on it, and I'm about to go out of town. I also have no way of diagnosing what the problem is (powers on, no beep at the beginning, won't send anything to the screen). Wish me luck! I wish I had a natural right to have a functioning computer:(
What I'm saying is that without copyright, there is no law to protect that source from being disassembled or reverse engineered. I can employ the bits and pieces into another program, whatever. I just want to remove the cartels' power of law. I don't always need exact copies, but I do want to be able to build on it. And besides, everything we have was built on the work of previous authors, inventors, etc. Removing copyright will only make it easier and more productive.
While I agree with your sentiment that certain software vendors are too powerful, getting rid of copyright is not the answer. Perhaps shortening the length of copyright?
In any case, there's no law against reverse engineering now, as far as I know. In fact, the DMCA explicitly allows reverse engineering (perhaps only for compatibility purposes, but couldn't anything be construed as a compatibility purpose?). Furthermore, there is something besides copyright preventing you from using specific parts of a program freely: patents. Do you want to get rid of those, too? How do you like no prescription drugs? Because without patents, there would not be significant private sector research, and we all know how great the government's track record on drug research is.
Ok, fine. There would be no such thing as legally enforced closed source.
So you're saying, "Without copyright, there'd be no legally enforced closed source." Well, yeah. But then, that's practically a tautology. It's like saying, "Without laws about probation, there'd be no people on probation."
As for Windows not existing without copyright, that's just not true. Somebody will write up contract to have it made because they need it, just as the old cliche says.
Ah, patronage, is it? This is what copyright was created to avoid -- a system at which every single artist on the planet is controlled by a few wealthy elite.
All things will be made because of the necessity, not to make easier to sell refrigerators to the Eskimos.
This assumes that those who want it made can afford to do so. I mean, to create OS X you'd have to shell out a few billion dollars. Is there a company on the planet that could afford a one-time payment of a billion dollars, after which the code would be freely available to everyone on the planet? Hell no. The original company would never invest, and instead wait for someone else to invest. Now, you may say that they'd just go with an alternate solution (e.g. Linux), but then there'd be less competition, and thus less innovation.
So what if I don't have access to the original code? I can still find the information inside very useful. I can still use and modify(by attaching modules for instance?) it. I can still adequately reverse engineer an ATI or nVidia card to write drivers. I don't need anybody's permission. It's my card that I possess.
There's nothing stopping you from reverse engineering the drivers for nVidia and ATI now. In the US, it's protected under the DMCA, and there are OSS drivers for ATI that I know of. However, not to step on anyone's feet, the drivers are not that great.
Finally, there are other ways, without copyright, to protect your code from becoming open. For one thing, trade secrets through contract provisions. How can you get information about the code, or the code itself, if everyone who is allowed access to the LAN in which the code resides is under contract to not reveal any of the code? Even if the code could potentially be shared freely, courts tend to uphold contract clauses.
And the best part is that even without copyright everybody still gets paid when they perform what they were contracted to do.
Incorrect. Without copy control (copyright), no one would buy Windows (or OS X, or Final Cut Pro, or any other closed source app). Then, the company could not pay its programmers, and thus no one would get paid to make the program. OSS works for two reasons: there are a lot of nice people out there, and companies can make money providing support.
Still, this does not change my original point: without copyright, closed source still prevents you from accessing the original code. No amount of kludging around gets you the original code. Hell, if you're saying that without copyright closed source does not exist (which is a statement of physics and existence, not of legality), we might as well say that closed source doesn't exist now. After all, there are countries which do not enforce copyright. Thus, in those countries, does closed source not exist? I think it still does.
You're wrong to say most of the Windows source code was leaked; only a small portion was. However, to make you happy, let's go with a different binary instead: NONE of Vista's has been leaked, and it's a "completely rewritten" OS (which is why it took them so long to get it out the door).
Now, I was making the argument that a closed source, compiled binary will REMAIN closed source. One cannot reconstruct exactly the original source code from a compiled binary, which is what the OP was implying by saying that "without copyright closed source does not exist." Au contraire, it still does exist. One can reconstruct, with MUCH difficulty, an approximation of the original source code. However, this is still not the original code, which was my point. Closed source will remain closed source in the same way that, even if you have access to a film, you cannot reconstruct the original Final Cut Pro files.
It's like claiming that without copyright, you could split an MP3 into each original instrument track.
If you're speaking exclusively of the domain of music, I have no argument at this time. However, if you are speaking in general about copyright of any artistic work, I beg to differ. I recall reading something where James Joyce wrote novels as a profession and only for the money. Thus, Ulysses, arguably the greatest literary work of the 20th century (definitely one of the most influential), would have not been written had a copyright system not been in existence.
Of course, in typical Slashdottian fashion, I cannot find this source. However, I'm pretty sure I read this when I was researching arguments for and against copyright ages ago.
But even where there is no copyright there is the _fact_ of authorship. That is the closing can only legally be done with the correct attribution ie, "derived from project X" or based on code from "Jo Public". Take away those attributions and the closing author is committing fraud, claiming something that is their work independent of the true author.
I do not believe that the right of attribution is a natural right because (as made obvious by so many anonymous creations) many people give away their right of attribution. Thus, it is alienable, and not a natural right. Natural rights are inalienable.
Therefore, if the right of attribution is alienable, there is no reason that a system without copyright would include a system of attribution.
Oh come on. Without copyright there IS no closed source. There would be no law to keep me from using it.
Attention all Slashdot users: iminplaya has learned how to take win.exe and reconstruct the C++ source code! At least, that's what he claims would happen if copyright did not exist. Somehow if copyright did not exist, he would have the ability to take an EXE and reconstruct the precise source code in the original language, not in reverse-engineered assembly.
I think that 30 years from creation, plus another 30 years IF the copyright holder explicitly renews his rights is fair.
Copyright is supposed to be merely an agreement between society and the artist to grant a monopoly over a creative work for a set period of time. The consideration in return is that society will receive into the public domain for completely Free (libre) use, in order to improve society through artistic enjoyment. This is not up for debate.
Thus, the only logical and fair way (unlike how the US copyright system has been bastardized) to set length of copyright is to ask, "What is the minimum amount of time required to entire artists to create art such that enough art will be created for the betterment of society?" Then, society should debate how much art is enough, and use that to answer the question.
Using this logic, it is easy to ask: "How many artists refuse to create art unless they receive a guaranteed monopoly over the work for 60 years?" I'd be willing to bet that there is not a single artist that falls into this category.
Of course all my argument goes to bunk if you believe that it is a natural right to retain control over your artistic creations, but then there is no justification for temporary copyrights, only copyrights in perpetuity. I'm a consequentialist, and think copyrights in perpetuity are ridiculous; I suspect almost every Slashdotter is as well. Probably most of the world population as well.
Perhaps Blackberry could have saved some capital by licensing NTP's patents when they first demanded extortion payments and then followed up with a suit against NTP to invalidate the bogus patents and request compensation for royalties paid.
I'm not too sure about that -- there have been cases in the past where courts have ruled under similar facts that the plaintiff had elected to "buy its peace," and was not recoverable. Some military academy case comes to mind, of which I've forgotten the name. However, an experienced lawyer could probably come up with a way to distinguish these two cases.
I'm not too hip with virtualization techniques, so correct me, please. It just seems dangerous to virtualize another, potentially unsecure, operating system within kernel space (isn't that Ring 0?). Does it seem dangerous to anyone else?
I don't know about personal property, but real property (i.e. land) law handles it like this: if A sells B defective land (i.e. A does not own the land, rather C does), and B then acts in reliance of this (such as by modifying the land), C may not recover the land; B is the rightful owner. I'm not completely sure about if B does not rely on the deal, but I believe that once B takes possession of the land, it belongs to B and C may not recover the land.
I'd imagine that C could sue A for the fair market value of the land, but don't take my word for it. Also, this rule may not extend to personal property, but it seems to make sense prima facie.
Only if the number of possible cunts is fixed and known.
Somehow, I feel like I'm not reading Slashdot. Did the channel get changed over to MTV's New Year's Countdown (language NSFW)?
I hereby dub Tablizer the John Cleese of Slashdot. I've never seen anyone use that word here before (John Cleese said "fuck" during his eulogy of Graham Chapman at the televised funeral, and allegedly was the first to use the f-bomb on TV, or something like that).
So I think you meant to say "neidsa" instead of "neidna," because I think you meant to anagram the word "design." There is no word in the English language that I know of which can be created out of the "neidna" that you typed.
Or did you do this on purpose in order to make reference to the floating point errors for which some Intel CPUs were recalled?
Slashdot Mirror
However, you know how people say "a whole nother ballgame." I have a theory that this is really "awholenother," with "whole" being an infix which is not placed at syllabic boundaries (an|oth|er), since there is no such word as "nother." This would be the only case of "whole" being an infix that I know of. But IANAL (I am not a linguist).
Japanese and Spanish. All I can say in Italian is "Il parlo italiano" and "Eets-a me, Mario"
...that the article is inaccurate, because I'd really like to say (to join in with other Slashdotters in showing off bilingual skills): Nihongo wo manande yokatta. (Ninchishou tte yokunai kara)
;)
Or...um...No me gusta demencia
I apologize for so much emphasis on "fucking," but I find that the native usage of one of English's very few infixes is fascinating.
And for anyone curious, the first language A Beautiful Mind is using in his post is Hungarian.
It's not an insult. It's a mistake with great ramifications: the next election comes around, and Slashdotters recall that the GOP started this broadcast flag legislation. "Well, then I'll vote (D) instead." Now they'd be voting for the people who instantiated the bill. And I'm no (R), so don't be making your snide "Ohhh...Republicans must also take offense at this" ramarks. I'm against giving any party more false FUD to sling.
HOLY FUCK, SCUTTLEMONKEY. Didn't the internet community just bitch about Fox claiming that Mark Foley was a Democrat, and now this?
Let me set this straight for you: Both Biden and Feinstein are DEMOCRATS. Neither are members of the GOP. I'm just pissed about this, because the US elects the Democrats into power presumably for change, and then it's business as usual with the Broadcast Flag. Feinstein is the Democratic senior senator from California (Hollywood, etc.) and Biden is a senator from Delaware, where nearly all corporations in the US are incorporated (legally "born"). Big surprise that these two would be snorting coke of the MPAA's thighs like they are now.
How the hell could you fuck something like this up?
On a related note, Ron Paul has formed an exploratory committee for the '08 election. I've written to him before asking him his opinion, and he opposes the broadcast flag. If we get a president in who opposes the flag, we can have a safety net in the Executive Branch.
Simply put, negligence applies when a party has been negligent
For example: a mother who pours Draino down her child's throat is not negligent. She's a murderer. She would be negligent if she left Draino in the child's room after cleaning the sink in the child's bathroom, and then the child drank it (well, that would be up to the jury to decide, but in any case, I was just trying to demonstrate how purposefulness is not a necessary condition for negligence).
It was a hit in the US as well.
I was under the impression that Ford's character was not a great guy in What Lies Beneath, but I've never seen it, so I can't be sure. He's also gearing up for another Indiana Jones pic, isn't he?
However, Ford has kinda been typecast as the FBI CIA USPS XYZPDQ Übermensch. He plays a character a tiny bit blase who saves the day with his Fordiness. I wonder if he even gets offered roles other than those...
He could do little indie films (independent, not Indiana), I suppose. He is Harrison Ford. What up-and-coming filmmaker would turn down the opportunity to cast Ford as a gay homeless TV salesman from Thailand and rip apart the universe with that juxtaposition?
I'd spend a little more time debating this here, but literally my desktop computer just stopped working, and my resume is on it, and I'm about to go out of town. I also have no way of diagnosing what the problem is (powers on, no beep at the beginning, won't send anything to the screen). Wish me luck! I wish I had a natural right to have a functioning computer
In any case, there's no law against reverse engineering now, as far as I know. In fact, the DMCA explicitly allows reverse engineering (perhaps only for compatibility purposes, but couldn't anything be construed as a compatibility purpose?). Furthermore, there is something besides copyright preventing you from using specific parts of a program freely: patents. Do you want to get rid of those, too? How do you like no prescription drugs? Because without patents, there would not be significant private sector research, and we all know how great the government's track record on drug research is.
Ah, patronage, is it? This is what copyright was created to avoid -- a system at which every single artist on the planet is controlled by a few wealthy elite.
This assumes that those who want it made can afford to do so. I mean, to create OS X you'd have to shell out a few billion dollars. Is there a company on the planet that could afford a one-time payment of a billion dollars, after which the code would be freely available to everyone on the planet? Hell no. The original company would never invest, and instead wait for someone else to invest. Now, you may say that they'd just go with an alternate solution (e.g. Linux), but then there'd be less competition, and thus less innovation.There's nothing stopping you from reverse engineering the drivers for nVidia and ATI now. In the US, it's protected under the DMCA, and there are OSS drivers for ATI that I know of. However, not to step on anyone's feet, the drivers are not that great.
Finally, there are other ways, without copyright, to protect your code from becoming open. For one thing, trade secrets through contract provisions. How can you get information about the code, or the code itself, if everyone who is allowed access to the LAN in which the code resides is under contract to not reveal any of the code? Even if the code could potentially be shared freely, courts tend to uphold contract clauses.
Still, this does not change my original point: without copyright, closed source still prevents you from accessing the original code. No amount of kludging around gets you the original code. Hell, if you're saying that without copyright closed source does not exist (which is a statement of physics and existence, not of legality), we might as well say that closed source doesn't exist now. After all, there are countries which do not enforce copyright. Thus, in those countries, does closed source not exist? I think it still does.
You're wrong to say most of the Windows source code was leaked; only a small portion was. However, to make you happy, let's go with a different binary instead: NONE of Vista's has been leaked, and it's a "completely rewritten" OS (which is why it took them so long to get it out the door).
Now, I was making the argument that a closed source, compiled binary will REMAIN closed source. One cannot reconstruct exactly the original source code from a compiled binary, which is what the OP was implying by saying that "without copyright closed source does not exist." Au contraire, it still does exist. One can reconstruct, with MUCH difficulty, an approximation of the original source code. However, this is still not the original code, which was my point. Closed source will remain closed source in the same way that, even if you have access to a film, you cannot reconstruct the original Final Cut Pro files.
It's like claiming that without copyright, you could split an MP3 into each original instrument track.
Of course, in typical Slashdottian fashion, I cannot find this source. However, I'm pretty sure I read this when I was researching arguments for and against copyright ages ago.
Therefore, if the right of attribution is alienable, there is no reason that a system without copyright would include a system of attribution.
Thus, the only logical and fair way (unlike how the US copyright system has been bastardized) to set length of copyright is to ask, "What is the minimum amount of time required to entire artists to create art such that enough art will be created for the betterment of society?" Then, society should debate how much art is enough, and use that to answer the question.
Using this logic, it is easy to ask: "How many artists refuse to create art unless they receive a guaranteed monopoly over the work for 60 years?" I'd be willing to bet that there is not a single artist that falls into this category.
Of course all my argument goes to bunk if you believe that it is a natural right to retain control over your artistic creations, but then there is no justification for temporary copyrights, only copyrights in perpetuity. I'm a consequentialist, and think copyrights in perpetuity are ridiculous; I suspect almost every Slashdotter is as well. Probably most of the world population as well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_copyri
I'm not too hip with virtualization techniques, so correct me, please. It just seems dangerous to virtualize another, potentially unsecure, operating system within kernel space (isn't that Ring 0?). Does it seem dangerous to anyone else?
I forgot to add that the buyer has to be a reasonable buyer, and not absolutely retarded. This is what keeps A and B from colluding to steal C's land.
I don't know about personal property, but real property (i.e. land) law handles it like this: if A sells B defective land (i.e. A does not own the land, rather C does), and B then acts in reliance of this (such as by modifying the land), C may not recover the land; B is the rightful owner. I'm not completely sure about if B does not rely on the deal, but I believe that once B takes possession of the land, it belongs to B and C may not recover the land.
I'd imagine that C could sue A for the fair market value of the land, but don't take my word for it. Also, this rule may not extend to personal property, but it seems to make sense prima facie.
I hereby dub Tablizer the John Cleese of Slashdot. I've never seen anyone use that word here before (John Cleese said "fuck" during his eulogy of Graham Chapman at the televised funeral, and allegedly was the first to use the f-bomb on TV, or something like that).
Only the unwashed masses come for those. The truly educated elite? Well, we come for the Natalie Portman hot grits jokes.
Speaking of Slashdot memes, do GNAA trolls still show up? I haven't browsed below +4 in a year, so I'm not entirely sure.
Or did you do this on purpose in order to make reference to the floating point errors for which some Intel CPUs were recalled?