> You must have some sort of equation fetish. Get a life.
That's kinda mean. "Fetish" is so harsh. Religious conviction is intimately tied to beauty and what in the world could possibly be more beautiful than an equation? "Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare" and all that. If only equations were more well-understood by the masses, one could even fabricate a successful (i.e.: popular, rich, influential) religion whose symbolic centerpiece was mathematics. Consider Pythagoras and Spinoza.
For crying out loud! We're talking about CENSORING the INTERNET! Are you going to stand there and tell me that CENSORING the INTERNET isn't a topic of interest to slashdot readers?
I can tell where you're coming from, anyway, by the way you use the word "liberal," as though it were some kind of derogatory epithet. You're the one playing politics. You knee-jerk anti-liberals are such complete suckers, anybody can sell you any idea no matter how stupid or vicious, just by claiming that their idea is in opposition to some chimerical notion allegedly subscribed to by those awful "liberals."
I have an account with GTE/Florida where for $35 a month I get the cheapest available DSL line into my house. Then for an additional $20 a month I get ISP service and a fixed IP from Verio (packet.net in Florida). I could have gotten ISP service from GTE for $20 a month, and then I'd only have to pay one bill, but GTE doesn't offer the fixed IP address unless you buy a much more expensive level of DSL service. But since I can choose my ISP separately from my DSL provider, I get that fixed IP address at a nice low price.
I could get a Roadrunner connection to my house, with somewhat higher peak bandwidth, for a few dollars less a month. But unless I am willing to pay a higher price for a higher level of service I can't get that fixed IP address from Roadrunner's ISP service. And unlike GTE DSL, Roadrunner doesn't give you the option of going with a competing ISP.
Now GTE doesn't allow you to buy ISP service from their competitors out of philanthropy. They do it because they have to as a result of the anti-trust laws. It seems likely to me that a company with the tremendous size, overwhelming market share, and steep vertical integration of the newly merged AOL/TW will also very likely find themselves under the purview of the Anti-trust statutes.
So while some people are worried that this merger will result in Roadrunner cable users having AOL's dismally limited ISP service forced on them, I suspect the opposite will happen and this merger will lead to more open access to Time-Warner's physical cable network. At least I hope so.
What it means is that, as compared with the old days when it was practically impossible to obtain the software with which to connect to AOL, or a copy of Time Magazine, or a Time-Warner cable connection, or access to any of Ted Turner's various TV channels, NOW you won't ever again have to put up with these terrible chronic problems. Why, who knows, if you're lucky, you may even get an official AOL CD in the mail, totally unsolicted! Gosh that would be great!
> Friends, let me say that I am lucky to have my old friend > King James by my side; he has helped my elderly and ailing > heart to get through some of these times.
Your old friend King James, eh? Well we know the truth about this old friend of yours, King James - "Queen James" as he was known to his contemporaries. Well (sniff) I won't be lectured on morality by morally abandoned, lust-debauched heathens such as yourself.
More righteous than thou, WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
My fave case is a December 1984 IBM 5170 (PC-AT). It used to have a 6 MHz 80286 with 512 KB RAM, now it has a Tyan Celeron Socket 1 motherboard inside. I had to hacksaw away part of the internal drive bay to make room for the DIMMs on that MB. Someone had taken out the key lock so I mounted a reset button in the hole instead. It's real handsome, a classic, and solid enough you could drive your car up on it to get underneath and change the oil. The biggest failing is that it only has two bays, but I want to add a CD burner to it and I also want a separate CD reader.
Does anyone know if someone sells either a combination floppy drive and IDE CD reader in a 5-1/4" wide half-height (1-1/2" high) form factor, or quarter-height floppies and CD readers, so I can free up one of the external bays?
A Dremel Moto-tool and Super Glue is what you need. I don't necessarily mind these curvaceous cases vendors are shipping these days all that much, though they do look like my kid's old Mighty Morphin transformer toys, but what I hate are cases that aren't flat and level on top. Where do you pile up CDs and floppies? Where do you rest your coffee cup, wine glass or beer mug?
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
How's this: Microsoft (tm) Linux 2000 (tm)
on
China Banning Win2k
·
· Score: 1
Just to be perverse, I screwed with/etc/issue:
-----begin/etc/issue----- Microsoft Linux 2000(tm) (ILoveMelissa) Kernel 2.2.12-20 on an i586 -----end/etc/issue-----
This machine is actually running Redhat 6.1, by the way. And here is my/etc/lilo.message, which appears whenever I reboot:
-----begin/etc/lilo.message----- Welcome to MICROSOFT (tm) LINUX 2000 (tm)!
As always, you can rely on Microsoft for innovation! You're now using another unique, patented Microsoft product:
MICROSOFT (tm) LINUX 2000 (tm)
If you have any reason to imagine that the computer you're using is running a stolen, illegally copied, or unauthorized ("bootleg") copy of MICROSOFT (tm) LINUX 2000 (tm), be sure to immediately call 1-800-PIRATES and turn the software thief in to the law! Help stamp out software pirates! They're stealing from YOU!
Simply wait ten seconds to enjoy our new, uniquely powerful MICROSOFT (tm) LINUX 2000 (tm) operating system, or to use another fine MICROSOFT (tm) product, type in "DOS" before the ten-second waiting period ends.
Either way, you'll be enjoying the use of a Licensed MICROSOFT (tm) product, your assurance of the highest quality in personal computer software! Accept no substitutes, use MICROSOFT operating systems! -----end/etc/lilo.message-----
Hey, Microsoft lawyers! DON'T SUE ME, it's only a JOKE!
If this story is true ("Red Flag Linux"? sounds pretty dubious to me) might it have something to do with that NSA backdoor that was built into NT 4.0? I mean, if I ran the Chinese government I'd prefer to have the source code for the operating system being used by government agencies, all of it, and I'd get some people I could trust to go over it line by line.
All governments have police forces, and all police forces seem to have a practically biological urge to pry and spy against their subject citizenry. It is a fact of record that the U.S. government has found it necessary both to spy on all my telephone calls and to have access to protected files on my Windows NT server. I expect the Communist Chinese government to be at least as inquisitive, wouldn't you?
So just as the U.S. government built a backdoor into NT, wouldn't you expect the Chinese government to want to build a backdoor into their special Chinese edition of Linux? But how the Hell could they do that at the same time that they release full source code to the general public? Not only does open source make it difficult to conceal a police backdoor in source code, but also, with the compiler that usually accompanies Linux, one can make encryption tools which cripple all that expensive surveillance.
So will the distributors of "Red Flag Linux" follow the provisions of the Gnu Public License. and will the Chinese government allow them to do so? When a Chinese computer user gets a copy of "Red Flag Linux," does he get all the source code, and is he free to redistribute it with no restrictions?
That leads to another question about the GNU license. Would it be permissible under the GPL for me to sell a distribution of Linux without a compiler? It seems to me that merely having source code is pointless if one has nothing to compile it with.
Last, imagine, just as a hypothetical consideration, that a Chinese company starts flagratly violating copyleft; say, they release a binaries-only version of Linux. Do you suppose the WTO would apply trade sanctions against China in response to this violation of copyright? Of course you laugh! Everyone is aware that the WTO serves corporations and only corporations; no other considerations, such as environmental or human-rights issues, have ever applied in their judgments. Where there is no profit lost, the WTO has always remained indifferent. That is precisely what's wrong with the WTO.
> An aside: I find some of the Slashdot response interesting. > We're a bit schizophrenic. We are bananas about privacy > issues and here is the state taking action against a company > that makes a device that is used to illegally violate privacy > and we, er, go bananas!
Well, here's a flat-head screwdriver. You know, someone - possibly even I, but I wouldn't, as a matter of principle - someone could take this very screwdriver and stab your mother in the back of the neck. Mother-stabbing is even worse, I think, than illegal surveillance or the violation of one's privacy; and I expect you are as much against mother-stabbing as I am. That doesn't mean the government would be justified sending out SWAT teams to raid and close all the hardware stores, or your tool chest either.
So how hard is it, do you think, for a monolingual English-speaker to learn the language? And are there any jobs? And what are your immigration laws? My great-grandfather immigrated, my grandfather immigrated, my father immigrated, the way you talk, maybe it's my turn...
> We have raids on peoples house for the crime of owning a > fully legal, registered firearm.
I would be interested in reading about specific cases where the government has raided private citizens for possession of a legal firearm. That leaves out raids to confiscate, say, fully-automatic machine guns, which most people know are pretty much illegal everywhere in the U.S.A.
I personally think there are far too many guns in this country. Also, I think you gun lovers have pretty damn little to complain about in comparison with the cruelly persecuted victims of the US's totally-berserk "war on drugs." On the other hand, if I ever had to work in a convenience store at night again like I did twenty-five years ago, you can bet your ass I'd get another gun.
Even though I don't like guns and I don't own a gun, it does seem to me that if you follow the local laws and regulations for owning a gun, you should not be subjected to having your house raided by the police. But considering the chronic out-of-control behavior of the police in their status as drug-warriors, I can easily believe that gun-owners also see their civil rights abused on a regular basis. So this is an issue in which any citizen who values civil liberties should take an interest.
There's a funny quote in there from Richard Stallman: "If you want people to take out the garbage, you have to pay them. You don't have to do that to get people to program. The excitement of advancing the technology is what drives hackers."
You know, I have the highest respect and admiration for Stallman, but I sure think he's got that dead wrong. I mean, no one pays me to take out the garbage, I do it voluntarily for free. The alternative, after all, is to leave it to pile up and pile up until you can't even force your way in the front door any more. (Every now and then you read about some recluse who does just that, and how does everyone describe such a person? They say, "He's nuts!")
Why would Stallman - Stallman of all people! - make an error like that? Because the ideologists of capitalism has so deliberately and single-mindedly infected our way of thinking that it's practically unimaginable to imagine that people do anything at all without the incentive of a profit. Why, there are many people to whom, for example, the notion of altruism, or even social cooperation, is as alien and inconceivable as the idea of an existing supernatural deity is to an lifelong atheist; they simply can not fit their minds around such an idea.
And yet practically everybody does things without the incentive of a profit every day. I mean, can you imagine feeding your children, or drinking a glass of beer, or listening to music? Of course you can, it's to do things like that that one works and accumulates money; yet where's the financial profit in doing those things?
"Justice" is a common word, as opposed to a technical term, whose definition might only be known by experts. So even if an ordinary man-in-the-street may not be able to come up with a synthetic definition of the word, you'd expect to be able to place a case in front of him and be able to get an answer to the question, "Is this justice?" Furthermore, common words are defined by consensus, so if your definition of "justice" contradicts that common understanding of what the word means, then your definition is wrong.
Now you say:
> You probably understand only the post-modernist definition > of justice, which is "fairness". It's a sad side effect of > the civil rights movement that the word justice had its meaning > destroyed in common usage. As it has classicly been defined, > justice is when the law is carried out as it is written (or > as it is interpreted in a common law derived system.)
Ok, then, let's review an extreme example of "the law as it is written;" to be specific, the anti-Jew laws of Germany's Third Reich. Those clearly written laws specified that Jews could be deprived of all their goods and sentenced to slave labor. By your definition, "justice" consists of nothing more or less that carrying out these laws. I think it's obvious that no one in his right mind uses the word "justice" in this sense.
I'll get my daughter to make up a fake card for Redrum. She's good at doing stuff like that in Photoshop. The question is, what should it look like? I picture it as a squat little red-colored demon holding a bottle of rum (depressingly literal I am) in one hand while the other hand is upraised with that famous crooked finger, this would be a "drunk pokemon," but she may have a better idea. Hope Nintendo doesn't sue me. She's 12 and she still digs Pokemon, though not half as much as her 7-year-old brother.
Theft? You sucker, don't you know, all property is theft!
So you have a problem with thieves, hey Hog boy? Well how about that there moron G. W. Bush, who just recently nakedly stole the U.S. Presidency?
But he hasn't been convicted in a court of law! Instead the highest court has upheld his right to commit that particular larceny! etc., etc...
OK, I see, you have a problem with thieves who get caught, is that it? Well, forty million or so Napster users haven't been caught yet, and so far as I am concerned, I hope they never do.
The law just isn't half so clear as you claim. It never is. If in general laws were, in this fair land, my U.S.A., alone seven hundred thousand lawyers would be instantly out of jobs, which pray God in Heaven forbid. You know, you yourself talk like a lawyer: specifically, you make bullshit pronunciamenti with flawless self-assurance. That's not only en vogue but de rigueur in court. This here ain't a court though, this is instead the highly intellectual, syntactically sophisticated, logically rigorous/., where we civilized folk sneer as such pretension!
Anyhow, laws don't mean a thing until they have been interpreted in court. Ain't that right? So legally, you can't be a thief until after a court of law has convicted you of thievery under a specific numbered statute. Who's been convicted? For sure, not I! Say now, you might be able legally float wild chartless allegations such as that during the course and flow of passionate jury-rendering argument in the special environment of the courtroom, but out here on the street, harsh unequivocal words like your
...You are a thief.
are actionable. So y'all watch your dang tongue, lawyer-boy!
Anyway. Fuck the big five record companies. Fuck them right up the ass with a red hot steel poker.
In general, fuck capitalism. You know (or maybe you don't know, in which sad case I pity you for a lost fool) what capitalism claims in terms of moral duties: that I, as just another private individual sadly lacking a large surplus of cash lying around, that is to say, a workie, that I have no rights whatsoever - no right to eat nor to breathe nor to occupy any volume of space, not to live at all. Sans cash, go die - and pay for your interment, or face your estate being sued! At the same moment, and I'm supposed to take this rubbish seriously: here's yet another swollen jerk bearing before him as the escutcheon of his nobility, a lordly cash-wad - hey, look, look! all, kneel and scrape, saints be praised, it's one of the rich! - braying at the front of his procession, here's his high-browed publicist to lecture us over his sponsor's holy property rights, which that moneyswine himself bought from legislators and judges shamelessly unaverse to being bribed, and he lets me know in no uncertain terms that the foundation and entirety of the concept of right and wrong is indentically synonymous with paying a downright religious obeisance to those legal rights, down to the last jot and tittle of legislative detail.
Now I don't know exactly what you mean by "justify," Sir Plato. I probably don't want to know; listening to these depressing circular arguments not only sets me off my dinner but conjures up ugly demons who chase me remorselessly all through the too few hours I sleep. But I got news for you, Hog boy. These are moral questions and I will listen to authorities but I will not yield authority, period. Surely not to that cynical joker Valenti, even unlikelier to IANAL on slashdot. Not even to a judgment at law. Suppose some begowned ass in a court somewhere, interpreting lobbyists's laws, pounds down his big wood hammer and intones, "You lose!" - not in the least would that ever induce me to believe that innocently to swap an mpg should be seen by the sane as the same as the foul sour sin of stealing.
Mr. Hog, I know sin, and Napster is no sin.
...not in the least
would that ever induce
me to believe that
innocently to swap
an mpg
should be seen
by the sane
as the same
as the foul sour sin
of stealing.
What fun! Good night!
Yours WD "happy new year!" K - WKiernan@concentric.net
I see that Stallman's beard offends you. I take it you would be happier if Stallman were to shave. I don't suppose he will, and I can't imagine why you'd care. I'm glad you can't see me, for if I had a beard perhaps it too would offend you, which heaven forbid. Also, by your slashdot user name I take it you don't approve of the GPL. Fortunately for you no one forces you to release any all-original code you've written under the GPL.
What I'm wondering is, as you don't approve of the Gnu Public License, how do you feel about more ordinary proprietary software licenses, such as the End User License Agreement on this copy of NT Workstation 4.0 I have on my bookshelf? You know, just as there are certain legal restrictions on the use of software, such as EMACS or the Linux kernel, whose creators released it under the GPL, similarly the MS EULA restricts the use of software which Microsoft created and distributed. Do you have similar reservations about that? Do you refer to the MS EULA as "viral"? Certainly it "infects" the product; if I transfer ownership of my copy of NT to you, you too must abide by the terms of the MS EULA. Is there any particular reason you prefer the MS EULA to the GPL, which would explain you not choosing the user name "EULAs-not-good"?
The "infectious" aspect is the one main reason why you get to have a free copy of Linux plus countless support files and utilities, complete with the all-important source code. Complaining about the GPL is like saying "Life is great, everything is wonderful, but occasionally the bright sun hurts my eyes, I sure wish it would go away."
"Bigness" is too a word. Not only is it a word but everyone knows what it means. My fave quote from this piece was:
Individuals seem to have little chance against such enormity.
That's sweet. Reading it lights up my day and reminds me once again why I love Katz so. You suggest an editor but one of those would spoil things I think. A picky editor, a pedant, would have rejected that line, making the distinction between "enormousness" (yes, that too is a word) and "enormity." But whether or not one does make that distinction, Katz's sentence happens to be correct.
"Here, Vladimir, you say you want to be Prime Minister, eh? Well, you can be sitting at this desk, answering these telephones, at midnight GMT as half of Russia's power reactors shut themselves down automatically and the other half melt and go through the floor..."
Actually Boris wants to be not just out of office but overseas, Switzerland most likely (cozily close to all Russia's loose cash) at midnight.
Do you remember seeing him where he stood there and told these awful broken jokes, flopped, sweated, failed? Remember that terror in his eyes? That act sucked me in completely. God I was scared half to death. Fucking guy was a genius, I tell you.
Carrey's pretty good, too, though I don't rate him half as high as the fearless Katz. (As the fearless Katz does. Let's not rate Katz yet for a few years.) I don't much like the movies but I can't wait to see this thing.
I could swear I saw that site get slashdotted right before my eyes; the first pix downloaded nice and fast, but their server ground to a halt even as I watched!
My favorite was that pink and orange Flash Gordon dress. I'll bet my older daughter would look great in one of those. Too bad I saw this too late for Christmas.
Also there were a few nice boots Nitrozac might want to check out. I mean even after 1/1/2000 when everything breaks, she'd still be able to use them as boots.
> wow, it's nice to see the American Ebonics language exists > in the far corners of the world too.
Yeah we whites really owe the blacks for their amazing linguistic and artistic genius; not only have they given American English most of the most useful and entertaining neologisms, but also they single-handedly invented all this century's new, original genres of American music.
Slashdot Mirror
> You must have some sort of equation fetish. Get a life.
That's kinda mean. "Fetish" is so harsh. Religious conviction is intimately tied to beauty and what in the world could possibly be more beautiful than an equation? "Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare" and all that. If only equations were more well-understood by the masses, one could even fabricate a successful (i.e.: popular, rich, influential) religion whose symbolic centerpiece was mathematics. Consider Pythagoras and Spinoza.
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
For crying out loud! We're talking about CENSORING the INTERNET! Are you going to stand there and tell me that CENSORING the INTERNET isn't a topic of interest to slashdot readers?
I can tell where you're coming from, anyway, by the way you use the word "liberal," as though it were some kind of derogatory epithet. You're the one playing politics. You knee-jerk anti-liberals are such complete suckers, anybody can sell you any idea no matter how stupid or vicious, just by claiming that their idea is in opposition to some chimerical notion allegedly subscribed to by those awful "liberals."
Hmmf, WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
I have an account with GTE/Florida where for $35 a month I get the cheapest available DSL line into my house. Then for an additional $20 a month I get ISP service and a fixed IP from Verio (packet.net in Florida). I could have gotten ISP service from GTE for $20 a month, and then I'd only have to pay one bill, but GTE doesn't offer the fixed IP address unless you buy a much more expensive level of DSL service. But since I can choose my ISP separately from my DSL provider, I get that fixed IP address at a nice low price.
I could get a Roadrunner connection to my house, with somewhat higher peak bandwidth, for a few dollars less a month. But unless I am willing to pay a higher price for a higher level of service I can't get that fixed IP address from Roadrunner's ISP service. And unlike GTE DSL, Roadrunner doesn't give you the option of going with a competing ISP.
Now GTE doesn't allow you to buy ISP service from their competitors out of philanthropy. They do it because they have to as a result of the anti-trust laws. It seems likely to me that a company with the tremendous size, overwhelming market share, and steep vertical integration of the newly merged AOL/TW will also very likely find themselves under the purview of the Anti-trust statutes.
So while some people are worried that this merger will result in Roadrunner cable users having AOL's dismally limited ISP service forced on them, I suspect the opposite will happen and this merger will lead to more open access to Time-Warner's physical cable network. At least I hope so.
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
What it means is that, as compared with the old days when it was practically impossible to obtain the software with which to connect to AOL, or a copy of Time Magazine, or a Time-Warner cable connection, or access to any of Ted Turner's various TV channels, NOW you won't ever again have to put up with these terrible chronic problems. Why, who knows, if you're lucky, you may even get an official AOL CD in the mail, totally unsolicted! Gosh that would be great!
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
> I hate everyone
> Just like Columbine High School
> Everyone will die
hate them or love them
they're going to die anyway
all men are mortal
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
...Off-topic? What topic?
> Friends, let me say that I am lucky to have my old friend
> King James by my side; he has helped my elderly and ailing
> heart to get through some of these times.
Your old friend King James, eh? Well we know the truth about this old friend of yours, King James - "Queen James" as he was known to his contemporaries. Well (sniff) I won't be lectured on morality by morally abandoned, lust-debauched heathens such as yourself.
More righteous than thou, WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
My fave case is a December 1984 IBM 5170 (PC-AT). It used to have a 6 MHz 80286 with 512 KB RAM, now it has a Tyan Celeron Socket 1 motherboard inside. I had to hacksaw away part of the internal drive bay to make room for the DIMMs on that MB. Someone had taken out the key lock so I mounted a reset button in the hole instead. It's real handsome, a classic, and solid enough you could drive your car up on it to get underneath and change the oil. The biggest failing is that it only has two bays, but I want to add a CD burner to it and I also want a separate CD reader.
Does anyone know if someone sells either a combination floppy drive and IDE CD reader in a 5-1/4" wide half-height (1-1/2" high) form factor, or quarter-height floppies and CD readers, so I can free up one of the external bays?
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
A Dremel Moto-tool and Super Glue is what you need. I don't necessarily mind these curvaceous cases vendors are shipping these days all that much, though they do look like my kid's old Mighty Morphin transformer toys, but what I hate are cases that aren't flat and level on top. Where do you pile up CDs and floppies? Where do you rest your coffee cup, wine glass or beer mug?
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
Just to be perverse, I screwed with /etc/issue:
-----begin /etc/issue----- /etc/issue-----
Microsoft Linux 2000(tm) (ILoveMelissa)
Kernel 2.2.12-20 on an i586
-----end
This machine is actually running Redhat 6.1, by the way. And here is my /etc/lilo.message, which appears whenever I reboot:
-----begin /etc/lilo.message-----
Welcome to MICROSOFT (tm) LINUX 2000 (tm)!
As always, you can rely on Microsoft for innovation! You're now using another unique, patented Microsoft product:
MICROSOFT (tm) LINUX 2000 (tm)
If you have any reason to imagine that the computer you're using is running a stolen, illegally copied, or unauthorized ("bootleg") copy of MICROSOFT (tm) LINUX 2000 (tm), be sure to immediately call 1-800-PIRATES and turn the software thief in to the law! Help stamp out software pirates! They're stealing from YOU!
Simply wait ten seconds to enjoy our new, uniquely powerful MICROSOFT (tm) LINUX 2000 (tm) operating system, or to use another fine MICROSOFT (tm) product, type in "DOS" before the ten-second waiting period ends.
Either way, you'll be enjoying the use of a Licensed MICROSOFT (tm) product, your assurance of the highest quality in personal computer software! Accept no substitutes, use MICROSOFT operating systems! /etc/lilo.message-----
-----end
Hey, Microsoft lawyers! DON'T SUE ME, it's only a JOKE!
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
If this story is true ("Red Flag Linux"? sounds pretty dubious to me) might it have something to do with that NSA backdoor that was built into NT 4.0? I mean, if I ran the Chinese government I'd prefer to have the source code for the operating system being used by government agencies, all of it, and I'd get some people I could trust to go over it line by line.
All governments have police forces, and all police forces seem to have a practically biological urge to pry and spy against their subject citizenry. It is a fact of record that the U.S. government has found it necessary both to spy on all my telephone calls and to have access to protected files on my Windows NT server. I expect the Communist Chinese government to be at least as inquisitive, wouldn't you?
So just as the U.S. government built a backdoor into NT, wouldn't you expect the Chinese government to want to build a backdoor into their special Chinese edition of Linux? But how the Hell could they do that at the same time that they release full source code to the general public? Not only does open source make it difficult to conceal a police backdoor in source code, but also, with the compiler that usually accompanies Linux, one can make encryption tools which cripple all that expensive surveillance.
So will the distributors of "Red Flag Linux" follow the provisions of the Gnu Public License. and will the Chinese government allow them to do so? When a Chinese computer user gets a copy of "Red Flag Linux," does he get all the source code, and is he free to redistribute it with no restrictions?
That leads to another question about the GNU license. Would it be permissible under the GPL for me to sell a distribution of Linux without a compiler? It seems to me that merely having source code is pointless if one has nothing to compile it with.
Last, imagine, just as a hypothetical consideration, that a Chinese company starts flagratly violating copyleft; say, they release a binaries-only version of Linux. Do you suppose the WTO would apply trade sanctions against China in response to this violation of copyright? Of course you laugh! Everyone is aware that the WTO serves corporations and only corporations; no other considerations, such as environmental or human-rights issues, have ever applied in their judgments. Where there is no profit lost, the WTO has always remained indifferent. That is precisely what's wrong with the WTO.
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
> An aside: I find some of the Slashdot response interesting.
> We're a bit schizophrenic. We are bananas about privacy
> issues and here is the state taking action against a company
> that makes a device that is used to illegally violate privacy
> and we, er, go bananas!
Well, here's a flat-head screwdriver. You know, someone - possibly even I, but I wouldn't, as a matter of principle - someone could take this very screwdriver and stab your mother in the back of the neck. Mother-stabbing is even worse, I think, than illegal surveillance or the violation of one's privacy; and I expect you are as much against mother-stabbing as I am. That doesn't mean the government would be justified sending out SWAT teams to raid and close all the hardware stores, or your tool chest either.
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
So how hard is it, do you think, for a monolingual English-speaker to learn the language? And are there any jobs? And what are your immigration laws? My great-grandfather immigrated, my grandfather immigrated, my father immigrated, the way you talk, maybe it's my turn...
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
You write:
> We have raids on peoples house for the crime of owning a
> fully legal, registered firearm.
I would be interested in reading about specific cases where the government has raided private citizens for possession of a legal firearm. That leaves out raids to confiscate, say, fully-automatic machine guns, which most people know are pretty much illegal everywhere in the U.S.A.
I personally think there are far too many guns in this country. Also, I think you gun lovers have pretty damn little to complain about in comparison with the cruelly persecuted victims of the US's totally-berserk "war on drugs." On the other hand, if I ever had to work in a convenience store at night again like I did twenty-five years ago, you can bet your ass I'd get another gun.
Even though I don't like guns and I don't own a gun, it does seem to me that if you follow the local laws and regulations for owning a gun, you should not be subjected to having your house raided by the police. But considering the chronic out-of-control behavior of the police in their status as drug-warriors, I can easily believe that gun-owners also see their civil rights abused on a regular basis. So this is an issue in which any citizen who values civil liberties should take an interest.
So can you provide us with a few links?
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
There's a funny quote in there from Richard Stallman: "If you want people to take out the garbage, you have to pay them. You don't have to do that to get people to program. The excitement of advancing the technology is what drives hackers."
You know, I have the highest respect and admiration for Stallman, but I sure think he's got that dead wrong. I mean, no one pays me to take out the garbage, I do it voluntarily for free. The alternative, after all, is to leave it to pile up and pile up until you can't even force your way in the front door any more. (Every now and then you read about some recluse who does just that, and how does everyone describe such a person? They say, "He's nuts!")
Why would Stallman - Stallman of all people! - make an error like that? Because the ideologists of capitalism has so deliberately and single-mindedly infected our way of thinking that it's practically unimaginable to imagine that people do anything at all without the incentive of a profit. Why, there are many people to whom, for example, the notion of altruism, or even social cooperation, is as alien and inconceivable as the idea of an existing supernatural deity is to an lifelong atheist; they simply can not fit their minds around such an idea.
And yet practically everybody does things without the incentive of a profit every day. I mean, can you imagine feeding your children, or drinking a glass of beer, or listening to music? Of course you can, it's to do things like that that one works and accumulates money; yet where's the financial profit in doing those things?
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
"Justice" is a common word, as opposed to a technical term, whose definition might only be known by experts. So even if an ordinary man-in-the-street may not be able to come up with a synthetic definition of the word, you'd expect to be able to place a case in front of him and be able to get an answer to the question, "Is this justice?" Furthermore, common words are defined by consensus, so if your definition of "justice" contradicts that common understanding of what the word means, then your definition is wrong.
Now you say:
> You probably understand only the post-modernist definition
> of justice, which is "fairness". It's a sad side effect of
> the civil rights movement that the word justice had its meaning
> destroyed in common usage. As it has classicly been defined,
> justice is when the law is carried out as it is written (or
> as it is interpreted in a common law derived system.)
Ok, then, let's review an extreme example of "the law as it is written;" to be specific, the anti-Jew laws of Germany's Third Reich. Those clearly written laws specified that Jews could be deprived of all their goods and sentenced to slave labor. By your definition, "justice" consists of nothing more or less that carrying out these laws. I think it's obvious that no one in his right mind uses the word "justice" in this sense.
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
I'll get my daughter to make up a fake card for Redrum. She's good at doing stuff like that in Photoshop. The question is, what should it look like? I picture it as a squat little red-colored demon holding a bottle of rum (depressingly literal I am) in one hand while the other hand is upraised with that famous crooked finger, this would be a "drunk pokemon," but she may have a better idea. Hope Nintendo doesn't sue me. She's 12 and she still digs Pokemon, though not half as much as her 7-year-old brother.
I put on my Snorlax hat to write this post.
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
Theft? You sucker, don't you know, all property is theft!
So you have a problem with thieves, hey Hog boy? Well how about that there moron G. W. Bush, who just recently nakedly stole the U.S. Presidency?
But he hasn't been convicted in a court of law! Instead the highest court has upheld his right to commit that particular larceny! etc., etc...
OK, I see, you have a problem with thieves who get caught, is that it? Well, forty million or so Napster users haven't been caught yet, and so far as I am concerned, I hope they never do.
The law just isn't half so clear as you claim. It never is. If in general laws were, in this fair land, my U.S.A., alone seven hundred thousand lawyers would be instantly out of jobs, which pray God in Heaven forbid. You know, you yourself talk like a lawyer: specifically, you make bullshit pronunciamenti with flawless self-assurance. That's not only en vogue but de rigueur in court. This here ain't a court though, this is instead the highly intellectual, syntactically sophisticated, logically rigorous /., where we civilized folk sneer as such pretension!
Anyhow, laws don't mean a thing until they have been interpreted in court. Ain't that right? So legally, you can't be a thief until after a court of law has convicted you of thievery under a specific numbered statute. Who's been convicted? For sure, not I! Say now, you might be able legally float wild chartless allegations such as that during the course and flow of passionate jury-rendering argument in the special environment of the courtroom, but out here on the street, harsh unequivocal words like your
are actionable. So y'all watch your dang tongue, lawyer-boy!
Anyway. Fuck the big five record companies. Fuck them right up the ass with a red hot steel poker.
In general, fuck capitalism. You know (or maybe you don't know, in which sad case I pity you for a lost fool) what capitalism claims in terms of moral duties: that I, as just another private individual sadly lacking a large surplus of cash lying around, that is to say, a workie, that I have no rights whatsoever - no right to eat nor to breathe nor to occupy any volume of space, not to live at all. Sans cash, go die - and pay for your interment, or face your estate being sued! At the same moment, and I'm supposed to take this rubbish seriously: here's yet another swollen jerk bearing before him as the escutcheon of his nobility, a lordly cash-wad - hey, look, look! all, kneel and scrape, saints be praised, it's one of the rich! - braying at the front of his procession, here's his high-browed publicist to lecture us over his sponsor's holy property rights, which that moneyswine himself bought from legislators and judges shamelessly unaverse to being bribed, and he lets me know in no uncertain terms that the foundation and entirety of the concept of right and wrong is indentically synonymous with paying a downright religious obeisance to those legal rights, down to the last jot and tittle of legislative detail.
Now I don't know exactly what you mean by "justify," Sir Plato. I probably don't want to know; listening to these depressing circular arguments not only sets me off my dinner but conjures up ugly demons who chase me remorselessly all through the too few hours I sleep. But I got news for you, Hog boy. These are moral questions and I will listen to authorities but I will not yield authority, period. Surely not to that cynical joker Valenti, even unlikelier to IANAL on slashdot. Not even to a judgment at law. Suppose some begowned ass in a court somewhere, interpreting lobbyists's laws, pounds down his big wood hammer and intones, "You lose!" - not in the least would that ever induce me to believe that innocently to swap an mpg should be seen by the sane as the same as the foul sour sin of stealing.
Mr. Hog, I know sin, and Napster is no sin.
would that ever induce
me to believe that
innocently to swap
an mpg
should be seen
by the sane
as the same
as the foul sour sin
of stealing.
What fun! Good night!
Yours WD "happy new year!" K - WKiernan@concentric.net
I see that Stallman's beard offends you. I take it you would be happier if Stallman were to shave. I don't suppose he will, and I can't imagine why you'd care. I'm glad you can't see me, for if I had a beard perhaps it too would offend you, which heaven forbid. Also, by your slashdot user name I take it you don't approve of the GPL. Fortunately for you no one forces you to release any all-original code you've written under the GPL.
What I'm wondering is, as you don't approve of the Gnu Public License, how do you feel about more ordinary proprietary software licenses, such as the End User License Agreement on this copy of NT Workstation 4.0 I have on my bookshelf? You know, just as there are certain legal restrictions on the use of software, such as EMACS or the Linux kernel, whose creators released it under the GPL, similarly the MS EULA restricts the use of software which Microsoft created and distributed. Do you have similar reservations about that? Do you refer to the MS EULA as "viral"? Certainly it "infects" the product; if I transfer ownership of my copy of NT to you, you too must abide by the terms of the MS EULA. Is there any particular reason you prefer the MS EULA to the GPL, which would explain you not choosing the user name "EULAs-not-good"?
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
The "infectious" aspect is the one main reason why you get to have a free copy of Linux plus countless support files and utilities, complete with the all-important source code. Complaining about the GPL is like saying "Life is great, everything is wonderful, but occasionally the bright sun hurts my eyes, I sure wish it would go away."
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
"Bigness" is too a word. Not only is it a word but everyone knows what it means. My fave quote from this piece was:
Individuals seem to have little chance against such enormity.
That's sweet. Reading it lights up my day and reminds me once again why I love Katz so. You suggest an editor but one of those would spoil things I think. A picky editor, a pedant, would have rejected that line, making the distinction between "enormousness" (yes, that too is a word) and "enormity." But whether or not one does make that distinction, Katz's sentence happens to be correct.
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
"Here, Vladimir, you say you want to be Prime Minister, eh? Well, you can be sitting at this desk, answering these telephones, at midnight GMT as half of Russia's power reactors shut themselves down automatically and the other half melt and go through the floor..."
Actually Boris wants to be not just out of office but overseas, Switzerland most likely (cozily close to all Russia's loose cash) at midnight.
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
Do you remember seeing him where he stood there and told these awful broken jokes, flopped, sweated, failed? Remember that terror in his eyes? That act sucked me in completely. God I was scared half to death. Fucking guy was a genius, I tell you.
Carrey's pretty good, too, though I don't rate him half as high as the fearless Katz. (As the fearless Katz does. Let's not rate Katz yet for a few years.) I don't much like the movies but I can't wait to see this thing.
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
...because like the acronym "gnu", Kaufman's "comedy" (it isn't the right word for what he did, but what is?) was recursive.
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
I could swear I saw that site get slashdotted right before my eyes; the first pix downloaded nice and fast, but their server ground to a halt even as I watched!
My favorite was that pink and orange Flash Gordon dress. I'll bet my older daughter would look great in one of those. Too bad I saw this too late for Christmas.
Also there were a few nice boots Nitrozac might want to check out. I mean even after 1/1/2000 when everything breaks, she'd still be able to use them as boots.
Yours WDK - Kiernan@concentric.net
> wow, it's nice to see the American Ebonics language exists
> in the far corners of the world too.
Yeah we whites really owe the blacks for their amazing linguistic and artistic genius; not only have they given American English most of the most useful and entertaining neologisms, but also they single-handedly invented all this century's new, original genres of American music.
Wow, is this ever off-topic.
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net