The word 'pogrom' is most often applied to persecution of Jews by the Tsars. However, Stalin also killed many Jews, and the term is also used for his purges.
Ah, a sensible an informative reply. How often do we see those here? I expect you're right that Stalin's hatred for religion stemmed from his brutal religious upbringing.
I would like to add that Stalin was very anti-semitic and so his disproportionate slaughter of Jews may have been more on racial than religious grounds. This may be due to his rivalry with Trotsky (Lev Bronstein to you), who was of Jewish extraction although I don't know if he had any religious beliefs. Trotsky, meanwhile, hated Stalin for being 'Southern' i.e. from one of the Asian Republics.
I think Japan is the only country where the total of believers in the various religions is greater than the population. A majority of Japanese people practices both Buddhism and Shinto, but there are significant numbers of athiests and Christians. If you want precise statistics, check the CIA factbook.
I always thought that the imperial ideology of Japan in the first half of the last century was based partly on Shinto but mainly on nationalism, imperialism, feudalism and capitalism, but I'm as ignorant as the next slashdotter.
Stalin and Pol Pot were Communists, and as such Atheists.
Many Communists have been, are, and will be religious. And many athiest. In each category, many do good and many do evil. May I remind you that earlier this year the Vatican proclaimed a Communist as patron saint of politicians? Marx claimed that organised religion was used as a social tool to suppress unrest among the workers (which was true for the Church of England in the 19th Century), but if he ever made any statements about the existence of God they are much less famous. In any case, Marxists don't believe unquestioningly in everything Marx said, and many Communists are not Marxists.
The people that were murdered were murdered in the interest of furthering the cause of Communism, therefore, indirectly Atheism.
How did murdering Trotsky further the cause of Communism? He was assassinated purely for Uncle Joe's personal gratification. Stalin purged vast numbers of prominent Communists, and the killing fields didn't promote Communism much. You could add the Cultural Revolution to that list.
if you're Agnostic, you don't care
Being agnostic means you don't claim to know whether any deities exist. I've never heard an agnostic claim not to care about the subject.
There's a significant difference between Scientology and the other religions you mention. The other religions don't preach that their detractors can be lied to, sued, and destroyed in any way possible.
Why not spend this summer relaxing in sunny Afghanistan??
The WIPO treaty is relatively reasonable. It mandates legal penalties against circumventing technological measures used by copyright holders to protect their legal rights. These rights include a veto on copying and public display except for fair use, and the right to be identified as the author. It does not mandate legal penalties against circumventing technological measures used by copyright holders for any other purpose, e.g. to prevent certain movies being played in certain countries.
One enormous difference between this act and the DMCA is that the latter prohibits circumventing access controls (as does the Council Of Europe's draft treaty, which is more or less a word-for-word copy of the DMCA with paragraphs rearranged). But the Copyright Amendment Act only protects copy controls and rights-management information. See Division 2A paragraph 116A, especially section (7)(b) which states that it is not illegal to make a circumvention device if it does not infringe copyright. It will be illegal in Australia to produce a device which copies copy-protected material, or removes a watermark containing copyright information. But it will remain legal to produce a device such as DECSS for viewing DVDs, as watching a copy of a movie you own is a 'permitted use' - permitted by law, whether permitted by the copyright holder or not.
Of course, you should consult a lawyer before trusting me. There is also a restriction against circumventing access control, but that applies specifically to broadcast decoding devices (e.g. set-top boxes). One more thing. A circumvention device is a device which does nothing commercially significant other than circumventing, and therefore includes devices which do nothing at all. But it is only illegal if it does circumvent something, which is a welcome change from the DMCA and CoE draft.
If you agree with the philosophy of copyright in general, I can't see any strong grounds for complaining about this act. In fact I intend to urge my elected representatives to support legislation like this instead of the pernicious DMCA and its clones.
It would be strange if the source did not contain a copyright notice. Such comments are almost universal in code for external use. What other grounds could hooptie have for saying that he retained the copyright? And
everything developed has been released under the GPL, with my name as the holder of the copyright.
implies that the code stated that it was copyrighted to hooptie (and probably that it was under GPL).
Because of the criticality of any medical or military software, any competent developer would insist on subjecting it to thorough scrutiny. This would certainly include a line-by-line examination of the code, so there is no question that they were unaware of what it said (even if they are unable to recall the verbal contract).
If hooptie had a written contract which contradicts the spoken one then there would be considerable trouble. There is probably good evidence that the employers agreed to give hooptie copyright, but proving that in court would be hugely expensive.
I agree that the issues would be the same if hooptie had placed it in the public domain, or reserved all rights for him/herself. The only significance of the GPL is that hooptie might have misled the other parties about its meaning, to persuade them to relinquish their claim to the copyright. Or they might feel now that they were misled, or claim they were. (I don't think this would be a very strong argument, as hooptie would surely have provided a copy of the license.)
Yahoo's physical operations in France were minimally relevant to the recent court case. Yahoo corporation in California was issued with an injunction (or whatever they call it in France) with two separate parts:
Remove and prevent content on Yahoo.fr which contravened French law.
Remove and prevent content on Yahoo.com which contravened French law, or make it impossible for either people in France or French citizens in other countries to view such content.
Yahoo.fr content is probably physically hosted in France, and perhaps mirrored elsewhere, but I have no definite information on the subject. Yahoo.com is probably hosted in the USA.
At substantial expense, Yahoo complied with the first part and attempted to comply with the second. Owing to ambiguity in the original court order, the judge ruled that Yahoo had not complied with it, and issued a second judgment. (I've only read the English text, for which Yahoo's interpretation is much more reasonable, but the emphasis may have been different in the original.) This new order repeated the restrictions against yahoo.com, and imposed stiff fines until they were met. Yahoo has complied with the stricter regulations, effectively censoring its US and worldwide operations. The company has countersued in California, citing the jurisdictional arguments you mention.
Nowhere in any of the court proceedings is there any mention of the physical location of various servers. It would be quite possible for yahoo.fr to move its physical hosts to another country (e.g. Belgium). It would also be possible for the company to be registered abroad and the staff to work elsewhere. But none of these considerations are mentioned in either of the rulings against the American defendant. The locations of Yahoo's various operations were not a factor in either of the decisions. These questions will not be addressed unless/until the countersuit is heard. If yahoo.fr left the country, the court's only new problems would be the administrative ones of how to enforce its ruling. And there are very few countries which do not cooperate with France on international crime.
If the Church of Scientology can censor the Internet, a permanent member of the UN securirty council isn't going to have much trouble. By the way, Robespierre isn't representative of any enduring French political tradition. Petain would be a better example. If you feel the need for childish nationalistic taunts, Bonaparte won't have the desired effect. Most French people admire him, just as Americans admire JFK and the English admire Henry V (there's obviously something about crazed warmongering losers that inspires national pride).
I think that the reason people fear this site, isnt so much what it depicts towards animals, but rather what it says about human nature.
What on Earth does it tell us about human nature that we don't know already? We already know that pain and disfigurement (e.g. Tom & Jerry) often amuses people. We already know that when most people find something funny, some people will not. These people are, perhaps unfairly, criticised for having a poor sense of humour.
We already know that many people are stupid, including some of the humourless.
Do you have any evidence that it's 'the ones who deny acknowledging their dark nature' who are more likely to commit acts of cruelty, or are you just automatically regurgitating pop psychology?
When you apply for a serious post, the application form or interviewer typically asks why you left your previous/current employer. At least, here in the UK they usually ask. Did your current employer ask you that question, and did you give broadly the same answer? If you said something different, I can understand your boss being annoyed. Either you lied to get the job, or you are now spreading lies about an ex-employer.
Note well that a separate (and ignored) section of the DMCA grants _much_ better 'fair use' to anyone with a 'commercially viable' product.
That's incorrect. The DMCA bans devices and services which are designed to circumvent access controls, e.g. DeCSS. It also separately bans devices which have only limited commercially significant use apart from circumvention. Twice. From the DMCA Section 1201 (a)(2)(B) and again in (b)(2)(B):
has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title;
Presumably the drafters intended to specify either devices which can be used for circumvention and have no other commercially significant use, or devices that have a commercially significant circumvention use and no other commercially significant use. However, they settled for banning all devices whose commercial significance is finite (sounds reasonable...).
Note that 'commercially significant' is not the same as 'commercially viable'. The former means that it affects commerce, regardless of whether it can profitably be sold, hired, etc.
Remember that Yahoo is countersuing the French court which recently censorsed laws on Yahoo's American sites. Keeping the Internet reloatively free will benefit everyone (not least Yahoo). Meanwhile this (Yahoo) link notes that Yahoo has added $5M to the $100M Bill Gates has put up to pay for an HIV vaccine. That bit of news ought to inspire the trolls.
Northern Light never tried to be a portal -- they're still just a (bad) search engine.
I've always found it a very good search engine. It's quick, easy, powerful and returns many times more matches than Altavista, usefully classified. What more could you ask?
That 'sentence' has no main verb (and is also missing its subject, or object, or both), so it doesn't mean much. Presumably the writer intended to say that by agreeing to the TOS you grant Yahoo that license.
I guess they want to publish works like Voices From The Hellmouth legally. They might perhaps feel they need this license if they want to show your work in different locations (either virtually, e.g. different pages, or physically, e.g. different servers. OTOH, I'm sure they don't need your permission for a RAID).
This would be a problem if you're posting source code or other open-source material. Yahoo's license is incompatible with (for example) the GPL. Note that it only applies to material where you own the copyright, so if you have assigned copyright to GNU, for example, you no longer have the legal power to grant Yahoo its license (but I don't think this has been tested in court). That, incidentally, is one answer to the register's source's question.
I don't know why groups and clubs are an exception, but these are the places where code is most likely to be posted.
That article is in no way critical of Ranma's sex-changes. Its only complaints are:
This is a fun series and very suitable for children with two considerations; there is usually one (and only one) brief instance of nudity in every OVA or movie, and some of the TV episodes. There is also considerable martial arts style fighting. However, the violence is cartoon in nature with bruises and bandages that disappear in the next scene.
(Note the implication that trivialised violence is better than violence with realistic consequences.)
England has never been a representative democratic republic. In the 17th century England was briefly a republic under an unrepresentative parliament (elected by a minority of wealthy men, much like US governments before the abolition of slavery, female suffrage and civil rights), and then a dictator. England has not existed as a sovereign nation for nearly 300 years, and the UK remains a monarchy as its name suggests.
You first sentence is unclear. Do you claim that the EU needs better regulation than it has, or better than the USA? Do you claim that markets are not competitive in general, or just in the EU? Either way, what evidence supports this conclusion?
A few US companies with very high reputations to maintain may decide it is more profitable to respect their customers' privacy. Many managers will consider the money to be made from abusing their customers, but refuse on ethical grounds. (Don't laugh, it's true.) But it is common practice to use customer data in any way which might prove useful. There are several reasons for this:
As far as I can tell from press commentary and the actions of companies such as Amazon.com, privacy policies have no legal standing. They purport (at least on ecommerce sites) to be terms of sale, which would be legally binding, but apparently they are not. It seems they do not even have the status of advertising, where companies can be penalised for making false claims.
All you can see is the privacy policy. You have no way of finding out whether the company is follwing its policy. You may realise that your email and physical addresses have been sold to spammers, but you won't know who sold them.
Most dotcoms are fly-by-night companies not long for this world. They have not had time to build a good reputation and will not have time to suffer from a bad one.
Even in a long-established company, the executive who makes the decision to sell your personal data will probably not be there for long. (S)He will receive a generous bonus for the profit generated, and leave before the lost sales are apparent. There are a few industries such as pharmecuticals and aerospace where a long-term view is required, but they are exceptional.
In theory there would be no need for laws against fraud, false advertising, unsafe food, medical malpractice or deadly working conditions. The market would prevent such problems. But in reality all these were extremely widespread before they were outlawed, for the reasons given above, and still occur sporadically.
I'd be interested to hear about this personal experience you speak of. Exactly what protection do you have in the US that you do not have in Europe?
Slashdot Mirror
>One broke the contract with the school and the code of conduct, and resuted in suspension.
Just what contract are you claiming exists between these children and the school?
The word 'pogrom' is most often applied to persecution of Jews by the Tsars. However, Stalin also killed many Jews, and the term is also used for his purges.
Ah, a sensible an informative reply. How often do we see those here? I expect you're right that Stalin's hatred for religion stemmed from his brutal religious upbringing.
I would like to add that Stalin was very anti-semitic and so his disproportionate slaughter of Jews may have been more on racial than religious grounds. This may be due to his rivalry with Trotsky (Lev Bronstein to you), who was of Jewish extraction although I don't know if he had any religious beliefs. Trotsky, meanwhile, hated Stalin for being 'Southern' i.e. from one of the Asian Republics.
I think Japan is the only country where the total of believers in the various religions is greater than the population. A majority of Japanese people practices both Buddhism and Shinto, but there are significant numbers of athiests and Christians. If you want precise statistics, check the CIA factbook.
I always thought that the imperial ideology of Japan in the first half of the last century was based partly on Shinto but mainly on nationalism, imperialism, feudalism and capitalism, but I'm as ignorant as the next slashdotter.
Many Communists have been, are, and will be religious. And many athiest. In each category, many do good and many do evil. May I remind you that earlier this year the Vatican proclaimed a Communist as patron saint of politicians? Marx claimed that organised religion was used as a social tool to suppress unrest among the workers (which was true for the Church of England in the 19th Century), but if he ever made any statements about the existence of God they are much less famous. In any case, Marxists don't believe unquestioningly in everything Marx said, and many Communists are not Marxists.
The people that were murdered were murdered in the interest of furthering the cause of Communism, therefore, indirectly Atheism.
How did murdering Trotsky further the cause of Communism? He was assassinated purely for Uncle Joe's personal gratification. Stalin purged vast numbers of prominent Communists, and the killing fields didn't promote Communism much. You could add the Cultural Revolution to that list.
if you're Agnostic, you don't care
Being agnostic means you don't claim to know whether any deities exist. I've never heard an agnostic claim not to care about the subject.
Why not spend this summer relaxing in sunny Afghanistan??
One enormous difference between this act and the DMCA is that the latter prohibits circumventing access controls (as does the Council Of Europe's draft treaty, which is more or less a word-for-word copy of the DMCA with paragraphs rearranged). But the Copyright Amendment Act only protects copy controls and rights-management information. See Division 2A paragraph 116A, especially section (7)(b) which states that it is not illegal to make a circumvention device if it does not infringe copyright. It will be illegal in Australia to produce a device which copies copy-protected material, or removes a watermark containing copyright information. But it will remain legal to produce a device such as DECSS for viewing DVDs, as watching a copy of a movie you own is a 'permitted use' - permitted by law, whether permitted by the copyright holder or not.
Of course, you should consult a lawyer before trusting me. There is also a restriction against circumventing access control, but that applies specifically to broadcast decoding devices (e.g. set-top boxes). One more thing. A circumvention device is a device which does nothing commercially significant other than circumventing, and therefore includes devices which do nothing at all. But it is only illegal if it does circumvent something, which is a welcome change from the DMCA and CoE draft.
If you agree with the philosophy of copyright in general, I can't see any strong grounds for complaining about this act. In fact I intend to urge my elected representatives to support legislation like this instead of the pernicious DMCA and its clones.
This must be some exciting new meaning of the word 'elected' I wasn't previously aware of.
It would be strange if the source did not contain a copyright notice. Such comments are almost universal in code for external use. What other grounds could hooptie have for saying that he retained the copyright? And
implies that the code stated that it was copyrighted to hooptie (and probably that it was under GPL).Because of the criticality of any medical or military software, any competent developer would insist on subjecting it to thorough scrutiny. This would certainly include a line-by-line examination of the code, so there is no question that they were unaware of what it said (even if they are unable to recall the verbal contract).
If hooptie had a written contract which contradicts the spoken one then there would be considerable trouble. There is probably good evidence that the employers agreed to give hooptie copyright, but proving that in court would be hugely expensive.
I agree that the issues would be the same if hooptie had placed it in the public domain, or reserved all rights for him/herself. The only significance of the GPL is that hooptie might have misled the other parties about its meaning, to persuade them to relinquish their claim to the copyright. Or they might feel now that they were misled, or claim they were. (I don't think this would be a very strong argument, as hooptie would surely have provided a copy of the license.)
- Remove and prevent content on Yahoo.fr which contravened French law.
- Remove and prevent content on Yahoo.com which contravened French law, or make it impossible for either people in France or French citizens in other countries to view such content.
Yahoo.fr content is probably physically hosted in France, and perhaps mirrored elsewhere, but I have no definite information on the subject. Yahoo.com is probably hosted in the USA.At substantial expense, Yahoo complied with the first part and attempted to comply with the second. Owing to ambiguity in the original court order, the judge ruled that Yahoo had not complied with it, and issued a second judgment. (I've only read the English text, for which Yahoo's interpretation is much more reasonable, but the emphasis may have been different in the original.) This new order repeated the restrictions against yahoo.com, and imposed stiff fines until they were met. Yahoo has complied with the stricter regulations, effectively censoring its US and worldwide operations. The company has countersued in California, citing the jurisdictional arguments you mention.
Nowhere in any of the court proceedings is there any mention of the physical location of various servers. It would be quite possible for yahoo.fr to move its physical hosts to another country (e.g. Belgium). It would also be possible for the company to be registered abroad and the staff to work elsewhere. But none of these considerations are mentioned in either of the rulings against the American defendant. The locations of Yahoo's various operations were not a factor in either of the decisions. These questions will not be addressed unless/until the countersuit is heard. If yahoo.fr left the country, the court's only new problems would be the administrative ones of how to enforce its ruling. And there are very few countries which do not cooperate with France on international crime.
If the Church of Scientology can censor the Internet, a permanent member of the UN securirty council isn't going to have much trouble. By the way, Robespierre isn't representative of any enduring French political tradition. Petain would be a better example. If you feel the need for childish nationalistic taunts, Bonaparte won't have the desired effect. Most French people admire him, just as Americans admire JFK and the English admire Henry V (there's obviously something about crazed warmongering losers that inspires national pride).
What on Earth does it tell us about human nature that we don't know already? We already know that pain and disfigurement (e.g. Tom & Jerry) often amuses people. We already know that when most people find something funny, some people will not. These people are, perhaps unfairly, criticised for having a poor sense of humour. We already know that many people are stupid, including some of the humourless.
Do you have any evidence that it's 'the ones who deny acknowledging their dark nature' who are more likely to commit acts of cruelty, or are you just automatically regurgitating pop psychology?
When you apply for a serious post, the application form or interviewer typically asks why you left your previous/current employer. At least, here in the UK they usually ask. Did your current employer ask you that question, and did you give broadly the same answer? If you said something different, I can understand your boss being annoyed. Either you lied to get the job, or you are now spreading lies about an ex-employer.
Alexander conquered the known world. Several Indian and Chinese leaders made similar claims.
That's incorrect. The DMCA bans devices and services which are designed to circumvent access controls, e.g. DeCSS. It also separately bans devices which have only limited commercially significant use apart from circumvention. Twice. From the DMCA Section 1201 (a)(2)(B) and again in (b)(2)(B):
Presumably the drafters intended to specify either devices which can be used for circumvention and have no other commercially significant use, or devices that have a commercially significant circumvention use and no other commercially significant use. However, they settled for banning all devices whose commercial significance is finite (sounds reasonable...).Note that 'commercially significant' is not the same as 'commercially viable'. The former means that it affects commerce, regardless of whether it can profitably be sold, hired, etc.
Ever heard of cinema?
Remember that Yahoo is countersuing the French court which recently censorsed laws on Yahoo's American sites. Keeping the Internet reloatively free will benefit everyone (not least Yahoo). Meanwhile this (Yahoo) link notes that Yahoo has added $5M to the $100M Bill Gates has put up to pay for an HIV vaccine. That bit of news ought to inspire the trolls.
I've always found it a very good search engine. It's quick, easy, powerful and returns many times more matches than Altavista, usefully classified. What more could you ask?
This would be a problem if you're posting source code or other open-source material. Yahoo's license is incompatible with (for example) the GPL. Note that it only applies to material where you own the copyright, so if you have assigned copyright to GNU, for example, you no longer have the legal power to grant Yahoo its license (but I don't think this has been tested in court). That, incidentally, is one answer to the register's source's question.
I don't know why groups and clubs are an exception, but these are the places where code is most likely to be posted.
This is a fun series and very suitable for children with two considerations; there is usually one (and only one) brief instance of nudity in every OVA or movie, and some of the TV episodes. There is also considerable martial arts style fighting. However, the violence is cartoon in nature with bruises and bandages that disappear in the next scene.
(Note the implication that trivialised violence is better than violence with realistic consequences.)
To calculate a false positive rate of 10^-6 you would need a sample of about 10^7: ten million people. That's thorough.
Nice pun.
England has never been a representative democratic republic. In the 17th century England was briefly a republic under an unrepresentative parliament (elected by a minority of wealthy men, much like US governments before the abolition of slavery, female suffrage and civil rights), and then a dictator. England has not existed as a sovereign nation for nearly 300 years, and the UK remains a monarchy as its name suggests.
Pitcairn women have been voting (on and off) since 1838. See the encapsulated history of the islands.
How much did they fine Amazon.com for revealing individuals' purchases? Wasn't it $0?
A few US companies with very high reputations to maintain may decide it is more profitable to respect their customers' privacy. Many managers will consider the money to be made from abusing their customers, but refuse on ethical grounds. (Don't laugh, it's true.) But it is common practice to use customer data in any way which might prove useful. There are several reasons for this:
- As far as I can tell from press commentary and the actions of companies such as Amazon.com, privacy policies have no legal standing. They purport (at least on ecommerce sites) to be terms of sale, which would be legally binding, but apparently they are not. It seems they do not even have the status of advertising, where companies can be penalised for making false claims.
- All you can see is the privacy policy. You have no way of finding out whether the company is follwing its policy. You may realise that your email and physical addresses have been sold to spammers, but you won't know who sold them.
- Most dotcoms are fly-by-night companies not long for this world. They have not had time to build a good reputation and will not have time to suffer from a bad one.
- Even in a long-established company, the executive who makes the decision to sell your personal data will probably not be there for long. (S)He will receive a generous bonus for the profit generated, and leave before the lost sales are apparent. There are a few industries such as pharmecuticals and aerospace where a long-term view is required, but they are exceptional.
In theory there would be no need for laws against fraud, false advertising, unsafe food, medical malpractice or deadly working conditions. The market would prevent such problems. But in reality all these were extremely widespread before they were outlawed, for the reasons given above, and still occur sporadically.I'd be interested to hear about this personal experience you speak of. Exactly what protection do you have in the US that you do not have in Europe?