Our first Ammendment states that our government must neither endorse nor hinder any specific religion. Some people feel that public displays of religious dogma constitute an endorsement. Others feel that banning such dogma from all public places constitutes a hinderance.
Refering to a COURTHOUSE as "all public places" is a nice way to cloud the issue.
this proves the GP post. Tweaking the issue until you get a 50% split on opinion.
Most people can easily understand why putting forward legislation passed by God in prominent display at a courthouse not only endorses a specific set of religious laws, violates a fundamental priciple of justice, and amounts to FRAUD.
I'm sure people could also see the violation of the constitution if a Muslim judge wanted to rely upon the Quran as an authority or even as guidance in his decisions. I can only imagine the ruckus that would result if a judge wanted to put a large inverted pentagram on display in the court.
But redifining courthouse as "all public places" is a good way to change what would have been a strong majority agreement into a devisive issue.
Last thing: if you followed the FSF's recommendations as to how to use the license, your code would contain this text:
# This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or # modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as # published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of # the License, or (at your option) any later version.
If you are going to allow undefined licensing of your work. Why not just make the work Public Domain and be done with it.
You dont know what text future GPL licenses may contain.
This sounds a lot like you had a rotary service phone line and you were using a touch tone phone.
simply providing dial tone costs money, takes electricity and requires physical hardware at the central office to be dedicated to your line.
putting dialtone on an unserviced lines also creates confusion to technicians who use line testers to see if a line is alive or not. They listen for the dialtone.
Your case does not represent the norm for disconnected phone lines. Normally they are quite dead. No dial tone.
"I didn't know Canada adhered to the US Constitution, which was what was quoted in the article that I replied to. Try to stay focused here."
I didn't claim that Canada was bound by the american constitution. However the original comment was an issue of legal interpretation. And the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms has a similar clauses against self incrimination.
7. Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice. 8. Everyone has a right to be secure against unreasonable search or seizure....
11. Any person charged with an offence has the right... (c) not to be compelled to be a witness in proceedings against that person in respect of the offence;... (h) if finally acquitted of the offence, not to be tried for it again and, if finally found guilty and punished for the offence, not to be tried or punished for it again; 13. A witness who testifies in any proceedings has the right not to have any incriminating evidence so given used to incriminate that witness in any other proceedings, except in a prosecution for perjury or for the giving of contradictory evidence.
Since the original comment dealt with a matter of legal interpretation, it is RELEVENT to the discussion how other courts have already ruled in regards to similar rights in another english speaking country. You probably didn't know this but courts, even though not bound, can be persuaded by other rulings on other countries on similarily worded statutes.
Civil Liberties organizations (the ACLU was mentioned specifically in the original article) ARE definitly inspired by civil liberties afforded in other free democracies. And these comments are on topic.
Compare the Charter with the 5th ammendment to the US constitution as quoted in the article: "No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."
Specifically compared Charter 11(c) "[Any person charged with an offence has the right] not to be compelled to be a witness in proceedings against that person in respect of the offence" to the 5th "[no person] shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself" and combine the effect of Charter section 13, and the effect is very similar. In fact, almost identical.
The entire discussion itself deals with civil liberties (regarding fingerprints, photos and DNA) and not merely the interpretation of the US constitution, any comments on those liberties is on topic. Or in "focus" as you say.
This same argument has been going on in regards of what to do with photographs and fingerprints of people after they are aquitted.
After a person is cleared on the offence there is no additional benefit to society to keep their personal information which outweighs the invasion of privacy that person suffers for having that information be on the "Record".
For an innocent person, having their fingerprints show up in a criminal database is an invasion of privacy. That is their personal data which the state took from them without their consent.
Insofar as the legal system is founded on the principle of presumption of innocence and respect for the rule of law. A person who is aquitted ought to be left alone as much as possible, and free to go about their business as if they were never accused in the first place.
There is no legal status in this society of "innocent, but not really".
As for your contention that EVERYONE gets fingerprinted. That is not necessarily true.
As least in Canada, there is discretion on the police as to whether or not they choose to take fingerprints. They have the authority in certain cases, but they can skip it if they dont see any necessity.
I would be suprised if most jurisdictions had a rule which said police MUST take fingerprints even if they dont want to.
incidentally.. in Canada, the policy of police departments (at least RCMP and Toronto Police) is to destroy or return fingerprints and photos of a person if they are aquitted of all charges upon request.
It is that policy (to destroy on request) which caused the Ontario Supreme Court to rule that the law allowing fingerprint retention on any basis was constitutional. It is likely I think, that if police started refusing to destroy fingerprints on an ad hoc basis, then the Court would rule that they must.
anyway.. this is Canadian law which few of you care about.
"Will other convicted spammers now have grounds for an appeal?"
Anyone who is convicted on the basis of evidence which can not possibly cause a reasonable and unbiased person to reach a guilty verdict has always had a grounds for an appeal. This is nothing new. Nor is it restricted to accused spammers.
The jury has a responsibility, not only the accused, but also to the 'people' to be fair and unbiased in its findings.
Among other things, this means its findings must be objectively plausible. The jury may not create fictions out of whole cloth.
If the prosecution (as the CNN article seems to imply) could not find a single person to come forward and claim they received unsolicited email, and if the accused testified and claimed they never sent unsolicited email, then the jury could not arbitrarily decide to conclude the opposite of the only evidence before the court.
If that was a necessary element of the offence, then guilt can not be proved.
If they said 'guilty' then either they made a mistake or they were not being fair and unbiased.
A judge may not overturn a conviction simply because he would have personally found the defendant not guilty. He has to find that if the jury was acting fairly, then the conviction could not be possible. i.e. That no jury acting fairly could possibly have reached that guilty verdict.
I believe this judge was merely speculating why the jury reached the wrong verdict. I dont think there actually needs to be any finding of a specific 'cause' for the juries incorrect verdict. The statement to "confusion" is merely obiter. The court likely concluded the jury was not doing its job, which is to be FAIR and UNBIASED in its deliberation.
(as usual the media completely fails to report enough information to make sense out of what actually took place in the courtroom.)
This usually means that was no evidence before the court capable of supporting the juries conclusion, and therefore the jury either misunderstood or was using external evidence to reach its verdict, or was being vindictive and punishing the accused merely because of the victims suffering, or its outrage at the crime, rather than the evidence of guilt.
If you were tried with murder, and the murder victim was clearly still alive (and especially if the prosecutor admits the victim is alive, and the defense called the victim to the stand to attest to that), then the jury *must* acquit. The evidence can not possibly support a finding of guilt. Even if the accused was covered in the "victims" blood, and the "murder weapon" was found, and motive and opportunity was proved. If the victim is alive, then clearly no murder could possibly have been commited (unless they conclude that someone ELSE was murdered). In this case the jury must have misunderstood the evidence. That is kind of a crazy example, but it is a situation where an appeals court would reverse the jury's verdict.
Put basically... mere disagreements do not overturn decisions. More is required.
"the right to copy things is a moral right, a right that exists above government. It is an inherent right that describes a nature of human existence that lives in us from the time we are born." the burden of truth lies with the sceptic. Excuse me? Man has the natural right to copy? Maybe it's just me, but I'd like to see some explanation and more justification than the fact that it was somehow possible to actually get it to appear in type. I'm curious, when exactly does this 'right to copy' kick in?
I wont get into a large treatese on the justification for that line of belief here.
I would need to answer the questions:
1. What is a natural right? 2. Are there any rights which are not natural. i.e. are there manmade rights? 3. Does a natural right morally take precedence over a manmade right? 4. Is the right to copy a natural right? 5. Is the exclusivity of copyright a natural right or a man made right?
Now I will first point out that LEGALLY, there is no difference between flavors of rights. Either something is recognized in law as a right or not. So to that extent I will not try to argue that there is a right to copy. Legally the right to copy is held exclusively by the copyright holder.
to answer the questions in brief: IMHO 1. a natural right is a right to do something that by ones very nature is a necessity for existence and continuation. Since natural rights derive from ones very nature, they can not be GRANTED nor REVOKED. 2. yes. governments often create priviledges and call them RIGHTS. Such RIGHTS have no more moral weight than privileges as the same governments can easily revoke such RIGHTS. Contrasted with natural RIGHTS, which can not be granted and can not be revoked. 3. morally yes. To infringe on a natural right is to do serious harm to an individual and takes away from them something they need which they can not do without. To infringe on a man made right is really an offense against the STATE, as the right only exists in so far as the STATE deems it to exist. It does not exist within the infringed individual. The infringed individual has no cause for upset. 4. Yes. We can not possibly resist the urge to learn or emulate those around us. By our very nature we COPY and imitate in order to become fully functional human beings. In order to learn how to paint, we COPY paintings of others. In order to learn how to sing we COPY songs of others. In order to learn how to think, we study the ideas and philosophies of others. Human beings can not become creative without copying. Human achievement is based on copying what has come before and improving on it. I could go on.. but I will not go on here. I claim that it can be demonstrated that the right to copy is a natural right. 5. The right to dictate what other individuals do in amongst one another and between one another does not appear anywhere in nature. You are not prevented from being a fully functional human being if other people are at liberty to learn and emulate you (i.e. copy you). In fact, you are likely to be treated as some kind of leader and given a position of respect in society.
Copyright is an attempt to encourage creativity, but that does not mean it is either effective or necessary for creativity. Thousands of years of human development has proved that.
At what point does 'my' idea become 'everyones' idea? Is it still mine when it exists only in my head? What about when my novel is halfway done?
The question is meaningless. It will be YOUR idea for the rest of eternity. Whether you are granted a state enforced monopoly on it, is a seperate question.
I think the 'right to copy' must in some way include the 'right to access to copy'.
If you take that position you would be taking a brand new position, neither supported in law, or advocated by current copyright proponents or free information proponents.
Will I be obligated to provide access? Will it be OK for someone to break into m
I was following you until that statement. For good or bad, copyrights are legal fictions. They were created by government.
Without some damn persuasive arguments it's way too easy to look like you just like free stuff.
That is an ad hominem argument. Just because someone may or may not like free stuff, it doesn't weaken his claim that the right to copy is an inalienable right.
If you disagree, then say so. You attack a straw man by attacking some claims about "incentive" etc etc. His strongest claim is:
"the right to copy things is a moral right, a right that exists above government. It is an inherent right that describes a nature of human existence that lives in us from the time we are born."
""So, no, MS wouldn't have to GPL the driver layer.""
You misunderstood me. I was saying that MS need *not* GPL the drivers because the drivers are not derived from any GPL code.
Only a modified version of linux (if MS made one, as the article suggested) would need to be GPLed.
I was commenting on the idea proposed by the article, and making the point that the actual drivers themselves would not need to be GPLed.
I did not claim MS would need to create any GPLed code. I only said that if the way MS went about creating this hypothetical version of linux, was to actually modify the linux kernal itself, then those modifications would need to be GPLed.
"GPL specifically makes an exception for linking against things distributed with the operating system"
This doesn't mean that you don't need to GPL license your program (if it derives from other GPL code in the Linux kernal). It only means that you don't need to redistribute the entire linux kernal just because you derive from part of it, because everyone that uses your program must already have the entire linux kernal you are excused from the requirement to redistribute the entire kernal. You would still need to distribute the remainder of the derived program in source code form, as well as license it to ALL THIRD PARTIES under the GPL.
"Additionally, a win32 driver layer would also fall under Linus' binary-module exception."
Linus's binary-module exception does not change the effect of the GPL. It only grants a small additional freedom to those who derive specifically from any code which Linus HIMSELF is the sole copyright holder of. He grants you additional permissions under specific circumstances. And by relying on those permissions you need not rely on the GPL. Many parts of Linux are copyrighted by many different people.
With that said, it is possible to create binaries which derive from nothing other than Public Domain interfaces, and thus do not derive from any GPLed code. X11, Posix and ANSI C are public standards with public interfaces for example. You need not GPL a program simply because it derives from those API's.
"They wouldn't do this for many other reasons (being hard to do, relinquishing a monopoly, truested computing, etc), but licensing isn't one of them."
the article said: "Well, except for the fact that Microsoft would be unable to produce such a product without allowing the other vendors access to the driver code as part of the open-source Linux license arrangement (GPL)."
If the device drivers are not derived from any GPL code (and as they is currently proprietary, presumably they are not GPL derived), then Microsoft can make a version of Linux which uses the drivers. The modified linux is based on GPL code (i.e. the base linux kernal) and the modified linux is based on propietary code (device drivers).
GPL does not require that copyright holder of the original software to agree to anything (in respect of the original software). Only the author of the derived software (in respect of the derived work) agrees to license the software under the GPL.
This artical is simply FUD.
Proprietary device drivers which work under linux today.
Moreover: The majority of device drivers in MS Windows are not even owned by microsoft at all, but belong to the companies which manufacture the respective devices, and licensed to Microsoft.
However, I argue that a model such as this does very little to substantiate that position because the necessary data does not exist.
This is untrue. There is data. The data takes the form of tree rings, bubbles of ancient atmosphere trapped in glacial ice, fossil evidence. Archeological evidence of ancient civilizations. The laws of physics. Geological evidence of continental drift.. etc etc..
Climatology is an extension of the sciences of chemistry, thermodynamics, biology and physics combined with archeology and some deductive reasoning.
It is not some mysticism which climatologists pull out of a hat.
These are the same sciences which resulted in the impossible inventions of space flight, automobiles, heavier than air flight, electrical motors, anti-biotics, synthetic plastic, flat screen TVs, the atomic bomb.
If you're going to develop and rely on a model to prove a point, be ready to defend the statistics and methods which underly it. That's just as much a part of the science as is the climatology at this point. If you disagree, don't use a statistical model.
There is no obligation to defend against insincere or uneducated attacks.
Convincing someone who doesn't understand science, math or logic in the first place of the validity of a scientific model or theory does not make the theory more valid. Convincing such a person is an act of diplomacy and personality, and doesn't reflect in any way on the science itself.
Such people are no more likely to be convinced one way or the other regardless of the validity or invalidity of any particular model.
Unfortunately many scientists have a naive optimism about the basic intellect of man, and believe that if they try hard enough they can convince non-scientists who dont want to believe.
I think greed and short sightedness are the problem.
We, (and by "we" I mean the corporate/industrialist complex) have decided that the standard of education should be just the minimal amount of education necessary to insure the population can serve as a cheap labour pool and nothing more.
As a result the majority of people are too uneducated to make sensible decisions. This is part of the reason we have governments.
Sadly, we have also directed our governments to fear and worship industry.
To make matters worse we have fooled ourselves into believing that "voluntary" environmental sensitivity will somehow be sufficient, notwithstanding that the system we have created puts so many advantages forward for anyone who is willing to pollute and waste.
We have also conned ourselves into attributing $0.00 value to the natural environment and atmosphere, and thus any attempt to enforce sustainable environmental practices is calculated to result in a decrease in GDP.
If the environment was assigned a positive cash value (rather than $0.00) we could easily calculate an increase in GDP.
If we have a polluted lake, suitable for industrial use, and workers spend a year cleaning the lake, and the only thing we have to show for it is a clean lake with a wide variety of aquatic life. We value their work at $0.00 and thus no self interested actor in the FREE MARKET would ever finance this endevour.
If we convert farmland into forest, we calculate a loss of capital. As farmland is worth MORE on the free market than forest. A forest is simply clean. You can't do really do anything with it except perhaps destroy it. The CO2 it removes from the atmosphere can NOT be marketed. (except perhaps this may change with the kyoto accord, but this is percieved as unfair tampering with the so called Free Market)
We fail to calculate the cost of clean up as a charge against production and hence we have a fictionalized GDP. We dont calculate clean up as a charge against production, because industrialists consider clean up to be an optional Public Relations investment rather than a necessary part of manufacturing. And WE BELIEVE IT.
Lots of production of goods, but also lots of destruction of the environment which we tolerate because the environment is worth $0.00.
The problem is not people. The problem is that the natural environment is being held hostage by polluters, who feel they are entitled to destroy it.
People don't value clean air, water, soil, etc. enough for their purchasing decisions to force polluters out of business, or to even change their production methods.
A clean environment, has NO MARKET VALUE. That does not mean it has no value whatsoever.
It is a myth spread by polluters that that EVERYTHING can be (and would by some magical process, automatically be) reduced to a monetary value. This myth is convenient, because it means that everything is available to those who have the money. (And the biggest polluters have most of they money). Even things which can not be sold or bought become available for cash if this myth is widely accepted.
Can I sell you your clean environment? I don't own it. But if you value it so much, then perhaps you should pay me so that I don't burn toxic chemicals?
Polluters want to be paid for something they dont own. It is quite simply: FRAUD and EXTORTION.
mere criminal acts which even Free Marketers usually look to a government entity to prohibit.
To allow FRAUD and EXTORTION to go unpunished, is to encourage and reward it.
The strongest advocates of a FREE MARKET sit on trillions of dollars of wealth which was originally aquired by acts of violence and military power, at far less than MARKET value, under the guise of divine right/will, manifest destiny or the justification of "spreading justice and civilization".
Now polluters want to be paid lest they will destroy the environment which they dont own.
So a convict has the right to travel wherever they want, whenever they want?! Try again - that one won't ever fly!
Ok. I'll try again: Even a CONVICT (assuming he escaped captivity) may, in general, freely travel wherever he pleases and know in his heart HE IS DOING NOTHING WRONG.
As a human being he has a RIGHT to travel. A RIGHT founded on the principles of morality.
I said: "I'll just quote that without a response so you can see for yourself how moronic you sound."
Good call - insults instead of reasoning.
I was reasoning. The statement I was claiming is moronic is the the statement: "duh!". And it is a moronic statement. If you dont want to feel insulted by argument, then don't mock the other side by impersonating a moron.
Or are you trying to say that I took the statement "duh!" the wrong way. It isn't an insult?
I said: "If the convicts rights can be taken away by a mere law then surely anyone's rights can be taken away."
your reply:
A "mere law"?! So you don't believe in the rule of law, or that the state has the right to punish transgressors of your state's laws?
Law does not create right and wrong.
Things are right or wrong of their own merit due to morality, not because a law says they are right or wrong.
Your response does not address any part of my claim. Is it your position that your rights as a human being are granted to you by the state and can be rightfully taken away by "law"?
Yes, a convict's rights can be taken away by a "mere law"
Reread my statement. I said ANYONE'S RIGHTS. A convict is merely a convict due to a legal definition. Anyone can be a convict if a law is passed which defines them as a convict.
- the commandment that says "thou shalt not steal", codified into written law under whatever name your legal system happens to call it (burglary, robbery with violence, whatever) with an explicit range of penalties listed for punishing those who commit that crime.
I would prefer we keep law and divine commandments seperate because they are not the same thing, however I will bite.
That law "Thou shalt not steal" attempts to encode morality in written rules. The law did NOT create the morality in the first place.
Stealing was wrong long before there was any legal code prohibiting it. And stealing would be wrong even if it was legal.
Your positition is that the state creates rights and wrongs by act of law, and therefore that morality is dictated and controlled by the state and since the State creates rights the State can also uncreate rights.
My position is that Rights exist independantly of the the State, and independantly of the Law. The most the law can do is recognize them or infringe on them. The law can not change them.
By your position, a GUILTY person has all the rights of an innocent person unless they are CAUGHT and CONVICTED. Therefore there is nothing WRONG with breaking the law as long as you don't get caught. And therefore RAPE and MURDER are RIGHT, as long as you dont get caught. But ONLY if you do get caught, then you are a bad person.
IMHO: That is an absurdity.
MURDER and THEFT is wrong because the application of moral thought and reasoning will arrive at that conclusion. It doesn't morally matter what the law says on the subject.
As for the Law itself. It says the the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are INALIENABLE and imbued by the CREATOR.
By the logic of the US legal system, only GOD can cause you to lose your right to life liberty or the pursuit of happiness. No "law" can do so. Not even the KING'S LAW. (source: Declaration of Independance)
The US Code does not purport to UNDO the rights of convicts. It simply infringes on them according to the principles of justice in order to achieve correction, deterrant, and whatever else the aims of the criminal justice system are.
History has shown time and time again that when government attempts to provide a service, they do it less efficiently, are less responsive to customer needs, and provide fewer features.
By any chance when you say "efficient" do you really mean "treat employees like disposable objects or slaves", "leak chemical waste into a nearby public water tables" or "avoid complying with environmental and safety regulations not to mention tax codes, wherever you can do so without getting caught" or do you mean "screw over your employees by stealing money from their pension fund?" or did you mean "lie about the addictive properties of your products" or "conceal research results that show your product is a risk to human life and should not be sold" ?
Please.. can you explain what you mean "efficient" in the context of business because I'm sure it does not refer to the cost the customer pays for the service. Because "history has shown" that private businesses are LESS efficient than publicly owned businesses in that regard.
And, of course, the capper to any "humans are causing the devastation of the planet" argument is that the same things happened (according to "reputable scientists") before humans got here.
Before we got here it didn't matter if climate change rendered the earth inhospitable to human beings because there weren't any human beings to support. There is nothing to suggest that had 6 billion human beings been around in those previous eras of massive climactic change we would not have been wiped out.
Before we got here, there was a time when the atmosphere was so rich in oxygen that giant dragonflies could survive. That much oxygen would be poisonous to to many forms of life today (ourselves probably included).
There was a time when there was almost no oxygen in the atmophere. We would have not survived.
There was a time when the atmosphere was much richer in CO2. Perhaps rich enough to kill poor God fearing homosapien from CO2 poisoning.
Just because some now extinct organisms used to be able to survive in prehistoric climates, does not mean that homo sapien wont go extinct if we allow our climate to change.
We are here now, and throwing all the models out the window, it is still a truism, that any arbitrary change to a functioning system is more likely to cause HARM than good.
If we weren't here, we couldn't have caused it, and if it happened before when we didn't cause it, there is no reason to believe we are causing it now.
Except for the fact that we are dumping all sorts of shit into the atmosphere that no species has ever dumped since the dawn of time and we are destroying more forests and more of the biosphere than any species since the dawn of time.
The majority of species in earths history have ALL GONE EXTINCT.
The fact that this is "natural" does not mean it isn't a fate that some of us would like to avoid for mankind. Not everyone believes that standing around, raking in massive corporate profits, and waiting for the Messiah to return is the best course of action.
"Sure you can. Just one example: tThe average citizen enjoys the right to free travel; "
Who gave the average citizen the "right" to free travel? Was this some gift that the state gave? This is an intrinsic quality of being a human being. This right does not depend on the good graces or even the laws of the state.
"a convict doesn't (which is why they're a convict - duh!)."
I'll just quote that without a response so you can see for yourself how moronic you sound.
"Bottom line - when convicted of a crime, you lose many of your rights until you've served your time."
What if you are wrongfully convicted? Then do you lose your rights?
A right is not something that someone gave you and no one can take it away.
Totalitarianists like to tell people that they have no rights except the rights that the STATE deigns to give them. And therefore the STATE can take them away.
You can lose your freedom. You can not lose your RIGHT to freedom.
It says so in the declaration of independance of all places.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. "
Look up the definition of "inalienable".
"If they were proposing to track people *after* they'd served their time, that would be violation of rights. But to track people as an alternative to jail, during which time they *have* no right to expect any freedom of movement at all, that's a damn fine thing."
Why NOT track people even before they are charged with a crime?
If the convicts rights can be taken away by a mere law then surely anyone's rights can be taken away.
why not just charge by the number of concurrant users? Or if anything performance related, the raw volume of data or the transaction count.
Oracle does not do more work on a faster cpu. That is like presuming that a sports car gets more miles than a minivan.
No company will double their transaction count by simply upgrading their db server. They need more staff and more customers as well!
If the cpu mattered at all on a RDBMS, it would only mean the same amount of work is done faster. However CPU speed is almost one of the most irrelevant factors in RDBMS performance and throughput.
This is just a lame attempt at grasping at a moral justification for price. Why not just say : we want more money, help us justify why we should get it.
No properly designed database will do twice as much work just because the CPU is dual core, or even 8 cores. The CPU should not be the bottleneck!
Oracle may as well charge more based on how experienced the SYSDBA and designers are. These guys can make at least an order of magnitude (if not 2 orders) difference in performance.
Slashdot Mirror
not the least of which is my right to the pursuit of happiness.
The right to "pursue", and the right to "be" are not the same thing.
You can use semi-automatic weapons to "pursue" happiness as well. You just need better aim.
Our first Ammendment states that our government must neither endorse nor hinder any specific religion. Some people feel that public displays of religious dogma constitute an endorsement. Others feel that banning such dogma from all public places constitutes a hinderance.
Refering to a COURTHOUSE as "all public places" is a nice way to cloud the issue.
this proves the GP post. Tweaking the issue until you get a 50% split on opinion.
Most people can easily understand why putting forward legislation passed by God in prominent display at a courthouse not only endorses a specific set of religious laws, violates a fundamental priciple of justice, and amounts to FRAUD.
I'm sure people could also see the violation of the constitution if a Muslim judge wanted to rely upon the Quran as an authority or even as guidance in his decisions. I can only imagine the ruckus that would result if a judge wanted to put a large inverted pentagram on display in the court.
But redifining courthouse as "all public places"
is a good way to change what would have been a strong majority agreement into a devisive issue.
Last thing: if you followed the FSF's recommendations as to how to use the license, your code would contain this text:
# This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
# modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as
# published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of
# the License, or (at your option) any later version.
If you are going to allow undefined licensing of your work. Why not just make the work Public Domain and be done with it.
You dont know what text future GPL licenses may contain.
This sounds a lot like you had a rotary service phone line and you were using a touch tone phone.
simply providing dial tone costs money, takes electricity and requires physical hardware at the central office to be dedicated to your line.
putting dialtone on an unserviced lines also creates confusion to technicians who use line testers to see if a line is alive or not. They listen for the dialtone.
Your case does not represent the norm for disconnected phone lines. Normally they are quite dead. No dial tone.
"I didn't know Canada adhered to the US Constitution, which was what was quoted in the article that I replied to. Try to stay focused here."
...
... ...
I didn't claim that Canada was bound by the american constitution. However the original comment was an issue of legal interpretation. And the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms has a similar clauses against self incrimination.
7. Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.
8. Everyone has a right to be secure against unreasonable search or seizure.
11. Any person charged with an offence has the right
(c) not to be compelled to be a witness in proceedings against that person in respect of the offence;
(h) if finally acquitted of the offence, not to be tried for it again and, if finally found guilty and punished for the offence, not to be tried or punished for it again;
13. A witness who testifies in any proceedings has the right not to have any incriminating evidence so given used to incriminate that witness in any other proceedings, except in a prosecution for perjury or for the giving of contradictory evidence.
Since the original comment dealt with a matter of legal interpretation, it is RELEVENT to the discussion how other courts have already ruled in regards to similar rights in another english speaking country. You probably didn't know this but courts, even though not bound, can be persuaded by other rulings on other countries on similarily worded statutes.
Civil Liberties organizations (the ACLU was mentioned specifically in the original article) ARE definitly inspired by civil liberties afforded in other free democracies. And these comments are on topic.
Compare the Charter with the 5th ammendment to the US constitution as quoted in the article:
"No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."
Specifically compared Charter 11(c) "[Any person charged with an offence has the right] not to be compelled to be a witness in proceedings against that person in respect of the offence" to the 5th "[no person] shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself" and combine the effect of Charter section 13, and the effect is very similar. In fact, almost identical.
The entire discussion itself deals with civil liberties (regarding fingerprints, photos and DNA) and not merely the interpretation of the US constitution, any comments on those liberties is on topic. Or in "focus" as you say.
How is DNA any different?
Who says it is?.
This same argument has been going on in regards of what to do with photographs and fingerprints of people after they are aquitted.
After a person is cleared on the offence there is no additional benefit to society to keep their personal information which outweighs the invasion of privacy that person suffers for having that information be on the "Record".
For an innocent person, having their fingerprints show up in a criminal database is an invasion of privacy. That is their personal data which the state took from them without their consent.
Insofar as the legal system is founded on the principle of presumption of innocence and respect for the rule of law. A person who is aquitted ought to be left alone as much as possible, and free to go about their business as if they were never accused in the first place.
There is no legal status in this society of "innocent, but not really".
As for your contention that EVERYONE gets fingerprinted. That is not necessarily true.
As least in Canada, there is discretion on the police as to whether or not they choose to take fingerprints. They have the authority in certain cases, but they can skip it if they dont see any necessity.
I would be suprised if most jurisdictions had a rule which said police MUST take fingerprints even if they dont want to.
incidentally.. in Canada, the policy of police departments (at least RCMP and Toronto Police) is to destroy or return fingerprints and photos of a person if they are aquitted of all charges upon request.
It is that policy (to destroy on request) which caused the Ontario Supreme Court to rule that the law allowing fingerprint retention on any basis was constitutional. It is likely I think, that if police started refusing to destroy fingerprints on an ad hoc basis, then the Court would rule that they must.
anyway.. this is Canadian law which few of you care about.
Look up R. v. Dore if you care about details.
"Will other convicted spammers now have grounds for an appeal?"
Anyone who is convicted on the basis of evidence which can not possibly cause a reasonable and unbiased person to reach a guilty verdict has always had a grounds for an appeal. This is nothing new. Nor is it restricted to accused spammers.
The jury has a responsibility, not only the accused, but also to the 'people' to be fair and unbiased in its findings.
Among other things, this means its findings must be objectively plausible. The jury may not create fictions out of whole cloth.
If the prosecution (as the CNN article seems to imply) could not find a single person to come forward and claim they received unsolicited email, and if the accused testified and claimed they never sent unsolicited email, then the jury could not arbitrarily decide to conclude the opposite of the only evidence before the court.
If that was a necessary element of the offence, then guilt can not be proved.
If they said 'guilty' then either they made a mistake or they were not being fair and unbiased.
A judge may not overturn a conviction simply because he would have personally found the defendant not guilty. He has to find that if the jury was acting fairly, then the conviction could not be possible. i.e. That no jury acting fairly could possibly have reached that guilty verdict.
I believe this judge was merely speculating why the jury reached the wrong verdict. I dont think there actually needs to be any finding of a specific 'cause' for the juries incorrect verdict. The statement to "confusion" is merely obiter. The court likely concluded the jury was not doing its job, which is to be FAIR and UNBIASED in its deliberation.
(as usual the media completely fails to report enough information to make sense out of what actually took place in the courtroom.)
This usually means that was no evidence before the court capable of supporting the juries conclusion, and therefore the jury either misunderstood or was using external evidence to reach its verdict, or was being vindictive and punishing the accused merely because of the victims suffering, or its outrage at the crime, rather than the evidence of guilt.
If you were tried with murder, and the murder victim was clearly still alive (and especially if the prosecutor admits the victim is alive, and the defense called the victim to the stand to attest to that), then the jury *must* acquit. The evidence can not possibly support a finding of guilt. Even if the accused was covered in the "victims" blood, and the "murder weapon" was found, and motive and opportunity was proved. If the victim is alive, then clearly no murder could possibly have been commited (unless they conclude that someone ELSE was murdered). In this case the jury must have misunderstood the evidence. That is kind of a crazy example, but it is a situation where an appeals court would reverse the jury's verdict.
Put basically... mere disagreements do not overturn decisions. More is required.
"the right to copy things is a moral right, a right that exists above government. It is an inherent right that describes a nature of human existence that lives in us from the time we are born." the burden of truth lies with the sceptic. Excuse me? Man has the natural right to copy? Maybe it's just me, but I'd like to see some explanation and more justification than the fact that it was somehow possible to actually get it to appear in type. I'm curious, when exactly does this 'right to copy' kick in?
I wont get into a large treatese on the justification for that line of belief here.
I would need to answer the questions:
1. What is a natural right?
2. Are there any rights which are not natural. i.e. are there manmade rights?
3. Does a natural right morally take precedence over a manmade right?
4. Is the right to copy a natural right?
5. Is the exclusivity of copyright a natural right or a man made right?
Now I will first point out that LEGALLY, there is no difference between flavors of rights. Either something is recognized in law as a right or not. So to that extent I will not try to argue that there is a right to copy. Legally the right to copy is held exclusively by the copyright holder.
to answer the questions in brief:
IMHO
1. a natural right is a right to do something that by ones very nature is a necessity for existence and continuation. Since natural rights derive from ones very nature, they can not be GRANTED nor REVOKED.
2. yes. governments often create priviledges and call them RIGHTS. Such RIGHTS have no more moral weight than privileges as the same governments can easily revoke such RIGHTS. Contrasted with natural RIGHTS, which can not be granted and can not be revoked.
3. morally yes. To infringe on a natural right is to do serious harm to an individual and takes away from them something they need which they can not do without. To infringe on a man made right is really an offense against the STATE, as the right only exists in so far as the STATE deems it to exist. It does not exist within the infringed individual.
The infringed individual has no cause for upset.
4. Yes. We can not possibly resist the urge to learn or emulate those around us. By our very nature we COPY and imitate in order to become fully functional human beings. In order to learn how to paint, we COPY paintings of others. In order to learn how to sing we COPY songs of others. In order to learn how to think, we study the ideas and philosophies of others. Human beings can not become creative without copying. Human achievement is based on copying what has come before and improving on it.
I could go on.. but I will not go on here. I claim that it can be demonstrated that the right to copy is a natural right.
5. The right to dictate what other individuals do in amongst one another and between one another does not appear anywhere in nature. You are not prevented from being a fully functional human being if other people are at liberty to learn and emulate you (i.e. copy you). In fact, you are likely to be treated as some kind of leader and given a position of respect in society.
Copyright is an attempt to encourage creativity, but that does not mean it is either effective or necessary for creativity. Thousands of years of human development has proved that.
At what point does 'my' idea become 'everyones' idea? Is it still mine when it exists only in my head? What about when my novel is halfway done?
The question is meaningless. It will be YOUR idea for the rest of eternity. Whether you are granted a state enforced monopoly on it, is a seperate question.
I think the 'right to copy' must in some way include the 'right to access to copy'.
If you take that position you would be taking a brand new position, neither supported in law, or advocated by current copyright proponents or free information proponents.
Will I be obligated to provide access? Will it be OK for someone to break into m
The copyright exists no matter what the reason
I was following you until that statement. For good or bad, copyrights are legal fictions. They were created by government.
Without some damn persuasive arguments it's way too easy to look like you just like free stuff.
That is an ad hominem argument. Just because someone may or may not like free stuff, it doesn't weaken his claim that the right to copy is an inalienable right.
If you disagree, then say so. You attack a straw man by attacking some claims about "incentive" etc etc. His strongest claim is:
"the right to copy things is a moral right, a right that exists above government. It is an inherent right that describes a nature of human existence that lives in us from the time we are born."
Your only reply to that claim seems to be:
The copyright exists no matter what the reason
""So, no, MS wouldn't have to GPL the driver layer.""
You misunderstood me. I was saying that MS need *not* GPL the drivers because the drivers are not derived from any GPL code.
Only a modified version of linux (if MS made one, as the article suggested) would need to be GPLed.
I was commenting on the idea proposed by the article, and making the point that the actual drivers themselves would not need to be GPLed.
I did not claim MS would need to create any GPLed code. I only said that if the way MS went about creating this hypothetical version of linux, was to actually modify the linux kernal itself, then those modifications would need to be GPLed.
"GPL specifically makes an exception for linking against things distributed with the operating system"
This doesn't mean that you don't need to GPL license your program (if it derives from other GPL code in the Linux kernal). It only means that you don't need to redistribute the entire linux kernal just because you derive from part of it, because everyone that uses your program must already have the entire linux kernal you are excused from the requirement to redistribute the entire kernal. You would still need to distribute the remainder of the derived program in source code form, as well as license it to ALL THIRD PARTIES under the GPL.
"Additionally, a win32 driver layer would also fall under Linus' binary-module exception."
Linus's binary-module exception does not change the effect of the GPL. It only grants a small additional freedom to those who derive specifically from any code which Linus HIMSELF is the sole copyright holder of. He grants you additional permissions under specific circumstances. And by relying on those permissions you need not rely on the GPL. Many parts of Linux are copyrighted by many different people.
With that said, it is possible to create binaries which derive from nothing other than Public Domain interfaces, and thus do not derive from any GPLed code. X11, Posix and ANSI C are public standards with public interfaces for example. You need not GPL a program simply because it derives from those API's.
"They wouldn't do this for many other reasons (being hard to do, relinquishing a monopoly, truested computing, etc), but licensing isn't one of them."
We both agree on that point.
I meant to say:
*There exist* proprietary device drivers which work under linux today.
the article said:
"Well, except for the fact that Microsoft would be unable to produce such a product without allowing the other vendors access to the driver code as part of the open-source Linux license arrangement (GPL)."
If the device drivers are not derived from any GPL code (and as they is currently proprietary, presumably they are not GPL derived), then Microsoft can make a version of Linux which uses the drivers. The modified linux is based on GPL code (i.e. the base linux kernal) and the modified linux is based on propietary code (device drivers).
GPL does not require that copyright holder of the original software to agree to anything (in respect of the original software). Only the author of the derived software (in respect of the derived work) agrees to license the software under the GPL.
This artical is simply FUD.
Proprietary device drivers which work under linux today.
Moreover: The majority of device drivers in MS Windows are not even owned by microsoft at all, but belong to the companies which manufacture the respective devices, and licensed to Microsoft.
However, I argue that a model such as this does very little to substantiate that position because the necessary data does not exist.
This is untrue. There is data. The data takes the form of tree rings, bubbles of ancient atmosphere trapped in glacial ice, fossil evidence. Archeological evidence of ancient civilizations. The laws of physics. Geological evidence of continental drift.. etc etc..
Climatology is an extension of the sciences of chemistry, thermodynamics, biology and physics combined with archeology and some deductive reasoning.
It is not some mysticism which climatologists pull out of a hat.
These are the same sciences which resulted in the impossible inventions of space flight, automobiles, heavier than air flight, electrical motors, anti-biotics, synthetic plastic, flat screen TVs, the atomic bomb.
If you're going to develop and rely on a model to prove a point, be ready to defend the statistics and methods which underly it. That's just as much a part of the science as is the climatology at this point. If you disagree, don't use a statistical model.
There is no obligation to defend against insincere or uneducated attacks.
Convincing someone who doesn't understand science, math or logic in the first place of the validity of a scientific model or theory does not make the theory more valid. Convincing such a person is an act of diplomacy and personality, and doesn't reflect in any way on the science itself.
Such people are no more likely to be convinced one way or the other regardless of the validity or invalidity of any particular model.
Unfortunately many scientists have a naive optimism about the basic intellect of man, and believe that if they try hard enough they can convince non-scientists who dont want to believe.
As usual, people are a problem.
I think greed and short sightedness are the problem.
We, (and by "we" I mean the corporate/industrialist complex) have decided that the standard of education should be just the minimal amount of education necessary to insure the population can serve as a cheap labour pool and nothing more.
As a result the majority of people are too uneducated to make sensible decisions. This is part of the reason we have governments.
Sadly, we have also directed our governments to fear and worship industry.
To make matters worse we have fooled ourselves into believing that "voluntary" environmental sensitivity will somehow be sufficient, notwithstanding that the system we have created puts so many advantages forward for anyone who is willing to pollute and waste.
We have also conned ourselves into attributing $0.00 value to the natural environment and atmosphere, and thus any attempt to enforce sustainable environmental practices is calculated to result in a decrease in GDP.
If the environment was assigned a positive cash value (rather than $0.00) we could easily calculate an increase in GDP.
If we have a polluted lake, suitable for industrial use, and workers spend a year cleaning the lake, and the only thing we have to show for it is a clean lake with a wide variety of aquatic life. We value their work at $0.00 and thus no self interested actor in the FREE MARKET would ever finance this endevour.
If we convert farmland into forest, we calculate a loss of capital. As farmland is worth MORE on the free market than forest. A forest is simply clean. You can't do really do anything with it except perhaps destroy it. The CO2 it removes from the atmosphere can NOT be marketed. (except perhaps this may change with the kyoto accord, but this is percieved as unfair tampering with the so called Free Market)
We fail to calculate the cost of clean up as a charge against production and hence we have a fictionalized GDP. We dont calculate clean up as a charge against production, because industrialists consider clean up to be an optional Public Relations investment rather than a necessary part of manufacturing. And WE BELIEVE IT.
Lots of production of goods, but also lots of destruction of the environment which we tolerate because the environment is worth $0.00.
The problem is not people. The problem is that the natural environment is being held hostage by polluters, who feel they are entitled to destroy it.
The market on its own would disagree with you.
Since when did abstract concepts have opinions?
People don't value clean air, water, soil, etc. enough for their purchasing decisions to force polluters out of business, or to even change their production methods.
A clean environment, has NO MARKET VALUE. That does not mean it has no value whatsoever.
It is a myth spread by polluters that that EVERYTHING can be (and would by some magical process, automatically be) reduced to a monetary value. This myth is convenient, because it means that everything is available to those who have the money. (And the biggest polluters have most of they money). Even things which can not be sold or bought become available for cash if this myth is widely accepted.
Can I sell you your clean environment? I don't own it. But if you value it so much, then perhaps you should pay me so that I don't burn toxic chemicals?
Polluters want to be paid for something they dont own. It is quite simply: FRAUD and EXTORTION.
mere criminal acts which even Free Marketers usually look to a government entity to prohibit.
To allow FRAUD and EXTORTION to go unpunished, is to encourage and reward it.
The strongest advocates of a FREE MARKET sit on trillions of dollars of wealth which was originally aquired by acts of violence and military power, at far less than MARKET value, under the guise of divine right/will, manifest destiny or the justification of "spreading justice and civilization".
Now polluters want to be paid lest they will destroy the environment which they dont own.
Ok. I'll try again:
Even a CONVICT (assuming he escaped captivity) may, in general, freely travel wherever he pleases and know in his heart HE IS DOING NOTHING WRONG.
As a human being he has a RIGHT to travel. A RIGHT founded on the principles of morality.
I said:
"I'll just quote that without a response so you can see for yourself how moronic you sound."
I was reasoning. The statement I was claiming is moronic is the the statement: "duh!". And it is a moronic statement.
If you dont want to feel insulted by argument, then don't mock the other side by impersonating a moron.
Or are you trying to say that I took the statement "duh!" the wrong way. It isn't an insult?
I said:
"If the convicts rights can be taken away by a mere law then surely anyone's rights can be taken away."
your reply:
Law does not create right and wrong.
Things are right or wrong of their own merit due to morality, not because a law says they are right or wrong.
Your response does not address any part of my claim. Is it your position that your rights as a human being are granted to you by the state and can be rightfully taken away by "law"?
Reread my statement. I said ANYONE'S RIGHTS. A convict is merely a convict due to a legal definition. Anyone can be a convict if a law is passed which defines them as a convict.
I would prefer we keep law and divine commandments seperate because they are not the same thing, however I will bite.
That law "Thou shalt not steal" attempts to encode morality in written rules. The law did NOT create the morality in the first place.
Stealing was wrong long before there was any legal code prohibiting it. And stealing would be wrong even if it was legal.
Your positition is that the state creates rights and wrongs by act of law, and therefore that morality is dictated and controlled by the state and since the State creates rights the State can also uncreate rights.
My position is that Rights exist independantly of the the State, and independantly of the Law. The most the law can do is recognize them or infringe on them. The law can not change them.
By your position, a GUILTY person has all the rights of an innocent person unless they are CAUGHT and CONVICTED. Therefore there is nothing WRONG with breaking the law as long as you don't get caught. And therefore RAPE and MURDER are RIGHT, as long as you dont get caught. But ONLY if you do get caught, then you are a bad person.
IMHO: That is an absurdity.
MURDER and THEFT is wrong because the application of moral thought and reasoning will arrive at that conclusion. It doesn't morally matter what the law says on the subject.
As for the Law itself. It says the the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are INALIENABLE and imbued by the CREATOR.
By the logic of the US legal system, only GOD can cause you to lose your right to life liberty or the pursuit of happiness. No "law" can do so. Not even the KING'S LAW. (source: Declaration of Independance)
The US Code does not purport to UNDO the rights of convicts. It simply infringes on them according to the principles of justice in order to achieve correction, deterrant, and whatever else the aims of the criminal justice system are.
The linked article doesn't even site any source for the contention that there is any intention to file suit.
History has shown time and time again that when government attempts to provide a service, they do it less efficiently, are less responsive to customer needs, and provide fewer features.
By any chance when you say "efficient" do you really mean "treat employees like disposable objects or slaves", "leak chemical waste into a nearby public water tables" or "avoid complying with environmental and safety regulations not to mention tax codes, wherever you can do so without getting caught" or do you mean "screw over your employees by stealing money from their pension fund?" or did you mean "lie about the addictive properties of your products" or "conceal research results that show your product is a risk to human life and should not be sold" ?
Please.. can you explain what you mean "efficient" in the context of business because I'm sure it does not refer to the cost the customer pays for the service. Because "history has shown" that private businesses are LESS efficient than publicly owned businesses in that regard.
And, of course, the capper to any "humans are causing the devastation of the planet" argument is that the same things happened (according to "reputable scientists") before humans got here.
Before we got here it didn't matter if climate change rendered the earth inhospitable to human beings because there weren't any human beings to support. There is nothing to suggest that had 6 billion human beings been around in those previous eras of massive climactic change we would not have been wiped out.
Before we got here, there was a time when the atmosphere was so rich in oxygen that giant dragonflies could survive. That much oxygen would be poisonous to to many forms of life today (ourselves probably included).
There was a time when there was almost no oxygen in the atmophere. We would have not survived.
There was a time when the atmosphere was much richer in CO2. Perhaps rich enough to kill poor God fearing homosapien from CO2 poisoning.
Just because some now extinct organisms used to be able to survive in prehistoric climates, does not mean that homo sapien wont go extinct if we allow our climate to change.
We are here now, and throwing all the models out the window, it is still a truism, that any arbitrary change to a functioning system is more likely to cause HARM than good.
If we weren't here, we couldn't have caused it, and if it happened before when we didn't cause it, there is no reason to believe we are causing it now.
Except for the fact that we are dumping all sorts of shit into the atmosphere that no species has ever dumped since the dawn of time and we are destroying more forests and more of the biosphere than any species since the dawn of time.
The majority of species in earths history have ALL GONE EXTINCT.
The fact that this is "natural" does not mean it isn't a fate that some of us would like to avoid for mankind. Not everyone believes that standing around, raking in massive corporate profits, and waiting for the Messiah to return is the best course of action.
Please read my previous reply to another similar post.
I would give you all my mod points. But I already posted in this discussion.
We obviously disagree on what a "RIGHT" is.
"Sure you can. Just one example: tThe average citizen enjoys the right to free travel; "
Who gave the average citizen the "right" to free travel? Was this some gift that the state gave?
This is an intrinsic quality of being a human being. This right does not depend on the good graces or even the laws of the state.
"a convict doesn't (which is why they're a convict - duh!)."
I'll just quote that without a response so you can see for yourself how moronic you sound.
"Bottom line - when convicted of a crime, you lose many of your rights until you've served your time."
What if you are wrongfully convicted? Then do you lose your rights?
A right is not something that someone gave you and no one can take it away.
Totalitarianists like to tell people that they have no rights except the rights that the STATE deigns to give them. And therefore the STATE can take them away.
You can lose your freedom. You can not lose your RIGHT to freedom.
It says so in the declaration of independance of all places.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. "
Look up the definition of "inalienable".
"If they were proposing to track people *after* they'd served their time, that would be violation of rights. But to track people as an alternative to jail, during which time they *have* no right to expect any freedom of movement at all, that's a damn fine thing."
Why NOT track people even before they are charged with a crime?
If the convicts rights can be taken away by a mere law then surely anyone's rights can be taken away.
In this instance I don't believe that tracking cons is really a violation of anyones rights.
Sure it is. It is a violation of the convicts rights.
The question is whether or not the violation is "justified" and "reasonable".
You can't LOSE your rights. Your rights are your rights. PERIOD.
why not just charge by the number of concurrant users? Or if anything performance related, the raw volume of data or the transaction count.
Oracle does not do more work on a faster cpu. That is like presuming that a sports car gets more miles than a minivan.
No company will double their transaction count by simply upgrading their db server. They need more staff and more customers as well!
If the cpu mattered at all on a RDBMS, it would only mean the same amount of work is done faster. However CPU speed is almost one of the most irrelevant factors in RDBMS performance and throughput.
This is just a lame attempt at grasping at a moral justification for price. Why not just say : we want more money, help us justify why we should get it.
No properly designed database will do twice as much work just because the CPU is dual core, or even 8 cores.
The CPU should not be the bottleneck!
Oracle may as well charge more based on how experienced the SYSDBA and designers are. These guys can make at least an order of magnitude (if not 2 orders) difference in performance.