At the moment, if you kill someone in self-defence, you are not prosecuted. Its only if you commit preventable murder (or manslaughter) that you can be jailed.
I think this is the fairer system. The punishment fits the crime, and the law does not encourage anyone to commit retribution killings. If you come to my house and steal my TV, I can only kill you if you pose an immediate threat to me or my family (or don't mind gaol time).
As for the idea of deterence, it is important, but should not be the be-all and end-all. If we want to deter cold-blooded killers, we should hang, draw and quarter any we catch. Or burn them at the steak. Maybe immitate mob-like killings, say by casing the criminals' feet in concrete and dropping them in a river. What better deterent?
Justice, as an ideal, is not merely some fantasy. It is a means by which society can assign proportional punishment to law-breakers. It is partly a deterrant, partly a rehab system, but mainly a way of keeping the serious criminals away from society.
If your builder says he was being robbed, how do we know that's true? If he has no defence wounds, and no witness of the incident, he could get away with murder. Unless he is subjected to state-ordered punishment.
Yeah. Like, before we invented fire, we went for hundreds of thousands of years eating raw food, and were far better off that way.
The fact that we eat *NO* raw food today is what's wrong with our society. I'm not going to explain how raw food is necessary, just say that cooked food has a monopoly on the food we eat, and this is *BAD*.
Seriously, though, do you really think, in the 21st centuary, we should maintain the "eye for an eye" mentality. I'd rather live in a world where justice was served some of the time than have perpeptual vigilantism. After all, if I go out and kill a burglar, wouldn't his relatives want to kill me?
Ok, a terrorist is on a tube train, and pulls out a bomb.
"Ah ha", thinks the wily passenger, "thank God bombs are now legal for everyone!" The passenger then pulls out their own bomb and detonates it, leading to mass loss of life, anyway.
You have to remember, bombs aren't targetted weapons. You can't fight a terrorist in a tight situation with another bomb.
You say "If bombs are illegal...then only the terrorists will have bombs". Whilst this may be true, it isn't as simple as this. Intelligence agencies can covertly observe black market bomb distribution channels, or look up anyone buying large quantities of fertilizer in central London.
I honestly can't see one advantage of legalising weapons aimed at causing mass devastation.
I agree. There are few programs on Linux that are "far better" than Windows programs. But I do genuinely prefer Amarok to anything I used on Windows. I dunno, maybe I was missing out on something big, but I really think Amarok is awesome, mostly for reasons another responder said.
After years of using the Internet, my mind's become so lazy and forgetful that I don't remember anything at all. I need a quick hyperlink to refresh my goldfish-like brain.
After all, in this technological age, memory is volatile...
Possibly off topic, but a similar thing went on with the old bubble chambers at CERN.
People wihout much of a background in physics would trall through the images, looking for patterns that they'd been told to look out for.
I think its important that someone is documenting the work of these heroes of maths and physics. Without them, advancements would have had to wait for the computer revolution. If we don't remember how important their contributions were, I'm sure it will only be a generation before they're forgotten.
If you were trying to make a joke out of this for the/. audience, I'd have gone with "you insensitive clod". Obviously, though, you shun memes. They do that it Soviet Russia, too, only its slightly different over there...
I love how "Some people are idiots. Other people are not" gets modded "3, Informative".
I have some others: some people are conservative, others are not. Some people eat meat, others do not. Some people read Slashdot, others have a social life.
Come on mod points. I'm ready for you!
Seriously though, if you haven't seen Bad Astronomy, do. Go to it. It rocks.
If you thought that was impressive, how about the HURD. HURD stands for "HIRD of Unix Replacing Daemons", and HIRD stands for "HURD of Interfaces Representing Depth". That's TWO MUTUALLY RECURSIVE ACRONYMS!
I've never bought a VCR tape of a movie that has ads on it.
Obviously you don't own a copy of "I, Robot", then. Man, that film was just a proof of concept of the "2 straight hours of nothing but product placement" idea...
Yeah, BitTorrent was shot down by the *.AAs as evil, and its been forced into obscurity now. No-one uses a free-of-charge product after it has gotten wide-spread free publicity from a corporate giant such as the RIAA or MPAA.
"95% of the software out there assumes you have [Windows]"
Very true. And the reason for this is so many people have Windows. Almost 90% of PCs on W3C have some variant of Windows. Baring in mind that this will be particularly techie community, it doesn't bode well.
The fact of the matter is, for most manufacturers, it just isn't cost effective to make their devices compatible with Linux, then test against various distros with various kernel configurations on various hardwares just to tap into under 4% of the market. Firefox has almost 1 in 10 people on the web, and some businesses still think its not viable to support it.
It's going to take some dedicated geeks to introduce Linux to the general public. Without market share, no-one's going to bother.
Linspire and (though it pains me to say this) Xandros are two viable distros that are either ready or nearly ready for the main-stream market. Hell, even SUSE is pretty useable for Linux n00bs.
As for lack of support, there are plentyofforumsfulloffriendly people willing to help, or providing in depth documentation.
Give a man Linux, and he'll use it, get stuck and return to Windows. Teach him to use Linux, and how to find help, and we've improved our market share.
You're probably going to hate me, but as my friend tried to learn as many digits of pi as possible, I picked up the first forty without trying. And I learnt the greek alphabet without practicing.
For some reason, I have to revise for hours in order to learn for end-of-year tests, though.
As someone who had never seen the old "Who", I must say I do quite enjoy this series. I like how it has managed to satirise the Iraq war, considered the implications of torture and the death penalty, and focussed on the need to be surrounded by friends/family.
My one complaint is that every episode thus far has been set on/in orbit around Earth, and most of them in the 20th and 21st centuries. The beauty of SciFi is you can do anything, see anything. Its the ultimate escapism. So why go to early 21st century London so often?
A lot of posters here are (rightly IMHO) complaining of the stupidly long period of copyright being suggested here.
HOwever, there is surely a greater threat from DRM. In X years time, when copyright has expired and a work is in the public domain, DRM will still be active. There's no preset kill limit within DRM. Maybe, despite the fact we legally have access to works, we will be unable to listen to/watch them. I seriously doubt the publishing companies and record labels of the time will be willing to allow the development of DRM-braking tech, especially if this could damage the effectiveness of work that is not in the public domain.
On a slightly unrelated note, I wonder if work which is now in the PD will return to copyright if the period of copyright is extended?
That's all well and good if you own a major money pulling idea, but sometimes that just isn't practical.
First of all, what if you have a minor work? My father published a book, and made about £10 on it, if you take away the cost of printing etc. It would cost more in administrative costs for the government to collect the 10p tax on that.
Second of all, what about compilations? If an anthology of work is published, do you have to tax every individual who owns some IP within the book?
What about books that are in the public interest to be in print. Imagine if Darwin had been subject to a '1% of peak annual profit' copyright tax. Initially, a large profit would have come in, as there was a great deal of interest in the work. However, after about a decade or so, he (or his estate) would have to pay a very large amount of copyright tax. If they couldn't afford this, "On the Origin of Species" would have had to go out of print. Somehow, I doubt this would have been a benefitial outcome for anyone.
Slashdot Mirror
At the moment, if you kill someone in self-defence, you are not prosecuted. Its only if you commit preventable murder (or manslaughter) that you can be jailed.
I think this is the fairer system. The punishment fits the crime, and the law does not encourage anyone to commit retribution killings. If you come to my house and steal my TV, I can only kill you if you pose an immediate threat to me or my family (or don't mind gaol time).
As for the idea of deterence, it is important, but should not be the be-all and end-all. If we want to deter cold-blooded killers, we should hang, draw and quarter any we catch. Or burn them at the steak. Maybe immitate mob-like killings, say by casing the criminals' feet in concrete and dropping them in a river. What better deterent?
Justice, as an ideal, is not merely some fantasy. It is a means by which society can assign proportional punishment to law-breakers. It is partly a deterrant, partly a rehab system, but mainly a way of keeping the serious criminals away from society.
If your builder says he was being robbed, how do we know that's true? If he has no defence wounds, and no witness of the incident, he could get away with murder. Unless he is subjected to state-ordered punishment.
Yeah. Like, before we invented fire, we went for hundreds of thousands of years eating raw food, and were far better off that way.
The fact that we eat *NO* raw food today is what's wrong with our society. I'm not going to explain how raw food is necessary, just say that cooked food has a monopoly on the food we eat, and this is *BAD*.
Seriously, though, do you really think, in the 21st centuary, we should maintain the "eye for an eye" mentality. I'd rather live in a world where justice was served some of the time than have perpeptual vigilantism. After all, if I go out and kill a burglar, wouldn't his relatives want to kill me?
Yes, but you're one person. Personally, I am sexually attracted to people of other races, as are many people.
Its like saying "blonde people are going to speciate, because I'm not attracted to blonde women".
I thought putting "Copyright (c) 1996-2005 Microsoft Corporation" was a demonstrable leap that justified a patent.
So no, Google isn't going to be sued. Why attempt to sue when they can afford decent legal defence?
So what you're saying is we're going to have loads of "internets"? I can but worry about how rumours will spread through these things.
Ok, a terrorist is on a tube train, and pulls out a bomb.
"Ah ha", thinks the wily passenger, "thank God bombs are now legal for everyone!" The passenger then pulls out their own bomb and detonates it, leading to mass loss of life, anyway.
You have to remember, bombs aren't targetted weapons. You can't fight a terrorist in a tight situation with another bomb.
You say "If bombs are illegal...then only the terrorists will have bombs". Whilst this may be true, it isn't as simple as this. Intelligence agencies can covertly observe black market bomb distribution channels, or look up anyone buying large quantities of fertilizer in central London.
I honestly can't see one advantage of legalising weapons aimed at causing mass devastation.
I agree. There are few programs on Linux that are "far better" than Windows programs. But I do genuinely prefer Amarok to anything I used on Windows. I dunno, maybe I was missing out on something big, but I really think Amarok is awesome, mostly for reasons another responder said.
Have you used Amarok? If not, try it immediately.
Of course we don't.
After years of using the Internet, my mind's become so lazy and forgetful that I don't remember anything at all. I need a quick hyperlink to refresh my goldfish-like brain.
After all, in this technological age, memory is volatile...
I'm a complete Linux convert.
Programs like Amarok for music and Qalculate for my college work (for example) are far better than anything I ever used on Windows.
I have Mepis on my laptop and Ubuntu and Fedora on my desktop. I even have Linux on my PS2.
Looking at Longhorn, it looks ugly, incomplete and rushed. If I installed a copy, the first thing I'd do would be to install Firefox.
So why am I so desperate to be invited to the Beta program? Its like a compulsion. Maybe there are some "Winuser Anonymous" meetings I can go to...
People wihout much of a background in physics would trall through the images, looking for patterns that they'd been told to look out for.
I think its important that someone is documenting the work of these heroes of maths and physics. Without them, advancements would have had to wait for the computer revolution. If we don't remember how important their contributions were, I'm sure it will only be a generation before they're forgotten.
Or, alternatively,
"You will make yourself look like a fucking retard today."
If you were trying to make a joke out of this for the /. audience, I'd have gone with "you insensitive clod". Obviously, though, you shun memes. They do that it Soviet Russia, too, only its slightly different over there...
I love how "Some people are idiots. Other people are not" gets modded "3, Informative".
I have some others: some people are conservative, others are not. Some people eat meat, others do not. Some people read Slashdot, others have a social life.
Come on mod points. I'm ready for you!
Seriously though, if you haven't seen Bad Astronomy, do. Go to it. It rocks.
On a geek-centric forum such as Slashdot, I think this is tantamount to flamebait.
(Read: get a good supply of toilet roll.)
(Read: the fully-clothed bits)
(Needs little explaining)
Ewww... Especially (as implied later) if you're watching with friends and family.
'nuff said indeed.
Remind me never to come round and watch a film with you. Then again, you certainly seem to know how to have a good time.
GUG - the GIMP User Group, derived from
GIMP - the GNU Image Manipulation Program, derived from
GNU - a recursive acronym for GNU's Not UNIX.
If you thought that was impressive, how about the HURD. HURD stands for "HIRD of Unix Replacing Daemons", and HIRD stands for "HURD of Interfaces Representing Depth". That's TWO MUTUALLY RECURSIVE ACRONYMS!
Yes, NASA are definitely behind the times.
Yes, but they also make a hell of a foie gras. You could go for that instead.
Obviously you don't own a copy of "I, Robot", then. Man, that film was just a proof of concept of the "2 straight hours of nothing but product placement" idea...
Yeah, BitTorrent was shot down by the *.AAs as evil, and its been forced into obscurity now. No-one uses a free-of-charge product after it has gotten wide-spread free publicity from a corporate giant such as the RIAA or MPAA.
Very true. And the reason for this is so many people have Windows. Almost 90% of PCs on W3C have some variant of Windows. Baring in mind that this will be particularly techie community, it doesn't bode well.
The fact of the matter is, for most manufacturers, it just isn't cost effective to make their devices compatible with Linux, then test against various distros with various kernel configurations on various hardwares just to tap into under 4% of the market. Firefox has almost 1 in 10 people on the web, and some businesses still think its not viable to support it.
It's going to take some dedicated geeks to introduce Linux to the general public. Without market share, no-one's going to bother.
Linspire and (though it pains me to say this) Xandros are two viable distros that are either ready or nearly ready for the main-stream market. Hell, even SUSE is pretty useable for Linux n00bs.
As for lack of support, there are plenty of forums full of friendly people willing to help, or providing in depth documentation.
Give a man Linux, and he'll use it, get stuck and return to Windows. Teach him to use Linux, and how to find help, and we've improved our market share.
For some reason, I have to revise for hours in order to learn for end-of-year tests, though.
My one complaint is that every episode thus far has been set on/in orbit around Earth, and most of them in the 20th and 21st centuries. The beauty of SciFi is you can do anything, see anything. Its the ultimate escapism. So why go to early 21st century London so often?
HOwever, there is surely a greater threat from DRM. In X years time, when copyright has expired and a work is in the public domain, DRM will still be active. There's no preset kill limit within DRM. Maybe, despite the fact we legally have access to works, we will be unable to listen to/watch them. I seriously doubt the publishing companies and record labels of the time will be willing to allow the development of DRM-braking tech, especially if this could damage the effectiveness of work that is not in the public domain.
On a slightly unrelated note, I wonder if work which is now in the PD will return to copyright if the period of copyright is extended?
First of all, what if you have a minor work? My father published a book, and made about £10 on it, if you take away the cost of printing etc. It would cost more in administrative costs for the government to collect the 10p tax on that.
Second of all, what about compilations? If an anthology of work is published, do you have to tax every individual who owns some IP within the book?
What about books that are in the public interest to be in print. Imagine if Darwin had been subject to a '1% of peak annual profit' copyright tax. Initially, a large profit would have come in, as there was a great deal of interest in the work. However, after about a decade or so, he (or his estate) would have to pay a very large amount of copyright tax. If they couldn't afford this, "On the Origin of Species" would have had to go out of print. Somehow, I doubt this would have been a benefitial outcome for anyone.