"Independant developers not associated with debian can't make packages and have them available to apt by default."
Well, just exactly the same than... anyone else in the world and this part of the Galaxy.
Or do you have access to Photoshop on your Windows or your Mac by the default? I bet no, you don't. You have to give some footsteps and then you get it.
The same on Debian: you can edit/etc/apt/sources.list add the provided new source line and voila! to all effects that independent program management becomes tightly coupled with your usual Debian's tools.
"But for home users it's imperitive that they be able to install software and IMO they should not have to be root to do so"
Well, IMO, and in opinion of those that have effectively develop unix-like systems, well, they have to be root.
Now, it's free software man, you can start your "no-security" project whenever you like. But, hey, I will tell you the world is full of "no-security" Windows 9Xs and "I'm running Administrator" Windows 2000 and XPs, so I think you can have quite a good perspective about what happens when you go the "IMO they should not have to be root to do so" way.
"First of you can't install a application as a user, now how stupid is that?"
Yes, now you point it out is quite stupid.
Now: why is it that my car has a single wheel drive? Only the driver can decide where to go with the car! isn't it plainly stupid?
The things the computer will do are decided by its administrator, just the same the captain of a boat is the single one that decide where the boat will go.
"If *I* want to install a bleeding edge version of Gimp"
Tell it to the administrator, or become administrator yourself.
"I neither want to bother the admin with it"
I promise you will bother even more if you could just go installing software all around. And still, you will probably be able to just compile the Gimp and install within your home directory not needing aid from the sysadmin for that.
"Secondly Debian packages work great, but only for stuff that is in Debian, which might be a lot, but is *far* from everything"
Wrong again. Debian packages will work great for any stuff built "the Debian way" no matter if it comes from Debian repos or not. Well... quite exactly the same with your beloved MacOS/X: it doesn't work too good for binaries not developed for it, does it?
"..and its also often *way* outdated, remember those three year release cycles..."
Debian has not a "three year release cycle" while it is true that last Stable has been so for three years (and still, major versions of any propietary OS -including Apple's, doesn't seem to get the market with higher frecuencies, do they?).
Again, nothing avoids you to produce and distribute your own packages FOR Debian. Heck! then you will prefer a long release cycle in order not to change too much your packages for a long, long time.
And then again, even if you'd be force to change stuff at a fast pace, it is much better when the whole production process is publicly available so you don't have to either wait for The Company to release their new OS version and see then how it breaks your program or sign expensive deals with it in order to have a look to early betas.
"Software packaging should be done by those that provide the software in the first place"
That you will have to tell to software providers; nothing prevents them from doing so. Debian package format, for instance, is publicly available as well as tools to help at the make of it.
"the distro might run a quality check on it"
And it does for quite a large bunch of software. But this shouldn't refrain you from plubishing your own "non-blessed-by-the-distro" software if you want to. After all, I don't think neither Microsoft nor Apple runs quality checks on, say, Dreamweaver, and nobody expects it to be otherwise.
"What good is it to release a software today and having to wait three or more years till it finds it way into Debian"
Here you simply don't know what are you talking about.
"There are of courses dozens of other problems, but those above are probally the main ones"
Then we are quite lucky since noone of the "problems" you talk about are real problems at all, but in your imagination and due, so it seems, from poor knowledge.
"Sounds like the beginning of a false demand being rumored to guarantee scarcity later on from frantic parents"
Yes: it is a variant of the well known "guru effect" coupled with percieved scarcity.
They tell only the first ones will have it; due to artificial scarcity (ie: retaining stocks for a while) it is percieved it must be true, so even people in dude will buy it thinking they won't be able to do it later.
You forget that darwin is APSL which support propietary software whitin it. Apple can add whatever the hell they want to darwin's codebase without releasing its source code.
"alternatively how will they prevent the people from running darwin (already working) and adding the proprietary pieces of osx?"
1/ Propietary pieces of "osx" will only run on top of Apple's propietary "darwin". 2/ They will prosecute whoever tries to break their IP.
"I would suggest ammending your idea: the patent tax. The tax would be a percentage of sales of the product and/or a perctentage of total revinue for the specified time period or until the holder relinquishes it. patents that aren't actively making money would become a burden on the company and quickly dropped"
And how do you suggest this will happen?
On one hand you can end up on the stupid situation that a VERY ingenious company wouldn't be able to sell their REALLY great inventions; say a patent takes 20% of revenue on taxes; what about a really great product with six really great innovations within? Our really innovative company would end up giving 110% their sale benefits on taxes!
On the other hand, how this would stop Ironclad Big Megacorp from filling one bazillion patents a year (on a saner environment conceptually equivalent to your suggestion, only not so stupid)? Since they are binded to pay taxes on sales it's obvious they wouldn't pay a nickel for those (bazillion minus short n) that just end up in a box waiting for better days; those that really make money on sales Ironclad Big Megacorp won't have any problem to pay some taxes for them.
Or do you mean taxing disregarding if the patent-thingie does make money for the company which fills it or not? That would be even stupider! Imagine Short Company already having four good patents (at 20% tax); filling a new patent would eat up all their benefits; they could trash one of their previous patents in order to fill a new one... without being sure they will make more money from the new patent than from the older one? I can hear the CFO: since we already have our maximum patent share let's close our R+D department; it's a short step for our company but a big shit for innovation! On the other hand, Ironclad Big Megacorp might just create a "paper" company to hold their new patents; since that paper company would have no benefits (they would license their inventions at 0.0000000001 cents each to the mother corp) their "patent tax" would amount to zero, and they would still manage to fill a bazillion patents a year.
The little detail being that the patent is NOT on the idea, but on an implementation of the idea.
You can go to the patent office and say "hey, in order the end up hunger in the world we should... uh... end it up somehow. Patent this!"
No: you have to make PATENT to everyone that want to test it that you have a new way to do something, or a way to do something new. The proper way to make it patent is, of course, show your prototype (no, the papers won't do: all they can do is suggest it will do; but you won't really know till you see the thingie at work).
All that goes out of this way (like patenting "ideas" or "concepts", not "things") it's going against the very meaning of the "patent" word.
"Patents are ok if used correctly"
Patent that!
Problem is there's no known proper big scale way to use patents correctly. Testing for obviousness, for instance, is quite a taugh task: quite a lot of things seem to be just obvious... once somebody other points them out.
So they believe they won't see a winning end for the case.
"B: They can't afford to go to court."
So they wouldn't be able to see a winning end for the case.
"C: The complications, time and money required to go to court outweigh that of settling out of court. "
So, at the very end, they see no winnings.
"D: Just because you are in the right doesn't mean you will win, anything could happen depending on the judge's mood!"
If they saw clearly the winning end for the trial, they'd go for it.
"E: millions of other reasons I can't even think of. "
And I bet they all reduce to the one and only already stated: they believe they won't see a winning end for the trial.
"In the end settling out of court is usually best for both parties involved and for us the public!"
Which amounts almost to nothing regarding what I said: like in a war, it's very probable that noone of both sides would see a winning end once they go to court!
It seem to me it is a course for future PHBs. Noone else would have the guts of "teaching" "complex website technologies" in three months to people with no previous exposure to *anything* programing related.
So, they probably only want to learn the buzzwords so they (as always) *seem* to know what they are talking about and then have the real techies clean the mess when the shit they spit reaches the fan.
So I tell you mates, don't tell him even a single a word; to the enemy, not even water!
"but there's almost always someone who you can point to and say "this person/organization holds copyright over the majority of the code""
Well, you really have picked the "problem" from the article's author. He thinks that since it migth seem dificult for *him* to point out the copyright holder for any given software work, it hurts somehow the GPL case in court.
But as you yourself pointed out, it is exactly the other way around! When you put an eye over an obviously GPLed work you migth not immediatly know how the copyrigth holder is, but you have no need at all to know it! it is enough for you to know it is under the GPL, so you already know what you can do with the code and what you can't do.
In case you violate the GPL, then is *my* turn to show up as the copyrigth holder, which usually is quite easy for the author to probe and call you to court. *Then* you will know how the copyrigth holder is, which is the only moment it really makes sense (since only the copyright holder can claim rigths).
I see that article is just pure nonsense from one that either doesn't really understand what he is talking about... or knows it just too well.
"It's funny, someone was saying exactly the opposite in yet another RIAA/copyright-related thread just a few hours ago."
No: in fact, they are just saying exactly the same thing!
Someone wouldn't go against the RIAA because he wouldn't see a winning end for his trial.
Someone wouldn't go against the GPL because he wouldn't see a winning end for his trial.
Obviously the *reasons* why this would be so are enormously different in each case.
But, just in case you still don't see them, RIAA has *hugh* amounts of money; SPI or FSF are not such strong contenders (not to talk about any little software company release their software under GPL).
Oh! I really beg your pardon for not being born in the United States of Blessed America and not being perfectly fluent in English.
On the other hand "I look forward to becoming..." doesn't sound pure Shakespeare to me either... maybe that can partially explain your unability to understand my poor prose.
" I was beginning to believe that Break-the-Law 101 was part of business school curriculum"
Oh, of course it is!
The question here is they are not going to teach not even Break-the-Law 101 to people so naive to give themselves trapped by such an obvious evidence (they used their own login/pass!). It is a matter of choincing only "best quality" for their Bussiness School.
The question is: sure is it a bullshit argument? It is my URL textbox after all, and it is known I can only access public resources through it (so it is not kind of a "hacking tool" or anything like that).
Some time ago was published that Google indexed quite a lot "private" files from people that stupidly left it accesable through their badly configured local http daemon (and probably they still do so). Maybe affected people should think about a class auction against Google to alleviate them from the weight of a bunch or two of million US dollars.
"There is a sad reason to not run testing: the testing distribution is the last one to get security updates"
Take out "sad"; it is simply "there is a reason not to run testing: that it is, uh, testing".
"For a broadband user, a moving desktop distribution makes a lot of sense"
For a user that wants his job done, a moving anything has the slightest meaning. Someone told it perfectly: Stable guarantees that you won't have to change this or that configuration file because of a package upgrade. I do use my box to have work done (and to post to Slashdot), not to being changing this or that program configuration this day and the other.
Rolling distros are perfect for boys living at their parent's basament which think they have a life because they know what the last version of KDE or Gnome or whatever program is. Heck, adult people even haven't a "favourite program" to desire to upgrade as soon as its next version publishes!
"If it was my decision (which it clearly isn't), I would work for..."
That's open source, boy, it is EXACTLY your decision what do you work for and/or where do you want to push your "favourite distribution" to.
"Instead, let some kind of specialized "release team" take care of making debian stable releases at whatever rate they feel apropriate simply by freezing the moving distribution and working on it until it is stable enough to be released as a new "debian stable"
Well, it seem you don't know what you talk about either! what do you think is the way Sarge is making its way into new Stable?
"only 12 months of security support for the old Debian release, after a new release has come out?"
Sure Not!!!
I would be terrified if that were the case!
No, no. It is plently 12 months after more than a year of Sarge "being there" for you to plan your migration path from Woody to Sarge which, you know, is license fees-free and for most cases, just a matter of editing about three words at a single file and issue two commands.
"Considering that Debian "stable" is targeted at users who are very conservative about upgrades, Woody should be supported for at least a few more years. IMHO."
Considering I do use and administer Debian systems extensively I say you neither use nor administer Debian systems. IMHO.
I am not English native, but I think the word for what you are doing is "astroturfing".
In other words what the hell are you talking about?
"For those that don't understand the difference between GPL and LGPL, LGPL allows distribution under the library user's own terms provided that the new terms allow modification of the work by the end-user and allow reverse-engineering (among other things)"
You are right. This is called parametric statistics (you just show numbers). The problem comes when you try to make use of those numbers.
I imagine that the group your are referring to is that of african-americans (I think that's north-american politically correct way to name them, isn't it?)
Then, your assertion can be rewritten this way: "50% of the murderings are commited by african-americans which only make up 11% of the USA population".
Then I'll ask you "so what?"; it is your answer to my question the one that can mark you as racist if you imply from the previous assertion that somehow the color of the skin has something to do with your "natural tendency" to become a murderer.
Slashdot Mirror
"Independant developers not associated with debian can't make packages and have them available to apt by default."
/etc/apt/sources.list add the provided new source line and voila! to all effects that independent program management becomes tightly coupled with your usual Debian's tools.
Well, just exactly the same than... anyone else in the world and this part of the Galaxy.
Or do you have access to Photoshop on your Windows or your Mac by the default? I bet no, you don't. You have to give some footsteps and then you get it.
The same on Debian: you can edit
"But for home users it's imperitive that they be able to install software and IMO they should not have to be root to do so"
Well, IMO, and in opinion of those that have effectively develop unix-like systems, well, they have to be root.
Now, it's free software man, you can start your "no-security" project whenever you like. But, hey, I will tell you the world is full of "no-security" Windows 9Xs and "I'm running Administrator" Windows 2000 and XPs, so I think you can have quite a good perspective about what happens when you go the "IMO they should not have to be root to do so" way.
"First of you can't install a application as a user, now how stupid is that?"
Yes, now you point it out is quite stupid.
Now: why is it that my car has a single wheel drive? Only the driver can decide where to go with the car! isn't it plainly stupid?
The things the computer will do are decided by its administrator, just the same the captain of a boat is the single one that decide where the boat will go.
"If *I* want to install a bleeding edge version of Gimp"
Tell it to the administrator, or become administrator yourself.
"I neither want to bother the admin with it"
I promise you will bother even more if you could just go installing software all around. And still, you will probably be able to just compile the Gimp and install within your home directory not needing aid from the sysadmin for that.
"Secondly Debian packages work great, but only for stuff that is in Debian, which might be a lot, but is *far* from everything"
Wrong again. Debian packages will work great for any stuff built "the Debian way" no matter if it comes from Debian repos or not. Well... quite exactly the same with your beloved MacOS/X: it doesn't work too good for binaries not developed for it, does it?
"..and its also often *way* outdated, remember those three year release cycles..."
Debian has not a "three year release cycle" while it is true that last Stable has been so for three years (and still, major versions of any propietary OS -including Apple's, doesn't seem to get the market with higher frecuencies, do they?).
Again, nothing avoids you to produce and distribute your own packages FOR Debian. Heck! then you will prefer a long release cycle in order not to change too much your packages for a long, long time.
And then again, even if you'd be force to change stuff at a fast pace, it is much better when the whole production process is publicly available so you don't have to either wait for The Company to release their new OS version and see then how it breaks your program or sign expensive deals with it in order to have a look to early betas.
"Software packaging should be done by those that provide the software in the first place"
That you will have to tell to software providers; nothing prevents them from doing so. Debian package format, for instance, is publicly available as well as tools to help at the make of it.
"the distro might run a quality check on it"
And it does for quite a large bunch of software. But this shouldn't refrain you from plubishing your own "non-blessed-by-the-distro" software if you want to. After all, I don't think neither Microsoft nor Apple runs quality checks on, say, Dreamweaver, and nobody expects it to be otherwise.
"What good is it to release a software today and having to wait three or more years till it finds it way into Debian"
Here you simply don't know what are you talking about.
"There are of courses dozens of other problems, but those above are probally the main ones"
Then we are quite lucky since noone of the "problems" you talk about are real problems at all, but in your imagination and due, so it seems, from poor knowledge.
"Sounds like the beginning of a false demand being rumored to guarantee scarcity later on from frantic parents"
Yes: it is a variant of the well known "guru effect" coupled with percieved scarcity.
They tell only the first ones will have it; due to artificial scarcity (ie: retaining stocks for a while) it is percieved it must be true, so even people in dude will buy it thinking they won't be able to do it later.
"you forget that darwin is opensource."
You forget that darwin is APSL which support propietary software whitin it. Apple can add whatever the hell they want to darwin's codebase without releasing its source code.
"alternatively how will they prevent the people from running darwin (already working) and adding the proprietary pieces of osx?"
1/ Propietary pieces of "osx" will only run on top of Apple's propietary "darwin".
2/ They will prosecute whoever tries to break their IP.
"what are our options?"
"I'd recommend using the Java [cytrix] client rather than the native linux one"
i'd recommend trashing away the windows-only app and looking really hard for a Linux-compatible one, full stop.
"Software patents are currently illegal under EU law"
No; they are not. You can already find quite a lot of patents describing software or algorithms on the EU.
They are not illegal; they are just probably not enforceable.
"I would suggest ammending your idea: the patent tax. The tax would be a percentage of sales of the product and/or a perctentage of total revinue for the specified time period or until the holder relinquishes it. patents that aren't actively making money would become a burden on the company and quickly dropped"
And how do you suggest this will happen?
On one hand you can end up on the stupid situation that a VERY ingenious company wouldn't be able to sell their REALLY great inventions; say a patent takes 20% of revenue on taxes; what about a really great product with six really great innovations within? Our really innovative company would end up giving 110% their sale benefits on taxes!
On the other hand, how this would stop Ironclad Big Megacorp from filling one bazillion patents a year (on a saner environment conceptually equivalent to your suggestion, only not so stupid)? Since they are binded to pay taxes on sales it's obvious they wouldn't pay a nickel for those (bazillion minus short n) that just end up in a box waiting for better days; those that really make money on sales Ironclad Big Megacorp won't have any problem to pay some taxes for them.
Or do you mean taxing disregarding if the patent-thingie does make money for the company which fills it or not? That would be even stupider! Imagine Short Company already having four good patents (at 20% tax); filling a new patent would eat up all their benefits; they could trash one of their previous patents in order to fill a new one... without being sure they will make more money from the new patent than from the older one? I can hear the CFO: since we already have our maximum patent share let's close our R+D department; it's a short step for our company but a big shit for innovation! On the other hand, Ironclad Big Megacorp might just create a "paper" company to hold their new patents; since that paper company would have no benefits (they would license their inventions at 0.0000000001 cents each to the mother corp) their "patent tax" would amount to zero, and they would still manage to fill a bazillion patents a year.
"The patent is on the idea"
The little detail being that the patent is NOT on the idea, but on an implementation of the idea.
You can go to the patent office and say "hey, in order the end up hunger in the world we should... uh... end it up somehow. Patent this!"
No: you have to make PATENT to everyone that want to test it that you have a new way to do something, or a way to do something new. The proper way to make it patent is, of course, show your prototype (no, the papers won't do: all they can do is suggest it will do; but you won't really know till you see the thingie at work).
All that goes out of this way (like patenting "ideas" or "concepts", not "things") it's going against the very meaning of the "patent" word.
"Patents are ok if used correctly"
Patent that!
Problem is there's no known proper big scale way to use patents correctly. Testing for obviousness, for instance, is quite a taugh task: quite a lot of things seem to be just obvious... once somebody other points them out.
"A: They believe they will lose. "
So they believe they won't see a winning end for the case.
"B: They can't afford to go to court."
So they wouldn't be able to see a winning end for the case.
"C: The complications, time and money required to go to court outweigh that of settling out of court. "
So, at the very end, they see no winnings.
"D: Just because you are in the right doesn't mean you will win, anything could happen depending on the judge's mood!"
If they saw clearly the winning end for the trial, they'd go for it.
"E: millions of other reasons I can't even think of. "
And I bet they all reduce to the one and only already stated: they believe they won't see a winning end for the trial.
"In the end settling out of court is usually best for both parties involved and for us the public!"
Which amounts almost to nothing regarding what I said: like in a war, it's very probable that noone of both sides would see a winning end once they go to court!
It seem to me it is a course for future PHBs. Noone else would have the guts of "teaching" "complex website technologies" in three months to people with no previous exposure to *anything* programing related.
So, they probably only want to learn the buzzwords so they (as always) *seem* to know what they are talking about and then have the real techies clean the mess when the shit they spit reaches the fan.
So I tell you mates, don't tell him even a single a word; to the enemy, not even water!
"but there's almost always someone who you can point to and say "this person/organization holds copyright over the majority of the code""
Well, you really have picked the "problem" from the article's author. He thinks that since it migth seem dificult for *him* to point out the copyright holder for any given software work, it hurts somehow the GPL case in court.
But as you yourself pointed out, it is exactly the other way around! When you put an eye over an obviously GPLed work you migth not immediatly know how the copyrigth holder is, but you have no need at all to know it! it is enough for you to know it is under the GPL, so you already know what you can do with the code and what you can't do.
In case you violate the GPL, then is *my* turn to show up as the copyrigth holder, which usually is quite easy for the author to probe and call you to court. *Then* you will know how the copyrigth holder is, which is the only moment it really makes sense (since only the copyright holder can claim rigths).
I see that article is just pure nonsense from one that either doesn't really understand what he is talking about... or knows it just too well.
"It's funny, someone was saying exactly the opposite in yet another RIAA/copyright-related thread just a few hours ago."
No: in fact, they are just saying exactly the same thing!
Someone wouldn't go against the RIAA because he wouldn't see a winning end for his trial.
Someone wouldn't go against the GPL because he wouldn't see a winning end for his trial.
Obviously the *reasons* why this would be so are enormously different in each case.
But, just in case you still don't see them, RIAA has *hugh* amounts of money; SPI or FSF are not such strong contenders (not to talk about any little software company release their software under GPL).
"Yeah but don't they still own the copyright to the work (patches) they submit unless they implicitly transfer them over?"
unless *explictly* transfer... you mean!
Oh! I really beg your pardon for not being born in the United States of Blessed America and not being perfectly fluent in English.
On the other hand "I look forward to becoming..." doesn't sound pure Shakespeare to me either... maybe that can partially explain your unability to understand my poor prose.
" I was beginning to believe that Break-the-Law 101 was part of business school curriculum"
Oh, of course it is!
The question here is they are not going to teach not even Break-the-Law 101 to people so naive to give themselves trapped by such an obvious evidence (they used their own login/pass!). It is a matter of choincing only "best quality" for their Bussiness School.
"And, yes, it's a bullshit argument..."
The question is: sure is it a bullshit argument? It is my URL textbox after all, and it is known I can only access public resources through it (so it is not kind of a "hacking tool" or anything like that).
Some time ago was published that Google indexed quite a lot "private" files from people that stupidly left it accesable through their badly configured local http daemon (and probably they still do so). Maybe affected people should think about a class auction against Google to alleviate them from the weight of a bunch or two of million US dollars.
"It's within their rights to deny admission based on any number of criteria"
Like, uh, being black, jewish, homosexual or something like this?
Or something more on the lines of being "someone who faces me against my own stupidity"?
"students knowingly circumventing security to gain information"
"Circumventing security"!!!??? Now is "circumventing security" accesing public data through a public URL?
C'mon!
This the typical case where somebody on a power position punishes the indefense as a means to alleviate his own red-facing because its own stupidity.
"There is a sad reason to not run testing: the testing distribution is the last one to get security updates"
Take out "sad"; it is simply "there is a reason not to run testing: that it is, uh, testing".
"For a broadband user, a moving desktop distribution makes a lot of sense"
For a user that wants his job done, a moving anything has the slightest meaning. Someone told it perfectly: Stable guarantees that you won't have to change this or that configuration file because of a package upgrade. I do use my box to have work done (and to post to Slashdot), not to being changing this or that program configuration this day and the other.
Rolling distros are perfect for boys living at their parent's basament which think they have a life because they know what the last version of KDE or Gnome or whatever program is. Heck, adult people even haven't a "favourite program" to desire to upgrade as soon as its next version publishes!
"If it was my decision (which it clearly isn't), I would work for..."
That's open source, boy, it is EXACTLY your decision what do you work for and/or where do you want to push your "favourite distribution" to.
"Instead, let some kind of specialized "release team" take care of making debian stable releases at whatever rate they feel apropriate simply by freezing the moving distribution and working on it until it is stable enough to be released as a new "debian stable"
Well, it seem you don't know what you talk about either! what do you think is the way Sarge is making its way into new Stable?
"only 12 months of security support for the old Debian release, after a new release has come out?"
Sure Not!!!
I would be terrified if that were the case!
No, no. It is plently 12 months after more than a year of Sarge "being there" for you to plan your migration path from Woody to Sarge which, you know, is license fees-free and for most cases, just a matter of editing about three words at a single file and issue two commands.
"Considering that Debian "stable" is targeted at users who are very conservative about upgrades, Woody should be supported for at least a few more years. IMHO."
Considering I do use and administer Debian systems extensively I say you neither use nor administer Debian systems. IMHO.
I am not English native, but I think the word for what you are doing is "astroturfing".
In other words what the hell are you talking about?
"For those that don't understand the difference between GPL and LGPL, LGPL allows distribution under the library user's own terms provided that the new terms allow modification of the work by the end-user and allow reverse-engineering (among other things)"
That is, simply stated, pure bullshit.
" It just didn't make sense to me that a prior employer could get sued for saying true things about an employee"
Truth, that flagrant relativism when showed to a judge...
"this would not be "racist", but objective."
You are right. This is called parametric statistics (you just show numbers). The problem comes when you try to make use of those numbers.
I imagine that the group your are referring to is that of african-americans (I think that's north-american politically correct way to name them, isn't it?)
Then, your assertion can be rewritten this way: "50% of the murderings are commited by african-americans which only make up 11% of the USA population".
Then I'll ask you "so what?"; it is your answer to my question the one that can mark you as racist if you imply from the previous assertion that somehow the color of the skin has something to do with your "natural tendency" to become a murderer.
I read your post with most interest, and at the end of it, all I can say is:
"So what?"