Well, the solution is quite obvious: if you want to back up every CD you listen to, for whatever reason, and you can't back up certain CDs, well, don't buy those certain CDs. There's absolutely nothing that says you have to buy it, and there's nothing that says a company selling a product must sell it in a certain format. At least, not in the CD industry, that I'm aware of anyway.
If nobody buys the burnproof CDs, then artists won't want their music distributed in that format, and so it won't be. It's a free market economy, in this sense, it isn't really all that complex. Nobody buys = no money coming in = nobody will make it any more.
No, they're doing it to get free music from the world's largest catalogs of downloadable music.
OK, just so we're clear on that point.;) I find "I know it's wrong, I'm doing it anyway" much more acceptable than "it isn't wrong! the riaa's ripping them off anyway!"
Incidentally, if most artists are not members of the RIAA, then how exactly does downloading their music without paying for it hurt the RIAA? It looks to me as if it's hurting the smaller artists more directly.
So all Napster users who pirate MP3s are deliberately breaking copyright law in order to knock the RIAA down a step, and thereby helping the smaller artists? I doubt it. IMO, it should be up to the artists themselves to come up with an alternative to the RIAA. This argument strikes me as 75% excuse for most people to do something they'd likely do anyway. People have always pirated music; this just makes it quicker, easier. (Not to say that you, dachsund, are personally pirating MP3s using Napster, or to try to claim a higher moral ground by saying I've never in my entire life ever pirated music - because I'd be lying.)
Shirley there are better ways to show contempt for the RIAA. I can think of one that's been proclaimed: boycott all RIAA artist CDs. Don't buy them new, certainly, but further, don't buy them used either. Why not? Because at one point, those WERE new CDs, resold by somebody who knew that the option of reselling them was there. If people stop buying used RIAA-artist CDs, soon the used CD stores won't have a market for them and will no longer buy them, or (more likely) they'll get overstocked and won't buy any more. Granted, you're hurting the used CD stores this way, but IMO it's one of the few things an individual who isn't directly involved in the music industry can do in order to hurt the RIAA, at least in a morally-correct fashion.
I nominate "anybody who doesn't have a computer but likes music anyway".
Right now, the RIAA is a devil the artists know. They might not LIKE the RIAA, but they know how it works and how to deal with it. Is replacing the RIAA wholesale, which is what you and most other advocates are talking about, really the best thing to do?
"I went into the business for the money, and the art grew out of it. If people are disillusioned by that remark, I can't help it. It's the truth." - Charlie Chaplin
Don't forget, musicians would like to make money. I'm sure most of them would perform for free if they could eat and live and have all the other amenities most people want, but that just doesn't happen without money in our society, so they're going to want to get paid. Some of them will want to get paid a lot. Does any musician deserve to get paid a lot? Why not? If people are willing to fork out money such that an individual or a group get paid a lot (see professional sports for another example) then of course they deserve the money.
Science *wasn't* "dependant" (if you can read so well, why can't you spell? - oops, flamebait) on computers in the past. But things change. Science is becoming increasingly dependEnt on computers to do its work. Why is this a bad thing? I don't think the author of the editorial was saying "science is impossible without computers". However, walk into *any* scientific research institute and you'll see computers. Lots of them. They sure make life easier. Sometimes.:)
I believe the reason is that Americans have no reason to depend on other countries in the world (unlike even the first world countries, much less the third world). American politics does not depend as much on, say, the Middle East as the Middle East does on America.
I think people lining up for gas in the 70s would have thought something different. OPEC ring any bells? I don't recall reading in the news anywhere that the US has totally lost its dependence on Middle East oil. Now, however, the US has a proven track record in "mess with our oil and we'll mess with you". (Personally, I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing - economic warfare is still warfare, IMO, and should be treated as such. Reply with the weapons you have, not with the weapons the enemy wishes you to use.) This is getting OT, but...
I find a lot of people like to bash yanks just cos you all are an easy target, particularly Commonwealth-types. It's accepted in our culture to bash an American because of his or her birthplace. (Any baseball fans remember a few years ago when the Phillies were playing the Jays and a Philadelphia radio announcer said something about Rita MacNeil that a lot of Canadians also say, ie, made a reference to her size? Wow.)
Um, welcome to the world we live in, I guess...
Welcome to the global village, where it doesn't matter if you like to have sexual relations with sheep, but $DEITY help you if you're an outnumbered American.
"which England conquered" I believe falls into the New France defeat. Nevertheless, I believe France had a North American presence up until Napoleon's defeat, although I could be wrong - I'm at work and don't have time to look up relevant references (which I notice you failed to include).
However, the relevant part of my original post still stands: originally being a French territory != follows French civil law as opposed to British. All of Canada, save for Quebec, does so; I don't recall Waterloo being located inside the borders of the Province of Quebec (since I work in Waterloo, I think I'd remember something about that).
Civil law in Canada depends on whether you're in Quebec or not. Technically, most of Eastern Canada was a French territory, which England conquered or was ceded after Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo. As far as that goes, I believe the author of the article is correct, as was the poster who pointed out that if enough of a fuss was made, Britain would quite likely make moves to "reintegrate" Sealand. (Incidentally, if my grade 8 Social Studies and Grade 11 Law classes are recalled correctly, generally Canadian civil courts follow US precedence, if there's no prior Canadian or British precedent.)
... or to eliminate grades altogether, a la Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I think Phaedrus had a good idea.
This is the sort of thing why I loved the honours program I took: your mark was based in great part on your participation in seminar. None of the parroting back crap that only separates those who can memorise from those who can't. Yum.
Emily's point, as I took it, was not that she personally finds Linux difficult to use (although she apparently did). Her point is that it will not replace Windows as a desktop O/S, precisely *because* of what some would call its strengths: its customisability (is that a word?), flexibility, and complexity. Our office examined Linux on the desktop a year or so ago - before my time here - and found that it Just Wouldn't Work. Our secretaries etc can't, and don't want to learn how to, customise their desktops beyond what theme they want. Most don't even go that far, they just use what I give them. That's what most people do - the client side of the client-server, the users, whatever you want to call them. (In a previous post, somebody used the word luser. That's funny on alt.sysadmin.recovery; that's not funny when you want to be taken seriously in a desktop os discussion.)
Emily's rant was about the same thing - she doesn't want to be presented with oodles of choices when she's installing and running a desktop operating system. Why does she have to "break out her favourite development environment and start hacking"? Her whole point was that users don't want or need to do that. They just want something they can use. They want to be able to read the documents other people give them, they want to know that when they doubleclick that icon, the app will load up.
This is why, Emily says, Linux will not beat Windows out on the desktop - and she's right. That's not to say Linux doesn't have a place on some desktops, because it does. However, it doesn't have a place on as many desktops as Windows does - for the reasons she gives.
To mirror what countless others have said: the only legal advice *anybody* should accept from posters on this or any other website, regardless of their (claimed) backgrounds or intentions, is to go ask a lawyer. Furthermore, make it a lawyer who's somewhat local to you. Doing anything else is foolhardy.
As a personal aside: I wish/. posters would separate "their world" from the real world. Just because you feel the law *should* operate in a certain manner doesn't mean it will... and just because one judge says law X should be interpreted in manner Y doesn't mean another judge won't say it should be interpreted in manner Z. Disagreements like that are what keep Supreme Courts in paycheques.;)
Add on to that many people think their product is the most bloated, slow, and kludgy word processor on earth and you have even more reason to be angry.
Sounds like you and Robert Sawyer would get along well.;) For myself, I believe all applications suck; some suck less than others, for various reasons. I use Word because it'll read most any file format going; the fact it does lots of nifty things is icing on the cake. As a Windows-based word processor, it's hard to beat. As a text editor, well... yeah. I stick with notepad, or better yet, joe.;)
Many believe Microsoft to be engaged in similar practices.
Isn't that what the whole court case is about?
People have every right to be angry if they feel that MS products are kludgy, etcetc. However, that doesn't mean MS is wrong and should be punished. The problems with Windows et al are due more, IMO, to trying to support legacy code than to deliberate attempts to harm the consumers, using their (MS's) place in the market.
The other thing Katz brought up is the government has to prove that MS prevented Netscape from bringing things to market - personally, I don't believe they did.
Of *course* Microsoft is doing everything they can to solidify their position in the marketplace. Isn't that what capitalism is about? I could go on, but it would be somewhat offtopic and I'm at work anyway.;)
Why should Linus' opinion matter more than anybody else's? Is he some sort of deity for writing a kernel? Don't get me wrong, I have a linux box on (well, beside) my desk, and I have several lightweight servers running linux, but... come on.
"I have to run Office2000 because everyone else does." That, again, is a sign of the monopoly that MS has.
*Having* a monopoly isn't, in and of itself, illegal, is it? If I produce a superior product - the superiority of Office is debatable, but for the purposes of this post I'll assume it is better than the competition - why should I be punished for it? Slam MS for predatory postures - but don't slam them because people use their products under the notion that they're better. (Personally, I have two machines sitting beside my desk - this one, running Windows and Office 2000 which I use for web browsing and officework, and another running linux, which I use for the network-related tasks my job involves.)
Most of the posts on this topic have been just that, "DSL companies shouldn't do ". That's fine. Let those people who don't agree with how a business - or business class - is being run start their own businesses up. Most posters here are from 'free enterprise' countries - what's to stop them, if they feel that a business can be successful and make money? That's the beauty of free enterprise, if you don't agree with how a business is run, there's absolutely nothing stopping you from starting one yourself. If you (meaning the/. population at large, not you specifically, mindstrm) feel that strongly about it, petition your local companies! Of course, the argument can be made "they won't change, they're making more money this way"... what's the problem with a business making money? That's what they're in the business FOR, right?
switch to other, less secure versions that we at least know are free from holes.
It would seem to me that if they're free from holes, they're *more* secure. If you don't trust the product, it isn't secure, I don't care what features it has.
if you accept this idea as being true for all thoughts no matter if you only think it once
that's why I said "often enough" - unless your definition of "often enough" was "once". (My definition wasn't; I had in mind some random number > 1.)
How would you know if the person you're with was tempted? Do they tell you "Honey, today I had lustful thoughts about a man I saw on the street"? Confess thy sin and thou shalt be pardoned? (I'm sure some couples do, in fact, do this; I'm equally sure there's a large number of couples that assume no harm, no foul, and if they were tempted and resisted, they don't bother mentioning it - unless they felt really guilty, I guess.) It all goes back to the definition of adultery is whatever the couple agrees it is - and if they don't agree, they probably won't last very long as a couple.
You are not "Living by the "rules" in the Bible" if you take the second half of this most basic rule without the first half
Point conceded. (I'm no Biblical scholar, and the last time I read the Bible was years ago.)
However, given that it's possible to live the second half without living by the rules in the Bible, it's possible to live by some rules in the Bible without living by the whole thing (you said so yourself), and therefore the intention of the post you replied to is proven - just because it's in the Bible, doesn't mean it's wrong. *That* is the attitude that I was fighting against - there's too much slamming of Christianity purely for slamming's sake in geek-circles, IMO - but now we're getting OT.
I missed a portion of your post when I was replying.
Yep, and it's still as facist today as it was before. One should never trust those who restrict your freedom of thinking whatever you want. People should be judged by their acts.
We're not talking about restricting your freedom to think here, nor are we talking about judging. The question was: is online sex the same as adultery? The reply was: for what it's worth, here's what the Bible says (yes, it is). My post states that, among other things, just because it's in the Bible doesn't mean it's wrong, as some of the followups to that post seemed to imply.
This concept can be based on the idea that if you think about something often enough, you're probably going to eventually do it. For myself, if I knew my partner was continually thinking about having an affair, I'd have some pretty severe trust issues. That's not restricting their freedom to think whatever they want, is it?
I did NOT attempt to absolve e-mail users of all responsibility of their actions. I DID say that holding them fully responsible is wrong. ("Dim witted users" is precisely the language I was railing against. You don't know everything about everything - don't expect everybody else to hold expertise in fields not their own. If I were an auto mechanic, I could just as easily call you dim witted for not knowing the proper way to change your oil - would that make me correct?)
"Everybody knows" can not be one of your defences - common sense isn't. Further, not every company has seminars on virus defense. A user who attends such a seminar but fails to heed its warnings can be classified as dim witted. A user who doesn't have such seminars to attend isn't dim witted - they're merely ignorant.
If you say the earth is flat, I'll laught at you. If you say the earth is flat and that's your religion, I loose my right to laught about it ?
And laughing is your prerogative. We're not talking about something that can be empirically proven though - we're talking about ethics, we're talking about morals - although some philosophers believe these CAN be scientifically proven. By openly laughing, however, you lose your right not to be laughed at in return.
Most christian people do this or that because "the Bible says so, and if it is in the Bible, then it is true". What an amazing display of self-thinking and independance !
Has it occurred to you that perhaps they've considered the alternatives and rejected them? Would that not fall under the definition of "self thinking" and "independance" [sic] ?
not ALL my beliefs come from ONE book. It's not getting ideas from book which is wrong, it is getting ALL your ideas and ALL your beliefs from ONE book, and then stubornly refusing anything not compatible with those ideas because they are against what that one book says.
I know VERY few people that get ALL their beliefs from ONE book, be they Christian, Jew, or Satanist. Ditto for the stubborn refusal idea. The original poster wasn't saying that "the Bible says that this is adultery, so it must be true". The original poster was saying "this is the Bible's take on it, take it for what it's worth to you". And my reply to the followup to that post was "don't reject it just because it's in the Bible".
It isn't JUST in the Bible, either. Many philosophical beliefs include this concept. (I happen to agree with those beliefs; many do not. That doesn't make them wrong, it makes them different.)
re "most christian people". By christian, do you mean people who follow the Bible, or do you mean people who believe in the Christian God? If the former, then obviously they believe that if it's in the Bible, it's true. (That doesn't mean their ethics are wrong, either.) If you mean the latter, I know *many* people who follow the concepts in the Bible according to *their* interpretation. Their self-thinking and independence led them to the conclusion that there is, indeed, a greater being, and that some of the concepts in the Bible are good. I'm don't believe in a greater being myself, but that doesn't mean I can't choose to live by some of the concepts in the Christian Bible.
By the way, by defending your right to ridicule somebody for their beliefs (whether or not their beliefs seem logical to you), you defend my own right to ridicule you for yours, immaterial of their logic. (Do unto others... but that's a Christian concept, so does that make it false?)
Is something invalid just because it's in the Bible? (And, for that matter, who are you to ridicule somebody for their religious beliefs, as your post implies?)
Further, this belief is in more publications, if you will, than simply the Christian Bible. The concept of "thinking it is as bad as doing it" has been around for longer than the Bible. Just how much longer is left as an exercise for the reader; Greek philosophers may have had something to say on the subject of ethics and morals.
Living by "rules" in the Bible doesn't require that you accept that there's a God as defined in said book; it just requires that you do unto others as you would have them do unto you, take personal responsibility for your actions, and other similar ideas. (But these are obviously silly and outdated in a day where the person opening an attachment maliciously sent to them is at fault for getting a virus... sorry, that's a different rant.)
If old books seem stupid, you could try reading, f'rinstance, Robert Heinlein, he held a few of the same beliefs. Or you could work out your own set of beliefs to stand by; provided they don't break any laws, there's no harm in that.
You could even post on slashdot, for all the world to see, your personal beliefs so that somebody else can take potshots at them because they happen to be based on a book. (I find it quite likely that, no matter what your beliefs, they've been previously published somewhere, so it should be fairly easy.)
IMO, and others', only you and your partner can define what is adulterous. If your partner has no problem with you calling 1-900 sex numbers, then so be it, it ain't. The line is drawn where the agreement is made. For myself and my own fiancee, the line is drawn at the point of action - where it becomes interactive and more than just "wow, look at ". We didn't sit down and agree on this, it's just understood.
However: if you need me, or anybody else, to tell you this, my suspicion is that your relationship is on shaky ground anyway. Morals come from within, not without, and most peoples' reaction to having others' morals imposed on them is to go out and do whatever it is they're not meant to be doing.
(Strictly speaking, if you had a Christian Church wedding (be it RC, some form of Protestant, whatever), then as previous posters have noted, thinking is as good as doing.)
If you think your partner is being ridiculous in saying that online sex is cheating (or, reversed, if you think they're being ridiculous in saying it isn't), perhaps you should consider the lack of respect that's apparently there. (Not meaning you the person whose post I'm replying to; meaning you the reader who's in this hypothetical relationship.)
Re:Been done here for ages, and it works.
on
The Unblinking Eye
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If you can't trust your political parties, then the problem isn't with democracy, it's with your political parties.
In a democracy, you do NOT give the ruling power the means to destroy any political opposition. While you've removed "crime" by 70%, you've virtually guaranteed that any political opponent can have his every move tracked.
so what are you saying, that having that 70% extra crime is an acceptable cost of having some extra degree of privacy? Note that, as another poster said, police already do this. In fact, if I knew a cop wasn't always on the lookout while on patrol for known criminals, I'd be very, very pissed off.
The problems with this sort of system that you point out aren't inherent in the system; they're inherent in the people that use that system. If you believe *so strongly* that your system is that flawed, why the hell are you still living there?!
Slashdot Mirror
Well, the solution is quite obvious:
if you want to back up every CD you listen to, for whatever reason, and you can't back up certain CDs, well, don't buy those certain CDs. There's absolutely nothing that says you have to buy it, and there's nothing that says a company selling a product must sell it in a certain format. At least, not in the CD industry, that I'm aware of anyway.
If nobody buys the burnproof CDs, then artists won't want their music distributed in that format, and so it won't be. It's a free market economy, in this sense, it isn't really all that complex. Nobody buys = no money coming in = nobody will make it any more.
No, they're doing it to get free music from the world's largest catalogs of downloadable music.
;)
OK, just so we're clear on that point.
I find "I know it's wrong, I'm doing it anyway" much more acceptable than "it isn't wrong! the riaa's ripping them off anyway!"
Incidentally, if most artists are not members of the RIAA, then how exactly does downloading their music without paying for it hurt the RIAA? It looks to me as if it's hurting the smaller artists more directly.
So all Napster users who pirate MP3s are deliberately breaking copyright law in order to knock the RIAA down a step, and thereby helping the smaller artists? I doubt it. IMO, it should be up to the artists themselves to come up with an alternative to the RIAA. This argument strikes me as 75% excuse for most people to do something they'd likely do anyway. People have always pirated music; this just makes it quicker, easier. (Not to say that you, dachsund, are personally pirating MP3s using Napster, or to try to claim a higher moral ground by saying I've never in my entire life ever pirated music - because I'd be lying.)
Shirley there are better ways to show contempt for the RIAA. I can think of one that's been proclaimed: boycott all RIAA artist CDs. Don't buy them new, certainly, but further, don't buy them used either. Why not? Because at one point, those WERE new CDs, resold by somebody who knew that the option of reselling them was there. If people stop buying used RIAA-artist CDs, soon the used CD stores won't have a market for them and will no longer buy them, or (more likely) they'll get overstocked and won't buy any more. Granted, you're hurting the used CD stores this way, but IMO it's one of the few things an individual who isn't directly involved in the music industry can do in order to hurt the RIAA, at least in a morally-correct fashion.
Who needs Best Buy/Tower Records/RIAA?
I nominate "anybody who doesn't have a computer but likes music anyway".
Right now, the RIAA is a devil the artists know. They might not LIKE the RIAA, but they know how it works and how to deal with it. Is replacing the RIAA wholesale, which is what you and most other advocates are talking about, really the best thing to do?
"I went into the business for the money, and the art grew out of it. If people are disillusioned by that remark, I can't help it. It's the truth." - Charlie Chaplin
Don't forget, musicians would like to make money. I'm sure most of them would perform for free if they could eat and live and have all the other amenities most people want, but that just doesn't happen without money in our society, so they're going to want to get paid. Some of them will want to get paid a lot. Does any musician deserve to get paid a lot? Why not? If people are willing to fork out money such that an individual or a group get paid a lot (see professional sports for another example) then of course they deserve the money.
Science *wasn't* "dependant" (if you can read so well, why can't you spell? - oops, flamebait) on computers in the past. But things change. Science is becoming increasingly dependEnt on computers to do its work. Why is this a bad thing? I don't think the author of the editorial was saying "science is impossible without computers". However, walk into *any* scientific research institute and you'll see computers. Lots of them. They sure make life easier. Sometimes. :)
No, it's the definition of human-egos-as-villain. HAL was the embodiment of this. The technology served as the facilitator, the catalyst.
I believe the reason is that Americans have no reason to depend on other countries in the world (unlike even the first world countries, much less the third world). American politics does not depend as much on, say, the Middle East as the Middle East does on America.
I think people lining up for gas in the 70s would have thought something different. OPEC ring any bells? I don't recall reading in the news anywhere that the US has totally lost its dependence on Middle East oil. Now, however, the US has a proven track record in "mess with our oil and we'll mess with you". (Personally, I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing - economic warfare is still warfare, IMO, and should be treated as such. Reply with the weapons you have, not with the weapons the enemy wishes you to use.) This is getting OT, but...
I find a lot of people like to bash yanks just cos you all are an easy target, particularly Commonwealth-types. It's accepted in our culture to bash an American because of his or her birthplace. (Any baseball fans remember a few years ago when the Phillies were playing the Jays and a Philadelphia radio announcer said something about Rita MacNeil that a lot of Canadians also say, ie, made a reference to her size? Wow.)
Um, welcome to the world we live in, I guess...
Welcome to the global village, where it doesn't matter if you like to have sexual relations with sheep, but $DEITY help you if you're an outnumbered American.
"which England conquered" I believe falls into the New France defeat. Nevertheless, I believe France had a North American presence up until Napoleon's defeat, although I could be wrong - I'm at work and don't have time to look up relevant references (which I notice you failed to include).
However, the relevant part of my original post still stands: originally being a French territory != follows French civil law as opposed to British. All of Canada, save for Quebec, does so; I don't recall Waterloo being located inside the borders of the Province of Quebec (since I work in Waterloo, I think I'd remember something about that).
Civil law in Canada depends on whether you're in Quebec or not. Technically, most of Eastern Canada was a French territory, which England conquered or was ceded after Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo. As far as that goes, I believe the author of the article is correct, as was the poster who pointed out that if enough of a fuss was made, Britain would quite likely make moves to "reintegrate" Sealand. (Incidentally, if my grade 8 Social Studies and Grade 11 Law classes are recalled correctly, generally Canadian civil courts follow US precedence, if there's no prior Canadian or British precedent.)
... or to eliminate grades altogether, a la Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I think Phaedrus had a good idea.
This is the sort of thing why I loved the honours program I took: your mark was based in great part on your participation in seminar. None of the parroting back crap that only separates those who can memorise from those who can't. Yum.
Emily's point, as I took it, was not that she personally finds Linux difficult to use (although she apparently did). Her point is that it will not replace Windows as a desktop O/S, precisely *because* of what some would call its strengths: its customisability (is that a word?), flexibility, and complexity. Our office examined Linux on the desktop a year or so ago - before my time here - and found that it Just Wouldn't Work. Our secretaries etc can't, and don't want to learn how to, customise their desktops beyond what theme they want. Most don't even go that far, they just use what I give them. That's what most people do - the client side of the client-server, the users, whatever you want to call them. (In a previous post, somebody used the word luser. That's funny on alt.sysadmin.recovery; that's not funny when you want to be taken seriously in a desktop os discussion.)
Emily's rant was about the same thing - she doesn't want to be presented with oodles of choices when she's installing and running a desktop operating system. Why does she have to "break out her favourite development environment and start hacking"? Her whole point was that users don't want or need to do that. They just want something they can use. They want to be able to read the documents other people give them, they want to know that when they doubleclick that icon, the app will load up.
This is why, Emily says, Linux will not beat Windows out on the desktop - and she's right. That's not to say Linux doesn't have a place on some desktops, because it does. However, it doesn't have a place on as many desktops as Windows does - for the reasons she gives.
To mirror what countless others have said: the only legal advice *anybody* should accept from posters on this or any other website, regardless of their (claimed) backgrounds or intentions, is to go ask a lawyer. Furthermore, make it a lawyer who's somewhat local to you. Doing anything else is foolhardy.
/. posters would separate "their world" from the real world. Just because you feel the law *should* operate in a certain manner doesn't mean it will... and just because one judge says law X should be interpreted in manner Y doesn't mean another judge won't say it should be interpreted in manner Z. Disagreements like that are what keep Supreme Courts in paycheques. ;)
As a personal aside: I wish
Add on to that many people think their product is the most bloated, slow, and kludgy word processor on earth and you have even more reason to be angry.
;) For myself, I believe all applications suck; some suck less than others, for various reasons. I use Word because it'll read most any file format going; the fact it does lots of nifty things is icing on the cake. As a Windows-based word processor, it's hard to beat. As a text editor, well... yeah. I stick with notepad, or better yet, joe. ;)
;)
Sounds like you and Robert Sawyer would get along well.
Many believe Microsoft to be engaged in similar practices.
Isn't that what the whole court case is about?
People have every right to be angry if they feel that MS products are kludgy, etcetc. However, that doesn't mean MS is wrong and should be punished. The problems with Windows et al are due more, IMO, to trying to support legacy code than to deliberate attempts to harm the consumers, using their (MS's) place in the market.
The other thing Katz brought up is the government has to prove that MS prevented Netscape from bringing things to market - personally, I don't believe they did.
Of *course* Microsoft is doing everything they can to solidify their position in the marketplace. Isn't that what capitalism is about? I could go on, but it would be somewhat offtopic and I'm at work anyway.
Heck, even Linus called this decision idiotic!
Why should Linus' opinion matter more than anybody else's? Is he some sort of deity for writing a kernel? Don't get me wrong, I have a linux box on (well, beside) my desk, and I have several lightweight servers running linux, but... come on.
"I have to run Office2000 because everyone else does." That, again, is a sign of the monopoly that MS has.
*Having* a monopoly isn't, in and of itself, illegal, is it? If I produce a superior product - the superiority of Office is debatable, but for the purposes of this post I'll assume it is better than the competition - why should I be punished for it? Slam MS for predatory postures - but don't slam them because people use their products under the notion that they're better. (Personally, I have two machines sitting beside my desk - this one, running Windows and Office 2000 which I use for web browsing and officework, and another running linux, which I use for the network-related tasks my job involves.)
They shouldn't say...
/. population at large, not you specifically, mindstrm) feel that strongly about it, petition your local companies! Of course, the argument can be made "they won't change, they're making more money this way"... what's the problem with a business making money? That's what they're in the business FOR, right?
Most of the posts on this topic have been just that, "DSL companies shouldn't do ". That's fine. Let those people who don't agree with how a business - or business class - is being run start their own businesses up. Most posters here are from 'free enterprise' countries - what's to stop them, if they feel that a business can be successful and make money? That's the beauty of free enterprise, if you don't agree with how a business is run, there's absolutely nothing stopping you from starting one yourself. If you (meaning the
switch to other, less secure versions that we at least know are free from holes.
It would seem to me that if they're free from holes, they're *more* secure. If you don't trust the product, it isn't secure, I don't care what features it has.
if you accept this idea as being true for all thoughts no matter if you only think it once
that's why I said "often enough" - unless your definition of "often enough" was "once". (My definition wasn't; I had in mind some random number > 1.)
How would you know if the person you're with was tempted? Do they tell you "Honey, today I had lustful thoughts about a man I saw on the street"? Confess thy sin and thou shalt be pardoned? (I'm sure some couples do, in fact, do this; I'm equally sure there's a large number of couples that assume no harm, no foul, and if they were tempted and resisted, they don't bother mentioning it - unless they felt really guilty, I guess.) It all goes back to the definition of adultery is whatever the couple agrees it is - and if they don't agree, they probably won't last very long as a couple.
You are not "Living by the "rules" in the Bible" if you take the second half of this most basic rule without the first half
Point conceded. (I'm no Biblical scholar, and the last time I read the Bible was years ago.)
However, given that it's possible to live the second half without living by the rules in the Bible, it's possible to live by some rules in the Bible without living by the whole thing (you said so yourself), and therefore the intention of the post you replied to is proven - just because it's in the Bible, doesn't mean it's wrong. *That* is the attitude that I was fighting against - there's too much slamming of Christianity purely for slamming's sake in geek-circles, IMO - but now we're getting OT.
I missed a portion of your post when I was replying.
Yep, and it's still as facist today as it was before. One should never trust those who restrict your freedom of thinking whatever you want. People should be judged by their acts.
We're not talking about restricting your freedom to think here, nor are we talking about judging. The question was: is online sex the same as adultery? The reply was: for what it's worth, here's what the Bible says (yes, it is). My post states that, among other things, just because it's in the Bible doesn't mean it's wrong, as some of the followups to that post seemed to imply.
This concept can be based on the idea that if you think about something often enough, you're probably going to eventually do it. For myself, if I knew my partner was continually thinking about having an affair, I'd have some pretty severe trust issues. That's not restricting their freedom to think whatever they want, is it?
I did NOT attempt to absolve e-mail users of all responsibility of their actions. I DID say that holding them fully responsible is wrong. ("Dim witted users" is precisely the language I was railing against. You don't know everything about everything - don't expect everybody else to hold expertise in fields not their own. If I were an auto mechanic, I could just as easily call you dim witted for not knowing the proper way to change your oil - would that make me correct?)
"Everybody knows" can not be one of your defences - common sense isn't. Further, not every company has seminars on virus defense. A user who attends such a seminar but fails to heed its warnings can be classified as dim witted. A user who doesn't have such seminars to attend isn't dim witted - they're merely ignorant.
At any rate, this is way off topic.
If you say the earth is flat, I'll laught at you. If you say the earth is flat and that's your religion, I loose my right to laught about it ?
And laughing is your prerogative. We're not talking about something that can be empirically proven though - we're talking about ethics, we're talking about morals - although some philosophers believe these CAN be scientifically proven. By openly laughing, however, you lose your right not to be laughed at in return.
Most christian people do this or that because "the Bible says so, and if it is in the Bible, then it is true". What an amazing display of self-thinking and independance !
Has it occurred to you that perhaps they've considered the alternatives and rejected them? Would that not fall under the definition of "self thinking" and "independance" [sic] ?
not ALL my beliefs come from ONE book. It's not getting ideas from book which is wrong, it is getting ALL your ideas and ALL your beliefs from ONE book, and then stubornly refusing anything not compatible with those ideas because they are against what that one book says.
I know VERY few people that get ALL their beliefs from ONE book, be they Christian, Jew, or Satanist. Ditto for the stubborn refusal idea. The original poster wasn't saying that "the Bible says that this is adultery, so it must be true". The original poster was saying "this is the Bible's take on it, take it for what it's worth to you". And my reply to the followup to that post was "don't reject it just because it's in the Bible".
It isn't JUST in the Bible, either. Many philosophical beliefs include this concept. (I happen to agree with those beliefs; many do not. That doesn't make them wrong, it makes them different.)
re "most christian people". By christian, do you mean people who follow the Bible, or do you mean people who believe in the Christian God? If the former, then obviously they believe that if it's in the Bible, it's true. (That doesn't mean their ethics are wrong, either.) If you mean the latter, I know *many* people who follow the concepts in the Bible according to *their* interpretation. Their self-thinking and independence led them to the conclusion that there is, indeed, a greater being, and that some of the concepts in the Bible are good. I'm don't believe in a greater being myself, but that doesn't mean I can't choose to live by some of the concepts in the Christian Bible.
By the way, by defending your right to ridicule somebody for their beliefs (whether or not their beliefs seem logical to you), you defend my own right to ridicule you for yours, immaterial of their logic. (Do unto others... but that's a Christian concept, so does that make it false?)
Is something invalid just because it's in the Bible? (And, for that matter, who are you to ridicule somebody for their religious beliefs, as your post implies?)
Further, this belief is in more publications, if you will, than simply the Christian Bible. The concept of "thinking it is as bad as doing it" has been around for longer than the Bible. Just how much longer is left as an exercise for the reader; Greek philosophers may have had something to say on the subject of ethics and morals.
Living by "rules" in the Bible doesn't require that you accept that there's a God as defined in said book; it just requires that you do unto others as you would have them do unto you, take personal responsibility for your actions, and other similar ideas. (But these are obviously silly and outdated in a day where the person opening an attachment maliciously sent to them is at fault for getting a virus... sorry, that's a different rant.)
If old books seem stupid, you could try reading, f'rinstance, Robert Heinlein, he held a few of the same beliefs. Or you could work out your own set of beliefs to stand by; provided they don't break any laws, there's no harm in that.
You could even post on slashdot, for all the world to see, your personal beliefs so that somebody else can take potshots at them because they happen to be based on a book. (I find it quite likely that, no matter what your beliefs, they've been previously published somewhere, so it should be fairly easy.)
IMO, and others', only you and your partner can define what is adulterous. If your partner has no problem with you calling 1-900 sex numbers, then so be it, it ain't. The line is drawn where the agreement is made. For myself and my own fiancee, the line is drawn at the point of action - where it becomes interactive and more than just "wow, look at ". We didn't sit down and agree on this, it's just understood.
However: if you need me, or anybody else, to tell you this, my suspicion is that your relationship is on shaky ground anyway. Morals come from within, not without, and most peoples' reaction to having others' morals imposed on them is to go out and do whatever it is they're not meant to be doing.
(Strictly speaking, if you had a Christian Church wedding (be it RC, some form of Protestant, whatever), then as previous posters have noted, thinking is as good as doing.)
If you think your partner is being ridiculous in saying that online sex is cheating (or, reversed, if you think they're being ridiculous in saying it isn't), perhaps you should consider the lack of respect that's apparently there. (Not meaning you the person whose post I'm replying to; meaning you the reader who's in this hypothetical relationship.)
If you can't trust your political parties, then the problem isn't with democracy, it's with your political parties.
In a democracy, you do NOT give the ruling power the means to destroy any political opposition. While you've removed "crime" by 70%, you've virtually guaranteed that any political opponent can have his every move tracked.
so what are you saying, that having that 70% extra crime is an acceptable cost of having some extra degree of privacy? Note that, as another poster said, police already do this. In fact, if I knew a cop wasn't always on the lookout while on patrol for known criminals, I'd be very, very pissed off.
The problems with this sort of system that you point out aren't inherent in the system; they're inherent in the people that use that system. If you believe *so strongly* that your system is that flawed, why the hell are you still living there?!
Recommended reading: Aristotle, Plato.