Wouldn't it be perhaps easier and better to just licence it saying "The invention in this patent may be used freely in any software program where the entirety of the program is available to the public and gives the public the right to freely use, modify and distribute said software"
maybe throw in a clause or two saying that this also aplies to any software that links against this code.
That would cover even BSD licences, as soon as someone made it proprietary, they would be violating the patent licence.
Course, I must say it would be better to just not patent software in the first place. Allowing it to be freely used by free software is definitly a "good thing" but....its more the lesser evil than the greater good.
Though, I supose if you can sleep at night, then thats really the most important test of all. The rest is just silly debate.
> This is just another example of people using > "intellectual property" laws to restrict > sharing, just as the GPL restricts sharing.
Actually...I like the GPL alot...to me its more of using intellectual property laws to do something that they wern't really intended for.
Its saying "I don't want the right to restrict others from using the source to my code. AND I don't want YOU to take advantage of my kindness to restrict people."
Which is of course quite different from the "I want to restrict everyone" idea of most IP Law users.
> But if it did hit the ground, then it would > still probably hit somewhere remote, and again > not hurt anyone (no one has yet made a > continent-busting explosive). But I guess if it > did go through all of that and still explode > over New York, then that would suck.
Hmmm that depends alot on who you ask.
I know plenty of people who woul dbe "Pleased as Punch" if a nuke detonated over NYC. (Many of them happen to live in upstate new york even)
> Assume that I take/. posting, article, etc. or > cnn.com posting, article, etc. and posted it on > my own site without permission or formal > process. How would/. feel?
How do domain names ever feel?
Slashdot is not a person, it is not even an animal like a monkey, wher eyou could make a case that it might "feel" something.
Now, How would the people who work putting/. together feel? Beats me, I don't know them.
How would the community feel? Hard to say. There would be alot of reactions, depending on how you did it.
There would be people like me who would be pissed if you claimed to have written it yourself, afterall, its not nice to lie. However, if you did not commit fraud (ie lie about who wrote it) then, I would say "More power to ya". I couldn't care less....its just some text. Hell...mirror my website for all I care. (for anyone who looks at my site and once again calls me a hipocrite: I put those notices in telling people NOT to do that a LONG time ago, I havn't updated in 4 years - I consider it more a historical snapshot than a changing web page)
Then...there woul dbe others who would call you a theif and be all mad about it. There would be still more who would think its a silly issue and not really care one way or the other.
The range of response would be wide. There is no single "/. opinion".
Just go to the cemetary, find a gravestone of a person who died last year at age 5, then name it after them...the "Mikey Smith Child Protection Act".
Then write upa bill that will add a law on the books, making it illegal to kill children with guns, or something else that sounds really good but is nicely redundant with existing laws.... then just tack on the stuff to repeal the DMCA at the end.
Your argument makes an assumption, that not everyone believes is correct.
You assume that the means of "Using a loophole in the law" or "breaking the law" is necissarily, in and of itself, wrong.
I would personally argue, that the law can be either right or wrong. The law is an absolute measure of nothing more than the law. It is not a measure of morality. It is only immoral to break the law, when the action is immoral.
As for equating free software with the russian revolution.... yea some of the ideas are similar, but the russian revolution suffered from corrupt leadership that was more interested in grabbing power for themselves than actually helping the people.
In the free software movement, noone is running around trying to solidify their own powerbase, at the expense of the masses.
As for communism....why point at the russian revolution...what abou tthe farm (www.thefarm.org) which is a community right here in the US that has been around since the 70s and still is...they have been experimenting with progressive forms of communism quite sucessfully for years.
While I agree with what you are saying about how following the law can be morally wrong, and how breaking the law can be morally right, I have to diasgree with your view of a "perfect world".
A perfect world would NOT be one where people can just mindlessly follow laws. Noone should EVER mindlessly follow law and just assume "its the law, it must be right".
In a perfect world, the law woul dnever punish a person for acting in a morally proper way. It would also not allow a person acting in morally improper ways from using it to harm those who are acting properly.
However, that does not mean people would blindly follow the law. I would prefer a world where people think for themseleves and make their own decisions. I want a world where noone EVER says "I can't do that, ITS ILLEGAL" I want a world where people say "I can't do that, its just wrong"
They have a headlock on anyone writting an encoder in a country that is backwards enough to allow Software patents. In countries that do not have a patent system, or whose patent system is smart enough to not allow software patents, then they have nothing.
In that case we should THANK MS for comming up with this patent...its such a damned stupid idea that people SHOULD be prevented from using it.
Maybe next someone will patent sloppy code indenting, oh...and memory leaks.
I would say someone should patent opening files and writting to them without checking if the write failed (::cough::quota::cough::) but pine has been doing that for years. (if you don't believe me, id be happy to show you some nice runaways)
Then again, I supose memory leaks, and bad code have plenty of prior art too.
Copyright applies as soon as it is set in fixed form.
So if you make something and do not patent it, you do not get patent privilidges, but you do stop someone else from later making it and getting a patent. (in theory...)
the filesystem can be thought of as a database so.../etc is a table in the larger FS database
It just happens to be a database that doesn't suck at 3 am when the system went down and can't get past single user mode - because um...one of the um OTHER admins fucked something up (yea thats the ticket)
> For anyone here who's used it (admit it:), what > that patent describes is Windows 98's "Critical > Notification Update" utility, a program that > checks the versions of your software, compares > it against what's on Microsofts server, asks if > you want to download it, and then if you say so, > downloads and installs the appropriate updates.
Which is almost exactly what apt does.
apt gets th elatest package list, checks it against whats on your system, and downloads all the needed packes and installs them. (well 1 of apts modes of operation does that, it also allows you to install or upgrade individual packages, if you want. It will download the package you told it about and all its dependancies )
> There are sometimes valid reasons for abortions. > There are never valid reasons for the > exploitation of children. -
This is not where the analogy breaks down, it is where you misunderstand it. I am not saying anything about the validity of an abortion or exploitation of children...
I am talking about the harassment of innocent individuals, simply for their association with the issue. A person who walks into a clinic that performs abortions, for some other medical procedure (contrary to what some may think, most clicnics do not base their entire practice on any 1 procedure) are harassed.
Even if you believe that abortion is NEVER justified, this has nothing to do with it anyway. I am talking about the harassment of innocent people.
How would you react to find a group that had a nude woman walk down the street...then took the picture of every man who turned their head twice to gawk at her, and pasted their pictures up on a board with the title "Possible sex Offenders"?
Whats worst...this banning of the porn itself is silly. I can see banning the production of child porn. Banning the mere free downloading or posessuion of it, is ludicris. Banning sex with children, or creation of "kiddie porn" is an attempt to ban the exploitation of children. Banning the simple (esp free) download or possession does NOTHING to stop actual explotation....it serves to PUNISH people for their sexual orientation. It serves to drive them further under ground. It serves only to take away what may be their only outlet to releaiving their sexual frustration.
Banning production is banning exploitation. Banning mere posession or download is attacking individuals, not for their actions, but for their desires.
> are you trying to justify the downloading of > naked kids? ARE YOU?!?
DOwnloading naked kids? hmmm can I download a hamburger and french fries too? hmmm No Make that some prime rib, and some good red wine....now where exactly do I go to download this stuff again?
> if you go around DL'ing illegal material that > has a negative affect on our society.
hmmmm the transfer of bits from some other computer to my hard drive can have a negative effect on our society? Please explain. Also please quantify the actual harm done per kilobyte.
> your whole view on the subject is narrow, and > you seem to be too engrossed with yourself to > have a truly valid argument.
A complete moron said something to me once, it was the only thing he ever said that was correct... "When you point your finger at someone, you point 3 back at yourself"
> (and yes, the internet IS public property)
Yes but....people are allowed to have private conversations in public places. Personally, I think laws saying people can't have sex, or walk around without cloths are pretty draconian... course...I only see 3 functions to clothing, 1) protection from the elements 2) pockets 3) naugahide (ever sat on it not wearing long pants?)
Given those being the only 3 functions of clothing that I recognize (special clothing designed for extra suport aside), I don't see any real problem with walking around naked (esp on a hot day)
If you are offended by something, then its your own fault for choosing to be offended. Can't blame others for your choices.
> I'd be more willing to convict a guy of > statetory rape if he did it to a pre-16 girl. > Shouldn't that be what age of consent is about? > First, what bennefits these teens, and second, > what we as a society find accepable.
I have a problem with statutory rape. The thing is, OK rape is bad. No IS no. But Statutory rape says "Yes is no" if the other person is too young.
The real problem is simply this...it is not a a charge brought by th esuposed victem, it is brought by their parents. It is not a device for protecting anyone, its a device for legitimising parental dominion over the lives of their offspring.
I tend to think that by the time a person is physically capable of sexual activity, they should be able to decide for themselves what they wish to do. At that point the law needs to leave it alone. If a person can't decide by then, there is either something wrong with them, or their parents didn't do a very good job of teaching them.
> So we lock away people for something we don't > have much knowledge about, or lock away someone > who seriously needs mental help.
Its not too hard to understand...the public doesn't get it, but the general public tends to not get alot of things (esp when the media finds it more profitable to use it as a scare tactic to keep people afraid and watching the news)
I think its simply a fetish. Have you read the Cryptonomicon portion where some guys were "van eck phreaking"? there was a long letter about fetishes where the writter said he was very thankful that his was stockings and not little children...afterall that type of sexual preference is well laid into the brain by age 7.
These people are not "sick", they simply have a sexual fetish that is not "socially acceptable". There is no way to "cure" someone of this, any more than you can "cure" someone of homosexuality.
Our society always seems to take the least healthy and most problimatic aproach to social issues. Make it illegal and hope it goes away. Shun them, that will make them stop. Just drive everything underground, make it a black market affair.
Why deal with a problem when you can just jail it away and call all the people who have any interest in it at all "sick"?
Is Child Porn a tough issue? Yea, it deals with alot of issues. When is a person old enough to consent to sex? When are they old enough to consent to sexual photos?
When you turn 18 there is no fairy that flies by and sprinkles dust on you and magically makes you able to make decisions for yourself. Its NOT as cut and dry an issue as legalists would have you believe.
But anyway...drawings? Drawings! The very idea that a person can set pencil to paper and somehow comit a crime by merely moving its tip across the page! The very idea of that offends me.
In fact...the very idea that someone could sit alone in their room, involve no other people, could possibly do anything, short of detonating thermonuclear devices, and somehow break a law is simply insane.
I supose it is things like that which have led to the word SNAFU
> It's been said many times by others: if you have > done nothing wrong, you have nothing to be > afraid of. Accountability is good, unless you're > an anarchist:)
Well actually I am an anarchist and I am all for acountability. However, I am certainly against this type of tactics.
This reminds me of those right-to-lifers who stand in front of Clinics that perform abortions and take down the licence plate numbers of EVERY person who enters the clinic.... then they take the licence plate numbers, find out who ownes the vehicle and harass them...never mind that they may have only gone to the clinic for counseling, or some other procedure, they get harassed just for parking in the parking lot and entering. (by harassed I mean recieve packets with pictures of stillborn babies that have been mislabeled as fetuses for impact and called "baby killers" etc)
As far as using this information...well its not as hard as you might think. Require a valid email adress to get a "password" or any number of sinister methods. Call the ISP and demand the name of the user who had that IP...claim that they were distributing illegal copies of some IP you own, need to know who to sue.
Never mind that ALL they did was download a file. You have no idea whatsoever what their intentions were. You have no idea what they thought the file was.
Then thank you for working on such an important system. If I ever get enough time in my schedual to give the code a good read over...I will probably join development (actually...I am thinking about implimenting a freenet server in PERL - is there an updated version of the protocol docs?)
> And, "guaranteed anonymity" is pushing it > (there are no guarantees in life). See the FAQ.
Well not true...there is 1 garauntee...death. (sorry to be so morbid...but its true)
True....but how many cannabis smokers smoke even 1 joint per day, every day, for the majority of their lives?
Ill tell you its very very few.
Sure, most go through their binges, but very few smoke THAT much for THAT long.
Of course the first question my pediatrician asked how much I smoked, I said maybe once a week or less (it was true) and he said "Oh ok"...that was the end of the subject, he never brought it up again.
My next doctor got a bit of a chuckle when I told him that I smoked a tiny bit of pot to help me eat when I had the flu (I litterally went from not being able to keep down water to eating solid food in 4 puffs)
by obtaining it in this way, you have not actually agreed to any licence. I don't think that "By reading this" you can actually be held legally responsible for anything...afterall...since its part of the document, then there would be no way to know the terms before you agree.
besides...you, the obtainer, have not broken any law, except maybe copyright law....but...fair use still applies (there was an mp3 article a while back where both sides lawyers agreed that fair use applies, regardless of whether the act of obtaining the material is illegal)
As such...you could use it to add the info to the kerberos spec:)
All in all it would just be best if someone converted it to plain text and sent it to an anonymous remailer - posted into usenet. (are there still anonymous remailers that post to usenet? sigh...I still lament the loss of annon.penet.fi)
Yup...like the DARE program, started by none other than Daryl "Recreational Cannabis users should be shot" Gates. Its still around, even though it has been shown that kids who graduate from it have a HIGHER instance of teenage drug use than kids who don't.
While his work has been bunked by many of the people in his feild as being woefully inadequet for the conclusions he comes to, I can find no reference to him actually denouncing his own work.
I DO remember that one of the medical researchers who was comming out with "Marijuana is bad for you" studies DID come out and denoucne his work. However, it apears that it either was NOT Dr Nahas, or it was, but it wasn't highly publicised.
On the whole though, it is well known that you can't get the legal permission needed to study marijuana, unless your study is designed to skew the results in the favor of saying bad things about it...even real medical researchers find it incredibly hard, if not impossible, to get the permission needed.
Actually what you should ask is WHY are we fighting a "War on Drugs"?
There is very little, if any, evidence that drug prohibition does anything "good". Switzerland recently held a study where some heroin addicts were given the ability to buy heroin legally and use it in "safe rooms".
What did they find?
They found that, while most continued using heroin, they became productive members of society able to hold down normal jobs and no longer needed to rely on stealing and crime to pay for their habbit. It was inflated prices of drugs on the black market that was causing them to turn to crime to feed their habbit, NOT the drug.
Everyone always points to "the children" and "teen drug use". However, it is harder for kids to get alcohol than cannabis, or heroin. Black market dealers don't check IDs, only reputable merchants who have licences to worry about.
Look at Dr Nahas (sp?) who was in charge of many of the studies that "proved" marijuana was harmful to people and "hurt productivity". He came out years later and denounced his own work. He admitted that all of his work was biased and he did it for the money, the US gov was paying him to come up with bogus study results. You will find prohibitionists still cite his studies as proof that "drugs are harmful"
I don't know about you, but fabricating lies, refusing to listen to scientific data, sounds alot like a religous war to me.
I will note a couple of last things on this topic (which is fairly offtopic already but..is a pet issue of mine):
1) The AMA was against cannabis being schedualed 2) I worked in a hospital as a tech, my mother worked in a hospital for 25 years, she tried and was unable to find a doctor who has a problem with cannabis use. 3) my own doctor had no issues with the fact that I smoked cannabis (my peiatrician that is) when I switched from a pediatrician to a doctor who focuses on Adult patience...my new doctor had no problem with this fact either.
> Main Entry: religion ... > 4 : a cause, principle, or system of beliefs > held to with ardor and faith
Well...Mr. Stallmen stated his belief, which is in line with what I would call the Atheist Religion, which is a system of beliefs, held to with ardor and faith, specifically centering on the belief that there is no "God".
Sounds like a religon to me. In fact, I consider myself to be a member of that religion.
> Furthermore, the attacks on the "War on Drugs" > and conservative politicians in general were > completely unnecessary in this forum.
I disagree.... slashdot is a discussion forum, not a purely technical one (not even a mostly technical one). Discussion of politics and social issues are definitly relavent...especially in an interview.
> The same drug policies have continued for eight > years under Clinton's administration -- does > that make them ok? The high rate of imprisonment > in this country continues under a Democratic > administration, yet the implication is that it's > the fault of Republicans.
Which, in my mind, goes to show that there is very little, if any, real difference between the Republicans and the Democrats. Lately, I have been refering to them, collecitvly, as the "Republicrat Party", which is split into 2 factions, which hate eachother for no real reason.
As for the war on drugs, I have to agree with the people who have said it is a "religous war". It is the only context in which it makes sense. Any practical view of it shows that it is an utter failure. It has not reduced use, or supply in any real way. In fact, current day drug prohibition, is a failure in ALL of the same ways as Alcohol prohibition of the 1920's. In fact, in an interview, the head of the DEA advocated bringing back alcohol prohibition, and stated that he believed it could be done within "the next 10 years".
However, I digress. yes, there are social problems here in america. Our legislative problems just amplify them. You can't legislate away a social problem, yet time and again, our society tries to do just that. (the war on drugs is just 1 set of examples)
Slashdot Mirror
Wouldn't it be perhaps easier and better to just
licence it saying "The invention in this patent
may be used freely in any software program
where the entirety of the program is available
to the public and gives the public the right to
freely use, modify and distribute said software"
maybe throw in a clause or two saying that this
also aplies to any software that links against
this code.
That would cover even BSD licences, as soon
as someone made it proprietary, they would be
violating the patent licence.
Course, I must say it would be better to just not
patent software in the first place. Allowing it
to be freely used by free software is definitly
a "good thing" but....its more the lesser evil
than the greater good.
Though, I supose if you can sleep at night, then
thats really the most important test of all. The
rest is just silly debate.
> This is just another example of people using
> "intellectual property" laws to restrict
> sharing, just as the GPL restricts sharing.
Actually...I like the GPL alot...to me its more
of using intellectual property laws to do
something that they wern't really intended for.
Its saying "I don't want the right to restrict
others from using the source to my code. AND I
don't want YOU to take advantage of my kindness
to restrict people."
Which is of course quite different from the
"I want to restrict everyone" idea of most
IP Law users.
> But if it did hit the ground, then it would
> still probably hit somewhere remote, and again
> not hurt anyone (no one has yet made a
> continent-busting explosive). But I guess if it
> did go through all of that and still explode
> over New York, then that would suck.
Hmmm that depends alot on who you ask.
I know plenty of people who woul dbe "Pleased as
Punch" if a nuke detonated over NYC. (Many of them
happen to live in upstate new york even)
> Assume that I take /. posting, article, etc. or /. feel?
/.
> cnn.com posting, article, etc. and posted it on
> my own site without permission or formal
> process. How would
How do domain names ever feel?
Slashdot is not a person, it is not even an animal
like a monkey, wher eyou could make a case that it
might "feel" something.
Now, How would the people who work putting
together feel? Beats me, I don't know them.
How would the community feel? Hard to say. There
would be alot of reactions, depending on how
you did it.
There would be people like me who would be pissed
if you claimed to have written it yourself,
afterall, its not nice to lie. However, if you
did not commit fraud (ie lie about who wrote it)
then, I would say "More power to ya". I couldn't
care less....its just some text. Hell...mirror
my website for all I care.
(for anyone who looks at my site and once again
calls me a hipocrite: I put those notices in
telling people NOT to do that a LONG time ago,
I havn't updated in 4 years - I consider it more
a historical snapshot than a changing web page)
Then...there woul dbe others who would call you
a theif and be all mad about it. There would be
still more who would think its a silly issue and
not really care one way or the other.
The range of response would be wide. There is no
single "/. opinion".
Oh thats simple...
Just go to the cemetary, find a gravestone of
a person who died last year at age 5, then name
it after them...the "Mikey Smith Child Protection
Act".
Then write upa bill that will add a law on the
books, making it illegal to kill children with
guns, or something else that sounds really good
but is nicely redundant with existing laws....
then just tack on the stuff to repeal the DMCA at
the end.
Though, maybe I am too cynical?
Your argument makes an assumption, that not
everyone believes is correct.
You assume that the means of "Using a loophole
in the law" or "breaking the law" is necissarily,
in and of itself, wrong.
I would personally argue, that the law can be
either right or wrong. The law is an absolute
measure of nothing more than the law. It is
not a measure of morality. It is only immoral
to break the law, when the action is immoral.
As for equating free software with the russian
revolution.... yea some of the ideas are similar,
but the russian revolution suffered from corrupt
leadership that was more interested in grabbing
power for themselves than actually helping the
people.
In the free software movement, noone is running
around trying to solidify their own powerbase,
at the expense of the masses.
As for communism....why point at the russian
revolution...what abou tthe farm (www.thefarm.org)
which is a community right here in the US that has
been around since the 70s and still is...they have
been experimenting with progressive forms of
communism quite sucessfully for years.
While I agree with what you are saying about how
following the law can be morally wrong, and how
breaking the law can be morally right, I have to
diasgree with your view of a "perfect world".
A perfect world would NOT be one where people can
just mindlessly follow laws. Noone should EVER
mindlessly follow law and just assume "its the
law, it must be right".
In a perfect world, the law woul dnever punish a
person for acting in a morally proper way. It
would also not allow a person acting in morally
improper ways from using it to harm those who
are acting properly.
However, that does not mean people would blindly
follow the law. I would prefer a world where
people think for themseleves and make their own
decisions. I want a world where noone EVER says
"I can't do that, ITS ILLEGAL" I want a world
where people say "I can't do that, its just wrong"
*Bzzt* you lose.
They have a headlock on anyone writting an encoder
in a country that is backwards enough to allow
Software patents. In countries that do not have
a patent system, or whose patent system is smart
enough to not allow software patents, then they
have nothing.
Server figures out the dependancies? HA!
In that case we should THANK MS for comming
up with this patent...its such a damned stupid
idea that people SHOULD be prevented from using
it.
Maybe next someone will patent sloppy code
indenting, oh...and memory leaks.
I would say someone should patent opening files
and writting to them without checking if the
write failed (::cough::quota::cough::) but pine
has been doing that for years.
(if you don't believe me, id be happy to show you
some nice runaways)
Then again, I supose memory leaks, and bad code
have plenty of prior art too.
Nope wrong...
Patents have to be applied for an awarded.
Copyright applies as soon as it is set in fixed
form.
So if you make something and do not patent it,
you do not get patent privilidges, but you do
stop someone else from later making it and getting
a patent. (in theory...)
Well....linux does use a database...
/etc is a table in the larger FS database
the filesystem can be thought of as a database
so...
It just happens to be a database that doesn't suck
at 3 am when the system went down and can't get
past single user mode - because um...one of the
um OTHER admins fucked something up (yea thats
the ticket)
-Steve
> For anyone here who's used it (admit it :), what
> that patent describes is Windows 98's "Critical
> Notification Update" utility, a program that
> checks the versions of your software, compares
> it against what's on Microsofts server, asks if
> you want to download it, and then if you say so,
> downloads and installs the appropriate updates.
Which is almost exactly what apt does.
apt gets th elatest package list, checks it
against whats on your system, and downloads all
the needed packes and installs them.
(well 1 of apts modes of operation does that, it
also allows you to install or upgrade individual
packages, if you want. It will download the
package you told it about and all its dependancies
)
> Here's where that analogy breaks down:
> There are sometimes valid reasons for abortions.
> There are never valid reasons for the
> exploitation of children. -
This is not where the analogy breaks down, it is
where you misunderstand it. I am not saying
anything about the validity of an abortion
or exploitation of children...
I am talking about the harassment of innocent
individuals, simply for their association with
the issue. A person who walks into a clinic that
performs abortions, for some other medical
procedure (contrary to what some may think,
most clicnics do not base their entire practice
on any 1 procedure) are harassed.
Even if you believe that abortion is NEVER
justified, this has nothing to do with it anyway.
I am talking about the harassment of innocent
people.
How would you react to find a group that had a
nude woman walk down the street...then took
the picture of every man who turned their head
twice to gawk at her, and pasted their pictures
up on a board with the title "Possible sex
Offenders"?
Whats worst...this banning of the porn itself
is silly. I can see banning the production of
child porn. Banning the mere free downloading
or posessuion of it, is ludicris. Banning
sex with children, or creation of "kiddie porn"
is an attempt to ban the exploitation of children.
Banning the simple (esp free) download or
possession does NOTHING to stop actual
explotation....it serves to PUNISH people for
their sexual orientation. It serves to drive them
further under ground. It serves only to take away
what may be their only outlet to releaiving their
sexual frustration.
Banning production is banning exploitation.
Banning mere posession or download is attacking
individuals, not for their actions, but for their
desires.
> are you trying to justify the downloading of
> naked kids? ARE YOU?!?
DOwnloading naked kids? hmmm can I download a
hamburger and french fries too? hmmm No Make that
some prime rib, and some good red wine....now
where exactly do I go to download this stuff
again?
> if you go around DL'ing illegal material that
> has a negative affect on our society.
hmmmm the transfer of bits from some other
computer to my hard drive can have a negative
effect on our society? Please explain. Also please
quantify the actual harm done per kilobyte.
> your whole view on the subject is narrow, and
> you seem to be too engrossed with yourself to
> have a truly valid argument.
A complete moron said something to me once, it was
the only thing he ever said that was correct...
"When you point your finger at someone, you point
3 back at yourself"
> (and yes, the internet IS public property)
Yes but....people are allowed to have private
conversations in public places. Personally, I
think laws saying people can't have sex, or
walk around without cloths are pretty draconian...
course...I only see 3 functions to clothing,
1) protection from the elements
2) pockets
3) naugahide (ever sat on it not wearing long
pants?)
Given those being the only 3 functions of
clothing that I recognize (special clothing
designed for extra suport aside), I don't see
any real problem with walking around naked (esp
on a hot day)
If you are offended by something, then its your
own fault for choosing to be offended. Can't
blame others for your choices.
> I'd be more willing to convict a guy of
> statetory rape if he did it to a pre-16 girl.
> Shouldn't that be what age of consent is about?
> First, what bennefits these teens, and second,
> what we as a society find accepable.
I have a problem with statutory rape. The thing
is, OK rape is bad. No IS no. But Statutory rape
says "Yes is no" if the other person is too young.
The real problem is simply this...it is not a
a charge brought by th esuposed victem, it is
brought by their parents. It is not a device for
protecting anyone, its a device for legitimising
parental dominion over the lives of their
offspring.
I tend to think that by the time a person is
physically capable of sexual activity, they
should be able to decide for themselves what
they wish to do. At that point the law needs to
leave it alone. If a person can't decide by then,
there is either something wrong with them, or
their parents didn't do a very good job of
teaching them.
> So we lock away people for something we don't
> have much knowledge about, or lock away someone
> who seriously needs mental help.
Its not too hard to understand...the public
doesn't get it, but the general public tends to
not get alot of things (esp when the media finds
it more profitable to use it as a scare tactic
to keep people afraid and watching the news)
I think its simply a fetish. Have you read the
Cryptonomicon portion where some guys were "van
eck phreaking"? there was a long letter about
fetishes where the writter said he was very
thankful that his was stockings and not little
children...afterall that type of sexual preference
is well laid into the brain by age 7.
These people are not "sick", they simply have a
sexual fetish that is not "socially acceptable".
There is no way to "cure" someone of this, any
more than you can "cure" someone of homosexuality.
Our society always seems to take the least healthy
and most problimatic aproach to social issues.
Make it illegal and hope it goes away. Shun them,
that will make them stop. Just drive everything
underground, make it a black market affair.
Why deal with a problem when you can just jail it
away and call all the people who have any interest
in it at all "sick"?
Just say no to .
-Steve
Noone? well hell I will openly defend it.
Is Child Porn a tough issue? Yea, it deals with
alot of issues. When is a person old enough to
consent to sex? When are they old enough to
consent to sexual photos?
When you turn 18 there is no fairy that flies by
and sprinkles dust on you and magically makes you
able to make decisions for yourself. Its NOT as
cut and dry an issue as legalists would have you
believe.
But anyway...drawings? Drawings! The very idea
that a person can set pencil to paper and somehow
comit a crime by merely moving its tip across
the page! The very idea of that offends me.
In fact...the very idea that someone could sit
alone in their room, involve no other people,
could possibly do anything, short of detonating
thermonuclear devices, and somehow break a law
is simply insane.
I supose it is things like that which have led to
the word SNAFU
-Steve
> It's been said many times by others: if you have :)
> done nothing wrong, you have nothing to be
> afraid of. Accountability is good, unless you're
> an anarchist
Well actually I am an anarchist and I am all for
acountability. However, I am certainly against
this type of tactics.
This reminds me of those right-to-lifers who
stand in front of Clinics that perform abortions
and take down the licence plate numbers of EVERY
person who enters the clinic....
then they take the licence plate numbers, find out
who ownes the vehicle and harass them...never
mind that they may have only gone to the clinic
for counseling, or some other procedure, they
get harassed just for parking in the parking lot
and entering. (by harassed I mean recieve packets
with pictures of stillborn babies that have been
mislabeled as fetuses for impact and called
"baby killers" etc)
As far as using this information...well its not
as hard as you might think. Require a valid
email adress to get a "password" or any number of
sinister methods. Call the ISP and demand the name
of the user who had that IP...claim that they were
distributing illegal copies of some IP you own,
need to know who to sue.
Never mind that ALL they did was download a file.
You have no idea whatsoever what their intentions
were. You have no idea what they thought the file
was.
> (yes, I am one of the head Freenet developers)
Then thank you for working on such an important
system. If I ever get enough time in my schedual
to give the code a good read over...I will
probably join development (actually...I am
thinking about implimenting a freenet server in
PERL - is there an updated version of the
protocol docs?)
> And, "guaranteed anonymity" is pushing it
> (there are no guarantees in life). See the FAQ.
Well not true...there is 1 garauntee...death.
(sorry to be so morbid...but its true)
-Steve
True....but how many cannabis smokers smoke even
1 joint per day, every day, for the majority of
their lives?
Ill tell you its very very few.
Sure, most go through their binges, but very few
smoke THAT much for THAT long.
Of course the first question my pediatrician asked
how much I smoked, I said maybe once a week or
less (it was true) and he said "Oh ok"...that
was the end of the subject, he never brought it
up again.
My next doctor got a bit of a chuckle when I told
him that I smoked a tiny bit of pot to help me
eat when I had the flu (I litterally went from
not being able to keep down water to eating
solid food in 4 puffs)
Well IANAL but...
:)
by obtaining it in this way, you have not actually
agreed to any licence. I don't think that "By
reading this" you can actually be held legally
responsible for anything...afterall...since its
part of the document, then there would be no way
to know the terms before you agree.
besides...you, the obtainer, have not broken any
law, except maybe copyright law....but...fair use
still applies (there was an mp3 article a while
back where both sides lawyers agreed that fair use
applies, regardless of whether the act of
obtaining the material is illegal)
As such...you could use it to add the info to the
kerberos spec
All in all it would just be best if someone
converted it to plain text and sent it to an
anonymous remailer - posted into usenet. (are
there still anonymous remailers that post to
usenet? sigh...I still lament the loss of
annon.penet.fi)
Yup...like the DARE program, started by none other
than Daryl "Recreational Cannabis users should be
shot" Gates. Its still around, even though it
has been shown that kids who graduate from it have
a HIGHER instance of teenage drug use than kids
who don't.
This is kind of a retraction....
I did a little more research on Dr Nahas.
While his work has been bunked by many of the
people in his feild as being woefully inadequet
for the conclusions he comes to, I can find no
reference to him actually denouncing his own work.
I DO remember that one of the medical researchers
who was comming out with "Marijuana is bad for
you" studies DID come out and denoucne his work.
However, it apears that it either was NOT
Dr Nahas, or it was, but it wasn't highly
publicised.
On the whole though, it is well known that you
can't get the legal permission needed to study
marijuana, unless your study is designed to
skew the results in the favor of saying bad
things about it...even real medical researchers
find it incredibly hard, if not impossible, to
get the permission needed.
> That depends what you consider success/failure.
Actually what you should ask is WHY are we
fighting a "War on Drugs"?
There is very little, if any, evidence that drug
prohibition does anything "good". Switzerland
recently held a study where some heroin addicts
were given the ability to buy heroin legally and
use it in "safe rooms".
What did they find?
They found that, while most continued using
heroin, they became productive members of society
able to hold down normal jobs and no longer needed
to rely on stealing and crime to pay for their
habbit. It was inflated prices of drugs on the
black market that was causing them to turn to
crime to feed their habbit, NOT the drug.
Everyone always points to "the children" and
"teen drug use". However, it is harder for kids
to get alcohol than cannabis, or heroin. Black
market dealers don't check IDs, only reputable
merchants who have licences to worry about.
Look at Dr Nahas (sp?) who was in charge of many
of the studies that "proved" marijuana was
harmful to people and "hurt productivity". He came
out years later and denounced his own work. He
admitted that all of his work was biased and he
did it for the money, the US gov was paying him
to come up with bogus study results. You will find
prohibitionists still cite his studies as proof
that "drugs are harmful"
I don't know about you, but fabricating lies,
refusing to listen to scientific data, sounds
alot like a religous war to me.
I will note a couple of last things on this topic
(which is fairly offtopic already but..is a pet
issue of mine):
1) The AMA was against cannabis being schedualed
2) I worked in a hospital as a tech, my mother
worked in a hospital for 25 years, she tried and
was unable to find a doctor who has a problem with
cannabis use.
3) my own doctor had no issues with the fact that
I smoked cannabis (my peiatrician that is) when
I switched from a pediatrician to a doctor who
focuses on Adult patience...my new doctor had no
problem with this fact either.
From the web page that you point to:
> Main Entry: religion
...
> 4 : a cause, principle, or system of beliefs
> held to with ardor and faith
Well...Mr. Stallmen stated his belief, which is
in line with what I would call the Atheist
Religion, which is a system of beliefs, held to
with ardor and faith, specifically centering on
the belief that there is no "God".
Sounds like a religon to me. In fact, I consider
myself to be a member of that religion.
> Furthermore, the attacks on the "War on Drugs"
> and conservative politicians in general were
> completely unnecessary in this forum.
I disagree.... slashdot is a discussion forum, not
a purely technical one (not even a mostly
technical one). Discussion of politics and social
issues are definitly relavent...especially in an
interview.
> The same drug policies have continued for eight
> years under Clinton's administration -- does
> that make them ok? The high rate of imprisonment
> in this country continues under a Democratic
> administration, yet the implication is that it's
> the fault of Republicans.
Which, in my mind, goes to show that there is very
little, if any, real difference between the
Republicans and the Democrats. Lately, I have been
refering to them, collecitvly, as the
"Republicrat Party", which is split into 2
factions, which hate eachother for no real reason.
As for the war on drugs, I have to agree with the
people who have said it is a "religous war". It is
the only context in which it makes sense. Any
practical view of it shows that it is an utter
failure. It has not reduced use, or supply in
any real way. In fact, current day drug
prohibition, is a failure in ALL of the same ways
as Alcohol prohibition of the 1920's.
In fact, in an interview, the head of the DEA
advocated bringing back alcohol prohibition, and
stated that he believed it could be done within
"the next 10 years".
However, I digress. yes, there are social problems
here in america. Our legislative problems just
amplify them. You can't legislate away a social
problem, yet time and again, our society tries
to do just that. (the war on drugs is just 1 set
of examples)
-Steve