You know, the OS from the people who created Unix.
The Fourth International Workshop on Plan 9 is scheduled for October of this year, so I don't thinks quite dead yet. The "Plan 9 from User Space" project ports many Plan 9 user tools to Linux and other Unix-like environments, and there is also a project (Glendix) to create an OS distro using the Plan 9 userland with the Linux kernel.
They also had an associated embedded OS called Inferno.
It was the GUI that came with my Amstrad 6400 back in '87. A 16-color GUI running on an 8086 w/ 640k ram and a 20 meg hard drive.
IIRC, the GEM Desktop wasn't an OS, it was a GUI engine that ran on top of DOS (somewhat like pre-Win95 Windows), and (like pre-3.0 Windows) in addition to GEM applications running within the GEM environment, you could get some of them with a runtime that would run under DOS.
'The GNU Hurd is under active development. Because of that, there is no stable version'
Note, here, that the premise does not follow from the conclusion. There are stable versions of many software packages which are also under active development. Active development itself does not imply the absence of a stable version; a well-run process of active development will periodically produce stable versions suitable for regular use, while the unstable, bleeding-edge version marches on ahead.
I fired up an old Win95 box a few months ago, and was startled by how much more responsive it was compared to the modern WinXP system I use at work.
Eh, most WinXP boxes I've used have been more responses than any Win95 box I've used, even where I've deliberately installed a lot of extra unnecessary background apps on the WinXP (OTOH, the few Vista systems I've used have been sluggish compared to WinXP systems with far less impressive hardware specs; can't commenton Win7, haven't used it.) I'm not questioning your experience here, but I am skeptical about its generality.
OTOH, Windows in any form seems to be sluggish, especially with the shovelware (much of it always on in the background by default) that modern big-name manufactures load onto systems, but even with that stripped out. Whenever I've used Linux (usually whatever the current Ubuntu/Kubuntu version is, though at times I've used Fedora and a few others), on the exact same hardware as any version of Windows, the Linux install has been more responsive than Windows.
In a modern PC, we're taught to optimize for development speed. Make it run, make it right, and then make it fast. Which means programs get bloated, and nobody cares because computers can keep up. Note how the choice of OS does not affect this process.
Certainly OS matters at least in terms of what is supported at a system level to streamline development. If rapid, correct development is aided by particular well designed APIs that are implemented in some OS's and not others, than those in which they are implemented are at an advantage for the process you describe.
What do you call the inclusion of the NEC into basically every codified ordinance in the country? It's a Copyrighted work that is included by reference into laws nationwide.
That's a slightly different issue from; I certainly think the inclusion-by-reference of not-available-gratis standards in law and regulation (which is rampant; the example I would usually point to in complaining about this is the ASC X12N Implementation Guides mandated under the HIPAA Transactions and Code Sets regulations, which used to be copyrighted-but-available-gratis due to a subsidy from the government to the publisher, but which haven't been for some time, with new versions which were never gratis are mandated for use from 2012; the complete mandated set of specifications costs something like $2,000, and itself references numerous external code sets which are required to build a correct implementation, and which themselves are in some cases not available gratis) is a real problem, and quite often the fact that the specifications are not available gratis runs counter to the notional purpose of the law or regulation.
Personally, I'd like to see Redhat, Debian or Ubuntu take KDE as the default.
There'd be no point in Ubuntu taking KDE as the default, except creating confusion as Ubuntu with KDE as default changed names from "Kubuntu" to "Ubuntu" and Ubuntu with GNOME as default changed names from "Ubuntu" to, presumably, something like "Gubuntu".
Does it say that God created the earth 5000 years ago and created us? Does it show that there is no such thing as evolution? No? Then it isn't creationist.
Very few creationists claim that God created the Earth 5000 years ago (Young Earth Creationists favor a date just over 6,000 years ago, and plenty of creationists don't specifically espouse a young-earth view. Creationists also generally don't show, or even pretend to show, that there is no such thing as evolution, they just accept it on faith, though some attempt to masquerade as scientists and purport to show that there is no such thing as evolution.
So, given the standards you suggest for Spore, most Creationists would not be "creationist", either.
Creationism doesn't compare to evolution in the analogy your making. Evolution is a process that is proven to happen in many different situations, and Spore reveals many of the basic parts of it.
Yes, generalized Darwinian evolution is a process that, in addition to its source in biology, has been shown to have some utility in explaining other processes, and which occurs pretty much by definition where certain sets of features are present (a source of random variations which affect fitness, a system which largely but not entirely preserves traits, etc.)
OTOH, the basic required features are completely absent from Spore. As I understand, prerelease versions of the game had at least a kind of trait preservation (lacking the essentially unrestricted changes of the released version of the game), though they still lacked random variation.
If turning waste plastic into fuel was cost effective, they'd be doing it already.
Yes, nothing new can ever be (or have the potential for becoming) cost effective, because if it was, it would already be done by everyone, everywhere, already. Everything that can be done, is already being done. Semptember 16, 2009, is the official end date of human progress.
The Supreme Court ruled that poll taxes were illegal because it disenfranchised the poor, I see applying Copyright to laws or legal publications of the state to be the exact same thing.
Laws are already not subject to copyright. I don't think you can make a good argument that doing any of the things that are restricted by copyright with regard to other state works is a "fundamental right" the way voting is.
Government documents (from any government) may be copyrighted, but they must come with a standard license allowing it's citizens to use the documents however they want.
"must"? Based on...what, exactly? Or when you say "they must", do you just mean "I would prefer that they"?
Even if I bought your explanation, the book was produced by Oregon taxpayers so it the copyright holder is *them* not the AG who is just an employee of the taxpayer. QED the book should be freely-copyable by the people who paid the bill (Oregonians).
That makes about as much sense as saying that if you own a share of Microsoft stock, Microsoft can't enforce its copyrights against you, since the employee (even if an executive) attempting to do so on behalf of the corporation is really just your employee.
There is nothing saying that the people of the State of Oregon, through the mechanism they have elected for self-government, couldn't adopt a policy that directs that all state citizens are automatically granted royalty-free licenses to all state-owned copyrights for all purposes so long as they remain citizens of the State. But, as far as I can tell, they have not chosen to do so.
It's the law for federal documents. None of them are copyrightable.
But not because the logic you posited in GGP regarding "implied use" is incorporated law, but because federal government works themselves are expressly and specifically excluded from copyright.
Thanks for that clarification however I'd still argue that works of the state belong to the people and aren't subject to copyright restrictions.
Works of a state government belong to the people of the state collectively. The people of the state are represented by the state government, who is the legal owner of the copyright.
If they weren't subject to copyright, works of the state government would be owned by the world at large, not the people of the state.
(That being said, it is less often the case that there is a a state is acting in its constituents real interests by exercising copyrights in a particularly restrictive way than would be the case for a private business entity doing the same thing.)
So why don't the chiropractic dudes have to prove the claim that their chiropraticic stuff works?
Because their statement isn't the subject of a libel charge. (If it were, it would be presumed to be false in trying that charge, but since it almost certainly doesn't meet the other requirements to be libel, it wouldn't matter.)
Isn't Britain otherwise pretty anal about the presumption of innocence, to the point that accusations sometimes can't be even talked about in the press? Why the huge difference for libel?
AFAIK, no. Presumption of innocence applies to criminal matters, which libel is generally not, but the reasons why the press may sometimes be reluctant to run stories about accused criminals that might remotely suggest their guilt before they are convicted is that Britain has the kind of libel laws being discussed in the case, not because of the legal presumption of innocence. Its not a "difference for libel", as the libel laws are the thing underlying the behavior.
Well, since I'm not living in a country where kooks and liars are given the benefit of the doubt,
Not possible if you have libel laws at all. With such laws, either: 1) People characterized as kooks and liars accurately are given the benefit of the doubt when they sue for libel (British system), or 2) Kooks and liars whose lying consists of defamatory lying about others are given the benefit of the doubt when they are sued for libel (American system).
The burden of proof has to be somewhere, and whichever side you put it on, with regard to libel, is going to give "kooks and liars" the benefit of the doubt.
I thought the Supreme Court had ruled that laws could not be copyrighted?
Maybe, but this isn't about a law being copyrighted, its about a book about the law (not the law itself) produced by an executive branch agency of a State being copyrighted.
Instead of paying $25, which helps to recoup the costs of making a book that's almost exclusively used by law firms, or possibly directly challenging the validity of the copyright in court, he takes the passive-aggressive route and posts copyrighted material on the internet for free.
Usually, you don't have standing to challenge a claim of copyright in court unless (these are illustrative rather than exhaustive): (1) You are the actual creator of the work, and the claim of copyright is itself therefore an actionable violation of your rights, or (2) The purported copyright holder is suing you for violating the copyright, and you are interposing the invalidity of the copyright as a reason you shouldn't be held liable.
"Someone else made a bogus claim of a legal right" is not, generally, itself a cause of action on which you can prevail in court. If it were, the courts would be even more clogged than they are now.
What you call the "passive-aggressive" route -- violating a right that someone claims they have and challenging them to enforce it -- is a common way of challenging a legal claim, since it puts the person making the claim in the position of publicly backing down or filing a suit in which you can challenge the validity of the claim.
U.S. government works are automatically public domain. Shouldn't state government materials be the same way?
Maybe they should be. You are free to lobby your state government to create a law dedicating every state-created work which would be subject to copyright to the public domain.
Personally, I think copyright protection can often be useful to states, though I'd like to see states recognize that, given the fact they aren't private entities competing for profit that benefit by imposing costs on other entities that are similarly situated, they would be well advised to generally adopt liberal licensing schemes for most works.
Nope, not buying it. Especially if it pertains to public policy. Any legal description, guide, index, or other derivative document of law should, by its implied use, be public domain.
You are welcome to lobby Congress to incorporate that radical provision into copyright law, but I don't think its going to fly. If you restrict it to those when "created by a public entity", you might have a tiny bit better luck, as without that your proposal would deny copyright to privately written legal texts, etc. (Anyhow, rather than exceptions to copyright to the work based on its "implied use", why wouldn't you just create an exception to the exclusive rights of copyright based on the actual use as, essentially, an extension to the existing Fair Use rule? That seems to me to be more sensible.)
But, at any rate, that's not the law as it stands, so even granting (for the sake of argument only) that your proposal ought to be the law, it isn't the law, and so isn't a convincing argument for why this work would be outside the scope of copyright under the law today.
Morals and ethics are not relative. There is a difference between the specific and the general. The general: it is immoral to coerce someone to have sex with you. The specific: a fourteen year old is unable to make an uncoerced decision to have sex with a 40 year old. Hundreds of years ago society did not agree with the specific rule, but it did agree with the general rule.
That's not really all that true. Historically, the issue wasn't as much coercion as of violation of property rights of a third party to the act (either the father or husband of the woman), which is why it wasn't until the 21st century that more than a very small minority of the world's countries prohibited marital rape (either specifically or by not excluding it from the general prohibition on rape), why many places in the world still don't prohibit it, and why in some cultures (even in places where law has formally moved past this point) there is still little difference in the treatment of the identified perpetrator and victim in a (non-marital) rape and the willing participants in pre- or extra-marital sex.
The idea that real and competent consent is the key issue in sexual morality/ethics is not something that is a matter of universal understanding across time and space where only the details of who is competent to consent have changed over time. (Though, OTOH, after the idea that consent was a key basis of morality -- after, IOW, the Enlightenment -- the tolerance of marital rape was justified for quite some time, e.g., in England and later in the U.S., among other places, by the concept of marriage as unconditional and irrevocable consent.)
Slashdot Mirror
The Fourth International Workshop on Plan 9 is scheduled for October of this year, so I don't thinks quite dead yet. The "Plan 9 from User Space" project ports many Plan 9 user tools to Linux and other Unix-like environments, and there is also a project (Glendix) to create an OS distro using the Plan 9 userland with the Linux kernel.
Inferno is still around.
Its been open soruce for the last five years, though two or three major versions newer than whatever you used ten years ago.
IIRC, the GEM Desktop wasn't an OS, it was a GUI engine that ran on top of DOS (somewhat like pre-Win95 Windows), and (like pre-3.0 Windows) in addition to GEM applications running within the GEM environment, you could get some of them with a runtime that would run under DOS.
Note, here, that the premise does not follow from the conclusion. There are stable versions of many software packages which are also under active development. Active development itself does not imply the absence of a stable version; a well-run process of active development will periodically produce stable versions suitable for regular use, while the unstable, bleeding-edge version marches on ahead.
Eh, most WinXP boxes I've used have been more responses than any Win95 box I've used, even where I've deliberately installed a lot of extra unnecessary background apps on the WinXP (OTOH, the few Vista systems I've used have been sluggish compared to WinXP systems with far less impressive hardware specs; can't commenton Win7, haven't used it.) I'm not questioning your experience here, but I am skeptical about its generality.
OTOH, Windows in any form seems to be sluggish, especially with the shovelware (much of it always on in the background by default) that modern big-name manufactures load onto systems, but even with that stripped out. Whenever I've used Linux (usually whatever the current Ubuntu/Kubuntu version is, though at times I've used Fedora and a few others), on the exact same hardware as any version of Windows, the Linux install has been more responsive than Windows.
Certainly OS matters at least in terms of what is supported at a system level to streamline development. If rapid, correct development is aided by particular well designed APIs that are implemented in some OS's and not others, than those in which they are implemented are at an advantage for the process you describe.
That's a slightly different issue from; I certainly think the inclusion-by-reference of not-available-gratis standards in law and regulation (which is rampant; the example I would usually point to in complaining about this is the ASC X12N Implementation Guides mandated under the HIPAA Transactions and Code Sets regulations, which used to be copyrighted-but-available-gratis due to a subsidy from the government to the publisher, but which haven't been for some time, with new versions which were never gratis are mandated for use from 2012; the complete mandated set of specifications costs something like $2,000, and itself references numerous external code sets which are required to build a correct implementation, and which themselves are in some cases not available gratis) is a real problem, and quite often the fact that the specifications are not available gratis runs counter to the notional purpose of the law or regulation.
There'd be no point in Ubuntu taking KDE as the default, except creating confusion as Ubuntu with KDE as default changed names from "Kubuntu" to "Ubuntu" and Ubuntu with GNOME as default changed names from "Ubuntu" to, presumably, something like "Gubuntu".
Very few creationists claim that God created the Earth 5000 years ago (Young Earth Creationists favor a date just over 6,000 years ago, and plenty of creationists don't specifically espouse a young-earth view. Creationists also generally don't show, or even pretend to show, that there is no such thing as evolution, they just accept it on faith, though some attempt to masquerade as scientists and purport to show that there is no such thing as evolution.
So, given the standards you suggest for Spore, most Creationists would not be "creationist", either.
Why? Though it takes work, learning certainly can be fun.
Yes, generalized Darwinian evolution is a process that, in addition to its source in biology, has been shown to have some utility in explaining other processes, and which occurs pretty much by definition where certain sets of features are present (a source of random variations which affect fitness, a system which largely but not entirely preserves traits, etc.)
OTOH, the basic required features are completely absent from Spore. As I understand, prerelease versions of the game had at least a kind of trait preservation (lacking the essentially unrestricted changes of the released version of the game), though they still lacked random variation.
Yes, nothing new can ever be (or have the potential for becoming) cost effective, because if it was, it would already be done by everyone, everywhere, already. Everything that can be done, is already being done. Semptember 16, 2009, is the official end date of human progress.
Laws are already not subject to copyright. I don't think you can make a good argument that doing any of the things that are restricted by copyright with regard to other state works is a "fundamental right" the way voting is.
"must"? Based on...what, exactly? Or when you say "they must", do you just mean "I would prefer that they"?
That makes about as much sense as saying that if you own a share of Microsoft stock, Microsoft can't enforce its copyrights against you, since the employee (even if an executive) attempting to do so on behalf of the corporation is really just your employee.
There is nothing saying that the people of the State of Oregon, through the mechanism they have elected for self-government, couldn't adopt a policy that directs that all state citizens are automatically granted royalty-free licenses to all state-owned copyrights for all purposes so long as they remain citizens of the State. But, as far as I can tell, they have not chosen to do so.
But not because the logic you posited in GGP regarding "implied use" is incorporated law, but because federal government works themselves are expressly and specifically excluded from copyright.
Works of a state government belong to the people of the state collectively. The people of the state are represented by the state government, who is the legal owner of the copyright.
If they weren't subject to copyright, works of the state government would be owned by the world at large, not the people of the state.
(That being said, it is less often the case that there is a a state is acting in its constituents real interests by exercising copyrights in a particularly restrictive way than would be the case for a private business entity doing the same thing.)
Because their statement isn't the subject of a libel charge. (If it were, it would be presumed to be false in trying that charge, but since it almost certainly doesn't meet the other requirements to be libel, it wouldn't matter.)
AFAIK, no. Presumption of innocence applies to criminal matters, which libel is generally not, but the reasons why the press may sometimes be reluctant to run stories about accused criminals that might remotely suggest their guilt before they are convicted is that Britain has the kind of libel laws being discussed in the case, not because of the legal presumption of innocence. Its not a "difference for libel", as the libel laws are the thing underlying the behavior.
Not possible if you have libel laws at all. With such laws, either:
1) People characterized as kooks and liars accurately are given the benefit of the doubt when they sue for libel (British system), or
2) Kooks and liars whose lying consists of defamatory lying about others are given the benefit of the doubt when they are sued for libel (American system).
The burden of proof has to be somewhere, and whichever side you put it on, with regard to libel, is going to give "kooks and liars" the benefit of the doubt.
Maybe, but this isn't about a law being copyrighted, its about a book about the law (not the law itself) produced by an executive branch agency of a State being copyrighted.
Usually, you don't have standing to challenge a claim of copyright in court unless (these are illustrative rather than exhaustive):
(1) You are the actual creator of the work, and the claim of copyright is itself therefore an actionable violation of your rights, or
(2) The purported copyright holder is suing you for violating the copyright, and you are interposing the invalidity of the copyright as a reason you shouldn't be held liable.
"Someone else made a bogus claim of a legal right" is not, generally, itself a cause of action on which you can prevail in court. If it were, the courts would be even more clogged than they are now.
What you call the "passive-aggressive" route -- violating a right that someone claims they have and challenging them to enforce it -- is a common way of challenging a legal claim, since it puts the person making the claim in the position of publicly backing down or filing a suit in which you can challenge the validity of the claim.
I hate to interrupt your rant, but the issue here is not someone claiming copyright on the laws.
Maybe they should be. You are free to lobby your state government to create a law dedicating every state-created work which would be subject to copyright to the public domain.
Personally, I think copyright protection can often be useful to states, though I'd like to see states recognize that, given the fact they aren't private entities competing for profit that benefit by imposing costs on other entities that are similarly situated, they would be well advised to generally adopt liberal licensing schemes for most works.
You are welcome to lobby Congress to incorporate that radical provision into copyright law, but I don't think its going to fly. If you restrict it to those when "created by a public entity", you might have a tiny bit better luck, as without that your proposal would deny copyright to privately written legal texts, etc. (Anyhow, rather than exceptions to copyright to the work based on its "implied use", why wouldn't you just create an exception to the exclusive rights of copyright based on the actual use as, essentially, an extension to the existing Fair Use rule? That seems to me to be more sensible.)
But, at any rate, that's not the law as it stands, so even granting (for the sake of argument only) that your proposal ought to be the law, it isn't the law, and so isn't a convincing argument for why this work would be outside the scope of copyright under the law today.
That's not really all that true. Historically, the issue wasn't as much coercion as of violation of property rights of a third party to the act (either the father or husband of the woman), which is why it wasn't until the 21st century that more than a very small minority of the world's countries prohibited marital rape (either specifically or by not excluding it from the general prohibition on rape), why many places in the world still don't prohibit it, and why in some cultures (even in places where law has formally moved past this point) there is still little difference in the treatment of the identified perpetrator and victim in a (non-marital) rape and the willing participants in pre- or extra-marital sex.
The idea that real and competent consent is the key issue in sexual morality/ethics is not something that is a matter of universal understanding across time and space where only the details of who is competent to consent have changed over time. (Though, OTOH, after the idea that consent was a key basis of morality -- after, IOW, the Enlightenment -- the tolerance of marital rape was justified for quite some time, e.g., in England and later in the U.S., among other places, by the concept of marriage as unconditional and irrevocable consent.)