Someone subscribes to the RIAA edition of the dictionary. Guess I should steal your car, since with enough lawyers you could prove I "stole" several cars from you already.
Watering down terms for criminal actions is such fun! Maybe we should try murder next?
Optional Garbage Collection, which is in the new standard, is a horrible idea. You cannot depend on it, as it is not guaranteed, and it will slow programs which do not need it, as well as potentially break low-level operations on memory. I have no idea what they were thinking when they allowed that in, but it is a very dangerous "feature."
Completely false. I have a rather new ATI card, and KDE (along with a number of other parts of the X-related system) have simply never come close to working right, effects or not. In fact, enabling the effects seems to mitigate some of the graphical corruption and nearly seizure-inducing playback errors in video. Killing that means I'll be unable to use the system at all. None of this on Windows, of course...
I think there is a point where FOSS developers pointing fingers and threatening is harmful. This is one of those points. Does ATI/AMD have crap drivers? Yes. Flash sucks, too. There is a point where developers need to man up and deal with that as the given. "You bought the wrong video card / computer" is not a professional answer from anyone, let alone people who expect their OS to be taken seriously by corporations and governments. I have advocated Linux for over a decade and it is to the point I can barely feel comfortable suggesting someone try it. The attitude "it isn't our problem" needs to change - as does the "it works for me" philosophy constantly flaunted as an excuse not to deal with real issues - or else Linux is not long for this world.
"Okay, so you base rights on faculties possessed by individuals"
I did? Please show me where I said anything about that, because I think it was pretty clear I would be talking about whole species. Notice "or at least the possibility of it." Nice strawman, though.
"for not the least of reasons that we don't really have a definition of what constitutes a language. If you mean any means of productive information communication, the most complex language abilities after human beings' are possessed by honeybees."
I say language because it is difficult to measure intelligence without it. If the thing cannot express itself in any way understandable to the outside world, there is essentially no method by which to determine what its feelings on the matter are.
"Lastly, if you think animals are accorded any legal rights, you are either not referring to American law (which is certainly possible), where animals are legally farm or lab equipment, or you vastly overrate the amount of protection those laws provide."
So because they can be used as lab animals - ie, to use in research to cure human diseases, animals have no rights? And because it is legal to farm them, they have no rights? This is right animal rights activists like you deserve zero respect. No animal on earth, by your standards, is "accorded any legal rights." Please, go back to bombing zoos or something. Intelligent adults are discussing real-world matters.
"And when stem cell steaks become the norm, we might be able to rid ourselves of the necessity of growing and killing animals for food. It is a worthy moral objective."
Of course, it will be followed by mass-extinction of domesticated animals. I don't care much about the concept of "animal rights" in general, but I think jumping to "worthy moral objective" is childish when that is in fact the real world fallout.
Intelligence, or at least the possibility of it, is probably a good start. Of course, that implies language. Some animals may fall under it, but those are already protected, for the most part.
While that might be true, and is indeed the only reason I have stuck around this long, speech ceases to have a purpose if the mods censor you for having the wrong opinion.
If there are that few comments, it means there are also few readers, which subsequently makes the likelihood of there being modders reading low. It gets even more suspicious when only one post gets modded up, which I have seen too many times to not know there is something shady going on.
Same with Bonch. Constantly modded up right after posting. Meanwhile, there is apparently a mod blacklist. Slashdot has serious problems which the editors need to deal with, or the last few intelligent posters will depart...
Arizona is the worst of the worst; that being, the worst of the US. They feel no need to respect human rights: they still use forced labor in dangerous conditions, have concentration-camp style prisons, and racially profile anyone who might be "illegal" (effectively giving police probable cause to stop and search anyone not white). The state needs sanctioned by the UN, right after being ejected from the union.
'It's nearly impossible to prove that something "does not exist" or "can never work"'
No, it is impossible. That is why those are the defaults until the positive has been proven. It doesn't exist until there is proof it exists; it doesn't work until there is proof it works.
"If you (a consenting adult) wants to eat toxic garbage I have no problem with this (provided your insurance covers the costs)"
Ding-ding-ding-ding... this, right here, is why we will never have socialized medicine in the US: because people like you see it as an excuse to start designating what is "right." It is exactly the reason there was such a fuss, and while largely unfounded, it obviously had some truth as long as this sort of nonsense gets spewed.
"Doesn't abolishing copyright and patents remove ownership of the copyrighted or patented material? Hence, since there is no ownership of the copyrighted/patented material, anybody can use it."
No. It simply stops acting as if information is a tangible, scare resource, which can be traded and sold finitely, by legal power.
Quoting your later post:
"Intellectual property exists in every modern nation in the world. How can you say that intellectual property never existed in the first place?"
I don't like to say this because it offends people (reasonably), but it really is the best counter to this line of thinking: by your argument, the abolition of slavery was also communism.
Not only that, but I seem to have been blacklisted as a mod; probably for telling Bonch off or maybe foe'ing one of the editors. Excellent karma solid for several years, many up-modded posts, few down, yet no mod points in over 6 months. So much for moderation being what sets slashdot apart. It seems mods are getting solidly stupider, constantly modding up trolls for agreeing with them politically, and I don't doubt that more people have been blacklisted than me for saying the wrong thing. Just look at all the up-mods to idiots in this story... slashdot has really fallen.
Sorry, no. You have to actually remove someone's property - take, not deprive of possible gain, not even profit, but remove and gain the same amount - to classify it as "theft." Otherwise, we have a term for that: piracy. Please stop butchering the English Language to suit your political ends. Just because you might apply it more narrowly than the **IA doesn't make you any less despicable for attempting.
Slashdot Mirror
"Deleted stuff is never erased, just marked as "free space" by the OS."
On some filesystems, that is enough to make the data unrecoverable. Just not the more common ones like NTFS and EXTn.
And we finally figured out why they keep crashing.
Someone subscribes to the RIAA edition of the dictionary. Guess I should steal your car, since with enough lawyers you could prove I "stole" several cars from you already.
Watering down terms for criminal actions is such fun! Maybe we should try murder next?
Ideas are completely and utterly useless. Truly creative people learn to actually turn an idea into reality. Idiots pay someone else to.
Sadly, the fact is, the other party did start it. That Obama didn't fix it doesn't make them a damn bit better.
Optional Garbage Collection, which is in the new standard, is a horrible idea. You cannot depend on it, as it is not guaranteed, and it will slow programs which do not need it, as well as potentially break low-level operations on memory. I have no idea what they were thinking when they allowed that in, but it is a very dangerous "feature."
Completely false. I have a rather new ATI card, and KDE (along with a number of other parts of the X-related system) have simply never come close to working right, effects or not. In fact, enabling the effects seems to mitigate some of the graphical corruption and nearly seizure-inducing playback errors in video. Killing that means I'll be unable to use the system at all. None of this on Windows, of course...
I think there is a point where FOSS developers pointing fingers and threatening is harmful. This is one of those points. Does ATI/AMD have crap drivers? Yes. Flash sucks, too. There is a point where developers need to man up and deal with that as the given. "You bought the wrong video card / computer" is not a professional answer from anyone, let alone people who expect their OS to be taken seriously by corporations and governments. I have advocated Linux for over a decade and it is to the point I can barely feel comfortable suggesting someone try it. The attitude "it isn't our problem" needs to change - as does the "it works for me" philosophy constantly flaunted as an excuse not to deal with real issues - or else Linux is not long for this world.
What a shocker. Google must be doing something right to have those enemies.
"Okay, so you base rights on faculties possessed by individuals"
I did? Please show me where I said anything about that, because I think it was pretty clear I would be talking about whole species. Notice "or at least the possibility of it." Nice strawman, though.
"for not the least of reasons that we don't really have a definition of what constitutes a language. If you mean any means of productive information communication, the most complex language abilities after human beings' are possessed by honeybees."
I say language because it is difficult to measure intelligence without it. If the thing cannot express itself in any way understandable to the outside world, there is essentially no method by which to determine what its feelings on the matter are.
"Lastly, if you think animals are accorded any legal rights, you are either not referring to American law (which is certainly possible), where animals are legally farm or lab equipment, or you vastly overrate the amount of protection those laws provide."
So because they can be used as lab animals - ie, to use in research to cure human diseases, animals have no rights? And because it is legal to farm them, they have no rights? This is right animal rights activists like you deserve zero respect. No animal on earth, by your standards, is "accorded any legal rights." Please, go back to bombing zoos or something. Intelligent adults are discussing real-world matters.
"And when stem cell steaks become the norm, we might be able to rid ourselves of the necessity of growing and killing animals for food. It is a worthy moral objective."
Of course, it will be followed by mass-extinction of domesticated animals. I don't care much about the concept of "animal rights" in general, but I think jumping to "worthy moral objective" is childish when that is in fact the real world fallout.
Intelligence, or at least the possibility of it, is probably a good start. Of course, that implies language. Some animals may fall under it, but those are already protected, for the most part.
If you fly your aircraft low enough to be in shotgun range, I'd say they would be acting in self-defense shooting your stupid ass down.
While that might be true, and is indeed the only reason I have stuck around this long, speech ceases to have a purpose if the mods censor you for having the wrong opinion.
If there are that few comments, it means there are also few readers, which subsequently makes the likelihood of there being modders reading low. It gets even more suspicious when only one post gets modded up, which I have seen too many times to not know there is something shady going on.
Same with Bonch. Constantly modded up right after posting. Meanwhile, there is apparently a mod blacklist. Slashdot has serious problems which the editors need to deal with, or the last few intelligent posters will depart...
...that no one intelligent will ever apply to again. Good job; now watch your rankings fall like the stones in your university administrators' heads.
Arizona is the worst of the worst; that being, the worst of the US. They feel no need to respect human rights: they still use forced labor in dangerous conditions, have concentration-camp style prisons, and racially profile anyone who might be "illegal" (effectively giving police probable cause to stop and search anyone not white). The state needs sanctioned by the UN, right after being ejected from the union.
'It's nearly impossible to prove that something "does not exist" or "can never work"'
No, it is impossible. That is why those are the defaults until the positive has been proven. It doesn't exist until there is proof it exists; it doesn't work until there is proof it works.
"If you (a consenting adult) wants to eat toxic garbage I have no problem with this (provided your insurance covers the costs)"
Ding-ding-ding-ding... this, right here, is why we will never have socialized medicine in the US: because people like you see it as an excuse to start designating what is "right." It is exactly the reason there was such a fuss, and while largely unfounded, it obviously had some truth as long as this sort of nonsense gets spewed.
Why do you think it's your business, again?
It is both scary and disheartening when the libertarians are right.
"Doesn't abolishing copyright and patents remove ownership of the copyrighted or patented material? Hence, since there is no ownership of the copyrighted/patented material, anybody can use it."
No. It simply stops acting as if information is a tangible, scare resource, which can be traded and sold finitely, by legal power.
Quoting your later post:
"Intellectual property exists in every modern nation in the world. How can you say that intellectual property never existed in the first place?"
I don't like to say this because it offends people (reasonably), but it really is the best counter to this line of thinking: by your argument, the abolition of slavery was also communism.
Not only that, but I seem to have been blacklisted as a mod; probably for telling Bonch off or maybe foe'ing one of the editors. Excellent karma solid for several years, many up-modded posts, few down, yet no mod points in over 6 months. So much for moderation being what sets slashdot apart. It seems mods are getting solidly stupider, constantly modding up trolls for agreeing with them politically, and I don't doubt that more people have been blacklisted than me for saying the wrong thing. Just look at all the up-mods to idiots in this story... slashdot has really fallen.
Sorry, no. You have to actually remove someone's property - take, not deprive of possible gain, not even profit, but remove and gain the same amount - to classify it as "theft." Otherwise, we have a term for that: piracy. Please stop butchering the English Language to suit your political ends. Just because you might apply it more narrowly than the **IA doesn't make you any less despicable for attempting.
Agent Smith needs to get cracking on the 256 bit upgrade. I know, I know, it will break the pod drivers, but I hear those are going to be ported soon.
I'd pay big bucks to see Maggie Smith battling aliens with an assault rifle.