Who cares? This is just superficial appearrance -- a template. The content of the sites is vastly different...
The point is that over 90% of the content (i.e. the actual characters stored in the file) are an exact duplicate (copy) of the original. That does not qualify as "vastly different" in my book.
For a parallel example, try taking a Windows XP iso, using a hexeditor to replace instances of "indows" with "indow$", and posting the result on a public website, claiming "fair use" because "it's a parody of the original work." I doubt you'd survive the resultant lawsuit.
What this guy did isn't parody; it's plagiarism. Now if he had created a brand-new site FROM SCRATCH, making it look like the original WITHOUT ACTUALLY COPYING IT, then there'd be no grounds for complaint.
They haven't licensed their web-site code
Neither have they announced that it's okay to copy, with or without modifications for the sake of parody. In the absense of such declarations, copyright law clearly states that you DON'T have permission to copy somebody else's work.
Lifting web-site code is common on the web.
Shoplifting is common in my neighborhood, too, but that doesn't make it legal.
none of the actual content is the same, something you seem to be overlooking. Try looking deeper than just the visual appearance of the site: the conent is all different.
Sorry to have to spell it out for you, but here goes. Original site:
I'd say that you're a PRIME candidate for a lawsuit. Not only are you obviously COPYING instead of RE-CREATING the content, but you're linking to porn. People are highly sensitive to that sort of thing, especially where schoolchildren are concerned.
If you plagiarized one of MY websites that way, I'd sue you, too.
Why the heck would anyone willingly subject him/herself to Windows 9x?
Church office: old Pentium 200's and the like with 32 or 64meg RAM. No discernable IT budget. Even if I WERE willing to pirate the software, Win2k/XP won't run at acceptable speed on older hardware; Win9x will.
And that's where we disagree. You call Titan AE science fiction; I call it fantasy. I agree that it makes very bad science fiction, but as fantasy goes, it's at least as good as the vastly more popular "Dragonball Z".
Of course, I wouldn't pay money to see either one of them...
Dyson Spheres and Ringworlds would be a far more efficient use of your building material.
Umm, we're talking FANTASY here. Get a sense of perspective, fer crying out loud!
If you want reality, calculate the tensile stress on the Ringworld structure and explain to me how something composed of ordinary matter could survive it.
Does anybody know a Win95/98/ME screensaver that locks on the NT Domain password? Yes, I've done google-searches; even wrote one for Win311 once but it broke in 95/98. I'm no Win32 guru; I write Unix stuff.
No, for flame wars Usenet is a far better medium. (grin!) In all fairness, my gripes are mostly directed at Java in the user interface rather than Java on the server; your claims to its effectiveness are probably very well founded, as far as they go.
I appreciate your rant as a Windows/Linux user... doesn't sound like you have done much programming w/JAVA... will have problems w/cross platform if you don't think cross platform.
All of which is right on-track. No, I don't program in Java, though I'm forced to use it occasionally. From a programmer's perspective, Java may well be the cat's pajamas, but from a user's perspective (mine), Java sucks.
Nice karma whoring tho mate.
Harrumph! Posted too late in the discussion to win any mod points; if I were karma whoring I would have at least included some links. Moderators always like to see some links, even if they don't bother to follow them.
Well, if you want the absolute-latest version of Windows, it's still worth burning to a CD, because updates (service-packs) are a few months apart. But if you want the absolute-latest version of Linux, then go ahead and download it, because anything on CD is bound to be obsolete already.
Which, ironically, can be seen as an argument FOR Windows, in the business world.
With MOST of the JAVA Based projects I have worked on, it is almost ambiguous which platform you work on as long as you follow good standards and don't step too deeply into proprietary land.
<RANT>
Please excuse the off-topicness, but you've just voiced my biggest gripe against the whole Java fad. I was there when Sun touted Java as the answer to computing's Holy Grail: Write-Once, Run-Everywhere. Except that it ain't necessarily so. Nearly every day, I encounter another Java app that runs in any OS you care to use, as long as it's Windows. GRRR!!!! Whenever I hear a new Java convert espousing its merits, the hypocrisy of the whole thing just about kills me. Every point where Java is supposed to shine is directly contradicted by my personal experience. It's not just a few exceptions that spoil the image. MOST of the JAVA apps I've been forced to deal with are slow, bloated, buggy, and worst of all, NON-PORTABLE!
Cut-and-paste doesn't work consistently between Opera and other X-apps.
But the main reason that Opera doesn't get as much press is because, heck, they're making money. If the Mozilla programmers build a better browser, kudos from the open-source press are likely the only payment they'll see for their efforts. But if Opera builds a better browser (and in a lot of ways, they have -- witness their domination of the embedded market) they'll get paid in cash.
Admittedly, most of them were when somebody forwarded a bit of advertising, thinking I'd be interested, but occasionally somebody is so clueless that they trigger spamassassin's rules by all-caps plus improper addressing and so forth. WebTV users are especially prone to that sort of thing.
All of which wouldn't be a problem, except that I'm trying to be a good sysadmin and implement the spam-filter globally across the network.
Well, I was joking, but if you really want to know, read The Cathedral and the Bazaar. The only currency in the Open Source market is recognition and peer review. They provide the only pressure (but it is often sufficient) for people to produce secure, bug-free, usable software.
Slashdot Mirror
A person is smart; people are dumb, stupid, panicky creatures and you know it!
Kay, from Men in Black
Whoah!
When's the last time you were able to do THAT?
The point is that over 90% of the content (i.e. the actual characters stored in the file) are an exact duplicate (copy) of the original. That does not qualify as "vastly different" in my book.
For a parallel example, try taking a Windows XP iso, using a hexeditor to replace instances of "indows" with "indow$", and posting the result on a public website, claiming "fair use" because "it's a parody of the original work." I doubt you'd survive the resultant lawsuit.
What this guy did isn't parody; it's plagiarism. Now if he had created a brand-new site FROM SCRATCH, making it look like the original WITHOUT ACTUALLY COPYING IT, then there'd be no grounds for complaint.
Neither have they announced that it's okay to copy, with or without modifications for the sake of parody. In the absense of such declarations, copyright law clearly states that you DON'T have permission to copy somebody else's work.
Shoplifting is common in my neighborhood, too, but that doesn't make it legal.
Sorry to have to spell it out for you, but here goes. Original site:
Parody site:
You figure it out. As you say, I'm just an idiot who can't distinguish appearance from "conent" (sic).
I'd say that you're a PRIME candidate for a lawsuit. Not only are you obviously COPYING instead of RE-CREATING the content, but you're linking to porn. People are highly sensitive to that sort of thing, especially where schoolchildren are concerned.
If you plagiarized one of MY websites that way, I'd sue you, too.
Church office: old Pentium 200's and the like with 32 or 64meg RAM. No discernable IT budget. Even if I WERE willing to pirate the software, Win2k/XP won't run at acceptable speed on older hardware; Win9x will.
And that's where we disagree. You call Titan AE science fiction; I call it fantasy. I agree that it makes very bad science fiction, but as fantasy goes, it's at least as good as the vastly more popular "Dragonball Z".
Of course, I wouldn't pay money to see either one of them...
Umm, we're talking FANTASY here. Get a sense of perspective, fer crying out loud!
If you want reality, calculate the tensile stress on the Ringworld structure and explain to me how something composed of ordinary matter could survive it.
Shades of Fahrenheit 451 (shudder!)
Does anybody know a Win95/98/ME screensaver that locks on the NT Domain password? Yes, I've done google-searches; even wrote one for Win311 once but it broke in 95/98. I'm no Win32 guru; I write Unix stuff.
So you already sent your $100 donation to the Mozilla project, then?
No, for flame wars Usenet is a far better medium. (grin!) In all fairness, my gripes are mostly directed at Java in the user interface rather than Java on the server; your claims to its effectiveness are probably very well founded, as far as they go.
All of which is right on-track. No, I don't program in Java, though I'm forced to use it occasionally. From a programmer's perspective, Java may well be the cat's pajamas, but from a user's perspective (mine), Java sucks.
Harrumph! Posted too late in the discussion to win any mod points; if I were karma whoring I would have at least included some links. Moderators always like to see some links, even if they don't bother to follow them.
Well, if you want the absolute-latest version of Windows, it's still worth burning to a CD, because updates (service-packs) are a few months apart. But if you want the absolute-latest version of Linux, then go ahead and download it, because anything on CD is bound to be obsolete already.
Which, ironically, can be seen as an argument FOR Windows, in the business world.
Please excuse the off-topicness, but you've just voiced my biggest gripe against the whole Java fad. I was there when Sun touted Java as the answer to computing's Holy Grail: Write-Once, Run-Everywhere. Except that it ain't necessarily so. Nearly every day, I encounter another Java app that runs in any OS you care to use, as long as it's Windows. GRRR!!!! Whenever I hear a new Java convert espousing its merits, the hypocrisy of the whole thing just about kills me. Every point where Java is supposed to shine is directly contradicted by my personal experience. It's not just a few exceptions that spoil the image. MOST of the JAVA apps I've been forced to deal with are slow, bloated, buggy, and worst of all, NON-PORTABLE!
</RANT>I use Opera, too (paid for it, even). And if it weren't for several really annoying bug/features, I'd quit using Mozilla altogether:
But the main reason that Opera doesn't get as much press is because, heck, they're making money. If the Mozilla programmers build a better browser, kudos from the open-source press are likely the only payment they'll see for their efforts. But if Opera builds a better browser (and in a lot of ways, they have -- witness their domination of the embedded market) they'll get paid in cash.
I use file-rc.
In Debian.
Gets rid of all that /etc/rc.d/rc{1,2,3,4,5,6}.d crap and replaces it with a single /etc/runlevel.conf file.
REALLY neat stuff. Check it out here.
I've gotten false positives.
Admittedly, most of them were when somebody forwarded a bit of advertising, thinking I'd be interested, but occasionally somebody is so clueless that they trigger spamassassin's rules by all-caps plus improper addressing and so forth. WebTV users are especially prone to that sort of thing.
All of which wouldn't be a problem, except that I'm trying to be a good sysadmin and implement the spam-filter globally across the network.
Whoops! Correction: host it here.
Any volunteers to set up an central fund for collecting and distributing the donations? You could probably host it here.
Score: -1 (Troll)
Umm... what, exactly, would be improved by plating over half of Australia? And which half would be an improvement?
Careful how you answer; some Aussies read slashdot, too.
Well, I was joking, but if you really want to know, read The Cathedral and the Bazaar. The only currency in the Open Source market is recognition and peer review. They provide the only pressure (but it is often sufficient) for people to produce secure, bug-free, usable software.
Get it?