Considering that most of the judge from the 21st century are, at most, 12, and not even lawyers, let alone judges, yet kinda makes this tough.
The corollary to this, of course, is that 20th Century judges have had 12 years to adjust their intellectual stance to accommodate 21st Century circumstances. GP's point stands.
What's with the curly brackets around {unspoken}?
It's obviously a Perl hash reference. In other words, they're too stoned to talk.
Linus Torvald's words keep coming back to mind... "unholy abomination" I believe they were.
Hey! Don't look at me! I don't touch that GNOME 3 shit. I've been using a Mac for, like, forever.
Regards
Satan J. Lucipher, ESQ
I don't know what the suitable punishment for such poor punsmanship would be - probably something appropriate but not poetic, like a gag and a straitjacket, just to keep you from making puns about your punishment.
Punishment? Ha! You must be Gnu here...
Trampling by herd of angry gnus. That's poetic justice.
So... Gnus for Nerds, when they copy Stuff That Matters?
I think you missed the part where he mentions that he *gives* stuff (that he created) for free.
I didn't miss it at all. But his choice to give stuff away doesn't give him the right to take from others.
See? It's exactly this attitude - that you can't share without being a thief - that makes me want to punch someone in the face.
How dare you imply that I don't respect the rights of others? You should be ashamed. Just because you can't imagine a world in which sharing doesn't equate with stealing doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.
The stuff about an open Internet is 50%genuine principles, and 50% a pompous rationalization from greedy geeks who want free copies.
Ignoring the 'greedy' part, which is a gratuitous characterisation, yes, emphatically yes. I want free copies. It's called sharing; you might have heard about it.
What people who bitch about piracy never adequately explain, when they're busy deriding the so-called pirates, is why according to this report at least, widespread copying is actually making things better for said writers/musicians/artists/designers/videographers. Even the content distributors (who are the ones we're really talking about when we mention SOPA/PIPA/ACTA) are profiting more than they ever have, deriving more 65% of their revenues from technologies they swore would kill them.
Sharing is a public good; everyone from Jesus to Hobbes to RMS[*] has espoused this principle. And you know what kind of person is most likely to share? The ones with the least. I live in a Least Developed Country, and the generousity shown here makes society in North America look absolutely sick.
And yet here we have the so-called content owners, who insist on transfer of authorship before they'll even consider distributing your material, telling me I can't have a working Internet because I wanted someone else to listen to a song? Imprisoning people just because they want to help me share? Fuck that.
And before you dare call me selfish or a thief, and before you accuse me of taking crumbs from the mouth of the poor, starving artist: I get paid to write, code and take photos, and yet I still manage to give almost all of that output away. If I can do it, then so can others. The plain fact is that others are thriving in this gift economy. The only ones who aren't are those complacent, sclerotic few who think that artificial scarcity is valid economics. Well, as far as I'm concerned, they can go rot.
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[*] Okay, visually that's not much of a gamut, but you get my point...
Don't forget that everyone agrees that writers/musicians/artists/designers/videographers and other creators ought to be compensated. Unfortunately, that compensation is rapidly changing.
Unfortunately? Think again. According to this report at least, widespread copying is actually making things better for said writers/musicians/artists/designers/videographers. Even the content distributors (who are the ones we're really talking about when we mention SOPA/PIPA/ACTA) are profiting more than they ever have, deriving more 65% of their revenues from technologies they swore would kill them.
The National Guard and the U.S. Army live under very different rules my friend.
No argument from me on that count. But I believe the reference was to 'the military', of which the National Guard is most definitely a part.
And while this didn't involve exchange of fire (but did involve tanks and cavalry, whose movements can be deadly in close quarters), the Army has indeed been used against innocent American civilians.
That's assuming the military goes along with it. Having been in the military myself, and having family still in, I can tell you know that there are no orders issued by any commanding officer that would cause them to open fire on U.S. citizens unless their own lives were in imminent danger.
I know you believe this, but the Ohio National Guard beg to differ.
If you flaunt it, expect to have it trashed.