Java and avoiding software piracy?

[Joe Attardi]

I refuse to sign up for a Web forum when there's a perfectly good
Usenet that had already existed for decades before the Web was a
twinkle in Tim Berners-Lee's eye. If people here want GG issues
discussed someplace else then someone with admin access can go create
a GG-issues Usenet newsgroup.

Let me seriously ask you a question. Assuming anybody in this group
cared about your complaints about Google Groups, what would you expect
anyone in this group to do about it? Posting your complaints about the
admittedly crappy Google Groups interface in this group isn't just
annoying to the others, it's a waste of your own time and energy,
because your problems aren't going to be heard by the right people.

Someone tried to help you by pointing you to a Google Group, run by
Google, where you could post your concerns, but instead you berated
him and went on again about your strange phobia of web forums/
discussion groups of any kind.

No, you're DEMANDING, which speaks volumes about YOUR maturity.

Sigh. I'm not demanding anything.

If you are seriously interested in discussing the problem, instead of
insulting and selectively quoting people's messages, please answer my
question. What do you expect anybody in this group to do to fix your
problems that Google Groups is encountering?

And please answer another question. There seems to be a double
standard here. In our last encounter several months ago, you
constantly called me out for making completely offtopic posts. But
now, here you are doing the same thing. The conversation was steered
from an interesting software piracy/copyright/free software debate
into a discussion about how you think someone is hacking Google Groups
to silence you, which of course is not true.

Maybe you could try actually responding to my points this time,
instead of substituting my text with "[insult deleted]" when no insult
actually took place. Like earlier, I listed a counterpoint to the
point you made that all I do is attack. I provided links to several
discussion threads that prove your assertion false. Why did you
construe that as "[insult deleted]" ??

 

[Joe Attardi]

Please curl up and die now. It is obvious that you have nothing
constructive to contribute, nor indeed anything but personal attacks,
if no longer directed exclusively at me.

It's not a personal attack, it's my opinion of his extremist views on
free software.
You don't find it ironic that the GPL, which is intended for free
software, freedom, etc., is actually the most restrictive of the
mainstream open source licenses? It restricts in many ways what you
can do with software derived from a GPLed work.

How can that be called a "free software" license?

Is that constructive enough for you, or will you still call it an
insult because it conflicts with what you think?

 

[Patricia Shanahan]

I asked what proof you have.

Instead you just listed your own conjectures and the suspicious nature
of such posts that were allegedly hacked. Not to mention, hacking
Google Groups would be a daunting task. If you think the security of
Google is that lax that your average Usenet poster could break it to
selectively block posts, you are off your rocker.

The problem cannot be at the Google groups end, because both the posts
in question reached at least two servers outside Google's domain.

Patricia

 

[Joe Attardi]

No, I make a point, he calls me names, I call it an insult.

Whoa, wait, what!? My head asplode.

The post you marked as "insult deleted" contained simply some links to
other discussions on Google Groups that invalidate your point, then
simply said "Wrong again!"

Where in that post did I call you names?

 

[Joe Attardi]

The problem cannot be at the Google groups end, because both the posts
in question reached at least two servers outside Google's domain.

I doubt that will convince him, either. He is convinced everyone is
out to get him, and no matter what discussion someone might offer to
the contrary, he must obviously be right!!!!!1111eleven

 

[nebulous99]

The highly-selective message-blocking. The "coincidental" timing of
the first such incident... spam filters... odd timing.. I'd expect a human
attacker to go for the throat however.

[insults deleted]

FOAD.

 

[nebulous99]

Someone tried to help you by pointing you to a Google Group, run by
Google, where you could post your concerns, but instead you berated
him and went on again about your strange phobia of web forums/
discussion groups of any kind.

You missed the part where I mentioned that the "group" in question
(which is not a bona fide newsgroup) was almost as completely ignored
by Google employees as comp.lang.java.programmer. One would pop in
from time to time and mention that they were aware of a problem, and
that was it. No explanation; no time when they'd have fixed it; no
useful information whatsoever. The volume of complaints already being
posted there obviously didn't get the actual technicians off their
cans, since they still waited four days before lifting a finger to do
anything, as evidenced by the problem not only not getting even
incrementally better during that time, but actually getting worse!

Now since you've obviously missed important stuff, and it's making you
post silly responses, you must go back and reread the entire thread,
one word at a time NO SKIMMING! that's cheating, before making any
more usenet posts.

Sigh. I'm not demanding anything.

You ordered me about like a drill sergeant, and you most certainly
neglected to say "Please".

The conversation was steered
from an interesting software piracy/copyright/free software debate
into a discussion about how you think someone is hacking Google Groups
to silence you, which of course is not true.

You neglect to note that:
a) The post that was attacked was in this thread! Of course my
response to the attack is also in this thread.
b) There is no "which of course is not true" to infer here. The
evidence, circumstantial though it is, all lands firmly in favor of my
hypothesis and against your arrogant assertion of what "of course is
not true". Unless you have knowledge of evidence you're neglecting to
share with the rest of us?

instead of substituting my text with "[insult deleted]" when no insult
actually took place.

I only do that when there's something insulting in there and nothing
worthwhile in the way of argumentation, usually just an attempt to
demonstrate something else insulting that assumes as a false premise
the first insult.

Like earlier, I listed a counterpoint to the
point you made that all I do is attack.

With your every attack post you continue to prove my point. If you
have ever posted anything remotely on-topic to this froup it's not
been recently, and 99+% of what traffic I observe coming from you is
in the form of invective, almost all of it attacking me, but with a
smattering of random lashings-out at among other people the
illustrious RMS of GNU/FSF fame(!), so at least I'm in distinguished
company.

Now go away and leave me alone.

 

[nebulous99]

On Jul 23, 9:04 pm, (e-mail address removed) wrote:> No, I make a point, he calls me names, I call it an insult.

Whoa, wait, what!? My head asplode.

The post you marked as "insult deleted" contained simply some links to
other discussions on Google Groups that invalidate your point, then
simply said "Wrong again!"

Where in that post did I call you names?

The very fact that you even tried to "invalidate" me, and then
proceeded to attack me by calling me "wrong". In fact you implied a
second such, since you said "again", implying there was at least one
additional occasion of incompetence on my part.

Publicly alleging incompetence on my part is unwelcome and will not be
tolerated. Don't do it again.

Furthermore, a few token on-topic posts years ago followed by
thousands of vicious attack posts since then in at least two major
flame wars does not change your stats much. Instead of 100% attacki
and off-topic you may be merely 99.9% attacki and off-topic, which is
still way more than anyone else posting to this froup. You also lurked
for a very long time, appeared to blast invective at various people
(chiefly me), lurked for another very long time, and again decloaked
with armed phasers and torpedoes. As far as I can tell you are an
Orion pirate lurking alongside a heavily-trafficked space lane waiting
for opportune moments to strike, rather than a constructive
participant of this group. So please go away.

 

[nebulous99]

I doubt that will convince him, either. He is convinced everyone is
out to get him, and no matter what discussion someone might offer to
the contrary, he must obviously be right!!!!!1111eleven

No, I am convinced that YOU are out to get me, you and one or two
others. With your every hostile and vicious post you provide further
evidence that I'm not a paranoid delusional in having these
convictions, but merely making the obvious conclusion from observation
of your behavior. You are now also the one most vehemently opposed to
the "it was intentional censorship" theory despite being able to
muster zero evidence to support such an assertion. The guilty party
might well wish to conceal their guilt by trying to convince everyone
that the purported criminal act never took place. The only reason I am
not 100% certain of your guilt is because the guilty party might, on
the off chance that they actually have an IQ above the single digits,
reason that if he "doth protest too much" he'll become a suspect and
might therefore remain silent, as I notice two people have done since
shortly after the attack -- Oliver Wrong, my initial suspect, and Lew,
who also went hostile in this thread. So I'd say the odds are about
even it's you or Wrong, with Lew a dark-horse candidate for the Censor
of the Month Award, and the winner receiving an all-expenses-paid trip
to scenic tropical Guantanamo Bay on trumped-up charges of cyber-
terrorism.

 

[John mitre]

Either way, the high selectivity remains, as does the fact that the
perpetrator violated the CFAA in hacking a server (whichever server).
Add to that a second violation of the CFAA if you're right, as they'd
have had to hack or spy in some illicit manner to find out which
server I use to check propagation! Under your theory, that server
becomes another narrowly-targeted aspect of this so-called "glitch"
that further reduce the odds of its being a random happenstance --
adding to the fact that two different versions of the same message
with the same semantic content were affected but no other messages
were affected by the so-called "glitch", the fact that the message in
question was an important one and one that took a relatively large
amount of effort to create, and that the message in question was a
defense in a war situation, plus that none of these "glitches"
occurred during peacetime or affected less-important messages,
messages that didn't require much effort to compose, or messages
unrelated to any ongoing controversies.

Why so selective? Your theory and the assumption that it's a random
"glitch" predict a random percentage of messages would be affected.
The odds that only two would be, AND they'd happen to be the only two
attempts to post a particular response, AND the sole affected unit of
semantic content would be a defense in response to a bogus post in a
controversy rather than something unrelated to controversy, AND the
post would be one involving significant effort to compose rather than
little given the majority require little, AND the post would be mine
and not someone else's, AND the affected server would be precisely the
one that I use to check propagation, AND the post would be one I
considered it important to see distributed as widely as possible, and
at minimum everywhere the one it followed up to went, rather than one
I was less concerned about ... are astronomically against that
incredible chain of bizarre coincidences.

So much for "random glitch". It was censorship. The only thing to
quibble over is which server was hacked, by whom, and how, and perhaps
their exact motives -- Oliver wanting to force having the last word?
Joe Attacki out of pure bloody-mindedness and hate? Someone else?

Hey fellas,

Cool down

Btw, Joe, I got it working now.

Thanks

 

[Joe Attardi]

The very fact that you even tried to "invalidate" me, and then
proceeded to attack me by calling me "wrong".

Grow up. Calling somebody wrong is not an attack. It's part of a
discussion.

Publicly alleging incompetence on my part is unwelcome and will not be
tolerated. Don't do it again.

Ok, Internet Tough Guy.

If you truly believe people are manipulating Google to hide your
posts, then you ARE incompetent.

Uh-oh, I publicly alleged incompetence on your part. You won't
tolerate that! What are you going to do, Internet Tough Guy?

 

[Joe Attardi]

No, I am convinced that YOU are out to get me, you and one or two
others. With your every hostile and vicious post you provide further
evidence that I'm not a paranoid delusional in having these
convictions

Being hostile towards somebody is not evidence of "illegal hacking" or
censorship. Feel free to try again and procure actual evidence that
this is taking place. Put your money where your mouth is, otherwise
you'd might as well shut up about it.

You are now also the one most vehemently opposed to
the "it was intentional censorship" theory despite being able to
muster zero evidence to support such an assertion.

You are the accuser. The burden of evidence is on you, so this means
nothing.
How do you provide evidence that someone is _not_ hacking Google?

The guilty party

might well wish to conceal their guilt by trying to convince everyone
that the purported criminal act never took place. The only reason I am
not 100% certain of your guilt is because the guilty party might, on
the off chance that they actually have an IQ above the single digits,
reason that if he "doth protest too much" he'll become a suspect and
might therefore remain silent, as I notice two people have done since
shortly after the attack -- Oliver Wrong, my initial suspect, and Lew,
who also went hostile in this thread.

Wow. You are reading WAY too far into all of this. May I suggest you
shut down the computer, slowly back away, and go get some sunshine.

So I'd say the odds are about
even it's you or Wrong, with Lew a dark-horse candidate for the Censor
of the Month Award, and the winner receiving an all-expenses-paid trip
to scenic tropical Guantanamo Bay on trumped-up charges of cyber-
terrorism.

ROFLCOPTER!

Are you serious?? hahahaaa. Cyber-terrorism!
Call Homeland Security! Twisted's Google Groups posts aren't getting
out quickly enough! Al Qaeda suspected.

 

[~kurt]

Cut out the middleman and they may make more even while the total book
sales revenue goes down -- the author gets some of what the publisher
got, and the public saves on spending the rest. The publisher,
obsolete, gets zilch.

Too bad there are no real world examples to back this up for you. When we
see a J.K.Rowling who is giving away her books for free, making even a 10th
of what she does, then, you might be on to something.

This is what public policy should support. If publishers are obsolete
let them go out of business like buggy whip manufacturers did. If they
are not then ipso facto they'll still be able to do business and make
money.

OK, so, there is nothing I know of stopping people from using your business
model. People can publish and beg for donations.

That is insulting, rude, and uncalled-for. The business model

You are the one who started with the name calling. Even worse, you
are making statements about my general beliefs that are false, and
only meant to make you feel better about your position while adding
nothing to it.

described works for Red Hat, so your calling it "naive"[sic] is
refuted by evidence and simply braindead. And by the way, it's
"naïve".

It is spelled correctly:

<http://wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=naive>

But, you have to admit, I do pretty good for someone who doesn't
use a spell checker (haven't bothered to hook it up to vi yet).

As for the funny "ï", I just use what is on the keyboard....

Explain to me how this business model works for Red Hat? Have you ever
used their software? I just told you, they charge $300 per seat for
a standard Workstation license! If you don't pay this, then you are
*not* abiding by their business model!

shouldn't have to be; the laws should be repealed unless someone can
justify keeping them. In fact it would be nice if laws were subject to
renewal requirements that depended on a vote of the legislature and
argumentation including submitted briefs by interested parties, and

Oh, I agree with this. Congress should have to spend half the year
renewing old laws. Those that don't get renewed fall off the books
after, say, a decade, because they are apparently not important.

You also believe that nonviolent civil disobedience is wrong.

Hardly - although I am much more for the violent type.

Oh, wow, you consider making illegal copies of software and other
media "civil disobedience"! Yea, civil disobedience that benefits
your immediate desires. Wow! Now that is a new one.

Tell me what I can and cannot do with my machinery and my stuff inside
the walls of my house, will you? Communist! *spits*

I agree with your position on machinery. You buy something, like a
video game console, and the DMCA says you can not modify it to run,
say, Linux. It is illegal to circumvent the manufacturer's measures
that have been put in place to use the game console in a way other than
how it was intended. That is absurd.

At the same time, I think the manufacturers should be allowed to make
their hardware as difficult to circumvent as they can (which they are
already allowed to do). But yea, the user should be able to hack it
as much as they want.

You should also be able to make as many back up copies of software
and other media as you want, as long as you are the one in possesion of these
copies, and don't distribute it.

The problem with your logic here is, you claim something you illegally
copied is *yours* to copy. It is not, unless you paid for it. You have
no right to it until you have paid for it.

I prefer to give the USER a choice. Users outnumber creators. And it's

Users can choose to not use software with licenses they don't agree with.
I've made this choice at home - I don't use MS windows - I've read their
EULA.

continued sufferance. But we, the people, have spoken. Loudly. 60
million people is more than 1/10 the population, indeed closer to 1/5.
Your traction won't last long; your grip is already beginning to
slip...

Heh, you are obviously not running on all 8 cylinders.

Red Hat's shareholders would disagree and I think they outnumber you.

Once again. look at the prices they charge per seat! I can not just buy
a single CD, and install it on as many computers as I want, without
breaking their license.

RH is doing OK:

<http://moneycentral.msn.com/investor/charts/chartdl.aspx?Symbol=rht&CP=0&PT=10>

They have had higher highs, and higher lows, for the most part, since
2002.

Funnily enough, there was a Finnish gent once who thought much the
same thing about a pet programming project he was doing in his garage.
He released the results under GPL. He's now a flaming millionaire. You
might have heard of this fella, name of Linus Torvalds...

Funny thing is, he isn't the zealot you are, and he isn't making his
money off Linux. He makes his living off a real job. It wasn't all that
long ago that he managed to save up enough to buy his first house. Linux
made a name for him, and I'm sure has helped him make a good salary.
I'm not even sure if he is a millionare yet - he was a hundred-thousand-air
the last time I read, but that was at least 4 years ago.

Have you ever read what Linus has actually written regarding copyright?
You might be a little surprised.

And thus impoverishing the world, making it so much harder for them to
efficiently use and benefit from your software, even though that

But hopefully lining my pockets!

additional use would not increase your costs one iota (save support,
but you could refuse that, or charge money for it to cover its costs
and turn a profit).

Support is *boring* - it is just as bad as O&M.

Turning a profit is good - making a killing, now that is the American Dream.

- Kurt

 

[Joe Attardi]

You missed the part where I mentioned that the "group" in question
(which is not a bona fide newsgroup) was almost as completely ignored
by Google employees as comp.lang.java.programmer.

I didn't miss this part. It is irrelevant, because it's not our
problem that nobody in the Google Groups help group is listening to
you bitch about their free service.

The volume of complaints already being
posted there obviously didn't get the actual technicians off their
cans, since they still waited four days before lifting a finger to do
anything, as evidenced by the problem not only not getting even
incrementally better during that time, but actually getting worse!

I am not sure why you expect dedicated quality service and support for
a FREE SERVICE. Think about that for a sec.

Unless you have knowledge of evidence you're neglecting to
share with the rest of us?

The burden of proof is on the accuser. Sorry.

I only do that when there's something insulting in there and nothing
worthwhile in the way of argumentation

Or if you can't come up with a witty comeback. or allegations of OMG
CENSORSHIP!

random lashings-out at among other people the
illustrious RMS of GNU/FSF fame(!), so at least I'm in distinguished
company.

Illustrious!? Hahahahahahaha!!!

The man is completely off his rocker and beyond eccentric. Not to
mention his apparent lack of grooming standards, but I guess that's a
cheap shot.

 

[~kurt]

Oh, for God's sake stop it already!

Twisted/nebulous99 is a well-known Troll that have rambled on like
this on several NGs in the past.

Yea, I'm just starting to see this - I'm a bit slow maybe. But, he
is falling right in with the many other unbalanced people I have seen
on some other forums over the years.

- Kurt

 

[Joe Attardi]

Yea, I'm just starting to see this - I'm a bit slow maybe. But, he
is falling right in with the many other unbalanced people I have seen
on some other forums over the years.

I know.. I do have a bad habit to keep taking his flame bait. But I
keep seeing all this retardedness about "OMG HACKERZ!!!" and it's
really irritating. I would killfile the simpleton troll, but
unfortunately Google Groups does not have that ability yet. Maybe if I
whine about it in here long enough, a Google engineer will hear my
pleas and magically implement it for me.

 

[Hunter Gratzner]

There is nobody in this thread by that name, as far as I can tell.

It is you. You have been outed many moons ago in
rec.games.roguelike.angband, when you had one of your hissy fits there
and people could no longer stand you. We have read about your past.
The own FAQ you had. The squirrel incident. Your University. The
"conspiracy" at your University (did you know that K.M.M. is back in
Ottawa from the US for some time now? Should we giver her a call?).
Your interest in Fractals. We had to read it all.

We have enough of your hissy fits. We don't like your death threats.
You are unconvincible. You insult us, you insult our intelligence.
Particular your argumentation is laughable.

The simple thing is, we don't like you. Please go away.

 

[Andreas Leitgeb]

Also, of course, annoying someone here gives them
incentives to do something

gosh, you're right on this one!
/me plugs ears and sings lalalalalalalalalalalala...

 

[Andreas Leitgeb]

But what if they need this software and have no alternatives?

oh, this one is still worth replying despite my previous decision
not to reply anymore ...

According to your own ideas, they should hire programmers to
program one that they then will give everyone for free.

 

[Andreas Leitgeb]

No, but I certainly have the right to request that they shut the hell
up if they have no alternative to offer.

You have every right to request whatever you like, be it
free beer, diminishing of copyright laws, or even that
the sky be checkerboard-colored.