Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2001 22:32:27 -0800 From: "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com> To: "P. U. (Uli) Kruppa" <root@pukruppa.de>, <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: RE: Smashing Bill Gates necessary? Message-ID: <001f01c16043$7a89a180$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> In-Reply-To: <20011029040835.T2878-100000@big>
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>-----Original Message----- >From: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG >[mailto:owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG]On Behalf Of P. U. (Uli) >Kruppa >Sent: Sunday, October 28, 2001 8:41 PM >To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG >Subject: Smashing Bill Gates necessary? > > >Hi everybody! > >Perhaps I am becoming a little bit moralistic these days? >In the gnome-fifth-toe collection I found a little game >called XBill. Its sense is to smash tiny pictures of Bill >Gates and some blood will be splattered when you hit him. > >Of course Bill Gates can pay enough lawyers to take care of >this himself, Sorry, but the US Supreme court has ruled that satire is constitutionally protected free speech. Bill Gates could NOT pay enough lawyers to "take care of this himself", at least not in the United States. Perhaps in other countries that don't have free speech protections, but I suspect he wouldn't be that interested. >of course I do not have to play this game, of Which is exactly what the court stated in their ruling. No one in the US can force anyone in the US to read or view something they don't wish to. It's a good idea that some other countries should consider adopting. >course I do not like Microsofts monopolistic business >strategies and of course smashing icons, burning >straw-puppets, crosses or flags is not as bad as killing >real persons, but still I do not really like the idea. > >I think it would not be a great loss to take this game out >of gnome-fifth-toe. > I'm glad that you feel this way. You know where the rm command is on your system and I trust you know how to use it to accomplish this. As far as the rest of us go though, let me ask this: 1) Is the existence of this piece of code hurting anyone? 2) Is this code activated by the system without user intervention? 3) Does this code damage the system? 4) Was anyone exploited or harmed to create this code? If the answer to these question is NO then I submit that the authors of gnome are the ones who should be making this decision. As far as morals are concerned, there's enough work to do on the Internet eliminating pedophile operations, remailers that are used to illegally harass others, and spammers out to defraud people that I suggest you concentrate your energies there, where it's really needed. This issue is between you and the gnome authors, please don't waste space stirring up people over it. There's plenty of things in FreeBSD that someone out there could construe as objectional, starting with Beastie looking like Satan and ending with complaints about the error message of the command "nice man woman" Ted Mittelstaedt tedm@toybox.placo.com Author of: The FreeBSD Corporate Networker's Guide Book website: http://www.freebsd-corp-net-guide.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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