Mark Shuttleworth Apologizes for Trademark Action Against Fix Ubuntu 196
A few days ago, the operator of Fix Ubuntu received a threatening letter from Canonical commanding him to cease using the Ubuntu name or logo. Last night, Mark Shuttleworth posted an update noting that it shouldn't have happened, and also apologizing for calling opponents of Mir the open source tea party. "In order to make the amount of [trademark related] correspondence manageable, we have a range of standard templates for correspondence. They range from the 'we see you, what you are doing is fine, here is a license to use the name and logo which you need to have, no need for further correspondence,' through 'please make sure you state you are speaking for yourself and not on behalf of the company or the product,' to the 'please do not use the logo without permission, which we are not granting unless you actually certify those machines,' and 'please do not use Ubuntu in that domain to pretend you are part of the project when you are not.' Last week, the less-than-a-month-at-Canonical new guy sent out the toughest template letter to the folks behind a “sucks” site. Now, that was not a decision based on policy or guidance; as I said, Canonical’s trademark policy is unusually generous relative to corporate norms in explicitly allowing for this sort of usage. It was a mistake, and there is no question that the various people in the line of responsibility know and agree that it was a mistake. It was no different, however, than a bug in a line of code, which I think most developers would agree happens to the best of us. It just happened to be, in that analogy, a zero-day remote root bug. ... On another, more personal note, I made a mistake myself when I used the label “open source tea party” to refer to the vocal non-technical critics of work that Canonical does. That was unnecessary and quite possibly equally offensive to members of the real Tea Party (hi there!) and the people with vocal non-technical criticism of work that Canonical does (hello there!)."
"The new guy" (Score:5, Funny)
Sucks to be "the new guy"; you always get blamed for dumb mistakes by "the experienced guy".
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Sucks to be "the new guy"; you always get blamed for dumb mistakes by "the experienced guy".
Guy comes into office and finds a letter offering him advice. It says: First time you screw up, blame everything on me. Second time you screw up, sit down and write an advice letter...
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I think I've heard this one... it ends like "the third time, make up three envelopes..."
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Fine (Score:5, Funny)
Bridge (Score:2)
I have one to sell you if you believe him. And i will toss in a bag of extremely rare muffler bearings.
Re:Bridge (Score:5, Insightful)
I believe him. He's a smart guy (multi-millionaire businessman and all that), I'm sure he knows and knew beforehand what an unholy row a trademark cease-and-desist letter would cause. And I'm 99% sure he isn't the one in charge of sending out legal letters- I'm certain Canonical employs people for that.
So yeah, I'm willing to believe that he thinks sending out the letter was a mistake.
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He was a bit lagging though, I would not rule out that the negative reaction of the web played a role. Anyway, he did the right move.
Re:Bridge (Score:4, Insightful)
I have no love for ubuntu or Shuttleworth, but this explanation seemed fair to me, and totally plausible.
As for the slow reaction time, that's just a reality of any large company getting a PR blindside like this. When large companies do something they suspect may be unpopular, they are usually ready with their pre-prepared reactions and they roll the apology out like clockwork. When something like this just happens out of nowhere, people scramble, there are meetings in boardrooms with powerpoint slides, conference calls with managers spending time at the cottage, and it takes a while to get a reaction out the door that everyone is comfortable won't make things worse.
TLDR: I buy it, but ubuntu still sucks
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Considering that is exactly what I assumed had happened when I first heard about it, I have little reason not to believe it.
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Rare muffler bearings, you do realise those are made of platinum and are what makes catalytic converters so expensive and attrackable to thieves selling scrap right?
Seriously, the converters with the bearings inside them are worth the most for scrap. Of couse the beads aren't really bearings but they look just like small ball bearings with the race.
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Exactly.
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So you're saying that Mark Shuttleworth did not actually apologise that somehow that apology letter is a new legal attack aimed at silencing the critic at https://fixubuntu.com/ [fixubuntu.com] with a quite specific and singular complaint with regard to targeted marketing incorporated in dash https://help.ubuntu.com/13.04/ubuntu-help/unity-dash-intro.html [ubuntu.com]. A further article tackling this complaint might be useful https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/10/privacy-ubuntu-1210-amazon-ads-and-data-leaks [eff.org]. Seems pretty genuine to m
Illustration of the issue (Score:5, Informative)
To further illustrate the problem with review of trademark concerns at Ubuntu, several years ago I contacted their legal department with a request to be permitted to use the Ubuntu logo, alongside those of several other notable open source Linux and BSD distributions, for printing on the sails of small kites for sale at the cost of production. The objective was to create an opportunity for people to ask "hey, what's that logo represent" and engage youngsters in a discussion on open source operating systems. The request was summarily denied with some hand waving about brand protection and value to the company. Oh well.
Re:Illustration of the issue (Score:5, Interesting)
The request was summarily denied with some hand waving about brand protection and value to the company. Oh well.
What do you expect? Lawyers ruin everything, including open source. Except, wait, no, actually they don't. Ubuntu is made primarily of open source projects. It's just a pile of packages and standards for organizing the large and growing collection of Linux-related applications and software. They put a sticker on it and say "This particular organization of those things is called Ubuntu."
Well, good news: There's a lot of other things that are pretty much the exact same thing that doesn't have that sticker on it, and you can do whatever you want. Guys, don't let a distribution's "brand identity" trip you up. If they're stupid enough to not engage in reciprocal marketing, move on to the next guys. They're only shooting themselves in the foot when everything else is marked with 50 different distribution badges and names, and Ubuntu isn't on the list. Ubuntu, what's that? Never heard of it. (evil smile)
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Your sentiment is well taken, and just for reference I'm a Debian fan of some 13 years (I've run Debian [and various BSD flavors] on all my core infrastructure for ages, and have worked as a senior engineer responsible for hundreds of Ubuntu hosts containing thousands of virtualized Linux guests of varying distros). That said, Canonical has actually done a decent job of promoting Ubuntu, and it's a fact that getting people introduced to Ubuntu first and other distros later (owing to the DFSG, which is a goo
Re:Illustration of the issue (Score:5, Funny)
I started on Slackware in the 2.0 kernel days. So to be honest, I don't get the fuss. But then, since Slackware is basically the Ikea of distributions, you shouldn't be surprised at my apathy. Page 246: Now that you've hand-coded the boot loader in assembly using nothing more than the provided hair pin and a resistor, let us discuss how to compile the kernel using the provided mismatched header files and the IT Pro's prayer, which goes a little like this: "Dear God... I know I didn't believe in you before I tried installing Linux using this installer... but I do now. Please, just send me a sign. Let it compile. That's all I ask. Dear god, please let it compile... *click*"
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It could be worse. I remember going through this compiling and installing Minix back in the pre linux days.
And that damn thing [i]didn't[/i] compile. On purpose I think, see it was [i]educational[/i]. Hey on the upside I figured out how to write a driver for a hard drive controller nobody used (Wang) on an OS nobody heard of (Minix). Oh well, I passed the course.
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That said, you should be aware that various other projects also enjoy protection under United States trademark laws, although they are far less hostile than Canonical in my experience.
That seems to be a good point to mention the history of the trademark on the term "Linux". Linus did not initially seek a trademark on the the term. A scummy lawyer named William R. Della Croce, Jr got one for it in 1994 and, in classic IP troll fashion, starting sending letters out to distros and book publishers demanding payments to license the term. There followed a lengthy court case to determine if the guy named "Linus", who was the acknowledged originator of the operating system named "Linux" might ha
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To further illustrate the problem with review of trademark concerns at Ubuntu, several years ago I contacted their legal department with a request to be permitted to use the Ubuntu logo, alongside those of several other notable open source Linux and BSD distributions, for printing on the sails of small kites for sale at the cost of production. The objective was to create an opportunity for people to ask "hey, what's that logo represent" and engage youngsters in a discussion on open source operating systems.
How do you know that the kids would have asked "what does that logo represent?" Maybe they would have thought that it's the logo of your kite brand, or just some arbitrary pretty symbol printed on it.
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The little pamphlet talking about Ubuntu and other distros would probably have sparked the question if natural curiosity didn't. Just guessing here.
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Yes. I sincerely doubt I ever got an opportunity to speak with anyone who went to law school; the quality of the responses I got read more like some intern was copying and pasting boilerplate PR material instead.
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The objective was to create an opportunity for people to ask "hey, what's that logo represent" and engage youngsters in a discussion on open source operating systems.
For the same purpose I've got a large plush rastafarian penguin. [imgur.com]
It works great as a conversation starter into free and open source software and/or legalization and cultivation of herbs, as the case may be. The reddened eyes mirror my own when hacking long into the night, or taking a break therefrom. I also have an Ubuntu tee-shirt serving as my dart board's bullseye for discussing things like TFA, your post, and our new Debian deployment.
The best talking piece was my large terrarium of green anolis for di
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Perhaps instead you should have contacted their marketing department, and asked them to sponsor your kites for a small sum of money. In return for their money you could promise them to put their logo on your kites.
Just a thought on a lazy sunday evening.
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It's not reasonable at all. Canonical could easily grant a narrow use license for the trademarked logo on grounds of promotional value, with the value specifically being talking to kids about an operating system they can control and contribute to themselves. They simply chose to default to the policy of ignoring the potential value without any further discussion on the matter. Then again, what do you expect of a distribution that rides on the coattails of Debian with every release, right?
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Did you have something on the kite stating that the kite was intended for use only to stimulate kids to talk about operating systems? Something that would clearly show that the kites were not to be used in any other way that might damage Ubuntu's corporate image or dilute the brand? The only place where you talked about the context in which the branding would be used was in your request. You asked Ubuntu to give you a blank permit for use on the basis of them just trusting that you would never screw them ov
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There is a massive difference in promoting something that is nothing more than a simple corporate brand, and promoting something that represents the ideals found in an open source operating system. Ubuntu is supposed to be about its community, but Canonical has increasingly hijacked that goodwill over the years. If you can't see the difference between these two things, I'm sorry dude, I can't help you.
On the laughable topic of profit, see my other comment [slashdot.org] on the subject. Cheers.
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Apparently you have a gross misunderstanding of the legal concepts of trademark dilution, promotional use, and licensing. Logos slapped on cars in various racing circuits must really dilute the brands involved, huh? It's probably also worth mentioning that I offered to contribute 30% of all proceeds back to financially support open source projects of Canonical's choosing as well, which isn't exactly insignificant after small volume production costs are accounted for in something meant as an exercise in open
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You, remember, are asking for permission to display a logo where no relationship exists between you and Canonical, and where none is implied.
I won't bother quoting more of your reply, since it's all repetitious regurgitation of the quoted text. You've entirely missed the point that asking for permission to utilize a trademark, in other words asking for a license to use the trademark, is how you establish a relationship. In this case, it would have been for promoting open source operating systems via a means that would have been fairly interesting to kids without trying to deliver the initial message through a computer screen. Damage the mark? Ar
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That just pisses me off, since I was calling my "cost of production" $10/hour for designing, purchasing, printing, and assembling the components of various kite designs (and some were pretty nifty designs) on a part time / evening hours basis. The end result would have cost about USD $2-3/unit for kids. The t-shirts you linked to probably cost about $2 to produce, and are being sold at > $20 apiece. Lovely.
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Reference the other comment [slashdot.org].
You go right ahead and make your own distribution, including a nice toolchain and community to support it. I'll be over there promoting successful distros and projects that I use on a daily basis.
I strongly suspect you have no idea at all what "make your own distro" means.
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If you go into Linux considering Debian and Ubuntu to be that similar, you're gonna have a bad time.
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Just curious, but why is centos never part of these debates? Is it generally not used? Its pretty much Ill I've touched for years, but I never see them in flame wars.
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You should probably read my other comment [slashdot.org] on that point. We're talking about a laughably low level of profit, if you could call it that at the low production levels involved. Meanwhile, apparently it's totally okay for others to sell $20 t-shirts with the Ubuntu logo slapped across them. I wonder if they even bothered asking for permission.
Two sides to everything (Score:2)
At end of blog post: "Comments off" (Score:3)
An apology that blocks further discussion. I'm disappointed, but not surprised.
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So you prefer to continue an argument rather than accept the victory of your favorite opinion?
Do you ever have anything of value to contribute to any discussion?
Good apology (Score:4, Insightful)
Nice to see a solid apology from Mark. I think a frank apology in non corpo-speak can make the world of difference. It takes an adult to hold up their hands and say they fucked up in public.
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New guy makes a mistake, news at 11 (Score:2)
Pathetic (Score:2)
He should really go into politics. They acted like dicks, and now he's doing damage control...
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It didn't change my opinion one bit... (Score:4, Interesting)
I had already moved off Ubuntu and back to Debian.
That whole switch to Unity kinda irked me.
So I did something about, and now I am back in trusty 'ole Gnome Classic.
And no, I'm not afraid of or against change.
I actually really like the new version of Gnome and was getting used to Unity.
But I use my computers for work day in and day out.
And neither of those desktops are near stable enough for what I do.
Both frequently become unresponsive and leave me unable to navigate apps.
Then I have to go into a console with alt+f(x) and kill the display manager or log out and back in.
Which doesn't look good to executives when you are attempting to demonstrate new products.
And yes, I am more than competent enought to install Gnome Classic in Ubuntu.
But the only reason I ever switched to Ubuntu was for the quick and dirty wireless support.
With Wheezy, all my wireless woes seem to have past and I'm not constantly burdened by a "let's try this" mentality.
My desktop "just works" again.
Heh, kinda funny I switched to the core distribution from Ubuntu so the thing would "just work".
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What is this, iambic pentameter? I've never been good with poetry.
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I was mostly referring to your unnecessary use of linebreaks.
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Ah that's actually kind of funny. Work requires me to type that way, so I just do it everywhere. Sorry to hog the screen space.
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Like I said, I mostly just though it looked like a poem. ;)
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I also moved from Ubuntu to Debian.
For me it was that I prefer Gnome Shell to Unity.
I did try installing Gnome on Ubuntu, and then the Ubuntu Gnome variation (or whatever it's called), but in both cases I had the impression that the integration was a bit wonky. You'd have a mixture of Ubuntu and Gnome apps which supposedly did the same things, but in subtle different ways. Like the "Online Accounts" thing in the settings.
Anyway, I decided to try Debian and was surprised to see that not only Gnome had a muc
Hybryde Linux - look to the future (Score:2, Informative)
They should try a setup like Hybryde Linux provides:
"Hybryde Linux is an Ubuntu-based distribution for the desktop. Its most unusual feature is an option to switch rapidly between multiple desktop environments and window manager without logging out - the list includes Enlightenment 17, GNOME 3 (GNOME Shell and GNOME 3 "Fallback" mode), KDE, LXDE, Openbox, Unity, Xfce and FVWM. This is achieved via a highly customizable Hy-menu, which also allows launching applications and configuring the system. All open ap
Who is the new guy? (Score:2)
Is his name Tibor?
Wordy? (Score:2)
The sincerity of an apology is inversely proportional to its word count.
Apology Accepted! (Score:3, Insightful)
It takes a big man to apologize.
I want to thank Mark Shuttleworth for stepping up and doing the rightthing.
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Stay classy, my friend (Score:2)
Much ado about nothing, aka. lawyers. (Score:2)
Can we all hug now? :-)
Fair Use Needs to be defended (Score:3, Interesting)
This was wrong and there needs to be criminal charges against companies that do this. "I'm sorry" doesn't cut it.
Besides, run Debian, you'll realize how much Ubuntu doesn't contribute.
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Not sure if he is right, but I do agree to an extent. Sending out a clearly unfounded C&C or threat of lawsuit should at least carry a fine with it. Companies have no incentive to weigh the public good right now.
Give us the option to pay for Ubuntu development (Score:5, Interesting)
As a Ubuntu user I don't understand why Canonical will sell my data to third-parties but not give me the option to pay for the software.
I've already paid $250 for VMWare Workstation and $100 for Windows 8 OEM as a guest OS. I'd happily pay $100 to Canonical for Ubuntu if they would even give me the option in return for not selling my search data.
He needs to make another apology (Score:2, Redundant)
He still needs to apologize for that stinking turd Unity.
It was no different than a bug in code? (Score:2)
A bug in code is something that is the result of something overlooked, or perhaps the result of laziness (can't be bothered to handle something properly in unlikely conditions). However sending out a template letter requires somebody to make a conscious decision to do it, so is certainly not a bug.
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From what it sounds like, he meant that it was a bug in their process: that they aren't more closely monitoring what the new guy did, and/or that they didn't train him better to not do that. I think it's a reasonable analogy.
someone's been lying to you (Score:2)
> So mothers with children and their kids went hungry because no food stamps.
Whoever you've been getting your "facts" from has been lying to you. That's assuming you're not the liar, of course. Food stamps never stopped. Obama did threaten to stop payments IF the shutdown continued into November (while continuing "green" payouts to campaign contributors).
You may have noticed that DEMOCRAT senators, leaders of the presidents own party, are currently acknowledging the republicans were right - healthcar
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I'll just remind you that being "offended" is a natural trait for liberals, and especially "progressive" liberals. No one else gives a small damn about such trivial drivel. Most people are born with a skin, which toughens with age. Self flagellating progressives never do toughen. They tear their skin routinely, to ensure that life is painful. Hey - that's their problem, and no one else is concerned.
As AC points out, the government shutdown was the responsibility of every single dickhead in Washington.
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Your ignorance of politics is striking.
Yeah, reading [dailykos.com] causes ignorance. True story.
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And, to your point, it takes two to tango - either side of the aisle could have stopped the shutdown at
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The Tea Party isn't a formal organization. Anyone who claims to speak for the movement is lying
I speak for the entire Tea Party when I say...
CHANGE PLACES!
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Takes two to tango? Yeah, sure all it takes to not having a minuscule number of fundies blocking the state apparatus is to just let them get the final say whenever discord strikes. That's exactly how a democracy is supposed to work, right?
That is exactly how a committee is supposed to work (like a legislative body such as the U.S. Congress or Parliament). When there is discord and a substantial minority (not even a majority) that is making a significant complaint about what is happening on that committee, it is supposed to sort of gum up the works.
If you want something run efficiently, you get a king or a dictator. I could Godwinize this discussion at this point, but note what countries were run "efficiently" at the government level and as
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Yep. This whole thing was cynical political theater: the Republicans cynically shut down the government and the Democrats cynically tried to make it look worse than it was.
I'm in Washington DC, so there are national parks everywhere -- I live 50 feet away from a little one. All the famous monuments that people crossed the ocean to see? Barrycades everywhere. Glover Park? Nope, since nobody's ever heard of it.
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Barrycade (noun):
A parade of people named Barry. The Barrycade originated in Boston's 1837 Barry uprising in which men named Barry marched in support of Barry rights.
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...they were put there to keep cars out of certain national monuments, because those places get packed with tourists and require a law enforcement presence so people don't get run over and become speed bumps for the next impatient tourist.
Around here, they were barricading parking pullouts along the highway to prevent people from looking at the mountains in a national park. Yeah, I'm sure that was prompted by safety concerns.
"Barrycade" defined (Score:2)
to put up Barrycades
First, they're called barricades
Barrycade n. [Alteration of "barricade" after "Barry", nickname for Barack] A barricade associated with a U.S. government shutdown during the administration of President Barack Obama, whose political reputation was widely considered to ride on the success of a health care statute that was so abhorrent to the Republican caucus in the House of Representatives that they were willing to shut down the government over it.
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So, basically, you're saying that people can't be trusted to walk through a park without a police presence? You must be a very proud progressive.
BTW - barricades and Barrycades are quite distinct. Barricades are erected by competent authority to warn people of potential hazards. Barrycades were erected by political stooges so that Barry could figuratively thumb his nose at American citizens. I only wish that I had been in Washington with my fellow veterans when they picked those Barrycades up, and threw
Re:Hrrrm. (Score:5, Informative)
Just to clarify a point of information:
The Spanish Inquisition and the other Inquisitions of the Holy Roman Church were given a bad rap by 19th and 20th century researchers into medieval history. All because of a failure to recognize that a common type of secular trial at that time was called an "inquisition". These were not religious trials, these were secular courts. A trial by inquisition was different from a trial by jury and was probably similar to the way trials in Small Claims Courts are handled in the USA today.
The religious Inquisitions were nowhere near as large in scope or as influential on daily life as many historians who wrote between 1800 and 1950 believed them to be. It was only when historians were able to use computers to develop databases from original court records that the confusion between a secular trial by inquisition and a religious trial by the Church's Inquisitors was resolved. That work started in the 1970s, but it takes a while to transcribe hundreds of years of handwritten court records into databases, and the effort only began to bear fruit around 2005.
It turns out, for instance, that the "burning times" when witches were persecuted and sometimes executed occurred several centuries later than previously thought, were about two orders of magnitude less than previous estimates, and mostly involved secular courts. In fact, there were Papal edicts barring Church Inquisitors from going after witchcraft of itself. For that matter, a lot of the secular trials by inquisition for witchcraft were dismissed outright or resolved by fines-- as when a midwife was proven negligent or the village herbalist gave somebody foot powder in place of lice-be-gone.
We now return you to your regular Slashdot rantings...
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The Spanish Inquisition and the other Inquisitions of the Holy Roman Church were given a bad rap by 19th and 20th century researchers into medieval history.
The Spanish Inquisition operated under the sole control of the Spanish king, it was not a church institution and is not comparable with the Roman Inquisition.
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Yes, I should have been more clear. The Inquisitions by the Church were smaller in scope and limited in their actions.
The primary purposes of the secular Spanish trials by inquisition seems to have been to identify those who were still practicing the Jewish or Muslim faiths, so they could be properly brought into the Christian fold by renunciation of their old ways and confession of their sins, after perhaps a bit of torture. And of course concurrent with the confiscation of their property and wealth. Find
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The Spanish Inquisition and the other Inquisitions of the Holy Roman Church were given a bad rap by
... The people that survived.
FTFY
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It was only when historians were able to use computers to develop databases from original court records that the confusion between a secular trial by inquisition and a religious trial by the Church's Inquisitors was resolved. That work started in the 1970s, but it takes a while to transcribe hundreds of years of handwritten court records into databases, and the effort only began to bear fruit around 2005.
Can you clarify with specific examples of such databases? I work in a somewhat related field, and this comes as news to me. We don't have transcriptions for similar records hundreds of years more recent (and more relevant to our work) than those of the time period you're describing.
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I can offer links to bibliographies concerning the persecution of witches in the medieval period. But the focus of my work is on popular articles that influence today's neopagan and witch communities, so my reading is almost exclusively of derivative works.
Here goes:
* Hanover.edu bibliography of both primary sources and recent scholars [hanover.edu]
* Kings.edu bibliography on the subject [kings.edu]
* Jenny Gibbons, "Recent Developments in the Study of The Great European Witch Hunt" [draeconin.com], originally in __Pomegranate__, 1998 issue
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No, that is not information about the historical Tomas Torquemada in the Wikipedia article. It is a reasonable summary of what was thought to have been T's life and times by historians and biographers prior to the 1970 - 1990 revolution in assessing medieval European history, but much of the material available to those scholars is now suspect. Most of the "contemporary" data on T's life and work was brought to light about 30 years after his death (and, conveniently, after the deaths of all who could have di
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I have no children because I know I could not afford to give them everything they deserve. So, it would be a cruelty to them to be so self-centered as to have children anyway, knowing my situation, merely because I want them or think they're neat or think parenthood will fulfill my life or whatever. I have to consider what kind of life the child(ren) would have if I am to be a responsible parent. Maybe one day I'll be ready. I sure hope so.
Those kids went hungry because their mothers were too self-centered, or shallow, or not intelligent enough to make similar decisions. Yeah that does sound harsh. It sounds harsh because I care about children more than I care about playing to this crowd and sounding like a nice inoffensive person.
I suspect that is not the only reason that you don't have any children. I think it's stongly likely it would be your personal choice regardless of whether or not you had the means. In any case, your argument is essentially that no-one should ever have children since they can't know that they will always be able to provide for them. Even if you had the financial wherewithal now, you could not guarantee you would for the next 18 years. The fact is, people die, people get sick and don't die, couples break up,
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I think a lot of people disagree with your conclusion. I don't think that I should be obligated to work on behalf of someone else's survival if they are UNWILLING to work for themselves. Given that condition, I'd rather let them die.
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People easily confuse the government shutdown with the threats regarding the debt ceiling.
Lots of people could have cared less about the shutdown, but understood full well the consequences of default. Conflating the two over the ACA was a big mistake. Its my understanding is that the Tea Party aligned members of the RNC were responsible for that, but I could be wrong.
Re:too little, too late (Score:5, Insightful)
Quit being such a drama queen. The company screwed up. He screwed up. Everybody apologized. Life goes on. One mistake does not a Microsoft make.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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I agree. While it wasn't an awful apology, it did have a whiff of "I'm really sorry what I said is negatively impacting my interests" about it.
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Or, that the very least, you should at least tell the tale of the time that a Møøse bit your sister.
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Yes, *one mistake*. But Mark 'this isn't a democracy' Shuttleworth didn't make one mistake, he pisses off most users every time he opens his mouth, in his continuing attempt to become a Steve-Level-Asshole...
- "We do not vote on design changes"
- Unity
- Lenses
- MIR
- Teaparty
- Trademark Crap
to list just a few...
Trademark and Teaparty were just addressed, Unity and MIR we technical decisions*, and Lenses were (and are) a huge disaster and abuse of trust. But can you honestly name three other problems? I'm on Xfce/12.04 and wondering what should be next.
*They were open source code, so even if we think they were misguided and poor decisions, they were nowhere near Apple/Microsoft bad.
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GP says "One mistake does not a Microsoft make." And, you seem to argue that point. So - tell me, how many hardware manufacturers have been coerced into installing Ubuntu, and ONLY Ubuntu on all their hardware, with the threat that if they install ANYTHING else, they will be cut off? How many hostile takeovers has Ubuntu engaged in now? Does Ubuntu have a patent portfolio, with which they extort billions from Android and all other operating systems?
Everyone makes an ass of themselves sometimes. Only Bi
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Canonical has already shown it's stripes as the Microsoft of the Linux world,
Well, given that the majority of home computer users are using a Microsoft OS, and of those using Linux, I would imagine a large number (if not most) using a Canonical OS (or derivative), I'm not convinced that this is as much of an insult as you would like it to be.
Oh, and as for the other likely home computing OS, I've heard rumours that Steve Jobs wasn't altogether saintly either!
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Re:Open source tea party (Score:5, Insightful)
Mark Shuttleworth, you go to hell, you rigid, small minded twat.
I always admire how those who take the moral high-ground regarding insults, always manage to avoid using insults themselves!
Oh well, at least Mark Shuttleworth apologised.
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Mark Shuttleworth, you go to blazes, you rigid, small minded twit. I say that because your vapid insult works both ways. You insult those who rationally oppose the fragmentation caused by Mir. You insult the huge number of sincere tea party advocates with your insulting, condescending, stupid metaphor. And by the way, before you insult ME, I would feel exactly the same if you said "Socialist Workers Party", "Communist Party", or "Libertarian Party".
Actually, your closed mind is its own reward. You're not an
Re:shutterworth rage (Score:5, Funny)
"u gotta"? Jesus, kid, that's annoying. Please stop posting from your phone.
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"He didn't expected such a fuss about it, right now we can see the one and only Mark Shuttleworth doing damage control."
Further, he is trying to give the impression that they are being generous by not taking action, and that they could have taken legal action had they wanted to.
But the truth is that it is a US site, what it is doing is perfectly legal under US law ("fair use"), and Ubuntu has not a leg to stand on.
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And undrr US law, fair use is considered a defense against a violation which makes it problematic because fair use posses the potential of risk that might not be completely disbursed if the somewhat costly legal system fails it.
People do make mistakes though and i'm not sure this shouldn't be viewed as one. Perhaps the site gets an official license out of the deal. Time will tell