Slashdot Mirror

I was reading the "common sense" items listed here. Maybe lawyers don't get out much:

>A 13-inch wheel on a wheelbarrow warns: “Not intended for highway use”

The tires on my trailer, which is intended for highway use and has ST tires, are 13 inch. Considering the rubber itself is 80 dollars never mind the wheel, I could certainly see someone considering purchasing a wheelbarrow for the wheel. An intelligent warning. FWIW, most people without trailers don't even know that there's different grades of the same size tire that range from "Not intended for highway use (ie: Fine for your farm)" to "55 mph maximum highway use (ST Tires, what is on most small trailers" to "Light Truck 75 mph highway use".

When you buy tires for your car, unless you plan to drive like a maniac or bump into curbs, I bet you didn't even check the speed rating, did you?

>A snowblower warns: “Do not use snowthrower on roof.”

Ever wondered why houses in some areas have doors on the second level that lead to "nowhere"? Sometimes it's because they were converted warehouses. Other times, it's because the damn snow gets that high. That means bungalows in those areas could, in a freak storm, have a roof accessible from the ground. And snow that heavy will collapse the roof eventually. That snowblower sure is looking a lot better than a shovel for 10 feet of snow...

>A flushable toilet brush warns: "Do not use for personal hygiene."

They make a similar handle for toilet paper for the disabled, and, from the commercial, fatties. I bet the hospital grade one costs a lot more than the flushable toilet brush. Once again, like the wheelbarrow wheel, sometime price overrides someones more logical thoughts.

>A warning on an electric drill made for carpenters cautions: “This product not intended for use as a dental drill.”

Would it be this by chance?

https://www.dremel.com/en-ca/Attachments/Pages/ProductDetail.aspx?pid=225-01

Because I could totally see someone getting bad ideas about some home dentistry with that pic. Again, price.

Be sure to include the Avoid Death warning label on the manual.

Maybe there should some sort of rule against submitting links to sites run be people who don't understand the concept of thumbnails and providing a link to the larger version of the image. I'm talking about this page http://www.mlaw.org/wwl/photos.html

A humble toilet brush has beaten stiff competition to win US consumer watchdog group M-LAW's "Wacky Warning Label" contest. The offending item comes complete with the caveat "Do not use for personal hygiene" - a piece of advice sufficiently stupid to impress the jury of listeners of Detroit radio station, WOMC-FM. This year's contest - the eighth - attracted hundreds of entries from across the US. Runner-up position on the podium was occupied by a kids' scooter which declared: "This product moves when used." Third place went to a warning on a digital thermometer stating: "Once used rectally, the thermometer should not be used orally."

I especially like the fishing lure that says 'harmful if swallowed.'

besides all the theorical issues (free will, free speech) there are a couple of practical issues that I'd like to point out. It seems to me that we have to adapt rist our ideas to what is doable, instead of trying to adapt reality to our phylosophy.
first: computer generated graphics is going to be not distinguishable (by the typical perv-end-user who trolls online), so it will be hard to prove that one downloaded *real* child porn intentionally
second: generating child porn will at least 'start' from "real" images: or are all pornographist so good in CG that they won't even need a start point and will create a child image from scratch? third: what is the problem here, pornography as a concept or child abuse as a real fact? if the problem is pornography we could argue that it's just a form of expression. Sick, whatever you think. But still a form of expression for lonely people. If the problem is child abuse there's no issue here.
fourth: you are discussing this point under an US point of view. What if virtual child pr0n will be declared illegal in the us but legal in another country. Are you americans going to bomb them? Or even worse, to sue them? :)
fifth: In my opinion, a children who grows up in an "all-smiley-and-light" environment will be much more shocked when he/she'll face reality.