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Candidates' Positions On Internet Filtering
VirtualAdept writes: "The candidates' views came out in the debate last night on the issue of Internet content. Essentially it boils down to the fact that Bush favors putting a filter on all computers paid for by public money (libraries, schools, etc) and Gore favors ISPs having a 'parents' protection page every time 95 percent of the pages come up' as well as 'a feature that allows parents to automatically check, with one click, what sites your kids have visited lately.' The relevant quotes are on the third page of the Posts's debate coverage, about 1/4 of the way down on my window. Here is the start of the Washington Posts's debate coverage." Very few issues hit as close to home as this one.
And if any such laws are made, I would like them, as a citizen of the federation, to be uniform accross all states. I think it *is* a federal issue because it affects citizens everywhere, regardless of state.
Just because something affects everyone doesn't mean the federal government legally can or should address it.
The Constitution is quite explicit on this; anything not specifically granted to the federal government is the purview of the states, period.
I won't address your horrible misconceptions about Libertarianism; it's obvious that you haven't read anything of consequence on the subject. There are four times as many Libertarians working with the system as there are Greens, if measured by people in elected and/or appointed government positions who are members of the associated party.
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And I would expect Libertarians would be less afraid of Greens than the other two parties, because putting the political system back in the hands of the people could also allow the system to be changed the way they like it.
That's how Libertarians would feel if the Greens were indeed wanting to put political power "back in the hands of the people".
However, the Greens want political power in the hands of the people about as much as the Bolsheviks did.
Remember that when Nader says he wants control of various "societal assets" taken away from those who control them now and returned to "the people", what he is saying is that he wants property and businesses taken away from private companies and given to the government. I.E., Socialism, pure and simple.
When he says our "18th Century Democratic Rights need retooling for the proper exercise of our responsibilities as citizens in the 21st century" he means the Bill of Rights can't be allowed to get in his way.
Read their "Ten Key Values" and remind yourself that they're talking about THE GOVERNMENT controlling these things, not the people.
These people want to take complete control over all education in the US, eliminating the voice of even the states in their own public school systems, much less the community school boards.
The Greens have some occasional language in the US that is a sop to folks disgusted with the Democrats and the Republicans, but when you take their writings on the whole instead of looking at just a paragraph, you see a scary repeat of history that's already played out elsewhere.
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I'd give you karma points if I could!
Anyway, I find out I match with one Harry Browne, and am a liberal libertarian ^^
The nick is a joke! Really!
GPL Deconstructed
I think he means from an intelligence point of view. If someone is willing to make the same stupid mistake (albeit minor) three times in a row when the result is long term imprisonment, it's quite likely that they are complete idiots and will only get worse later on.
I'm not sure I agree with it, but I don't think it's as simple as "a minor making three minor offenses".
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
I agree completely my friend, and why should my kids even be supervised by me at all? First we must conquer the libraries then we can move on to robot nannies and send them off to a boarding school run by militant robots with drives jam packed with censorware.
The we can sit around with our wives and get back to enjoying 'Friends.' Damn those question-asking, need guidance, little midget wannabes.
Given that parents are too lazy to spend time looking after their children on the internet, as shown by desire to use magical filters to babysit for them, what makes them think the same parents would spend any time going thru a list of URLs to check whether their children have been bad?
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(assuming rational parents)
You assume too much.
Take a clear-headed, calm, rational person. Now make them a parent. About 95% of the time the result will be someone who is anything but rational, at least where their children are concerned.
The same appearent genetic trait that temporarily turns off a person's common sense before and during the act of conception must also be hard at work during the years that the resulting child lives with the parent. Some of the most ludicrous and ideas and hateful lies I've ever heard have been said by parents to their children. The average parent is demeaning, manipulative, dishonest, and often abusive. That is why I say that expecting parents to be rational is expecting too much. I'd expect a politician from New Orleans to be honest before I'd expect a mom to be able to think straight where her children are concerned.
And no I'm not a kid, I turn 29 in November.
Lee Reynolds
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
My guess is that they started contributing to the GOP _after_ the democrats started the anti-trust stuff.
Not to defend Microsoft, democrats, or Janet Reno, but...
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
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The number of people working for the federal government has gone DOWN under Clinton/Gore and went UP under Reagan/Bush and Bush/Quayle
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True, but the total spending (which is the important part) went the other way around.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
And perhaps you should "opt out" of using roads and ask for your money back? Maybe you don't use the public park, you should ask for your money back? Hey, you've never used welfare, ask for your money back?
If I didn't use the roads, it would absolutely be appropriate to give me that money back.
If I don't use the park, it's absolutely appropriate to give me that money back.
If someone else is too lazy to get a job, and too unfriendly to get help from their family or friends or church or whatever, why the hell should I be forced to pay for their upkeep? Especially to pay half my income to a system that wastes the vast majority of it on paying high government salaries and other crap instead of using it to help the needy?
If I want to help the needy, I'll give my money to an organization that will use most of it to help them, not an organization that will use 10% of it to give them food stamps, that are then used to buy a little bit of food and a lot of cigarettes and beer.
Welfare doesn't exist to help the needy; welfare exists to make as many people as possible dependant upon the government, so that they'll continue to vote for the folks who gave it to them.
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What exactly does that mean? What is childhood supposed to be in his estimation and how could some outside influence "rob" a young person of it?
Since I've heard this kind of baloney before, even back when I was a kid, I've had time to contemplate what it means and I've come to the conclusion that types like Nader think childhood is ignorance. Purposeful ignorance created and maintained to facilitate the brainwashing of the child by his or her parents. How many people do you know whose outlook on life and views on various issues are merely what their parents told them to think? How many people do you know who know how to think for themselves and who come to their own conclusions about the world based upon what they see with their own eyes? If we had fewer of the former and more of the latter the world would be a better place. The former are sheep for the slaughter.
Lee Reynolds
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
I think that's a euphemism for giving back extra money that was mistakenly taken from people to begin with.
Rich people pay, percentage wise, a proportionately high amount in taxes. Therefore, they probably have a lot more coming back to them.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
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Slashdot Cruiser, Slashdot candidate for the 2000 election, would like to formally announce his new plan for punishing the rich, redistributing the wealth, and giving a free ride to the hitchhikers left behind on our high-speed economic expressway.
Step one: Confiscate all the assets of one William Gates.
Step two: Take out a small portion for administrative overhead and a bitchin' rave.
Step three: Pay off the national debt with Mr. Gates' money.
Step four: Use the rest of the money to fund after-school prescription hot grits programs for the children and the elderly.
This is a program that will work. This is a program the Slashdotters will support. This is a program that the people want -- except for Mr. Gates, of course, and who cares what he wants? I didn't want his OS on my computer but I got it anyway, dammit.
No other proposal so successfully combines the principles proven by focus groups and polls to win votes. No other proposal appeals so directly to the thousands of disaffected geeks in America. No other program gives your lazy ass something for nothing so efficiently. Just look at all this program has to offer:
1) Instead of unfocused class-warfare against some nameless, facless, vaguely-defined "upper class", it focuses the collective tyranny of the majority against a SINGLE PERSON. We're not violating the rights of a minority, we're violating the rights of ONE GUY -- a guy nobody even likes! What's he going to do about it?
2) This one guy has more than enough money to solve our problems. Why pick the pockets of all the semi-rich when we can comment wholesale robbery against one person? Why spread the misery when we can focus it against the one person who was spread so much misery amongst Slashdotters?
3) The program is certain to be an instant hit among Slashdotters. Let's face it -- these people are basing their votes on what kind of web server the candidates use on their campaign sites! They don't care about the Constitution (other than the First Amendment's protection of their pr0n). They don't care about taxation (unless it's a tax on e-mails). All they care about are geek issues. And they hate Bill Gates. Lord, how they hate Bill Gates!
Do the Democrats take a stand against Bill Gates personally? Hardly -- he's one of their contributors. Do the Republicans? Excuse me while I laugh. Only Slashdot Cruiser is offering a plan to focus the suffering back on the one man who has caused us so much suffering. Only Slashdot Cruiser's plan will provide for a healthy, robust economy, universal petrification, and hot grits for the children WITHOUT RAISING TAXES.
Certainly there are extreme elements in the Slashdot Party who do not think this platform goes far enough. Some think we should not only take all Bill's stuff, but that we should torture and kill him. To these people I can only suggest patience -- we must bring the moderates with us one step at a time.
Maybe you're against it right now. You won't be after your next bluescreen. Think about it.
Slashdot Cruiser -- seeking justice, settling for revenge.
Got a full tank of hot grits and a penis bird in the glove box.
Oh boy, and how well will Gore's approach work for spouses? "Honey, are you visiting the Whitehouse online again? What is this Whitehouse.com site? I'm going to see why you are so interested in politics all of a sudden...click!"
John S. Rhodes
WebWord.com -- Industrial Strength Usability
How to Download YouTube Videos
I guess we could make the observation that Gore now wants to filter and regulate his own invention, but that'd be a bit redundant, don't you think?Personally, rather than vote for those morons, I'm going to vote for my Darth Vader Lego Keychain. He's done a bang-up job guarding my keys, and I doubt we'll notice much difference voting a hunk of plastic into office rather than a block of wood or a coke whore. Sharkey
www.bamf.com
I've never understood our society's anxiety and concern over controlling what children see and don't see. In fact its always struck me as a demeaning attitude born from animosity and ignorance.
Kids aren't tape recorders. They are human beings. As such they are continuously struggling to make sense of the world in which they live. Each day they learn new things and compare them to that which they already know. They make decisions and form conclusions which shape the way they look at the world as well as who they are as a person. As time goes by and their experience with life grows, they re-examine their conclusions and modify them to account for new information or form new conclusions altogether. In case this sounds familiar to you it is because this is not what it means to be a child, this is what it means to be a thinking human being.
So I ask you, what on earth is there to gain from censoring the information they have available to them? Is there anything in this world that is so dangerous as a thought or idea that they will be unable to deal with it and reject it if it proves to be untrue? What lies are there in this world that are that difficult to unmask for someone able to think and examine the evidence?
But what if we are the source of lies? What if we are the ones who are trying to unduly influence what our children believe? If we see children as clay in our hands to be molded into whatever our own personal neuroses say they should be, then censoring what they see and hear would be an important first step in that direction. If we hide knowledge of human reproduction from them we will be better able to instill our own obsessions and compulsions concerning the subject. If we hide other information which contradicts our own opinions and beliefs then we will be all the more able to manipulate their view of the world and ensure that their biases and prejudices are copies of our own.
Is this what we really want our children to be? Unthinking drones whose only thoughts and feelings are the ones we sanction or implant? I certainly don't want that for my children. If I felt that I would put a child through that sort of psychological and intellectual abuse then I would not dare have children as I would be a threat to their wellbeing.
Instead of trying to teach children what to think, we should work to teach them how to think. A mind trained to think logically and critically is difficult to fool and is more likely to find good answers to life's questions and problems. A mind not so trained can be mislead by every logical fallacy and rhetorical trick in the book as well those that haven't even been written down yet.
The mass stupidity which is continuously exploited by every group and faction imaginable largely exists because people do not know how to think. If they did the world might be a better place with less bullshit to have to deal with from both the right and the left. I can think of no better time to learn logical and critical thinking skills than as a child.
No child of mine will ever be the victim of censorship by me. Anything and everything which they might wish to read or see will be available to them. My role as a parent will be to teach them how to successfully think for themself and deal logically witht the thoughts and ideas they encounter, not to try and hide things from them that I might find personally offensive or believe to be untrue.
Lee Reynolds
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
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I wouldn't want my kids going down to the library to research something on the Internet and...
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Good. Don't.
Case settled.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
I dissent :-)
Sex makes babies. Not all of the time, but enough to be a major social issue. Violence, on the other hand, makes black eyes, which go away. In terms of safety, more people get herpes than get shot, and more people die from sex (HIV), then die from wars.
If we could all learn to make war, not love, the world would be a much safer place.
This is my sig.
From the Green Party's platform website
C. LIVABLE INCOME
1. We affirm the importance of access to a livable income.
2. Job banks and other innovative training and employment programs which bring together the private and public sectors must become federal, state and local priorities. People who are unable to find decent work in the private sector should have options through publicly funded opportunities.
3. Workforce development programs must aim at moving people out of poverty - a "living wage" campaign and "living wage" standard will go a long way toward achieving this goal.
4. We urge that a national debate be held and broad public mandate be sought regarding (fiscal and monetary) economic strategies and policies as they impact wages. This debate is long overdue. The growing inequities in income and wealth between rich and poor; unprecedented discrepancies in salary and benefits between corporate top executives and line workers; loss of the "American dream" by the young and middle-class - each is a symptom of decisions made by policy-makers far removed from the concerns of ordinary workers trying to keep up.
5. A clear living wage standard should serve as a foundation for trade between nations, and a "floor" of wage protections and worker's rights should be negotiated and set in place in future trade agreements. The United States should take the lead on this front - and not allow destructive, corporate predatory practices under the guise of "free" international trade.
I still say that the standard response to each of these is "don't do that then!" I know scads of people that have absolutely no felony convictions. It is a trivial manner to live your life in such a way as to avoid them. Even if you are a pot smoker it is a trivial manner to never carry or sell a "felony" level of marijuana. Every pot smoker in the entire United States is probably aware what a "felony level" amount of pot for their jurisdiction is.
You have a good point about the murderer/rapist only getting 10 years in jail. Of course the "fix" for this is simple. Throw the murderer in jail forever (or, better yet, make sure that the murderer has full access to the legal system and when due process has run out execute him).
The fact of the matter is that people do not have the right to do stupid things and get away with them. People with a felony conviction should be especially careful not to drive 95 on the freeway, they should stay away from spray paint, and they should be careful not to carry too much dope around. People with two felony convictions should probably reconsider the people they hang around with. If not, they are going to end up in jail with their so-called friends for a very long time.
Seriously, how in the world do you rehabilitate someone that continues to act irresponsibly despite the fact that they know that they could go to jail for the rest of their lives? If you can't get the clue light to come on by the third felony I would submit that it is relatively safe to conclude that they are criminally stupid and should be locked up for their own protection. These laws are not arbitrary, and they were created by you and your fellow citizens. If you don't like them, work at getting them changed (though I doubt you will have much luck, most people frown on vandalism, reckless driving, and felony quantities of weed). Just don't come crying to me when you get caught three times committing a felony. It's not like it's a big secret that breaking these laws could land you in jail for a long time.
And perhaps you should "opt out" of using roads and ask for your money back? Maybe you don't use the public park, you should ask for your money back? Hey, you've never used welfare, ask for your money back?
I think my point is that the government is there to provide some baseline. Now you can use that or not...your choice. But the government is not a set of options which you can redeem for money. Giving your public school funding money back is admittingly failure and an unwillingness to solve the problem. I do not agree with that. It is beyond my comprehension why one of the richest, most prosperous, most powerful, countries in the world cannot even create a quality education system. No, I don't think we should bail out. I think we should fix it.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
The goal is to have a certain *minimum* level of education for all citizens. Hey, if you don't want to use public education, or public roads, or public parks, don't...it's your choice. But the government should provide a standard minimum level of education for everybody. Your opinion of the role of government may differ. But in my opinion vouchers are admission of failure of that task and a cop out.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Well, I think in the most fundamental ways that government is needed, we are very much a "central" people.
;)
We all should have a *minimum* level of education.
We all should have a *minimum* level of health.
We all should have at least a very *minimum* means of subsistence.
These fundamentals don't change according to what state you're in. It is these few fundamental things that I think make sense to be federally sanctioned.
And while I was growing up I lived most of my life outside the United States in foreign countries. Now back in the states, I can't help but see, that *yes* we are a very "central" people. The world has gotten so much smaller since 1776...the "federation" doesn't even really make sense any more. Every little 200-person county has its own tome of archaic and peculiar laws. To a programmer that just doesn't make sense. Abstract, standardize, modularize, reuse
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
I think you miss the point (as many regulation-fearing "netizens" do). Nader is not about censoring, or government telling you what is right and wrong. Nader's *one* problem with entertainment is with corporatizing consumerizing culture it espouses. His complaint is that we are giving free reign to corporations to brainwash our kids, over our airwaves, from the time they are able to watch tv, until death. His complaint is that we are *letting* corporations pollute our schools with propaganda, *forcing* students to participate in a diet of their advertisement during *our* school ours. He is arguing that *we* as a people should take control back. Yes, I realize that it is up to parents to control what their kids what and do. However, we have allowed corporations to hold us hostage, to the point that there is *no* way to avoid their advertising and propaganda. Nader is for reclaiming this control over our own airwaves and our own schools. He is not telling you what you can and can't watch, other than saying that you should have *control* over what you can watch. Is there any geek around here, that, for instance, is *for* DVD controls that *force* you to watch advertisements? Many of us filter out ads in our browsers. That is control.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Yes, which is why we have to *fix* government, not an excuse to let corporations have free reign.
E.g., we should replace the robber with a trusted guard, not just say "oh well, the robber is a crook too, so, hey, everybody, let's grab some dough"
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
I think your argument needs some work.
I dissent :-) Sex makes babies. Not all of the time, but enough to be a major social issue.
Mostly true. I am gay, so I don't have to worry about unwanted pregnancy. (It's the *wanted* pregnancy which is a problem.)
Violence, on the other hand, makes black eyes, which go away.
You make it sound as if black eyes are the only outcome of violence, and we both know that this is not the case. Violence causes some damage that can be as trivial as what you claim, but can also bring about much more chronic and damaging things. Take death, for instance. Or disability. Or psychological damage (what happens to the innocent children who see their parents engage in violence).
In terms of safety, more people get herpes than get shot,
And more people engage in domestic violence than get herpes. I think domestic violence is a much larger problem than herpes will ever be. Herpes is non-fatal. We can't say the same thing for domestic violence, which can have long-reaching and long-lasting destructive effects.
and more people die from sex (HIV), then die from wars.
This is simply not true. 20 million Russians died in World War II. It's going to be a while before AIDS can claim that many. Besides, people die from AIDS because due to a virus, not due to sex. Yes, I know that the virus is transmitted sexually, but you also have to admit that other viruses are transmitted by much more innocuous human contact (e.g. tuberculosis). By your argument, all human contact causes death.
We need to learn how to stop disease, not human contact.
If we could all learn to make war, not love, the world would be a much safer place.
Unless you are the one who happens to get raped, pillaged, or killed in said war, right? I can't see how you have come to this conclusion.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
No. A popular vote is the most democratic answer, not the only representative answer.
It is fundamental to the design of our system that some things are counted by state, and others by population. There would *be* no ratified constitution without providing this type of protection to the small states.
If you want to remove our protection, go form a separate union of large states, or we'll leave and form our own. But you're not going to get us to go along sith stripping us of the constitutional prerogatives that were used to get us to join.
The U.S. is *not* the goverment. *The* government is the set of state governments, which delegate their power to the feds--and can withdraw this.
Quite simply, to submit the small states to the tyranny of the majority by the large states violates our most fundamental principle, government by consent of the governed.
hawk, a displaced Nevadan
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-- SIGFPE
I consider myself a small "L" libertarian who doesn't want to waste his vote in such a close election. so i'm going with Bush, however if it looked like it wasn't such a close election i think i'd have to vote for nader. Why? because i can only hope that his party gets their "= billing" in the next election and is able to split the vote of the democrats in two for a couple years, giving the republications a greater majority than they have, so if you like what nader has to say AT ALL, please vote for him. (my first post on /. ever, although i've read it nearly every day for 2 years.)
Gore's plan seems to be really horrible... it puts a huge responsibility on ISPs. They have to intercept web requests and insert their own parent-blocking-thing. Most ISPs don't have this infrastructure. They also don't have the infrastructure to keep track of what pages you've visited. And that's a lot of stuff for them to keep track of, not to mention that there are other barriers (encryption).
Bush's idea to put blocks on public computers may be a bad idea, but at worst you won't be able to get to some sites you need to get to at your library. With Gore's plan, suddenly ISPs have a huge responsibility to keep track of everyone's usage, and when they do that they open themselves for (A) lots of lawsuits and (B) now the gov't can subpeona your browsing history from your ISP that they have to keep. There goes all your privacy.
Not only that, we've seen recently that many ISPs back down from big corporate pressure... since your ISP now has a list of everywhere you've visited some corporation can sue your ISP ``unless you tell us everyone who has downloaded an mp3'' or something.
-- Erich
Slashdot reader since 1997
I think I'm voting for Bush, if only for the lesser of two evils.
I was struck by the comments generated when one Joyce Klinger asked about morality and Hollywood and violence, and children.
He talks about character education in schools, filters in the public libraries(as you alluded to), after school programs etc.
But what 'impressed' me was his voice against censorship. Yes, you can talk to Hollywood and such, and ratings would be helpful, and controls would be helpful, but, he says:
"I'm going to remind mothers and dads: The best weapon is the off-on button, and paying attention to your children and eating dinner with them..."
So, unless you're just reading sound bites or something, Bush qualifies as a candidate.
Gore, on the other hand, wanted ISPs to have "parents' protection page every time 95% of the pages come up. And a feature that allows parents to automatically check, with one click, what sites your kids have visited lately."
Which sounds like a privacy nightmare for kids and families. Who gets access to this information *other* than parents?
The nick is a joke! Really!
GPL Deconstructed
I don't know if I these proposals are useful, but I don't think that they're censorship. The proposal to allow for monitoring what sites your kids go to seems like it would be pretty easy to implement in a browser. All you really need to do is lock down the browser history feature. It wouldn't take very long to add a feature to Mozilla that required password access to clear/alter the history.
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Preventive War is like committing suicide for fear of death. - Otto Von Bismarck
But later (or before, I forget) Gore's idea on parental responsibility came up again specically on a question about how to make sure that parents are responsible when it comes to education needs. Both candidates quickly skimmed away from how to deal with lax parents and went into their blurbs about their various education plans. But this is really an important point - if the parents are not going to spend the time and investiment in the education of their students, are they going to spend the time and investiment in makign sure their kid is only visiting good sites? Probably not.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
When/how did you interpret Bush as regulating speech from his debates? Perhaps it was something outside his debate, but it would seem that Bush has no interest in censorship, from his response to Joyce Klinger as regards the Internet, Hollywood, morals, etc.
The nick is a joke! Really!
GPL Deconstructed
Hasn't either candidate used a browser in the last five years? There's something called View History...
sulli
RTFJ.
And by god, if I catch Jenny looking at that birth control website again she's gonna get the beating of her life.....
As this is only my opinion, I'll say what I think.
There needs to be a simplification of roles. Either a child is given privacy and all the responsibilities that come with it, or the parent must be able to check on their child.
We're living in a time where parents can be held responsible for a child's actions, and must pick up the peices when a child makes a mistake. Never mind the fact that the child made the mistake under the protection of privacy, thus the parents had no way of knowing what was going on.
Which is it? Jenny has privacy and freedom to view a site on birth control, screw up usage instructions, and then the parents must take up the bill for her mistake? Or allow the parents to see this behavior and perhaps (assuming rational parents) give her direction to the right decision? Parents giving direction? Well, yes, that is their job after all.
You just gave your argument against Gore; what is it that Bush has said that makes him against a free or open internet?
The nick is a joke! Really!
GPL Deconstructed
School and library funded computers should be used for research purposes, and using filtering software to do that is a reasonable approach. (Common sense should also come into it -- a student should be able to request the filter be disbaled to reach a site normally blocked if there is a good reason behind it.)
On the other hand, Gore's approach really is creepy -- compel ISP's to provide an ability to track users so that parents can snoop on their kid's activites? It ain't censorship, but it is draconian.
Remember, it's one thing to say that government resources have restrictions, it's quite another for the government to force private industry into doing its will, no matter how good the intention.
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Why the hell would you vote for someone that supports a MAXIMUM WAGE? thats not freedom, infact its exactly the opposite. while I agree with you on Bush and Gore Nader is definetly not what you think he is. He's socialism 100%. IF you want that, then move to Switzerland. I'll take freedom and lousy presidents any day.
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It doesn't seem to radical...
Controlled access in a public institution. Not saying I agree with it, but a library has to dictate it's choices based on morals, bandwidth, resources, allocations, etc anyway.
A library does not have unlimited bandwidth. It seems as reasonable to stop porn as it does anything else. I do have concerns when he wants to filter violence and pornography, but it doesn't seem a bad idea to filter it in general.
Bush does have points for mentioning:
"But I'm going to remind mothers and dads: The best weapon is the off-on button, and paying attention to your children and eating dinner with them."
I don't know enough about Nader to vote for him. But I think I'm more comfortable with Bush, than with Gore.
The nick is a joke! Really!
GPL Deconstructed
When did we (collective USA population) give up our self-responsibility and self-reliance? And WHY?
I, as a parent, am responsable for teaching my child right from wrong, and for protecting my child against harm. I decide what is right and wrong, based on my upbringing, ethics and values. And I decide what is the best way to protect my child. What I consider right, others may consider wrong. And what others may consider harmful, I may consider worth knowing about.
It is also my responsibility to know what my child is doing (not at all times, as that is simply not possable), and to take responsibility for what she does, until she is mature enough to take the responsibilities on her self.
As a result, if she is on the net, then I'm damn well going to be there to help guide her and answer questions for her. A piece of filtering software can't do these things. Expecially when the user of the software is not allowed to know EXACTLY what is being filtered and WHY!
With this said, Bush is says that when my child is online, I should forget about all of these responsabilities and turn it over to a piece of software, that will make the decisions as to what my child my read/see and not read/see. The decisions will be a one size fits all based on who knows what.
Gore's ideas are better, but I'm afraid that his ideas will just be a stepping stone to Bush's form of filtering.
Also, the idea that my child has to come home to look for information, because the libraries have been prevented from providing it, is just plane bad! The idea of a library is to provide a central place to find information. If we allow filtering to happen, then we might as well close the libraries down.
Bush calls for faulty filtering software, which I can live with because I, and many I know, can circumnavigate around it.
Gore, however, wants ISP level controls and filters and checks available to parents, and not for the parents to do it themselves! Which means anyone else with proper authority can also check on the activities of anyone on the internet, because an ISP cannot differentiate between a kid and a parent at the same terminal at home.
Dunno, look up Joyce Klinger's question and both responses to see what I'm talking about, page 3 of the debates.
The nick is a joke! Really!
GPL Deconstructed
The Constitution party has their own set of lies.
They claim to be in absolute favor of state sovreignity, but they also want federal laws requiring states to observe one particular religion's ideas about marraige, regardless of the wishes of the citizens of those states.
Thus, they expose themselves even in their own party platform.
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From The Onion
Quiquid latine dictum sit altum viditur
Create a 'router' box. The box would come in 56k modem variety, or ethernet variety. Basically, on the 'input' side would be either a phone cord or cat5 input, output side would be a special cord, maybe USB or some special port design that needs a new card. Inside the router box would be a small HD (a gig or so) and necessary software. Note that both input and output would not be ports, but cords that come from inside the box so they can'd be disconnected or bypassed.
The box basically acts as a firewall/router. Software on the computer can activate the modem if necessary. All network requests would go through this box, and can be logged. The router would respond to local address calls, and would require password protection to access. As the way the cords are set up, and assuming you remove the modem from the computer, you can't bypass this system easily by just physically connecting the wires any differently. Otherwise, the kid would have to go into the computer, install the modem or netcard, and then go from there, but that would have a much larger chance of detection by the parents than just hacking around filtering software. I'd say that these would run no more than $100, and probably could be down to $50 if done right.
The only major way to break this is to find the password to the box, but that's the problem with any secure system.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
http://slashdot.org/articles/00/06/19/059246.shtml
Read the bit about the Wired expose.
As for libraries. Instead of filtering software, how about just having the libraries check up on the patrons from time to time? Filtering software is flawed, and has been found guilty of consistently blocking critical information.
I've always had enormous difficulty getting information at libraries with filtering software installed. Not just blocked links. Many of them block entire protocols. No ftp, telnet, or gopher.
-- perl -e'print pack"H*","6e656d6f406d38792e6f7267"'
The purpose of having libraries is to provide the public access to information, and Internet filtering attacks this mission. There's no reliable way to filter out, for example, Porn, without denying library patrons access to: health information, information for survivors and victims of sexual abuse, scientific papers about human reproduction, discussions about sexual ethics and morals. The list goes on. There's no reliable way to filter bad information without filtering good information
Not everyone has, or can afford, Internet access. For many people, libraries are their only free access to this information. They are also, for the most part, free of censorship.
Every library I know anything about has policies against using library resources to access porn, or play games. This is reinforced by the library staff far more effectively than can be done by software. Some libraries have porn filters in the childrens secion, but allow full access from machines in other sections of the library, which seems to be a decent compromise.
It's easy for Bush and Gore to talk about Internet censorship, they're just preaching to the reactionary and the ignorant.
_____________
I'll bet / with my Net / I can get / those things yet.
_____________
I'll bet / with my Net / I can get / those things yet.
--Dr. Seuss
The Bell Curve is racist?! Have you even read it, or do you prefer burning books in advance of thoughtful discussion? I don't happen to agree with the primary thrust of the book as it doesn't acknowledge cultural influence upon the statistics. But to mention it in the same breath as Mein Kampf, a piece of historical propaganda and fiction is unjustified. I happen to agree with you that filters in public libraries are a bad idea, more because it is a slippery slope, and there can not be adequate discussion of what is and what is not filtered. Frankly, you are absolutely right that a little supervision, or even mere public exposure, will more constructively control this behavior than any filtering software
But back to your initial comment. The fact that you somehow believe that The Bell Curve, an almost entirely statistical work done on studies and statistics generated by other entities is "Hatred and racism" is perhaps the best proof of your argument. Clearly this is part of contentious public discussion, and as soon as we start the book burnings/filtering we control the course of that discussion in an unacceptable manner. We let the bias of someone, anyone, to determine what is and what is not acceptable.
Even so, we need to be far more cognizant of suggestions that change the nature of the Net itself, and which permit greater control of personal information.
Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes "Who Keeps the Keepers Themselves" ~ Juvenal
A year ago, I came up with a novel solution, one which I intend to carry over to our new family house. The television will not be hooked up. It will be connected to the VCR and the stereo receiver, so that we can watch movies as we choose them. But that's it. No cable feed, not even an antenna. There's not enough really good television programming to make it worth having that permanent distraction taking up our family room.
So many people think of television as some kind of basic human right that they ignore this possibility. The same goes for internet access. Thousands of Americans don't have any way to access the World Wide Web, and they're not suffering for it. If you don't like what the Internet has to say, don't turn it on. It really is that simple.
Now, what should we do about public libraries? In my opinion, nothing. Hatred and racism like The Bell Curve and Mein Kampf are already available in most sizable public libraries for those who want it; literary pornography is easily accessible to anyone who can find the romance section. And if you don't want to deal with kids browsing porn away from their parents, then just position the monitors so that a librarian at their desk can see what's being downloaded.
This is, as far as I know, the single best example of politicans saying what they think people want them to say instead of thinking through a practical solution to things. Mandatory filtering software has already been tried out extensively, and it never works right: it never filters everything, and usually ends up filtering things it shouldn't because of too-narrow criteria. Gore's proposed solution is poorly thought out, but Bush's is just insipid.
I'm willing to agree that *both* candidates lie, and that neither is particularly trustworthy.
One thing I can put against Bush, however, is that ID software resides in Texas, and that Texas is responsible for the most violent games in the world, right now. *grin*
Likewise, that his is also the gun-state (I think. Did I get that wrong?). And the cowboy state.
Still, that seems to be the way politics works. You represent the most voters, you get the most voters. If you screw them over (by going back on your word, by violating your 'contract') you can get kicked out, replaced, or just not elected.
Dunno, I still haven't seen any reason to vote for Gore yet. His ISP/monitoring plan bothers me.
The nick is a joke! Really!
GPL Deconstructed
... other than the minor technicality that the page you linked to doesn't say anything of the sort, you make a great case.
What Nader is against is giving corporations direct access to the schools as a captive audience to market to. You see, us commie pinko radicals have the crazy notion that schools are for learning more important things than what cola brand to drink and what shoe brand makes you cool. What we're worried about may just be the idea that if an organization starts funding a program, they're going to want to influence its content. I bet you'd scream like a pig stuck with a hot poker if you found out your school was using a lesson plan on agriculture sponsored by PETA, and you wouldn't buy the defense "they're just paying for it, they're not writing it." It hasn't possibly occurred to you that if the lesson plan was sponsored by "Supermarket to the World" ADM, it might have a bias, too?
What Nader's website actually says on that page you linked to is, "It is easy to point the finger at the Marilyn Mansons. But they are merely instruments. Speaker Hastert and Senate majority leader Lott ought to focus on the deeper problems. Behind every Marilyn Manson are corporations and corporate executives who cynically draw their large compensation packages from the fruits of such work." Woo.
Brin makes a good observation in his article (the personality traits that make someone a good gadfly aren't necessarily the ones that you want in a political leader), and the page has a lot of political grandstanding (maybe Nader has some of the qualifications we evidently look for in leaders after all--whoops, I'm being cynical). But pulling a column which is on marketing to children (you know, the page on Nader's site that you found it on puts in a category called "Marketing to Children") and pointing it to say, "Ooh, look, those nasty liberals want to censor everything!" is disingenous at best. Us nasty liberals have our faults, but failing to support free speech and civil liberties is, by and large, not one of them.
There are definitely more than two candidates.
The only two I'm at all familiar with right now is Bush and Gore.
I've heard Nader vaguely, and throughout this thread/slashdot post, Brown mentioned.
I'm behind on the times, unfortunately. My vote would go to the person that would do the least damage to our country, I think.
I saw your sig, but didn't follow the link. Just did, now.
The nick is a joke! Really!
GPL Deconstructed
Hell, folks!
Now we know why the Clinton Administration wants Carnivore up and running: its web page reconstruction capabilities fit in nicely with Mr. Gore's desires here. After all, the Gub-mint can do _anything_ to 'save the children'.
While I do not care for either candidate too much, the current administration's desire to have government oversight of packets flowing through ISP's scares the poop out of me.
FBI position on Carnivore states that harvesting of headers does not require a warrant, as it is functionally equivalent to a pen register, only content of messages requires a warrant. I would bet dollars to doughnuts that reconstruction of web pages visited won't require a warrant either, since I imagine this does not constitute a private person-to-person communication.
Put that together with the Administrative Supoena provisions of the Fugitive Apprehension act S.2516 and you have a recipe for incredibly intrusive surveillance of ordinary law-abiding citizens.
This bill will allow access to many different kinds of records of anyone _in contact_ with a Fugitive (merely charged or sought for questioning, not convicted, mind you!), prevent the entity furnishing the records from disclosing this fact to the subject of the investigation, and allow unlimited delay of government notification to the subject that they were the subject of an investigation.
This proposal of Gore's opens up complete surveillance of packets for all surfers, not just those who are under investigation.
Why not make it simpler for ISPs (take all the admin and compliance overhead out) and just mandate one NAP in DC (Ft. Meade, actually) that all packets traversing the US have to go through and no more difficulties with things like laws and the 4th amendment. Just a few DNS changes and Bob's your uncle.
This makes me want to puke.
No..
what I mean is, at any particular access point to the rest of hte Internet, THAT is where things like 'how should this access be provided' and 'waht kind of filtering' should be discussed, period. I'm not speaking technically, but politicaly.
If I want my kids to only use the intenret connection in the house if it's filtered, that's for me to decide, not the government.
If a community doesn't want its' public library to allow open internet access.. that's fine.
But at a federal level? Shouldn't happen period.
A little story:
With apologies to Douglas Adams, both for borrowing the passage, and for mangling it so in the paraphrasing...
The moral of this story is:
Reducing a political race to two irrelevant candidates does not mean that you are obligated to vote for the less irritating of the irrelevant. Vote for a candidate you can actually support. It's only a wasted vote if you throw it away on someone you do not want to be your president.
---
"The Constitution...is not a suicide pact."
"Life. Don't talk to me about life."
...proxy...server...
This puts the power in the hands of the parent and removes it from everyone else. Unfortunately, most ISPs' terms of service forbid this, meaning that the most effective solution is denied to parents. I would like to see the two candidates OUTLAW the provision that exists in many ISP's agreements (especially DSL and cable ISPs) that prohibit filtering by the parents. (It is a contract violation for me to have multiple computers attached to my cable modem.)
What I'd like to do is put a Linux box between my kids' computers and all the other computers in the house. The box, the cable modem, and the hub would be under lock and key, and only I and my wife would know the root password (not that she'd know what to do with a root password). Granted, an intelligent kid could hack the whole setup, but frankly, if the kid is old enough and smart enough to do that, and wants to hack past my parental controls, my job as a parent is just about finished, whether I like it or not.
Internet access that is paid for with public funds should be filtered. The filter lists should be open (and public as well), and there should be methods in place so that reasonable folks can get the information that they need at a public library. Blocking skin tones, while clever, would actually be a bad idea (IMHO). If you were looking for medical information, for example, blocking skin tones could prevent a problem. It's the classic case of Playboy versus National Geographic. One is pornography and the other is probably available in your children's elementary school. Librarians should have no trouble sorting this out, they've been doing it forever.
On the other hand, private Internet access should be just that private. The second you start mandating that ISPs keep histories of where their clients have been then you have a proven recipe for trouble. There are plenty of ways of finding out what your children have been looking at on the Internet. I currently use squid, but there are piles of software that do precisely that. And if you really want a squeaky clean ISP, there are plenty of those available as well. Let someone else do the filtering for you.
Gore is clearly cracked if he thinks that the answer is to force ISPs to keep track of where everyone surfs.
Ok here's the difference: a person sentenced to death in Texas is much much more likely to be black than a newborn. It's not much more likely to actually be guilty however.
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If you have studied philosophy or sociology, then you know from the Kantian problem of order that there is no natural law or rights. The
government is socially constructed and is enpowered by the people. The people decided that free speech is good and therefore it was put in the amendments. If people then choose to limit it in someway, then it is the people's choice.
The people chose to be bound by the Constitution. If they decide to choose to no longer be bound by it, that's one thing; but to simply violate it because part is inconvenient violates the law.
Not the natural law, you pulled that one out of your ass; the Law, which is what I was clearly talking about.
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George W Bush is stating that he's not for big government.
What is big government really? Is it a government that spends a lot of money? Yes it is.
Do we already have that? Yes.
Is a President going to be able to shrink it? Probably not. That's more in the hands of congress and they don't want to when it all comes down to it.
Is it also a government that's telling you what you can and can't do? Yes. It's that too.
We're always worried about Big Brother. We should also be worried about the government trying to act paternal with us. Parents should be allowed to raise their children. That means if I want my child to be able to read oldmanmurray the government should not be able to override me.
That's the correct position on the internet, IMHO. It still doesn't get the libertarians my vote.
America's got a lot of problems, but it's pretty prosperous overall. It's not a bad enough system that we should take our current paradigm, where the government takes 50% of our money for itself to turn around and tell us what to do, and move that DRASTICALLY to 100% (Stalinist communism) or 0% (Pure libertarianism).
What we ought to do is look for a candidate who wants to protect our rights and shrink goverment, say, 20%. Sadly, no such candidate exists.
"Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he deems himself your master."
Even if we suppose internet filtering software works (it clearly doesn't) or that it will some day soon (it won't) government censorship is completely unacceptable. No matter how loudly advocates cry "It's for the CHILDREN."
The solution is for any public internet access provider to have the strict rule "No internet access for unsupervised children."
What children see on the internet is being treated as a technical problem. It is not. It is a societal (and more specifically a parenting) problem.
I am a big fan of technology, but unsupervised children in an uncontrolled (and inherently adult) environment was a problem before computers were ever dreamed of. Fifty years ago people weren't demanding guards in the red-light districts to prevent their unsupervised children from seeing something they shouldn't!
C. LIVABLE INCOME
1. We affirm the importance of access to a livable income.
2. Job banks and other innovative training and employment programs which bring together the private and public sectors must become federal, state and local priorities. People who are unable to find decent work in the private sector should have options through publicly funded opportunities.
3. Workforce development programs must aim at moving people out of poverty - a "living wage" campaign and "living wage" standard will go a long way toward achieving this goal.
4. We urge that a national debate be held and broad public mandate be sought regarding (fiscal and monetary) economic strategies and policies as they impact wages. This debate is long overdue. The growing inequities in income and wealth between rich and poor; unprecedented discrepancies in salary and benefits between corporate top executives and line workers; loss of the "American dream" by the young and middle-class - each is a symptom of decisions made by policy-makers far removed from the concerns of ordinary workers trying to keep up.
5. A clear living wage standard should serve as a foundation for trade between nations, and a "floor" of wage protections and worker's rights should be negotiated and set in place in future trade agreements. The United States should take the lead on this front - and not allow destructive, corporate predatory practices under the guise of "free" international trade.
If parents are able to check which pages their children have viewed then there are serious privacy implications. If the ISP has the records then the government can obtain a warrant for their disclosure. Will the ISP log just children's accounts, or all accounts. Most families today all share one account with the ISP. Also what happened to the law that prohibits collecting information on children under the age of 13.
But, people see exactly what they want on the internet. Now, granted, it's sometimes hard to find what you want with the rotten state of today's search engines, but it still takes quite a dunce to "accidentally" hit a porn site and start downloading stuff. If kids are sitting in school computer labs downloading porn, or reading white supremecy websites, or reading a rant by some kid who wants to blow up his school, there's a better question to ask than "how did they get ahold of this" -- WHY did they get ahold of this?
I think answering this would provide a lot more insight into kids' minds than putting up arbitrary boundaries on their experience, mostly because it requires TALKING to kids. Internet filtering seems mostly like an attempt to dodge complex, difficult parenting responsibilities.
Where can I get a filter that will prevent my kids from browsing political sites?
Kevin Fox
Kevin Fox
What do you think about Nader's support of a MAXIMUM WAGE? ie. Nader wants the goverment to PROHIBIT people from earning more than $X dollars...
Isn't it amazing that the proposed max is just a bit more than his own income?
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Don't vote for the lesser of two evils. Vote for me, and let my unholy reign of darkness begin. Yes, people of America, you *will* bow down before me!
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
You mean taxpayer money. Bush favors the government taking money from high income earners and using that money to police other people's kids.
The most disgusting aspect of this is that the Republicans claim to be for smaller government then propose a big-government "solution" to a problem that does not exist.
It still comes down to a matter of parents deciding to be responsible for their own children. The government has no place here. When asked the question about Internet content filtering, Gore and Bush should have both replied, "It's not the job of the government to decide what people's children should see and should not see. It is the job of the parents."
Which is what the candidate who is getting my vote believes.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
And here's Howard Phillips of the Constitution Party, from an interview...
Constitutionally Correct
Gore invented the History button in browsers!
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The gravitational constant of protein has changed. - Turbine
Watching the debates last night, i was truely frightened when Bush started talking about blocking content at libraries and schools nationwide. Then he claimed it wasn't censorship. I was expecting him to go on to talk about how "some of the books in them thar libraries ain't too great either, and down in texas we got a solu'ion! We burn 'em! wooo yeeee hah!"...
Both are evil men. One is a stupid evil man, one is a slightly less stupid evil man. Just vote nader and walk away with a clear concious...
Being the grandson of the lady who administered numerous libraries in the past, I can tell you that our libraries are ALREADY censored.
In Texas, for instance, the Federal Government siezed all land-rights documents dating from the early 1800's. Why? Because the hispanics were going and finding their Gransparent's land grants that the State didn't enforced. They were sueing the US Government and winning.
It is also known that some unknown branches of the Government monitor the Materials checked out of libraries. I know several people who have been questioned about their choices in physics books. Some slashdotters know what I am talking about as well.
Lots of other stuff too.
Pan
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
Or perhaps you should just not paint on people's walls. The beautty of three strike laws is that you get "three strikes." Any kid stupid enough to get caught three times vandalizing deserves to spend their life in prison.
Natural selection is not necessarily a bad thing.
Asking a politician to legislate morality is like asking a fox to guard the henhouse.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Not to mention that I doubt that Joe and Jane Middle-Class-Voter are using either Linux or BSD. They're probably using "Windows to run the Internet"
Yes, I deliberately misphrased it, because (at the risk of sounding like a 1337 h4X0r), that's how the average guys sees it.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
You left out this part:
"Our society, even 10 or 20 years ago, would not have tolerated such youth-beamed depravity. These are the motivations that relentlessly drive the creation, production, and marketing of ever more Doom, Quake, Basketball Diaries, Marilyn Mansons, Mortal Kombat I and II and III and IV, Jerry
Springers, Howard Sterns, South Parks, and the rest of it.
This poison has got to stop. Enough is enough."
How do you interpret "This poison has got to stop. Enough is enough."?
I interpret it to mean he thinks the things he mentions are poison, and that he wants to stop them.
Before you argue that he doesn't want Congress to legislate them away, consider this, from later in the document:
"There is nothing Congress could do that is more important than making America's children safe again from the interests that would rob them of their childhood."
MAKING them safe. He's quite clear about it.
You picked out the nice safe quote that didn't hurt your case, but conveniently left out the damning revelations. That's why I linked the whole document instead of quoting; my agenda was to let people read it, not just your wishful-thinking interpretation of what you wish he'd said.
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Public Internet access should be filtered.
I wouldn't want my kids going down to the library to research something on the Internet and, knowing how searches bring up nonsense 98% of the time, pulling up some elephant sex porn site or something equally as disturbing. Then they'll come home and ask you about it, then what are you going to say?
Now, as far as the "feature that allows parents to automatically check, with one click, what sites your kids have visited lately," I believe it's called the HISTORY. Go buy NetNanny or filtered access from your provider, or, better yet, don't let your kids use the Internet.
I remember seeing this piece of software that could actually block images based on the amount of skin tones in it. It truly was a remarkable piece of software. It wasn't able to block everything, but it got most of the more raunchy images.
Mike
"I would kill everyone in this room for a drop of sweet beer."
I haven't seen this anywhere else, but I got this message, and I thought I would share:
On Friday, October 20, from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m., Judicial Watch will host a nationally televised presidential debate featuring Natural Law candidate John Hagelin, Democrat Al Gore, the Green Party's Ralph Nader, Reform candidate Pat Buchanan, Libertarian candidate Harry Browne, and Howard Phillips. George W. Bush has been invited but has yet to accept.
The debate will be televised on C-SPAN and C-SPAN 2, and maybe on some local stations. The times are Central, so check you local listings.
Gee, we have another poster here who posts before he reads...
Gore himself made this joke during the debate (I watched the debate and paraphrase here from memory, so forgive me if its not cut-and-paste perfectly quoted from the Post site). He said that he would like to see filtering software that parents wont have to ask their kids for help in setting up.
Seriously people, if you work in the tech sector, or care about the future of the Internet AT ALL, theres really only 1 candidate you can vote for (and no, they are not from one of the 10 "3rd parties" out there).
The ivory tower has never had to reach so h
first of all both of the candidates said exactly what the woman wanted to hear, of course. Then since they both don't know really what they're talking about they praised filtering software. Anyone who's had any experiences with this kind of software knows that it doesn't only filter out porn and other "offensive materials" but it also filters out half the sites you go to. Although out of the two of them Gore actually had ideas about new stuff to do with them: "I've been involved myself in negotiating and helping to move along the negotiations with the Internet service providers to get a parents' protection page every time 95 percent of the pages come up. And a feature that allows parents to automatically check, with one click, what sites your kids have visited lately." Can't you do this with Internet Explorer anyhow? Good stuff, good stuff
"Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth." John F. Kennedy
Most browsers have had that capability for a long time. There's a little thing you can click on M$IE called "History". Obviously Mr. Gore isn't quite as knowlegable as he likes to make out. Or perhaps he's going to patent "One Click Snooping" ;-)
Sure, people can delete the history, but I'm sure that any scheme you care to come up with can be defeated. One of my older co-workers caught his son looking at porno just this way. I told him "Well, at least you know for sure he's into women and not into sheepshagging". He accepted the point and wasn't too hard on his son ;-)
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Well, except for abortion, gay rights, military action, gun registration, workers rights, corportate welfare, social saftey net, and a couple dozen other things....
Niether of their positions is terribly radical and I can't think of anything either could say about the internet as a whole that would be more important to me than their positions on other core issues.
Kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...
I'm willing to agree that *both* candidates lie, and that neither is particularly trustworthy.
You say "both" like there are two candidates.
There are a hell of a lot more than two.
Dunno, I still haven't seen any reason to vote for Gore yet. His ISP/monitoring plan bothers me.
If you think I'm suggesting you vote for Gore, you must have not only skimmed my post instead of reading it, but also turned off signatures.
I wouldn't vote for Gore to be put out if he was on fire. As for his wife, I've called her a dangerous idiot to her face.
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If these issues are all "close to home," you'd seem to imply that you're a pregnant lesbian ex-soldier who can barely survive on the $5.15 you now make at Wal Mart.
Or I care about people who fall into those catagories, or it is possible for me to be effected by those issues.
Of course if "close to home" only means "effected directly by" as you seem to imply, the orriginal statement about the candidates positions was even more ludicruis. I have never used the internet from a public terminal of any kind and don't use my parents machine, so the actual statements made in the dabate are no where near my home (or I suspect, most /.ers)
Watch out where you shoot your mouth, you might hit the wrong target. :)
kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...
And all our public schools will turn to (or remain) shit? No thanks, I'd rather fix the system than patch it.
Although some issues of taxation pop into my head, I don't see it as unreasonable to let people choose what public school they want their kid to go to right now. I mean, it is *public* school. They can also choose to put their kid in private school if they have the money. But public money should not be used for vouchers, saying "I'm sorry, our public schools are crap, here, take this consolation gift". Public schools should be fixed. They should all provide at least a minimum level of quality education. I'm not just going to give up and say, "Ok, we failed, sorry."
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Why is it that we have several (ie, more than two, and definitely more than 3) candidates to choose from, but none of them seem to have all the ideas that we geeks like?
In other words, there's Nader, who seems to have it all together regarding privacy, but thinks that computer games and media violence causes "kids to shoot kids", and should be eliminated (or regulated to nothing).
Browne's against censorship, but is for things that make us cringe. The same goes for Gore and Bush (they each have ideas I like, and others I don't).
All of these candidates are like buying a cake that has a dill pickle in the middle (and a big one, at that). You like the cake, it is sweet - but you know there is a big piece of sourness on the inside, and it permeates the whole, making it all seem not worthwhile.
I see so many posts of "hold your nose and vote this way". Why should I hold my nose? Why isn't there one candidate that is fair and respectful for ALL THINGS. One candidate that knows what is right and wrong LOGICALLY - not "logic" based on a complete emotional level (I can allow some emotion - otherwise we would be led by a robot, and that isn't good at all). One candidate that works for the people, taking all their interests to heart, and not allowing his or her ideas cloud their judgement?
Is this too much to ask? Is it too much to ask for an honest, fair, and logical individual to head up our nation?
Perhaps it would be better if we had multiple presidents, instead of a single one - and they voted on issues (say, three presidents) that come before them. For some reason, this doesn't sound that workable though, and I also feel (I have no rational basis of knowledge for this) that something like this has already been tried in the past with other governments and has failed...
It wouldn't take much to convince me, just give me a candidate that:
* Advocates personal privacy
* Doesn't bow before corporate interests or offers (ie, get rid of the fscking corporate lobbiests)
* Wants to do away with patents on business methods and algorithms
* Doesn't support censorship of any kind
* Tells the public what goes on - no more secrets!
* Is a moral person, but does not try to inject his or her morals on others
* Knows what a computer and the internet is, and actually uses them regularly
* Realizes nature is not there to be raped indiscimanently
* Is for space exploration and expansion
* Wants children to have more rights
* Wants employees to have more rights when working for a company
I am sure I could post more to this list, but these are the major ones. Is it that much to want a candidate like this? It is getting to the point where I am considering to run - because these are the things that are important to me (unfortunately, it is a pipe dream - I am not old enough, and I don't have the money or influence)...
cr0sh for President!!! (just kidding)
I support the EFF - do you?
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
a feature that allows parents to automatically check, with one click, what sites your kids have visited lately
You mean kind of like a proxy? Or a DNS that kept tabs on what sites were visited? I'd buy that.
If the issue was adults in public areas were to be as closely watched, I'd definitely decline. However, parents are legally responsible for their children. If your kid goes to a bombmaking site, then comes into the kitchen for supplies, the parents should have a right to look at the logs and say "Gee, why does little Jimmy need acidic cleaning fluid"?
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
'a feature that allows parents to automatically check, with one click, what sites your kids have visited lately.'
It's sad that in an age when children are more mobile than ever before, the candidates are concerned only with online monitoring. With today's technology, tamper-proof GPS transponders could be affixed to every child, providing one-click access to their whereabouts online and off. As the costs of digital camera and wireless technology fall so rapidly, soon we could add one-click access to images of everything our children look at, like the pornography and bomb-making instructions being pushed at public libraries. Coupled with pulse rate monitors or alpha brainwave emission detectors, parents could be alerted to aberrant thoughts even before they manifest themselves as actions, and with two-way wireless technology, one-click corrective "pulses" could be delivered in nearly real-time.
Candidates should look forward to addressing tomorrow's problems with tomorrow's technology, rather than patching yesterday's problems with yesterday's technology.
I'm a veeeery religious person. I'm a gay christian actually: I fuck Jesus up the ass.
You get 2 points for doing all this research.
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I have to respond to this. I think Nader's biggest beef is that we are allowing corporations free reign to capture the minds of young people. As soon as a child is physically able to watch TV they are barraged with corporate propaganda telling what to eat, drink, think, buy, nag their parents about, do, feel, etc. In some European companies advertising during childrens programming is outright banned. Yes there are some rules about advertising to children in this country, but they are largely ignored or circumvented. It's not so much that Nader wants to legislate morality, as it is that he just wants to tone down the propaganda (of whatever form), to keep children, the most captive of audiences, from being barraged day in and day out, whatever the advertising content.
This is even *further* exemplified by the outrageous policy of schools obtaining corporate funding by allowing these corporations to dictate that they forcing students to watch corporate advertising. If that is not perverse, what is? Public schools should be publicly financed and NO corporations should be allowed to propagandize students while their even *in school*.
Sex, drugs, and violence sell. Hey, that's great, I'm with that. But it *shouldn't* sell to small children who know nothing better, and *can't* choose to ignore, disregard, or turn it off. It *shouldn't* sell to our own students in our own classrooms.
*Yes* it is the parents responsibility to filter what their children experience. However, we are currently under such a seige of corporate propaganda coming from every single (*cough* publicly owned *cough*) medium, that corporations effectively have held us *hostage* because there is NO way to filter out this stuff without filtering out *everything*. Is the solution to filter out everything? No. The solution is to tell corporations, no, they don't have free reign to corporatize and propagandize during children's shows. They don't have free reign to advertise content which they've previously agreed is NOT for children, TO children. They don't have free reign to use OUR schools to consumerize our children under their corporate parentage.
Nader is not crying save the children. He is saying why are we putting up with *allowing* what we do, on our own property. Take the reigns of your own government.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
...of filtering because then we have the fun race between parents who know next to nothing about computers trying to administer security on a box running an OS with no concept of security (at least in most cases) and used by kids who live and breathe rebellion and technology. But I pity those kids born of sysadmin parents.
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-- SIGFPE
> We have the technology to accurately tabulate a popular vote,
WE also had the technology back when the EC was deliberately chosen over the popular vote: namely, the 0, allowing straightforward addition.
A popular vote for president now is just as bad an idea as it was in 1789.; The difference now is that the absolutely committed slates of electors is also a bad idea (thought not as bad a popular vote).
hawk, esq.
I love how everyone gets all worked up about what the candidates positions are on this type of issue. It's not like when whoever gets elected that there will suddenly be this stupid law passed exactly like the described it. There is this thing called a Congress that does have some say in the issue.
So what we are more likely to end up with, rather than either of the two stated possitions is something else entirely. Something like a law that mandates that all federally funded pre-school programs must install filtering software that blocks porn and any discussion of patent and copy right issues, and simultaniously sets up a federal grant to study whether the honking of Canada geese during their annual migration through the United States is contributing significantly to global warming, assuming that global warming is really happening.
I know this is a a joke, but it raises a good point. Why do we need ISPs to log what pages kids are going to? If a parent really wants to know why doesn't he/she check the history, or get up off their lazy butt and watch the kid. If you *really* don't trust your kids, install a hidden camera, it's no different then logging their every move online. The fact that we are even *considering* laws to make censorware or logging mandatory shows how lazy our society has become. Most people in America, it seems, would rather let the government do it for them.
The best way to accelerate a windows box is at 9.8 meters per second square.
Actually the point is quite valid, although I don't believe that it is the crowning achievement of any presidency. The appointment of Supreme Court Justices is often as public a controversy as is the election of the President. Anybody here remember Clarence Thomas and the pubic hair? The whole thing might have seemed silly, but our presidents have stacked the court several times in the past when difficult cases were pending--often with the intended effect. Our oval office has caused the Supreme Court to swell to 13 justices in the past in order to sway power from one side to the other. We fortunately have more checks in place now to prevent that sort of thing, but 2 or 3 seats is a huge percentage of a nine-person panel.
All of this comes at a time when Microsoft--though bounced back to a lower court--faces some of its most difficult legal hurdles. Imagine a president who wants to be touchy-feely (this would, by the way, refer to the same man who believes that all cars should be outlawed--the man who invented the internet...) seeing an opportunity to make a political statement with such a big case as this. Does anybody really want Froot Loop Gore to have an impact on the future of operating systems? Or Bush's stance on gays and abortion? Roe v. Wade overturned through careful court-stacking?
The reality of 3rd party candidates, to return to the other subject, is many years from fruition. Currently we only see the Ross Perot effect, whereby frustrated voters pick Bill & Opus because they don't like George or Al. Remember what happened in '92? We got Slick Willie because of frustrated Republicans.
For all of those who fear Al Gore (and we should all be in this group), a vote should not be cast in frustration for some random guy who might get a few percent of the vote, but for the other major candidate. That way we aren't working against each other. Currently about 60% of registered voters do not like Gore. Why waste the votes on Nader? All he ever did was get rid of the Corvair, and even that was a crock.
Please believe that I do not support the 2 party system. But in the absence of a 3rd or 4th strong political party, votes are wasted on independent candidates. And that's all I have to say about that. Dammit.
I sit here and shake my head when people speak of electing Gore. Why? It's because he promotes himself as a defender of citizens rights and privacy and yet has the worst record I've seen.
Bush's plan for blocking software on publicly funded sites is a reasonable solution to a highly charged issue. If you want to get to blocked sites, use your personal account.
Let's look at Gore's record on privacy.
He failed miserably with the Clipper Chip initiative. For those of you too young to recall this blunder, it was an encryption chip to be built into everything. The encryption algorithm (SkipJack) was designed behind closed doors by the NSA and utilized key escrow to allow law enforcement access to your transmissions.
Because of the failed Clipper Chip plan, the whole Key Escrow Foundation was formed. It was because of this initiative that PGP introduced the Ancillary Key problem that surfaced a few months ago.
Digital Wire Tapping Law - Allows the FBI and other law enforcement to readily tap phone lines. Forces telecoms to provide facilities to make this all possible.
Eschelon - VP Gore overseas the the National Security Council. He had to be involved in the decision to deploy Eschelon.
Carnivore - A direct descendent of the DWT law.
Now, if things aren't bad enough, he wants to keep track of e-mail directed to/from young people AND track what the watch. Imagine his friends in Hollywood getting hold of THAT data!
Censorship and Hollywood - He stands before us on national television and tells us how he and Joe Lieberman are for family values and elimination of the marketing of violent and sexually explicit material to young people, but then accepts huge donations from the very people involved in that industry.
And we scream at Bush because of his big business ties? At least he admits when there is a conflict.
Gore claims to be heavily involved in the legislation for the creation and management of the internet. Who has benefited the most in the US from his initiatives? Can you say big media (CNN, MSNBC, ABCNEWS, AOL, TIMES-WARNER, AT&T)?
He sure protected his privacy when they came looking for his e-mails during the Monica Lewinsky scandal and Whitewater investigations. Or, has everybody forgotten about that?
And, let us not forget that Al supported (and still supports Bill Clinton) even as he purgered himself in court and lied to the American people.
Bottom line is that Al Gore is the worst thing that can happen to privacy minded individuals and for people who know right from wrong.
"God forbid that kids see people engaged in sex. Violent sex is another matter (becuase the violence is bad!), but healthy and positive sex is a good thing."
Heard a nice quote summarising strange American attitudes to sex .. "it's OK to bare arms but not to bare breasts". It's amazing, really. I remember watching action shows on TV when I was a kid - you could literally see dozens of people shot to death in one episode (it was OK because it was the "bad guys" getting shot) - but God forbid that you actually saw a woman's nipple!
How about a features that allows parents to read their kids' email with one click? With Carnivore it shouldn't be too hard to intercept email from flagged accounts (let the parents register em) and forward it to a cache ready for a parent's perusal. After all, if they're under 18 they don't deserve privacy, do they?
And by god, if I catch Jenny looking at that birth control website again she's gonna get the beating of her life.....
</sarcasm>
Bush and Gore are quite right. These things are obviously harmful to children, and we need to take whatever means necessary to keep them away from the Internet. But that's not the entire story. Let's look at what else all of this does:
bad patents: stifle innovation
porn sites: throttle our children's morality
"created the Internet" quote: drives me up the wall
Napster: hurts artists
"volunteer source" and "free support": undercuts high-quality commercial software
Slashdot: spawns trolls
Look at this list - a veritable smorgasbord of undesirable influences and destructive tendencies, ready to crash our economy and subvert our morals. I think it's perfectly obvious that the Internet isn't something we want around at all, and I demand that our next president take full responsibility for thoroughly dismantling it in a timely manner.
Thank you.
Bruce
Bruce
You are the real Bruce Perens.
This is a lot more overhead than just a caching proxy. And, yes, there are significant ISPs today that don't use caching proxies.
-- Erich
Slashdot reader since 1997
If you're anti-censorship, you are obligated by your own conscience to vote for Harry Browne. No other candidate - and very obviously neither of the two "main" candidates, supports a complete absence of all censorship. Mr. Browne believes that personal - and parental - responsibility is the proper solution, not government-enforced censorship. Furthermore, he recognizes that the federal government has no authority to censor anything, regardless of whether he or anyone else feels it's a good idea. Vote Browne. Vote Freedom.
You're not throwing away your vote if you vote 3rd party (Browne, Nader, etc). You're making a statement.
They won't win, sure. But if you don't vote you have truly wasted your opportunity. If you vote for the lesser of the two evils, you just perpetuate the status quo.
Now, if you really truly believe in either of the two main people, vote for them. But don't let that limit you from learning about (and possibly voting for) the alternatives.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
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/me had her first sexual experience at age 5. With another 5 year old. It's a natural urge, it's not dirty. Americans really piss me off on this subject...moreso because I am one.
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
What's your opinion on peer to peer file sharing? What's your opinion on filters?
Gimme a break. These things should be done at a personal, houshold, or community level *at most*. The federal government has *ABSOLUTELY NO BUSINESS* even dictating things like this.
Since when do we even have to *pretend* like we even *care* what they think about it.
The Libertarian party's position:
"Stop Internet Censorship
Politicians are trying to take away your right to read what you want, and to say what you want. "
Harry Browne's specific position:
"You have the right to speak and write freely -- on paper, on the airwaves, on the Internet --even if the government thinks it has a "compelling interest" in shutting you up."
As for Ralph Nader, he even wants to censor non-pornographic web sites; he doesn't want children to be able to access marketting information. He is one of those people we all berate here who think Doom causes violence.
And he doesn't want to stop at censoring it; he actually wants to outlaw it.
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And as for contributions, Microsoft has contributed dramatically more to the republicans than the democrats. ... Bill himself has done little to no contributing.
So THAT's why they went after Microsoft!
I thought Janet Reno's Justice Department might ACTUALLY have gone after someone because they broke the law. And here it turns out it's just another dose of revenge for not contributing to their machine's campaign and vacation fund.
Well at least it's nice to know that they're consistent. B-)
(And thanks for the link to Open Secrets.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The kid can bypass this by using an external SSL proxy. If he does, he has won the arms race and is obviously ready to take on some pr0n ;)
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But public money should not be used for vouchers, saying "I'm sorry, our public schools are crap, here, take this consolation gift".
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An important distinction needs to be made.
This is not a 'gift'. It is not being 'given'.
It is being returned.
If I can opt-out of funding the public school system, thus losing the right to send my kid there, I should be able to put them into what I feel is a better school (and frankly, if someone starts up a non-religious, non government funded school for the same price, it'll be much better).
It's not a gift. It's my money, let me decide how I want to use it to educate my kid.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
Put the burden of cleanliness back on the owner of the content.
.g domains (.g001 through .g999). Offer a free .g domain to every .com .net .edu .org .fr .etc domain in the world. Have a license agreement that states: I promise not to put dirty pics up or sound bites of people moaning or any naughty words on my site. All the same stuff as a g rated movie whatever that may be. Links from a .g site can only go to a .g site. Website owners can choose to create a g version of their site or not. Break the rules, loose a body part and your .g domain for 10 years.
.pg domain.
.g domains. If Microsoft.com doesn't want to go to the hassle of making their website work as microsoft.g or take on the added responsibility of keeping it clean, then fine, my kids won't be able to visit their site. If slashdot wants to write a script to replace the word "fuck" with a on the .g version of their site then maybe they could qualify. If they choose not to try then the kiddies lose out, no biggie either way.
.g sites to make sure they're not breaking the rules. It would cost some bucks (tons because the gov is involved) but not near as many as trying to censor the whole damn net. I'd actually be willing to help the gov by reporting abuses to the .g or .pg web (when I wasn't checking out porn or bomb making on the rest of the web that is).
.g sites so it would become .g certified by default.
We (the US gov I guess) create
Slashdot wouldn't qualify due to the naughty language and some of the hate posts. But they might qualify for a
Now I as a parent can tell my browser to only allow pg and g, all domains, or just g domains. Or I can sign up with an ISP that only routes packets from
The gov could create a task force to evaluate
Google could create a google.g search engine that only searches
Think about it.... I write a censoring proggie that traps for the word "dick" used in a sexually oriented sentence. Website desingers start calling a "dick" a "johnson" and break my filter. I mod it to also trap for "johnson" and they start calling it a "sausage". It just can't work.
Look at the hacker lingo crap. Cops start searching for "software" the criminals (thanks so much ppl) change the term to "wares", cops catch on so the software stealers change the name to "warez". At least I assume that's the way all that developed.
It'll never happen though.... the gov doesn't care one bit if my kids are looking at porn. They're using it as an excuse to introduce censorship into my home so I won't be so shocked when they step up the the next level of invading my privacy and taking away my rights.
sigless G
I wouldn't want my kids going down to the library to research something on the Internet and, knowing how searches bring up nonsense 98% of the time, pulling up some elephant sex porn site or something equally as disturbing.
First, perhaps you should accompany your kids to the library, or only allow them to go to a library where they won't be exposed to something that you don't want them to see. That would be taking responsibility for your childrens' welfare rather than trying to make someone else do it. Second, I think that children are much more damaged by seeing violence than they are seeing sex. We Americans are *very* hung up on sex as if it were something dirty. South Americans and Europeans are much more open about sexuality and (rightfully) think that Americans are weirdos. For bizarre reasons Americans still see "gangsta rap" as more palatable than pornography.
Then they'll come home and ask you about it, then what are you going to say?
I'd probably say, "Some people like having sex with elephants." I know several people who grew up having their parents be very frank with them about sex, even when their kids were two and three. They live perfectly healthy lives and in no way ever felt bad by what their parents told them.
It wasn't able to block everything, but it got most of the more raunchy images.
God forbid that kids see people engaged in sex. Violent sex is another matter (becuase the violence is bad!), but healthy and positive sex is a good thing.
I find it odd that people think children are sexless creatures. Do they realize how many kids are sexually active at 13 and suffer no psychological damage from it? I'm not talking about pedophilia (which is vile and deserves harsh punishment). I'm talking about kids looking at pornography, masturbating, and having sex with their peers. I'm sure there are quite of few of us here who have had many such experiences.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
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:>
I find beliefs such as that so repugnant, mostly because I've never heard anyone spout that type of drivel at me unless they or their parents made at least $80-90k per year
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Let me be the first, then (be warned: this is a bit of a rambling narrative).
My grandmother grew up in a home with a dirt floor, two sisters, and a somewhat unsupportive family life. She was pretty poor overall.
She married my grandfather who, while not rich, wasn't quite as bad off. Once they got married they moved elsewhere for a job, and had two kids.
While their home certainly had a 'real' floor, there wasn't much extra cash to spare on entertainment or extravagant gifts. My grandparents were very loving and caring individuals, though, and raised a couple of pretty good kids. One of which is my mother.
My uncle got a little college in (and did pretty well, as he's a fairly bright guy), although my mom did not (I also consider her pretty bright as well). Cash wasn't the easiest thing to come by, and by the time she had her kids there was lots of other stuff to take care of.
My sister and I grew up comfortable - about as spoiled as any typical middle class kid might be. My parents spent a lot of their cash helping my sister get a college education, and some on me as well (I'm just a little ways off from a basic Associate's degree). They also bought me a computer at a young age - not a trivial purchase - which helped inspire me to continue on with my interests in computers and related stuff.
My sister just got her Master's degree, and has become a pretty successful teacher - and well liked at that. I'm a bit younger, but I have a great job at a company I like, make a pretty decent wage, and work from home with a company supplied laptop.
Note that almost none of this is due to governmental assistance.
While not rich by any means, I definitely don't have to sweep excess dirt off of a dirt floor every night. And I have those who preceded me to thank for that. I only put the pieces together in the end in making my relative success.
My point: There is no such thing as making 'too much'. Yes, luck has something to do with it. So does being in the right place at the right time (or putting yourself in the right place at the right time). There's nothing wrong with that - if there is a demand for certain skills or people, they should feel free to reap those rewards. It's not our place to tell people that they are 'too in demand' or aren't worth that much to someone else.
And no, I don't doubt one bit that your mother is a very hard worker and probably deserves more. And she has probably tried hard to raise you in such a way that you'll have it better than she did. BUT don't blame someone just because they have a lot of cash because she doesn't. Some people may be assholes, and maybe she got screwed over a few times or made bad choices, but don't blame the rich for that. Especially when they already take up a higher percentage burden of the taxes as is.
In the end, I hope that I can provide for my kid(s) in such a way that they do better than I. Please don't chastise or look down upon me if I end up being pretty successful at it...
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
Yeah, God forbid we get justices who actually interpret the constitution rather than making up laws as they go. In any case, what type of justices do you think the Libertarians are going to pick? Activist ones? Please. I do find it highly amusing that you are voting Libertarian, rather than your first choice, the pseudo-socialists. Do you actually look at what people believe before voting?
Not to mention you are a slave of the media. You have no evidence that Bush is dumb, except what you hear in the media. Or perhaps because he's not a perfect public speaker. Either way, you're making an uninformed judgement.
--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
N8F8 --Porn monger and free speech advocate.
It's a bit late now, unless your state has a different deadline for registration.
In the 1930, the Socialist party was a third party. People voted for them. Every item on their platform was eventually adopted by the Democratic party. Of course, they've updated their platform, and are now asking for more things, but most of the things they were asking for then have come to pass.
I favor the things that the Libertarian party is pushing. I don't care if they are implemented by someone who claims to be a Libertarian. What I care about is the issues the party is pushing. As long as those are done, I'll be happy.
It doesn't matter than the Libertarians might not win this election, and might not win the next one. Every vote for them will make their issues more appealing to other parties, who will adopt them in an effort to sway my vote, and yours if you manage to register in time and vote Libertarian.
Our votes aren't about electing leaders so much as they are about determining which choices we will get next time.
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How much of it was due to parental assistance? Be honest - how much of you and your sister's education was paid for by your family?
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Most of my education was paid for by my employer at the time. That was a bit of a special case. My sister has a whole lot of student loans to pay off, but she's in a good position to do so as she now has access to a pick of decent jobs.
The initial part of my education was paid for by the state, out of funds that would have went to the local high school (I skipped out 2 years early). That funding, which would have been wasted on the pathetic high school I was attending, instead went to a fairly decent private community college where I actually learnt a few things.
If my parents didn't have the same tax burden, they could have done it directly.
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What's the effect of growing up in a middle class neighbourhood with good schools and no gun fights? That's luck.
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I didn't really grow up in a middle class neighborhood (go to Finley, WA and look around sometime - definitely a trailer park kind of place. We were comparitively wealthy, and crime wasn't all that horrible, but the local schools were worthless).
Either way, it's not luck. Nobody bought my mom's house for her, or bought the property on her behalf. Living in a somewhat rural setting makes things cheaper in many aspects, which was a decent reason to move there. Nobody is forcing anyone to live in a crime ridden inner city.
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I realize that you weren't replying directly to me, but I never advocated an maximum wage.
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I know, I wasn't really aiming at that (although I realize some people do advocate one, which is a vaguely fascist notion IMHO). I'm talking more about the undercurrent of class warfare that some people seem to ride on. A lot of people talk about others having 'enough' or 'too much' money, even though that's completely irrelevent. It's a matter of principle to me, I guess.
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I don't for a minute believe I got where I am because I'm smarter or work harder than people who didn't get here. I'm just lucky.
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You're largely where you are because of a combination of your intelligence and that of your parents. I don't really believe in luck, but I do believe in someone spotting opportunity and taking it.
In our society, I think it's common for some really smart people to not realize how bright they are, and lowering their own expectations as to what they can do. There are enough stories of people coming from near poverty to great success to prove that smart people CAN get somewhere - and enough untold stories of smart people who never get anywhere to show that some just don't get around to it.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
From the Amnesty International website, this pagesays:
9. Execution of the Innocent
As long as the death penalty is maintained, the risk of executing the innocent can never be eliminated.
Since 1973 more than 85 US prisoners have been released from death row after evidence emerged of their innocence of the crimes for which they were sentenced to death. Some had come close to execution after spending many years under sentence of death. Recurring features in their cases include prosecutorial or police misconduct; the use of unreliable witness testimony, physical evidence, or confessions; and inadequate defence representation. Other US prisoners have gone to their deaths despite serious doubts over their guilt.
But yeah, Amnesty Intl is just a bunch of extremists, right?
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