Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Scramjet, Golden Ears, Preciousness
Everything that rises must come down under. spam-it-to-me-baby writes: "The Australian trial of a scramjet engine has fizzed. 'The experiment at the Department of Defence's Woomera Prohibited Area, 500 kilometres north of Adelaide, was not successful because the [United States-supplied] rocket experienced flight anomalies prior to the scramjet experiment,' an analysis of what went wrong says. Not to worry, another test is tentatively scheduled for next week, assuming researchers can work out what went wrong with this one on the way up."
Not to be confused with this previous scramjet test, also unsuccessful.
Ah, much better, I thought you were being unreasonable there for a minute. After Jamie drew attention to it in a Slashdot piece on Saturday, SafeSurf changed their legislative proposal. In Jamie's words, "Woo!"
That's not all he said, of course: "Please note that, now, they ONLY want to fine you thousands of dollars for failing to label anything you write that is harmful to an 8-year-old. What a relief! "The penalty for a first offense of failing to label or mislabeling material harmful to minors shall be limited to a fine of under five thousand dollars."
Bennett Haselton passed on this commentary as well:
"If you go to http://www.safesurf.com/online.htm in Netscape and "View Document Info", it shows it was last modified on October 29, 2001. (This function doesn't work in IE.)The original OCPA is [at google]. SafeSurf apparently removed this paragraph from section 6:
Publishers may be sued in civil court by any parent who feels their children were harmed by the data negligently published. The parents shall be given presumption in all cases and do not have to prove that the content actually produced harm to their child, only that the material was severe enough to reasonably be considered to have needed a rating label to protect children.and replaced it with:Publishers may be sued in civil court by any parent who feels their children were harmed by the data negligently published. The parents/plantiffs shall be given presumption, if the case involves graphic images, and do not have to prove that the content actually produced harm to their child, only that the material was severe enough to reasonably be considered to have needed a rating label to protect children.and then added three new paragraphs listing more exemptions from this rule."
Can you hear that pea through the mattresses? For the audio objectivists, a good update to CmdrTaco's recent MP3 v. Ogg Vorbis inquiry: E1ven writes: "Everyone is always arguing about whether Vorbis sounds better than MP3, or vice versa. Here is your chance to see who is right! ff123 is doing a set of Blind Listening tests and could use your help. The more ears the better!"
How do they define harm in things like this? Is a description of what marijuana is count as harm? How about descriptions of the biological functions of humans, such as menstruation? They teach that in school, yet some bible thumpers might consider that to be harmfull. So its up to the parents to decide. So if I am a christian mother and I feel my child was harmed by reading Islamic scripture, thus poluting their pure religious experience, I can sue under these provisions?????
I sure hate living in a police state. Do you?
Since Ogg Vorbis got another mention, it may be worth mentioning that Croteam, creators of the surprise hit 3D shooter, Serious Sam, have announced that their upcoming sequel will have its music encoded using Ogg Vorbis, replacing MP3. Writes Alen Ladavac, "We've tried encoding all the music for SE with Oggdrop at 64kbps and the quality was perfect even at such low bitrate."
I submitted this to Slashdot two weeks ago, and it was rejected. (Hence, "Sore Loser" in the title.)
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
How much acceleration does one want to be subjected to?
Come on, give it up, that's
Having been in school for many years, I would think many things that people would come across in school would be more harmful than a lot of the things that can be found on the net. Yes, pr0n would fall under the category of harmful (and no, its one of the few that you're not exposed to in public school). For example, my social studies teacher showed a movie about the Civil War (I want to say "Glory" was the title.), but anyway, she got yelled at by many parents because it contained graphic images of a soldier getting his head blown up.
Welcome to the real world kiddies, violence happens and there isn't ANYTHING that you can do to stop it. I don't agree with the bill, as it would allow too many oo-they-have-money-so-lets-sue-them parents to take internet sites to court. And, it is especially bad for the children. When they get out to the real world, their parents won't be there anymore to sheild their eyes from the horrors of reality. Better let them see it while you're still there to explain it, than let them get smacked upside the head with reality when they turn 18 and/or go to college.
Honestly, this falls under the category of "political correctness." IMO, the world could use more political incorrectness. Also, by making it an offense to publish "harmful" material, it would drive more and more web hosting out of the USA, such that they couldn't be punished under that bill. In this economy and the shaky tech market, the last thing we need is to drive more business away from the USA.
We have freedom of speech? Not if any laws like these go into effect.
<SARCASM> (Note: Companies may like to check into the constitution before proposing legislation) </SARCASM>
Instead of forcing everyone to included a rating, or be assumed to be a child safe rating. It think that the content of the internet at this time warrents that all content be assumed to be non-child safe.
Then if a site has verified that it is child safe it should be given a rating accordingly. This of course woul change the litigation was handled since it would be impossible to litigate for accidently stumbling across adult content. This would have to be changed, because as we all know America DEMANDS litigation.
So we would change the proposal to allow people who were searching for adult content to sue if they stumbled across pages without tits that were not properly down rated from the default XXX rating.
This model seems to suit the internet audience much better than the safesurf act. It would require far less change to the existing structure as everyone knows most sites are porn sites and most people just use the internet to browse porn.
----- 70% of all statistics are completely made up.
Presently MP3 is the de-facto near-CD-quality audio format. I initially believed Vorbis would fade into obscurity as PNG has, requiring special plug-ins to view. However, the opposite seems to be true. A survey at raw42 revealed that 80.3% of users prefer Ogg Vorbis over MP3 (5.2%). I've beginnning to change my views too, considering that Fraunhofer owns the rights to MP3.
What do you think of MusicCity now?
It's worth noting that Scramjets have no real civilian use.
Even the Passenger aircraft is a red herring, once you've boosted to Mach 8 why stay in the atmosphere?
Why not do a sub-orbital shot? be much quicker and easier.
Scramjets may get used for reconnaisance, but the only obvious application is super-fast cruise missiles, not bound by ballistic missile treaties.
Yes it's cool whizz-bang tech
But only in the same way an H-Bomb is.
'There is a Light that never goes out.'
If SafeSurf somehow manages to get a politician's ear on this, I say that every web designer out there label ALL of their pages as obscene. This would basically nullify their software's effectiveness and have the side benefit of minimising suits against web designers under the premises of their proposal. At the very least, it'll put a gaping hole in the argument that their software should be required and isn't a form of censorship. I especially like how they are preaching voluntary labeling in their FAQ while proposing a compulsory system in that document. Truly classic...
What they seem to forget is that the existing ratings schemes (motion pictures, music, and video games) are largely voluntary and industry driven. The only penalties that are imposed on products in those markets are that some stores may not carry their product if they aren't labeled. What SafeSurf wants is a mandatory rating by law, which is just ridiculous, especially given the international nature of the net.
Warning: I am making the possibly misguided assumption that this new technology is based on "supersonic" combustion.
I have long since wondered when scramjet technology would fit into the "grand scheme" of rocketry needs. Standards serve both to implemement existing technology as soon as possible in order to acquire more investment dollars, and in order to ensure compatibility with existing and established markets and products. However, standards also serve to hamper technological advancements. Just look at the standard aircraft architecture (whatever it's called). On the other hand, standards also ensure compatibility with a wide variety of manufacturers and products. They generally make our lives much easier.
I believe that in order to push this new technology, and also to provide compatibility with the existing infrastructure, early developers of this technology will have to make some compromises. These compromises will be most notable in the actual user-cost. My reasoning being, is that they will have to make their product with two combustion technologies. One that uses the supersonic scramjet technology, and one that uses the old aircraft standard. This will increase the cost until they can figure a way to use a single method of combustion to do both. I think this format has the potential to do very well, except for the standards issue. If the general public can accept the early high costs of this technology and view it as a true leap, it will quickly become cheaper and more useful. If not, then it will die a quick death, and be thrown towards a niche category like perhaps the Minidisc is in America. Standards are again, both a blessing and a curse.
I have a better idea. Why not consider all internet content as inappropriate for children unless otherwise indicated. Then only go after the people who say their content is safe for children but isn't.