Slashdot Mirror
Stupid Censorship, Stupid Security
The
2003 Jefferson Muzzle
"winners" are out. This year's crop starts with John Ashcroft and the U.S. Congress, and works its way down through the school board that voted to put Harry Potter on the restricted shelf. Innovation in censorship deserves recognition, read and enjoy. And in other stupid news,
the winners of the
Stupid Security Competition
have been announced. I like that I'm being protected from tea. It makes me feel safe.
It's a sad day indeed when we need to fear the abilities of our government more than our fellow man...
Slashdot should get an award for "innovation in censorship" for its moderation system that (usually) succeeds in blocking posts like the parent from being seen by most people.
was a porn filter in the library of the university of Essex. But they did it bad and the university homepage become filtered
Most Annoyingly Stupid Award
Wrong... It should be awarded to this guy, when explaining the security in Iraq.
</joke>
--
Error 500: Internal sig error
Actually, I just added a +6 to all such "off topic" "troll" or "flaimbait" posts. They deserve props for letting me see these first.
I have also neutralized people's Karam advantage and put ACs on equal footing.
Bravo.
PS: It was a surprise seeing the "doggie" post then it was like "oh yeah, i just switched those settings..."
the problem with censoring data is that - if you aim to remove access to offending data - there is no end to it. there will always be people who get offended at anything.
for example the harry potter book burning event was just plain stupid. it is just a kids story (good though) and if your belief system is so fragile that you have to protect it by removing access to all data that you find not suitable, you have a problem.
in my experience if people prevent other people asking questions, than that means that that you are not too sure about your answers to those questions.
int.
Ned: And Harry Potter... and all his wizard friends... went STRAIGHT to hell for practicing witchcraft!
Todd: Yay!
One of my favorite saying is "Information is not bad, it is the is the holding of information that is bad". The idea that you are protecting a child from harm it unfounded. The only reason Censorship is around is cuz of Right Wing, conservatives are afraid of change. God forbid a child read a book about a kid who can make things float. Censorship is really about control, someone had decided that an idea should not be shared with other people and thus they take it upon them selves to control that idea. An idea could be anything, a book, a word, a movie, etc,. I am a firm believer that Censorship in any form is bad and hinders creativity. The DMCA is one of the biggest acts of Censorship I've ever seen. "NOPE! This here DMCA cays you can't publish that report about anti-copy protection!" common guys, step out of the box for a sec and look at with relevance Censorship has. and i'll tell you, it has none
Google doesn't index user sigs, so stop trying to "Google Bomb" with them.
"The lesson to be learned is not to take the comments on slashdot too literally." --Vinnie Falco, BearShare
It is interesting how many educational institutions get the award. Maybe they will finally learn something.
...is actually very good, espesially with a teaspoon of honey.
Having read thru a lot of the article, I must say that there is one thing that strikes me; the 'security measures' seems to have been dreamt up by someone in an office, written down by someone who's mind is on other things, and implied by people without the faintest idea of what the first person really meant.
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
Geez, then where do they put books like American Psycho (Bret Easton Ellis) ? On the secret underground cellar police-protected shelf ? In the porn section ?
theefer
from the Ashcroft article:
"Allowing $8,000 in tax dollars to be spent on drapes to conceal two semi-nude statues that often appeared behind the attorney general during press conferences in the Great Hall of the Department of Justice. Ironically, the two statues represent "The Spirit of Justice" and "The Majesty of Law."
Ironic indeed, in fact most telling.
Ashcroft in his post 9/11 reign of the DOJ has done more to hide the doings of the DOJ and execution of it's commandments from the public than any other Attorney General in our nations history.
Being that he is the mind behind "secret search warrants", "secret evidence" and "secret imprisonment", it is quite fitting that he display this by making the representitive figures of his office "secret" as well.
The Censor sits
Somewhere between
The scenes to be seen
And the television sets
With his scissor purpose poised
Watching the human stuff
That will sizzle through
The magic wires
And light up
Like welding shops
The ho-hum rooms of America
And with a kindergarten
Arts and crafts concept
Of moral responsibility
Snips out
The rough talk
The unpopular opinion
Or anything with teeth
And renders
A pattern of ideas
Full of holes
A doily
For your mind
Mason Williams
The Mason Williams Reading Matter, Doubleday & Company, New York, 1964
FreeSpeech.org
Do the rest of us a favor who do not see an FBI agent around every corner, stop calling every administrative attempt to restrict a display of objectional art to children censorship.
Whether this organization agrees with it or not parents and citizens have a right to restict objectional art from being displayed using publicly funded means, every bit as much as the artists have in producing then getting publishers to distribute and/or display their garbage.
Dawn of the Dead
How about linking to awards from opinionjournal.com or nationalreview.com?? Oh, its because it doesn't fit with your political biases and would actually serve to get both sides of the story.
You could of linked to their awards just now. Browsing the front pages of those two sites, I see no awards. Could you find the links?
The third item was a dual quarter pound cellophane wrapped cardboard package of loose leaf Chinese tea. Unfortunately, it was of a well known variety known as Gunpowder Tea, and had this printed on the packaging.
yahooObviously this was of such importance, that, despite already forcing the passenger to check his hand bag as hold luggage, it was decided that the tea was allowed, but that the evil word "Gunpowder" was not.
Consequently the security staff then rummaged around (thereby delaying me and the rest of the queue) and found a plastic bag into which they decanted the fragrant tea leaves, and confiscated the cardboard packaging !
How much more stupid can it get?Is there some kind of a Moore's law for Censorship? Something like "For every disgusting act of censorship, in 12 to 18 months there will be one twice as disgusting?"
some other thoughts:
People who are easily offended deserve to be... a lot!
The real war against liberty for all.
Can someone explain how this example constitutes censorship? From what I read, this incident was completely blown out of proportion. It wasn't because he wanted to cover up the statues, it was to provide a better backdrop for the cameras.
Using this as an example of "censorship" or to say that free expression has been muzzled is a little dubious. It puts the whole list into question of the motives and partisanship behind making it.
But of course it makes slashdot because it fits with their worldview.
SIG:Slashdot: indymedia for nerds.
...a certain online service implemented filters in its user registration process. People with last names like Petit or Snodgrass, and people who lived in cities with names like Scunthorpe or Middlesex, were prohibited from signing up for the service! The filters are implemented elsewhere too, one of AOL's remote employees couldn't enter his last name, Kuntz, into his online profile. Way to lose revenue.
Rev. Lovejoy: I've got to go and burn some Harry Potter books before children discover the joy of reading.
[Congress for a]llowing $8,000 in tax dollars to be spent on drapes to conceal two semi-nude statues that often appeared behind the attorney general during press conferences in the Great Hall of the Department of Justice. Ironically, the two statues represent "The Spirit of Justice" and "The Majesty of Law." They are scared to death of the naked truth. Here/a. is a mirror in the event that the original site goes down.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
Here is the reason why, in case you were a former censorware.org reader.
Or are you thinking at all? What the heck do you think censorship is except filtering? Jazus keerist, when the public institution makes the decision on what can be seen and what can't, that is censorship.
What looney bin do you pull your definitions from?
Infuriate left and right
Is ironic that most of the measures assumed that the terrorist are dumb and use always the same method or container for what they will do, not changing a bit their habits (puting bombs in backpacks instead of big, uncontrolled bags?) showing that the real dumbs are in the controlling points, and that the more effective measure of terrorism is letting the same dumb people to do his job, with that is enough.
Too bad its not really FUD if you agree with it. Remember, FUD is only FUD is Microsoft or John Ashcroft are the author.
Never overestimate the end user. -jeramy b. smith
My school's filter has blocked the Muzzle Awards under the category of "Pornographic and Recreational Nudity"! -Joe
Restriction of the Harry Potter series actually makes sense. Think about it: the "hero" and his pals basically harbor a complete disregard for authority, and when they are caught, the worst that happens is they get warned not to do it again (which means that they WILL).
Anyone that is a parent knows what happens to kids that act like this: they become spoiled brats who don't know that certain actions have certain consequences...
If a kid that already knows about consequences wants to read the series, that's up the kid's parent(s). If the kid DOESN'T know about them, then I'm not so sure it's a good idea, since it sets a bad example.
When politicians are involved, everyone loses.
These are not stupid. The writers are burning in their cubicles. Our forces are more stupid than anything referenced in your post. We are victorious! yours truely, Mohamm3d Al-Sahaf
-yours truely Mohamm3d Al-Sahaf
did anyone else notice that there were a disproportionate number of awards going to institutions of learning? namely, school districts including middle schools and high schools?
i don't know about anyone else, but this is a scary proposition for me. schools trying to prohibit the dissemination of information about different cultures and schools of thought speaks volumes about the types of people that are educating our young people. if i let my kids in the future go through a given school system, i want availble to them a variety of vantage points, not just the "right one" as prescribed by the administration.
Help! Help! I'm bein' repressed!
Couldn't find a burkha in her size.
Ben Masel: 51,282 votes for US Senate in the Wisconsin Democratic Primary
All censorships exist to prevent any one from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions...
:) The rest of the quote reads: ...All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently, the first condition of progress is the removal of censorships. -George Bernard Shaw
Didn't say it was it was a very good purpose...
Amen.
On a similar note, I'd like to cite the Bill of No Rights, Article II:
You do not have the right to never be offended. This country is based on freedom, and that means freedom for everyone - not just you! You may leave the room, turn the channel, express a different opinion, etc., but the world is full of idiots, and probably always will be.
=Smidge=
The Johns Hopkins University here in Baltimore, MD views itself as a potential "soft target" for terrorists, due to its being a high-profile educational institution.
Since February, Hopkins has had a van parked in front of 34th street to keep terrorists from blowing up the freshman dorms with a car bomb.
Presumably this was done to pre-emptively quell the fears of parents who might think JHU wasn't doing enough to keep their kids safe. Nevermind that the side streets allow terrorists equal access to the dorms, that the freshman dorms probably aren't high on Osama's list of Baltimore targets, and that the number of people in the world who knew Hopkins was anything but a hospital can be counted on one hand.
Otherwise a harmless gesture of stupidity, aside from the fact that 34th Street is a free parking zone with about 20 spaces. Its closing has created a major parking shortage in the entire University area. For those of us that actually have to deal with it on a daily basis, this is more than just whining- this is a true inconvenience.
Stupid.
Intercarve Networks, LLC
While the baby milk incident at an airport is well known I feel other airport incidents deserve honorable mention as well.
Like... The decorated World War Two veteran who was told he would not be able to take his Medal of Honor on the plane due to the pin on it. There was also a small pen knife with the set. When he asked if they could mail it to him he was told no. When he asked what would be done with it he was it would "probably be thrown away."
And here's one you see on the news now and then but never, ever makes the news in the way it should... Someone gets through security at an airport terminal in a way they should not. No one ever thinks of using the video cameras all over the airport to track them down, to see if they did anything suspicious. Oh no. Much easier to empty the entire terminal out so that everyone who was spread out all over the terminal is now crowded into the street and sidewalk in front of the terminal.
None of the people doing security ever seem to think of the great risk this exposes those people to when they are forced to congregate in an open area much more tightly packed than they had been in the terminal. None of the security personnel have ever considered that this might be an excellent way to initiate a terrorist attack.
(DISCLAIMER - Any terrorist with half a brain has probably thought of these or variations thereof so my discussing them here is not giving them any ideas. Maybe this will cause some security person who stumbles on this to start thinking seriously about how stupid this "empty the terminal to secure it" policy is.)
Recipie for Mass casualties:
Precipitate an incident at an airport terminal that you know will cause the security personnel to herd all of the people in the terminal outside where they are easy to get at and densely packed to boot. (If you pay any attention to the world at all you must have seen scenes like this on your TV when such an overreaction occurs locally.)
Possibilities to cause mass casualties include:
Set off a car bomb. Set off several if you can manage it. Can't park one? Well drive one into the crowd and detonate it. Couple of guys in security uniforms telling you that "You can't drive your car in there?" Shoot them and drive where you like.
Fire on the crowd with automatic weapons. Two or three people with assault rifles could cause hundreds of casualties in under a minute given the rate of fire of the weapons and the density of the targets. Full metal jacketed rounds can even penetrate one target and enter and possibly penetrate another multiplying the effectiveness of the attack. If a belt-fed weapon can be used that's even better. No need to stop and reload and probably a higher cyclic rate that will yield even better results.
Rocket-propelled grenade launcher into.. you guessed it... the crowd. Can even be mixed in along with the automatic weapons fire.
Chemicals. Whether these are chemical weapons specifically or simply highly poisonous or corrosive laboratory supplies, great effectiveness is possible. Combine with explosives or automatic weapons fire for improved results.
I'm sure there are other possibilities but the above and combinations of the above would be quite effective in achieving mass casualties. Why would any terrorist need to look further when so many simple but effective and quite realistically doable ways spring to mind.
Hopefully some airport security personnel will see this and bring it to the attention of someone with enough insight to see that the old "Herd them out" routine is not really sensible these days.
I like that I'm being protected from tea. It makes me feel safe.
Read the article. They stopped an airplane passenger because he was carrying a box of gunpowder tea. After some investigating and discussing, they decided he could, in fact, carry the tea, but they had to impound the box with the evil word "gunpowder". So, they transferred the tea to a plastic bag, after which the passenger proceded to the plane.
So, no, they're not protecting you. They let the gunpowder tea onboard, those incompetent fools! What next? Bazooka Joe gum?
I'm telling you, what we need is more restrictions. I'm glad these gentlemen got the recognition they so richly deserve.
Others because they just don't care.
I looked through the Jefferson Muzzles an the one thing that struck me was that the damn things keep repeating. Its the same things that have been going on for ever before the awards for started.
The scenario is always the same some small or petty elected/appointed official decides what the hell I am going to do this anyway. Its not that they don't know whats gone before. Its not that they don't understand. Theyre just assholes and theres no good way to make certain that the pain they cause others gets back to them in a timely fashion.
It's not just government, its any organization that thinks its managed to achieve a level of insulation. You can put in your favorite (Phone Co., Power Co., Cable Co. (often the best purchase a political contribution can buy), Microsoft, legacy app vendor ).
on npr friday morning. you can listen to a stream of it here
it's streamed in either real or wmp.
Creationists are a lot like zombies. Slow, but powerful and numerous. And they all want to eat our brains.
A rant about it
The RAVE act basically means, if there are any drugs on your property, no matter whether they belong to someone else or whether you knew about it, are your responsibility, and your property may be forfeit and you can be subject to a ludicrous fine.
The full text of the law.
A.C. for obvious reasons.
In 2001 I was interning as a system/network administrator for a publishing house (hint: textbooks). It was (alas) a mostly NT shop for the typists, editors, etc. "grunt workers." The graphics and design teams were mostly using Macs. We had an NT box with 5 30 gig drives serving as a file server.
One of the C-level pointy hairs must have logged into the file server one day and realized that most of the space was used up. He sent a memo to our department (Technical Operations) saying how he found a large number of TIF, EPS, and PSD files on the drives taking up "inordinate amounts" of space and that they need to be deleted immediately. I kid you not. Dunno whether he thought they were horrific pirate music files or what, but they were taking up space so by god they needed to go.
My manager printed out a copy of the memo, handed it to me, smiling, and said "write a batch file to do what he wants." I did. Ten minutes later, the fileserver had about 80 gigs more storage space.
All of us on the floor laughed our asses off most of the day.
The night shift spent most of their time restoring backups (fortunately most of the artsy folks had their own backups as well) cursing us for carring out the order.
The C-level never contacted TechOps again.
Just one example: San Fransisco's subway system BART is criticized for closing their public restrooms. In Washington DC the subway systems was designed 20 years or so ago without public restrooms in the first place. It is in fact hard to find a spot in the DC subway system where you are not under the watchfull eye of a video camera, all being monitored by at least one attendant visible to the public (I think the feeds go to a central location as well). Since they don't put subway stops in deserted parts of the city, this is hardly a major inconvenience. You simply visit a public restroom before you enter the station.
I can't think of any security measures anywhere that don't have at least one of the following problems:
The awards seem to include examples of all three. When I have talked to people who complain about various security measures I try to come up with scenarios that would justify the specific measure that they are complaining about. I can almost always get them to say "Oh, I never thought of that."
In a perfect world we would do this experiment: Every city would have TWO airports. One with the current mix of inconvenient, invasive, and imperfect security checks, the other with only the most cursory check in place (like US Airports in the 50's). Pilots, passengers and employees would use/work at the airport of their own choosing. There would probably be significant cost savings associated with having little or no security measures in place, so that airport could use lower costs as an incentive too.
I'd love to see the long-term results.
You can not bring bottled water w/ a lid into a stadium because when full, they can be EASILY tossed onto to field or into the crowd and it acts as a missle. This policy started a little while ago after quite a few people figured this out during a game (I cant remember when / where but IIRC, it was the start of last season).
I just had to throw the lid away when I went into Arrowhead.
The ultimate network admin tool needs HELP!
How can the parent possibly be modded as flame?
Offering an alternative to those who may not be aware the options is a decent thing to do. Especially that the line most given to people here who bitch about the gov is change things by how you vote. Is supporting another party flame??
Why are the statues and paintings there in the first place? If they interefere with the business of the place, they shouldn't be there at all. If they don't, they shouldn't be covered to improve the image of the speaker.
If Ashcroft and Powell are trying to stage a delivery of media-bites to television without distraction, they can get made up and do that in a controlled studio. If they are trying to speak with the trappings, hiastory and authority of the location they are in, they shouldn't hide the location.
On the other hand, maybe we'd "get" the message better if the background was a huge waving flag, like in the opening scene of "Patton".
Let me pick my own world view, don't change it for the cameras.
Although the school administration should have done more to explain to Morgan (and most importantly, her parents) what the problem was, I can't say I disagree with them not wanting her to distribute relgious messages to other students in the class (although they probably shouldn't have made her collect them once passed out).
A public school is a state-run institution, and the children are required to attend (unless they receive an alternative education). As such, Morgan's fellow students were basically a captive audience as Morgan distributed her individually-targetted religious messages to them. Morgan does not have a right to use the public school as an opportunity to hand out religious materials, no matter how naive her intentions were.
"Every man is a mob, a chain gang of idiots." - Jonathan Nolan, Memento Mori
Don't forget that bottled water is no longer allowed in many clubs, and has apparently been classified by DEA as "drug paraphanelia" because it's possible to put odorless colorless drugs into bottled water. Someone please back me up with references, I don't have any offhand.
Huh? At least 60% of the "awards" are to liberal groups or individuals making asses of themselves. Such as throwing out right-wing newspapers on school campuses, or attacking a student's right of free speech because they said something religious. Yes the big awards go to the government, which happens to be Republican right now, but Democrats in power would get the big awards too.
The sig says it all...
As long as there is a Second Amendment, there will always be a First Amendment.
I think they refused the passenger to take the foil with 'gunpowder' written on it on board because he might fake a bottle of actual gunpowder and threaten to blow it up in the plane. This is why no toy-weapons are alowed on board, too.
Just my idea.
Wow, so instead of just taking it "Uncut and Raw" you separate the good from the crap and read only the crap. What a concept.
Repeal the DMCA!
The concept is much simpler: All posts start at one and what I'd like to see is the ABSOLUTE VALUE of all moderation changes. E.g., if a posts gets mod'd up 11 and down 11 that would be something I want to see even if it is still at 1. Posts that have not provoked a ratings change ... yawn?
Another possible option is Gentoo Linux. Gentoo makes it easy to circumvent censorship by compiling directly from the source, so that the programs you run are optimized for the platform they run upon. It's very difficult to censor, say, a movie, if the DVD player that's playing it has support for MMX and was compiled using -funroll-loops.
If they decide your I68 form is not in order, your boat will be impounded. Due to their zero-tolerance drug laws, if an immigration officer decides that there is even one speck of marijuana on your boat, your boat will be impounded. I am NOT a pot user, btw.
Basically, if they want to, they can take your boat. And even if they don't, they treat you like a criminal.
So I don't sail over there anymore. It's a pity, because the towns and people are super-friendly.
It's the usual thing: everybody loves american people, but your government sucks.
The fact of any security measure being not 100% effective is the critical one, and completely vitiates most procedures. You may be able to rationalize a scenario that explains a procedure. But the low occurance of the feared scenario, coupled with the imperfections often make the system with the new procedure work worse than the old.
Since terrorism happens so infrequently, we can't tell if terrorist acts have decreased, increased, or stayed the same since any new tightened procedures have been implemented, or even since 9/11/01. Looking at it the other from the other side, more arduous security measures are a definite good for those who are paid to implement them, and we should be suspicious that their $100000/unit, less than perfect security system isn't truly any more effective than rolling dice.
As an example, suppose 1 person in 1000000 tries to smuggle a bomb detectable by those ion scanners in airports, and those scanners have a 95% detection rate and a 1% false alarm rate. With 200 million passengers/month (http://www.atwonline.com/stats_top25.cfm), 10 bombs will be completely undetected, the device will trigger 2000190 times, causing the screenings to be useless 99.9905% of the time, and hoping that the further screening will pick up the 0.01%. Maybe the time and effort doing the useless screenings would be better as guard service on the flights, or on combat training for the crew.
You can juke around with the numbers some, but there's always a tradeoff between the sensitivity and the false alarm rate of any test.
Terrorist acts are so low frequency, that using an imperfect system to counteract them is a waste of money and effort. Gains that you would expect from a system are mostly lost in the wasted effort in false alarms, and the effort might be better directed elsewhere.
Me? I want to carry my Visor Edge stylus on the plane so I can poke the eye of a box-toting hijacker, like brave Swiss Army penknife, fingernail clipper, and knitting needle toting passengers on flight 93. Rationalizing useless security procedures is counterproductive.
I think the thing with disposeable lighters being allowed and refillable ones not is that you could fill the lighter with something other than lighter fuel, but it's still stupid because they let you on with bottled drinks even if they're opened already.
graspee
Spelling mistakes are ugly. The TJCPFE's Muzzles are littered with typos. Why? Why? Why?
some airlines might go out of business.
Personally, it will take a lot more reason for me to fly anywhere, and suffer the "security" measures today than before 9/11. The extra time involved, risking losing anything I might be carrying, etc, just so I can feel "secure".
Frankly, it's not my idea of a vacation.
So now the only way I would take a flight is if it involves my job and I have no choice. Fortunately, my job involves no travel.
So the airlines don't get my money, and neither do the places I might go on vacation. Way to go Ashcroft.
What sucks is that I back Bush, and didn't think there would be a problem with Ashcroft. Now I'm hoping Bush will realize what Ashcroft has been doing, and replace him.
Won't you please think of the children!?!?!?!?!
Yeah, right.
Hey AC,
What's a good source for news on the status of Afganistan?
Thanks,
MOST EGREGIOUSLY STUPID AWARD WINNER - THE AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENT
As an Australian I too was amused that our government's response to an increased public awareness of terrorism, was to send us all fridge magnets.
HOWEVER...
The nominator for this award states TWICE that "there are no proven instances of any terrorist activity whatsoever targetted at Australia."
So the 84 Australian victims of the bombing attack in Bali, who were SPECIFICALLY TARGETTED by a terrorist group (members of the group admitted as much) were not "targetted"?
Perhaps the fuck-knuckle that nominated the Australian Government should have actually read the literature that they sent out. It was meant to re-assure people that our government were actually doing something.
The fridge magnet was funny though.
http://jesus.everdense.com/
I don't know about the others, but The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn were so much against slavery that it would be amazing had they not banned it.
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
How is this a troll? It is a direct example of a technique for censorship... which was the subject and the topic.
It occurred to a friend of mine and this information is being shared with those readers who might be interested.
And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make
And here is what may be a nominee for 2003 here.
Impersonating Tycho from Penny Arcade since before there was a PA.
The devil is usually in the details, though. Let me provide some examples of stupid airport security (and contrast to good security examples).
1: Flew to Ecuador-- in Newark, out JFK. The terminal in JFK had the ticket counters in the same physical space as the gates *with no possibility&* of a wall or checkpoint between. Thus,the security checkpoint had to be before you get to the ticket counter, and every piece of luggage must be assumed to be a carry-on (you cannot have a knife in your checked luggage).
Compare with Singapore where every gate has a security checkpoint, and the gate waiting area is opened just before the plane is ready to board.
2: In Sea-Tac airport, even international travelers are *not* allowed to lock thier luggage (which could be tampered with, or stolen once outside the US) because the TSA must have the ability to search any bag.
Compare to Jakarta where every bag is x-rayed and if necessary searched *before* it is checked. Ususally they are also sealed by the airline or by security personnel to prevent further tampering.
I guess it is true that we in the US have never faced a threat like we do now, unlike many other parts of the world, so we are having to learn many things the hard way. I just wish the government would take a look at how other countries solve the problem and use that as a starting point rather than assume that nobody else has had to deal with these issues.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
I have noticed lately that there are very concerted attempts from both the radical left and extreme right wings to limit speech that they find offensive. It is very troubling. The lefties want to limit "offensive" speech- like Mark Twain- , and the right wing-nuts want to ban BAD things like NUDITY.
I think both of these extreme groups need to take a breather. How about READING Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. The "nigger" Jim was the most noble and compassionate character. Even as an opressed slave man, he showed that his humanity remained with him. He was the earliest black character to portray true nobility. Sure, he was uneducated and ignorant of many things, but his character was unselfish and kind. Can no-one spot the irony of someone like Jim being called "the nigger" by even his closest friends?
And realistically, I have two young sons, and I object more to the gratuitous and unrealistic violence on television than nudity. Nudity is part of human existence and is almost never offensive. (okay, the nudity in "1984" offended me). I would trade 50% of the violence for 300% more nudity if humans must be titillated in order to watch TV.
Just remember, folks, the PC crowd and the Religious Right may disagree on what should be banned and why, but they're basically identical personalities, believing themselves to know best for OUR kids.
The security measures, and actually the whole atmosphere at an airport make me feel very insecure. The guards are supposed to be good guys protecting us from the evil terrorists. Well, they don't look very good to me. They look threatening and intimidating, and apparently have full permission to inflict their bad tempers on random passengers. I've grown reluctant to fly because it means putting myself in such a powerless and sometimes humiliating position.
They've even shown video of dead Iraqis on Foxnews. Based on your comment I must assume that you haven't actually been watching the war coverage, because if anything I think it's shown the public how gritty and awful war really is. I've been watching the news a lot lately and I have seen video (from embedded reporters) of dead and wounded Iraqis, bloody dirty marines, that burning american ammo truck and the brave marine who jumped into the one next to it to try and save it. The firefights. What the hell have you been watching, Barney the Dinosaur?
-73, de n1ywb
www.n1ywb.com
On the flight down I had a backpack full of 3 ham radio handi-talkies, many spare battery packs, two drop-in chargers, my Dell Axim, a bunch of food, two full water bottles, a GPS, and an LED flashlight. I took everything out of my pockets and put it all in my pack. I didn't set off the metal detector, but they did take all of the stuff out of my pack. The guy had to ask his manager if I could fly with my ham radios. The manager said yes, if they passed the explosive screening. That wasn't a big deal, it only took a couple of minutes. I was a little suprised that they only screened the radios themselves, and not the spare batteries or chargers, which would be a lot easier to hide bombs in. Anyway the radios passed (of course), and I packed everything back into my bag and boarded my flight. My friend got the 3rd degree and got searched and questioned for a half hour because he didn't know to take his laptop out of it's bag. Bizzare.
In DC, security was pretty tight everwhere, but some places where noticably tighter than others. Some things are just closed, like the Capital, and the federal mint. The tightest security was at the Suprime Court, where they didn't allow you to carry any electronic devices or bags of any kind into the court, and they made you walk through two metal detectors. Thankfully they offered a free coatcheck and also $.25 lockers.
Most places (IE all the museams, and the washington monument) just made you walk through a metal detector and then hand searched and or xrayed your bag. At the Smithsonian museam of natural history, the security woman opened my full backpack, and saw my granola bars right on top, and asked for one. I gave her one and she didn't bother searching the rest of my bag. Okay...
On the flight back they didn't even take anything out of my pack (which was still full of ham radios and other electronics), and my friend remembered to take out his laptop and also cruised right through. Then our flight got cancelled. The put us on a different flight that was supposed to have left 5 minutes earlier but they held it for us. We (all nine of us) ran to the gate where and NTS guy told us to all line up for a random re-screaning with a want and he also wanted to rifle through our bags. Then the stewardess told us to get on the plane. The NTS guy waved at me to get in line but the stewardess pushed me towards the gate and said "just get on the plane" so I did. They didn't make me get back off, and after the rest of my group was re-screned we flew home.
Honestly I think most of the security precautions I encountered were overkill, and would also be completely ineffective against all but the most bumbling of bad guys.
-73, de n1ywb
www.n1ywb.com
It's a car bridge. Thousands of cars cross it every day. Quite a few trucks do too. Big trucks. Lots of room inside. And with the wonderful Sydney traffic system, stopping is barely going to be noticed.
The bridge was finished in 1932 and is a serious bridge. None of this flimsy, late 20th century sway in the wind rubbish. If there is anything left for it to be anchored to, then it's not going anywhere.
There are other targets that are far more attractive that don't have any security guards on them. There's a tunnel under the harbour and another, less beefy bridge further into the harbour.
The security guards are mostly useless anyway. Security guards were set to guard the Opera House (The big white buildings that do a credible impersonation of wind traps from Dune) at about the same time they were put on the bridge. The successfully managed to not stop anti-war protestors from writting "No War" in 3 meter high letters along the top of one of them (and a special mention goes to the cleanup crew who managed to get the paint to run the full length of the building making it look as though it had been washed with a red sock).
Nerd: Derogatory term typically directed at anybody with a lower Slashdot ID than you.
I don't know how this got modded flame bait, as it is a valid claim, valid in that the poster has every right to believe that his option is the better one. I for one however reserve my right to disagree.
Did your friend ask to see the guy's search warrant? I don't think he can get in without one unless she lets him in.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
I spent a good 20 minutes looking at the winners of past Jefferson Muzzle awards and have determined that some of them are really damn stupid, such as :
-Sports Illustrated in 1994 for refusing to publish an Addidas ad featuring a nude guy in their swimsuit issue. The whole point of the SI swimsuit issue is to see a bunch of semi-nude chicks, I don't think anybody buys it to see a nude guy.
-CBS in 1996 for not airing a whistleblower interview on 60 Minutes relating to the tobacco industry. The tobacco industry is one of the most powerful industries in this country, and I sure as hell wouldn't want to get into a legal battle with them. If anybody won this award, it should've been the tobacco industry!
-The lifetime muzzle for Rudy Guiliani. I've been the New York before and during Guiliani... it was much better during Guiliani, with his outrageous permits, etc.
-CBS for censoring the NBC billboard in Times Square on New Years Eve. Not only is it free advertising for an opposing network, but CBS could technically get sued for copyright infringement.
Now, I'm not defending any of these people or companies, but gosh, lets use some common sense!
Sent To: somerville (at sign) MIT.EDU
Subject: Somerville Bill of Rights Defense meeting Monday night
From: Jake Beal
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FYI, for those who are concerned about post-9/11 civil liberties:
I'm involved with a group working to make Somerville a Civil Liberties
Safe Zone --- a city which is standing up against some of the
more flagrant abuses in the PATRIOT act, Total Information Awareness,
and some of the other recent scary federal activity. Cambridge already
has a similar resolution, as do 80+ cities around the US.
Tomorrow evening, Monday April 14th, we're having out first public
meeting, and starting a petition campaign in support of the Somerville
resolution. We'll have a brief talk about the state of civil
liberties, what we've been doing, what the resolution is about, and
what you can do to help. The meeting will last under an hour, so
don't worry about things dragging on. We'll start right at 8pm and
move quickly.
If you're interested, come join us and bring other interested folks
from Somerville (and elsewhere too: they can help spread the campaign).
Date: Tomorrow, Monday April 14th
Time: 8:00pm
Place: Somerville West Branch Public Library (40 College ave, two blocks
from the Davis Sq. T stop)
For more info, our website is
http://municipalfreedom.org
Thanks,
- -Jake
That was the crux of it too. Apparently because it was a 911 call the sheriff claimed that a search warrant was not required.
That anytime a 911 call is received that the officer has the right to check out the whole house. She asked him for his ID which he showed but she was too shook to write it down. Later she called the sheriff's office and procured the needed information
The logic seems OK in a way that someone else could have placed the call and that person is now being held against their will.
And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make
I spent 8 years on a combat targeting team in the military from 1962 till 1970 so I may be an evil bastard... but I am patriotic.
And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make
"Deep down you want all of the worlds problems to be so simple they can be solved by a hug, and a coke with every day ending at sunset when all the peoples of the world join hands and sing together in perfect harmony. But that's not the world we live in, it's a world that never existed, and will never exist. "
Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. The problem with you war pigs is that you think there are no other ways to solve problems other then killing. Over a thousand civillians were killed, tens of thousands of civillians were injured, tens of thousands of iraqi "soldiers" who were simply conscripts died too.
Once bush chummed the waters bloodthirsty fucks like you got all frenzied at the thought of dropping bombs on people and war became inevitable. Stupid warmongers then closed their eyes to any other possible solution.
COmbined technologies of israel and the US and we could not figure out where saddam was and get rid of him? All the special ops, cia, mossad, etc could nto infiltrate the regime to get rid of saddam? There was no other solution except to invade and kill? Yea right!
The really sad thing is that the bloodlust of pigs like you is still not satiated. Sryia is next.
War is necrophilia.
Looks like the mods don't understand the fine art of sarcasm :p
http://www.archive.org/details/ThePowerOfNightmares
There's a great first hand account of the life of an embedded journalist in the SMH.
And there's an interesting blurb here about the US killing non-embedded journalists.
Vino, gyno, and techno -Bruce Sterling
In addition to the FUD disseminated but the Australian Federal Govt. regarding terrorism, and related threats, one of the most inconvenient security measures that has been re-introduced (it was a bit hit during the 2000 Olympics) is to remove ALL rubbish bins from city railway platforms. Presumably bombers are too smart to leave 'suspicious' luggage lying around and have taken to placing their nasty packages in the trash, I suppose it's old hat after the Hilton Hotel Bin Bombing , the result - city trains are filled with litter. Suppose it creates jobs - or something,.
I'm extremely curious why Michael registered it for another two years instead of just handing the domain over. If he's working at Slashdot and not doing anything with the site, what does he need it for? What other purpose would it serve other than to specifically prevent others from using it? Sorry, but that's freaking lame. That's cybersquatting! Thanks, Michael...
At least there is censorware.net.
"Sufferin' succotash."
Thank you :)
http://www.xpurple.com
Excellent! Superlative! Cutting! -- Here are a few of my favourite examples:
Sure, I know that this is standard english, but it is not often that a rare and beautiful display and command of the language is presented on the web in all it's glory. Agreeing with the author(s) only makes reading it more pleasing.Newsfollow.com
It seems very strange to me that a telephone call can suddenly blow away the requirement for a warrant. Maybe the sheriff was simply bluffing? I don't think there's anything illegal about that. But then again, I don't really know a whole lot about any of this.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
I love the irony. We finally get some religion in schools ("witchcraft") from Harry Potter, and suddenly the Christian bigots think religion in school is a bad idea! Can ya believe that? Now if only they weren't so goddam stupid, they might have a revelation about how they're trying to do the same thing to other religions as they claim Harry Potter was doing to them...
Who was it again, that said "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you"
?
I SEE UGLY PEOPLE.
That's what's offensive to me- droopy, pendulous breasts on pale bluish skin with grime on it.