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Senators Call for Universal Internet Filtering
An Anonymous Coward writes "US senators today made a bipartisan call for the universal implementation of filtering and monitoring technologies on the Internet in order to protect children. Their statement came at the end of a Senate hearing in which civil liberties groups were not invited."
Is Freenet ready yet? What do you mean they're still coding it in Java?
How we know is more important than what we know.
is that any argument that invokes 'Think of the Children' automatically loses. We grew up in a dangerous world, so will they. Its up to the parents to monitor what they're doing not the state.
09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
+2 Troll is Slashdot's way of saying groupthink is confused
From TFA:
"While filtering and monitoring technologies help parents to screen out offensive content and to monitor their child's online activities, the use of these technologies is far from universal and may not be fool-proof in keeping kids away from adult material," Sen. Inouye said. "In that context, we must evaluate our current efforts to combat child pornography and consider what further measures may be needed to stop the spread of such illegal material over high-speed broadband connections."
How does he jump from kids seeing pr0n to pr0n of kids? Is this a special type of logic you learn when you get into politics?
End of lesson. You may press the button.
Orwell must be looking down and shaking his head.
Children and terrorists
What a nice blessing for any power hungry totalitarian government
I would like to make a bipartisan call for the universal firing of every congress critter who supports this idea in order to protect us from stupidity. Congressmen are not invited to comment on this request.
-jX
Don't you just love politics? It's like a comedy of errors.
Anyone else notice that this is being headed by Senator Ted Stevens? Why is anyone listening to him about this kind of a thing?
They tried this, and COPA was gutted after the civil liberties folks got back in the loop. I wish Ted 'Series of Tubes' Stevens and Senator 5-0 would stop trying to govern parenting. Heck, isn't Stevens up against the wall for some illicit activities in Alaska? Looks like he can't even protect himself from himself, let alone watching out for other people's kids.
Let parents deal with kids. If the parents can't do it, there are local resources that can help. Legislating to the family unit won't work. There are more important national things begging for attention, like getting a bridge built to a barely inhabited island in AK.
"First things first, but not necessarily in that order."
- Doctor Who
What are they trying to do? Emulate China?
Do these idiot senators even consider the implications of such a precedent when they propose it? (Well, not like the proposal has a chance to survive, anyway...)
But I'd rather my kids see a boob and suffice a natural desire, than hrm I dont know drugs, gang banging, drinking, smoking, HAVING sex, skipping school, watching the news and seeking people blown up/burned, and the rest of the horrible things out in the REAL world. Life sucks, putting up an internet filter sounds a lot like another country who's authority we question (china). The net is meant to be an open flow of information.
Freedom is a THREAT to national security! //end sarcasm
Welcome our internet monitoring overlords!!!
Someone should really explain the concept of "unworkable" to these clowns. Short of shutting down the entire Internet...no, wait! They couldn't possibly be...???
And they're calling it The Fairness Doctrine???
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
"There are ways for parents to keep their kids from the stuff we want to censor out, but we don't trust them to do it. Also, those darn kids are to sneaky for their parents to stop."
Whatever happened to letting the parents do their job and parent?
The creator of this post (Jacob Smith) hereby releases it, and all of his other posts, into the public domain.
We have Republicans in Congress propositioning their same-sex underage pages, others sleeping with prostitutes, and a Democrat president a few years back getting frisky with his intern and a box of (contraband) Cuban cigars -- and all this makes it onto the news.
Who's going to protect the children from being exposed to the examples from these pinnacles of morality?
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
When will it be the case that the people of the United States wake up from their deep slumber and recognize that the political empire must end?
When?
What is it going to take?
A complete erosion of the constitution and all rights and laws does not seem to awaken them, wars in the name of false ideology and lies doesn't seem to do it, failed leadership and international hatred doesn't seem to stop the snoring.
What will it take?
Filtering the internet?
Outright censorship of certain groups of people will occur in the name of protection of American children?
Last time I checked, the protection children in the United States require is from their government and military recruitment programs.
A public education system with a %30 drop-out rate results in kids being shipped off to war because they can't get other jobs.
Start protecting your investments by educating them, then perhaps after that a discussion can begin around controlling people that know how to read and write.
This has nothing to do with the children... It has everything to do with complete control of YOU.
VOTE 3rd party immediately.
The problem with filtering is that it blocks a lot of legitimate content that shouldn't be blocked, and lets a lot of content that probably whould be blocked if the filter was behaving as the people who implemented it intended. For example, Microsoft's download page Also, forcing filtering on everyone is certainly contrary to the first amendment.
Wasn't the Great Firewall of China implemented to "protect the children?"
Hmm...
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
How do we know that this article wasn't posted by a US lawmakers, fishing for unruly opposition? Anonymous indeed! I am going to make a new tinfoil hat and watch V for Vendetta again. Maybe cry myself to sleep!
Bubb-- oh wait!
Your truly, Anonymous User
A political story that doesn't have a loaded slam about republicans or GWB in it on the front page? I think I've seen everything now.
Where's kdawson? We need to rectify this immediately.
No need to vote 3rd party: vote for Ron Paul. He is basically a libertarian running as a Republican. The more I listen to the guy, the more I like him.
I believe in de-evolution. God made the world perfect, man fell, and its been going downhill ever since!
Is still Ron Paul.
Is this really how the U.S. government thinks it should regulate Internet communication and content?
...and after 6 months, let's add certain political speech (i.e. views of those not in power) to the definition of obscene.
...and we continue to slide down the slippery slope...
Let us ban internet content deemed obscene to save our sensitive childrens' eyes. What standards should we use?...Oh, of course, we already have the FCC's handy guidelines for obscene content on over-the-air TV and cable TV broadcasts. Let us just use a similar definition of obscene content to filter out the internet. That is very convenient since the FCC already has a lot of experience in this area, and of course we can apply old laws to new mediums in which they were never intended to regulate.
Oh, but how will we enforce these new filtering laws? We need to remove anonymity with internet postings (technologically, almost impossible, and if implemented this will essentially remove the best form of communication for whistle blowers that exists). Also, we need to block all foreign internet content if that is obscene, so maybe we should build a whitelist of sites without offensive content...
End sarcasm.
Apparently so are the rest of them. Specifically the first and tenth....
:(
It's becoming increasingly apparent that the second might need to be taken out and exercised in the near future.
~ a low user id is no indication I have a clue what I'm talking about.
Having stupid friends makes you stupid.
At the end of a major LUG today the members all endorsed a bipartisan plan to introduce universal senator filtering. Under the filtering plan no senator judged to have a tech-iq less than 150 would be allowed to speak or vote about technology issues. Hopes are that such powerful bipartisan legislation would lead to a safer internet for personal rights.
"While filtering and monitoring technologies help parents to screen out offensive content and to monitor their child's online activities, the use of these technologies is far from universal and may not be fool-proof in keeping kids away from adult material"
...oh God no!! What about satellite dishes and even shortwave! Those porn terrorists could be beaming it directly into our homes. Why if a minor were to come into the possession of a electro-magnetic wave receiving device, it could be the end of civilization as we know it!
And the same can be said of the fucking postal system.
While it's true that parents can screen the letters that arrive at and are sent from their home post office box to somewhat guard against their children using the postal system to solicit, receive, and exchange adult material, the practice of screening by parents is farm from universal and even when applied may not be fool-proof.
We had better start filtering and monitoring all domestic mail as well. And, my God, what about international mail? We'll have to screen that for sure, maybe even just stop it all.
And, and,
This is exactly why I think being "bi-partisan" is overrated.
All the usual freedom shills come out of the closet when things like this are mentioned. Fact is, the technology to deliver this level of security across the whole internet is being developed and policies are being proposed. It's just one available tool as part of the prevention, detection, and enforcement loop. Think about that the next time you sit behind a firewall, a "secure by design" OS, and pick up your email from your ISP spam filtered email.
Pure freedoom is scope to do anything. World doesn't work like that. Your freedom is someone else's pain. It's why food mass produced food is regulated up the wazoo. One botulism riddled sandwich at home just kills you. Repeat the same trick in a restaurant and a 100 people die. It's the same as the difference between a one time hack and the software they bung in pacemakers.
In fact, what really, really annoys me about this freedom talk all the time, as well as the insensitive domestic reporting of foreign affairs, is the incredible destabilising influence it can have on communities and, in some cases, entire nations. The uprising in Iraq at the end of the first Gulf war, nonsense with China and, more lately, with Iran. It's the same sort of thing with road rage and corporate misconduct. People copy people even if it's wrong or inappropriate.
Freedom? You can't handle it. Plato was right.
"It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing."
Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Macbeth, Act V, Scene V
Sounds like a good description of the Congress.
I'm buying stock in websense tonight. Because if they think they can control it then the answer is obviously websense.
You said "Research" and "Ted Stevens" in the same sentence...I don't know if you remember, but this is Ted "The internet is a series of tubes" Stevens, the guy knows flat nothing about technology...Hell, he probably thinks this is technically feasible, when anyone with a networking background would just start laughing.
Hopefully fossils like him will just die off or (even better) get thrown out of office and replaced by people who aren't utterly clueless. Our only hope in this situation is for him to kick off, unfortunately, because he'll never stop winning in Alaska as long as he keeps up with the "Bridge to Nowhere" pork projects.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Their statement came at the end of a Senate hearing in which civil liberties groups were not invited.
But were the children invited?!?!
Might this be the first step towards legislating mandatory adoption of Trusted Computing as a way of controlling the internet and content, using the tried-and-true "think of the children!" method of bulldozing reasoned opposition by those that prefer their computers do what *they* want, instead of what corporations and the government wants?
n g/20031001_tc.php
For those unfamiliar, here's a link to an EFF page on Trusted Computing.
http://www.eff.org/Infrastructure/trusted_computi
Here's another link to an excellent piece by Ross Anderson.
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/tcpa-faq.html
Not trying to be all tinfoil-hat-like, but it seems these days that it's trumped-up issues like this that precede an attempt to limit freedoms and increase control of the population. Awareness of these possibilities is the first and most important step to preventing a world none of us wants to live in.
Cheers!
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
RTFA! The senate did not, in fact, pass a law banning or filtering anything. They commissioned a study to propose alternatives. That is the politician's polite way of saying "I'm not going to do anything meaningful for you today. Come back in two years, after I get re-elected."
Vote Quimby!
http://xkcd.com/756//
If i had one dollar for every brain you dont have, i would have $1.
Really, if you just executed like a 1000 people a year that are caught making kiddy porn, that would put a pretty big damper on the whole thing. Just shoot them all. Go after criminals, not the rest of us.
This is my sig.
As a 3d artist I feel threatened by this desire to filter and monitor the internet. Look on CGTalk, there are tons of nude 3d girls and other characters on there. If they start this up then we might have to censor ourselves if we want to post our work online.
Does that mean we can filter them out of the net too? Please?
"It's becoming increasingly apparent that the second might need to be taken out and exercised in the near future. :("
The really sad part is that your probably right.
You want to leave Washington full of unemployed goatse?
Well. I guess the place really can get worse!
The best tool against the postdigestive sphincters on the internet is education. Parents need to know what kind of dangers there are, as well as tools that might be able to help them educate their kids. Filtering software should be included with the caveat that it's not foolproof.
The Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.
Also, the USA is not the world, and we don't own the internet. I think there's a lot of politicians that don't understand how the internet works (Big surprise that Mr. Stevens' name comes up in the article. Tubes, etc), that it's a global network and that's how you get inane laws like this proposed. How about we have some personal responsibility and expect parents to monitor their own children's online behavior, and not rely on the government to do that for us because I'm and adult, I don't need MY internet to be filtered at all.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
While it doesn't add much more, TFA doesn't link to the actual press release it cites throughout the body of the article which is here. When will politicians and parents for that matter learn that in many cases sheltering your children rather than educating them is a mistake? From personal experience my parents censorship only made it all the more thrilling when I finally decided to do break their rules by first watching TV shows they banned and later engaging in underage drinking and other forbidden activities.
We ARE working hard and doing out damnest best toward the grand cause of creating a whole new generation of sissies. -jkol
They have something like this in China right? Filtering technology to protect their populous and children from material the government deems immoral?
Maybe this might start a move away from the US, why house your servers there
oh no, not again.
(and again....)
this concept needs to die.
If you're on the internet, you're going to jail.
I would like to propose that the federal government cannot protect children, and that it should not even consider protecting children. It should delegate such responsibilities to the parents of said children, in the same way that it delegates the care and feeding of children to them. Why? Because the federal government is the most inefficient and bureaucratic mess on the face of the earth, and children must be protected efficiently and without red tape.
F--- the F'in Children already.
Parents.
Do
Your
F'in
Jobs
or better yet, don't breed 'em if you don't want the responsibility.
The US has had true freedom longer than any nation in history, but that time is quickly coming to an end.
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
Civil liberties groups weren't invited. Boo hoo. I wasn't invited either. Maybe they need to lookup the meaning of the word "invited". If you need an invitation to go someplace, you aren't "entitled" to go.
No one elected these "civil liberties groups". They aren't owed any special input on policy. They should get the same input as the rest of us get.
(The Senate should stop being so extremely stupid though. It's been chock full of fools for as long as I can remember. Why do people keep voting those old fossils back there?)
I don't have any children of my own, but there are two in the house that are step-children of my sister. One of the machines is locked down tighter than the NSA, and the child using it couldn't comprehend how to hack it (she's rather mentally challenged), and the other is monitored extremely closely by the adults in the house. You know, good ol' fashioned parenting and family intervention.
It's time the state quit trying to do our fucking job, which we're doing quite well, thank you very much. If they want to pass this silly legislation, then I fully expect them to pay my broadband bill, as I am no longer in control.
-Kinsey
Kids are seeing boobies. Is that the world you want to live in!
I'd love to be a libertarian, but it seems I'd have to believe that the free market works, and corporations are free to do business however they wish.
I wouldn't mind, assuming we returned corporations to a public charter system, in which a corporation may have its charter revoked if it is found to behave illegally. And, I'd like to see some vengeance against the to executives, and make it so if Kenneth Lay dies, we get to see his body so all the ex-Enron employees who were fleeced out of their retirement funds can piss in his cold dead mouth.
'Cause I don't think he's dead.
If the libertarians can promise me that, I'm a convert. 'Cause except for the whole trust-in-the-free-market thing, I'm mostly there.
Actually, I'm a liberal anarcho-constitutionalist. But that's pretty damned close.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
...do not welcome our new US overlords.
When being introduced to Congress, a bill shall have a realistic plan for implementation (made by people who actually know what they're doing) attached to it.
I can just see Sen. Stevens talking to his staff about putting "filters" in the "tubes" of the internets. With a straight face.
by our government officials. Wrap themselves in the cloak of "protect the children" when it really means, "We will be censoring the internet to OUR advantage". What a bunch of mealy mouth losers.
My karma is not a Chameleon.
There's plenty of informal agreements developing between states to put in place an enforcement system over the parts of the world that matter, from North America, to Europe, to Asia. Legislation proposals have already done the rounds in key developed countries, and systems are well developed. The only major niggle is rolling it out.
Trusted computing, permissions based traffic, and all that jazz is coming and there's nothing Slashdot, the GPL brigade, or Saint Stallman of MIT can do to stop it. The untrammelled liberal academic worldview is heading for a brick wall and it's going to get a headache. Not everywhere in this world is a university staff room. That's why.
For all the talk, there's a lot of ignorance and peer pressure floating around the human rights tree hugging save the world mob as much as there is around their opposite numbers that line their own pockets, shit on the workforce, and screw the world. It's just a tool, like any other tool. Nothing to worry about. You need to understand that.
STEALING? Even a loaf of bread? Bah, give them the death penatly.
Caught with a prostitute? Get the death penalty.
Had sex with a female who is 17 years, 11 months, and 28 days of age in Arizona, California, Iowa, Puerto Rico, or Wisconsin? You had sex with a minor so death penalty.
Smoked Pot? Hell, give the death penalty as well.
A child that stole a piece of 5 cent gum? Kill em.
Yep, give em all the death penatly, after all, they are nothing more than criminals and we must go after the criminals. That will teach anyone from even considering becoming criminals. So what if all of the children are dead from committing a simple crime of Jay Walking or stealing candy from a store. They too are nothing more than lowly criminals after all.
Oh wiat, you are going to say that is different? How is it so different? You were the one that stated "Just shoot them all. Go after criminals, not the rest of us." and criminals are the ones who commit a crime so I was simply going by your logic.
Why do people think it is okay to put the responsibility of the parent onto the government? The parent isn't supposed to just take away access to a TV or Computer; they are supposed to instill discipline and judgment into their child. Even if I was in a room with three TVs and two computers; if I were told by my parent not to turn either of them on, I didn't. Not because I was the model child and didn't get into trouble, but because I was taught that every action has a consequence. We had the old Tandy 1000s in my school, and if you didn't follow the rules you didn't get to play. When the rules were broken there were consequences and we quickly learned to try to not break the rules. We were also taught about dangers and why we shouldn't do things. Stop trying to put your parental responsibility on the government. Do it yourself or don't have children.
Children of today are fucking weak.
Back in my day we actually enjoyed getting molested by our priests and coaches. Fucking crybabies.
... from their teachers. Let me get this straight. The U.S. Government wants to filter pictures of sex acts, so it can later employ teachers to have ACTUAL sexual relations with kids?... on the taxpayer's dime? I don't get it. The picture is worse than the deed? You know what they say about those most opposed.
How many teachers (federally funded employees) get away with banging their students without even a slap on the wrist? In my high school, there were at least two. One even tried to sex me up once during class. Can't we just start there Mr. Senator? I'd rather my kid look at nudie pics than get a fat cock up the ass from his History teacher.
Priorities aside, I'm sure the government will filter responsibly, just as they've used the Patriot Act responsibly and managed our Social Security responsibly. With all of the legislated restrictions on cryptography, it's practically guaranteed that we can't ever have electronic privacy. Will ever we have the same window into politician's lives as they have into ours?
I looked at his website. Sounds like the same stuff all the other republicans are saying. How is he any different?
"That which does not kill us makes us stranger." -Trevor Goodchild
...and wrote all three of my elected representatives about this travesty. The Communications Decency Act of 1996 died a natural death in 1997 when the Supremes decided it was bad law. Let's not resurrect the shambling corpse to trod all over our basic freedoms.
Let's put video cameras in everybody's house while we're at it. Don't want anybody letting the kids watch the wrong shows on teevee. When our eighth graders are drafted to fight in Iraq, you damn sure don't want them to have ever seen any pr0n.
But freedom is a threat to national security. Freedom of the people is the only real threat to the security of any state. Always has been, always will be. Some people don't seem to understand that those same personal freedoms are the only real security the people have. Again, always has been, always will be.
It's the same thing as all the Patriot Act crap wasn't really for fighting terror, it was a wholesale monitoring of the US public by a paranoid administration. It's like calling wrecking the educational system "no child left behind". It's like a whole lot of what is going on these days -- call a violation of our civil liberties or Constitutional rights something that sounds patriotic or like it is protecting kids, or protecting 'Merca.
Maybe they should just go ahead and call this what it really is - just another step towards a totalitarian police state.
Oh wiat, you are going to say that is different? How is it so different? You were the one that stated "Just shoot them all. Go after criminals, not the rest of us." and criminals are the ones who commit a crime so I was simply going by your logic
The big hole in your argument is that stealing a loaf of bread is not the same as raping a 2 year old. We can argue about the socioeconomic causes of someone stealing a loaf of bread and thus the penalty, but, the facts are in when it comes to child rapists. Generally speaking, sex offenders have a very high recidivism rate, so, rehabilitation doesn't work. Therefor, because they represent a continuing and ongoing danger to society, it is safer for everyone involved to just kill them.
Please, explain why a child rapist has a right to life.
This is my sig.
Two Senators in their 80s find the Internet kind of scary. What a surprise. I wonder if either of them has ever used a computer or even knows how to type.
No, what it really means is "We can't really get away with anything before the election, but if you help us get elected next year, we can really clamp down on that Intarweb thingy after I get re-elected. You make money in fines and prison contracts, I make money on hard drive and router sales, and when it doesn't work, you just demand more funding and stronger enforcement, and we'll both get filthy stinking rich, rolling in hookers and coke, and the fucking voters will pay for it outa their own pockets. HAW HAW HAW!"
> You people aren't cynical enough!
Young bull: "Hey, look at them cows grazing down there in the meadow!"
Old bull: "Yep, mighty fine udders on 'em."
Young bull: "Oh yeah! Let's run down this hill and fuck one of them cows!"
Old bull: "No, son. Let's walk down this hill. And fuck 'em all."
No, sir, we're plenty cynical enough. If anyone isn't cynical enough, it's you.
We grew up in a dangerous world, so will they. Its up to the parents to monitor what they're doing not the state.
Didn't you know, too many parents want the state, government, to watch their kids, that being a parent is too much work. So they want a nanny state.
FalconShould there be a Law?
What really happened was a committee hearing by the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. The witnesses were either people against child pornography (Miss America, the Director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire, and the president of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children) or experts ("experts" ?) on technology (the Assistant Superintendent for Technology and Human Resources of the Virginia Department of Education and the General Counsel/Corporate Secretary, of the Go Daddy Group, Inc).
After the hearing, they decided to draft a measure to:
For those who believe Stevens' lack of knowledge will only cause harm, the day before this hearing he cosponsored the Community Broadband Act of 2007.
If you listen to his speeches and read more about him, you will see that he is staunchly against any regulation of the Internet. He believes that the government should try to stay out of the lives of the individual as much as possible. Check out his stance on personal liberty. He is also the only Republican candidate against the war in Iraq. He opposed it from the very beginning because he felt that we must actually declare war if we are to invade another country. He basically is calling for a return to a government dictated by the constitution -- namely that any powers not specifically given to congress by the constitution should be left to the states.
If you want to learn more, you can search for Ron Paul on YouTube and see his campaign speeches. I think you will see that he is quite a bit different than most of the Republican candidates -- especially the front runners.
I believe in de-evolution. God made the world perfect, man fell, and its been going downhill ever since!
"Republicans and Democrats, working together. The only thing stupider than a Democrat,or a Republican, is when these little pricks work together."
As long as there are terrorists who hate our freedom, we must keep freedom safe.
So, we shall take our freedom, stuff it in a lead box, pour a concrete casing around it (eight or ten yards^3 should do it), dig a big hole on G.W. Bush's ranch, and bury it there, where our President can keep it safe. He'll watch it for us while it's hidden away all snug-like, and then the terrorists won't have any reason to attack us, because it's our freedom they hate.
Actually, I suspect terrorists really *do* hate our freedoms, but that's mostly because the only American freedoms they've experienced are the ones in Iraq, and we only gave Iraqis the worst freedoms so far: the freedom to get their asses blown up.
My brother has a great idea. Instead of dropping bombs, we should be dropping hot tubs and cold beer and reruns of American Gladiator. It's hard to plan ultra-violence when you're sitting in a hot tub drinking cold beer watching stupid 15-year-old American television.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
We grew up in a dangerous world, so will they. Its up to the parents to monitor what they're doing not the state.
"We" grew up in a dangerous internet enabled world.
"They" (Senators/Congress/most parents) didn't.
You may of grown up in an internet enabled world, but not all of us were. I was born before John F Kennedy was shot. There was no web or internet as we know it today while I was growing up. There was arpanet and milnet, which only the rare person knew of.
FalconShould there be a Law?
on our civil liberties. Someone who would respect the individuals right to decide for themselves. Someone not already in bed with corporations. If only there was someone like that!
RON PAUL 2008
The article is misleading.
The entire point of the bridge *is* the airport. Yes, there are generally only six flights a day, and yes, the ferry between the airport and Ketchikan generally only runs half-filled.
Except during the summer.
Ketchikan is one of Alaska's primary tourist destinations, especially for fishing and hunting. Tens of thousands of tourists come to Ketchikan each year. During the summer months, the ferry is very full. If you drive (many of these tourists have hundreds of pounds of baggage), you often have to wait several ferry cycles during peak times.
During the summer, tourist congestion makes travel to and from the airport very painful. I mean, tourists make life in Alaska painful anyway, but in Ketchikan especially. And those tourists complain. They complain about the airport. They complain about the ferry. They complain about the limited flights in and out, and how full the flights always are, and how they can't tote their heavy baggage all the way down to the ferry.
Basically, the bridge is to get tourists to shut the fuck up. Quit your bitching. Suck it up, buttercup.
If you had to listen to tens of thousands of tourists complain about the airport, you'd want to spend millions of dollars of other people's money on this bridge, too.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
As for growing up in a "dangerous world", I can assure you that what was "normal" behaviour in the 60's towards kids would now land you in jail.
Ain't that true? I recall growing up my mom would occasionally order a glass of wine when we went out to eat. A parent doing that today would be arrested, have thier children taken away, and tossed into gail.
FalconShould there be a Law?
If these senators really give a shit about young kids being exposed to sexuality, maybe they should start with the advertising industry's relentless campaign to get 11-year-olds to think and act 16. When I was a kid there were tons more tv ads for toys and games, but nowadays the business world seems to see childhood merely as an unnecessary delay before the onset of low-self-esteem compulsive spending.
Wait! I've got it!
What if there were child terrorists! We could get the best of both worlds. Wouldn't that be great? "We need to bomb Venezuela to protect ourselves against gay atheist pornographic child terrorists! With potty-mouths!"
That's even better.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
You forgot about all those sickos taking pictures of their own kids! Kill 'em all!
Tell the kids to use linux, so they won't have to look for cracks in pages like astalavista, cracks.(insert foreign country domain here), etc.
Or pass a law that forces every browser to have text-only mode by default
Or make all the media free, since some torrent sites have very work-unsafe advertising
just my $0.02 (actually, it would be two thirds of a US cent, since I live in argentina (you fucking imperialist pigs))
Basically, the bridge is to get tourists to shut the fuck up. Quit your bitching. Suck it up, buttercup.
Make them pay a toll and use the toll revenues to pay off the bonds issued to finance the construction and maintance of the bridge.
FalconShould there be a Law?
"Think of the children!" /end //.parody
We grew up (Rather I did [I'm 22]) without the internet. Even when it really started to boom it was not near as bad as it is today. The world is alot more dangerous today then when I was a kid. Hell I could walk to school without fear or rape or something like that.
This is a good hearty laugh. You are safer today than you ever were. Your generation will live longer then any of the humans that came before you, you most likely you are going to die of a very mundane and boring age related disease. Want to talk about scary? Imagine a world where stepping on a nail is potentially lethal, a scrap can lead to an amputated arm, you can die of a sore throat, or you are a few minutes away from nuclear Armageddon.
What do you have to worry about today? Over eating or smoking. Yeah, that is right... the thing to most likely kill you is stuffing too much food down your gullet or a voluntary behavior. Oh god, the horror... the horror. Your pool is dramatically more likely to kill you than a terrorist. You stand a far better chance of being killed in a car accident than being murdered, and the rate of murder and rape in respect to the overall population has been on a nose dive since the 80s*.
The only thing that has changed in this world is that you are far safer and far more likely to live to be a crotchety old bastard than ever before. We don't need politicians "protecting the children" and more than we ever have.
*http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/05cius/data/table_01.html
But I'd rather my kids see a boob and suffice a natural desire, than hrm I dont know drugs, gang banging, drinking, smoking, HAVING sex, skipping school, watching the news and seeking people blown up/burned, and the rest of the horrible things out in the REAL world.
Ah but having sex is one of the good things in the world. As is drinking.
FalconShould there be a Law?
...if Kenneth Lay dies, we get to see his body so all the ex-Enron employees who were fleeced out of their retirement funds can piss in his cold dead mouth Remind me, did he have an open-casket funeral?That's the last time I run code posted in somebody's sig...
Apparently, there is a totally new definition of 'child pornography' that I'm not aware of. Or this senator is an idiot.
I'm inclined to go with the second option.
Won't someone please protect the children?
Here's a thought: How about you keep your children off the internet? And how about the schools keep the internet out of the classroom?
The people who created the hardware and software that makes up the internet all grew up WITHOUT internet access.
So why do kids need internet access at all? There are these crazy things called "books" that are loaned out for free (as in beer) from these places called "libraries".
Of the fortune 500 people, I'm willing to lay odds that ALL of them grew up to be successful without internet access growing up. The congressmen as well.
So kids can grow up to be inventive, successful, well-adjusted, intelligent adults without internet access during their childhood. (OK, except for the congressmen)
Who would have thought...?
Or the other side of the coin are the crack whores that pop one out after another simply to get more money from the government to further fuel their addiction.
I guess you're one of those who hasn't heard welfare was reformed in the 1990s after Newt Gingrich had his Contract With America passed. Now there's a tyme limit of 5 years that you can be on welfare and collect money from the feds.
FalconShould there be a Law?
In the interest of espousing good advice, I'm going to depart ever so slightly from the topic. Mod me as you will. A few years ago I decided to take matters seriously about protecting my children from the dangers of the internet. I wanted my kids to be internet and computer savvy. I had been completely limiting their online access in the interest of safety. I wasn't happy with that approach. After some research, I discovered Astaro. The home license + annual subscription offered virus and spam protection in the http proxy, and content filtering by category. With that I was able to allow my kids to have their own computers in their own rooms. The firewall provided an adequate level of protection with those capabilities. Besides that, I also talked to my kids about what they should look out for and avoid. I'll repeat... I talked to my kids!
I just looked tonight, and it appears Astaro is providing the virus/spam protection + content filtering for free now. I have been paying about 45 euros annually, and now I discover its free! One caveat, Astaro is an enterprise class firewall. It works great, but its not necessarily easy to setup. There is good documentation, a knowledge base, online walkthrough videos, and a pretty good support forum to help get you through. And, hey, it runs on Linux!
I really wish it were more accessible for the less technically inclined, because it really is an ideal solution for the home.
kdawson is a fucking turd who needs to get his ass removed from slashot. he needs to get a fucking life.
Thank God they will protect our children from reading comments that are critical of Congress.
This reminds me of when Theresa Kerry (then Theresa Heinz) got Congress to crack down on TV stations that showed a show called "Sledge Hammer." In this paradoy of Dirty Harry, our hero breaks up the world's most powerful and most corrupt organized crime family, and is shows dragging out the suit-clad gangsters. The sign on their door reads "House Ways & Means Committee" She got John Kerry to stomp on that under the guise of protecting our children from senseless violence on TV.
They will keep taking away our freedoms until we follow the bard's advice: "The first thing we do is..."
They will keep taking away our freedoms until we take Gen. W. T. Sherman's attitude: "I saw a good politican once..."
Andy Out!
P.S. At least spell my name correctly on the next sedition indictment!
Or what about the end of the days when you could feed 3 people one the wages of one?
That's only because Dick and Jane have to have the lastest and greatest toys, be it iPod, iPhones, or wii, at least before a lot of well paying jobs were outsourced.
Economic realities have a lot more to do with parents letting the boob tube educate their kids then their choice does.
It was thier choice to have one or more children If a person is not in a position to take care of children s/he shouldn't have any.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I thought that the Democrats were in charge of both houses?
Sorry to bring it up, but for everyone that claimed that it was Bush and Rove that was trampling on all our rights, it really isn't fair unless you say the same about Pelosi and Reid.
Has anyone posted "Pelosi: Worst. Speaker. EVER!" yet? And, why not?
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Its for the children! Its for the children!
you know what? FUCK its for the children! I'm tired of this bullshit. All it's going to do is hamper our rights as adults, while supposedly protecting the children.
The only thing that could and should really protect children are parents - you know, the people that look after and raise a child?
But no, in todays world, 'parents' are people completely unassociated with the actual parents, and come in the forms of TV, salespeople having to ask for ID, and video games, provided the parent even so much as glances at the ESRB rating, which they probably don't... so they complain and bitch more.
I want to live in a world where the rules state that: you can't do this or that until you've come of age (driving and drinking - just examples, not to be done both at the same time); your mom and dad look after you, and only have a babysitter when they need it (dates, alone time, etc); politician won't tell me how the FUCK I raise my child.
why can't we live in a world like that? Oh thats right, parents don't want to take responsibility for their own FUCKING children. how pathetic, IMO.
The really sad part is that your probably right. No, the REALLY sad part is that, no matter how much NEED there might be for it, it won't happen. Americans have made apathy an art-form.
Basically every site in .kids would have to be policed by an organization and by the kids viewing it themselves. What happened to this idea?
God spoke to me.
The article alternates several times between talking about child pornography and viewing of pornography by children. This confusion is evidently not merely the fault of the article, as both concepts appear clearly in quoted sections. Is there a conscious attempt to broaden the term "child pornography" to include any involvement of children with pornography including viewing it? Or is it simply a particularly blatant instance of doublespeak?
What I really like, though, is the fact that no doubt many of the same folks backing this are vigorous proponents of the sort of privatization that's funneling billions into the pockets of contractors in Iraq. I guess none of their friends own stock in any of the many and varied private companies out there who have been shilling filtering software for years. Or maybe that's what they'll do -- hire a contractor to build what they want under government auspices. So apparently all the private-sector companies out there who've been trying all these years haven't done a good enough job, but the lowest-bidding snake oil salesman will surely pull a miracle out of his ass.
The really sad part is that your probably right. The really sad part is that would be considered terrorism, and you'd be an enemy combatant. All communications are monitored, so good luck organizing that without getting stopped prematurely.
No need to vote 3rd party: vote for Ron Paul. He is basically a libertarian running as a Republican. The more I listen to the guy, the more I like him.
Ron Paul is Libertarian, but only because the Republican Party no longer is the party of small government, it hasn't been since Ike was pres. I voted for him the first tyme he ran for president in 1988, on the Libertarian Party ticket, and I'll vote for him in 2008 if he's on the ballot. Heck, even though I'm registered No Party Preference, I'll change my registration to Republican so I can vote for him in the primary. Of course after afterwards I'll change right back.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Do not allow children or right wingers to connect.
Go form your own network. call it Kids-net. Right wing christians could use it too.
Congress needs to spend less time trying to end violence on TV, and more time trying to end violence in Iraq. I don't give a rats ass how many people die on TV. I do care about how many people die in Iraq.
Sens. Stevens and Inyoue had a similar hearing last year. Not much happened.
This year, they heard fewer witnesses. A summary:
The witnesses heard are reasonable ones. We used to see a big presence from the religious right at these things, but that's not happening this time. Nobody was asking for much on the legislative front.
[Link down - so I cannot read the article] I take it by 'universe' he actually means the USA? If not then he should just butt out. The rest of the world didn't vote for him or the Government he is part of. We do not need, nor do we want, his interference in what we are allowed to do in those countries which are outside the small proportion of the world that he represents.
Have a look at soylentnews.org for a different view
Nonsense, the third amendment is still going strong. You're not asked to quarter troops in your home, just support them with your taxes... and put bumperstickers on your car... and silence all political debate because it would embolden the enemy and put our troops at risk.
Nevermind
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Whenever you here about children from washington it is about oppressing adults. If the word "children" comes out of a politicians mouth I automatically oppose whatever it is they are talking about. "Fuck off" is what I say, I'm too busy protecting my children from them! Buch of coke snorting child slave tradin pedophiliac bastards!!! Talkin about children all the time because they want them sitting on their lap.
Speaking as one of those moral voters, I just want to say that they're way out to lunch on this one. This plan is ridiculous.
I can scarcely imagine a less productive exercise than this, but I'm sure they'll not only imagine such a thing, but attempt to pass it into law.
No, the only way that our elderly politicians will be able to retain their shabby dignity is if they're allowed to keep the bodies of attractive young folk safely hidden away, out of the public eye.
I'd love to be a libertarian, but it seems I'd have to believe that the free market works, and corporations are free to do business however they wish.
In a freemarket corporations would not have the power they currently enjoy. For instance under a freemaket the RI/MPAA wouldn't exist, or at least wouldn't be able to go after grannies or teens because copyrights and patents would not exist.
I wouldn't mind, assuming we returned corporations to a public charter system, in which a corporation may have its charter revoked if it is found to behave illegally.
Yeap, it used to be a corporation could have it's charter cancelled if it didn't live up to it's obligation to improve the commn or public good. Thomas Jefferson railed and warned of corporations and power, Thomas Jefferson: Against Corporate Power.
...Kenneth Lay ...
If the libertarians can promise me that, I'm a convert. 'Cause except for the whole trust-in-the-free-market thing, I'm mostly there.
It was both Democrats and Republicans that allowed Enron to happen, not Libertarians
"I think people should know that the Libertarian party...
- Is going to protect religious freedom.
- Work at freeing you from being a slave to taxes for almost half the year.
- Remove government corruption by removing the monetary incentive.
- Keep government out of your personnel life. You can now shower alone without Sam.
- Protect our country from invaders and disaster, by not scattering our young able bodied citizens all over the earth.
- Listen to this countries citizens rather than it's Enrons.
- Embrace our country's roots as a country of freedom and liberty."
FalconShould there be a Law?
Have you no shame, sir? Good lord, that's the most painful thing I've heard since that bit about you and dead people.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"Protect The Children" thats becoming the new catch word to get the sheep publc to go along with new government monitor and watch dogging. Much like "The Terrorists" are used to brow bet the sheep public into accepting a war. The fact of the matter is that the goverment lives in a world WAY out of touch with reality. Porn does not sexually assult people, people sexually assult people. In the US we seem to think that a naked body is the wost possible thing in the world. Hey why dont they get health care for kids, and fix the education system before they worry about a kid who might see a boobie on the internet. Are they also going to filter older borthers or fathers stash of playboys. Wake up senetors most of you were created by your parents be horny and naked!.While some of you were simply spawed by are dark our underlords.
Actually we've had this kind of filtering for years now here in Norway and most ISPs are connected to the filter run by the national police. It's easy to get around it of course if you know how.
The other thing is of course the filter does not work the way it's supposed to! Lots of people have reported on internet forums and newspaper debates that their legitimate surfing has incurred the wrath of The Filter. Some of the just reported that legal porn sites were included. It's not like we feel sorry for them.
But the principles of free speech versus censorship should obviously be considered very important! They are central values in our constitution as well. But wouldn't you know it? The public does not know, care and did't get to vote on it. Welcome to democracy!
Holding someone accountable for stupid comments or for terrible waste of public money is not a "personal attack", especially when that person chooses to put himself up for criticism by offering to represent Americans while those Americans are paying his salary and for his pork.
BTW: many conservatives in Alaska were furious with the bridge -- it's a waste of taxpayer money. Many liberals in Alaska were furious with the bridge for the exact same reason. Stevens' probability of being re-elected is far from certain; he's likely to be contested in a primary by a Club for Growth candidate, and the Democrats [with lots of cash in the DSCC and far fewer seats to defend in the Senatorial election 2008] are sure to run a good race against him. Before you claim it's hopeless, Stevens' senate seat was occupied by a Democrat before Stevens won.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
... the definition of Freedom requires an alteration in Websters.
Except his scary fairtax plan is quite extreme and can cause serve economic damage if you apply a 25% consumption tax in addition to state taxes! Yes the rich corporate fat cats will pay nothing but it wont help if their income drops by 50% as people can afford the taxes at their level of spending. Regression consumption taxes really hurt the lower class the most and people who are just trying to get buy.
Yes I will probably be modded as a troll here but think before you follow a candidate who support such an idea? Rich alreayd have insane savings rates and poor have debt or dissaving rates.
Anyway a huge depression could result if he is elected and does such an insane system.
http://saveie6.com/
Quite frankly there is no reason at all children need to be on the net - period....How about a) parents parent and b) go back to the ancient methods of teaching which some how taught kids how to read, write, do math and put a man on the moon.
Like children can't learn something new on the net. Part of being a parent is watching your kids, and that includes watching what they do on the computer. Computers can also be used to learn to read, afterall what's a person doing on the net if they can't read? Or write, or do math. I once ordered a PC for my sister and her daughter, as part of the software package I ordered educational programs for my neice. Now as to whether she ever used them I don't know. Me, I decided I wanted to major in and become a Computer Engineer in high school after teaching myself BASIC on a dumb terminal in the school library that was hooked up to the mainframe downtown, before the net existed like it does now.
FalconShould there be a Law?
He does take a pro-personal-liberty/anti-foreign-adventures/pro-h ard-money stance on a lot of things, which is kind of refreshing to see in a conservative candidate. There is, however, one very important personal liberty he's firmly against and that is the right of a mother to have full control over her own reproductive system. It's not that I myself want to go around applying a litmus test, but you can't pass yourself off as being absolutely for freedom and liberty if you say "except for you people over there, sorry."
I wish there was a candidate who could be on speaking terms with the NRA, NORML, and NOW all at once. I'd vote for them in a heartbeat.
To me that is that is the free market is anarchy run by corporate barons. Theoriticaly a newer competitor will come in to save us. But the barriers of entry are so large its impossible.
In a free market there wouldn't be corporate barons and there wouldn't be barriers to entry into a market. Those barriers are there because incumbent corporations have paid politicans to raise artifical barriers. No barriers meas more competition, just as with Google pressuring the FCC to allow open access to the airwaves being freed up by the switch to digital tv. Open access will create competition and the telcos along with others will see a loosing of their power. Kind of like cellphones did to landline phone companies.
FalconShould there be a Law?
The senators might as well pass a law saying that gravity and common sense are not in effect in Washington DC, at least they would be right on one count. It should be clear to everyone that *if* effective filtering of Internet content on a global scale were possible then it already would have been done by someone. Even the great firewall of China is not completely effective and those people live in a police state. Also, consider the massive financial incentive that has been in place for the music industry to fund discovery and implemention of this type of technology. The only thing stopping them is the near impossibility of the task. This proposed legislation will not change anything. If the free market couldn't provide effective global filtering despite massive financial incentives then how much less will such a system magically spring into being from legislative fiat?
We had that. It was called "The Internet."
But then AOL came along and messed it all up.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
The really sad part is that your probably right.
No, the REALLY sad part is that, no matter how much NEED there might be for it, it won't happen. Americans have made apathy an art-form.
That's pretty prevalent in most societies, when the living generations haven't seen any fighting to preserve liberty they get apathic, complacent. I think this is what Thomas Jefferson meant when he said the USA should have a revolution every 20 years.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Standing up to the feds (or locals) has only ever brought more feds with more guns and an ever increasing desire to kill you. Just ask Randy Weaver.
Personally, I happen to think that christian - or any other kind: islamist, free market, etc. - fundamentalism is the most damaging thing children can be exposed to. I don' want some semi-insane creep telling my kids they'll burn in hell if they don't obey him. Nor do I want them to pick up an adamant faith that not imposing any kinds of rules or controls on a bunch of greedy bastards will magically cause those bastards to behave. I'd much rather have them browse porn all day long. Won't someone please think of the children ?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
The easiest would be to just block them in the DNS, if they wanted to be more rigorous they could block all traffic etc.
The point here is that no laws would be needed, and anyone who doesn't like it can always switch to another ISP, as long as there are ISP:s that do not filter. I suspect there would be a market for that as well. This is in fact how it works in, for example, Sweden.
Of course, politicians and companies plan for years about government contracts. Of course, they both write the laws and determine the size of the checks. That's how government contracting is supposed to work.
Yes, a lot of that money is wasted. But it's wasted because of incompetence and "not my problem" attitudes, not because these people have some elaborate conspiracy.
These kinds of issues arise whenever more than two people work together on anything. It's the price we pay for living and cooperating. It's the cost of compromise and incomplete information. There is no magic fix for it and we can't throw people in jail for it. All you can do is try to do your part to improve things.
Who do you think the government is supposed to task with doing this kind of work? And who do you think is supposed to make the decisions about how to allocate money and how?
doesn't china filter their internet pretty heavily and get a lot of flak for it? why are we any different?
if you filter my internet, i'll move to canada where you can't take my taxes anymore.
The assumption is that kids shouldn't see boobies. This is a load of crap. There are kids, right now, on beaches all across France co-existing with topless females. This doesn't seem to have hurt the French any - in fact, a call to protect kids from boobies would probably be viewed in France like a call to protect kids from wine. "Well, eventually they will have some wine, and eventually they will either have or play with boobies, so why get excited about this?"
"Whenever 'A' annoys or injures 'B' on the pretext of saving or improving 'X', 'A' is a scoundrel." -H.L.Mencken
I predicted this would happen years ago (purely because the free flow of information is not good from a government perspective - makes it very hard to lie to the public), then they tried to get it through, and to my genuine surprise Clinton vetoed it as 'unconstitutional' - he got my respect for that. It was shortly after that he got impeached for getting a BJ (which only earned him more respect...) It's the thin end of the wedge. Once you have the tools in place to filter internet traffic for one type of content, then it becomes trivial to use that infrastructure to control any content you wish. This is a Very Bad Idea.
Laws creating a gulf of disparity between themselves and the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights will erode the indivisibility of the United States.
How many times do I have to state it, now repeat after me:
The Internet is not my baby sitter.
The Internet is not a pacifier.
Real kids need real parenting.
I cannot protect my kids from the truth.
Leaving kids alone on the Internet is almost as bad as leaving them on a streetcorner.
If I am for censorship, I am a bad American Citizen.
Any filtering will be used for ill-deeds.
Creating a kid-safe Internet will compromise its integrity.
"For the kids" is a threadbare political argument used to push an unjust un-Constitutional agenda forward.
Filtering is the first step in censoring.
It is the the World Wide Web--Not Romper Room!
Keep your laws off my Internet!
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
Ok... you've got a good point. But here's the thing, and I like to tease my old dad about this because I've busted him with this as well.
The guys don't know how to use computers. They really actually expect people like us to believe them when we get a call "Can you help me, my hard drive is full", you go there to check what happened and find out he has about 550Gigs of upskirt latex lesbo teen porn. What they're hoping we'll believe is that because the internet isn't safe, he clicked a link on the Wall Street Journal site, got a virus and now his drive is full. I have personally caught a politician, two major corporate CEOs, and worst of all my dad in this lie.
It really becomes all about protecting kids to them. They lobby and try to make it seem they actually are working actively to solve the problem. What's really humorous is, it strikes me that they don't actually research ahead of time what they're talking about. Politicians only listen to people smarter than them if the persons name is actually important enough that while they're explaining that they asked for help from a smart guy, every idiot like themselves would recognize the smart guys name and give the politician credit for being smart enough to choose that guy in particular. What's worst is that some of them actually use John Dvorak for information... but that's a different rant.
If these idiot politicians were to spend even an hour researching a good adviser, they might try calling Marc Andreeson (sp.) or if they're important enough, Bill Gates, or if they're bright enough Linus. Any one of these three guys can in less than a minute talking act as a bullshit meter for the politician that's just going to make a fool out of himself and the people that voted for him.
A good idea...
Moron Politician : Hey Sweet-tits, can you get me Bill Gates on the line? (this is him talking to his 19 year old secretary his wife doesn't approve of)
Sweet-tits : Just a minute
*** Ring Ring ***
Bill Gates : Hi, umm yeh this is Bill Gates, please tell me you're not trying to squeeze me personally for campaign contributions again, those hookers you tried sending me spent nearly 2 hours in my lobby here at Microsoft before I was forced to have them arrested and charged for indecent exposure.
Sweet-tits : **giggle**
Moron Politician : It's nothing like that Bill, but I'm sorry to hear you didn't like them, I've used them myself a few times. Actually I got busted with porn on my hard drive again and if I don't want to be thrown out of office, I need to pretend like it was research and try to propose a "Save the future criminals" bill at the house. I was hoping you could hop on the wagon with my idea that I have.
Bill Gates : Well, shoot, I can't promise anything, but if there's something I can do to help, let me hear about it.
Moron Politician : Well, I wanted to propose a filter be required on the Internet to block kids from anything dangerous online. You know, block the pictures.
Bill Gates : Hundreds of companies already write products like these, there are even good ones that are free out there, but Moron, you know that it's not the pictures and videos that are the real problem, the real problem is the stalkers in the chat lines that are 50 year old men pretending to be 13 year old girls. That's the real problem. Can't write a filter like that, literally impossible. Please tell me that these stupid ideas aren't what you're wasting all the tax payer money on?
Moron Politician : Hell no, thanks to being in office, I've managed to shave 3 points off my game and am hoping to play an exhibition game soon with Bob Barker to raise money for kids. Well if you get any good ideas, please call Sweet-tits and have her setup a call for us. I need to come up with a good "Save the Brats" thing soon. By the way, I just recently had a second line for my secretary installed under my desk so that when the phone rings, she doesn't have to stop working. I really recommend it.
Bill Gates : **** Click *** Beep Beep Beep ***
Sweet-tits (with her mouth full) : Oo eenk eeds onna elp?
Um... he's pro-life, supports continued exclusion of gays from the military, anti-stem cell research, and voted to support large subsidies for oil companies. He's highly socially conservative and is only fiscally conservative when it comes to a few popular issues.
I'm not at all a Libertarian. However, I have a few Libertarian friends, and they don't give a rats ass what I do in the bedroom or that I write prescriptions for the morning after pill. Calling Ron Paul a Libertarian is not only incorrect, but insulting to people who really are.
Nick
You should vote for Ron Paul even if you disagree with him (as I do) on abortion. Why? Because as president he wouldn't have the power to ban abortion, but he *would* have the power to change our foreign policy. His election as president (or just Republican party candidate, or even just serious contender in the primaries) would send a giant message to Washington (and in particular the Republican party) favoring his libertarian ideals of small government and less regulation, because that is where he differs with other candidates. It wouldn't really send much of a message about abortion.
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
Does that mean he's against net neutrality?
By the way: Net neutrality means making it illegal for an ISP to mess with their traffic -- a neutral ISP would not filter or QoS, unless specifically asked to by a particular customer. This is what I support.
There is another definition of "net neutrality" which means that the government should not interfere with the Internet. This is NOT net neutrality, it is a deliberate hijacking of the term. He may support this; I do not, and I hate people who abuse language like that.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
``It's becoming increasingly apparent that the second might need to be taken out and exercised in the near future. :(''
At least you understand its purpose. But I think education should come first. I mean, people actually voted _for_ Bush in the last elections, when I thought it was completely obvious that bad things had and would come of it. If you can't even get people to vote for a different candidate, what do you expect to gain by armed rebellion? Getting yourself a one way trip to Guantanamo Bay? Replacing the democratically elected government in a violent coup d'etat? You might say it's for the common good, but that's exactly what the folks proposing this universal filtering are saying.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Soap Box. Ballot Box. Ammo Box.
Use in that order.
It's not mine, but I thought it was amusing enough to repeat.
-R
Social Security - it's better than Social Darwinism.
How? I guess what I am asking is, do you really believe this? If so, why?
http://xkcd.com/386/
And it should come as soon as possible, because the USA is loosing it's control over the Internet. Just make something like the ICRA mandatory by law and the filters that parents install can be much more usefull. Then parents can decide what their children can see and the internet still stay free.
If they would implement this now and put some pressure on other countries they could set a standard. You then can choose yourself what to see and what not.
He is only for FairTax as a temporary means of income tax, until he would reduce government spending to where the IRS was no longer necessary. He is certainly concerned for the poor and middle class of this nation -- read his speech here on how our monetary policy taxes them excessively, and what he proposes to do about it. It has to do with returning the currency to a gold standard. By doing so, the government can't print money to cover its debts, and would be forced to spend wisely, resulting in smaller government, less taxes, and less inflation. Also see these videos (part 1, part 2) where he discussed monetary policy last week with Fed Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke. Ron Paul knows his stuff and would be a tremendous asset for all of us to have in the White House.
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
None of the filters proposed (here or elsewhere) would protect kids against the only real threat they face from the Internet: Pedophiles.
The 'threat from pornopgraphy' is pure bullshit. No child has even been hurt or even affected in a negative way by porn, on the Internet or in real life. They have their horizon broadened, gain more acceptance of the natural deviations (like homosexuality) and most importantly learn about sex and how it actually works in real life (what goes where, and what the variations are and so on). Of course there are narrow-minded bigots that feel that for instance accepting homosexuality or masturbation is wrong and a 'damage', but making laws based on that is insanity.
Filtering pr0n out of the internet should be easy, just put a filter around the series of tubes.
"There is, however, one very important personal liberty he's firmly against and that is the right of a mother to have full control over her own reproductive system."
Do you support allowing incest? If not, why?
The masses are the crack whores of religion.
In Europe they have nudity, in America they have violence.
Rather than tryng to prevent the transmission of child pornography, let's prevent
the creation of it! We should mandate that suppliers of electrical power make
sure that none of it powers cameras that are used to capture the pornographic
images in the first place.
Big talk there, Che.
.22, you savvy?
So will we be seeing you standing up to a tank anytime soon?
Revolution may have been a practical form of political expression in the days of horses and muskets, but I'm not real enthused about going up against F-22s with my little Ruger
... think of the children! They're in mortal danger right now and we must plug the holes. All that information leaking out of them tubes can really damage their fragile little minds.
Lolol Lawlerskaters
Mr. Senator,
Given the statistical evidence, at least in this country, it would seem to me that protecting children would be *best* accomplished by banning the Roman Catholic Church. Roughly 4% of all priests have been accused of sexual abuse, a far, far, far higher rate than the number of pedophilia oriented websites.
Note: I'm not seriously proposing banning the RCC. I'm merely pointing out *if* you were protecting the kiddies, what train of thought you should be following.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
Why would anybody believe that this is about "protecting our children?" (And when did that become the job of the state)?
m a_executive_orders.htm); NSPD51, suspension of the constitution for a minimum of 6 months, etc.
This is about one thing: Controlling and censoring information on the internet. The internet is way too open for these people, it's too much of a bastion of free thought and provides the ability for the masses to coordinate, organize and disseminate information.
When they are done it will basically be like some sort of fucked up interactive television where you can buy shit - like a cross between MSNBC, Amazon.com and Cable On-Demand services and your email (which will be scanned by the state of course).
We have a DOJ that has just announced that they will not enforce a contempt charge even if it passes the house - so the cat is out of the bag, this administration is openly saying that they are above all laws; congress, instead of actually working to preserve separation of powers, due process, and the rule of law and talking about this shit?
The administration, DHS, and the mainstream media seem to know for certain that there is going to be a larger than 9/11 attack within the next month or two. Unfortunately if this happens martial law will likely be declared, all of these fucked up executive orders kick in (10990 - 12656, see http://www.theforbiddenknowledge.com/hardtruth/fe
This is a publicity grab that's intended to ride the coat-tails of the news story on myspace's deletion of profiles associated with criminals and predators. The "bipartisan senators" are only barely senator*s*--there's precisely two of them: "Tubes" Stevens and Inoyue, of Hawaii. Don't hold your breath, people. The Internet will be fine. Other less insane or gerrymandered pols will not want to hop on a bandwagon that will roll directly towards a one-to-one policy correspondence with countries such as China.
" . . .think before you follow a candidate who support such an idea . . . a huge depression could result if he is elected and does such an insane system."
The President of the United States is not in a position to immediately implement a major overhaul of the tax system. Despite the fact that President Bush has taken several steps along the road, the President is not yet an all powerful dictator. OTOH, he WOULD have power over the Justice Dept. and be able to expose all of these illegal spying/wiretapping/surveillance/info gathering operations. As commander in chief, he would also be in a position to disengage the country from these insane militaristic crusades(which he has already advocated).
If a "consumption tax" is so repugnant to you that you could not in good conscience vote for a candidate who advocates it, then good for you. It sounds like you're arguing against it based on an implementation scenario, so you might consider the fact that it has a minuscule chance of being implemented in a 4 year term.
I can't know for sure, but I'd be willing to bet that Ron Paul would instantly veto a bill that proposed "Universal Internet Filtering".
Don't give away too much information about yourself.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
I for one am grateful to our Senators for making sure we don't get left behind by the Chinese.
Voting for 3rd parties is doomed to failure in a majority-rule voting system. The only way 3rd parties will ever have a chance of winning is to change the system. Start small. Use Condorcet-style votes when choosing where to go to lunch with your coworkers; then local elections; then state elections; maybe, MAYBE, in 9 or 13 years, it can percolate up to pressident. Learn more.
Those who fail to understand communication protocols, are doomed to repeat them over port 80.
I don't think that the second amendment really matters if people are willing to commit the treasonous act of rebelling against their government.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
Dear Senator,
Senators Daniel K. Inouye and Ted Stevens have recently made claims that the Internet was a dangerous place where parents alone will not be able to protect their children and now seem to be calling for legislation to impose universal filtering on the internet.
While I agree that SOME parent might need help controlling where their children browse, I don't believe that it is up to the government to take that role. There are many internet filtering packages available for parents to install if they wish. Instead of legislating universal internet filtering, perhaps a program that would alleviate the costs of purchasing internet filtering software. Another possibility would be to contract a development company to provide the necessary filtering software for free to parents who wish to use it.
I have been in the Information Technology field for 17 years, and I can tell you that universal internet filtering would cause slower data throughput, severe bottlenecks, unnecessary costs and potential liability issues for internet providers. I have no problem with the government providing help to parents who request it, but to place a burden on the populous as a whole is wrong. There is a saying that goes around among people. "Just because your child is an inconvenience to you, does not mean he/she should be an inconvenience to me." I am all for protecting the children, but leave it in the hands of the parents, the government should not take the role for itself.
I ask that you oppose universal internet filtering and perhaps propose the alternatives I mention above.
Sincerely,
I read Slashdot for the headlines, because the headlines, unlike the articles, are usually original and never duplicated
Perhaps making it illegal is not the way to handle it. I would favor ISPs losing broad swaths of legal protections the instant they filter traffic. Basically, an ISP should in no way be considered a "common carrier" once they filter for corporate advantage. So they'll have to offset extorting the likes of Google for access to their customers against increased liability for anything that crosses their network.
Yes he is, actually. OnTheIssues.org has some of his stances on Technology, including voting against net neutrality. Between that and his desire to abolish the Fed, I only have a handful of things I disagree with him on.
"Commerce Committee Chairman Daniel K. Inouye (D-Hawaii) and Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee Vice Chairman Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) both argued that Internet was a dangerous place where parents alone will not be able to protect their children."
My guess is, whomever has been identified to do this project -- if it passes -- has someone named Inouye or Stevens working there (or maybe both).
See, we all know the internet is a series of tubes. Now some of these tubes look like vaginas. Some of these tubes look like penis. And yet, some of these tubes look like an anus! Clearly, we need to control which tubes the children drive their dumptruck through, lest they miss the information superhighway's exit signs and wind up going down the wrong tube. Of course we could throw a few billion into putting more signs on the information superhighway, maybe a few rest stops along the way too. Sounds like the best use of taxpayer money to date!
I do, to the same degree that I support allowing other sexual activity (that is to say, within limits of reasonable consent). Why, should I not support it?
(I'd also oppose it if the population got low enough that the resulting decreased genetic variability was a threat to sustainability of the breeding pool, but we're just a little far from that at the moment.)
do you filter them tubers or what those damn geeks call that internet-er-er. Put congress in the same little yellow buss with Bush and make them al wear velcro helmets.
Why am I reminded of that bit in Heinlein's "Magic, Inc." story where the politician effectively stands up and rails against the use of magic? (It's then explained that the person is just appeasing his constituency.)
"I've spent my whole life figuring out crazy ways to do things. It'll work." -- Montgomery Scott, "Relics"
Image mining still works. Given a quick check of the size of the branches on my newsserver, it seems to have some very active newsgroups in the alt.binaries.pictures tree. The quality of the images & the signal to noise ratio is questionable, but the volume seems to still be as high as it ever was.
And to hell with the rights of the unborn to live! Tell me, what is the difference between a baby who is in the womb at 34 weeks gestation and one who has just been born. Answer: nothing. But if you kill the baby who is outside of the womb, it is murder. If you kill the baby who is still in the womb, it is conveniently called choice. This is morally reprehensible and repugnant. It is to our eternal shame that we have slaughtered an entire generation -- over 40 million babies -- in the last forty years. Forget the holocaust. Forget Stalin's purges. We have eclipsed them both in our barbarous campaign for "choice".
I challenge any one who is pro-abortion to go visit a neo-natal unit. My wife just gave birth to a very premature baby (he was born at 28 weeks gestation -- three months early). He weighed only 3 lbs, but he was perfect with tiny hands, feet, and beautiful blue eyes. He is now a healthy four month old who weighs over 9 lbs. However, according to the law, he was not a human until he left the womb. Some even say that they are not capable of pain, but I can assure you from his crying that he knew what pain was. So, visit a neo-natal unit. Tell those parents to their face that that tiny baby in their arms is not human.
The Declaration of Independence listed three inalienable rights: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (emphasis added). The first and most important of these is life. Don't cloak the real issue here by talking about a woman's control of her body -- that is a bogus and vile argument. The baby is a separate living being that happens to be growing inside a woman's body. Just because it cannot be seen or heard does not make it any less human. Also forgotten in all of this is the tremendous pain and guilt that the mothers often feel after taking the life of their child. No, really all that matters is that the abortion money machine remains in place.
I may have infused too much anger into this post, but I wonder if that is what is necessary. We are talking about people's lives not which team we are going to root for in the Super Bowl. We are not talking about what we are going to have for dinner but the entire future of another person's life. Just as we have the Bill of Rights and the Supreme Court to protect the minorities, so they should also protected the silent minority -- the unborn.
I believe in de-evolution. God made the world perfect, man fell, and its been going downhill ever since!
>> Ron Paul basically is calling for a return to a government
>> dictated by the constitution -- namely that any powers not
>> specifically given to congress by the constitution should be
>> left to the states.
(Off topic rant)
That's just what we need. Reestablishment of segregation.
Illegal abortions performed in bathrooms. Evolution theory
banned in schools. Rampant capital punishment against non-whites.
Jail time for buggery. Big red A for adultery. Book burnings.
When you get down to it, the federal government is the only
thing keeping the red states from reverting to the worse
parts of the previous centuries. Maybe the real solution is
to spin them off, like any good corporation would.
jfs
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
From TFA: "'Given the increasingly important role of the Internet in education and commerce, it differs from other media like TV and cable because parents cannot prevent their children from using the Internet altogether,' Sen. Stevens said."
What? Why not? All modern operating systems come password protected (just log off and don't give your kid the password.), and it's a frickin' computer. There's no barrier for software vendors to write software that limits or prevents Internet access. What's your kid going to do, buy his own laptop that you don't know about, unplug your computer and hook his up to your router? That ability is a natural function of computers. TV, on the other hand, has only recently starting coming with technology to password protect specific channels, and I think that's usually only with the upgraded package from the cable provider.
So, would miscarriages be manslaughter or murder?
"If the legislators in question REALLY wanted to do something effective..."
How about instead of spending billions on even more police to act as parents, we get more money to the PARENTS!
Like 2-3 year paid maternity leave for working moms/dads, benefit supplementation for part-time working moms/dads, or greater daycare/workcare allowances. Tax breaks for businesses to encourage working from home? THERE are some GOOD ideas on where we should be spending our tax monies, not adding even more damned police and making this an even bigger police state.
And just to be clear, so as to avoid the flame wars, I do not have a problem with police. In fact, I fully support and often pity them for the shiet they are forced to go through dealing with the masses. I just have a big problem with how we are using them these days.
Opinion:=TMyOpinion.Create(Me);
If that is the best you can do, then I guess it validates my argument. The answer, of course, is neither unless the miscarriage occurred as the direct consequence of the mother's actions or that of another. For example, if someone struck a woman and she miscarried her baby, I would consider that manslaughter. If the woman deliberately took action to cause a miscarriage, that would be murder.
Of course, you were just trolling and hiding behind your cowardice. You probably don't actually care that there is a reasoned response.
I believe in de-evolution. God made the world perfect, man fell, and its been going downhill ever since!
It is rather interesting that those politicos have not learned the lesson yet. There are and will always be several ways to bypass any type internet filtering. Kids are curious little things, and it only takes one or two of them to find a bypass method before the news spreads around school yards and chat rooms like a virus. My two cents is that those politicians are too old and don't have much else to prove, so they keep coming back with old ideas. How boring !!! How about letting parents do their job, huh ?!!!
Love the energy!
I agree; let them install the monitoring and filtering. How long do you think it will be, given the proliferation of wireless technology, before routing internet data through land lines is a thing of the past? Thirty years ago, the scale and type of data transmission seen on the internet would have been unthinkable. In thirty years, my bet is on technologies that truly bring about the sort of 'datasphere' that Simmons mentions in Hyperion. You can't filter that, or monitor it in a centralized fashion; at best you can test or sample it, like you might test or sample for pollution in the ocean.
If this sort of thing had happened ten years ago, I think we would have had real cause to worry. As it is, it is the sort of cash cow government project that will bring a lot of money in to someone, but need never be really completed or functioning. Because, frankly, the end goal isn't achievable. To date no society has succeeded in restraining it's children. Why are we any different?
[Ego]out
Reason has little to do with emotional topics.
I'd rather not see a woman brought before a court to have to prove her innocence as to her involvement with her miscarriage.
There's enough screwy laws as it is. We don't need any more for crimes committed by or against able-bodied and able-minded people that happen to have a certain medical condition.
(They do make great headlines though. Not only does the news get to sensationalize a (white and attractive generally) woman getting killed, the media gets the bonus of the unborn fetus too! Then the local politicians can cook up a new law to punish those who murder pregnant women to add another bullet point under their "Think of the children!" campaign.)
And all those extremely premature babies only survive due to advances in our medical technology, rather expensive technology at that. A century ago, the woman giving birth that prematurely would have killed the baby. Of course, the same is true today for those who cannot afford the hospital bills involved with the pre or post natal treatments needed to keep the fetus viable or the baby alive respectively.
Wait, so, I'm confused. He wants to "keep kids away from adult material" by reevaluating efforts to "combat child pornography". So is he just linking buzzwords, or saying "If you have a child, and he looks at porn, it's child pornography and illegal! PROTECT THE CHILLUNS!"
first off, i applaud you, US senators, for not inviting civil liberties groups to this hearing. they may have voiced a different opinion disagreeing with yours and probably would have offered varying perspectives on the issue. this whole idea of listening to many and obtaining a more thorough, comprehensive understanding of the issue would have been a time consuming inconvenience. obviously you, the members of the US senate, know what is best for all members of our society.
secondly, i think it's wonderful we're taking the necessary steps to create our own great firewall similar to that of communist China. that's done wonders for their country and i'm sure we'd see similar results over here.
lastly, taking the parental duties from parents to monitor what their own children are doing is a step in the right direction. parents shouldn't have a say in how they go about raising their own children anyway. obviously you, the government, can do a much better job. i mean come on, it worked for the Hitler Youth and Nazi Germany right?
http://robotbrother.blogspot.com/
- Write an algorithm that can analyze images to detect nudity and or sexual acts - Write an algorithm that can try to determine the age of a person in an image. - Put the two together - Profit!
Ted Stevens is currently under criminal investigation (reported in the WSJ yesterday). Wake me when he isn't. Then maybe this legislation will be relevant. Until then, he is obviously talking about bigger crimes to distract from his "smaller" ones.
TO BUY A NEW CAR WOULD MAKE YOU SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE.
Wouldn't it be easier and simpler if parents "protected" their children instead? That they'd be educated in lifes good and bad vs. the bubbly, spoiled and whiney MTV corporate world? Why is this the internet's job? Cybernanny?
You can try to make excuses or cloud the issue in ambiguity, but there is one unquestionable fact: abortion kills babies. It is a willful act of cruel, inhumane brutality against an innocent life. Just as we denounce the slaughter of innocent civilians and genocide, so we should denounce this reprehensible act. We condemn slavery, but we actively slaughter our own children. We are upset about invading Iraq, but we invade the bodies of little babies and destroy them in the womb. Think about that.
I believe in de-evolution. God made the world perfect, man fell, and its been going downhill ever since!
Skin is skin. Censor all, or censor none.
(IANAL)
Censorship should happen in the homes not on the infrastructure.
Silly politicians.
Look at the tone of your writing, throwing out all sorts of random points because you have a visceral reaction against the death penalty. But let's go point for point.
A jay walker can end up killing a two year old by walking into traffic and cause a major wreck so kill the jay-walker as they can't be rehabilitated.
Presently, there are very cases of where jay-walkers actually cause major car accidents. Never-the-less, if it could be proved that a jay-walker did so deliberately to cause a car accident, then yes, the crime would be capital murder. However, the next question is, could a murdering jay walker be rehabilitated. For now, we would assume yes, given no statistical evidence to the contrary.
Someone stealing a loaf of bread can't be rehabilitated either and could end up killing a two year old at a bank so kill him as well.
Actually, there's a great deal of evidence to support exactly that contention.
Someone who smokes may kill a two year old through second hand smoke, so kill the smokers as well
Actually no, because, second hand smoke is an invention of trial lawyers and the doctors they paid off.
This is my sig.
Yes I will probably be modded as a troll here but think before you follow a candidate who support such an idea? Rich alreayd have insane savings rates and poor have debt or dissaving rates.
Anyway a huge depression could result if he is elected and does such an insane system.
Unless we're thinking of different Fairtax plans, the one I've read is actually fairly progressive (i.e. not regressive). For instance, as part of the system, the Department of Health and Human Services would regularly determine the general cost of living at a poverty line level for various family sizes (including food, clothing, health care, etc), and then send a refund check to every single family every month covering the tax value of that cost, effectively nullifying the tax for low income families. Also, there are absolutely NO exceptions in the Fairtax, which means that rich people would have to pay for their indulgences. And since when is savings a bad thing? It allows banks to offer lower rates of interest to companies, which allows them to invest, which helps them lower prices.
Another benefit of the Fairtax system is the complete elimination of the massive amounts of overhead caused by the tax system; they'll run more efficiently, have to pay fewer taxes, and need substantially fewer accountants and lawyers for this sort of thing. Most of these savings would be passed onto the consumer, helping to nullify the price increase.
Also, remember, the rich are currently the biggest beneficiaries of the tax system. They pay ridiculously low percentages (I've heard of millionaries paying something like 15%), while the middle class winds up somewhere in the 40% range. There's no cheating a Fairtax system; you pay taxes on everything you buy, and the rich will either help pay for their share of the government, or help lower our prices.
If you want to complain about the Fairtax, complain about the fact that it only works if implemented perfectly, and that it'll never, ever be accepted by Congress even in small parts. But the economics are fairly sound, or at least not absolutely insane. It's infeasible, but a fairly interesting idea. I personally like it because the government won't be able to get away with out of control spending without us knowing about it in the form of a sales tax increase.
Literally they will suck the US dry. The worst generation of Americans ever. The BB politicians are a prime example. A generation of ego driven, self-serving, money grubbing thieves, who will sell this country and their mothers out to make a dime.
No one in my immediate family are baby boomers. Both my parents were born before the boom. My aunts and uncles who are baby boomers are all ego driven, self-serving, money grubbing thieves. One of them is retired from government service with a 100% pension. He makes the same money retired as he does working. Is it any wonder he retired? Another stole money from my family to finance their house.
All of the generations that have followed these losers are going to have to stand up to them. They are not super geniuses and they do not deserve our adoration. They are ego driven, self-serving, money grubbing thieves, and they will piss on your back and tell you it's raining, just because they can.
That's why I tell them, "Your government hates you, almost as much as they hate the rest of us."
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
You say he's for personal liberty, but all I see is that he's anti-choice and probably against same sex marriage, too. Where does it stand on things like flag burning? What about religious documents in public (government) buildings? Prayer in schools? Doesn't sound like he's for personal liberty at all!
He's against regulations, but consider that Net Neutrality is a form of regulation. Okay, I'll agree with you. I guess he's not like most republicans in that he's even further to the right.
It sounds like he wants to move us back. He's calling for a return to something. As I look back at American history, I don't really see anything I want to go back to.
"That which does not kill us makes us stranger." -Trevor Goodchild
How about we have a .kids.TLD that is actually a proxy that goes through their imagined firewall. They get the stupid proxy they want and leave the rest of us alone. Filtering software becomes incredibly simple. Just one big stupid database so that the politicians can have a big warm fuzzy feeling.
Execute!
Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it. - Mark Twain
That's pre 7-11 thinking....
Looks like it's election year again. More bills put up to make it look like they are doing something. This'll never pass the courts.
Everybody knows 3 people with my name.
Are you sure the footage just wasn't shot in Japan?
The first time I saw this printed on the referenced site, I thought you were full of bullshit. But now I realize that you're just yanking our chains. You are, aren't you? Otherwise you need to go see your doctor. Those meds aren't working.
Let's face it, we (the majority) all liked our president's before they went in office.
Ahhh, nerd naivety.
y -senate-republicans-on-track-for-record-setting-ob struction// 18218.html
This is politics. The Republicans are opposing ALL Democrat sponsored legislation in the Senate. They need something to distract people from this. Like a pointless morality campaign.
McClatchy: Senate Republicans On Track For Record Setting Obstruction
Nearly 1 in 6 roll-call votes in the Senate this year have been cloture votes. If this pace of blocking legislation continues, this 110th Congress will be on track to roughly triple the previous record number of cloture votes -- 58 each in the two Congresses from 1999-2002, according to the Senate Historical Office.
(cloture votes are required to end debate, part of filibustering)
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/07/21/mcclatch
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/v-print/story
You can try to make excuses or cloud the issue in ambiguity, but there is one unquestionable fact: abortion kills babies. It is a willful act of cruel, inhumane brutality against an innocent life. Just as we denounce the slaughter of innocent civilians and genocide, so we should denounce this reprehensible act. We condemn slavery, but we actively slaughter our own children. We are upset about invading Iraq, but we invade the bodies of little babies and destroy them in the womb. Think about that.
Abortion, in most cases, kills a largely undeveloped fetus that is incapable of surviving outside of the mother's body. This lump of tissue is not a baby, it is not a sentient human being. It is a parasite within the mother's body and allowed to exist only by her whim.
Most people regularly eat animals with more intelligence than a fetus. Eating pork is more morally questionable than abortion.
No one claims abortion is a GOOD thing. But as far as bad things go, it ranks somewhere below eating meat and a bit above jaywalking.
I tend to agree with you, except that they aren't actually common carriers, not by law. They're in this sort of odd position where if they get a complaint about you, they have to cut you off -- or something like that. I don't actually know how it works, but I would expect an entirely neutral ISP to even allow you to send spam, and simply be willing to provide your personal details to anyone who complains, so they know where to send the lawsuit.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
"[Two Senators] argued that [the] Internet was a dangerous place where parents alone will not be able to protect their children."
The internet is dangerous? Well so is the rest of the world, in case you haven't noticed. Parents can't protect their own children by themselves? Some people neglect or abuse their offspring or just plain suck at parenting, but this doesn't mean that all taxpayers should foot the bill to possibly help make up for it. It also doesn't give our government freedom to impose a mechanism which could easily, and most certainly would be used in unintended ways to limit the rights of anyone who happens to use the internet.
"While filtering and monitoring technologies help parents to screen out offensive content and to monitor their child's online activities, the use of these technologies is far from universal and may not be fool-proof in keeping kids away from adult material"
May not be foolproof? how about definatly is not and never will be foolproof. I am aware of no technology that is foolproof.
"...we must evaluate our current efforts to combat child pornography and consider what further measures may be needed to stop the spread of such illegal material over high-speed broadband connections."
How did they come to the conclusion that child pornography is only spread over high-speed broadband? Or is it alright to send such things over slow connections? Or are they singling out broadband for some other reason?
"Given the increasingly important role of the Internet in education and commerce, it differs from other media like TV and cable because parents cannot prevent their children from using the Internet altogether,"
So no parent can keep their child off the internet today because kids use the internet to buy things and do schoolwork. I know libraries and brick-and-mortar stores aren't endangered species yet, so why can't they use those? Sure it may not be as convenient, but with the good comes the bad in anything.
"The headlines continue to tell us of children who are victimized online. While the issues are difficult, I believe Congress has an important role to play to ensure that the protections available in other parts of our society find their way to the Internet."
Popular mass media is the primary gauge for how well Congress is doing its job and where its priorities lie? Headlines are funny things, they often make phenomena seem ubiquitous when they are really quite rare. With a population of hundreds of millions of (supposedly sovereign) people, you will get quite a few perverts and quite a few poorly parented kids, and eventually they'll cross paths, whether it be in cyberspace or on a public street. But the frequency with which this happens does not warrant such a response.
"[T]he most important finding of the committee is that developing in children and youth an ethic of responsible choice and skills for appropriate behavior is foundational for all efforts to protect them--with respect to inappropriate sexually explicit material on the Internet as well as many other dangers on the Internet and in the physical world,"
Surprise of all surprises, the best way to 'protect' children, online and otherwise, is to teach them proper behavior and how to make their own choices. But of course telling people to do a better job raising and supervising their children doesn't win many votes, so these findings and others like it will fall on deaf ears. If prefer some raw statistics that show it's mostly lack of education (of both the children and parents) and parental incompetence that most urgently need to be addressed , then read netsmartz.org.
Nowhere in this article do I see any of these lawmakers making any valid arguments as to why this filtering/monitoring technology is needed. These peop
Those are pretty important ones. Is there anything you actually agree with him on?
The problem I have with Libertarians and "small government" is, it tends to give entirely too much power to corporations, and puts entirely too much faith in the free market to resolve anything.
Let's face it -- if you're in an area where there's only one or two ISPs, the free market isn't going to do ANYTHING. They can basically do anything they want to you, as long as it's not quite enough to make you physically move to another location. It's called a geographical monopoly, and it is why the government already regulates other utilities.
And the same principle is true in all sorts of other places. Libertarians cry "slippery slope", that the mere hint of government intervention means next moment, we'll have to fill out six pages of government forms and pay three different kinds of taxes just to get Internet. But it goes both ways -- you start deregulating everything, and pretty soon you have anarchy -- which means "might makes right" -- which means none of the little guys that Libertarians are supposedly about will have a chance against the likes of Wall-Mart, Exxon, Sony, Microsoft, Monsanto, etc.
What we really need is a healthy moderate. Do they even exist anymore? Someone who decides we should grow up and stop wasting the public dialog with "think of the children", abortion, gay marriage, etc. Someone who has some sort of a plan for Iraq -- frankly, I don't care if they want to pull out or not -- but who will actually listen to their military advisers, and stop using the war one way or another as a political tool. Someone who might do patent reform, without ripping out the patent system entirely -- same with education.
Someone who is more intelligent than a yogurt. (Bush and Ted Stevens need not apply.)
I'm not sure my candidate exists, though! I guess I should write a letter to Obama or something, find out if he knows/cares about technological issues.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I think what GP is asking, and what I'm wondering as well, is how we'll prevent corporations from putting poisons into the air and water or abusing their workers if the only enforcement is after-the-fact in a courtroom?
This brings up one thing I disagree with at least some other libertarians, I support a strong EPA enforcing environmental laws and regulations. As far as the environment goes I support the precautionary principle.
The only way I can see this working is if corporate personhood was revoked, which I don't see on any of the Libertarian Party's platforms.
From the Libertarian Party website:
"Tightening up the charters, along with elimination of corporate personhood and elimination of limited liability would enable a self regulating structure that would ensure that contractual obligations are met."
"If I am ever in a position to do something about it, I will call for a removal of corporate personhood, becuase I believe that is the basis for these types of problems and the never ending battle of control between government and private enterprise."
"As for corporations and unions. Corporations should be stripped of their ficticious personhood and accordingly stripped of the ability to make political contributions."
Searching the LP website I found 15 pages about this, so there are a number of Libertarians who don't believe corporations shoud be given personhood status.
FalconShould there be a Law?
For the most part both parent only have to work if they want to join the rat race and keep up with the Jones, or because they made bad decisions. You shouldn't have children unless you can financially support them.
I'm not sure myself. I know I am structuring a life so I don't have to make that kind of sacrifice. but I"m not in the same circumstance that most people are in, so I struggle with how much we can expect from average joe and jane blow... maybe they *do* need some help...
I'm all for giving assistance to those who need it, but it should be civil society that gives the aid not government.
Did both of your parents work?
My dad retired from the Airforce and my mom worked part tyme while putting herself through school to be a lab tech in a hospital, then once she finished her training she worked fulltime. However they seperated then divorced while I was still young. Didn't matter much because even when they were married he wasn't around for long. He was constantly stationed overseas, to Tiawan or Japan. I'd like to have gone myself but because he'd only be there a few months or so, so it wouldn't have made sense to move the entire family.
FalconShould there be a Law?
In the above note, as I was enumerating things for a man to have, I forgot to include GUNS!
This is my sig.
Why do we always insist on banning things we don't agree with?
There are four boxes used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order.
Aircraft cannot hold territory.
Just ask those dudes in Iraq.
There are four boxes used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order.
Alan Turing and Gordon Rice Call for Senators who know what the heck they're talking about
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
I mean if the web site were being browsed with ssl encryption it would be harder to filter, right?
Then we would get to go back to arguing^h^h^h^h^h^hdiscussing whether the united states (and other) governments should have the ability to read all encrypted traffic (for official "authorized" purposes only of course).
Over the last 40 years I have written a lot of software, and some of it has ended up in unexpected places. I recently found some source code I wrote while at Digital Research in a zip file on a server in a remote vampire sanctuary in europe. I wrote some encryption interfaces for Motorola for the military and I expect that code was widely used in places I can only imagine. As long as we are writing code modules, we have very little control over where those modules end up. The best we can hope to do is not actually integrate anything we personaly consider immoral. You make a personal stand. You make an example. People notice and respect you or not. As you get older, your views change and hopefully, you don't regret later what you did when you were younger. If I invented something that was used for an immoral purpose, I would think once about killing the asshole that used my code in an immoral way before I would consider suicide. Serve the society in the way you see best. Namaste - doug
I hope your blessing of sunshine is returned tenfold someday, Insha-Allah
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Gold has fluctuated very heavily in recent years. People I know lost money in the early 80s for investing gold.
At least the government can control its own currency to slow inflation or stop deflation by just reducing or printing more money. That is kind of hard with gold.
http://saveie6.com/
You're so full of shit: "Generally speaking, sex offenders have a very high recidivism rate, so, rehabilitation doesn't work."
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/abstract/rsorp94.htm says:
"Within 3 years following their release, 5.3% of sex offenders (men who had committed rape or sexual assault) were rearrested for another sex crime."
That's some high recidivism rates there! Wow, 5.3% sure is a lot of reoffense! That rehab ain't working, maw!
As for the rest of it all, I already covered it here: http://www.angryoffender.com/registry_proves_worth less.html QUOTE:
The proof is overwhelmingly against the long-standing theory that "sex offenders are very likely to commit their crimes again." Previous resources straight from law enforcement and corrections departments themselves have quoted sex offender reoffense rates circling five to six percent. For example, The U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics: Recidivism of Sex Offenders Released from Prison in 1994 section from the "National Recidivism Study of Released Prisoners" study highlights the following four bullet-points (emphasis and commentary added):
* Within 3 years following their release, 5.3% of sex offenders (men who had committed rape or sexual assault) were rearrested for another sex crime. - In other words, out of every 1,000 sex offenders, the average you'll see "doing it again" is 53. Considering the tiny fraction of the population that sex offenders occupy, any given child or adult is far more likely to be injured or killed in a car wreck than molested, raped, or killed by a "sex offender." As far as the "within 3 years" goes, see the next study below this one.
* On average the 9,691 sex offenders served 3 1/2 years of their 8-year sentence. - It's hard to interpret this, but I'd have to say that my best guess on why this is, is due to good behavior and being worthy of parole. In other words, sex offenders don't act like hoodlums while in prison and rehabilitate rather well.
* Compared to non-sex offenders released from State prisons, released sex offenders were 4 times more likely to be rearrested for a sex crime. - EVERY TIME that I quote the first item above, THIS ONE is used by people who think they're intelligent and think they've "caught me" making a mistake or skewing the facts. Unfortunately for them, they failed to use common sense in their search for ways to "stick it to me." If a person shows a lower threshold of restraint for committing any given crime, common sense dictates that the chances of being accused or actually committing that crime would be higher. Think of cocaine addicts as an example. Does it not logically follow that a cocaine addict will both (A) be looked at with more suspicion regarding drug-related crimes (and thus be at higher risk of rearrest) AND (B) have less "conscience" about starting up cocaine again? Also, note that they mention ARRESTS AND NOT CONVICTIONS. Being "rearrested" doesn't mean "reconvicted." You'd be surprised how many people choose to ignore these things to further their blind hatred of sex offenders.
And then:
* Within 9 years of their release, 49% were returned to prison. Not reported is the fact that only 6% of these (34 out of 556) were returned to prison for a new sex crime. Most were returned for parole violations (27%) or for committing other crimes such as drug offenses.
* The study includes the clear statement: "These findings suggest that sex offenders are a diverse population and that when looking at sex offender recidivism it is important to distinguish total criminal activity from sexual reoffending." (p. 34) Unfortunately, politicians and the media rarely do this.
* Between 1985 and 2001 a tot
It isn't necessary to tie a currency 100% to gold; it could be tied to multiple metals, or have a fractional tie (such as the Swiss franc prior to 2000). That would reduce or eliminate a lot of the price volatility that you mention, and would still encourage governments to balance their budgets and control debts. As it stands now with a floating currency, it is too ripe for abuse. See this article for some more history behind the gold standard.
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware