Apple Sued For Man's Porn Addiction

coolnumbr12 writes "Chris Sevier, a 36-year-old man from Tennessee, got so addicted to porn videos that his wife took his children and left him. Now he has sued Apple saying the company failed to install any filter in its devices to prevent his addiction. In a 50-page complaint, Sevier calls Apple a 'silent poisoner' responsible for the proliferation of 'arousal addiction, sex trafficking, prostitution, and countless numbers of destroyed lives.' Sevier is seeking damages from Apple, but said he we will drop the lawsuit if Apple agrees to sell devices with a 'safe mode.'"

Comments

False Flag

[digitrev]

Normally, I'm not this paranoid, but this reads like a false flag operation by some religious group looking to get filters installed by default. At the very least, I wouldn't be surprised to find out that they're helping fund this insane lawsuit.

Re:False Flag

[digitrev]

And now having re-read the article, I realize that this man is patently insane. Primarily because he blames Apple for driving sex shops out of business.

Re:False Flag

[amicusNYCL]

Who cares, let them do whatever they want. They can file as many suits as they want and, each time, a jury will be able to decide if Apple is the group that is ultimately responsible for some guy who got himself addicted to porn. While he's at it, he can sue Ford for allowing him to drive to the convenience store to buy beer and fuel his alcohol addiction, because that is obviously Ford's fault since they don't ship their cars with a mode that makes the car unable to drive to the convenience store to buy beer.

Re:False Flag

[ArcadeMan]

Just because he's insane doesn't mean there's no religious group behind the lawsuit.

Re:False Flag

[Gription]

It is this sort of stupidity that I think the creationists could use as an effective argument against evolution.
- The fact that SO MANY people have no ability to take any responsibility for their actions and the fact that people don't overwhelmingly blast them for their insane helplessness seems to be some level of proof that humans have no evolved traits for any self responsibility. I would expect that self responsibility would have to be part of any sort of evolved survival traits.

(or maybe we need to release more tigers in our cities to get the old awareness going again...)

Re:False Flag

[Anonymous Coward]

better to have the responsibility lie with the individual who chose it.. blame chain games turn into societal witch hunts very very quickly. these witch hunts destroy liberty. to be honest, it was his wife's choice to end the relationship, not his.

Re:False Flag

[pspahn]

I would suggest he is primarily insane because he has been a serial stalker.

Re:False Flag

[Reverand Dave]

Usually one follows the other.

Re:False Flag

[Austerity Empowers]

If I am on a jury, and I hear "Addicted to porn", I'm going to have a really hard time remaining objective about the person speaking.

As such I'd probably get thrown off the jury and people who actually BELIEVE THIS SHIT will take my place.

Re:False Flag

[gl4ss]

yeah, from a quick glance his wife left him because he was looking for fuck dates on the internets.

he could also try suing lenovo, dell and microsoft on the same grounds and while at it google, firefox and his isp.
fucking douche. or apparently not a fucking douche since he is complaining.

Re:False Flag

[CanHasDIY]

Normally, I'm not this paranoid, but this reads like a false flag operation by some religious group.

Even better:

Chris Sevier, an attorney from Nashville,is suing Apple...

Rent-seek much?

Re:False Flag

[Anonymous Coward]

Personal responsibility is an invented concept driven by societal needs. Fundamental evolution doesn't work well with the concept. In fact shuffling responsibility onto others and suckering them into dealing with it is a fantastic survival strategy we can see throughout the animal kingdom.

Re:False Flag

[Reverand Dave]

This is the exact opposite. Humans are selfish and self-serving like no other species can be. This is a direct result of natural selection. Your ancestors weren't the ones holding the door so people could get through, they were the ones trampling old women and children to get theirs first. More recently however, helplessness is a trait that is bred and perpetuated by a society that is ok with just accepting things as is without explanation.

"How did the universe get here? I dunno, God did it." What is more lazy and helpless than that? It's pretty thematic through out the whole ID debate. Acceptance in spite of investigation and evidence to the contrary. That is the epitome of a lazy and entitled attitude IMHO.

That being said, fuck yeah, bring on the tigers.

Re:False Flag

[interkin3tic]

But... there already ARE filters on by default. The app store doesn't seem have anything that would rate higher than a PG-13. Safari's default search engine was at least google, maybe they've changed it, but google has safesearch on by default. It's not like you say "Siri, I like dogs" and it goes right to a gallery of people having doggystyle sex.

...

I guess I'm assuming that religious groups would think about it first. You may be right.

Re:False Flag

[GameboyRMH]

Mod parent up, was just gonna say this.

Evolution doesn't give a damn how much of an irresponsible moron you are, only how much you reproduce. And irresponsible morons are especially good at that.

Re:False Flag

[Rick Zeman]

It is this sort of stupidity that I think the creationists could use as an effective argument against evolution. .)

Dunno, I kind of think this guy is the most effective argument against evolution.

Re:False Flag

[mwvdlee]

Which type of people do you think procreate the most; people with or without a sense of responsibility?
There are whole MTV shows dedicated to demonstrating this principle of evolution.

Re:False Flag

[Guy Harris]

And now having re-read the article, I realize that this man is patently insane.

Gee, ya think so?

Re:False Flag

[Artifakt]

I'm wondering if this particular Sevier lives in Sevierville. Seveirville is named after John Sevier, a pioneer settler to the region. That part of the state has literally thousands of people with some variant on Sevier as their last name; Mostly Seviers, but with Siviers, Seebers, Seibers, Severs, and even a few Xaviers. I know of only one sex shop in the Sevierville area, but I don't think it's out of business. (It calls itself "Sexy Stuf", and the ex and I don't patronize places that can't spell, but it looked open when we stopped at the Smoky Mountain Knife Museum (It's like a four story mall full of knife dealers, with taxidermied animals and indoor waterfalls, and I'd bet Mr. Sevier would love it if he can stop focusing on sex so much).
        Knoxville, 30 miles away or so, has lots of sex stores still open last I checked - Adult Superstore, Fantasy World, Intimate Treasures, Romantic Escapades, and others. Town and Country seems to be fading fast, but they're kinda disquieting (as in labeling the plus-size video's "fattyporn", and clerks who seem oddly judgemental), so I really doubt it's apple putting them out of business.

Re:False Flag

[Synerg1y]

It is well within recent event's limits to believe that he is being funded by the FCC... who want to censor real life: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NDPT0Ph5rA

Re:False Flag

[amRadioHed]

Humans are selfish and self-serving like no other species can be.

Sure... if by "like no other species can be" you mean "exactly like every other species is".

Re:False Flag

[Golddess]

Hey now, I'll have you know I'm perfectly capable of being insane without needing a religious group backing me up, thank you very much. :P

Re:False Flag

[jythie]

That would be less a 'false flag' and more a test case or a poster child.

Re:False Flag

[BattleApple]

Or a joint funding between fuckbook and some religious group.

Re:False Flag

[DutchUncle]

If I understand you correctly, you're saying that there should be *more* irresponsible morons than any other type of people.

Hmm. Didn't Cyril Kornbluth write "The Marching Morons back in the early 1950s? Since there is prior art on this subject, you're not allowed to think that.

Re:False Flag

[DutchUncle]

That being said, fuck yeah, bring on the tigers.

Says a member of the group best known for sitting at their monitors until their muscles atrophy. (note to self: get away from monitor before tigers . . . )

Re:False Flag

[JeanCroix]

For those not following your link: Sevier lost his law license in 2011 after the Tennessee Supreme Court ruled he can’t practice due to reasons of mental illness. New reports reveal his disability is related to Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome from his time serving in Iraq.

Re:False Flag

[GameboyRMH]

Hey, he had kids already, evolution says he's doing better than any of us who don't have kids.

Re:False Flag

[Lithdren]

The end of your first paragraph didn't quite end how I was expecting it to upon first reading it...i'm thankful for this.

Re:False Flag

[hermitdev]

The counterpoint to this is from the TFA:

His wife abducted his son and disappeared...

indicating the man has successfully reproduced. Granted the "porn addiction" appears to have started after he reproduced, but he has still reproduced.

Re:False Flag

[Just Some Guy]

Normally, I'm not this paranoid, but this reads like a false flag operation by some religious group looking to get filters installed by default.

That requires a Venn diagram overlap of "rich", "organized", and "stupid". Apple's not-really-an-alternative is to implement filters by default and make them 100% infallible, so that no one will ever accidentally see porn who doesn't mean to and so that someone who wants to see porn won't be accidentally blocked from doing so. Put another way, if Apple added filters, they'd be legally obligated to make them work perfectly. I can imagine that they wouldn't be in any rush to take that deal.

Re:False Flag

[beelsebob]

I know you americans like to use "communist" to mean "anything we don't like", but seriously, what does being against porn have to do with being very left wing to the point of saying everyone should share everything equally?

Re:False Flag

[DigiShaman]

I'm guessing he picked up the phone an called an attorney. Rather then tell him to sleep off his crazy idea, they latched onto it as a springboard to sue Apple. Jackpot Justice. So even if he loses, the lawyers win via collection of services rendered. It's fucking low that scum like this prey on the mentally disturbed!

Re:False Flag

[SuricouRaven]

That explains a lot about the state of the world.

Re:False Flag

[P-niiice]

dude, i'm pretty sure if a bernie madoff came to be in the animal kingdom, that pile of bananas would be hard to miss

Re:False Flag

[networkBoy]

Only if my insanity matches their insanity, else they will attempt to bury me. (Or burn me at the stake).

Re:False Flag

[Obfuscant]

but seriously we don't blame the heroine or meth for a junkie becoming a junkie.

We do, however, blame the guy standing on the street corner handing out free samples of dope trying to get people hooked.

I blame them for being less perfect than I am, just like this dude is.

FTFY. Humans are an imperfect animal with build in chemical and psychological pathways that can lead to dependency on many different kinds of things. Some people have had enough support early in their lives that they haven't made bad decisions that lead them down the bad pathways; some people haven't. That doesn't make the person pathetic or weak or even simple, it just makes him human.

Re:False Flag

[umghhh]

it is only partially true. Social animals develop virtues because that allows them to build complex societies. No virtues = no society. This said there are are always some that abuse the system. Society can survive only if number of such indihviduals is limited - this works by means of social cohesion. In liberal societies this seems to work less efficiently as in ones where not paying your dues means gets you ostracised or worse.

So yes evolution does not give a damn about how irresponsible you are but then we reached extreme levels of population density not because all humans behaved like assholes. You may even theorize about need for having assholes just to prove the system works and keep the defences high - in a sense showing all that are capable of socializing that antisocial types are bad and even evil and some of them may be panished etc.

Re:False Flag

[hermitdev]

I can't believe I'm actually about to defend Apple, but I think the point is suing Apple for producing a computer that can be used to access any multitude of media and do any number of any other things is absurd as suing Sony for the same thing, because they produce TVs, BluRay & DVD players, and computers that can be used to access the same media.
Smokers didn't sue their local convenience stores where they bought their smokes, they sued the manufacturers of said tobacco products. This is a classic case of a bullshit, groundless lawsuit, that should be tossed, and the only reason Apple is the plaintiff is because they have deep pockets.
For this to have any standing (and I don't think it has so much as a termite-ridden peg leg to stand on), he should have gone after the producers of the pornography he had to which he had become addicted (but I bet he didn't watch long enough to see the credits).
He should also add his ISP to the suit for wantonly providing access to the media.

Re:False Flag

[icebike]

The counterpoint to this is from the TFA:

His wife abducted his son and disappeared...

indicating the man has successfully reproduced. Granted the "porn addiction" appears to have started after he reproduced, but he has still reproduced.

Heh, maybe he should have sued his wife, not Apple. It would have been cheaper, and either way he's not getting anything.

Re:False Flag

[hairyfeet]

Actually I would say it proves evolution, specifically that because we humans have evolved with a small tribe mentality (protecting our own small sphere instead of looking at humanity as a whole) and an instinct to protect those in our tribe we are creating a "march of the morons" situation by having a civilization that allows truly stupid people like in TFA to have offspring, thus spreading the stupid like a jackass rolling a porta potty downhill spreads shit.

Sadly this IS the future of society, a full on "Big Mother" nanny state that every damned thing you see/read/hear, even eat and drink, because it will assume that you are just as big an idiot as the lowest common denominator who of course will think that lowest common denominator is a bot on Transformers.

Re:False Flag

[Anonymous Coward]

Reason and faith are only incompatible when they intersect to the detriment of the former. There's plenty of stuff that could logically exist that we have no evidence for, and possibly never will. You can select an outcome in those cases and they would have to be based on faith.

And as for everything else, most people without recourse to proper equipment or resources have to take many of the more obscure scientific theories on faith. Some people do not, and that is how you end up with conspiracy theories becoming prevalent in the face of scientific knowledge. Conspiracy theorists are fine with science itself, they just have no faith in the results that have been presented to them by certain authorities. That is an important difference.

Faith is not important for science, but it is important for the acceptance of the results of science, when those results are not obvious and easily repeatable by the layperson. Scientific advancement benefits as much from credulity, as you would put it, as religion does.

Re:False Flag

[gVibe]

False flag for those who do not know is what the government or any organization does to distract the not-so-smart people while a more sinister plan is enacted. In short: "Look a flying saucer!" meanwhile "BANG!" something blows up.

Re:False Flag

[leonardluen]

doesn't google turn on "safe-search" by default?

Re:False Flag

[gVibe]

Can I please speak to Hank? I know he normally only comes out after 8pm, but I have something to show him.

Re:False Flag

[HaZardman27]

Smokers didn't sue their local convenience stores where they bought their smokes, they sued the manufacturers of said tobacco products

What's even more bullshit, is that in this case, it is more like suing the company which built the truck used to haul the cigarettes from the factory to the convenience store. At least the convenience store made the conscious decision to sell cigarettes there. The truck company just built a damn truck, which happens to work on highways and is capable of moving cigarettes.

Re:False Flag

[parkinglot777]

Well, he might be dreaming on getting a huge payment (if he could ever win). Or at least, he just wants publicity if he sues a corporation (Apple) rather than his own wife, so that he can be [in]famous...

Re:False Flag

[tnk1]

Probably has to do with the idea that the common welfare is maintained by everyone in a classless society. So if you're being addicted to something like porn or drugs, you are not just hurting yourself, you're hurting everyone.

There are and were a number of "morality" pushes by communist countries. Granted, a lot of that was the fact that becoming a communist doesn't change some basic ideas that people have about morality. Most people aren't for or against porn or drugs because God says not to do them, they're inherently offended by people who make use of them due to their view of the world.

For instance, those who view themselves as hard workers will look down on addicts as drains on society. You'll find people who consider it a "Christian" duty to bust drug users. You can very easily come across that sort of viewpoint in a communist country as well, just for different reasons.

Re:False Flag

[Hoi Polloi]

Either that or he became "born again" and needed blame someone else for his problems.

Re:False Flag

[Altrag]

"How did the universe get here? I dunno, God did it." What is more lazy and helpless than that?

I don't know about that. It takes a lot of dedicated effort to remain willfully ignorant in today's era of information overload.

"God did it" made reasonably sense when the state of human knowledge was such that we couldn't have known better. And "God did it" is still a reasonable (if unlikely) reason for the Big Bang happening in the first place. People who want to want to reconcile science and religion are welcome to do so on levels like that if it makes them happy.

But trying to claim that the world started 6000 years ago when we can date things back millions or billions of years with proven methods are just out to lunch. The absolutely best they can claim is that the devil (or maybe God himself, to "test" us -- ie: make sure we don't try to use the big old brains He gave us) purposely laced our planet with particular datable isotopes and geographic strata and whatever else the smart people use to (reasonably) accurately date things (accuracy within 1% is a reasonable accuracy in many cases, even if it means a potential real error of a million years, for example.)

Re:False Flag

[spire3661]

You dont understand Evolution at all. Its not about the individual actors, but the ability for a species to carve out a niche and reproduce successfully in a given environment. Even if he is pants-on-head retarded, he is still old enough to have reproduced, thus Evolution was successful for him.

Re:False Flag

[beelsebob]

* "[...] everyone should share everything equally" - hahaha! sorry, but i find that also naive...

Like it or not, that's what communism stands for. The fact that it was implemented poorly (or not at all) by many supposedly communist (but actually fascist, totalitarian) states is neither here nor there.

Re:False Flag

[fl!ptop]

either way he's not getting anything

Which is probably why he was addicted in the 1st place.

Re:False Flag

[Chris Mattern]

I would expect that self responsibility would have to be part of any sort of evolved survival traits.

Why? Getting someone else to do your work is in fact a proven survival strategy. The is a large population of innumerable kinds of parasites thriving out there, you know.

Re:False Flag

[deathlyslow]

Heh, maybe he should have sued his wife, not Apple. It would have been cheaper, and either way he's not getting any. There fixed that for you.

Re:False Flag

[hairyfeet]

Oh lord isn't that the truth, to get to my GF's place you have to drive through a trailer park to get to the side road her place is on and....damn. It just blows my mind how you will see these folks living in squalor, everything around them falling apart, yet the women all have kids like stair steps, we are talking 4+ kids on average, all squeezed into these little bitty single wide trailers from the 60s and 70s, I had to show my girl Idiocracy because she asked when I went through there to take her home what "march of the morons was" and after seeing it she said "Its funny but sad, because that is what we are gonna end up becoming". Hell just watch one of the Transformers movies and I'd say we are already getting there, all the "wacky hijinks" with Shia leButt might as well be called "Ass the movie".

BTW I know this is offtopic so I apologize beforehand, but would the ones that said a prayer a few weeks ago for my mom mind saying one for my dad? I may not have much in the way of faith left but I believe my own eyes and after asking for prayers at my normal haunts even though the docs had written off my mom as a lost cause she made a 100% recovery, she is doing so well now she is back at home with her reality TV and her wiener dog. But now as soon as the customer I'm waiting on picks up his tower i gotta head back to the hospital to sit with dad, he is burning up and having trouble breathing and so far everything the docs have tried has been for naught, they just can't seem to kill the infection.

All I can say is thank all that is good for my little sweetie, how many would spend their third date in the ER helping me fill out forms on mom and not a month later be cooking for mom and the boys so i can spend time in the hospital with dad? Not many that is for damned sure, if it weren't for my little rock of Gibraltar the stress of this year would have put me in a hospital bed or the morgue, but through it all she just puts her arm around me and says "you need me, I'm here".

Re:False Flag

[Bigbutt]

But I don't want any group swill.

[John]

Re:False Flag

[CanHasDIY]

I know you americans like to use "communist" to mean "anything we don't like", but seriously, what does being against porn have to do with being very left wing to the point of saying everyone should share everything equally?

Most Americans base their understanding of communism on our nations history with the U.S.S.R. and China, rather than any specific definition. To that end -

http://englishrussia.com/2010/08/16/anti-alcohol-soviet-posters/

Doesn't take a major Puritanical leap to go from demonizing booze to demonizing sexy pictures.

Re:False Flag

[CanHasDIY]

False flag for those who do not know is what the government or any organization does to distract the not-so-smart people while a more sinister plan is enacted. In short: "Look a flying saucer!" meanwhile "BANG!" something blows up.

Incorrect:

False flag (or black flag) describes covert military or paramilitary operations designed to deceive in such a way that the operations appear as though they are being carried out by other entities, groups or nations than those who actually planned and executed them.

Re-using your example: Government agents blow up a hospital and make it appear that a flying saucer (or Al Queda, some militia group, etc.) was actually to blame.

Re:False Flag

[datavirtue]

That's not paranoia it is just a logical and innovative way of analyzing this strange story. Maybe I'm slipping but normally I would think of something like that given such an odd report.

Re:False Flag

[Altrag]

I have to fully disagree with this argument.

Humanity has NEVER had a high percentage of smart, responsible people. And we're still trending towards a smarter populace (more people with at least a BA and such metrics.) Also being a more responsible populace is questionable but that's digressing a bit.

Humanity's cogs have always been the grunts -- they're plentiful and replaceable. But our leaps and bounds have come from the very very few superstars -- the Newtons and Einsteins and Teslas of the world are the ones who progress us.

The rest of us mass of grunts get to benefit from the achievements of the few visionaries and progress marches on. But there's never been a time when more than a fraction of a percent of humanity has been "smart" in the world-moving (even a small corner of the world) sense. There has of course been times when certain factions have tried to suppress the few visionaries that do pop up during their rule.

Overall my point is that visionary intelligence is more likely the genetic mistake among a (comparatively) stupid population rather than some goal we're supposed to be moving towards -- as others have pointed out, evolution favors your reproduction far far more than it favors your contributions to other peoples' lives.

Re:False Flag

[Reverand Dave]

All that shows is that humans have a capacity for compassion, which if you look at some of the horrible things we've done despite this capacity, makes so many things seem so much worse. There's more examples of animals being hunted to extinction than examples of animals being preserved due to exploitation.

Re:False Flag

[Runaway1956]

I thought they only burned vivacious buxom females at the stake. Guys are just thrown into the tinder pile at the base of the stake. I learned that from Hollyweird!

Re:False Flag

[Anonymous Coward]

But trying to claim that the world started 6000 years ago when we can date things back millions or billions of years with proven methods are just out to lunch.

Exactly! Everyone knows the world started on January 1, 1970. It's only those DOS or Apple heretics that think it started in 1980 or 2001. Silly people!

Re:False Flag

[Reverand Dave]

A tittle is the dot above a lower case "i" or "j", dipshit. My misspelling was intentional, you're just dumb.

Re:False Flag

[datavirtue]

I acknowledge the nature of an "unseen" world where ideas and thought originate but for which we have no physical proof--some call it "spiritual." I do not believe in it however as I'm still learning more about nature every day. I do not secretly long for the death of those who do not see as I do like the acolytes of these fundamentalist sects do. I grew up in a fundamentalist sect which many people have great things to say about its people, but the truth is that they taught their people that those not in the sect where damned to certain death by god and those real, live, grown up, supposedly adult people believe it and in essence hate and judge their fellowman in their hearts as unworthy of life (while acting perfectly nice to their face). If you think that devout religious people do not view you as a piece of shit then you are wrong. In their eyes you are as good as dead and deserve worse.

Re:False Flag

[luther349]

its not apples problem to deal with his personal issues. if he wants filters so bad there is plenty available for ios.

Re:False Flag

[White Flame]

The fact that it was implemented poorly...

That's not the problem. The problem is the fact that humanity does not work that way in any scale beyond small clan/tribe units.

Re:False Flag

[MaskedSlacker]

Mod Parent -1 Brain Rotted by Pop Science Books.

That is not how evolution works. Natural selection doesn't give a flying fuck about the value judgements you impose on behaviors.

Re:False Flag

[MaskedSlacker]

Well ya if you want to believe that Wikipedia is the endall source of information...but...in today's world: "False flag terrorism" occurs when elements within a government stage a secret operation whereby government forces pretend to be a targeted enemy while attacking their own forces or people.

You must be drunk. You just repeated your parent.

For example, a "false flag operation" is a terrorist act committed by one group for the express purpose of discrediting another group, which is framed for it. Just sayin...

So was your parent. Go home gvibe, you're drunk.

Re:False Flag

[Ol Olsoc]

Reason and faith are only incompatible when they intersect to the detriment of the former.

Always has been, and always will.

There's plenty of stuff that could logically exist that we have no evidence for, and possibly never will. You can select an outcome in those cases and they would have to be based on faith.

And as for everything else, most people without recourse to proper equipment or resources have to take many of the more obscure scientific theories on faith.

No, it isn't faith. It speaks to credibility. My lack of access to a particle accellerator, but accepting the results has nothing to do with faith. The work is there and documented, and I can access it. In addition, If I accept one scientific theory and it is proven to be wrong, I'll look into it, and abandon the old for the new. Faith is much more akin to believing that the world was completely covered with water from rainfall, when it is physically impossible for that to happen, and believing that the man who built the boat put two of every creature on the boat when the dimensions of the boat would obviously not have held two of every creature on earth, and that not every species lived in the middle East, so they would have to swim across the oceans to get there - so that they wouldn't drown. Believing in impossibilities that have been proven wrong is faith. Strong faith.

Some people do not, and that is how you end up with conspiracy theories becoming prevalent in the face of scientific knowledge. Conspiracy theorists are fine with science itself, they just have no faith in the results that have been presented to them by certain authorities. That is an important difference.

Most conspiracy theorists I know are more aligned with the faith crowd. And they will believe pretty much the opposite of whatever happens to be known. Their reasonong is backwards, say that dirty so and so's belive in something, and since I don't like them, whtever they say, do or think must be wrong. I find it to be more an abberation of human behavior, and in many ways, very manipulable by cynical politicians.

Faith is not important for science, but it is important for the acceptance of the results of science, when those results are not obvious and easily repeatable by the layperson. Scientific advancement benefits as much from credulity, as you would put it, as religion does.

Well, at least you didn't pull out the old "Atheism is a religion" canard. But once again the mistake of confusing credulity for credibility. Inasmuch as we mere mortals do not have the time or the resources to investigate every facet of human knowledge, there are some things we take as credible. But if I need to learn about something, it's easy to find the work and review it.

If I need to look up a formula for some electronics application, I can do that. I know where to look, and I have pretty fair confidence the formula will be correct. Because if it isn't, the project won't work, and as likely as not, I'll contact the author so they can correct the mistake. If I had faith that the formula was correct, I'd refuse to accept that it wasn't, and that perhaps I should sacrifice a lamb or somesuch so that the circuit would work the next time.

Re:False Flag

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you are confusing trust in the scientific method and the peer review process with faith. That trust is always provisional, always conditional, and scales up or down based on the evidence presented and the confidence I have in it unlike faith which is unconditional. Looks like a false equivalence fallacy to me.

Re:False Flag

[msi]

You where a lot closer than the USA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_Civil_War

Re:False Flag

[CanHasDIY]

Well ya if you want to believe that Wikipedia is the endall source of information...but...in today's world: "False flag terrorism" occurs when elements within a government stage a secret operation whereby government forces pretend to be a targeted enemy while attacking their own forces or people.

You must be drunk. You just repeated your parent.

For example, a "false flag operation" is a terrorist act committed by one group for the express purpose of discrediting another group, which is framed for it. Just sayin...

So was your parent. Go home gvibe, you're drunk.

Butbutbut... Wikipedia!

Re:False Flag

[lgw]

I swear, we should just rename the fallacy "no true communist" as it would end half of /. political threads. The word "communist" as commonly used by most speakers (you know, the way we say how words are defined in English) means exactly all those real-word totalitarian states. It's also what actually happens every single time "real communism" is tried on a large scale. Maybe you need a different word or phrase to capture your concept, like "unattainable ideal communism" or something.

Re:False Flag

[Gription]

You are right! That has been proven time and time again by animals in the wild that just stand there going, "Save me. I obviously can't be bothered!". I mean really, what would the world look like if you had all these organisms actively doing something for their own benefit? You would see things like zebras and gazelles running away from lions because of some silly evolutionary pressure for "self responsibility" would include running away from large things with teeth.

Yeah. It would look like a TV show on the Nature channel. That's only TV so that doesn't ever happen for real...

Re:False Flag

[Obfuscant]

And "God did it" is still a reasonable (if unlikely) reason for the Big Bang happening in the first place.

Apples and oranges. Who (or what) is responsible isn't the same thing as "via what mechanism".

The absolutely best they can claim is that the devil

Most creationists don't believe that the devil was responsible for creation.

or maybe God himself, to "test" us -- ie: make sure we don't try to use the big old brains He gave us

Perhaps God did it to give us all something to do with our "big old brains" while we're here on this planet? Most people who "do science" seem to enjoy it. Figuring out how something was done is still interesting, even if you leave out the question of who did it. Why does it matter if "God did it" or "it happened from a random chance accident of random molecules" when one is studying how DNA works?

accuracy within 1% is a reasonable accuracy in many cases

Claims of accuracy require a known correct value. It is precision that deals with repeatability and consistency between numbers of unknown accuracy.

If you seek across the world wild web, you'll find places that give the age of the universe ranging from 16+-5, 12.0+-1.5, 13.7+-0.2, and 9-11 GYears. Over the last few hundred years of that process, scientists have told us that the Earth is 2 GY, between 20 and 400 MY, 22MY, 200 MY, 56 MY, 50-150 MY. Radiometric dating has given answers from 1.3 GY to 3.8 GY. And now, with dedicated certainty, 4.54 GY, ref here.

I don't see anyone having their "big old brains" limited by anything, in fact, lots of "big old brains" have been having a lot of fun working on this. And there is nothing inherent in the statement "God did it" that stops people from being scientists and seeking knowledge.

Re:False Flag

[gVibe]

There is no law against Slashdot`ing while drunk...in fact...some of the best posts on Slashdot are from drunks. There is no law against Slashdot`ing while drunk...in fact...some of the best posts on Slashdot are from drunks.

Re:False Flag

[cffrost]

Sir... You're making a scene.

Re: False Flag

[Anonymous Coward]

If you really believe that I am sorry. There are two types of Christian churches: those who care about man made rules, traditions and controls and those who only exist to glorify Jesus Christ. The former is what you are referencing. The latter should be welcomed with open arms by every person in the human race.

Re:False Flag

[ArsonSmith]

"Addicted to porn" is not an issue I think would stand up in court. It may be a deep penetrating issue, but all it does is allow us to watch a bunch of people get screwed. Watching evidence I'd have a really hard time too. In the end he'll probably get off.

Re:False Flag

[gmhowell]

In those same old days, his estranged wife would have been 'encouraged' to continue performing her 'wifely duties' regardless of her opinions on the matter.

Re:False Flag

[Darinbob]

I think evolutionarily that both approaches are selected for. The selfishness basically extends to the person and to the person's offspring, but also to the person's family and tribe though not as strong. Ie, they will hold the door open for their tribe but trample over others who are not in the tribe.

Re: False Flag

[xlsior]

If he were to win, it would set a bad precedent. Consider this: how would forcing corporations like apple to automatically redirect Web traffic for a valid domain to a DIFFERENT domain 'because they should have known that's what I meant' be in anyone's best interest? It would be a bad day for ANY website that's not already in the top 50 most visited sires on the net...

Re:False Flag

[ThurstonMoore]

"We do, however, blame the guy standing on
the street corner handing out free samples
of dope trying to get people hooked."

Where is this street corner?

Re:False Flag

[TsuruchiBrian]

No, it isn't faith. It speaks to credibility. My lack of access to a particle accellerator, but accepting the results has nothing to do with faith. The work is there and documented, and I can access it.

How do you know that the documents are true? The virgin birth of Christ was documented as well.

You have faith that the scientific community is not one giant conspiracy. If everyone at CERN conspired to fabricate results, you have faith that one of them would blow the whistle and expose the fraud.

I have been looking for some kind of objective standard by which it makes sense to believe science over Christianity. I don't think there is one. I think it is ok to just believe scientific findings because they produce more convincing magic. They have convincing pictures of people walking on the moon and I have been on airplanes flying. I own a computer and a laser pointer. Thus far, I have never seen or talked to Jesus or any other religious icon. All we have for religion is stories in an old book and a string of "miracles" that have either been proven to be fake, or are otherwise just unconvincing (e.g. shroud of turin, etc).

Science has lots of confirmed miracles and religion has zero.

If you ask another person, he may have a different opinion of the situation.

It's all subjective.

Re:False Flag

[Calydor]

We do, however, blame the guy standing on the street corner handing out free samples of dope trying to get people hooked.

Exactly. That would be the porn websites.

Blaming Apple here is like blaming the city for building the street corner where the dope dealer is standing. (I know Apple didn't make the internet, but it's as close as we get in the analogy)

Re:False Flag

[Ol Olsoc]

No, it isn't faith. It speaks to credibility. My lack of access to a particle accellerator, but accepting the results has nothing to do with faith. The work is there and documented, and I can access it.

How do you know that the documents are true? The virgin birth of Christ was documented as well.

I can look up and investigate all the researchers, all their papers, as well as have a peer reviewed document to look at in the first place, reviewed by experts in the field. No faith required. The depth of conspiracy needed to have every single person in the pathway is as close to impossible as can be. But I would not assign it as 100 percent impossible. I have not the faitfh to do that.

You have faith that the scientific community is not one giant conspiracy.

It takes a certain amount of hubris to define another person's position for them. Taken from Merriam Webster:

Faith

1a : allegiance to duty or a person : loyalty

1b (1) : fidelity to one's promises (2) : sincerity of intentions

2a (1) : belief and trust in and loyalty to God (2) : belief in the traditional doctrines of a religion

2b (1) : firm belief in something for which there is no proof (2) : complete trust

3: something that is believed especially with strong conviction; especially : a system of religious beliefs

I see nothing in there that assigns faith to credibility built upon the likelyhood of research being true and or accurate, determined by the ability to research the work and worker.

Especially given that "2b (1) : firm belief in something for which there is no proof (2) : complete trust" is the exact opposite of the scientific method.

I completely reject the idea that one word can have two completely opposite definitions. I really do believe that the confusion is baed on the inability for people of faith to understand that there are people who do not think like they do. It is probably necessary for them to believe that lack of faith is faith, and no religion is religion.

Re:False Flag

[EuclideanSilence]

Your post needs 1 more close parenthesis.

Just sayin.

Re:False Flag

[realityimpaired]

Cool story bro, but median (raw) IQ scores have been rising for decades if not centuries.

The median IQ score is, by definition, 100....

While the specific skills being taught to obtain that median are different today than they were 200 years ago, I would hardly be as bold as to say that we're smarter today than we were back then. You very likely couldn't survive on your own 200 years ago, or even 100 years ago most likely, because most of us lack skills that would have been considered basic survival. In an agrarian pre-industrial society, your average computer geek would be considered very much a fool.

Case in point, the standard education given 150 years ago included multiple languages, classics, history, literature, logic, and mathematics. In order to graduate from University, you had to be proficient in all of these. Latin and quite often Greek were not optional, nor were the major European languages: English, Spanish, French, and German. Today, we teach a *very* different array of skills as a base point, but it's not any harder or easier for us than it was for them.

About the only basis for your point that actually makes some sense is that nutrition, especially in early childhood, has a *huge* impact on your brain development and performance later in life, but even that's a bit of a failing argument: our nutrition today is worse than it was 50 years ago because of the prevalence of junk food in the modern diet and the sedentary nature of the modern lifestyle.

Re:False Flag

[realityimpaired]

Why does it matter if "God did it" or "it happened from a random chance accident of random molecules" when one is studying how DNA works?

The bone of contention there is that sometimes people use the "god did it" as an excuse not to look deeper. Evolution is, for example, a fairly well accepted theory for why the different species came to be, but some people stick their fingers in their ears and refuse to even consider its validity because it runs counter to their idea that "God did it".

This is not the case for everybody who chooses to have a religion, but it is the case for the ones who are making this difficult for those who don't want religion to dictate everything in their life.

The world would be a much better place if *everybody* recognized that religion is a personal decision and choice you need to make for yourself, and that another's choice doesn't have to match your own for you to both be happy.

Re:False Flag

[MikeBabcock]

Nobody needs an argument against evolution -- intelligent people already know its far from well-proven but interesting to test against until it fails to hold up.

Re:False Flag

[MikeBabcock]

Damn, I wish I could remember the book I perused from a Toronto professor stating that rape was obviously an evolutionary trait to improve the species ... morality and evolution really don't get along when you think about it.

Re:False Flag

[mjwx]

Mod parent up, was just gonna say this.

Evolution doesn't give a damn how much of an irresponsible moron you are, only how much you reproduce. And irresponsible morons are especially good at that.

Evolution doesn't give a crap how many kids you pop out. That only determines your survival (Natural Selection).

Evolution is primarily driven by a need to change.

I expected Slashdot to know the difference between Natural Selection and Evolution. I am disappoint.

Re:False Flag

[MaskedSlacker]

The median IQ score is, by definition, 100....

Yet another example of, "If you give a man half a book, you make a fool of him."

Did you miss the word raw? The IQ score is a normalized score. The raw score is a raw score on the same test. People today with 100 IQs on MODERN IQ tests score higher than 100 on OLD tests.

Let me google that for you: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=IQ+rise+over+time&l=1

Re:False Flag

[hairyfeet]

Dude while you may be correct that real geniuses with vision have probably stayed at the same level when I was a kid we at least had a high percentage with what we called "street smarts" or basic common sense, now we seem to be creating people that are too fucking stupid as to even understand basic cause and effect, see the woman who fed nothing but Mickey D's to her kids for a decade and then tried to sue because she didn't know a decade of 24/7 fast food would make kids fat and diabetic as just one of a billion examples I could post here.

Maybe its because when I was a kid any woman that had a litter of kids by different men would have been looked upon as a whore and the guys who fathered those kids as worthless scum if they didn't step up but you didn't see the whole "half a dozen kids with half a dozen dead beat dads living like animals" shit like you do today. Hell when I come back from my babe's place, even late at night, I had to dodge kids just running loose like dogs, its seriously fucked up man, and its no wonder we are breeding so many dumbasses when you have kids that aren't being taught shit and left to run loose like animals needless to say their little brains are gonna get exactly jack and shit for stimulation.

At the end of the day you could take the smartest baby on the planet and put them in a house where nobody bothers to even talk to the kid and the babysitter is reality shows and they'll grow up to be just another moron on the march, you have to put in real effort and do the work when it comes to kids. I should know as I raised my two nephews as my sister lay dying and her ex, their father? Idiot. yet they are both HIGHLY intelligent and I would attribute that to constantly giving them new things to learn and do, if they wanted to play a video game? i would show them how the game was made, so that they knew how everything worked, i even let them build their own PCs at 11 years old, explaining how each piece they were installing worked and how the ones and zeroes were turned into images on a screen.

Maybe I'm just old fashioned but unless a kid has brain damage or some other mental defect if a kid ends up booger eating stupid i tend to blame the parents. Naturally they can't all be Einsteins but if there is two things little kids loooove its finding out how things work and using their imagination. If the parents would actually give a fuck instead of just letting their kids run wild and ignoring them? Then i think we could avert the march of the morons. Instead sadly it will more likely be like what i saw when I'd pick the boys up from one of their friends houses, a place without so much as a magazine in the house and parents that would just sit watching stupid shit that was the equivalent of "Oww my balls" while making sure junior had a console and a set to keep him out of their hair. Its no damned wonder we have so many dumbasses per square foot now, that is the seeds that society has sewn.

Re:False Flag

[Evtim]

Often the self-interest aligns with the interest of the group. No human can survive on its own (OK, perhaps a few dozens can, but that is in the noise).

The technological advancements only make it more so. Today, to exaggerate a bit, the action of anyone affect everyone.

At the end, it is in your best interest to act according to the golden rule. The most selfish thing to do - be an altruist!

Re:False Flag

[TsuruchiBrian]

I can look up and investigate all the researchers, all their papers, as well as have a peer reviewed document to look at in the first place, reviewed by experts in the field. No faith required. The depth of conspiracy needed to have every single person in the pathway is as close to impossible as can be. But I would not assign it as 100 percent impossible. I have not the faitfh to do that.

So you made a jump form "every single person would have to be involved" to "therefore it is close to impossible". What did you use to make that jump? Was it Science? Can you use science to prove science? Logic? Even logic itself says that logic can;t be used to prove the correctness of logic. Logical axioms, by definition, have no evidence. They must be taken for granted. What is belief in something without evidence, but faith?

Re:False Flag

[inasity_rules]

Not all "creationists" are young earthers. In fact doubt in that particular interpretation dates back to Augustine.

Re:False Flag

[Altrag]

Who (or what) is responsible isn't the same thing as "via what mechanism".

Precisely my point. While nothing is ever 100% provable (especially over astrological or evolutionary timescales,) we have some very good theories for things like planet generation and the evolution of life as we know it. No our theories are not 100% complete, but they're complete enough that "The universe winked into instance 6000 years ago" has become an obviously false mechanism.

If you want to talk about "who" did it well then we can take that to the logical extreme as well -- God is also responsible for the scientists who figured all those theories out being there in the first place, so therefore belief in God itself proves creationism false. Really, we can talk these points in circles forever because short of the second coming, there's no way to prove (or disprove) God did squat all even if He exists. All you have is faith, and faith alone is not a scientifically valid argument. Being written in the Bible is still useless because you have to take it on faith (again) that not only was the Bible truly Gods word, but that 2000+ years of human dickery hasn't corrupted God's words into something wholly unlike His original direction. That's a lot of faith and while the Bible certainly contains fact, it is not in itself sole evidence of said facts (scientifically speaking.)

Most creationists don't believe that the devil was responsible for creation.

I never said that. I suggested a possible claim that the devil fucked around with the planet (post-creation, presumably) in order to confuse us as a counterargument to any dating schemes that would disprove the creationist "theory" of a 6000 year old Earth.

Why does it matter if "God did it" or "it happened from a random chance accident of random molecules" when one is studying how DNA works?

No idea, and I have absolutely no problem with this line of thinking. Where I run into problems is when someone tells me the former faith-based "theory" wholly rejects the latter science-based theory.

Claims of accuracy require a known correct value. It is precision that deals with repeatability and consistency between numbers of unknown accuracy.

To be absolutely certain of your claim yes (but then why would you need estimates?) But multiple independent sources verifying a claim can be interpolated with the magic of statistics can be used to make an educated guess as to the accuracy of your estimate. Yes its still fallible (all of your sources could be incorrect) but its a hell of a lot better than just picking a number out of a book and claiming with absolute certainty that that number is correct because that same book said it is.

If you seek across the world wild web, you'll find places that give the age of the universe ranging from 16+-5, 12.0+-1.5, 13.7+-0.2, and 9-11 GYears. Over the last few hundred years of that process, scientists have told us that the Earth is 2 GY, between 20 and 400 MY, 22MY, 200 MY, 56 MY, 50-150 MY. Radiometric dating has given answers from 1.3 GY to 3.8 GY. And now, with dedicated certainty, 4.54 GY, ref here.

Absolutely. New measurements are being made all the time. Some verifying previous measurements, some refuting them. Looking back billions of years is hard to be sure. But none of those measurements are anywhere close to 6k years. I don't even want to guess never mind compute how many sigmas you'd need to get an estimate (never mind many estimates) in the MY or GY range if the real value is 6k. It would be a hell of a margin of error.

I don't see anyone having their "big old brains" limited by anything, in fact, lots of "big old brains" have been having a lot of fun working on this. And there is nothing inherent in the statement "God did it" that stops people from being scientists and seeking knowledge.

Re:False Flag

[Altrag]

I can't disagree with your examples. What I disagree with is the premise the people haven't always been that fucking stupid. I think the biggest difference we're seeing isn't an increase in stupidity and irresponsibility (at least not a great disastrous one,) but an increase of general knowledge of these things.

Reality shows are to life what porn is to sex -- over-the-top appeals to the senses. Different senses generally but nonetheless. What they do have in common is that neither of them are particularly realistic. Sure if you look hard enough, you can find someone who fits a reality show to a T (hell they find those people somewhere..) but if you look hard enough you can find a girl who wants to fuck like a porn star too. But because they exist doesn't mean they're particularly common.

Lets take a fun example of humanity's "responsibility" and "common sense" over history -- The royal families in many nations! Inbred so much that their blood doesn't clot and half of them are functionally insane. Yet even without knowledge of genetics, practically any good animal breeder from any point in history could have told them the likely outcome of too much incest. And these are the people who ruled our nations, sacrificed our lives in wars the average person knew or cared nothing about and so on.

I'd wager to say that humanity has always been just as stupid as we are now, on average. We've just invented better ways (social, technological, political) for the extremely stupid to make a name for themselves in ways that were previously unheard of. Its just too bad that the extremely smart (some of whom built those "better ways!") rarely get the same public attention -- watching the act of inventing a better TV isn't nearly as exciting as watching some moron make an ass of themselves in front of it.)

Re:False Flag

[Dog-Cow]

There is no such thing as a "need" to change at the level of nature. Evolution is not much more than the statement "things change, including living things". Nothing has to change. It just so happens that on a evolutionary scale, if a species does not, its chances for survival diminish.

Re:False Flag

[RivenAleem]

Do not give them any ideas. If they patent insanity, then they are going to try suing me.

Re:False Flag

[Cobonobo]

But think how much deeper down the rabbit-hole they could lead you...

Re:False Flag

[dywolf]

very few people actually make those claims

Re:False Flag

[lericah]

Religion is starting to die out, will it die before any more serious damage is done?

Re:False Flag

[Ol Olsoc]

So you made a jump form "every single person would have to be involved" to "therefore it is close to impossible". What did you use to make that jump?

What jump was that? If you have to have some times thousands of people involved in a conspiracy, `many of whome would be professionally destroyed if that involvement was found out, it is no "jump" to say it would be very unlikely to the point of near impossibility. No jump required, unless you are now redifning logical jump to include rational conclusion.

Was it Science? Can you use science to prove science? Logic? Even logic itself says that logic can't be used to prove the correctness of logic. Logical axioms, by definition, have no evidence. They must be taken for granted. What is belief in something without evidence, but faith?

Logic isn't science. Perfectly logical arguments can be made starting from known non-truths. Your argument has now gone circular. You can now use it to state that I have "faith" that say, a reaction between a given acid and a given base will be the same each time. If say we take a simple reaction between sodium bicarbonate and acetic acid that produces large amounts of Carbon dioxide, that I am taking it on faith that every time you combine the two, the same thing will happen. If the two components are mixed together, the same thing will happen. We can look up the reason why. And thereason why is dtetermined at a molecular level, and is repeatable. Defining my acceptance of that reaction, and the belief of some people that if they accept some deity as their God, they will be rewarded in some afterlife as identical things is silly and useless. You perform the interesting exercise of making two opposite concepts identical, and forcing one word upon them both.

Re:False Flag

[similar_name]

There's little evidence that people are getting genetically smarter. It has more to do with improved nutrition and education than anything else.

Re:False Flag

[MaskedSlacker]

Doesn't change the FACT that there is zero evidence of any decline.

Re:False Flag

[TsuruchiBrian]

I didn't logic was science. I was asking how you made the jump. I accept that logical arguments can be made from known truths. What I am asking you is why you have decided to believe in logic. If you have decided that there is a good logical argument to believe in logic, then it is you who has resorted to a circular argument.

If I use your chemistry example, where you say mixing 2 chemicals also yields the same result. You say there is a good reason to believe this at the molecular level. What leads you to believe that the molecules will always behave in the same way for all eternity? It is a fundamental axiom of science that the universe is governed by laws and that these laws never change. You can't, by definition, prove that this is true, especially not with science. It is an axiom. You are supposed to just believe it.

If you believe the scientific method is a good way to test the truth of various claims about the universe, how do you test the scientific method itself as a valid method of determining truth? Is there an experiment you can do to prove the scientific method itself is correct? Is this experiment valid if you use the scientific method to do this test?

I will state that I wholeheartedly follow science. I am an atheist. But I do recognize that science and logic fall into the same problem that religion does. Christianity bestows divinity on the Bible and uses the Bible as proof of the divine. God is always provably true within the rules dictated by the religion.

For example: God is real because every blade of grass is a miracle and only God is capable of miracles.

To me this sounds like nonsense. But thats because I have already adopted a scientific world view. If I had adopted the world view that everything is a miracle and only God can perform miracles, then the claims of science to explain things with natural laws rather than a divine creator would seem ridiculous (and do to many religious people).

Believers of science, logic, and mathematics take axioms of those disciplines on faith. Christians take the Bible on faith. What's the difference? The only difference I can see is the results that can be produced by the practitioners of these disciplines. I don't see a fundamental differences of the claims themselves.

If Christians upon praying could do magic like shooting laser beams and bring back people from the dead, this would increase the credibility of their claims. But so far I consider their claims to be basically worthless. The claims of science are very convincing.

Re:False Flag

[gravis777]

Wouldn't surprise me.

Interesting way to make your voice heard - threaten to sue, but say you will drop the lawsuit if you do this (interesting, sounds kinda like blackmail - we will sue unless you do this).

May not be such a bad idea though - first time you setup your computer, you get asked if you want to enable a porn filter or not (or whatever you want to call your web filter). You probably don't even have to really maintain it - just block Playboy.com , the .sex and the .xxx domains and say that you provided a filter. Something that could be coded up in a few minutes, just add another screen that users have to click through, and get all of these nut cases off your back.

Of course, and even better idea might to be to actually provide a functioning filter. Could be a great selling point for many families. To turn said filter off (after you turn it on - remember, you have to turn it on during the setup) requires an admin password. The fact that the user may know the admin password is moot.

So yeah, its a stupid stupid lawsuit, but it may not be that bad of an idea for Apple to actually do it.

Re:False Flag

[Obfuscant]

While nothing is ever 100% provable ... but they're complete enough that "The universe winked into instance 6000 years ago" has become an obviously false mechanism.

You started out right and then took a quick U-turn at the end. "Obviously false"? "Winked" is not the correct verb. I think you are not speaking pedantically and are instead making an offhand reference to literal interpretation creationism.

There are people on this planet who make a living fooling others. They copy something of value and pass it off as the real thing. Some of them are very good at it. Sometimes they even fool the experts. A work of art that was allegedly painted in 1600 was actually painted in 2000. How could this be? Because the "artist" went to great lengths to duplicate the materials and methods that would make it look like the painting was done 400 years ago instead of 10.

Piltdown Man. The missing link in 1920. A fake in 1953.

Now, if there is a being that can create a universe by speaking a word, do you not imagine that he could create it in such a way that it looked billions of years old to a human? To a being for whom time is irrelevant, do you not think he could speed up or slow down physical processes so that even if they began in the state we assume they did they would achieve a state we assume they would be in 13.7Gy later? If a human can fool other humans, how can you claim that a God cannot? Are you trying to claim that God is some kind of rube who can't figure out how to skip past the "coming attraction" ads when playing a DVD he rented? If God DID create the universe he must have done it 13.7Gy ago and he couldn't possibly have fast-forwarded through the boring bits to get to the interesting parts: humans? I'm not trying to convince you that is what happened, but I'm talking specifically to your claim of "obviously false". It is only "obviously false" because you assume as false that which you want to be false, and then the natural result is that what you've assumed to be false, is.

If you want to talk about "who" did it well then we can take that to the logical extreme as well -- God is also responsible for the scientists who figured all those theories out being there in the first place, so therefore belief in God itself proves creationism false.

What an absurd line of reasoning. God created scientists who claim God does not exist, therefore God does not exist? That's your argument in a nutshell. You're assuming what you need to prove -- that scientists are right -- to prove that scientists are right. You're ignoring that those theories deal with process and not actor. And you're abandoning the true meaning of "theory" in your attempt at religion-bashing.

All you have is faith, and faith alone is not a scientifically valid argument.

In science these are called "assumptions". Belief in things unseen. Nobody was around to measure the rate of radioactive decay 10,000 years ago, yet the assumption is that it was the same as what is measured today. From this faith comes the age of the Earth. Assumptions are all around us in science, yet few seem to understand (or just admit) their significance.

In high school, I was fascinated by geometry. Five assumptions lead to all of Euclidian geometry. But what if one or more of those assumptions are wrong? Lobachevsky was someone who questioned the assumptions about parallel lines. Now, in our local bit of space (which has been expanding over time) Euclid seems to be right. The universe is a large place. He's not "obviously right" (nor Lobachevsky "obviously wrong") when you consider the size of the problem. Just as Newton wasn't "obviously wrong" about classical physics, nor is what we now know is "obviously wrong" useless.

To be absolutely certain of your claim yes (but then why would you need estimates?)

No. Accuracy does not mean you are absolutely certain of your numbers. It mean

Re:False Flag

[AK Marc]

No, that's called a "distraction". A "false flag" is the CIA bombing the WTC, and setting up a terrorist orgnaization to take the fall. Bonus Flase Flag points if the reaction to the initial operation benefits yours. The original uses included simply running a false flag on a see going vessel to foil IFF (visual "what flag is that" at the time) to get close enough to kill the target, and deliberately running a specific flag in such an operation so survivors would report the wrong perpetrators to cause problems between the attacked and the blamed. The latter was more effective than the former, so "false flag" is generally assumed to be the latter, unless specified otherwise.

Re:False Flag

[Altrag]

I think you are not speaking pedantically and are instead making an offhand reference to literal interpretation creationism.

Not offhand -- I mentioned on several occasions that I was referring specifically to literal creation theories (and even more specifically to the zealotous creationists that make the most media noise.) I have no problem with you or anyone else reconciling religion's ancient teachings with what modern science has taught us about the world. I have a problem when you claim that religion's teachings deny scientific fact.

As for your examples -- I have never claimed science is infallible. In fact I explicitly stated an example where that's not the case (Newton's gravity which is a hell of a lot more accurately measured than anything from the Earth's history -- and still found to be wrong 400 years later.)

The difference is that science can be proven wrong. The religious zealots I've been discussing on the other hand do not believe that the Bible (and to be specific since apparently reading between the lines is hard, I mean their interpretation of the Bible) can be proven wrong in even the slightest context.

God created scientists who claim God does not exist, therefore God does not exist? That's your argument in a nutshell.

Way to rip out context. No, God created scientists who claim specific parts of the Bible are incorrect. For those people who believe the Bible must be 100% correct, having proof to the contrary is equivalent "God does not exist." The scientists who came up with such a proof are not making that claim -- the zealots are the one claiming that the proof must be wrong because of this (false) logic.

If you want a good historic example -- the number zero was banned from mathematics for a few hundred years because some zealot in the church decided that zero == void == no God and since the assumption was that God existed, zero obviously could not exist (it was church ruled time after all -- anyone who didn't agree with that assumption was shown "proof" in the form of a whip if not a gallows.)

Nowadays not even the craziest zealot (well ok, maybe the craziest one) would believe zero == no God, but that wasn't just a whacky theory at one point it was a fundamental belief.

In science these are called "assumptions". Belief in things unseen. Nobody was around to measure the rate of radioactive decay 10,000 years ago, yet the assumption is that it was the same as what is measured today. From this faith comes the age of the Earth. Assumptions are all around us in science, yet few seem to understand (or just admit) their significance.

Absolutely, but this goes back to having the ability to prove the assumptions wrong. That is a critical component of any scientific theory and the major feature that distinguishes a scientific theory from a faith-based one. The faith-based one can by nature never be disproved which intrinsically makes it non-scientific. Few people and no legitimate scientists would claim science is complete and 100% correct.

No, it wouldn't take a great "margin of error" in a measurement that is based on flawed assumptions for it to be completely wrong.

Right, which is why you need multiple independent sources for verification. Yes its possible that they're ALL wrong but the more you have the less likely that possibility is. You're absolutely correct that we don't have a 100% accurate estimate for the age of our planet -- but we've got enough estimates from various sources that all put it way way beyond 6000 years that we can be fairly certain a literal interpretation of the Bible's timeline is incorrect.

Hm.. my quoting of your post is getting out of order, but I'm not going to worry about that on a day+ old thread, so continuing on...

And yet, scientists do this every day of their lives. Well, almost. If I

Re:False Flag

[MysteriousPreacher]

Case in point, the standard education given 150 years ago included multiple languages, classics, history, literature, logic, and mathematics. In order to graduate from University, you had to be proficient in all of these. Latin and quite often Greek were not optional, nor were the major European languages: English, Spanish, French, and German. Today, we teach a *very* different array of skills as a base point, but it's not any harder or easier for us than it was for them.

How would demographics compare between modern universities and universities from 150 years ago?

I'm guessing, pretty reliably I'd imagine, that today a considerably larger proportion of the population is educated. For example, education in the UK wasn't even compulsory until 1880. In the population as a whole, education levels are massively improved over those found 150 years ago. Where I see risk is in education becoming too narrowly focused on stuff that makes money.

Re:False Flag

[realityimpaired]

Education being mandatory isn't indicative of a person's intelligence. Learning, yes, but intelligence is something that's extremely difficult to quantify, in part because it doesn't actually rely on learning and book smarts. :)

Re:False Flag

[Slashdot Parent]

Raising kids is tricky business, and they don't come with instruction manuals.

I agree with you that just ignoring your kids is a recipe for complete disaster. Not only will their brains fail to be stimulated in a positive manner, they will also grow up feeling insecure, unloved, and unwanted. However, I thought I'd take a moment to chime in with what kids *do* need, in case anybody is reading this.

First, kids need to feel like their parents love them and need to feel safe when they're with their parents. If you don't love them, fake it.

Developmentally, little kids need to learn to think symbolically and then abstractly. You and I do this intuitively, so we don't even think about it, but just the act of thinking of a toy train as a toy and a train rather than a piece of painted wood is insanely important. To help them along this path, you need to get down on the floor and play with them.

Crucially important is reading to them. Helps their language and with abstract thinking. This is difficult if mom has a 3rd grade education, but at the same time, if the kid isn't read to from the start, the kid will most likely present as "booger-eating stupid" starting in middle school when abstract reasoning is required. It'll be one of those, "why the fuck don't you get this? No seriously, this is dead easy, why can't you process it? Are you broken?" sort of way.

Also, playing "make believe" with them. Same reasoning as the above. You need to develop their curious little brains from the very beginning.

In closing, I just want to say that every kids is different and all bets are off. You need to be attentive and do what's right for your kid and not follow generic guidelines blindly.

Re:False Flag

[Slashdot Parent]

"Addicted to porn"

Porn is addictive? I need to confirm this firsthand.

Re:False Flag

[Rakarra]

It's not like you say "Siri, I like dogs" and it goes right to a gallery of people having doggystyle sex.

That's preposterous. Obviously it'd go right to a gallery of people having sex with dogs. ;)

Technically, it -should- call up pictures of the speaker having sex with dogs. If it's a truly smart program, it will be able to photo-manip two pictures together to show it.

Re:False Flag

[Rakarra]

False flag for those who do not know is what the government or any organization does to distract the not-so-smart people while a more sinister plan is enacted. In short: "Look a flying saucer!" meanwhile "BANG!" something blows up.

That's actually more "Wag the Dog."

In Soviet Tennessee

[instagib]

pr0n looks for YOU!

Re:In Soviet Tennessee

[nitehawk214]

pr0n looks for YOU!

in Soviet Xbone, Porn looks at you.

safe mode

[RichMan]

Remove the battery. Your device is now configured in safe mode. Unless you are disturbed by a black screen the device is now configured not to present offensive material.

Any material is possible to be a problem to someone. As "safe mode" cannot be sufficiently defined yet leave the device with any function at all "safe mode" is impossible".

Re:safe mode

[alen]

remove the battery? this is an iphone we are talking about

Re:safe mode

[war4peace]

I would mark you as Informative. Every day :)

Re:safe mode

[Gr8Apes]

Safe mode for this moron: Get hammer, apply to device repeatedly until offensive content is no longer shown.

PS - this was a macbook.

Re:safe mode

[rullywowr]

Safe mode for this moron: Get hammer, apply to anatomical device repeatedly until offensive content is no longer shown. There, FTFY.

Re:safe mode

[Anonymous Coward]

Remove the battery. Your device is now configured in safe mode. Unless you are disturbed by a black screen the device is now configured not to present offensive material.

I don't know. Those screens are awfully reflective...

Re:safe mode

[Anonymous Coward]

If you had read the article, you would know that he was using a Macbook Pro to visit kink.com or other sites..

Re:Safe Mode

[Bob the Super Hamste]

Well apple could offer devices with safe mode on them. These devices would be unable to connect to the internet (no NIC) or have any non keyboard/mouse I/O which would provide the necessary safe mode. This means no: internal expansion, USB, Firewire, Thunderbolt, DVD, CD-ROM, etc. All apple would have to do is offer them for sale (don't even bother making one) since I don't think they will be able to sell a single one.

Re:Safe Mode

[SuricouRaven]

His claim is a little more precise than that. He recounts a chain of events:
1. He wanted to look at facebook.
2. He typoed something (probably one of those idiots who puts 'facebook' into the address bar and lets the search engine add a .com) and ended up at a porn site.
3. Upon being confronted with porn, he was struck by an irresistable instinctive urge to look at it for hour after hour, week after week, destroying his life.

His claim is based on the idea that if Apple sold devices with filtering installed and enabled by default, the chain would be broken between steps two and three. That appears to be the only part of his argument that makes sense though - most of it consists of crazed ramblings that suggest his mental state may be impaired.

Re:safe mode

[kthreadd]

Well, you can remove the battery. It may be news to some but many things are not impossible just because it can't be done in 2 seconds.

Re:safe mode

[MaskedSlacker]

Smashing it with a sledgehammer does not count as a viable battery removal technique.

Re:safe mode

[Darinbob]

In that case, electrician's tape over the glass would work.

Re:safe mode

[CCarrot]

when i saw "safe mode" i thought about Windows safe mode. Press F8 to enter safe mode. gah, i've been using Windows too long. lol

Mr. Chris Sevier meant a browser mode that applied filters to search engines and blocked adult websites.

so Mr. Chris Sevier actually wrote a fifty page complaint. wow, that is a long complaint.

Especially when you're writing it one handed...

Re:safe mode

[Macgrrl]

I wonder if he's going to blame Apple for the fact that much of the kink.com content requires a subscription to view. You know, they twisted his arm by allowing his payment to be processed or something.

Re:safe mode

[arkane1234]

last I checked, no sledgehammer is necessary to remove screws... unless your an android user I guess...

Re:safe mode

[DMUTPeregrine]

No, you use a safe pry tool, some fancy screwdrivers, and a soldering iron to remove the battery from an iphone.

Not his fault

[MrEricSir]

What was he supposed to do? It's not his fault Apple makes such sexy hardware.

Re:Not his fault

[e_armadillo]

Yes, the hardware *was* asking for it :-)

Re:Not his fault

[cyclopropene]

What was he supposed to do? It's not his fault Apple makes such sexy hardware.

Get an iBurka?

Re:Not his fault

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

What was he supposed to do? It's not his fault Apple makes such sexy hardware.

Please observe the symbol on reverse side of your Apple product, facing away from the screen. Look at that: A tasty apple, with a bite taken out.

The fool. He picks up an internet connected device marked with the symbol of man's descent into sin(and nakedness) and then is surprised when his concupiscent flesh is besotted with unclothed harlots? Isn't that the most plausible outcome?

Re:Not his fault

[Bob the Super Hamste]

Dammit,of all the days to not have mod points. +1 funny

Re:Not his fault

[Rob Riggs]

Computers don't download porn; people download porn.

Re:Not his fault

[AdamStarks]

Gives a whole new meaning to "Steve Job"s.

Re: Not his fault

[SpaghettiPattern]

To stop a bad guy with a porn addiction you need a good guy with a porn addiction?

Re:Not his fault

[amicusNYCL]

Computers don't download porn; people download porn.

Strictly speaking, the computer does download the porn. The person just tells the computer to do it.

Re: Not his fault

[Darinbob]

And to protect the children, we need a good guy armed with porn stationed at every school?

A safe mode

[EvanED]

Sevier is seeking damages from Apple, but said he we will drop the lawsuit if Apple agrees to sell devices with a 'safe mode.'"

Apple machines do come with a safe mode. Here is the relevant documentation (though primarily geared toward leaving safe mode).

Personal Responsibility

[Sparticus789]

If this continues, every item sold within the US is going to have a 89-page disclaimer. It is bad enough that insulated cups have warnings about the contents being hot, now electronic devices need to have a disclaimer about the internet having pornography? This guy is literally, blaming the messenger (company that makes the device), for this his own actions and lack of self-control. Plenty of people can use the internet and even peruse sexual content without having their lives destroyed.

Maybe he should have tried getting a life and setting his priorities, instead of watching the Farrah Abraham video.

Re:Personal Responsibility

[DigitAl56K]

If this continues, every item sold within the US is going to have a 89-page disclaimer.

I believe Apple already serves this with every iTunes update.

Case dismissed!

Re:Personal Responsibility

[bonehead]

I remember a time when people were expected to take responsibility for their own actions. The world was a much better place then.

Now everyone who engages in anti-social / psychopathic behavior is a "victim". We blame government. We blame society. And best of all, we blame inanimate objects. But under no circumstances can we point out that the guy actually chose to behave in the way he did, and that he is entirely, 100% to blame for the situation he finds himself in.

(I'm not saying that viewing pornography is "in general" anti-social behavior, however, within the context of the boundaries of his marriage, it apparently qualified.)

Re:Personal Responsibility

[MrKevvy]

"It is bad enough that insulated cups have warnings about the contents being hot..."

You have a point: Hallowe'en Superman costumes contain the disclaimer "Costume does not enable wearer to fly."

Re:Personal Responsibility

[Sparticus789]

That would make MUCH more sense on the Green Lantern costume. Everyone KNOWS that Superman can fly because of the Earth's yellow sun, not his costume.

Re:Personal Responsibility

[Sparticus789]

So what country are you from which does not have a "sense of entitlement"?

Re:Personal Responsibility

[Ioldanach]

If this continues, every item sold within the US is going to have a 89-page disclaimer. It is bad enough that insulated cups have warnings about the contents being hot, now electronic devices need to have a disclaimer about the internet having pornography? This guy is literally, blaming the messenger (company that makes the device), for this his own actions and lack of self-control. Plenty of people can use the internet and even peruse sexual content without having their lives destroyed.

Maybe he should have tried getting a life and setting his priorities, instead of watching the Farrah Abraham video.

Hey, it's not his fault his wife found his link to Lesbian Spank Inferno!

Re:Personal Responsibility

[maliqua]

there really is no right target in this, the man is weak and pathetic and needs to own up to what he has done

Re:Personal Responsibility

[SuricouRaven]

Green lantern can only fly because of his ring. The problem with the costumes is just that they rarely come with the charging device.

Re:Personal Responsibility

[greg1104]

Coffee cups are a really bad example to bring up here. The warnings are there to try and dislodge ideas like the McDonald's coffee lawsuit. The reason that woman won a large judgement against McDonald's is that they were knowingly selling an unsafe product and just didn't care what happened to their customers.

So the problems leading to the warnings were not so much that people were stupid. It was that some number of corporations selling coffee were acting irresponsibly. In a social environment where legal penalties are the only way to add corporate accountability for unsafe behavior, you're kind of stuck with suing them to make a useful change. And when that happens, you can expect that those companies are going to add warnings to try and reduce their liability. That's not really connected to consumers being dumb in the coffee case.

The reason why that's a particularly bad example is that people see that sort of necessary legal action, and then apply it to shifting blame for any problem with a product. The subtle difference is that the McDonald's coffee was unfit for its stated purpose as sold, making it defective by objective measures. You cannot measure anything wrong with an Apple product because it lets you view porn. That's a subjective, moral issue rather than something you can build a factual case around.

Re:Personal Responsibility

[greg1104]

You kids and your new fangled reboot nonsense. Real fans know Superman can fly because Earth's gravity is lower than Krypton's.

Re:Personal Responsibility

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the law of large numbers, civil law, and the attention whoring media.

In a country the size of the US where anyone can sue anyone over anything, you're bound to get some really stupid lawsuits. Then when the media hears about a real gem they blow it out of proportion because it gets attention.

This guy has zero chance of winning his suit. But we hear about it because it's an extreme case, and therefore "interesting" whereas the countless other civil suites that are less redicilous get no coverage because they're "boring".

Re:Personal Responsibility

[CCarrot]

If this continues, every item sold within the US is going to have a 89-page disclaimer. It is bad enough that insulated cups have warnings about the contents being hot, now electronic devices need to have a disclaimer about the internet having pornography? This guy is literally, blaming the messenger (company that makes the device), for this his own actions and lack of self-control. Plenty of people can use the internet and even peruse sexual content without having their lives destroyed.

Maybe he should have tried getting a life and setting his priorities, instead of watching the Farrah Abraham video.

Indeed, right along the lines of an alcoholic suing the manufacturer of his/her favorite beer. "If it wasn't so damn good I wouldn't want it so often and I wouldn't be addicted, y'r honor!"

I's a BS money grab, or someone seeking his fifteen minutes. Seriously, I thought this kind of thing was what the Jerry Springer show was supposed to be an outlet for...too bad it's cancelled. At least when it was on, it was an automatic skip-channel reflex...now it seems that that's half of the current programming...

Re:Personal Responsibility

[Bill_the_Engineer]

It is bad enough that insulated cups have warnings about the contents being hot, now electronic devices need to have a disclaimer about the internet having pornography?

It's worse than that. Disclaimer on peanut butter jar, "ALLERGY WARNING: CONTAINS PEANUTS".

Re:Personal Responsibility

[gmhowell]

I personally blame the USA since you guys seem to have a monopoly on this retarded litigious crap but luckily your media spreads far and wide so your insidious sickness and sense of entitlement will spread to the rest of us eventually

your country is like a plague on the competence of the world

We may hold guns to the heads of innocent black youths in the US, but we don't hold a gun to the head of residents of Whereverthefuckyouarefromistan and make you consume our music, movies, tv shows, and books. If your local culture is so devoid of value that you must partake of ours, the fault is not us.

Re:Personal Responsibility

[gmhowell]

You kids and your new fangled reboot nonsense. Real fans know Superman can fly because Earth's gravity is lower than Krypton's.

Sounds like some Golden Age crap where he basically 'super jumped' like the Hulk does sometimes.

Re:Personal Responsibility

[Macgrrl]

You have to wonder why he doesn't suffer from loss of bone density, given he was raised since a small child within earth's gravity. Surely Krypton's gravity is irrelevant as he doesn't live there most of the time, he would have adapted to Earth's gravitational forces before he could walk.

Re:Personal Responsibility

[Macgrrl]

Oh, because it's got naked women in it! Look, I like naked women! I'm a bloke! I'm supposed to like them! We're born like that. We like naked women as soon as we're pulled out of one. Halfway down the birth canal we're already enjoying the view. Look, it's the four pillars of the male heterosexual psyche. We like: naked women, stockings, lesbians, and Sean Connery best as James Bond. Because that is what being a bloke is. And if you don't like it, darling, join a film collective. I want to spend the rest of my life with the woman at the end of the table here. But that does not stop me wanting to see several thousand more naked bottoms before I die. Because that's what being a bloke is. When Man invented fire, he didn't say "Hey, let's cook!" He said: "Great! Now we can see naked bottoms in the dark!" As soon as Caxton invented the printing press we were using it to make pictures of - hey! - naked bottoms. We've turned the Internet into an enormous international database of... naked bottoms. So, you see, the story of male achievement through the ages, feeble though it may have been, has been the story of our struggle to get a better look at your bottoms. Frankly, girls, I'm not so sure how insulted you really ought to be.

Steve - Coupling

Re:Personal Responsibility

[greg1104]

Right, the whole yellow sun thing didn't show up until the silver age era in the early 60's. Before that he was jumping--"able to leap tall buildings in a single bound"--and they modeled the low gravity powers based on speculation about what a man on the moon would be capable of doing.

Re:Personal Responsibility

[greg1104]

His bone density is going to be lower than someone who lives on Krypton itself. But if all of the structural components to his body, from bone to muscle to neurons, are adapted to be just plain stronger, some of that might be retained even without as much load on your body.

At this point we know just how much things like time in space degrade physical function, suggesting that a body's natural high gravity capability is trumped by recent environment stress. But the high-gravity powered Superman was the one of the 30th through 50's. The shift from a gravity powered hero to the magic yellow sun powers happened during the 60's, partly due to understanding of this area improving so much then. You can almost see how Superman's power explanations evolved in step with early space exploration.

Re:Personal Responsibility

[mjwx]

If this continues, every item sold within the US is going to have a 89-page disclaimer.

I believe Apple already serves this with every iTunes update.

Case dismissed!

And none of it is legally enforceable.

Case re-opened.

Re:Personal Responsibility

[gmhowell]

Ahh, silver age Superman, birthplace of Superdickery and Super-ventriliquism.

Re:Personal Responsibility

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually this guy may have a case. By Apple removing all pornographic material from the itunes store and going as far as banning all questionable content on their devices they are actually taking responsibility for making their devices safe for porn addicts. If their efforts are not effective enough to get rid of all porn on their devices then they in my opinion are liable because they didn't deliver what they were promising. Had this guy sued google I would say he didn't stand a chance. Google doesn't make such promises. But apple does.

Re:Personal Responsibility

[Crimey McBiggles]

"Literally"? Care to back that up?

Re:Personal Responsibility

[bonehead]

I fully understand that you may not chose those thoughts.

You do chose your actions.

I'm suing...

[Anonymous Coward]

...McDonald's for making me fat. They have failed to install a filter to prevent me from installing unhealthy food into my body.

Re:I'm suing...

[Scarletdown]

...McDonald's for making me fat. They have failed to install a filter to prevent me from installing unhealthy food into my body.

You need to replace your filter, as it obviously isn't working. I have the most up to date filter imaginable for that. I gag even thinking about trying to choke down anything from McDonalds.

Re:I'm suing...

[Sparticus789]

Remember the rule. When you go to the hardware store and buy a new AC filter and batteries for your smoke detectors, you have to replace your unhealthy filter. Brought to you by the Ad Council.

Re:I'm suing...

[Bob the Super Hamste]

I have a filter for it but it happens later. My body seems to reject fake food like that. I can get it into my stomach but it refuses to digest it. It feels like I ate a rock and after about 2 hours of feeling like crap I end up puking. Same thing happens with most fast food places and other very processed food.

Re:I'm suing...

[Anonymous Coward]

Um... This actually sounds like a serious medical condition to me. You might want to discuss this with your Doctor on your next checkup and get a liver function panel. Might have gall stones there Bob, and they can kill you.

Re:I'm suing...

[Rakarra]

You need to replace your filter, as it obviously isn't working. I have the most up to date filter imaginable for that. I gag even thinking about trying to choke down anything from McDonalds.

Same here.

I remember reading that food from McDonalds, over-processed and over-sweetened, doesn't taste good to a person who hasn't eaten it before, it's only through repeated consumption that the body adjusts to handle food that unhealthy that it tastes "good" and you get cravings. I took that with a grain of salt (sounded like bullshit to me) but I always wondered how truthful that was.

Only in US...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what happens when you don't have English Rule (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_rule_%28attorney%27s_fees%29), and you have personal bankruptcy.
There lawsuits doesn't happen in Europe for these 2 exact reasons, you'll have to pay the attorney fee's if you lose, so you have something at stake as well.

I'm suing slashdot

[nitehawk214]

For years and years of not getting my work done.

Re:I'm suing slashdot

[DigitAl56K]

I'm suing slashdot

"... just as soon as I get off slashdot."

Re:I'm suing slashdot

[nitehawk214]

"... just as soon as I get off

on slashdot?

Re:I'm suing slashdot

[shikaisi]

For years and years of not getting my work done.

I'd like to join your class action suit.

Everyone knows

[maroberts]

the internet is for porn

Re:Everyone knows

[CanHasDIY]

... So grab your dick and double-click!

Damn that's a great song.

What are we going towards?

[Anonymous Coward]

A Safe-Mode? What would they call it?
iCondom
ICondemn

And would you need a new name when it's disabled?
iSin
iLonely

Re:What are we going towards?

[Scarletdown]

A Safe-Mode? What would they call it?
iCondom
ICondemn

And would you need a new name when it's disabled?
iSin
iLonely

iGoatse.

Every time you even think about viewing porn, the safe mode kicks in and pops up a high def Goatse on your screen, causing instant bone kill.

Re:What are we going towards?

[SuricouRaven]

iBone, surely?

Trying to look the nice guy, just wants cash

[Anonymous Coward]

A safe mode strikes me as something that has absolutely nothing to do with his situation. Would he have handed it to his wife and said "could you please enable safe mode on this iPad and not tell me the password to remove it?" Sure, that would help with kids, but with an adult who bought the device and theoretically manages it?

This smells of the guy trying to provide an option that makes it sound like he's not in it just for the money, but which you can be pretty sure the company is not going to do. Apple isn't likely to put tons of development into something like that just based on this lawsuit. So he gets to feel like he's suing for a good reason, when he's really just hoping for a settlement somewhere below the cost for Apple to implement a "safe mode".

Re:Trying to look the nice guy, just wants cash

[Nidi62]

This smells of the guy trying to provide an option that makes it sound like he's not in it just for the money, but which you can be pretty sure the company is not going to do. Apple isn't likely to put tons of development into something like that just based on this lawsuit. So he gets to feel like he's suing for a good reason, when he's really just hoping for a settlement somewhere below the cost for Apple to implement a "safe mode".

Actually, I think this story smells more like a guy from a very conservatively religious community who is trying to shift blame away from him to Apple, saying he was helpless to avoid his divorce or viewing of porn. The article mentions that he talks about things like the ACLU inventing homosexuality in the 50s, and about God and how porn affects man's spirituality. This, or he has a certifiable mental illness, because a lot of his claims noted in the article make no sense and have no bearing on his argument. Either way, no lawyer should have agreed to take on this case and they should immediately be disbarred.

Re:Trying to look the nice guy, just wants cash

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

My money would be on 'certifiable mental illness'.

He is currently on "Disability Inactive Status" per Tenessee Supreme Court Rule 9, Section 21.

That isn't nearly as bad as some sort of overt moral turpitude; but it doesn't make your incoherent filing full of trivially verifiable nonsense and assorted non sequitors look any saner.

Re:Trying to look the nice guy, just wants cash

[bonehead]

This smells of the guy trying to provide an option that makes it sound like he's not in it just for the money,

No, this smells of the guy grasping at straws, hoping in vain to find validation for his bullshit belief that he is not responsible for his own actions.

In short, he's a pathetic, useless waste of oxygen.

Why would you use an Apple product?

[Anonymous Coward]

My mac pro is shiny, pure and innocent. I want to keep it that way. If I want to watch porn i use the dirty old dell in the garage. Now that dell is a big whore.

Re:Why would you use an Apple product?

[camg188]

My mac pro is shiny, pure and innocent.

Now sullied by slashdot.

Re:Why would you use an Apple product?

[gmhowell]

My mac pro is shiny, pure and innocent.

Now sullied by slashdot.

Meh, that's merely a dry finger bang compared to what he'd get at 4chan, SA, etc.

Re:Will he ever grow up?

[ArcadeMan]

I blame the government.

Re:What?

[emilper]

modded "overrated" by mistake, undoing it ...

As a recovering porn addict, I find this stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

For several years, pornography ruled my life. I lost my family over it. I lost my self respect over it. It was causing such deep depression that I nearly lost my life over it. Being in IT, I could get around any filters. If I wanted porn online, I found porn online. Simple as that. I finally broke my addiction to it and got my life back together. So, I feel the pain of the person who TFA speaks of.

That all being said...

This. Is. Stupid. Why not just sue The Internetz and your ISP and your carrier and every person who's ever produced pornography, and Samsung for making iPhone screens and... you get the point.

Stopping the addiction does not rely on Apple blocking porn on your iPhone. It involves taking responsibility, getting help, and STOPPING.

Re:As a recovering porn addict, I find this stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

This.

I too am a recovering porn addict. 15 months 'sober.' There is much that could be discussed about the causes of, and methods of overcoming, a porn addiction, but blaming the manufacturers of devices is ludicrous. My last look at porn was on an iPad - which I no longer have.

With statistics showing that 50% or more of men now look at porn regularly, porn addiction is a pretty big deal. And no - it's not just a religious sort of thing. It's a ruining marriage, losing job, lost productivity, wasted time and money and quality of life sort of thing.

Re:As a recovering porn addict, I find this stupid

[bonehead]

It involves taking responsibility,

Unfortunately, this is now seen as an archaic notion, which has no place in our "modern" and "enlightened" society.

We must blame all problems on inanimate objects, or else we run the risk of someone feeling bad.

Re:As a recovering porn addict, I find this stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks to both of you for sharing this - I think it's an important point of view not often heard. A porn addiction can cause as much trouble as addiction to alcohol or controlled substances, and it is even more ubiquitous - you can always find it for free, and without ever being seen in public.

But this guy's case is without merit. It's like suing a grocery store for selling liquor to an alcoholic. I'm sorry, but personal responsibility here is the answer.

Re:As a recovering porn addict, I find this stupid

[CanHasDIY]

For several years, pornography ruled my life. I lost my family over it. I lost my self respect over it. It was causing such deep depression that I nearly lost my life over it.

... and then I became post-pubescent. Problem solved!

Re:As a recovering porn addict, I find this stupid

[jandrese]

Eh, before blaming society for enabling this guy's lack of personal responsibility, lets wait and see if his case gets laughed out of court.

Re:As a recovering porn addict, I find this stupid

[wisnoskij]

I don't understand porn addition.
You can only masturbate so much until the pain makes you stop. And I am pretty most of all already do close to the limit.

Re:As a recovering porn addict, I find this stupid

[wisnoskij]

How do you not temp yourself.
I know alcoholics just (according to movies) never touch alcohol again.
But it would be pretty hard to never see a video with erotic content ever again. Hell, you cannot even watch Disney without seeing erotic content.

Re:As a recovering porn addict, I find this stupid

[wisnoskij]

***And I am pretty SURE most of US already do close to the limit.

Re:As a recovering porn addict, I find this stupid

[AvderTheTerrible]

One could also argue that the near ubiquitous availability of porn is simply allowing men to get what they want without a lot of hassle. Namely dating, courtship, and maintenance of a girlfriend/wife who, while attractive, good company, and (hopefully) a very good friend, simply does not live up to the task of keeping the mans sexual drive satisfied.

Porn addiction should be looked at in a couple different directions.The first is the direction that is being talked about so far in this discussion, namely of men who can't control themselves and spiral out of control with an addiction.

Another direction to look is what kind of family life does he have? Does his gf/wife make sure to tend to his needs? Does she care enough about him to get interested in things that he enjoys, sex among them? If there is sex, is it kept interesting? Or has it gotten incredibly stale and any attempts to make it interesting have been failures, either because they just didn't work, or worse, because the woman had no interest in exploring those options and simply expected the man to be satisfied with what he had? Or is this man in a worst case scenario where he has tried his best to find companionship, only to be left out in the cold and judged as not worth anyone's time in a relationship?

What a lot of people need to come to terms with is simply that people have sexual urges. For extensive periods of time our societies have placed a great amount of weight on suppressing those urges and judging them to be "unclean", meaning that only the boldest or most well connected had access to avenues of sexual experimentation. Now with porn literally everywhere, everyone can experience, at least at a distance, almost anything sexually imaginable. The game has changed, quite literally.

With sexual freedom comes a lot of people discovering urges they may never have been able to realize they had. And to be honest up to this point the majority of those people discovering themselves sexually have been men. Women are getting there, but it is taking them longer because of natures built in sexual imbalances. And this is one of the main parts of the problem.

Men have discovered that they want more than to just take a girl out to dinner and a movie on a regular basis, and if they are lucky, they get to have sex on rare occasion. Men have discovered that they want to have sex a lot more often than in the past and women are taking a long time to adapt to these new sexual demands.

Women hold the keys to the sexual kingdom quite closely and refuse to open the gates unless great sacrifice is made in order to get there. Men have simply started to decide that the price of admission is too high, and they are choosing substitutions that are more easily accessible.

As misogynistic as it sounds, the porn problem is caused in part by women making themselves unrealistically unavailable when demand has never been higher. The same thing happens in any high demand, low supply market. High demand and unavailability of any alternatives means everyone competes tooth and nail to pay top dollar for one unit of the coveted item. Then something else that works to satisfy the same demand comes along and suddenly everyone starts to wonder why they're paying out the ass for the cow when the imitation milk is damn near free.

It's simple economics only with sex as the currency. Men want sex but are tired of having to pay for the hassle of dates that may not be enjoyable, relationships that become stale after so long, and escalating costs for lower and lower returns. Until women start to become sexually open as well, porn will continue to be a huge problem for society because men gotta have it, and now they don't need women to get it anymore.

Porn addiction is the end result of mens biological imperative being artificially suppressed for thousands of years by societies that looked down on it and left most men with little to no way of actually expressing it, and suddenly removing that suppression by way of all manner of se

Re:As a recovering porn addict, I find this stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not easy - but it's possible. You have to decide what's more valuable - watching movies, or health. My wife and I use a website called kids-in-mind.com to check movie reviews. Right now - while my recovery is still fairly 'new' - we won't watch anything without a 1 or 2 in that first rating on the site. Does that mean I can't watch movies? Nope - I thoroughly enjoyed World War Z. Can I watch Game of Thrones? Nope. But my marriage and my health are more important than any movie or TV show.

Re:As a recovering porn addict, I find this stupid

[stud9920]

Thanks to both of you for sharing this

I'd rather they shared links to the porn so filty it caused them to quit

Re:As a recovering porn addict, I find this stupid

[gmhowell]

How do you not temp yourself.
I know alcoholics just (according to movies) never touch alcohol again.
But it would be pretty hard to never see a video with erotic content ever again. Hell, you cannot even watch Disney without seeing erotic content.

No kidding, that Ariel is fucking hot!

Re:As a recovering porn addict, I find this stupid

[DNS-and-BIND]

Men have discovered that they want to have sex a lot more often than in the past and women are taking a long time to adapt to these new sexual demands.

WTF are you talking about? The modern Western woman is having more sex, with more men, than ever in recorded history. Indeed it is the mark of a liberated woman - the repressed woman will, by definition, have sex with few men or one man.

Re:As a recovering porn addict, I find this stupid

[shikaisi]

I don't understand porn addition.

1 stack of porn + 1 stack of porn = 1 big stack of porn

Next week's lesson... porn multiplication

Re:As a recovering porn addict, I find this stupid

[DNS-and-BIND]

Women will never consider you as an option. They are only interested in the top 10% of men. What, you thought that monogamy just appeared one day cut out of whole cloth? It was designed by men so that every man could have a woman. In contrast to the earlier harem paradigm.

Only takes a hammer.

[GodInHell]

Works every time.

Re:What?

[Black Parrot]

He probably turned to it because she was using/withholding sex as a behavior modifier (or is grossly overweight).

Probably? What's the basis for that assessment?

I like it!

[wjcofkc]

While I think he's completely crazy to blame his addiction on Apple, the 'Safe-Mode' is not an altogether bad idea. Wouldn't it be nice to know your kids new MacBook had sex simply turned off?

It would take them days, perhaps even weeks to find a way to circumnavigate the measure. Just think how much our kids could learn about BSD! The really aspirational ones might even learn to cover their tracks with a terminal and Vim!

Safe Mode

[frovingslosh]

Assuming that Safe Mode is a mode that the owner can turn off and on, isn't that just the same as just not going to the porn sites? At least if you are the owner and an adult and not playing the "think of the children" game?

His offer sounds like he either wants to impose his values on others, or he knows that such "safe surfing" isn't really technically feasible so he can make to offer to sound like he's a decent guy rather than a pervert trying to profit big.

Yeah, right

[OzPeter]

From TFA

started when he “accidentally” replaced the “a-c-e” in Facebook with a “u-c-k.”

and

adding that until he got the MacBook, he had never seen porn of any kind or been to a strip club or sex shop.

Re:Yeah, right

[Bob the Super Hamste]

I'm sure we have all had typos that have been bad but really how does one accidentally replace “a-c-e” in Facebook with a “u-c-k”? I could see fat fingering it and getting incorrect but near letters, transposing letters, skipping a letter, or putting the wrong tld (I do that far too often when I want to go to weather.gov but type in weather.com and end up with bleeding eyes), but his claims are absurd to say the least.

Re:Yeah, right

[SuricouRaven]

At a guess, he - like so many users - doesn't actually know of 'facebook.com.' He just enters 'facebook' into the browser address bar, and lets it automatically send that to a search engine then clicks the top result. Combine a typo with the often over-aggressive techniques some dodgy porn sites use to lure in viewers, and it's possible that one could have overtaken facebook for some sufficiently mangled query.

Re:Yeah, right

[Dragonslicer]

You'd be surprised how common some typos are. Like this one.

Re:Yeah, right

[CanHasDIY]

At a guess, he - like so many users - doesn't actually know of 'facebook.com.' He just enters 'facebook' into the browser address bar, and lets it automatically send that to a search engine then clicks the top result.

... and doesn't double check his queries, or even look at the links he clicks on.

In other words, he's a fucking moron who did it to himself. Case dismissed.

Re:Yeah, right

[Macgrrl]

What keyboard was he using where "a" is near "u", or "e" is near "k"?

Re:Yeah, right

[Bob the Super Hamste]

Hence my statement about the absurdity of his claims. I could see it as a typo of fscrbook, fascebook, or some other common typo like that but even on my worst day I haven't had a typo that bad where I used the completely wrong hand and letter positions.

I suppose that could be a new sales blurb

[lexx21]

"We at Apple make the most spank-o-licious computer on the market"

Total Lack of Self-Responsibility

[ScottCooperDotNet]

Blaming a device maker for your actions with it shows a complete lack of self-responsibility and requires a child-like understanding of one's own self-control. I can see this guy testifying before Congress or whomever in favor of legal requirements for some sort of restricted mode, because he can't control himself, so everyone else should have to bear a burden of increased cost. A potential legal requirement would be easily met by Apple, but FOSS could be further limited by such laws, as not meeting requirements for schools, etc.

This is different from accessibility requirements, since the folks who need those cannot simply choose to see/hear. All this guy had to do was put the infernal device down.

Re:Total Lack of Self-Responsibility

[davidwr]

Blaming a device maker for your actions with it shows a complete lack of self-responsibility

In this case, yes, absolutely, a bazillion times over, but please don't over-generalize.

Blaming my computer for my greatly-increased productivity compared to pencil, paper, and abacus does not show a complete lack of self-responsibility.

I can see this guy testifying before Congress or whomever in favor of legal requirements

No, I can see this guy being invited to testify, seeing the microphone, grabbing it, and, well, let's just say CSPAN will be glad they put in a few-second delay or if they didn't, they'll wish they had.

Re:Total Lack of Self-Responsibility

[hAckz0r]

You had to go and ruin it for me. I was just getting ready to call my lawyer to sue Apple for not preventing me from setting my home page to Pizza-R-Us. How can I possibly create a case for causation of excessive weight gain if people like you are actually going to speak using logic and common sense? .

On the other hand, that means I don't have to chow down on a 200lbs of pizza to gain enough weight to convince a jury. While it originally sounded like a good plan, I kind of like not being fat.

Re:Total Lack of Self-Responsibility

[quacking duck]

Blaming a device maker for your actions with it shows a complete lack of self-responsibility and requires a child-like understanding of one's own self-control. I can see this guy testifying before Congress or whomever in favor of legal requirements for some sort of restricted mode, because he can't control himself, so everyone else should have to bear a burden of increased cost.

Nah, think further back in the chain. Make it illegal for women to appear unclothed or in some state of undress. Not just on-screen, in public too. Cover the hair and eyes, too. Guys like him can't control their urges, after all, so dammit others should have the responsibility to ensure he's not titillated and commits a sin in the process.

:rolleyes:

Re:Total Lack of Self-Responsibility

[Macgrrl]

The McDonalds Hot Coffee lady wasn't just being dumb, she suffered third-degree burns in her pelvic region when she accidentally spilled hot coffee in her lap and was hospitalized for eight days while she underwent skin grafting, followed by two years of medical treatment.

McDonalds had previously received numerous complaints from people that the coffee was being served at excessively hot temperatures and chose to ignore that advice. They consistently served coffee at higher than recommended temperatures and temperatures that were higher than were the industry norm.

While this case is frequently cited as an example of frivolous litigation it was anything but. The plaintiff went to court only asking for her medical costs to be covered, it was the jury who decided on the large punitive damages.

Man's Porn Addiction?

[Black Parrot]

What's with the redundancy in the headline?

I'm addicted to tentacle porn hentai

[ArcadeMan]

I'm going to sue Adobe for making Photoshop, the best image-editing software ever created, available for Microsoft Windows and Apple OS X.

Re:I'm addicted to tentacle porn hentai

[CanHasDIY]

Don't forget to sue the estates of Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla, for coming up with those electrical transmission setups that facilitated your access to porn. Oh, and Gutenburg (remember when we used to pay for porno, in magazine form? Barbaric times, I tell you what!)

Re:What?

[gl4ss]

his excuse is that he typoed facebook as fuckbook. 99.999% chance he was looking for some bitch to fuck - so the complaint is religious to the max to hide that he is that kind of a guy who had a wife and went on to look for sex dates on the internets...

I mean, who the fuck goes to fuckbook.com for porno and get real, the guy claimed he had never seen a pornographic image in his life in which case he probably got a hard on from evening news and wanked to mtv which doesn't sound sensible at all.

Parental controls

[Quila]

It's been built-in for years. The problem is that a person with a problem isn't going to use them to restrict himself.

Applying the knee-jerk logic...

[sl4shd0rk]

Guns enable murder, so ban guns

Let's apply the same logic to:
    Water enables drowning, so ban water
    Cars enable homicide, so ban cars
    Apple enables porn, so ban Apple

Yep. Seems like the correct logic for progress as a species.

Re:Applying the knee-jerk logic...

[arkane1234]

A) Yes, that's a problem.
B) Yes, that's what it was invented for.
C) Driving/insurance/safety equipment are daily activities that are a part of mundane everyday life. Guns are protection from people who no longer believe the laws to be worth following. (and those trying to remove said defense to allow the action to occur)
D) Everyone who disagrees with you is an idiot or a troll. Why are you arguing?

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

He probably turned to it because she was using/withholding sex as a behavior modifier (or is grossly overweight).

Or she could just no longer be attracted to you anymore. I mean, who finds bitterness and disdain for your gender attractive in a sexual partner?

Or was I being unfair in assuming that you're speaking from personal experience here? (I doubt it.)

Bill of Perceived Rights

[CanHasDIY]

WTF is going on with people these days? It seems over the last decade or so, our actual civil liberties - you know, the right to free expression, bearing arms, freedom from search/seizure without warrant - seem to be slowly fading out, while a brand new set of perceived rights is taking their place. Seriously, what the fuck is up with that?

FWIW, there is no such thing as:

the Right to Not be Offended
the Right to Determine What Rights Other People Have
the Right to Feel Safe

Re:Bill of Perceived Rights

[CanHasDIY]

I'm not "determining" shit, you jackass, the Constitution does.

Do the world a favor - rub the 2 brain cells you have left together until they catch fire.

Re:Bill of Perceived Rights

[CanHasDIY]

So you're in favor of laws requiring us to be frightened and offended at all times?

Crack or booze? I can't fathom that someone would have such a blindingly idiotic thought whilst sober.

Ridiculous

[flippy]

This is the most absurd lawsuit I've heard of in some time. It's like suing Stop & Shop for selling beer, saying that it caused one's alcoholism.

Re:Ridiculous

[tnk1]

And it's still stupid.

If casinos only had one result, gambling addiction, then you'd have a point. Most people who go into a casino drop some money there, but don't ruin their lives.

This Happens All the Time

[Grashnak]

Sevier claims that his addiction started when he “accidentally” replaced the “a-c-e” in Facebook with a “u-c-k.” Sevier said this F***book site “appealed to his biological sensibilities as a male,” and he started to prefer the images on the screen to his own wife.

Man, that happens to me all the time. One time, I reached for the skim milk and accidentally drank a 40oz bottle of vodka.

Another time, I was making a peanut butter sandwich and accidentally injected heroin into an artery.

Someone should pay!

Important Comment on ArsTechnica

[FuzzNugget]

According to this comment in the ArsTechnica discussion of their report on this story, the plantiff is actually a suspended lawyer who was formerly deployed and is now dealing with mental illness.

Maybe the commenter is taking the piss, but really ... that's the only explanation that makes any sense.

Re:Nanny State

[bonehead]

Fuck a petition.

Make this a referendum on a ballot. I'll vote for it.

Not fully competent

[mick129]

http://abovethelaw.com/2013/07/lawyer-apple-should-protect-me-from-my-porn-addiction/

At the end of this article, it notes that Chris Sevier has been placed on disability inactive status by order of the Tennessee Supreme Court due to “mental infirmity or illness.”

Re:Not fully competent

[Macgrrl]

Where's NYCL when you need him, I'd really like to see his take on the legitimacy of his claims from a legal stand point (rather than just a common sense, man up point of view).

Overwait? Blame your fork!

[kawabago]

Likewise, if you are fat, you can sue the manufacturer of your fork for not installing anything to prevent over eating. What happened to all that 'personal responsibility' America crows about?

Re:Nanny State

[Bob the Super Hamste]

That doesn't go far enough. Make it a constitutional amendment.

CORRECTED Re:Everyone knows

[davidwr]

the internet is ... porn

There, fixed that for you.

Re:Third option

[HiThere]

And sanctions his lawyer for filing a frivolous lawsuit.

Worked in Iowa

[kgamiel]

Iowa supreme court recently upheld decision that dentist was within his right to fire assistant because he was "too attracted" to her.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/13/us/iowa-court-reaffirms-dentists-firing-of-woman-he-found-too-attractive.html?_r=0

Lets be honest here...

[Anonymous Coward]

A porn addiiction is probably cheaper than having a wife and kids. He should be THANKING Apple....

Not redundant Re:Man's Porn Addiction?

[davidwr]

The following are also sensible headlines for other stories:
Man's gambling addiction
Teenager's porn addiction
Man's porn collection

So, as you can see, the following headlines would not be as specific as "Man's porn addiction":
Man's addiction
Porn addiction
Man's porn

only grounds he's got

[swschrad]

is if it was badly done porn.

you want to appeal, turn your head upward... but The Big Guy doesn't buy blaming others.

I hate this idiot

[Adult film producer]

He should not have access to any computing device, not even a calculator.

Don't laugh

[davidwr]

If a previous user had visited that URL, and "facebook" was never visited on that phone, I would expect the auto-fill to do that.

I've accidentally gone to site "A" instead of site "B" in my web browser if my most recent visit was to site "A" and they both start with the same letter and I'm not paying attention.

In any case, it's not the web browser publisher's fault, it's mine for not watching what I'm doing.

Lawyer should be sanctioned for abuse of courts

[davidwr]

Is apple specifically marketing to people with porn problems? To people with self-control issues? To kids? To demographics groups known to have high rates of porn- or self-control problems?

If not, their only "duties to protect the user from harm when using the product as designed" are

• those which either the general public shouldn't be expected to protect themselves against, like batteries catching fire, and
• those things which significant numbers the general public might do if they weren't either warned not to do it or prevented from doing it by technical measures AND which TYPICALLY have "high cost" results, like running their battery down so low that it won't recharge without a technician's help

If Apple used shoddy batteries that caught fire on more than a very infrequent basis or if they didn't cause the device to shut off well before the battery was drained to the point of requiring a service call, then it would be reasonable for the government or courts to strong-arm them into changing their design.

But allowing a user to go astray through a typo while web-browsing is TYPICALLY not a high-cost failure. In fact, the cost of preventing such failures is, on the whole, higher than the cost of the occasional typo.

--

Regarding legal liability for porn: If Apple starts encouraging employees start hanging around Junior High Schools offering "no blocking, and we won't tell your parents" iPhones out of their trenchcoats then we'll have a problem. Until then, carry on.

Proof that Apple is evil right here

[ulzeraj]

How? People are already replacing the devil with Apple in the "The ........ make me do it" sentence.

"How did the porn get here? I dunno, God did it?

[Anonymous Coward]

If God didn't want there to be porn he/she wouldn't have created it.
You don't see a three headed chicken or a duck that walks on its wings.
Or an square chilly pepper. Its because God didn't want them.
But porn, its his/her creation so it must be good and something God wants
us to have. So isn't Apple doing Gods work?

Let's add

[SirGarlon]

Let's add that the US media run the most shocking, bizarre, or outrage-causing stories they can find, regardless of the actual importance of the events. Since our population is over 300 million, you can manage to find a couple of those stories every day if you have thousands of reporters scouring the country. Then they harp on those stories for weeks. This gives the impression that everyone in the USA is some kind of freak.

What disturbs me is the number of people here who believe it -- who carry a gun because they actually believe they'll get attacked, or who think they'll get sued if someone spills hot coffee.

So perhaps stupid lawsuits like this occur (rarely) in other countries as well, but the media don't deem them newsworthy so you don't hear about them.

Re:Let's add

[Joey Vegetables]

Just because you might never have been a victim of violent crime - which has a tendency to concentrate itself in certain geographic areas, including the one where I was born and still live today - does not mean everyone else is so fortunate. I grew up in what would now be considered the ghetto. From the time I started working around age 10 (delivering papers), until the time I got a car and moved to the suburbs, which was when I was in my early 20s, I was violently assaulted roughly every year. About two thirds of those times I fought off my attackers with a deadly weapon (although none of those times ever resulted injury to anyone - I only needed to display it for them, cowardly bullies they were, to turn around and run off). One time I was able to run to safety and another time I was able to lock myself in a room until the attackers left. But on the remaining 2 or 3 occasions I was beaten badly and robbed of everything I had on me. I was very lucky I did not get shot (there were guns pointed at me on all those occasions as well as one or two of the others). Now that I don't have to hang out at bus stops at weird hours of the night, and live in a relatively safe part of town, that kind of stuff doesn't happen to me anymore, but at one time it did, and during that time, the fact that I was armed very likely saved my life. Some of the people I grew up with have similar stories, and one of them (that I know of) was brutally murdered, for no apparent reason, 2 or 3 months ago. You may be sheltered enough not to have to worry about this sort of thing, but a lot of us are not so fortunate, and I think I can speak on behalf of many of them, at least, when I tell you that their decision of whether and how to arm, train, and protect themselves and those around them is absolutely none of anyone else's business.

Re:Let's add

[SirGarlon]

You're reading too much into my remarks. If you make your decision of what weapon to carry, when, and where based on personal experience and observations, you're not the sort of person I was complaining about.

Re:Let's add

[Joey Vegetables]

OK. My apologies then.

Happy?

[drainbramage]

Are you happy to see me or is that an apple on your laptop?

Can we stop w/ the "man sues for..." stories?

[GodfatherofSoul]

Any idiot can sue for absolutely anything. I can sue my chair manufacturer for making me fat because it's so comfy. Now, if someone *wins* one of these ridiculous suites, THAT is news!

Opt-in controls for OCD?

[edelbrp]

How could that possibly work? He's actively looking for pr0n, so he'd simply turn off any controls that inhibit that.

Re:Opt-in controls for OCD?

[CCarrot]

How could that possibly work? He's actively looking for pr0n, so he'd simply turn off any controls that inhibit that.

And if he couldn't, then he'd go out and get a laptop or something else to feed his addiction with. If he cancelled his ISP, soon he'd be out piggybacking on his neighbors feed, or hanging around the shadier internet cafes...

What, does he think that alcoholics are cured just because their local grocery store is out of beer or decided not to carry it anymore?

Land of the free = land of "you're responsible for your own damn actions"

Nice

[nbritton]

I wonder how far that strategy will work with a speeding ticket, lets just call it entrapment that they designed a car that knowning violates the law when a simple technical solution could be implemented to make the car never exceed the posted limit.

In all seriousness though, I'd pay $2k to $3k extra for a button in a car that you could push to make it cruise exactly at the posted limit, as well as never exceed the limit going down hills, and it logs sensor data that can be used in court. It won't happen however, these fine only violations are what law enforcement calls their bread and butter.

Re:Nice

[gnasher719]

In all seriousness though, I'd pay $2k to $3k extra for a button in a car that you could push to make it cruise exactly at the posted limit, as well as never exceed the limit going down hills, and it logs sensor data that can be used in court. It won't happen however, these fine only violations are what law enforcement calls their bread and butter.

From a practical point of view: When there is a speed limit restricting the driving speed, a small number of drivers will go under the speed limit, most will go a little bit above, and a few will go a lot above the limit. Assuming the speed limit is there to keep things safe, the police or whoever puts up the speed limit, would know that, and set the limit so with this mixture of speeds the street would be safe. So in a perfect world, this button would allow you to exceed the limit within a safe margin (and with no speeding ticket). Which may be safer than everyone going exactly the same speed.

Re:Nice

[dkf]

Which may be safer than everyone going exactly the same speed.

For a particular stretch of road there's going to be a natural safe speed to drive it at. That speed will depend on all sorts of things, such as the condition of the road surface, the number of junctions, the likelihood of pedestrians walking out into the road, etc. As long as people stay within the natural safe limit, the accident rate will be low. That's true even if everyone drives at the same exactly identical speed, which isn't gonna happen in reality! Let's get real here! Unfortunately, some people, let's call them "asshole jerkwads that are a waste of their father's spooge", feel that driving within the safe natural limit is not for them. These are the folks for whom law enforcement's involvement in traffic speeding offenses is intended, as they're a hazard to everyone in the area. We can deplore the fact that this is necessary, but some people just plain are asshole jerkwads that are a waste of their father's spooge. Once you've got that, you've got to post official speed limits and so on. Those official speed limits aren't always a precise match for the road's natural limit, but it's usually best to keep them fairly close; encouraging people to disregard or disrespect official notices is idiotic.

This is all quite apart from fact that there are some jurisdictions that regard speeding tickets as a way to extort money from the law-abiding. That's a different sort of asshole jerkwaddery, but it's still asshole jerkwads that are the problem...

There is an old saying...

[DanielRavenNest]

"It's a poor workman who blames his tool."

Very applicable, and yes, pun intended.

Re:What?

[Dragonslicer]

his excuse is that he typoed facebook as fuckbook.

Well, they are only two letters apart. Letters that are nearly at the opposite side of the keyboard from the letters he wanted, but still only two letters.

What a wanker

[SpaghettiPattern]

What a wanker.

group swill?

[NotQuiteReal]

But if you did, I am sure there is a web site for group swill.

Re:What?

[CanHasDIY]

his excuse is that he typoed facebook as fuckbook. 99.999% chance he was looking for some bitch to fuck

*Looks at keyboard*

Yea, considering how far apart the "a" and "u" keys are, I figure that's a safe assumption to make...

Re:Nanny State

[CanHasDIY]

I would like to start a petition such that anyone found unwilling to take responsibility

FTFY - mentally ill people are incapable, ego-maniacal fuckwads are unwilling.

Don't saddle the mentally ill with the problems caused by ego-maniacal fuckwads.

Addiction

[phorm]

What are the qualifications for it to be considered an "addiction?"

I'd assume taking precedence over your job/relationship/family? While I don't doubt many I know view such material on a regular basis, they're not likely sneaking out for a dirty mag instead of a smoke-break, or missing junior's baseball game.

Lawyer

[phorm]

So what does it mean to be suspended? I suppose it only means he can't sue on the behalf of other people.

Re:Lawyer

[FuzzNugget]

It means he's suspended from practicing law. He cannot represent clients in any solicitary capacity, but he can still deal with any legal proceedings of his own, just like any citizen can technically do (just not practically)

Re:Will he ever grow up?

[cusco]

You must be a Libertarian. :-)

People with no self control

[Nyder]

should put out of their misery then they get this stupid.

Uhm, actually people download a simple text file

[Marrow]

Then the computer goes crazy! and downloads hundreds of things you never explicitly asked for. Some are porn. Some are ads. Some are probably viruses. And some are more text to download more more more. 1 click = 100s of downloads.

Is this a joke?

[Murdoch5]

It's not Apple's fault your addicted to porn, it's yours. When will people stop blaming everyone else and just accept they are weak, sorry excuses for humans. For instance, alcoholics claiming they have a disease or smokers claiming they didn't mean become hooked. Just accept the fact that if you have an addiction and it starts over taking your life that you're just a sorry example of a human being. It's not Apple's fault or the beer company's or the cigarette company's or anyone else, it's yours. The simple and real truth is, is that you can quit any addiction you have by will power. If you find something overtaking your life and IT IS NOT DUE TO A CHEMICAL IMBALANCE!!!!!!! then you just have to stop doing that thing. If you find yourself unable to stop under your own will then seek immediate help and give it up. The fact is company's and substances are not responsible for causing addiction, a person weak and sorry self control is. This man is addicted to porn because he wants to be just like a smoker chooses to be smoke and an alcoholic chooses to drink. Stop blaming everyone else, you're simply a weak person and you need to accept that!

Re:Is this a joke?

[mitcheli]

I was scanning these comments to moderate them and I ran across this one. On the surface, I agree with what you said regarding personal responsibility, however, addictions are chemically imbalanced. Your body does indeed build up a physical need for the substance that you're addicted to. I've seen alcoholics die when they tired to become sober because their body didn't have the substances that it needed. So I must respectfully disagree with you on that front. Many addictive substances alter the brain chemistry to change the way a person processes those substances. And yes, porn produces endorphins and other hormones, which can also be addictive. This cycle is what leads to the ever increasing need for more of the substance. Hard core drugs like Meth and Heroine are perfect examples of this. So yes, Alcoholism and Drug Abuse are very much diseases in much the same manner that mental disorders are a disease. They take a lot of effort to overcome and is not as simple as just "stopping".

Re:Tragic state of affairs, but...

[arfonrg]

It probably won't get as far as a judgement, Apple will probably pay him something to make him go away. WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF TORT.

hey, maybe he should embrace his actual self?

[strstr]

being a porn addict must be in his character, perhaps influenced by his neurological functioning and DNA. he should embrace it, instead of treating it like it's a problem. he lost his kids and shit, so what? move on, find a whore who's equally into porn as you are.. and enjoy your porn without restriction, because you are what you are, dude. apple isn't going to change or fix that.

Re:hey, maybe he should embrace his actual self?

[strstr]

people should be taught to embrace their impulses and to indulge in everything they like. he needs to work it into his live with control, like it's a special trait he has. there are tons of other women, men out there who are just the same, and living lives where this is not a problem. I mean, they embrace it, rather than try to victimize themselves over it. people in the country aren't told how to manage themselves or things they come into contact with, and by manage, I mean to embrace and have insight into.

The greatest commandment - love

[raymorris]

Weirdo fundamentalist sect <> faith

When Jesus was ask what was the greatest commandment, he said "love". Love your neighbor and love God, all the law and the prophets hang on those two, Christ said. So anyone teaching hate toward anyone is teaching the opposite of Christianity.

Certainly that happens, just as the guy selling fake "bomb detectors" claimed science, fools and charlatans sometimes claim God. Their claim is just as bogus though, as Christ clearly directed us to love those who oppose as we love ourselves, even fact even MORE than we love ourselves, love them as he loved us.

Re:The greatest commandment - love

[TsuruchiBrian]

The problem is that Christianity is quite contradictory. It teaches both love and hate. You could just as easily say "The Bible teaches hate, so if anyone tries teaching love, it's the opposite of Christianity". The fact that you choose to ignore the hateful parts of Christianity says more about about you than Christianity. There is enough of varying aspects of Christianity to give plenty of justification to both the hateful and loving Christians.

The same is true for most religions

What do you expect from a man made phenomenon? Why wouldn't it be full of contradictions and both good and evil? It just seems so unremarkable if 2 billion people didn't claim to believe it.

Re:The greatest commandment - love

[realityimpaired]

The problem is that Christianity is quite contradictory. It teaches both love and hate.

It doesn't really. The Bible has this contradiction in it, but the thing that most of the hateful xians seem to forget is that, according to their own dogma, Christ came to Earth and died on the cross in order to complete the old covenant established by the rules of the old testament, and to establish a new relationship with their God based on love. It's true that Jesus had more than a few quite famous temper tantrums and blowups against certain people in the book, but that was never about the person themselves, or the actions even, it was the location for the actions. The parable about the money changers in the temple, for example, wasn't about the moneychanging itself, it was about the fact that it was happening inside a temple, and was debasing the purpose of the temple to become a financial institution. And of course, the favourite thing for the "devout" to hate, homosexuality, isn't even mentioned in the gospels.

The ones who actually practice what they preach (and what's taught in the book they espouse) are quite accepting of those around them, and are usually pretty easy to deal with.

And no, I'm not a Christian. I was raised in a fairly liberal and open-minded Anglican family, and don't really have much use for the Christian God in my life. I don't really care one way or another whether God exists, nor do I feel like I need fear of damnation to give me a reason to treat those around me with respect.

Re:The greatest commandment - love

[TsuruchiBrian]

If you think past the teachings of Jesus described in the Bible. The rules of the universe. The ones that necessitated that the death of the purest human on earth needed to be killed in order for God to have a new relationship with man, is abhorrent. It is one thing if that was just the way things were. But they aren't. The Christian God decided they had to be the way. The Christian God decided that people who did not accept Jesus had to go to hell for eternity. This is his design. This God's moral standards do not even measure up to the moral standards of modern western civilization. I don't see any evidence of divinity in these ideas. To me this smells of bronze age thinking.

Apple can't be to blame

[RogueWarrior65]

Apple can't be to blame because if they were culpable, all that pr0n out there would be in glorious Quicktime instead of crappy Flash or WMV format. Not that I would know this.

Re:What?

[gmhowell]

his excuse is that he typoed facebook as fuckbook.

Well, they are only two letters apart. Letters that are nearly at the opposite side of the keyboard from the letters he wanted, but still only two letters.

Three sir, three!

Re:What?

[gmhowell]

Ugh, I think I have a little bit of the family dyslexia going on...

Interesting

[MBGMorden]

I find it interesting that the complaint paperwork was filed by himself. After reading TFA it was quite clear that this guy was insane, but I was wondering if he'd actually found a lawyer as equally insane to handle the case.

Re:Nanny State

[Macgrrl]

Mentally ill and developmentally retarded (in the literal sense) can have diminished capacity, much like a minor.

Unfortunately that doesn't help us with the case in question as the guy has been certified as suffering from a mental illness (PTSD).

OSX does have a built in Porn filter

[goombah99]

Parental Controls comes with a porn filter. it's a couple clicks to turn it on. Of course you can also turn it off if you are the super user. So exactly what is he asking for, a way to turn it on irrevocably? That sounds more like a job for a Baracuda box upstream than the computer itself.

iPod Condom

[Monsuco]

If I remember right, that new porn law means he'll have to have an iPod condom right?

safe mode exists

[Xicor]

there is already a safe mode... all he would have had to do is put on a child filter on his own computer... problem solved

Re:factually false

[TsuruchiBrian]

First of all I said "The *Bible* teaches hate". I don't know why you chose to misinterpret what I said. The fact is that Christians could have simply omitted the old testament from their holy book. They chose to keep, and are therefore subject to criticisms of the old testament.

The "ancient Jewish scriptures" didn't simply acknowledge that hate existed. They are included in your Bible as the word of God, and command hate. If you don't think the old testament should be included in the Bible, maybe you should create your own sect of Christianity as many others have done.

Even if you did this, it wouldn't mean that Christianity was only love. It would only mean that your version of Christianity was only love. Everyone else's version would still be a mix of hate and love, until you converted them to your version.

Second of all, the new testament also has some pretty terrible stuff in it. On the whole it looks quite progressive compared to the old testament, but compared with modern sensibilities it is barbaric.

Thirdly it is all irrelevant anyway because it's not real. Religion evolves. The leaders will continue to have "divine revelations" of new scripture or new interpretations of scripture in order to continuously drag this antiquated mythology into the present, ever diluting and politically correcting it's message.

How much can you change Christianity and still have it count as Christianity? They've already gotten rid of genocide, slavery, mysogeny, through new interpretations. Maybe we can get rid of miracles and Jesus and God.

The new message can be this:

Sure Jesus was just a man. That's why his teachings were full of flaws that contradict our current knowledge and sense of morality. We modern Christians are able to fix these flaws in a way that we think Jesus (if he lived today) might approve. We still believe in the golden rule and being compassionate, but we've grown out of the idea of supernatural deities as childish and primitive.

It all their

[ILongForDarkness]

ffaaa fall ggaaa Oh My Godddd yeah. Never mind I'm good for now.

Too Dumb To exist

[b4upoo]

Blaming Apple for porn addiction is about like me trying to sue a grocery store for failing to protect me from beer and wine.

Apple much?

[slashmydots]

EVERY Apple customer EVER. Blame everyone else. They're themselves perfect. Ultra arrogant and living in their own little world.

Re:Classic case

[Macgrrl]

What's so sinister about writing left handed?

Re:The actual lawsuit is a must-read

[Macgrrl]

+1, would read this fantasy author again, trips dangerously close to triggering Poe's Law on occasions but is so over the top as to dispel any reasonable belief that this is serious.

Re:The actual lawsuit is a must-read

[Macgrrl]

I wonder if anyone has ever told this guy that women watch porn too. On second thoughts, it might break his little brain even further.

My addiction is suing people who sue people

[Tyr07]

I can't help it. Every time I see someone sue someone for something stupid I have to sue them. It's an addiction, an illness brought on by people suing people for dumb reasons, and then I have to sue them. It's out of my control, I demand the people suing install a sue filter known as common sense and that in the future all people born come with 'common sense' pre-installed and enabled by default. I agree with the freedom of people who really want to turn off 'common sense' but it needs to be a default option on all future humans.

Re:Classic case

[arkane1234]

It's something people assume of left-handed people. Most of the time it's assumed that left-handed people are libertarian or liberal-leaning political individuals, which automatically means that the person making the assumption is a right-wing political individual. That bias automatically boils down to "different == sinful/evil".
It's kinda cute :-)

Re:Classic case

[Macgrrl]

Woosh!

I was actually referring to the latin where dexter means right-handed and sinister means left-handed.

but your explanation is cute too.

Courtroom drama in the making

[oDDmON oUT]

Apple lawyer: "Who clicked the mouse?"

Defendant: [inarticulate mumble]

Apple lawyer: "I'm sorry, the court can't hear you. Your Honor, would you please inst..."

Defendant: [Yells] "I can't take it anymore! I DID! I clicked it! God help me...I did."

Apple lawyer: "Your Honor, I rest my case."

Nobody forced him to buy apple.

[seeker_1us]

If he wants a computer with safe features he can install linux on a PC and put in free software to block porn on the computer he owns.

There's probably a 3rd party program for Apple that does the same thing.

Re:Nanny State

[CanHasDIY]

Mentally ill and developmentally retarded (in the literal sense) can have diminished capacity, much like a minor.

Unfortunately that doesn't help us with the case in question as the guy has been certified as suffering from a mental illness (PTSD).

Alright, then I guess he gets a pass.

Re:Definition ( was Re:safe mode

[RichMan]

> ,or similar visual representation or image of a person or a portion of the human body, which depicts ... and which is harmful to minors and adult males"

So that would be ankles, elbows, hair, eyes and simply the presence of females no matter how covered. Also this could be extended to any representation of the human form.

The definitions are not complete enough. The pharase "which is harmful to minors and adult males" opens it right up. And why were adult females not included? That makes the request itself sexist. The definitions need to be much more specific to be applicable.
Keep in mind monty python sketches discussing simply "areas".

Representations that are "harmful" are fully open to cultural interpretation. And given personal freedoms you can't manage to adjust to the cultural interpretations of a population?

Safe mode

[hgifford]

All computers already have a "safe mode". It's called the off button.

Re:What?

[AK Marc]

My parents went through one. It was settled very easily. The lawyers exist to keep them from having to be in the same room, not to actually argue anything. The only thing wrong with divorce at the moment is that the person demanding the children often also demands support. It shouldn't be allowed to argue that you are best for the children and you can't afford to care for them in the same sentence. "If you can't afford them, you can't care for them properly." should be the immediate response, and they get to choose whether they want the kids or the money, they can ask for only one.

Re:Will he ever grow up?

[AK Marc]

If your addictions are caused by a chemical imbalance which drive an intense desire for balance that can be achieved through some addictive action, whose "fault" is it, and where would you put the blame?

Re:Nanny State

[AK Marc]

It would have to be, as it's a direct violation of a treaty we've signed. A law would be illegal and invalid. We'd need to formally break the treaty, or put it in the Constitution. Otherwise, we aren't allowed to de-citizen anyone who isn't a dual-citizen.