Maybe it's just me, but I always had the feeling that the news was supposed to accurately represent, report and sum up what's going on in the world (or at least your own part of the world) - so whether it's all bad news or good news or some mixture thereof should depend on what's ACTUALLY HAPPENING, not on an executive decision.
But hey, maybe I'm just more interested in disseminating information and empowering the people to exercise their power (don't forget that we're supposed to live in a democracy, where it's the PEOPLE who rule!) than in keeping the unwashed masses happy with propaganda so that they won't challenge my reign.
That's nice, but I fail to see what's so great about this. Unless I'm misunderstanding things, it's the customer that donates the money, right? Dell is just collecting and forwarding it, and while that is certainly nice, it's not really a big deal. Call me back when they actually donate money themselves. (And as for "virtually" eliminating lead in certain components etc... that's nice, too, but again, I fail to see what the big deal is, or how it sets them apart from their competitors.)
And in any case, "planting" trees on Second Life might not be a new low, but it certainly is pretty stupid - even if you can't or don't want to plant a real tree, it'd make much more sense to tell people "please leave your computer turned off and don't play Second Life today". Yeah, it'd just be a feel-good measure that'd hardly have any real impact, but planting *virtual* trees? Come on. That's such a blatant attempt at commercialisation that I can understand the submitter's sentiments.
The only thing you can come up with to defend the USA's actions is "we're still better than communist dictatorships like Cuba"? I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry.
First of all, "the net" is not a sentient entity that has the ability to "consider" anything as anything. Second, while the Internet is designed to route around defects, this ability exists solely on the network level, not on the application level.
Invoking some alleged magical self-healing capabilities of "the net" may make you feel better when you have to deal with threats of censorship, but living in a dream world is not going to safe you - reality is not going to change just because you refuse to acknowledge it.
Censorship must be *fought* if you want to get rid of it (or prevent it); you can use both legal and technical means for that, but you still have to do something yourself. Nothing's gonna happen about it on its own, and if you think that the Internet was designed to ensure your ability to download pr0n without anyone being able to interfere, you've only shown that you only have a very nebulous idea of how the Internet actually works.
The constitution - or, for that matter, any (written) law - is not going to fade out of existence just because people ignore it, though. If Texas doesn't enforce this clause because they know it'd just be struck down eventually, you might conclude that nothing's actually wrong, but if I was from Texas, I'd still petition for it to be abolished. Not necessarily by raising a big stink in public, but I still think it'd be an important gesture if it was removed - a sign that "separation of church and state" is not just an empty, hollow term, but that rather, it actually means something.
No, the distinction does not just get a lot blurrier when you're talking about computer graphics, drawings, stories and other things that are purely products of someone's fantasy - it becomes crucial.
As repulsive as child pornography is, I don't understand why anyone (not you, but people in general) thinks that something where no person - no child - is actually harmed in any way whatsoever should be outlawed; it makes about as much sense as outlawing novels by Stephen King or Thomas Harris because they contain graphic violence. So what? Yes, they do, but it's not REAL - that's the difference.
What people are actually trying to punish, of course, is not just the act but also the state of being where child pornography is a turn-on for you - a perfect example of thoughtcrime.
Myself, I'd really prefer if the police could focus on *real* crimes where real people are hurt instead of wasting time prosecuting people for their thoughts.
That's like saying someone doing a report on, say, the Soviet Union is not unbiased because he concludes that Stalin killed a lot of people. It's not always the observer that's biased; sometimes, reality itself is.
I don't get your statement. I get up in the morning, feed my child, take a shower, go to work, go home, do my wife, go to bed. The same as I did before the government took away all my rights. Please tell me what I'm missing so I can be an angry citizen like yourself.
You honestly can't see the difference? Of course having your rights curtailed left and right likely won't have a (big) impact on your daily life, but there's more to life than that. Have you ever thought about what people in the Soviet Union did or what people in China do today, for example? Here's a hint: they get up in the morning, feed their children, take a shower, go to work, go home, do their wives, and go to bed.
Yet don't you think that something important was/is missing from their lifes?
France and Iran are nation states, and contrary to what you might think, that does make a difference. Call me back when New Hampshire has its own currency and its own foreign politics.
No. Like it or not, the standards are what the W3C produces - and while it might surprise you, Microsoft is actually a member of the W3C as well.
Your analogy about English in the USA is flawed as well, since English is the standard language in the USA by virtue of being used by *many different* people. A better analogy would be a group of people, one of which has a very loud voice; you might say he matters more because he contributes more to the total volume of the group than all the others combined, but that doesn't automatically make whatever language *he* speaks the standard. And if you now imagine that these people (including the very loud guy) actually all got together to decide on a common language and that while everyone else started using it, this guy continues to ignore it and uses his own dialect instead... then I'm sure you can see why the current situation is so ridiculous and why IE and Microsoft are in the wrong here.
That's simply not true. Of course private businesses are, basically, allowed to discriminate; otherwise, you could also sue a prospective employer when you don't get a job you applied for because you're not qualified for it (it's discrimination based on stupidity/lack of knowledge, after all).
What you're probably referring to is the Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States SCOTUS decision. This case, in turn, was about the constitutionality of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, though, and that act forbade - among other things - discrimination in hotels, motels, restaurants, theaters, and all other public accommodations engaged in interstate commerce (but not private clubs).
In other words, there was no general "you are not allowed to discriminate against anyone, ever" provision. So in order for this act to apply, you'd have to tell me a) why YouTube, as a website, falls into a category such as "public accomodations" (it's certainly different from hotels, restaurants, movie theatres, petrol stations and the like); b) why YouTube is engaged in interstate commerce (people posting videos neither pay for it no receive compensation); c) why YouTube would not qualify as "private" (you do have to sign up, after all; however, I do admit that given that pretty much anyone can, it may not be "private", although it's not clear to me either way) and d) why saying "we won't post your video" is discrimination, anyway.
I think d) is particularly important. It'd clearly be discrimination if YouTube said "we're not gonna post videos by black users" (assuming they'd be able to find out), but I'm neither sure that you can discriminate against individual people (as opposed to groups of people that share a certain characteristic or trait) nor do I believe that saying "we won't post this video based on characteristics and traits of the VIDEO (as opposed to the one who's attempting to upload it)" could ever be discrimination.
Humanity has had "major building projects and air conditioning" for the last 50,000 years? Wow. Here's your Alternate Bizarro Universe Award; you sure deserve it.:)
Long answer: no, but which software *can* you trust? If you install, say, Mandriva, how do you know that it's not going to "phone home" any of your data? Oh, sure, there's no such functionality in the source code, but how do you know that the binaries you're running do correspond to the source code you're getting? And while you might think that simply recompiling everything will help, it's not actually going to - Ken Thompson demonstrated this nicely. If you're using the shipped compiler, you can't trust that it won't bug your binaries again; and recompiling the compiler won't help, either, since the compiler might also be bugged to bug itself. So unless you have a trusted compiler binary already, you're basically stuck.
But to an extent, all that is besides the point: the real question is not "can you trust Vista" (or "can you trust Linux") but rather "can you trust Microsoft" (or "can you trust Mandriva", to pick up the example from above again). For MS, I'd probably answer that question as "no, you can't"; for Mandriva, I'd say "I don't know - I have no evidence either way". Ultimately, though, even when you do trust someone, that doesn't automatically make them trustworthy, so there's always a chance something bad will happen.
If you really want to be sure that nothing gets sent to anyone, get a second computer that is not connected to any network (well, other than the power grid) and use that for sensitive documents.
Why do US-Americans always have to talk about "first amendment rights" all the time? Outside of the fact that this is Canada we're talking about, a school is neither Congress nor a state.
I mean... imagine that some guy at work is always starting fights with his colleagues, and that the boss ultimately decides to fire him. Can he say "you can't fire me, I've got first amendment rights" now? Of course not. Certainly he's free to pick on his colleagues (as long as he doesn't incite criminal action, slanders them etc.), but the company is just as free to fire him; he does not have a constitutionally guaranteed right to work there.
Schools are similar - not quite the same, since students typically are required to attend (at least up to a certain age), but they don't have to tolerate all kinds of abuse without being able to do anything about it.
Put another way: schools have a purpose, and that purpose is to teach kids and make sure they learn things, and it makes sense to give them the ability to discipline those who actively seek to disrupt that purpose. And geez, we're not even talking about any real punishment here; the worst that can happen to you is that you get kicked out of school - it's not as if you're going to be sent to the slammer for a few or anything. The only thing that happens is that when you show time and again that you are unable and unwilling to respect the fact that the school is there to teach students and that other students have an interest in learning... then sorry bud, you're not welcome anymore. What's so controversial about that?
Also keep in mind that since students are required to attend school, other students will not have an opportunity to evade bullies. If I go to a bar and get into a (verbal) fight with the patrons, I can just decide to not go there again, and everything will be fine - I'm not forced to deal with them. Schools are different, which is another reason why it makes sense to regulate student conduct.
Of course schools can also abuse their authority: suppressions of criticism of teachers/the principal/the school in general, for example, seem to be all too common, and with the authority the school has, it's certainly necessary to ask quis custodiet ipsos custodes and how it's ensured that schools aren't run like tiny police states.
But I don't see what that has to do with bullying, to be honest. I don't see bullying others as a valid form of expressing yourself (freedom is important, but so is non-interference: your right to swing your fist ends where my face starts. When it comes to bullying, that often applies in the most literal sense), and while you might argue that schools are just gonna punish uncomfortable students (and by that, I mean students that ask uncomfortable questions, criticise the school etc.) as bullies now, well... I don't see how schools weren't able to abuse their power and punish those students before as well.
No, it's definitely a good thing that bullying is recognised as unacceptable behaviour, and it's definitely a good thing that schools are given the means to actually deal with it instead of just standing there helpless, watching and not being able to do anything about it.
Huh? Are you seriously trying to equate bullying (which, in itself, is an act that's defined by its intention and the intended effect on the victim, not by whether it's taking place "offline" or "online" or whether it takes any specific form) with students "learn[ing] things on their own, things that they are passionate about"?
The fact that others are worse off than you is not usually a consolation - and also, when I'm mistreating someone, the fact that I'm mistreating others in ways far worse is not an excuse for my mistreating that person, either.
Why do you assume that anyone who IS going to sit down and write an email isn't going to come up with something better and more productive than "OMGUR TEH SUXX0RZ!!11eleven"?
Sheesh, give people some credit. I see allegation along these lines being thrown around every single time anyone on Slashdot makes a suggestion that people get involved that goes beyond "if you are bothered by this, write to your senator", but I've never actually seen any evidence that the mails that are being sent are all counterproductive trolling. Of course, I haven't seen evidence to the contrary, either, but that just means that I can't say either way - and therefore, I simply don't make any claims about what kinds of emails do get sent.
Similarly, how do you know thousands of mails get sent? How many people read Slashdot (the comments), anyway? And how many of those will go ahead and spend time composing an email? It might well be "thousands", but it just as well might not. Again, how do you know?
I've searched for plenty of technical questions on google that land me on forums that require you to register to even read the posts. This means you have to give them a valid (well long enough for you to get the confirmation) email address and username/password. The worst part is that a lot of times those sites are really slow to send out the email and you're stuck waiting for it to solve your problem.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe it's just me, but I always had the feeling that the news was supposed to accurately represent, report and sum up what's going on in the world (or at least your own part of the world) - so whether it's all bad news or good news or some mixture thereof should depend on what's ACTUALLY HAPPENING, not on an executive decision.
But hey, maybe I'm just more interested in disseminating information and empowering the people to exercise their power (don't forget that we're supposed to live in a democracy, where it's the PEOPLE who rule!) than in keeping the unwashed masses happy with propaganda so that they won't challenge my reign.
That's nice, but I fail to see what's so great about this. Unless I'm misunderstanding things, it's the customer that donates the money, right? Dell is just collecting and forwarding it, and while that is certainly nice, it's not really a big deal. Call me back when they actually donate money themselves. (And as for "virtually" eliminating lead in certain components etc... that's nice, too, but again, I fail to see what the big deal is, or how it sets them apart from their competitors.)
And in any case, "planting" trees on Second Life might not be a new low, but it certainly is pretty stupid - even if you can't or don't want to plant a real tree, it'd make much more sense to tell people "please leave your computer turned off and don't play Second Life today". Yeah, it'd just be a feel-good measure that'd hardly have any real impact, but planting *virtual* trees? Come on. That's such a blatant attempt at commercialisation that I can understand the submitter's sentiments.
The only thing you can come up with to defend the USA's actions is "we're still better than communist dictatorships like Cuba"? I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry.
Indeed - that name almost (but not quite!) beats Ima Hogg. :)
Yeah... because the Beeb is personally (well, so to speak) responsible for everything that goes on in the UK, right?
Don't be stupid.
First of all, "the net" is not a sentient entity that has the ability to "consider" anything as anything. Second, while the Internet is designed to route around defects, this ability exists solely on the network level, not on the application level.
Invoking some alleged magical self-healing capabilities of "the net" may make you feel better when you have to deal with threats of censorship, but living in a dream world is not going to safe you - reality is not going to change just because you refuse to acknowledge it.
Censorship must be *fought* if you want to get rid of it (or prevent it); you can use both legal and technical means for that, but you still have to do something yourself. Nothing's gonna happen about it on its own, and if you think that the Internet was designed to ensure your ability to download pr0n without anyone being able to interfere, you've only shown that you only have a very nebulous idea of how the Internet actually works.
No, he didn't. "misspelt" and "misspelled" are both correct.
The constitution - or, for that matter, any (written) law - is not going to fade out of existence just because people ignore it, though. If Texas doesn't enforce this clause because they know it'd just be struck down eventually, you might conclude that nothing's actually wrong, but if I was from Texas, I'd still petition for it to be abolished. Not necessarily by raising a big stink in public, but I still think it'd be an important gesture if it was removed - a sign that "separation of church and state" is not just an empty, hollow term, but that rather, it actually means something.
No, the distinction does not just get a lot blurrier when you're talking about computer graphics, drawings, stories and other things that are purely products of someone's fantasy - it becomes crucial.
As repulsive as child pornography is, I don't understand why anyone (not you, but people in general) thinks that something where no person - no child - is actually harmed in any way whatsoever should be outlawed; it makes about as much sense as outlawing novels by Stephen King or Thomas Harris because they contain graphic violence. So what? Yes, they do, but it's not REAL - that's the difference.
What people are actually trying to punish, of course, is not just the act but also the state of being where child pornography is a turn-on for you - a perfect example of thoughtcrime.
Myself, I'd really prefer if the police could focus on *real* crimes where real people are hurt instead of wasting time prosecuting people for their thoughts.
That's like saying someone doing a report on, say, the Soviet Union is not unbiased because he concludes that Stalin killed a lot of people. It's not always the observer that's biased; sometimes, reality itself is.
You honestly can't see the difference? Of course having your rights curtailed left and right likely won't have a (big) impact on your daily life, but there's more to life than that. Have you ever thought about what people in the Soviet Union did or what people in China do today, for example? Here's a hint: they get up in the morning, feed their children, take a shower, go to work, go home, do their wives, and go to bed.
Yet don't you think that something important was/is missing from their lifes?
France and Iran are nation states, and contrary to what you might think, that does make a difference. Call me back when New Hampshire has its own currency and its own foreign politics.
No. Like it or not, the standards are what the W3C produces - and while it might surprise you, Microsoft is actually a member of the W3C as well.
Your analogy about English in the USA is flawed as well, since English is the standard language in the USA by virtue of being used by *many different* people. A better analogy would be a group of people, one of which has a very loud voice; you might say he matters more because he contributes more to the total volume of the group than all the others combined, but that doesn't automatically make whatever language *he* speaks the standard. And if you now imagine that these people (including the very loud guy) actually all got together to decide on a common language and that while everyone else started using it, this guy continues to ignore it and uses his own dialect instead... then I'm sure you can see why the current situation is so ridiculous and why IE and Microsoft are in the wrong here.
You should just quit. (And "smart ass"? That's much more appropriate than you might think! :))
"Oh, we got both kinds. We got country *and* western.". :)
That's simply not true. Of course private businesses are, basically, allowed to discriminate; otherwise, you could also sue a prospective employer when you don't get a job you applied for because you're not qualified for it (it's discrimination based on stupidity/lack of knowledge, after all).
What you're probably referring to is the Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States SCOTUS decision. This case, in turn, was about the constitutionality of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, though, and that act forbade - among other things - discrimination in hotels, motels, restaurants, theaters, and all other public accommodations engaged in interstate commerce (but not private clubs).
In other words, there was no general "you are not allowed to discriminate against anyone, ever" provision. So in order for this act to apply, you'd have to tell me a) why YouTube, as a website, falls into a category such as "public accomodations" (it's certainly different from hotels, restaurants, movie theatres, petrol stations and the like); b) why YouTube is engaged in interstate commerce (people posting videos neither pay for it no receive compensation); c) why YouTube would not qualify as "private" (you do have to sign up, after all; however, I do admit that given that pretty much anyone can, it may not be "private", although it's not clear to me either way) and d) why saying "we won't post your video" is discrimination, anyway.
I think d) is particularly important. It'd clearly be discrimination if YouTube said "we're not gonna post videos by black users" (assuming they'd be able to find out), but I'm neither sure that you can discriminate against individual people (as opposed to groups of people that share a certain characteristic or trait) nor do I believe that saying "we won't post this video based on characteristics and traits of the VIDEO (as opposed to the one who's attempting to upload it)" could ever be discrimination.
Humanity has had "major building projects and air conditioning" for the last 50,000 years? Wow. Here's your Alternate Bizarro Universe Award; you sure deserve it. :)
Short answer: no.
Long answer: no, but which software *can* you trust? If you install, say, Mandriva, how do you know that it's not going to "phone home" any of your data? Oh, sure, there's no such functionality in the source code, but how do you know that the binaries you're running do correspond to the source code you're getting? And while you might think that simply recompiling everything will help, it's not actually going to - Ken Thompson demonstrated this nicely. If you're using the shipped compiler, you can't trust that it won't bug your binaries again; and recompiling the compiler won't help, either, since the compiler might also be bugged to bug itself. So unless you have a trusted compiler binary already, you're basically stuck.
But to an extent, all that is besides the point: the real question is not "can you trust Vista" (or "can you trust Linux") but rather "can you trust Microsoft" (or "can you trust Mandriva", to pick up the example from above again). For MS, I'd probably answer that question as "no, you can't"; for Mandriva, I'd say "I don't know - I have no evidence either way". Ultimately, though, even when you do trust someone, that doesn't automatically make them trustworthy, so there's always a chance something bad will happen.
If you really want to be sure that nothing gets sent to anyone, get a second computer that is not connected to any network (well, other than the power grid) and use that for sensitive documents.
Why do US-Americans always have to talk about "first amendment rights" all the time? Outside of the fact that this is Canada we're talking about, a school is neither Congress nor a state.
I mean... imagine that some guy at work is always starting fights with his colleagues, and that the boss ultimately decides to fire him. Can he say "you can't fire me, I've got first amendment rights" now? Of course not. Certainly he's free to pick on his colleagues (as long as he doesn't incite criminal action, slanders them etc.), but the company is just as free to fire him; he does not have a constitutionally guaranteed right to work there.
Schools are similar - not quite the same, since students typically are required to attend (at least up to a certain age), but they don't have to tolerate all kinds of abuse without being able to do anything about it.
Put another way: schools have a purpose, and that purpose is to teach kids and make sure they learn things, and it makes sense to give them the ability to discipline those who actively seek to disrupt that purpose. And geez, we're not even talking about any real punishment here; the worst that can happen to you is that you get kicked out of school - it's not as if you're going to be sent to the slammer for a few or anything. The only thing that happens is that when you show time and again that you are unable and unwilling to respect the fact that the school is there to teach students and that other students have an interest in learning... then sorry bud, you're not welcome anymore. What's so controversial about that?
Also keep in mind that since students are required to attend school, other students will not have an opportunity to evade bullies. If I go to a bar and get into a (verbal) fight with the patrons, I can just decide to not go there again, and everything will be fine - I'm not forced to deal with them. Schools are different, which is another reason why it makes sense to regulate student conduct.
Of course schools can also abuse their authority: suppressions of criticism of teachers/the principal/the school in general, for example, seem to be all too common, and with the authority the school has, it's certainly necessary to ask quis custodiet ipsos custodes and how it's ensured that schools aren't run like tiny police states.
But I don't see what that has to do with bullying, to be honest. I don't see bullying others as a valid form of expressing yourself (freedom is important, but so is non-interference: your right to swing your fist ends where my face starts. When it comes to bullying, that often applies in the most literal sense), and while you might argue that schools are just gonna punish uncomfortable students (and by that, I mean students that ask uncomfortable questions, criticise the school etc.) as bullies now, well... I don't see how schools weren't able to abuse their power and punish those students before as well.
No, it's definitely a good thing that bullying is recognised as unacceptable behaviour, and it's definitely a good thing that schools are given the means to actually deal with it instead of just standing there helpless, watching and not being able to do anything about it.
Huh? Are you seriously trying to equate bullying (which, in itself, is an act that's defined by its intention and the intended effect on the victim, not by whether it's taking place "offline" or "online" or whether it takes any specific form) with students "learn[ing] things on their own, things that they are passionate about"?
Get a fucking grip.
The fact that others are worse off than you is not usually a consolation - and also, when I'm mistreating someone, the fact that I'm mistreating others in ways far worse is not an excuse for my mistreating that person, either.
Why do you assume that anyone who IS going to sit down and write an email isn't going to come up with something better and more productive than "OMGUR TEH SUXX0RZ!!11eleven"?
Sheesh, give people some credit. I see allegation along these lines being thrown around every single time anyone on Slashdot makes a suggestion that people get involved that goes beyond "if you are bothered by this, write to your senator", but I've never actually seen any evidence that the mails that are being sent are all counterproductive trolling. Of course, I haven't seen evidence to the contrary, either, but that just means that I can't say either way - and therefore, I simply don't make any claims about what kinds of emails do get sent.
Similarly, how do you know thousands of mails get sent? How many people read Slashdot (the comments), anyway? And how many of those will go ahead and spend time composing an email? It might well be "thousands", but it just as well might not. Again, how do you know?
Ooh, an irony meter. Oh, that's a *real* useful invention. ;)
http://www.bugmenot.com/ is your friend - and there's also a Firefox extension. :)
Do you honestly think that any website is going to shut down solely because people delete their tracking cookies?