This is only the beginning, citizens. Every election year, someone proposes this kind of lame idea, hoping that they'll be seen "stalwart defenders of public decency taking a stand against the evils of the Internet" instead of "idiots proposing stupid solutions to minor nuisances in an attempt to garner votes."
Last year, it was then-presidential-contender Senator Brownback of Kansas who was re-proposing the "Truth in Ratings" act, (although I'm sure that it was in NO way related to his "more-family-values-oriented-than-thou" appeal.)
This isn't entirely on-topic, but there are cases where college materials can be protected by copyright law.
Tests done for schools (law boards, EIT (engineer-in-training) tests, medical and nursing assessments, and so forth) are often done by companies that hold copyright on their materials... to the point that, when I took my EIT, I had to turn in all of my notes and scratch paper along with the bubble sheet. At the time, I thought it was silly.
Then, later, I got a job working for a company that provides online tests (along with the old paper-and-pencil ones) for a limited variety of schools. One of the things I had to do was write code that disabled the right-click button so that the students couldn't just do a copy-and-paste of the content and provide it to all of their classmattes. The company had invested a considerable sum to develop the tests, and didn't want people either copying the questions for study or for less-than-scrupulous professors getting ready-made exam material.
When we licensed the schools to use our tests, part of the agreement was that they would also act to protect our investment, and there were a few students who were drop-kicked from their classes when we found that, due to a careless professor's scheduling, they had managed to take our tests about 100 times.
Now, I think that this professor is going way overboard with the lawsuit, but I wonder if the next step is going to be these students suing my old company by claiming that our copyrighted works were no longer protected because they'd been transmitted over the Internet.
I always liked what John Adams had to say about that. He pointed out that the concept of "innocent until proven guilty" is based on the concept that, if an innocent man is determined incorrectly to be guilty, he then has no incentive keeping him from committing the crime anyway.
Well, you have to admit that the uniforms were pretty cool.
There was a quote in one of Terry Pratchett's books, where they were talking about elves, and how cool they were, even when they're treating humans as their rightful prey. (Think of the Bane Sidhe from the Celtic myths, and you'll see what I mean.)
The quote, though, was how mice don't have the same situation with cats. "Mice don't go around saying, 'OK, say what you like about cats, but you have to admit they've got style!'"
Now, the poster was clearly speaking in jest, but there are situations where some people overlook how utterly wrong something is, because they fixate upon the appearance, and that, although they have power over us beyond our wildest nightmares, at least these people look good.
To paraphrase Senator Leia Organa, "The more they tighten their grip, the more servers will slip through their fingers."
One of the things I have seen about the Church of Scientology, from postings on alt.religion.scientology and other areas, is that, no matter how things turn out, they cannot believe that their "tech" won't work. (Part of that is because changing any of the "tech" is considered a crime against the church, called "squirreling".) Therefore, members will be assigned to keep either churning out "cease-and-desist" letters to any ISP that might be hosting a Wikileaks server, or will be posting information to try to drown out the information there.
But even if it doesn't work, they keep doing the same old things, in the same old way - because their religion tells them that it must work.
So, it sounds as though the state legislature is trying to pass a law that says that if a teacher personally disagrees with evolution, then they can refuse to teach it.
Is the next step going to be that if I hold a strong religious and ethical belief about the speed limit, I'm not bound by it?
"...let us wear upon our sleeves the crepe of mourning for a civilization that had the promise of joy..."
I have come to the conclusion that no matter how sophisticated the sorting and boarding system is that an airline develops, it won't stand up to the first 10 people who board who have "special needs." It's not that these get abused - it's just that it takes time for the people with the toddler strollers, the wheelchairs, and the unaccompanied minors to get situated.
In all of the flights I've been on myself, I have yet to have been delayed by someone sitting in first class waiting to make an entrance. My wife and I, on the other hand, have had to slow things down for everyone else by getting kids placed, getting the diaper bag last into the carry-on stowage (we were more likely to need a clean diaper than a book), and so forth.
So, I confess. We're part of the vast conspiracy to force the airlines into bankruptcy by having the temerity to bring children on our flights.
I do apologize for that, but that was how I heard it used in an interview with someone who had been asked about the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. When someone suggested that the intelligence reports were wrong, the interviewee said that the information was "counter-factual."
It wasn't until later that I found out the person was, to use Abe Lincoln's phrase, "calling a tail a leg."
(By the bye, the original quote was from Barry Goldwater.)
How, then, do you explain the 13th Amendment? Anti-lynching laws? The various Voting Rights acts? Or the end of apartheid?
You see, I disagree with you on the priniciple that "morality" == "incapable of being legislated". A purely pragmatic approach to civil rights would have been to only grant them to people who supported whichever party was already in power... an unlikely proposition unless the party in power was in enough trouble that bringing in an influx of new voters could provide enough new support to hold off the disaffected.
However, that wasn't what happened in the above cases. The idea of giving a voice to those whose voices had been semi-forcibly quieted by poll taxes, stupid "literacy tests", and what not was taken as more of a moral crusade, a "treat these people fairly" approach. And it worked.
Now, as far as cyberbullying goes, I agree with you that more laws are not the answer. It's tempting to try to develop some as a reaction to the tragedy, but laws crafted in haste are usually fraught with unintended consequences, and I hope that various legislatures will stop and think before trying to apply some "zero-tolerance" policy that turns into a "zero-intelligence" policy.
Unfortunately, their track record has been none too good as far as applying the brakes during an election year.
Paedophilia is wrong, and those who practice it should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
I wouldn't dream of arguing. Criminal behavior requires punishment as a form of "dis-incentive" for repetition.
My biggest concern is when people decide that the fullest extent of the law isn't enough. Put them in jail for 10 years, fine. Make psychiatric counseling mandatory, even better - let's try curing the problem instead of just fighting it. All of these things are put into law.
It's when you have people who decide to use the fear of paedophiles as a tool that I start getting upset. You have towns who "one-up" each other as to where they refuse to allow people convicted of sex crimes to live, to the point where a small under-a-bridge homeless community developed for convicted sex criminal. (Florida state police worked last week on breaking up the community.)
Some more cynical types might see convicted sex offenders as a sort of "human guinea pig" when it comes to depriving them of various civil rights. We've seen situations where they've been put under 24/7 surveillance even after their sentence is up, we've had situations where vigilantes who saw their name on a registry site have paid them visits with shotguns, and we've seen cases where they've been told to leave hurricane shelters because of standing injunctions requiring them to stay a certain distance away from children. These people are handy to authoritarian figures, because it lets them work out the bugs on their surveillance systems / public registries / shelter admittance listings without actually endangering anyone the rest of the general public are concerned about...
P.S. I can already hear some of the people now, saying, "Well, how would you feel if it were your 12-year-old daughter who was abused?" I'd have to say that I'd feel like it sucked... and I'd also have to ask when the law really was based on how I felt.
Which is probably why it is attractive to some people: They don't want to think.
That was probably one of the most vicious verbal left hooks that I've ever seen thrown in a bare-knuckle debate.
IMHO, the boxing analogy is reasonably apt - when it comes down to it, you have two people who are trying to beat the living daylights out of each other, which is not the most civilized thing in the world... but when someone lands that huge shot out of nowhere, civilization goes right out the window, and you find that you gotta stand up and cheer.
Unfortunately, most third world kids don't speak the main language of the net, and won't have much use for what's currently on it. Actually, that's probably a good thing...
The whole point of being a student is to not have much use for the status quo, and to have a desire to expand upon it.
Henry Ford (I think) said that if you'd asked American consumers in the 1900's what they'd wanted, they'd have answered, "A faster horse." For whatever faults they had, he and his contemporaries were dissatisfied with the status quo then.
Perhaps with the OLPC product, we can have a new generation of people from a previously un-heard-from part of the world, asking questions like, "Do we really need this? What if we try...?" The Nigerian government would be well-advised to consider this.
However, since our choices are limited to list A of sycophants or list B of sycophants, I'm thinking the college kids have over-valued the vote.
You know, when I read things like this, I heave a sigh.
In the 1960's, there was a show called Room 222, which was a basic B-flat weekly drama about life in a high school. In one of the episodes about an upcoming election, one of the students gripes, "Election Day... every man picks his poison." When asked the reason for his bile, he responds, "There's nobody good running for office!"
The problem with this kind of thinking is that the decision as to "good" usually isn't made until the person is dead, and the historians get a chance to squabble over the bones. So we get "Lincoln, the Great Emancipator" as opposed to "Lincoln, the man who lost us our factory jobs to those freed slaves", or "Lincoln, the man who suspended the right of habeas corpus".
What we read of the "great leaders" is often a case of a liberal use (here meaning "lots of it", not "mad at a conservative") of rationalization, selective memory, and whitewash. Which doesn't necessarily detract from what they did... but does affect our expectations of the person for the job.
Above all, the whole thing of "there's nobody worth voting for, so why bother" strikes me as a defeatist attitude that might look cool and even be good for laughs, but doesn't help the matter any.
Slashdot Mirror
This is only the beginning, citizens. Every election year, someone proposes this kind of lame idea, hoping that they'll be seen "stalwart defenders of public decency taking a stand against the evils of the Internet" instead of "idiots proposing stupid solutions to minor nuisances in an attempt to garner votes."
Last year, it was then-presidential-contender Senator Brownback of Kansas who was re-proposing the "Truth in Ratings" act, (although I'm sure that it was in NO way related to his "more-family-values-oriented-than-thou" appeal.)
This isn't entirely on-topic, but there are cases where college materials can be protected by copyright law.
Tests done for schools (law boards, EIT (engineer-in-training) tests, medical and nursing assessments, and so forth) are often done by companies that hold copyright on their materials... to the point that, when I took my EIT, I had to turn in all of my notes and scratch paper along with the bubble sheet. At the time, I thought it was silly.
Then, later, I got a job working for a company that provides online tests (along with the old paper-and-pencil ones) for a limited variety of schools. One of the things I had to do was write code that disabled the right-click button so that the students couldn't just do a copy-and-paste of the content and provide it to all of their classmattes. The company had invested a considerable sum to develop the tests, and didn't want people either copying the questions for study or for less-than-scrupulous professors getting ready-made exam material.
When we licensed the schools to use our tests, part of the agreement was that they would also act to protect our investment, and there were a few students who were drop-kicked from their classes when we found that, due to a careless professor's scheduling, they had managed to take our tests about 100 times.
Now, I think that this professor is going way overboard with the lawsuit, but I wonder if the next step is going to be these students suing my old company by claiming that our copyrighted works were no longer protected because they'd been transmitted over the Internet.
I always liked what John Adams had to say about that. He pointed out that the concept of "innocent until proven guilty" is based on the concept that, if an innocent man is determined incorrectly to be guilty, he then has no incentive keeping him from committing the crime anyway.
There was a quote in one of Terry Pratchett's books, where they were talking about elves, and how cool they were, even when they're treating humans as their rightful prey. (Think of the Bane Sidhe from the Celtic myths, and you'll see what I mean.)
The quote, though, was how mice don't have the same situation with cats. "Mice don't go around saying, 'OK, say what you like about cats, but you have to admit they've got style!'"
Now, the poster was clearly speaking in jest, but there are situations where some people overlook how utterly wrong something is, because they fixate upon the appearance, and that, although they have power over us beyond our wildest nightmares, at least these people look good.
...causing hot grits to be poured down the pants of Natalie Portman.
(Or am I about seven years too late to post that?)
Can't say I blame you. Until November of 2005, Amway was outlawed as a cult group in the People's Republic of China.
To paraphrase Senator Leia Organa, "The more they tighten their grip, the more servers will slip through their fingers."
One of the things I have seen about the Church of Scientology, from postings on alt.religion.scientology and other areas, is that, no matter how things turn out, they cannot believe that their "tech" won't work. (Part of that is because changing any of the "tech" is considered a crime against the church, called "squirreling".) Therefore, members will be assigned to keep either churning out "cease-and-desist" letters to any ISP that might be hosting a Wikileaks server, or will be posting information to try to drown out the information there.
But even if it doesn't work, they keep doing the same old things, in the same old way - because their religion tells them that it must work.
Unless, of course it turns out that they actually HAVE become a Federal agency while nobody was looking...
So, it sounds as though the state legislature is trying to pass a law that says that if a teacher personally disagrees with evolution, then they can refuse to teach it.
Is the next step going to be that if I hold a strong religious and ethical belief about the speed limit, I'm not bound by it?
"...let us wear upon our sleeves the crepe of mourning for a civilization that had the promise of joy..."
I have come to the conclusion that no matter how sophisticated the sorting and boarding system is that an airline develops, it won't stand up to the first 10 people who board who have "special needs." It's not that these get abused - it's just that it takes time for the people with the toddler strollers, the wheelchairs, and the unaccompanied minors to get situated.
In all of the flights I've been on myself, I have yet to have been delayed by someone sitting in first class waiting to make an entrance. My wife and I, on the other hand, have had to slow things down for everyone else by getting kids placed, getting the diaper bag last into the carry-on stowage (we were more likely to need a clean diaper than a book), and so forth.
So, I confess. We're part of the vast conspiracy to force the airlines into bankruptcy by having the temerity to bring children on our flights.
I do apologize for that, but that was how I heard it used in an interview with someone who had been asked about the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. When someone suggested that the intelligence reports were wrong, the interviewee said that the information was "counter-factual."
It wasn't until later that I found out the person was, to use Abe Lincoln's phrase, "calling a tail a leg."
"I dislike the term 'lie, I prefer calling it 'counter-factual'."
(By the bye, the original quote was from Barry Goldwater.)
How, then, do you explain the 13th Amendment? Anti-lynching laws? The various Voting Rights acts? Or the end of apartheid?
You see, I disagree with you on the priniciple that "morality" == "incapable of being legislated". A purely pragmatic approach to civil rights would have been to only grant them to people who supported whichever party was already in power... an unlikely proposition unless the party in power was in enough trouble that bringing in an influx of new voters could provide enough new support to hold off the disaffected.
However, that wasn't what happened in the above cases. The idea of giving a voice to those whose voices had been semi-forcibly quieted by poll taxes, stupid "literacy tests", and what not was taken as more of a moral crusade, a "treat these people fairly" approach. And it worked.
Now, as far as cyberbullying goes, I agree with you that more laws are not the answer. It's tempting to try to develop some as a reaction to the tragedy, but laws crafted in haste are usually fraught with unintended consequences, and I hope that various legislatures will stop and think before trying to apply some "zero-tolerance" policy that turns into a "zero-intelligence" policy.
Unfortunately, their track record has been none too good as far as applying the brakes during an election year.
This is just in keeping with something my dad taught me many years ago:
A fool and your money are soon partners.
I wouldn't dream of arguing. Criminal behavior requires punishment as a form of "dis-incentive" for repetition.
My biggest concern is when people decide that the fullest extent of the law isn't enough. Put them in jail for 10 years, fine. Make psychiatric counseling mandatory, even better - let's try curing the problem instead of just fighting it. All of these things are put into law.
It's when you have people who decide to use the fear of paedophiles as a tool that I start getting upset. You have towns who "one-up" each other as to where they refuse to allow people convicted of sex crimes to live, to the point where a small under-a-bridge homeless community developed for convicted sex criminal. (Florida state police worked last week on breaking up the community.)
Some more cynical types might see convicted sex offenders as a sort of "human guinea pig" when it comes to depriving them of various civil rights. We've seen situations where they've been put under 24/7 surveillance even after their sentence is up, we've had situations where vigilantes who saw their name on a registry site have paid them visits with shotguns, and we've seen cases where they've been told to leave hurricane shelters because of standing injunctions requiring them to stay a certain distance away from children. These people are handy to authoritarian figures, because it lets them work out the bugs on their surveillance systems / public registries / shelter admittance listings without actually endangering anyone the rest of the general public are concerned about...
P.S. I can already hear some of the people now, saying, "Well, how would you feel if it were your 12-year-old daughter who was abused?" I'd have to say that I'd feel like it sucked... and I'd also have to ask when the law really was based on how I felt.
Kipling also described it nicely here.
...And I'm proud to be an American,
Where at least I know I'm free
As long as I follow the party line
And carry my ID...
(With apologies to Mr. Greenwood)
I tried it, and it did such a thorough job of stripping down my system that my wallpaper of Pamela Anderson was replaced with a skeleton.
Would that make Edmonds a "pun"dit?
That was probably one of the most vicious verbal left hooks that I've ever seen thrown in a bare-knuckle debate.
IMHO, the boxing analogy is reasonably apt - when it comes down to it, you have two people who are trying to beat the living daylights out of each other, which is not the most civilized thing in the world... but when someone lands that huge shot out of nowhere, civilization goes right out the window, and you find that you gotta stand up and cheer.
Slashdot Newbie: You did not actually read the article? This is madness!
Old-school Slashdotter: This... is... SLASHDOT! [kicks Newbie into Pit of Death]
concerning query of subject
archives suggest subject had unstable tendency to avoid performing work for the state by citing "fear of driving."
subject declared unperson for thoughtcrime: avoiding proper identification.
Big Brother is watching us. Long live Big Brother!
The whole point of being a student is to not have much use for the status quo, and to have a desire to expand upon it.
Henry Ford (I think) said that if you'd asked American consumers in the 1900's what they'd wanted, they'd have answered, "A faster horse." For whatever faults they had, he and his contemporaries were dissatisfied with the status quo then.
Perhaps with the OLPC product, we can have a new generation of people from a previously un-heard-from part of the world, asking questions like, "Do we really need this? What if we try...?" The Nigerian government would be well-advised to consider this.
You know, when I read things like this, I heave a sigh.
In the 1960's, there was a show called Room 222, which was a basic B-flat weekly drama about life in a high school. In one of the episodes about an upcoming election, one of the students gripes, "Election Day... every man picks his poison." When asked the reason for his bile, he responds, "There's nobody good running for office!"
The problem with this kind of thinking is that the decision as to "good" usually isn't made until the person is dead, and the historians get a chance to squabble over the bones. So we get "Lincoln, the Great Emancipator" as opposed to "Lincoln, the man who lost us our factory jobs to those freed slaves", or "Lincoln, the man who suspended the right of habeas corpus".
What we read of the "great leaders" is often a case of a liberal use (here meaning "lots of it", not "mad at a conservative") of rationalization, selective memory, and whitewash. Which doesn't necessarily detract from what they did... but does affect our expectations of the person for the job.
Above all, the whole thing of "there's nobody worth voting for, so why bother" strikes me as a defeatist attitude that might look cool and even be good for laughs, but doesn't help the matter any.
Here's your 0-2i dollars change (All I did was rotate the money 90 degrees)