I'll reword that to be more appropriate for our day and age:
I see where you are going and in principal I agree. The problem is the consequences of religion and other unspeakably inappropriate religious behavior generally play out over a lifetime and _generally_ speaking lead to more inappropriate religious behavior at an early age to more children.
It very quickly turns into a "grand scale" social problem due to geometric growth of inappropriate behavior.
Again, I generally agree with the principal of what you are saying, but it's very important to point out the deeply corrosive effect inappropriate religious anything has in a society.
There you go... Other Slashdot users can fill in the bold areas with their own moral hangups.
For the sake of argument, let's stay away from "all immorality is of the same level," as that sidetracks the debate. You are simplifying the issue(s). It's more a question of weighting moral issues. Something which can never be done without any biases. Of course most people would like to portray the (anonymity) issues here as being pro-rape/pro-murder etc (moral issues), but that is just a side-track to the real issue: true and unencumbered anonymity. With true anonymity nobody gets to decide what information is moral or immoral; not China, not the US State department, not the Moral Majority, not Imam's of a Mosque, nor the patriarch of a Western Anglo Saxon family.
Yes I'm sure all of these people (including the US government) wants anonymity, but the catch is they want anonymity for themselves and not for other people. So there it goes. You can't have your cake and eat it too.
You know, I never thought about it before... but why is it necessary to compare "rape" and "murder" and decide which of the two are worse? The point being that there are no crimes against posting pictures of murder, but their are crimes against posting pictures of (even) consensual sex between two minors or of a minor and an "adult". That's the thing; our laws are perverted.
Have you actually seen Freenet? The only purpose it's pretty much used for is the exchange of the worst crimes of humanity. When it's actually proven to be used for a legitimate purpose that needs anonymity, then you can criticize people's perception of it. Of course if people only used Freenet for "legitimate" purposes then their would be no need for Freenet. That's pretty much the point. If you are living in an age where people (and more importantly governments and their enforcement agencies) think that free and uncensored information is "the worst crimes of humanity" then Freenet is important. Yes this age existed long before the Internet (think Galileo or Copernicus and their radical ideas), or think to the present. The same types of people who wanted to block radical and blasphemous thoughts and ideas 500 years ago are the same types of people who are against Freenet. The dissemination of information (in binary form or otherwise) is not in itself inherently harmful. Of course one could always argue about the marginal effects of 'blasphemous', 'immoral', or 'anti-social' binary information being made available; but any information that you don't like to perceive is far better to be brought out into the open than to have people be punished for thought crimes.
Sure... If you pay 30 dollars a month for unlimited bandwidth (as I do; at 5 mb/sec), then I can understand rationing or charging extra at 250 GB downloads per month. This is not what Comcast is talking about. This is NOWHERE near what Comcast is talking about.
You are a late poster and you obviously haven't read my previous posts. It's important so I will restate it:
That's more than a dollar per Gigabyte usage for the cheapest plan. Between $6.00 and $1.37 per Gigabyte depending on your plan (without going over any bandwidth limits). All in all the $1.50 penalty for bandwidth over-usage falls into line with the regular plans they will be offering. One could assume that bandwidth usage includes both uploads and downloads, so for people who use something like bittorent a lot, you can divide by two (ceteris paribus) and get the average 'cost' of a download. - Ref: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=546978&cid=23338068
I laughed my ass off at that, seriously. You have made my day. Cute, but I think you take it for granted that most people are damn stupid. I will elaborate:
Most people don't have 'an idea' (are completely ignorant) of most computer/Internet related political issues, much less more common (and less computer related issues) like copyrights, trademarks, alternative (non-Windows) operating systems etc. The Slashdot community may not necessarily be "smart", but at least they are informed. So "Slashdot-smart" I will take with a grain of context.
What if more channels at a lower quality is what the consumer wants? That's fine and dandy (not for me of course). Just don't call it (or market it as the government et al does) as "HD" TV. If the owners of the resources want to make more money by just offering more channels than they could with the same amount of bandwidth then they should be taxed and charged licensing fees for these extra channels (to the extent that offering HD tv and more channels will not give these companies an economic advantage). The point being that 'better' technology should actually help the consumer more than it does the businesses who offer their resources to the consumer.
I am personally highly skeptical and cynical about the "more channels" issues. "57 channels and nothing on" I experienced in my youth. I don't want redundancy nor do I think the average consumer wants even more channels at lower quality and higher prices. Watching re-runs (or making money off of the draconian copy-right laws via commercials and watermarks) is not an option for me. I'd rather have an antenna (Flinstones style... bah, I'm aging myself) and get good quality local TV channels for 'free' rather than pay the owners of these regulated resources money to watch low quality (content and resolution-wise) television. Yep this is a 'bitch' for me. I don't think most consumers who really thought about it would disagree with me. But most consumers aren't educated, and most consumers (I would think) are in the (traditional) 18 to 35 age range (something I recently passed... boohoo, I cry real non-robotic tears) so perhaps they are getting 'educated' (or conditioned) to believe that low quality is good quality (or at least good-enough-for-me quality). I hope not, but children these days have little respect (for quality).
I'm skeptical the typical viewer cares about quality above the minimum threshold of a poorly encoded dvd. Fair enough, but if a person buys an HD capable TV then I would think that the consumer wants HD quality TV. In the near future of course, the consumer will not have a choice.
You're joking right? On one hand you have Comcast spending millions on ad campaigns touting that "Our network is already ON fiber optics!" and "Who says Comcast is faster? Oh, right, the facts." and on the other hand they are bitching that their archaic network infrastructure can't handle p2p traffic. Nope, I think they are bitching that their archaic profit margins/profit growth estimates can't handle p2p traffic.
Pay us 120 bucks a month for your cable and we'll give you ultra compressed, grainy "HD" channels As for the "HD" channels, there should have been laws in place not to allow the splitting or sharing of "HD" channel space (by degrading the signal to allow more channels per bandwidth). This I can predict will mean more low quality and low resolution channels (with nothing on) while the service providers get more bang for the buck. It's a lowest-common-denominator system the way the "HD" infrastructure is being setup. The consumer will lose in the end. And with my personal bitch; those watermark advertisements that people pay the cable companies to watch during their favourite TV shows and movies. And, one last point, in the beginning one could record TV shows, with "HD" and encryption this will likely be a thing of the past. TV is getting worse, not better; there is not 'progress' in television, just better business opportunities.
thats over 350 tv episodes bittorrented (assuming you share at least 1:1) or thats over $9,000,000 in fines to the MAFIAA (at their current discount rate of $30k per item) Wouldn't it be easier and cheaper to just buy a television set?
It's AMOUNT they're charging for going over the limit. $1.50 per gigabyte over the limit is completely unreasonable. But the general pricing plans (without going over any bandwidth limits) may seem a bit steep also:
The trial in Beaumont, Texas, will offer five-, 10-, 20-, or 40-gigabyte plans to new customers priced tentatively from $29.95 to $54.95 a month. (Ref: http://news.wired.com/dynamic/stories/C/COMCAST_INTERNET_CAP?SITE=WIRE&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2008-05-07-17-42-22)
That's more than a dollar per Gigabyte usage for the cheapest plan. Between $6.00 and $1.37 per Gigabyte depending on your plan (without going over any bandwidth limits). All in all the $1.50 penalty for bandwidth over-usage falls into line with the regular plans they will be offering. One could assume that bandwidth usage includes both uploads and downloads, so for people who use something like bittorent a lot, you can divide by two (ceteris paribus) and get the average 'cost' of a download.
Everybody who posts in Slashdot and complains about Slashdot seems to be a regular reader of Slashdot (and yes a poster and complainer about Slashdot).
Well if you don't like it here... Time better spent elsewhere.
It's ironic. As of this point in space-time the GP does have an Insightful moderation. It is also ironic that I very often get Insightful ratings (and appropriately IMHO) even though I don't (and never did) consider myself (very) knowledgeable and intelligent. It's a matter of degree.
I have always found that there is so much to know (on any one topic, much less IT itself which is a HUGE matter which most amateurs and 'civilians' take for granted). I have for example spent lots of time and money formally studying 'IT' and everyday I am still learning something knew. I don't consider myself an expert and will never claim to be (on Slashdot or on my resumes). Claiming to be "knowledgeable and intelligent" is (to me) arrogance. As I've stated, it is a matter of degree and perspective.
Hahaha. I suppose there is some amount of truth in that statement (and I take it to be more sarcastic than a real opinion [Hint to the mods not to Troll-label your post]). It really does depend on what you mean by "typical" though. It seems like most registered Slashdotters don't post (or at least not often), so it would be hard to make an accurate claim. There are some here that post quite frequently (almost daily), and those people seem to have intelligence (even if I disagree with their opinions), or at least enough intelligence to realize that they can avoid posting obviously stupid things and get away with it without being at -1 Karma. So I would argue that the regular poster are more intelligent than your average human (they have learned how to argue and communicate with a more educated and yes at times hostile crowd). I know I have increased my communication skills since I was here.
You took my comment. Now I can't say that without being labeled Redundant. Although it would make sense for the Hollywood types to choose somebody from the Slashdot crowd. From Wikipedia:
The series revolved around Angus MacGyver (known to his friends as MacGyver or "Mac") who favors brain over brawn in order to solve desperate problems. So yes choosing somebody from the Slashdot crowd would be appropriate. No real acting necessary if they want realism.
I think that requiring the president himself to okay the exceptions is a good way to keep them in check. Having a one man voting machine over-rule exceptions is not a check, it is an affront to democracy.
Anyway, this actually seems to be a good law. Has Hell frozen over ? Nope not really. It's just another hypocrisy law. It won't fly; the US has too many economic interests in China to pass any type of 'Human Rights' type legislation. China is not Cuba after all .
There is of course the "except for" provision (as was mentioned in the article). If you want to stop censorship you should first start in your own (Westernized) country(s). I'm thinking about book bannings, 'hate' laws, and 'pornography' laws which seem to be common place, amongst others. Of course if there is an "except for" provision it only means that you want freedom of thought for everything "except for" those things that you disagree with. This is where the hypocrisy comes in. It's a worthless and toothless law (just because of the "except for" provision). If law makers would be honest they would say that they whole heartedly support censorship except for their own moral, personal and political beliefs. It's much the same as the US stating that they would except international war crimes tribunals only if they were exempt from such tribunals (ref [et al]: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/jun/12/warcrimes.iantraynor). The US and its hypocrisy is the laughing stock of the world. Unless they can 'talk the talk, and walk the walk' then they should shut the fuck up.
The hate and pornography aspect covers just about everything (I remember Kodak saying they destroyed a lot of film sent to their labs by soldiers during the Vietnam war because they considered killing to be 'pornography'). So while US politicians often get elected for the tough stance on 'crime', they think other countries who get tough on 'crime' is bad. Stupid is as stupid does someone once said.
From the article:
the Act would require companies to disclose to the newly-created Office of Global Internet Freedom the terms that they do filter, and for the Office to continually monitor these filtered terms. If this was an anti-censorship law then any countries or companies providing filters should be punished. This does not seem to be the case. Filters are OK as long as the US agrees with what is being filtered. More specifically, the US wants Chinese pro-democracy (one could assume pro-US policy) information to be freely available, and more specifically they want anti-'pro-US policy' filters made illegal. Good luck:)
From the article:
"legitimate law enforcement" is extremely vague, and is left up to the US Department of Justice to decided on a case-by-case basis. So in other words, if you are Arabic or there-abouts (I'm using cynical language here) the US would not mind for 'legitimate law enforcement' to do its thing with people the US doesn't like.
Oh, and I just finished reading the end-game of the article:
Secondly, you guessed it--the bill has a convenient exit plan for anyone who tries to apply its rules to the United States. Yep, I'm typing as I read and learning NOTHING knew. Same old same old. Pathetic.
The idea being that people should not use their mod points to forward their own political agendas. If something is off topic, irrelevant, or blatantly biased (with the prerequisite logical fallacies and propaganda) then these posts should be modded appropriately (which in most cases, in the long run, seems to happen).
In the aforementioned post the argument was given (or implied) that sex equates to murder, and more specifically that pedophiles are murderers. This is very obviously not true.
Very nice. I did comment on that post (people can look for themselves for my nick). That post was a Troll and used logical fallacies. I'd hate to emphasize it, but there is a distinction between sex and violence. And their is a distinction between pedophilia and rape. Call me what you will; I prefer Logic over mod points.
Yeah... Personally I don't see a problem with "Red light camera's" where I live. Using camera's to spot (serious) traffic violations is to me a good thing. It's a sad reality to where I live.
The problem with the UK is that camera's are everywhere and they are used to monitor everything. Yes, I admit to myself that I may very well be hypocritical in my statements (I personally don't want to be monitored, but I want bad people to be caught). There-in lies the contradiction.
One must always try to solve the root of the problem (why people are running red lights) as opposed to attempting to treat the symptoms. Unfortunately there are always political implications (if most red-light runners are 'visible minorities' for example, then this is a [IMHO an inappropriate] trump for 'racial' discrimination.)
It's not so bad that they ask. What's worse is our representatives usually give them what they want. Or when they take what they want illegally our representatives don't do anything about it. I blame Congress as much as anyone for our constitutional crisis. Haha. That reminds me when I was a kid and I'd argue about politics with my family and relatives. There retort was usually something like "If you don't like it here then move to Russia."
That reminds me, I once had a (few) interviews with an "off shore" (and a rather large multi-billion dollar) bank (I never got the job, but it came damn close). They never marketed themselves as an "offshore" bank, but the more questions I asked during the interviews it became apparent. One question I asked about the bank's history is that they evolved from various European banks and financial industries during the Nazi era to elude government (Nazi) interference. To this day this bank (and I'm sure many others) are still active in keeping the flow of cash moving. When it all comes down to the bottom line money talks. History and more specifically economics will show that creating artificial barriers to commerce (however illegal that commerce may be) will never work.
Wireless mesh is the only way I know how. Even Tor and Freenet can't really be trusted. Oh yes they can be trusted. It depends on how they are used, the educated assumptions behind their use, and ultimately how trustworthy are they really and how fanatical and omnipotent are those adversaries.
Security (and in this case privacy) is only as good as the weakest link (which is almost always the people using these products). So for example, if you are a terrorist (or a democracy activist) wanting to use these anonymous resources to meet up with people in person, then you've pretty much blown your privacy.
Also, I don't see any reason why you couldn't use these technologies on a private (or semi-private) wireless mesh network. I can't see wireless mesh being in itself more secure than using something like Tor. It depends on how it's setup I suppose.
Slashdot Mirror
There you go... Other Slashdot users can fill in the bold areas with their own moral hangups.
Yes I'm sure all of these people (including the US government) wants anonymity, but the catch is they want anonymity for themselves and not for other people. So there it goes. You can't have your cake and eat it too.
You are a late poster and you obviously haven't read my previous posts. It's important so I will restate it: That's more than a dollar per Gigabyte usage for the cheapest plan. Between $6.00 and $1.37 per Gigabyte depending on your plan (without going over any bandwidth limits). All in all the $1.50 penalty for bandwidth over-usage falls into line with the regular plans they will be offering. One could assume that bandwidth usage includes both uploads and downloads, so for people who use something like bittorent a lot, you can divide by two (ceteris paribus) and get the average 'cost' of a download. - Ref: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=546978&cid=23338068
I laughed my ass off at that, seriously. You have made my day. Cute, but I think you take it for granted that most people are damn stupid. I will elaborate:
Most people don't have 'an idea' (are completely ignorant) of most computer/Internet related political issues, much less more common (and less computer related issues) like copyrights, trademarks, alternative (non-Windows) operating systems etc. The Slashdot community may not necessarily be "smart", but at least they are informed. So "Slashdot-smart" I will take with a grain of context.
I am personally highly skeptical and cynical about the "more channels" issues. "57 channels and nothing on" I experienced in my youth. I don't want redundancy nor do I think the average consumer wants even more channels at lower quality and higher prices. Watching re-runs (or making money off of the draconian copy-right laws via commercials and watermarks) is not an option for me. I'd rather have an antenna (Flinstones style... bah, I'm aging myself) and get good quality local TV channels for 'free' rather than pay the owners of these regulated resources money to watch low quality (content and resolution-wise) television. Yep this is a 'bitch' for me. I don't think most consumers who really thought about it would disagree with me. But most consumers aren't educated, and most consumers (I would think) are in the (traditional) 18 to 35 age range (something I recently passed... boohoo, I cry real non-robotic tears) so perhaps they are getting 'educated' (or conditioned) to believe that low quality is good quality (or at least good-enough-for-me quality). I hope not, but children these days have little respect (for quality). I'm skeptical the typical viewer cares about quality above the minimum threshold of a poorly encoded dvd. Fair enough, but if a person buys an HD capable TV then I would think that the consumer wants HD quality TV. In the near future of course, the consumer will not have a choice.
thats over 350 tv episodes bittorrented (assuming you share at least 1:1)
or
thats over $9,000,000 in fines to the MAFIAA (at their current discount rate of $30k per item) Wouldn't it be easier and cheaper to just buy a television set?
That's more than a dollar per Gigabyte usage for the cheapest plan. Between $6.00 and $1.37 per Gigabyte depending on your plan (without going over any bandwidth limits). All in all the $1.50 penalty for bandwidth over-usage falls into line with the regular plans they will be offering. One could assume that bandwidth usage includes both uploads and downloads, so for people who use something like bittorent a lot, you can divide by two (ceteris paribus) and get the average 'cost' of a download.
So some Slashdot moderator with a callous sense of humour rated my post redundant. Go figure!
In some ways I like the perverse sense of humour, in other ways I hope the meta-moderators damn you to oblivion.
Everybody who posts in Slashdot and complains about Slashdot seems to be a regular reader of Slashdot (and yes a poster and complainer about Slashdot).
Well if you don't like it here...
Time better spent elsewhere.
It's ironic. As of this point in space-time the GP does have an Insightful moderation. It is also ironic that I very often get Insightful ratings (and appropriately IMHO) even though I don't (and never did) consider myself (very) knowledgeable and intelligent. It's a matter of degree.
I have always found that there is so much to know (on any one topic, much less IT itself which is a HUGE matter which most amateurs and 'civilians' take for granted). I have for example spent lots of time and money formally studying 'IT' and everyday I am still learning something knew. I don't consider myself an expert and will never claim to be (on Slashdot or on my resumes). Claiming to be "knowledgeable and intelligent" is (to me) arrogance. As I've stated, it is a matter of degree and perspective.
Hahaha. I suppose there is some amount of truth in that statement (and I take it to be more sarcastic than a real opinion [Hint to the mods not to Troll-label your post]). It really does depend on what you mean by "typical" though. It seems like most registered Slashdotters don't post (or at least not often), so it would be hard to make an accurate claim. There are some here that post quite frequently (almost daily), and those people seem to have intelligence (even if I disagree with their opinions), or at least enough intelligence to realize that they can avoid posting obviously stupid things and get away with it without being at -1 Karma. So I would argue that the regular poster are more intelligent than your average human (they have learned how to argue and communicate with a more educated and yes at times hostile crowd). I know I have increased my communication skills since I was here.
Best regards,
UTW
There is of course the "except for" provision (as was mentioned in the article). If you want to stop censorship you should first start in your own (Westernized) country(s). I'm thinking about book bannings, 'hate' laws, and 'pornography' laws which seem to be common place, amongst others. Of course if there is an "except for" provision it only means that you want freedom of thought for everything "except for" those things that you disagree with. This is where the hypocrisy comes in. It's a worthless and toothless law (just because of the "except for" provision). If law makers would be honest they would say that they whole heartedly support censorship except for their own moral, personal and political beliefs. It's much the same as the US stating that they would except international war crimes tribunals only if they were exempt from such tribunals (ref [et al]: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/jun/12/warcrimes.iantraynor). The US and its hypocrisy is the laughing stock of the world. Unless they can 'talk the talk, and walk the walk' then they should shut the fuck up.
The hate and pornography aspect covers just about everything (I remember Kodak saying they destroyed a lot of film sent to their labs by soldiers during the Vietnam war because they considered killing to be 'pornography'). So while US politicians often get elected for the tough stance on 'crime', they think other countries who get tough on 'crime' is bad. Stupid is as stupid does someone once said.
From the article: the Act would require companies to disclose to the newly-created Office of Global Internet Freedom the terms that they do filter, and for the Office to continually monitor these filtered terms. If this was an anti-censorship law then any countries or companies providing filters should be punished. This does not seem to be the case. Filters are OK as long as the US agrees with what is being filtered. More specifically, the US wants Chinese pro-democracy (one could assume pro-US policy) information to be freely available, and more specifically they want anti-'pro-US policy' filters made illegal. Good luck
From the article: "legitimate law enforcement" is extremely vague, and is left up to the US Department of Justice to decided on a case-by-case basis. So in other words, if you are Arabic or there-abouts (I'm using cynical language here) the US would not mind for 'legitimate law enforcement' to do its thing with people the US doesn't like.
Oh, and I just finished reading the end-game of the article: Secondly, you guessed it--the bill has a convenient exit plan for anyone who tries to apply its rules to the United States. Yep, I'm typing as I read and learning NOTHING knew. Same old same old. Pathetic.
Thanks for your reply. I wasn't sure what your sentiments were (regarding my arguments), but I did think it pertinent to elaborate in any case.
Best regards,
UTW
The idea being that people should not use their mod points to forward their own political agendas. If something is off topic, irrelevant, or blatantly biased (with the prerequisite logical fallacies and propaganda) then these posts should be modded appropriately (which in most cases, in the long run, seems to happen).
In the aforementioned post the argument was given (or implied) that sex equates to murder, and more specifically that pedophiles are murderers. This is very obviously not true.
Very nice. I did comment on that post (people can look for themselves for my nick). That post was a Troll and used logical fallacies. I'd hate to emphasize it, but there is a distinction between sex and violence. And their is a distinction between pedophilia and rape. Call me what you will; I prefer Logic over mod points.
Yeah... Personally I don't see a problem with "Red light camera's" where I live. Using camera's to spot (serious) traffic violations is to me a good thing. It's a sad reality to where I live.
The problem with the UK is that camera's are everywhere and they are used to monitor everything. Yes, I admit to myself that I may very well be hypocritical in my statements (I personally don't want to be monitored, but I want bad people to be caught). There-in lies the contradiction.
One must always try to solve the root of the problem (why people are running red lights) as opposed to attempting to treat the symptoms. Unfortunately there are always political implications (if most red-light runners are 'visible minorities' for example, then this is a [IMHO an inappropriate] trump for 'racial' discrimination.)
That reminds me, I once had a (few) interviews with an "off shore" (and a rather large multi-billion dollar) bank (I never got the job, but it came damn close). They never marketed themselves as an "offshore" bank, but the more questions I asked during the interviews it became apparent. One question I asked about the bank's history is that they evolved from various European banks and financial industries during the Nazi era to elude government (Nazi) interference. To this day this bank (and I'm sure many others) are still active in keeping the flow of cash moving. When it all comes down to the bottom line money talks. History and more specifically economics will show that creating artificial barriers to commerce (however illegal that commerce may be) will never work.
Security (and in this case privacy) is only as good as the weakest link (which is almost always the people using these products). So for example, if you are a terrorist (or a democracy activist) wanting to use these anonymous resources to meet up with people in person, then you've pretty much blown your privacy.
Also, I don't see any reason why you couldn't use these technologies on a private (or semi-private) wireless mesh network. I can't see wireless mesh being in itself more secure than using something like Tor. It depends on how it's setup I suppose.