Glad to see there's at least one other person in this thread that actually knows what hate speech is.
Many of you are quick to slam Canada in your haste to pen a self-righteous Libertarian screed. Perhaps you should get a clue about what you're attacking before you make yourselves look foolish.
I can assert with equal authority that almost all video games do nothing wrong to children. I've been playing them with my boy over my home network since he was old enough to hold a mouse. We've had a great deal of fun over the years and he hasn't been changed in any way, except he's not scared of monsters and he knows more about computers now than his grandparents ever will.
I wouldn't play something like GTA with him because it introduces questions I can't easily explain, like "why are you kicking the prone policeman until he coughs up his money and weapons?". But simple fighting games like Unreal Tournament, Warcraft III, and Diablo are lots of fun and introduce about as many moral conflicts as playing Space Invaders did for us. That is to say, none at all.
IGN: How much does exposure to violent television affect a developing child? How does this compare with violent videogames?
Richard Gallagher:Viewing television violence has a stronger effect on youth than videogames. The impact of television violence is characterized as moderate to large in the literature. It is nearly twice as large as the effect of videogames, although the effect of videogames is increasing with the increased violent content of those games.
Strange Bedfellows? I thought you were referring to the increasing number of prominent conservatives and conservative organizations which are, to their credit, stepping up and opposing Bush's blatantly illegal actions. Today I even heard that arch-conservative Grover Norquist is piling on, as difficult to believe as that is.
Americans don't want a King George. They had enough trouble getting rid of the last one.
As for your assertion that the ACLU "filed a suit saying that the US Government has no right to pick up and deport illegal aliens", prove it. Show me a link. Because that sure sounds like Limbaugh-esque horseshit to me.
First of all, we're talking about thousands of incidents here, not 36. We won't know the full number until this matter is properly investigated, which won't happen while Bush stooges like Gonzales are covering for him. He acts more like Bush's press secretary than an attorney-general.
Second, FISA allowed Bush to do the warrantless tap and then get approval retroactively, within three days (yes, I know, that's a pretty huge civil liberties violation in itself). Despite this, Bush neglected to do so.
Anyone who had even the most nebulous ties to Al-Queda could have been wiretapped without a warrant legally. Do you imagine any court would have denied Bush this ability? Yet he didn't even try to follow the very explicit law and just completely ignored it.
Now why would he do this? I'll tell you why. Because he was wiretapping domestic opponents for purely personal political gain. He knew those searches would never be approved because they had no merit, and he didn't want the rest of us to know what he was up to.
This should concern you, as should his declarations that he can break the law whenever he feels like it during the duration of this "war on terror", which, in his mind, will last approximately forever.
You might also be concerned over his assertion of "commander-in-chief" powers over the civilian population. That is, if you haven't forgotten every lesson about tyrants your founders taught you.
Most people here don't give a damn about the URL behind the submitter's name. People who make big deals about that usually get marked off-topic anyway. But what I find very concerning is the general lack of quality of the stories submitted lately.
This is one of my favorite sites and has been for years. I'm here every day. But lately my interest in this site is waning. Here are the recent trends in story selection I find most annoying.
Informercials disguised as stories. Particularly those for products which are not innovations in the first place. Most particularly for products which do not yet even exist. It makes me want to scream at your editors to RTFA before they publish it to half a million people. Often the first page of the comments for such stories are filled with +5 comments saying "This should not have been a story because there's nothing interesting or innovative here". You should take that as an indication that your editors screwed up, rather than trying to defend their story choices.
Minor gaming stories that should not be on the front page. There's a gaming section of this site. Minor stories, like interviews with game company staffers no one has heard of, should go there rather than the main page. If you noticed, most of the gaming stories lately have about 20 comments on them, and most of them trolls. This should be an indication to you that your recent practice of promoting gaming press releases over substantial tech stories is not an interest shared by most of your readers.
There seem to be certain subjects which automatically get promoted to front page stories by the editors. For example, anything remotely to do with Star Wars or Blizzard. This has always happened to some degree, partly as a geek culture, tongue-in-cheek type of thing, but lately there's been too much of it. It's noise, not signal.
Look at what's on the top of each page. "News that matters". Lately you've been sliding away from that slogan. And that's the real threat to this site.
Just go to your control panel, load "security center", and then select the "change the way security center alerts me" option in the left column. Deselect all the alert options and you'll never be bothered by this FUD again.
The video on demand sounds like a great invention but I've never seen it before. I live in Canada and I don't think such a thing is offered here yet, at least not in the backwoods area I'm currently in. The channels I get aren't HBO precisely, they're resellers of HBO content.
The only PVR I can get with my service costs $600, which is far more than I'd be willing to spend. The competing service has one for $300 so I'm sure the price will eventually drop sufficiently that everyone has one but so far. But, where I live, that just hasn't happened yet.
I started watching Rome after a friend got an unsolicited DVD from HBO in his mail that had the first episode of Rome. I really liked it and wanted to get into the series, but it's the kind of show where you have to watch the episodes in order. So I had no choice but to download the first five episodes from my commerical usenet feed:)
I did however watch the sixth episode "regularly" on HBO, so I guess their tactic gained them a viewer. Then I immediately downloaded that episode so I could have a complete collection. Next Sunday, I'll probably be on my couch watching the seventh episode as it airs. And then I'll download it, too.
I'm not sure what the moral of this post is. Perhaps that "pirates" and legitimate customers are more closely intertwined than the simplistic among us would like to admit.
First thing I did was look up my favorite series, Battlestar Galactica, and saw that they immediately gave away the surprise ending of the last episode.
The old TV tome would give spoilers too, but there were protected under a "more info" type of link, as I recall, so you wouldn't see them if you were didn't request them.
Other than that, though, it seems to be a useful site. I really missed TV tome after it was utterly butchered by tv.com.
And we all know that safety is the primary concern of all Russian engineering projects, right? They've proven that so many times with their nuclear facilities, submarines, and rocket launches.
I always thought that was one of the critical mistakes Lucas made in the second trilogy. In the first three, there was absolutely no talk of "balance" to the force, the dark side was something to be entirely avoided. Dark emotions like hatred and rage might give you a temporary boost of power, but in the end always corrupted both the results of your actions and your very personality. Take it far enough and this corruption would even change your body.
I think this original conception made more sense dramatically and philosophically. It resonated so much with people that it became akin to a religion to many. Lucas then fucked it up entirely by adding the concept of "balance" and "mitoclorians" and most especially the incredibly cliched "chosen one from prophecy" crap, thereby making the Jedi order just another hackneyed, forgettable, Saturday Morning cartoon group of characters.
I guess the dividing line is between those blogs that allow comments and those that don't. Those with comments can provide far greater fact-checking ability than the mainstream news, assuming, that comments aren't selectively edited or deleted.
How many times have you read a newspaper article or seen a report on TV and wished you could immediately correct something the reporter got completely wrong?
Slashdot is just a blog, after all, and I think issues usually get a more thorough treatment here than you'll ever see from the likes of CNN, Fox, et al. Certainly those who are completely full of shit get called on it.
"Press releases from left-wing groups"...that's funny.
The press has been nothing more than a stenographer for the far right for years now. Consider whitewater, the starr report, the lies about the white house being trashed, the lies about wmd in Iraq, and so on. Try to imagine what the press would be saying if, for example, Bill Clinton had given phoney press credentials and a fake name to a gay prostitute so that said prostitute could derail press conferences with softball questions scripted by the white house. Then consider that this actually happened with Bush and the press has hardly said anything about it.
Sounds to me like you're just parroting Rush Limbaugh and his clones. Keep watching Rush, maybe he'll tell you how to think about Intel chips in Macs, too.
As you'll see, Gore made his first proposal to fund a universal version of the internet in 1986. How many other politicians, people not usually known for being up to date with technology, were pushing the internet in 1986? Were you?
This article puts 1986 (seven years before Mosaic) into perspective:
"That Gore wrote about a national "data highway" as far back as 1986 is extremely significant. It is important to make clear the context of the state of computing at that time. The IBM PC was only four years old. The Apple II computer was still in widespread use. The number of hosts on the Internet numbered, as counted by Mark Lottor's Internet Domain Survey, was 5,089. Entire universities (such as Michigan State University) made their initial connection to the Internet in 1986. In order for Gore to make this kind of speech in 1986, he had to have been conversant with the thinking of computer scientists and Internet pioneers. Such pioneers included such as Vint Cerf, Steven Wolf, and Larry Smarr - then director of the National Center for Supercomputer Applications at the University of Illinois (NCSA), where Mosaic would be born some seven years later."
Speaking of Vinton Cerf, who might be trusted to have an informed opinion on this, this is what he had to say about Gore:
Al Gore was the first political leader to recognize the importance of the Internet and to promote and support its development.
No one person or even small group of persons exclusively "invented" the Internet. It is the result of many years of ongoing collaboration among people in government and the university community. But as the two people who designed the basic architecture and the core protocols that make the Internet work, we would like to acknowledge VP Gore's contributions as a Congressman, Senator and as Vice President. No other elected official, to our knowledge, has made a greater contribution over a longer period of time.
Last year the Vice President made a straightforward statement on his role. He said: "During my service in the United States Congress I took the initiative in creating the Internet." We don't think, as some people have argued, that Gore intended to claim he "invented" the Internet. Moreover, there is no question in our minds that while serving as Senator, Gore's initiatives had a significant and beneficial effect on the still-evolving Internet. The fact of the matter is that Gore was talking about and promoting the Internet long before most people were listening. We feel it is timely to offer our perspective.
As far back as the 1970s Congressman Gore promoted the idea of high speed telecommunications as an engine for both economic growth and the improvement of our educational system. He was the first elected official to grasp the potential of computer communications to have a broader impact than just improving the conduct of science and scholarship. Though easily forgotten, now, at the time this was an unproven and controversial concept. Our work on the Internet started in 1973 and was based on even earlier work that took place in the mid-late 1960s. But the Internet, as we know it today, was not deployed until 1983. When the Internet was still in the early stages of its deployment, Congressman Gore provided intellectual leadership by helping create the vision of the potential benefits of high speed computing and communication. As an example, he sponsored hearings on how advanced technologies might be put to use in areas like coordinating the response of government agencies to natural disasters and other crises.
As a Senator in the 1980s Gore urged government agencies to consolidate what at the time were several dozen different and unconnected networks into
The US Commission on Civil Rights found massive evidence of voter disenfranchisement. They recommended immediate litigation by the Attorney General's office, a recommendation that was, of course, ignored.
The NORC recount by the media organizations showed that Gore won in a state-wide Florida recount under all standards possible for hanging chads and such. They had half a dozen scenarios for accepting ballots and Gore won in every single scenario.
And that's even after you factor in the obvious GOP cheats like accepting late overseas ballots in GOP counties (and only GOP counties), hiring private companies to "scrub" the voting lists of legal voters (most of whom were black), illegally excluding valid Gore over-votes, and the curious "Jews for Buchanan" phenonemon in Palm Beach. Even after all that crap Gore still would have won if the Republicans had allowed a full, fair, state-wide recount.
Count the votes, Gore wins. Don't count the votes, Bush wins. It was that simple.
Slashdot Mirror
Glad to see there's at least one other person in this thread that actually knows what hate speech is.
Many of you are quick to slam Canada in your haste to pen a self-righteous Libertarian screed. Perhaps you should get a clue about what you're attacking before you make yourselves look foolish.
That game blew me away. For about three days. Then I deleted it and never had the slightest urge to ever play again.
How did they buy stuff without your pin number? Don't you need to enter that when you make any purchase?
I can assert with equal authority that almost all video games do nothing wrong to children. I've been playing them with my boy over my home network since he was old enough to hold a mouse. We've had a great deal of fun over the years and he hasn't been changed in any way, except he's not scared of monsters and he knows more about computers now than his grandparents ever will.
I wouldn't play something like GTA with him because it introduces questions I can't easily explain, like "why are you kicking the prone policeman until he coughs up his money and weapons?". But simple fighting games like Unreal Tournament, Warcraft III, and Diablo are lots of fun and introduce about as many moral conflicts as playing Space Invaders did for us. That is to say, none at all.
Legal drinking age is 19 in Ontario. 18 is considered age of majority for all other things.
Strange Bedfellows? I thought you were referring to the increasing number of prominent conservatives and conservative organizations which are, to their credit, stepping up and opposing Bush's blatantly illegal actions. Today I even heard that arch-conservative Grover Norquist is piling on, as difficult to believe as that is.
Americans don't want a King George. They had enough trouble getting rid of the last one.
As for your assertion that the ACLU "filed a suit saying that the US Government has no right to pick up and deport illegal aliens", prove it. Show me a link. Because that sure sounds like Limbaugh-esque horseshit to me.
First of all, we're talking about thousands of incidents here, not 36. We won't know the full number until this matter is properly investigated, which won't happen while Bush stooges like Gonzales are covering for him. He acts more like Bush's press secretary than an attorney-general.
Second, FISA allowed Bush to do the warrantless tap and then get approval retroactively, within three days (yes, I know, that's a pretty huge civil liberties violation in itself). Despite this, Bush neglected to do so.
Anyone who had even the most nebulous ties to Al-Queda could have been wiretapped without a warrant legally. Do you imagine any court would have denied Bush this ability? Yet he didn't even try to follow the very explicit law and just completely ignored it.
Now why would he do this? I'll tell you why. Because he was wiretapping domestic opponents for purely personal political gain. He knew those searches would never be approved because they had no merit, and he didn't want the rest of us to know what he was up to.
This should concern you, as should his declarations that he can break the law whenever he feels like it during the duration of this "war on terror", which, in his mind, will last approximately forever.
You might also be concerned over his assertion of "commander-in-chief" powers over the civilian population. That is, if you haven't forgotten every lesson about tyrants your founders taught you.
This is one of my favorite sites and has been for years. I'm here every day. But lately my interest in this site is waning. Here are the recent trends in story selection I find most annoying.
Look at what's on the top of each page. "News that matters". Lately you've been sliding away from that slogan. And that's the real threat to this site.
Fake quote.
What determined the current share price, if outsiders weren't allowed to buy or sell the stock?
It annoys me too.
Just go to your control panel, load "security center", and then select the "change the way security center alerts me" option in the left column. Deselect all the alert options and you'll never be bothered by this FUD again.
The video on demand sounds like a great invention but I've never seen it before. I live in Canada and I don't think such a thing is offered here yet, at least not in the backwoods area I'm currently in. The channels I get aren't HBO precisely, they're resellers of HBO content.
The only PVR I can get with my service costs $600, which is far more than I'd be willing to spend. The competing service has one for $300 so I'm sure the price will eventually drop sufficiently that everyone has one but so far. But, where I live, that just hasn't happened yet.
I started watching Rome after a friend got an unsolicited DVD from HBO in his mail that had the first episode of Rome. I really liked it and wanted to get into the series, but it's the kind of show where you have to watch the episodes in order. So I had no choice but to download the first five episodes from my commerical usenet feed :)
I did however watch the sixth episode "regularly" on HBO, so I guess their tactic gained them a viewer. Then I immediately downloaded that episode so I could have a complete collection. Next Sunday, I'll probably be on my couch watching the seventh episode as it airs. And then I'll download it, too.
I'm not sure what the moral of this post is. Perhaps that "pirates" and legitimate customers are more closely intertwined than the simplistic among us would like to admit.
First thing I did was look up my favorite series, Battlestar Galactica, and saw that they immediately gave away the surprise ending of the last episode.
The old TV tome would give spoilers too, but there were protected under a "more info" type of link, as I recall, so you wouldn't see them if you were didn't request them.
Other than that, though, it seems to be a useful site. I really missed TV tome after it was utterly butchered by tv.com.
And we all know that safety is the primary concern of all Russian engineering projects, right? They've proven that so many times with their nuclear facilities, submarines, and rocket launches.
I would be happy to never see his name again. I've yet to read a Dvorak article on anything that had any value.
I always thought that was one of the critical mistakes Lucas made in the second trilogy. In the first three, there was absolutely no talk of "balance" to the force, the dark side was something to be entirely avoided. Dark emotions like hatred and rage might give you a temporary boost of power, but in the end always corrupted both the results of your actions and your very personality. Take it far enough and this corruption would even change your body.
I think this original conception made more sense dramatically and philosophically. It resonated so much with people that it became akin to a religion to many. Lucas then fucked it up entirely by adding the concept of "balance" and "mitoclorians" and most especially the incredibly cliched "chosen one from prophecy" crap, thereby making the Jedi order just another hackneyed, forgettable, Saturday Morning cartoon group of characters.
I guess the dividing line is between those blogs that allow comments and those that don't. Those with comments can provide far greater fact-checking ability than the mainstream news, assuming, that comments aren't selectively edited or deleted.
How many times have you read a newspaper article or seen a report on TV and wished you could immediately correct something the reporter got completely wrong?
Slashdot is just a blog, after all, and I think issues usually get a more thorough treatment here than you'll ever see from the likes of CNN, Fox, et al. Certainly those who are completely full of shit get called on it.
Didn't they recant and support that bill in the end?
And how does MS's opinion on any bill "lower the rights of gays and lesbians"?
If you'd spent any time on the MS Redmond campus you'd know it's one of the most gay-friendly work environments on the planet.
"Press releases from left-wing groups"...that's funny.
The press has been nothing more than a stenographer for the far right for years now. Consider whitewater, the starr report, the lies about the white house being trashed, the lies about wmd in Iraq, and so on. Try to imagine what the press would be saying if, for example, Bill Clinton had given phoney press credentials and a fake name to a gay prostitute so that said prostitute could derail press conferences with softball questions scripted by the white house. Then consider that this actually happened with Bush and the press has hardly said anything about it.
Sounds to me like you're just parroting Rush Limbaugh and his clones. Keep watching Rush, maybe he'll tell you how to think about Intel chips in Macs, too.
Al Gore and the Creation of the Internet
As you'll see, Gore made his first proposal to fund a universal version of the internet in 1986. How many other politicians, people not usually known for being up to date with technology, were pushing the internet in 1986? Were you?
This article puts 1986 (seven years before Mosaic) into perspective:
Speaking of Vinton Cerf, who might be trusted to have an informed opinion on this, this is what he had to say about Gore:
It's not accurate to say this object is "half" the size of the sun.
The planet in question is 5 times the mass of Jupiter. The sun is about a thousand times the mass of Jupiter.
I think you're confusing mass with diameter. Jupiter's diameter is indeed approximately one-tenth the diameter of the sun.
The US Commission on Civil Rights found massive evidence of voter disenfranchisement. They recommended immediate litigation by the Attorney General's office, a recommendation that was, of course, ignored.
The NORC recount by the media organizations showed that Gore won in a state-wide Florida recount under all standards possible for hanging chads and such. They had half a dozen scenarios for accepting ballots and Gore won in every single scenario.
And that's even after you factor in the obvious GOP cheats like accepting late overseas ballots in GOP counties (and only GOP counties), hiring private companies to "scrub" the voting lists of legal voters (most of whom were black), illegally excluding valid Gore over-votes, and the curious "Jews for Buchanan" phenonemon in Palm Beach. Even after all that crap Gore still would have won if the Republicans had allowed a full, fair, state-wide recount.
Count the votes, Gore wins. Don't count the votes, Bush wins. It was that simple.
At end of sentence in German the verb you always put. German grammar use while English speaking if talk like Yoda you want. Like charm it works.