The FCC has authority over your wireless communications. When it comes to WiFi, they can certainly compel you lock your access point, and I don't see the ACLU having an issue with it.
An American defending a German's philosophy of civil liberty... that's fresh!
Roads are civil infrastructure, for the benefit of society as a whole. WiFi access points are the responsibility of individuals for their own personal benefit.
If you reprimand taxpayers every time a criminal drives on a road, you would also have to reward them every time an upstanding citizen's life is saved by being driven to a hospital, for example. In essence this is what happens naturally, since society suffers for every illegal act and flourishes with every benevolent act, and it is reflected in our tax base.
Operating a WiFi access point is strictly for personal gain, and any substantially negative impact it has on society due to negligence must be prevented in law.
What's to stop hackers from setting up open wifi networks with poor security, hacking their own networks to perform criminal acts, then claiming that someone else did the hack and they aren't liable for what others do over their open wifi?
Mobs have been laundering money thanks to ignorant loopholes like this for over a century!
On top of that- cars, to a large portion of the population, are freedom. Freedom to go where you want, when you want. Freedom to live where you want. Freedom to just say "fuck it" one day and go on a road trip. Freedom from the clock- I don't have to leave the bar with my friends to make that last 10:30 pm bus, I can stay til closing time (assume I'm sober for this one). There is no substitute for this.
On top of that - cars, to a large portion of the population, are death. 1 in 84 Americans will die from a car accident*. 33% of the earth's carbon dioxide, the primary global warming issue, is from cars**. Cars are one-third responsible for the greatest threat to civilization in recorded history, largely because of people like you.
Your version of "freedom" is death. If you want to live like an ignorant hedonist, don't take us with you. Making the necessary adjustments is no more difficult than maintaining personal hygiene. (something tells me that's a bad example for this guy)
And no, I will not assume you were sober, you were drunk, and we all know it. Hence the tone of this reply.
There is a perfect substitute for this model of freedom: COMMON SENSE.
You do. 57% of the electricity generated in the US is generated by burning coal. Reduce your power consumption by 57% or you're saying we need to burn coal. It's that simple.
Your other points are valid, however there is a theoretical "deadline" where we no longer have enough oil required to make the necessary components and infrastructure for alternative power sources, while also powering civilization through the transition. We need vast amounts of oil to manufacture/ship/lubricate/etc all the "mechanical assistance" you described.
We can only speculate when that deadline will be. For all we know it may have already past. I doubt it, but what concerns me is that those with the best understanding of the oil industry sure are hoarding it like it's going out of style.
I'm of the opinion that oil is over-valued, and will eventually settle back well under $100/barrel, but the major issues can't be left to the responsibility of corporations and/or any one government, which is what I'm seeing largely so far.
And another problem is that nuclear plants can't be built fast or cheaply enough to keep up with the demand, and where they're needed most we can't trust the countries not to adapt the technology for weapons of mass destruction. Pakistan and India bought CANDU reactors from Canada and are now nuclear threats, ironically to each other. (Google: CANDU weapons)
So how are we supposed to convince a country like Syria to stop burning coal for their power? (and please don't say "nuke'em") This is just one of a mind-boggling number of issues that absolutely must be addressed before that deadline. The less we consume, the more time we have to solve them.
The nation's fleet of over 100 coal plants is responsible for 57 percent of the electricity generated in the U.S., more than any other single electricity fuel source. Coal power plants are responsible for 93 percent of the sulfur dioxide and 80 percent of the nitrogen oxide emissions generated by the electric utility industry.
When you plug into the wall, you burn coal. The notion that electric cars are better for the environment is absurd and naive. You don't see the soot coming out the tailpipe, but it's still adding to your local smog level and global warming in general.
The only way to lose the need to burn coal is to REDUCE power consumption so less polluting methods can handle the load. Burning gas is better than tapping the grid harder than it already is, and if everyone bought plug-in cars, electricity would quickly become more expensive than gas!
The global warming crisis is a multi-headed beast. Everyone's trying to chop off the gasoline head while the others continue causing irreparable damage uncontested. THERE IS NO SHORTCUT, YOU MUST REDUCE CONSUMPTION.
Start thinking along the lines of either finding work closer to home or finding a home closer to work, e-commuting, anything to shave miles off your routine. Truly earth-friendly personal transportation is a long way away. Decades.
1. Listening to music as loud as you want while not forcing it on others
You can count on two things: microwaves generating "cranial audio illusions" of the same magnitude of a loud rock show will be deadly, and the frequency range will be limited, nowhere near 20-20k Hz.
A rock show will have upwards of 30,000W of power driving speakers of the highest efficiency available. So imagine sticking your head into about 40 microwave ovens at once. It's ok, they're not tuned to the water-boiling frequency. You'll be just fine. Promise.
Knock on your head, that's probably the lowest note that can be produced, and not much more than maybe two octaves above that. Beyond that range the sounds either can't be produced or cannot pass through the grey matter. For lower tones you'd have to resonate the ribcage, but I expect ribs don't reflect microwaves nearly as well as the skull. For higher sounds you'd have to target the inner ear itself very precisely. Unless the target is wearing custom earrings for a guidance system to follow, you're s.o.l.
2. Rocking out to the loudest concert in history without anyone outside the venue hearing a whisper of it (on second thought, the RIAA might require this, so maybe it's not so good)
If sound waves were created inside someone of the magnitude of a loud rock show, it would be very audible to others. When you "feel the bass" it's up around 127dB and literally making your ribcage resonate. Believe me, you need much more power to drive a room full of people compared to an empty one, and that's a two-way street - a crowd full of resonating ribcages would radiate no less than a sound system. If >127dB were produced inside you your ribcage would essentially be a passive subwoofer, possibly resulting in the much-heralded "brown note".
3. Throwing a gigantic party with great tunes while letting the geezer next door -- who never listens to anything harder than Captain and Tennille -- get his beauty sleep
You and your guests would be discovered dead by your much irritated geezer neighbor. And let's not overlook how loud they would have to shout at each other to be heard over the music.
Also it's unlikely that the effect could be produced from omnidirectional microwave emitters. It has to be a pair of directional emitters, like two lasers and not a light bulb. The effect is called a "resultant". Hit two adjacent high keys on a piano and you'll hear a lower note underneath, the result of constructive modular interference. No one emitter can produce resultants, and the relative distance between the target and the emitters would have to be exactly equal.
I wonder how many people I just got to hit themselves in the head...
The only governments that must force it's people to stay are governments that know they are inherently inferior to the governance in other countries. Iran knows that it's power structure is based on a shitty way to live, it knows that it is culturally inferior.
But one is not the consequence of the other, and "cultural inferiority" is a rather inflammatory term to be throwing around in an international forum.
The reason countries like Iran have such brutal laws and maniacal dictators is because they're full of religious extremists hell-bent on killing each other over disputes going back centuries. Every time western society is introduced or imposed upon middle-eastern civilization all hell breaks loose, never moreso than this decade.
Apparently it takes a tyrant to keep the tyrants at bay. Writing about it doesn't solve anything anyway. Obviously I don't condone mortal censorship, but they've got bigger fish to fry.
I could have sworn it snowed in Germany. They can't possibly expect people to buy two expensive gas-misers in order to have optimum mileage year-round. That thing couldn't be expected to last a mile on a typical Canadian highway from December through the end of March - 1/3 of the year.
I would also be very concerned about getting into accidents because people don't look for midget microcars as they turn corners or merge lanes. I got around Vancouver for two years by bicycle and got hit 6 times by drivers not checking their blind spots (mostly just ended up on their hood). And that's in a town where it is well known there are many cyclists.
So regardless of how likely people are to survive accidents without injury, what's insurance going to cost on those? How much does it cost to fix an $8000 carbon-fiber monocoque? Sounds like owners will spend more on insurance than Civic drivers will on gas.
And once you get past 50 mpg or so, it really becomes academic. If the price of oil ends up making it prohibitively expensive to operate a car with less than 50 mpg, your personal mode of transportation will be the least of your worries, i.e. how is your food going to get from distant farms to your local supermarket? If people can't afford to drive their cars, guess what trucking companies can't afford...
6. eBay auctions are legally binding contracts.
7. When you initiate an eBay auction you are committed to selling the item at the end of the auction.
8. It is a crime to merely offer your vote for sale, just like offering a bribe.
9. No bids were placed because it would be equally criminal to do so.
10. Expressions do not have binding effect, the auction did.
11. The perpetrator could have mocked an image of an auction for his vote and made an effective non-criminal expression.
12. The sale of votes is a "big crime", same category as "treason", people who sell or attempt to sell their votes are "big criminals", regardless of their lack of intelligence.
(for the record in another post I indicated I think the kid should do a few days in the can but not suffer a permanent criminal record)
People have died for lots of things. Is this kid's stunt worth killing over?
Prosecutors don't decide what the maximum sentence is, 5 years and $10k is the maximum imposed by legislators, and you don't need much imagination to think up a situation where it would be applicable.
And who the hell are you to tell Americans how to run their country? Don't you know how many people died so Americans can ignore everyone's opinion but their own?;p
"If you choose not to decide you still have made a choice" - Rush - Freewill
Refusing to vote should never be a crime, it is a valid expression of your opinion and lack of voters is an important census indicator. I refused to vote in a recent provincial election because I did not approve of any candidate.
Contrarily, I saw a story of a Canadian being charged with a federal crime for refusing to fill and return their census documents. Their reason for refusing was that the software used to process the census information was developed by Lockheed Martin, a US military contractor. The person didn't seem to have a problem having his interview broadcast nationally via satellites which were also made by Lockheed Martin...
Getting back on point, I think that flagrantly selling your vote is worse than burning the flag. It goes beyond mere expression, and it is not just undemocratic, it is counter-democratic. A few nights on a steel bed is the perfect way to express how important free elections are to our society.
Still, the kid's only 19, and assuming he wasn't aware of how offensive his little prank was, his life shouldn't be ruined by a criminal record. Glad I'm not the judge for that one.
I was about to comment on how ridiculous it would be that a shop would install keyloggers, but what's to stop a rental client from installing them unbeknownst to the shop? They could easily be rigged to send private data out upon connecting to the web.
Mosr is reporting that CNet takes 5000% longer to report the painfully obvious than Slashdot. The difference is attributed to CNet's random approach to determining what is of interest to their readers, compared to Slashdot's user-based approach. It is expected that CNet will finally have a comeback to one of the hundreds of CNet jokes on Slashdot in the year 2112.
Of course there are illegal thoughts...Keep in mind, thinking of a crime is far from criminal
See how you contradict yourself here?
It's no more a contradiction than "guns don't kill people, people kill people [with guns]". Imagination isn't criminal, intent is. People can be convicted of crimes from a sting operation where nobody is actually in any danger.
Look at how crimes are investigated: motive, opportunity, and intent. Proving only one aspect won't convict anyone, and two are completely a matter of thought.
It's motive, means, and opportunity. Only motive is a matter of thought, and it only needs to be proven if there's not direct evidence; if fifty witnesses see you commit a crime and you're apprehended immediately, no one needs to consider your motive to convict you.
Perhaps that's the American version, means in most circumstances is tied to opportunity. One cannot have opportunity without means, and vice versa. A moot point.
It's not that having a motive is a crime, it's that we generally believe that people do things for reasons; the jury is only going to believe that John murdered Joe if they can imagine a reason.
I call that further evidence that it's the intent that is the crime, and the act is the effect of the intent. If a guy murders someone in front of 50 people, his sanity will likely come into play.
There are times to stand up for your rights, and times to stand aside and acknowledge a greater cause.
There is no greater cause than freedom.
Now that's VERY American, and highly simplistic. Rights and freedom aren't necessarily the same thing either. I'm talking about rights that are linked to abuse, causing the loss of freedom of others.
I'm sorry that friends of yours were sexually abused. People who sexually abuse people need to be removed from polite society. People who are accomplices in the sexual abuse of other people need to be removed from polite society.
But people who view images of sexual abuse are no more guilty of abuse than people who watch slasher pics - or the news - are guilty of murder. And people who create or view entirely synthetic images of sexual abuse have done nothing that violates the rights of others.
As much as activists have tried to tie violent imagery with violent crime, the argument hasn't convinced many people that violent imagery should be banned. However, child pornography is known to motivate pedophiles to re-offend, in most cases quite strongly, computer-generated or not.
Of course there are illegal thoughts. Sex is a result of thought, so is music, so is scientific insight, so is crime. The law prohibits certain acts, but the illegal act is really only evidence of illegal thought.
Look at how crimes are investigated: motive, opportunity, and intent. Proving only one aspect won't convict anyone, and two are completely a matter of thought.
Keep in mind, thinking of a crime is far from criminal, and even forming motive and intent is not criminal, provided you do not act on an opportunity that presents itself. Police are generally not even allowed to create opportunity to flush out those with motive and intent, or the perpetrator can claim entrapment as a defense. So rest at ease ye filthy minded folk, you're in no danger of getting busted for thinking of bad things.
However, pathological pedophiles are unable to control latent "bad thoughts", and there is currently no way to treat the condition by giving them control or enabling them to ignore the impulses.
So when considering computer-generated kiddie porn, let's weigh the potential benefits (ABSOLUTELY NONE) versus the potential damage (EXACERBATING AN ALREADY HOPELESS BATTLE).
There are times to stand up for your rights, and times to stand aside and acknowledge a greater cause. Ask two of my childhood friends which way you should go. They were victims of a pedophile, they should have some valuable insight.
Contacting them will be problematic though, they both killed themselves in high school.
The really cool campaign tricks are the false additions/amendments submitted to Wikipedia from government ip's.
Getting back on point, I think this chainmail study should be filed under the NSS category (No Sh** Sherlock). Some people's friends know friends of their friends? You're kidding!
Actually it's quite easy to brew 23L batches of good beer for under $8 (USD/CAD) if you buy ingredients in quantity, which is quite reasonable if you have brewing friends to share the load. That's roughly 12 cents per 12oz beer.
The beer I brew costs about 20 cents per 12oz bottle, and it's very user-friendly, designed to taste good without filtering and virtually no aging. It's drinkable (and enjoyable) within 10 days of *starting* the brew (only 3 days in the bottles), and peaks at about 6 weeks. At two weeks it's much like Charles Wells IPA.
I've offered to share my recipe, but most brewing enthusiasts are masochists who enjoy not drinking their beer for months...
I should also point out a major advantage of homebrewing vs. commercial brewing is "fresh-hopping", meaning the addition of hops mid-brew, whose aroma and flavor have a limited shelf-life. Part of my recipe uses fresh-hopping to mask the yeasts still present in the first few weeks after bottling. The yeasts are very good for you, only the taste is undesirable.
In response to the article, beer recipe swapping is hardly anything new. It's been going on for hundreds of years. Putting an open-source spin on it isn't really noteworthy.
I'm very interested, and actually invested in this subject, and I'm rather shocked of two things:
1 - I learned of this from/. (no offence) I deal with people in the Canadian music industry every day that have their balls hanging in the wind (read: over-invested) and I didn't hear even a whisper about this. This has people scared silent.
That doesn't mean it's especially catastrophic, but at least a 6 out of 10.
2 - The only posted information about this fiasco is from the horse himself, and it reads like a thesaurus malfunction. Yet folks here are chiming off like they're intimately familiar with the situation.
Long story short (too late), this story hasn't broken yet, but it could be pretty huge in the Canadian music industry, if it ever reaches the light of day.
If you're curious enough to follow this, please pass it on to anyone who might also find it curious, because otherwise it might never reach the light of day. Such is the music biz.
Slashdot Mirror
The FCC has authority over your wireless communications. When it comes to WiFi, they can certainly compel you lock your access point, and I don't see the ACLU having an issue with it.
An American defending a German's philosophy of civil liberty... that's fresh!
Roads are civil infrastructure, for the benefit of society as a whole. WiFi access points are the responsibility of individuals for their own personal benefit.
If you reprimand taxpayers every time a criminal drives on a road, you would also have to reward them every time an upstanding citizen's life is saved by being driven to a hospital, for example. In essence this is what happens naturally, since society suffers for every illegal act and flourishes with every benevolent act, and it is reflected in our tax base.
Operating a WiFi access point is strictly for personal gain, and any substantially negative impact it has on society due to negligence must be prevented in law.
What's to stop hackers from setting up open wifi networks with poor security, hacking their own networks to perform criminal acts, then claiming that someone else did the hack and they aren't liable for what others do over their open wifi?
Mobs have been laundering money thanks to ignorant loopholes like this for over a century!
On top of that- cars, to a large portion of the population, are freedom. Freedom to go where you want, when you want. Freedom to live where you want. Freedom to just say "fuck it" one day and go on a road trip. Freedom from the clock- I don't have to leave the bar with my friends to make that last 10:30 pm bus, I can stay til closing time (assume I'm sober for this one). There is no substitute for this.
On top of that - cars, to a large portion of the population, are death. 1 in 84 Americans will die from a car accident*. 33% of the earth's carbon dioxide, the primary global warming issue, is from cars**. Cars are one-third responsible for the greatest threat to civilization in recorded history, largely because of people like you.
Your version of "freedom" is death. If you want to live like an ignorant hedonist, don't take us with you. Making the necessary adjustments is no more difficult than maintaining personal hygiene. (something tells me that's a bad example for this guy)
And no, I will not assume you were sober, you were drunk, and we all know it. Hence the tone of this reply.
There is a perfect substitute for this model of freedom: COMMON SENSE.
* http://www.iii.org/media/facts/statsbyissue/oddsofdying/?table_sort_735950=3
** http://www.ecobridge.org/content/g_cse.htm
Who says we need to use coal?
You do. 57% of the electricity generated in the US is generated by burning coal. Reduce your power consumption by 57% or you're saying we need to burn coal. It's that simple.
Your other points are valid, however there is a theoretical "deadline" where we no longer have enough oil required to make the necessary components and infrastructure for alternative power sources, while also powering civilization through the transition. We need vast amounts of oil to manufacture/ship/lubricate/etc all the "mechanical assistance" you described.
We can only speculate when that deadline will be. For all we know it may have already past. I doubt it, but what concerns me is that those with the best understanding of the oil industry sure are hoarding it like it's going out of style.
I'm of the opinion that oil is over-valued, and will eventually settle back well under $100/barrel, but the major issues can't be left to the responsibility of corporations and/or any one government, which is what I'm seeing largely so far.
And another problem is that nuclear plants can't be built fast or cheaply enough to keep up with the demand, and where they're needed most we can't trust the countries not to adapt the technology for weapons of mass destruction. Pakistan and India bought CANDU reactors from Canada and are now nuclear threats, ironically to each other. (Google: CANDU weapons)
So how are we supposed to convince a country like Syria to stop burning coal for their power? (and please don't say "nuke'em") This is just one of a mind-boggling number of issues that absolutely must be addressed before that deadline. The less we consume, the more time we have to solve them.
We are really only consuming ourselves.
The solution to that is a standard power cell that can be exchanged.
The next problem is what if some underhanded attendant gives you a dud cell...
The nation's fleet of over 100 coal plants is responsible for 57 percent of the electricity generated in the U.S., more than any other single electricity fuel source. Coal power plants are responsible for 93 percent of the sulfur dioxide and 80 percent of the nitrogen oxide emissions generated by the electric utility industry.
When you plug into the wall, you burn coal. The notion that electric cars are better for the environment is absurd and naive. You don't see the soot coming out the tailpipe, but it's still adding to your local smog level and global warming in general.
The only way to lose the need to burn coal is to REDUCE power consumption so less polluting methods can handle the load. Burning gas is better than tapping the grid harder than it already is, and if everyone bought plug-in cars, electricity would quickly become more expensive than gas!
The global warming crisis is a multi-headed beast. Everyone's trying to chop off the gasoline head while the others continue causing irreparable damage uncontested. THERE IS NO SHORTCUT, YOU MUST REDUCE CONSUMPTION.
Start thinking along the lines of either finding work closer to home or finding a home closer to work, e-commuting, anything to shave miles off your routine. Truly earth-friendly personal transportation is a long way away. Decades.
Only if the technologies aren't locked up and hidden away by patents.
Mercedes has a blanket patent for safety devices used in cars such as airbags, crumple zones, etc. They have never enforced it.
I see enormous benefits in this technology.
1. Listening to music as loud as you want while not forcing it on others
You can count on two things: microwaves generating "cranial audio illusions" of the same magnitude of a loud rock show will be deadly, and the frequency range will be limited, nowhere near 20-20k Hz.
A rock show will have upwards of 30,000W of power driving speakers of the highest efficiency available. So imagine sticking your head into about 40 microwave ovens at once. It's ok, they're not tuned to the water-boiling frequency. You'll be just fine. Promise.
Knock on your head, that's probably the lowest note that can be produced, and not much more than maybe two octaves above that. Beyond that range the sounds either can't be produced or cannot pass through the grey matter. For lower tones you'd have to resonate the ribcage, but I expect ribs don't reflect microwaves nearly as well as the skull. For higher sounds you'd have to target the inner ear itself very precisely. Unless the target is wearing custom earrings for a guidance system to follow, you're s.o.l.
2. Rocking out to the loudest concert in history without anyone outside the venue hearing a whisper of it (on second thought, the RIAA might require this, so maybe it's not so good)
If sound waves were created inside someone of the magnitude of a loud rock show, it would be very audible to others. When you "feel the bass" it's up around 127dB and literally making your ribcage resonate. Believe me, you need much more power to drive a room full of people compared to an empty one, and that's a two-way street - a crowd full of resonating ribcages would radiate no less than a sound system. If >127dB were produced inside you your ribcage would essentially be a passive subwoofer, possibly resulting in the much-heralded "brown note".
3. Throwing a gigantic party with great tunes while letting the geezer next door -- who never listens to anything harder than Captain and Tennille -- get his beauty sleep
You and your guests would be discovered dead by your much irritated geezer neighbor. And let's not overlook how loud they would have to shout at each other to be heard over the music.
Also it's unlikely that the effect could be produced from omnidirectional microwave emitters. It has to be a pair of directional emitters, like two lasers and not a light bulb. The effect is called a "resultant". Hit two adjacent high keys on a piano and you'll hear a lower note underneath, the result of constructive modular interference. No one emitter can produce resultants, and the relative distance between the target and the emitters would have to be exactly equal.
I wonder how many people I just got to hit themselves in the head...
The only governments that must force it's people to stay are governments that know they are inherently inferior to the governance in other countries. Iran knows that it's power structure is based on a shitty way to live, it knows that it is culturally inferior.
But one is not the consequence of the other, and "cultural inferiority" is a rather inflammatory term to be throwing around in an international forum.
The reason countries like Iran have such brutal laws and maniacal dictators is because they're full of religious extremists hell-bent on killing each other over disputes going back centuries. Every time western society is introduced or imposed upon middle-eastern civilization all hell breaks loose, never moreso than this decade.
Apparently it takes a tyrant to keep the tyrants at bay. Writing about it doesn't solve anything anyway. Obviously I don't condone mortal censorship, but they've got bigger fish to fry.
I could have sworn it snowed in Germany. They can't possibly expect people to buy two expensive gas-misers in order to have optimum mileage year-round. That thing couldn't be expected to last a mile on a typical Canadian highway from December through the end of March - 1/3 of the year.
I would also be very concerned about getting into accidents because people don't look for midget microcars as they turn corners or merge lanes. I got around Vancouver for two years by bicycle and got hit 6 times by drivers not checking their blind spots (mostly just ended up on their hood). And that's in a town where it is well known there are many cyclists.
So regardless of how likely people are to survive accidents without injury, what's insurance going to cost on those? How much does it cost to fix an $8000 carbon-fiber monocoque? Sounds like owners will spend more on insurance than Civic drivers will on gas.
And once you get past 50 mpg or so, it really becomes academic. If the price of oil ends up making it prohibitively expensive to operate a car with less than 50 mpg, your personal mode of transportation will be the least of your worries, i.e. how is your food going to get from distant farms to your local supermarket? If people can't afford to drive their cars, guess what trucking companies can't afford...
Frank Zappa wasn't enough?
6. eBay auctions are legally binding contracts.
7. When you initiate an eBay auction you are committed to selling the item at the end of the auction.
8. It is a crime to merely offer your vote for sale, just like offering a bribe.
9. No bids were placed because it would be equally criminal to do so.
10. Expressions do not have binding effect, the auction did.
11. The perpetrator could have mocked an image of an auction for his vote and made an effective non-criminal expression.
12. The sale of votes is a "big crime", same category as "treason", people who sell or attempt to sell their votes are "big criminals", regardless of their lack of intelligence.
(for the record in another post I indicated I think the kid should do a few days in the can but not suffer a permanent criminal record)
People have died for lots of things. Is this kid's stunt worth killing over?
Kindly put your revolver away then.
Prosecutors don't decide what the maximum sentence is, 5 years and $10k is the maximum imposed by legislators, and you don't need much imagination to think up a situation where it would be applicable.
And who the hell are you to tell Americans how to run their country? Don't you know how many people died so Americans can ignore everyone's opinion but their own? ;p
"If you choose not to decide you still have made a choice" - Rush - Freewill
Refusing to vote should never be a crime, it is a valid expression of your opinion and lack of voters is an important census indicator. I refused to vote in a recent provincial election because I did not approve of any candidate.
Contrarily, I saw a story of a Canadian being charged with a federal crime for refusing to fill and return their census documents. Their reason for refusing was that the software used to process the census information was developed by Lockheed Martin, a US military contractor. The person didn't seem to have a problem having his interview broadcast nationally via satellites which were also made by Lockheed Martin...
Getting back on point, I think that flagrantly selling your vote is worse than burning the flag. It goes beyond mere expression, and it is not just undemocratic, it is counter-democratic. A few nights on a steel bed is the perfect way to express how important free elections are to our society.
Still, the kid's only 19, and assuming he wasn't aware of how offensive his little prank was, his life shouldn't be ruined by a criminal record. Glad I'm not the judge for that one.
I was about to comment on how ridiculous it would be that a shop would install keyloggers, but what's to stop a rental client from installing them unbeknownst to the shop? They could easily be rigged to send private data out upon connecting to the web.
Mosr is reporting that CNet takes 5000% longer to report the painfully obvious than Slashdot. The difference is attributed to CNet's random approach to determining what is of interest to their readers, compared to Slashdot's user-based approach. It is expected that CNet will finally have a comeback to one of the hundreds of CNet jokes on Slashdot in the year 2112.
1PM EST is 2PM east of Quebec, and 2:30 in Newfoundland! (They're easily confused, eh?)
See how you contradict yourself here?
It's no more a contradiction than "guns don't kill people, people kill people [with guns]". Imagination isn't criminal, intent is. People can be convicted of crimes from a sting operation where nobody is actually in any danger.
It's motive, means, and opportunity. Only motive is a matter of thought, and it only needs to be proven if there's not direct evidence; if fifty witnesses see you commit a crime and you're apprehended immediately, no one needs to consider your motive to convict you.
Perhaps that's the American version, means in most circumstances is tied to opportunity. One cannot have opportunity without means, and vice versa. A moot point.
It's not that having a motive is a crime, it's that we generally believe that people do things for reasons; the jury is only going to believe that John murdered Joe if they can imagine a reason.
I call that further evidence that it's the intent that is the crime, and the act is the effect of the intent. If a guy murders someone in front of 50 people, his sanity will likely come into play.
There is no greater cause than freedom.
Now that's VERY American, and highly simplistic. Rights and freedom aren't necessarily the same thing either. I'm talking about rights that are linked to abuse, causing the loss of freedom of others.
I'm sorry that friends of yours were sexually abused. People who sexually abuse people need to be removed from polite society. People who are accomplices in the sexual abuse of other people need to be removed from polite society.
But people who view images of sexual abuse are no more guilty of abuse than people who watch slasher pics - or the news - are guilty of murder. And people who create or view entirely synthetic images of sexual abuse have done nothing that violates the rights of others.
As much as activists have tried to tie violent imagery with violent crime, the argument hasn't convinced many people that violent imagery should be banned. However, child pornography is known to motivate pedophiles to re-offend, in most cases quite strongly, computer-generated or not.
Oh, forgot the best part. The pedophile was caught, confessed, convicted. Served 2/3 of a 4 year sentence and was released unconditionally.
Of course there are illegal thoughts. Sex is a result of thought, so is music, so is scientific insight, so is crime. The law prohibits certain acts, but the illegal act is really only evidence of illegal thought.
Look at how crimes are investigated: motive, opportunity, and intent. Proving only one aspect won't convict anyone, and two are completely a matter of thought.
Keep in mind, thinking of a crime is far from criminal, and even forming motive and intent is not criminal, provided you do not act on an opportunity that presents itself. Police are generally not even allowed to create opportunity to flush out those with motive and intent, or the perpetrator can claim entrapment as a defense. So rest at ease ye filthy minded folk, you're in no danger of getting busted for thinking of bad things.
However, pathological pedophiles are unable to control latent "bad thoughts", and there is currently no way to treat the condition by giving them control or enabling them to ignore the impulses.
So when considering computer-generated kiddie porn, let's weigh the potential benefits (ABSOLUTELY NONE) versus the potential damage (EXACERBATING AN ALREADY HOPELESS BATTLE).
There are times to stand up for your rights, and times to stand aside and acknowledge a greater cause. Ask two of my childhood friends which way you should go. They were victims of a pedophile, they should have some valuable insight.
Contacting them will be problematic though, they both killed themselves in high school.
The really cool campaign tricks are the false additions/amendments submitted to Wikipedia from government ip's.
Getting back on point, I think this chainmail study should be filed under the NSS category (No Sh** Sherlock). Some people's friends know friends of their friends? You're kidding!
"Say, are you on MyFace?"
Actually it's quite easy to brew 23L batches of good beer for under $8 (USD/CAD) if you buy ingredients in quantity, which is quite reasonable if you have brewing friends to share the load. That's roughly 12 cents per 12oz beer.
The beer I brew costs about 20 cents per 12oz bottle, and it's very user-friendly, designed to taste good without filtering and virtually no aging. It's drinkable (and enjoyable) within 10 days of *starting* the brew (only 3 days in the bottles), and peaks at about 6 weeks. At two weeks it's much like Charles Wells IPA.
I've offered to share my recipe, but most brewing enthusiasts are masochists who enjoy not drinking their beer for months...
I should also point out a major advantage of homebrewing vs. commercial brewing is "fresh-hopping", meaning the addition of hops mid-brew, whose aroma and flavor have a limited shelf-life. Part of my recipe uses fresh-hopping to mask the yeasts still present in the first few weeks after bottling. The yeasts are very good for you, only the taste is undesirable.
In response to the article, beer recipe swapping is hardly anything new. It's been going on for hundreds of years. Putting an open-source spin on it isn't really noteworthy.
Any excuse to talk about beer is ok by me though!
I'm very interested, and actually invested in this subject, and I'm rather shocked of two things:
1 - I learned of this from /. (no offence) I deal with people in the Canadian music industry every day that have their balls hanging in the wind (read: over-invested) and I didn't hear even a whisper about this. This has people scared silent.
That doesn't mean it's especially catastrophic, but at least a 6 out of 10.
2 - The only posted information about this fiasco is from the horse himself, and it reads like a thesaurus malfunction. Yet folks here are chiming off like they're intimately familiar with the situation.
Long story short (too late), this story hasn't broken yet, but it could be pretty huge in the Canadian music industry, if it ever reaches the light of day.
If you're curious enough to follow this, please pass it on to anyone who might also find it curious, because otherwise it might never reach the light of day. Such is the music biz.