I mean, seriously, we're talking about a little artificial island right? So the naturaly occuring fresh water is... nil? The ability to produce their own food?
My question would be, if Britain decided that they weren't subject to british law (all the court case said, from what I read) but that their claim of sovernty and territorial waters is bunk, how long could this "country" remain under a full blockade? Anyone can leave, but nothing comes in.
A full blockade will cause hardship in any country, but if we're talking a matter of weeks or months, I don't think we have a viable country here. Especially if they're in what is internationally recognized as another country's territorial waters. Anyone breaking the blockade would be committing an act of war against Great Britain, and who wants that?
So where do you get your food? Do you have equipment to make seawater drinkable, and where to you gets the parts when they break down? Where does your fuel come from? Do you have full solar/tidal/wind power, or are you importing gas or coal for a generator to keep these computers running?
Any kid can build a fort in the neighbor's yard and say they have their own country, but if the neighbor builds a fence and says "stay as long as you want, but mom can't bring you milk and cookies and when you leave, you can't come back" how long is it gonna last? I'd worry less about invasion, than that your neighbor will finally decide to stop letting you play in his yard.
Do ya think that in one of his other gigs, Katz gets payed by the word?
most writers do get paid by the word, but the problem is usually compensated for by editors with standards. Katz is his own editor, and so far as I can tell, does not hold himself to very high standards.
And the sad thing is, in all that space that he took up with fluff, he could have been actually making a point. Tell us about a specific game which requires creativity. Interview a MUD player about how long they worked to design the charecter and whether they worry about staying within their created "personality". Show its true, REPORT for the love of bagels, don't get make assertions, mention one web page in passing and fill the rest in with fluff!
You know, if I had an editor ask me to write a feature about creativity and culture in the modern computer gaming world, I'd have a lot of research to do. And it could be a really good story. Maybe Katz should just offer his broad generalization and then let someone who actually cares about good writing make an interesting feature out of it.
Besides, how can the ISP tell that this person just expressed an opinion that people didn't like? Perhaps they expressed an extreme religous opinion in a homosexual group? Or a pro-life in an abortion group? Or for that matter a pro-abortion (I REFUSE to call is pro-choice...) idea in a pro-life group?
So, freedom of speech should only be protected if it's speech of which you approve?
No, you're missing the point, which would be a fairly good one without the moron level inability to understand the term pro-choice.
The question was not whether the opinion was a "good" one or not. The question is "are we talking about an unpopular opinion or inappropriately flaming a group?" The fact that both pro-choice and pro-life opions could fall into this catagory, depending on where they were said should have been a good pointer on this distinction.
There is a difference between an "unpopular religious opinon", like saying on a catholic chat group that you don't know if Mother Tereasa actually meets the Church's requirements for sainthood, and a "religiously worded flame" like going into a abortion support chat room and doing the all caps shout that you are all filthy in the eyes of the lord for your murderous ways. It certainly effects how much slack your ISP is going to cut you when you start getting DoSed.
So the question is not how I, you or the ISP feels about the specific opinion expressed. The quest is whether it was expressed in a forum appropriate to it or in one where its just a distruptive attack itself.
What this means to me is that even though the users content was attracting the DoS attack, their may be laws that prevent them from just dropping their business. Like the example given in the news post, your right to refuse business only goes so far. You cannot refuse businees to someone base on race, ethnicity and religion. I think that civil rights would "out rank" whatever the ISP says. All the person needs is a lawyer to work that angle and sue the ISP.
I don't think that you have a civil rights case against the ISP unless their decision of what to do was based on the victims religious veiwpoints. If all they knew was "this guy's getting DoSed and screwing up our service, lets drop him", then its just consumer protection laws. The only way I could see it being a civil rights case would be if they knew the reason he was getting DoSed was his religious opinions and they said "he deserved to get DoSed for saying that, why should we do anything except cut our own losses."
Now, if the ISP had the right to cut him off for causing them service problems, he has a civil rights case against the script kiddies who were acting based on his religious opinions and caused him to lose something due to them. (assuming the truth of all statements in the orriginal post.)
It appears to me that you may be talking more about how to appeal to "geeks" than the general on-line public. Your quotes from Slashdot enhance that attitude. Do you feel that your comments are applicable to the entire growing field of people who may see a webpage, or to the programmers and techies that are making them?
The political activism groups that I have been involved with have never expected people to just find our websites with search engines. Instead we heavily market our sites as ongoing resources to people we encounter in other ways. As a result, we do not expect our hits to be coming from "geeks" any more than from anyone who can jump on IE in a spare moment and write in the url. To what extent should we believe in this "internet viewing public" rather than just aiming for the regular old public that happens to be checking out a couple of web sites?
Sorry, it was either a lie, or at best a radical mistake./. says this:
the Progressive Policy Institute has written a report that recommends extending the DMCA to explicitly outlaw technologies like Napster.
The report in question says this:
The public debate over Napster, however, shows that the danger to artists and record companies comes not from technological innovation, but from companies and individuals using the technology in illegal ways (One could rightfully say, "MP3 players don't steal music, people do.") Indeed, while we believe that new technologies should not only be allowed to flourish but should even be encouraged, even if they increase the risk of piracy, we also believe that companies or individuals who use the technology for illegal purposes should be subject to the restraint of the law.
Emphasis added. The report explictly says they do not want to ban any technologies. Yeah they criticise napster, if I criticise Microsoft am I advocating banning personal ownership of computers?
And the bit about college students was a simple statement of fact. They were pointing out the most numerous users, not the most dubious ones. They also explicitly pointed out that some musicians choose to release their songs on line and encouraged that.
Slashdot completely misrepresented the report. It is all about non-technology-banning ways of dealing with copyright infringment on line. In fact, even calling them the opposition is an assumption that everyone on/. is a super-cyber-libertarian, which many of us are not. For those of us who have any respect for intellectual property, they are the allies pointing to ways to protect "content producers" rights without trying to ban technologies.
Banning peer to peer file transfer effects a ton of programs out there. Some a lot more in use than Napster (ie ICQ). There is no way their "report" will get any merit. Atleast I pray it won't.
Well, if the report actually said that, you could be right. But the web site that was linked to in the article says nothing of the kind, and actually describes the report more than once as explicitly encouraging changes that will cut down on piracy without banning legitamate uses of the same technologies. That's the real WTF.
Did anyone actually follow the link before posting this story? The report appears to give recommendations that would change the way Napster does business but they go out of their way to say that they aren't attacking the programs themselves. If you read the article on the linked site, its kinda hard to miss. So why exactly did/. flat out lie about what their "opponents" are suggesting? Is it so hard to argue with a reasonable opponent that you have to strawman them?
I suggest following the link and reading for yourself what the group is suggesting. From the synopsis, it looks fairly reasonable to me. YMMV.
If I lie in a deposition, I am fined and/or serve some jail time. Afterward, I am free to go about my business. If the US President, who is charged with enforcing the law (and is also a lawyer), lies in a deposition, shouldn't he endure a penalty more severe, especially since he used his Office to stymie the Jones Investigation?
If you lie in a deposition one of any number of things will happen to you, the most excessive being a fine or jail term. If you are misleading and evasive in a deposition, you will most likely get the judge's "stern look number 25". I have heard nothing that indicates that Clinton's testimony met the legal criterion of perjury, and impeachments are only for legal crimes (high crimes, I might add, which perjury may or may not be). Its not a vote of no confindence because the president did a naughty thing then didn't own up to the full details when asked a more limited question.
If you were asked in a deposition if you had dinner with someone and said "no" instead of "no, but I did have a drink at the cocktail bar and one pretzel" you would be committing the same level of "perjury" clinton was accused of. All IMHO, of course.
PS, last time I checked, making motions of lawyer-client or executive privilege through propper channels didn't count as "styming" an investigation. It's standing up for your own constitutional rights. Presidents have those too, ya know.
Note: I am neither defending nor condemming the individual web sites which asked the dialectizer to remove them, or the guys decision to cut himself off entirely rather than continue to deal with the mounting number of "disconnect" requests.
Good point. Is this really any different than babelfish?
Or the jesus translator (sorry lost the link), or the candaianizer and all the rest (there are a LOT of these things).
Bablefish is probably the best example though, it is doing the same thing that this guys was.
The bablefish doesn't do the same thing this guy was at all. Though the technological process may be similar, the transformation of the work is completely different.
The bablefish takes a peice of text and changes the language that it is written in. The content, and more importantly, the context of the message is unchanged. A political rallying call in french is still a political rallying call when translated to english. A bunch of blond joke in spanish are still blond jokes in english. (though puns would just sound dumb). A health alert in english is still a health alert in portuguese. Ad nauseum.
But the entire point of these dialect "translaters" is to change, not preserve context. Any text read through it becomes a joke. A person who writes on political topics might be perfectly happy for people to read them in other languages, but annoyed to have them turned into a swedish chef joke by someone who isn't even creative enough to do the "parody" on their own.
Again, this is not a legal argument, so save those flames for someone else. But there is a reason that this guy has been flooded with requests to not link to people's sites while bablefish likely hasn't recieved any such requests. They aren't the same thing and people who have worked hard on a site know the difference. If you don't recognize that (possibly non-legal) difference, you won't understand the context of this announcement.
Or maybe you think that for you to admit how many guns you own, clinton should give detailed accounts of his sex life. Sounds a little too petty for that to be it.
Why is it so petty? Personally, I don't care to know about the sex lives of Clinton or anybody else for that matter. But, if I'm required to disclose information to a government agency, I would want to know about the people I'm disclosing my information to.
The pettyness is in expecting personal information several orders of magnitude more personal than they are asking for from you. Thats why I gave the example of Clinton's sex life vs another person's gun licenses. The point is that you do or can know almost everything about our president that the Canadian government is holding on citizens. In fact, US politicians are expected as a matter of campainging to reveal the kind of medical information that we expect to be completely confidential for the average citizen. The implication that equal disclosure for pols would scare them is silly, unless you were trading number of orgasms for number of cars, etc. And that, IMHO, would be petty.
Well, then we should start clammoring for requirements that POLITICANS disclose personal details about their lives as an exchange for details on ours. I don't think most politicians would go for that. I KNOW Bill Clinton wouldn't.
Wouldn't want to tell us what? His name and address? His income and from what sources? His weight, age, medical history, last three addresses, previous marriages, how many guns he's licensed to own, what church he attends, where he goes each time he leaves the country and his entire criminal record? What are you really talking about here?
If you're envisioning a time when the government will require us to tell them the names, places and possitions for all our sexual encounters, yes, politicians like any other person wouldn't go for it. For the information the canadian government is keeping, requiring public disclosure for clinton or anyone else of that level is redundant.
Or maybe you think that for you to admit how many guns you own, clinton should give detailed accounts of his sex life. Sounds a little too petty for that to be it.
Say I live in a housing development where all the houses were built by the same contractor. One night when almost everyone in the development is at the town fireworks, some guy goes and breaks into half the houses and smashes stuff for fun. We find that he was able to do this really easily because the contractor bought crappy locks to save money on the houses. A few people who had noticed the crappiness of the locks and installed extra bolts didn't get broken into.
Now, the contractor may get sued. The people who got broken into may have learned a lesson about taking charge of their own security. But none of this reduces the legal repercussions on the person who actually went out and broke the law.
Thats the way it is in the real world. You leave your car unlocked, you may have trouble with the insurance company if it gets stolen, but the car thief doesn't get any lighter charges. A pickpocket isn't committing less of a crime if your wallet is in your back or front pocket, even if one makes it easier on him. And a person who writes and distributes a virus to cause damage to people's systems isn't going to get any less blame because it was an "easy" system to damage. That doesn't mean that the makers of the system have no responsibility to those financially injured, but it has no bearing on how activly the virus creator should be prosecuted.
-Kahuna Burger
Re:All of slashdot insulted by Roblimo AGAIN?
on
Thus Spake Stallman
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First of all, its not offtopic, its a direct reference to something said in the story. Where else would we talk about it?
Also, I totally agree, I read that line and thought, "oh thats real cute. Nothing like a little note that essenstial says 'if you might disagree with this and feel strongly enough to comment on it, you just shouldn't read it.'" Hello? This is a discussion forum. The people who might disagree and even get angry are exactly the people we want to read and post, otherwise, what's the point?
Basically, it seemed like a way to pre-emptively dismiss those people who would differ with the interviewee, and I think is was insulting and tacky.
The original poster, from my reading, literally accused slashdotters of hipocrisy, not Katz.
And I'd have to agree with it because I've seen it. One poster was talking about "good government" and said that copyright wouldn't be enforced because its restriction of speach, but GPL would be because thats a matter of human rights. I suppose that its possible that outside of this single case that the massive number of/.ers advocating controll over your own information and respect for GPL are completely non-overlapping with the group saying that artists don't have the right to say how their work will be distributed, but there's no good reason to believe it.
From what I've been able to piece together after weeks of trying to ignore the whole Elian matter, I'm fairly sure that nobody ever issued a warrant to search the home of Juan Gonzales. That didn't stop an insane amount of officers invading his home to get Elian.
They had a warrent. If you're going to criticise the government, do it on the truth. There's no need assume the worst and then treat it as fact.
I also can't see anything insane about the number of men used. The more their physical force alone was intimidating, the less chance of them actually needing to use their guns. A lesson from the "Boston Massacre", perhaps.
It is less moral to comply with an immoral law or agreement then not to.
What if you don't want to break that law? Is it immoral to go about your business normally and also in compliance with an "immoral" law?
For instance, I believe that laws on mary-wana are extreme (though I wouldn't want it to be entirely unregulated anymore than I would support that for alcohol or tobacco). But I don't drink, smoke or even take pain killers much when I need them. So I have no interest whatsoever in using, possessing or having used around me a nasty smoky substance which also happens to be a drug. By your sig, it is actaully more immoral for me to live my life as I would choose regardless of drug laws than to go out and committ a crime just to do it? seems sketchy.
You really need to get a grip. I recomend the book because it is interesting and relitively well written. It also speaks directly to this rediculous myth that human capacity for violence is set in stone and desensitisation and modling cannot change it. You can comfort yourself by calling the author a fascist, but it just makes you sound petty and sad.
Is freedom to play video games more important to you than freedom of speach? Can I say anything I want except point out the dangers we may be exposed to? Its a pretty piss poor respect for freedom that responds with hysteria and bile to a reading suggestion.
What they did not address, however, is the massive ammount of collected evidence already available on the subject. Namely, the fact that while violent video games have become more and more popular over the last several years, all state and federal statistics show that violent crime committed by monors has gone down every year for the last several years.
Oh this is rich. All this talk about correlation vs, causation and then this. they don't need to "address" the data, because there is no useful data there.
This is pure correlation. "Two different things happened together, so they are related". The probelm is that tons of other things were happening at the same time. Program specifily meant to fight youth crime, other changes that may have had unexpected effects. An interesting study last year suggested that the entire dip in juvenile crime in the last decades is due to increased contrceptive avalibility and legal abortion. Unwanted poor kids are more likely to be delinquints, better family planning cuts down on both.
To suggest that structured laboratory data can somehow be trumped by highly confounded trends is just silly. Do you guys know anything about science?
You know when all the movie making types come out all high and mighty about how movies are just fiction and portayals of smoking, violence, drug use, treatment of women, roles of men, what have you, couldn't possibly effect people's actual behavior? I always want to be at one of those press conferences so I can stand up and ask them how much the makers of "The World Is Not Enough" got paid to show one scene of 007 using a Motorola cellular phone. Then ask them who they're lying to - the businesses who they tell that one shot of a product will make viewers want to identify with the hero and use it? Or us, when they say that the behavior of the hero could never effect the viewers' actions. They're lying to someone, or maybe everyone.
For a better perspective on the issue of this thread, read On Killing.
It's not to say that people who engage in violent behavior don't get ideas from video games or movies (or the 10 o'clock news...), but maybe, just maybe, they were predisposed to violence BEFORE they were introduced to the various types of media currently facing blame for the worlds woes...
I suggest reading On Killing. In WWII soldiers (like the original poster's father, perhaps) had very low firing rates. They gave them guns, pointed at the enemy and said "shoot", but in general, they didn't do much shooting. Troop leaders talked about walking up and down the lines, kicking soldiers to get them to fire their damn guns. These were men from a more rural nation than today, most of whom had probably handled guns well before being drafted.
By vietnam, the Army had heard of this psychology thing, and was using it to try to reduce soldier aversion to firing on other human beings. They used desensitisation and script building - the same factors, and in some similar ways, that modern psychologists worry about with violent media. Even though its likely that a smaller percentage of vietnam soldiers had handled weapons previous to the draft than their WWII counterparts, firing rates went way, way up.
Now, to go back to your earlier question, its possible that the entire draft pool of the vietnam war just happened to be more violent than those called up for WWII. Its also possible that people's behavior can be effected by stimuli and training. The fact that we don't present all of this stimuli and training on purpose, doesn't mean that it can't have an effect. It also doesn't mean that one round of Doom can turn a healthy person into a killer. But then, one cigarrette won't turn a healthy person into a corpse either, and that doesn't mean they're safe.
Causation: Evil violent game turns harmless person into violent person.
Correlation: Evil violent person tends to like games that happen to be violent.
Strawmanning: Rediculously exagerated descriptions of real causation.
Real causation: Exposure to violent video games has a tendency to increase the violent responses in any person with an accelerated effect in people who have other violence indicators.
To put in in other terms, you might as well have said -
Causation: puffing on one cigarrette will cause an otherwise completely healthy person to die of cancer within a year.
Correlation: people who have unhealthy habits and living situations otherwise also smoke cigarrettes.
The real answer, as above, is accellerated causation : Smoking is bad for you, but not in a individually predicatable way, and the effects will be increased in people with other unhealthy life factors.
You know, if there was a way to get demographic data on all you guys, we could have a real study going here. Just post a well designed, straightforward study on anything related to computers that has a non-positive outcome. Then post a link to it on/. and watch the responses. We could title it "The effects of negitive news on over-sensitive non-psych educated geeks who think they know everything."
If you want to get a less personalized veiw of the effect of external stimuli on violence, read On Killing. It starts with the firing rates of soldiers in WWII vs vietnam and how the army brought them up. pretty interesting.
If I am looking for the use or context of a command, and I cannot remember the exact command, (dont laugh..) then I can flip open a book and there it is. Ever tried searching for "That command that lets me..."
Ah, I was afraid that no one had made that point on online reference and I was too late to fit it in anywhere. Thank you!.
I have had numerous problems with spreadsheets, image proccessing programs and others where I want it to do something, but I don't know what they would call it. And since the help often only searches by the first word of the term they have choosen to use, the online help is almost as frustrating as just trying different things until something works. I find it much easier to browse for something in a paper manual, especially if its a "I'll know it when I see it" situation.
A.med domain sounds cool, but it brings up the issue of policing apropriate domain choice. Who will decide what does and doesn't belong? Sure, it wouldn't take much to say that porn sites don't deserve a.med, but if there is the power to prevent it, I could see some grey areas showing up.
Should homeopathic or naturapathic web sites be.meds? What about AIDS dissidents? (people who loudly insist that HIV and AIDS are unrelated and AIDS is not sexually transmitted) I certainly don't have all the answers (or even all the questions), but I would want a.med domain to be a source of dependable information - on the other hand, I'd like dependable information on naturapathy too, and wouldn't want to see everything outside of the narrow veiw of "real medicine" excluded.
If you read the page you would have found that they say that they will work their best to accomodate those in unfortunate circumstance (read disability or economically).
The problem is, I'm not in particularly "unfortunate circumstances" yet there's no way I could do this. On the other hand if they consider not being able to have no income for a year unfortunate, I should be encourgaing them in other charitable activities.;?
If you've read the links, it's pretty clear what he wants to do- he wants to provide a way for really smart people to get a really good education, without having to cater to the bottom 98%.:^)=
Unfortunately, i think you mean the really rich people, not just the smart - or those who still live with their parents, or have a spouse who can support both of them for a year.
Have you guys really thought about this? Its not just that you cannot earn money during that time, its that you still have to live! You have to have food, shelter and an internet hook up, with approx one day a week to earn money in (assuming the 6 days 12 hours included study time. If not, good luck finding time to shower.) And if this program really isn't acredited, that means no grants, or student loans.
So anyone who doesn't have a) someone capable and willing to completely support you for the course of one year, including paying the internet charges and any computer upgrades or repairs, or b) an entire years salery in your disposable savings, this is just a crazy idea. I could probably qualify for the program, but wouldn't even consider it. Its just not free. Its incredibly expensive.
And non-acredited? Please! Just go out and buy some good comp sci books, audit some comunity college lectures then write a nice essay telling your prospective employer what you learned. It will be worth just as much, or little, and you can read the books on the commuter train.
SUDDEN TRAIN OF THOUGHT SWITCH! Hey! I wonder if the on line notes and such will be AvantGo compatible? RETURN TO FORMER THOUGHTS. Then you can read that too, while pursuing a personal study program.
Slashdot Mirror
I mean, seriously, we're talking about a little artificial island right? So the naturaly occuring fresh water is... nil? The ability to produce their own food?
My question would be, if Britain decided that they weren't subject to british law (all the court case said, from what I read) but that their claim of sovernty and territorial waters is bunk, how long could this "country" remain under a full blockade? Anyone can leave, but nothing comes in.
A full blockade will cause hardship in any country, but if we're talking a matter of weeks or months, I don't think we have a viable country here. Especially if they're in what is internationally recognized as another country's territorial waters. Anyone breaking the blockade would be committing an act of war against Great Britain, and who wants that?
So where do you get your food? Do you have equipment to make seawater drinkable, and where to you gets the parts when they break down? Where does your fuel come from? Do you have full solar/tidal/wind power, or are you importing gas or coal for a generator to keep these computers running?
Any kid can build a fort in the neighbor's yard and say they have their own country, but if the neighbor builds a fence and says "stay as long as you want, but mom can't bring you milk and cookies and when you leave, you can't come back" how long is it gonna last? I'd worry less about invasion, than that your neighbor will finally decide to stop letting you play in his yard.
-Kahuna Burger
most writers do get paid by the word, but the problem is usually compensated for by editors with standards. Katz is his own editor, and so far as I can tell, does not hold himself to very high standards.
And the sad thing is, in all that space that he took up with fluff, he could have been actually making a point. Tell us about a specific game which requires creativity. Interview a MUD player about how long they worked to design the charecter and whether they worry about staying within their created "personality". Show its true, REPORT for the love of bagels, don't get make assertions, mention one web page in passing and fill the rest in with fluff!
You know, if I had an editor ask me to write a feature about creativity and culture in the modern computer gaming world, I'd have a lot of research to do. And it could be a really good story. Maybe Katz should just offer his broad generalization and then let someone who actually cares about good writing make an interesting feature out of it.
-Kahuna Burger
So, freedom of speech should only be protected if it's speech of which you approve?
No, you're missing the point, which would be a fairly good one without the moron level inability to understand the term pro-choice.
The question was not whether the opinion was a "good" one or not. The question is "are we talking about an unpopular opinion or inappropriately flaming a group?" The fact that both pro-choice and pro-life opions could fall into this catagory, depending on where they were said should have been a good pointer on this distinction.
There is a difference between an "unpopular religious opinon", like saying on a catholic chat group that you don't know if Mother Tereasa actually meets the Church's requirements for sainthood, and a "religiously worded flame" like going into a abortion support chat room and doing the all caps shout that you are all filthy in the eyes of the lord for your murderous ways. It certainly effects how much slack your ISP is going to cut you when you start getting DoSed.
So the question is not how I, you or the ISP feels about the specific opinion expressed. The quest is whether it was expressed in a forum appropriate to it or in one where its just a distruptive attack itself.
-Kahuna Burger
I don't think that you have a civil rights case against the ISP unless their decision of what to do was based on the victims religious veiwpoints. If all they knew was "this guy's getting DoSed and screwing up our service, lets drop him", then its just consumer protection laws. The only way I could see it being a civil rights case would be if they knew the reason he was getting DoSed was his religious opinions and they said "he deserved to get DoSed for saying that, why should we do anything except cut our own losses."
Now, if the ISP had the right to cut him off for causing them service problems, he has a civil rights case against the script kiddies who were acting based on his religious opinions and caused him to lose something due to them. (assuming the truth of all statements in the orriginal post.)
IMHO, IANAL, etc.
-Kahuna Burger
The political activism groups that I have been involved with have never expected people to just find our websites with search engines. Instead we heavily market our sites as ongoing resources to people we encounter in other ways. As a result, we do not expect our hits to be coming from "geeks" any more than from anyone who can jump on IE in a spare moment and write in the url. To what extent should we believe in this "internet viewing public" rather than just aiming for the regular old public that happens to be checking out a couple of web sites?
-Kahuna Burger
the Progressive Policy Institute has written a report that recommends extending the DMCA to explicitly outlaw technologies like Napster.
The report in question says this:
The public debate over Napster, however, shows that the danger to artists and record companies comes not from technological innovation, but from companies and individuals using the technology in illegal ways (One could rightfully say, "MP3 players don't steal music, people do.") Indeed, while we believe that new technologies should not only be allowed to flourish but should even be encouraged, even if they increase the risk of piracy, we also believe that companies or individuals who use the technology for illegal purposes should be subject to the restraint of the law.
Emphasis added. The report explictly says they do not want to ban any technologies. Yeah they criticise napster, if I criticise Microsoft am I advocating banning personal ownership of computers?
And the bit about college students was a simple statement of fact. They were pointing out the most numerous users, not the most dubious ones. They also explicitly pointed out that some musicians choose to release their songs on line and encouraged that.
Slashdot completely misrepresented the report. It is all about non-technology-banning ways of dealing with copyright infringment on line. In fact, even calling them the opposition is an assumption that everyone on /. is a super-cyber-libertarian, which many of us are not. For those of us who have any respect for intellectual property, they are the allies pointing to ways to protect "content producers" rights without trying to ban technologies.
-Kahuna Burger
Well, if the report actually said that, you could be right. But the web site that was linked to in the article says nothing of the kind, and actually describes the report more than once as explicitly encouraging changes that will cut down on piracy without banning legitamate uses of the same technologies. That's the real WTF.
Did anyone actually follow the link before posting this story? The report appears to give recommendations that would change the way Napster does business but they go out of their way to say that they aren't attacking the programs themselves. If you read the article on the linked site, its kinda hard to miss. So why exactly did /. flat out lie about what their "opponents" are suggesting? Is it so hard to argue with a reasonable opponent that you have to strawman them?
I suggest following the link and reading for yourself what the group is suggesting. From the synopsis, it looks fairly reasonable to me. YMMV.
-Kahuna Burger
If you lie in a deposition one of any number of things will happen to you, the most excessive being a fine or jail term. If you are misleading and evasive in a deposition, you will most likely get the judge's "stern look number 25". I have heard nothing that indicates that Clinton's testimony met the legal criterion of perjury, and impeachments are only for legal crimes (high crimes, I might add, which perjury may or may not be). Its not a vote of no confindence because the president did a naughty thing then didn't own up to the full details when asked a more limited question.
If you were asked in a deposition if you had dinner with someone and said "no" instead of "no, but I did have a drink at the cocktail bar and one pretzel" you would be committing the same level of "perjury" clinton was accused of. All IMHO, of course.
PS, last time I checked, making motions of lawyer-client or executive privilege through propper channels didn't count as "styming" an investigation. It's standing up for your own constitutional rights. Presidents have those too, ya know.
-Kahuna Burger
Good point. Is this really any different than babelfish?
Or the jesus translator (sorry lost the link), or the candaianizer and all the rest (there are a LOT of these things).
Bablefish is probably the best example though, it is doing the same thing that this guys was.
The bablefish doesn't do the same thing this guy was at all. Though the technological process may be similar, the transformation of the work is completely different.
The bablefish takes a peice of text and changes the language that it is written in. The content, and more importantly, the context of the message is unchanged. A political rallying call in french is still a political rallying call when translated to english. A bunch of blond joke in spanish are still blond jokes in english. (though puns would just sound dumb). A health alert in english is still a health alert in portuguese. Ad nauseum.
But the entire point of these dialect "translaters" is to change, not preserve context. Any text read through it becomes a joke. A person who writes on political topics might be perfectly happy for people to read them in other languages, but annoyed to have them turned into a swedish chef joke by someone who isn't even creative enough to do the "parody" on their own.
Again, this is not a legal argument, so save those flames for someone else. But there is a reason that this guy has been flooded with requests to not link to people's sites while bablefish likely hasn't recieved any such requests. They aren't the same thing and people who have worked hard on a site know the difference. If you don't recognize that (possibly non-legal) difference, you won't understand the context of this announcement.
-Kahuna Burger
Why is it so petty? Personally, I don't care to know about the sex lives of Clinton or anybody else for that matter. But, if I'm required to disclose information to a government agency, I would want to know about the people I'm disclosing my information to.
The pettyness is in expecting personal information several orders of magnitude more personal than they are asking for from you. Thats why I gave the example of Clinton's sex life vs another person's gun licenses. The point is that you do or can know almost everything about our president that the Canadian government is holding on citizens. In fact, US politicians are expected as a matter of campainging to reveal the kind of medical information that we expect to be completely confidential for the average citizen. The implication that equal disclosure for pols would scare them is silly, unless you were trading number of orgasms for number of cars, etc. And that, IMHO, would be petty.
-Kahuna Burger
Wouldn't want to tell us what? His name and address? His income and from what sources? His weight, age, medical history, last three addresses, previous marriages, how many guns he's licensed to own, what church he attends, where he goes each time he leaves the country and his entire criminal record? What are you really talking about here?
If you're envisioning a time when the government will require us to tell them the names, places and possitions for all our sexual encounters, yes, politicians like any other person wouldn't go for it. For the information the canadian government is keeping, requiring public disclosure for clinton or anyone else of that level is redundant.
Or maybe you think that for you to admit how many guns you own, clinton should give detailed accounts of his sex life. Sounds a little too petty for that to be it.
-Kahuna Burger
Now, the contractor may get sued. The people who got broken into may have learned a lesson about taking charge of their own security. But none of this reduces the legal repercussions on the person who actually went out and broke the law.
Thats the way it is in the real world. You leave your car unlocked, you may have trouble with the insurance company if it gets stolen, but the car thief doesn't get any lighter charges. A pickpocket isn't committing less of a crime if your wallet is in your back or front pocket, even if one makes it easier on him. And a person who writes and distributes a virus to cause damage to people's systems isn't going to get any less blame because it was an "easy" system to damage. That doesn't mean that the makers of the system have no responsibility to those financially injured, but it has no bearing on how activly the virus creator should be prosecuted.
-Kahuna Burger
Also, I totally agree, I read that line and thought, "oh thats real cute. Nothing like a little note that essenstial says 'if you might disagree with this and feel strongly enough to comment on it, you just shouldn't read it.'" Hello? This is a discussion forum. The people who might disagree and even get angry are exactly the people we want to read and post, otherwise, what's the point?
Basically, it seemed like a way to pre-emptively dismiss those people who would differ with the interviewee, and I think is was insulting and tacky.
-Kahuna Burger
And I'd have to agree with it because I've seen it. One poster was talking about "good government" and said that copyright wouldn't be enforced because its restriction of speach, but GPL would be because thats a matter of human rights. I suppose that its possible that outside of this single case that the massive number of /.ers advocating controll over your own information and respect for GPL are completely non-overlapping with the group saying that artists don't have the right to say how their work will be distributed, but there's no good reason to believe it.
-Kahuna Burger
From what I've been able to piece together after weeks of trying to ignore the whole Elian matter, I'm fairly sure that nobody ever issued a warrant to search the home of Juan Gonzales. That didn't stop an insane amount of officers invading his home to get Elian.
They had a warrent. If you're going to criticise the government, do it on the truth. There's no need assume the worst and then treat it as fact.
I also can't see anything insane about the number of men used. The more their physical force alone was intimidating, the less chance of them actually needing to use their guns. A lesson from the "Boston Massacre", perhaps.
-Kahuna Burger
What if you don't want to break that law? Is it immoral to go about your business normally and also in compliance with an "immoral" law?
For instance, I believe that laws on mary-wana are extreme (though I wouldn't want it to be entirely unregulated anymore than I would support that for alcohol or tobacco). But I don't drink, smoke or even take pain killers much when I need them. So I have no interest whatsoever in using, possessing or having used around me a nasty smoky substance which also happens to be a drug. By your sig, it is actaully more immoral for me to live my life as I would choose regardless of drug laws than to go out and committ a crime just to do it? seems sketchy.
-Kahuna Burger
Is freedom to play video games more important to you than freedom of speach? Can I say anything I want except point out the dangers we may be exposed to? Its a pretty piss poor respect for freedom that responds with hysteria and bile to a reading suggestion.
-Kahuna Burger
Oh this is rich. All this talk about correlation vs, causation and then this. they don't need to "address" the data, because there is no useful data there.
This is pure correlation. "Two different things happened together, so they are related". The probelm is that tons of other things were happening at the same time. Program specifily meant to fight youth crime, other changes that may have had unexpected effects. An interesting study last year suggested that the entire dip in juvenile crime in the last decades is due to increased contrceptive avalibility and legal abortion. Unwanted poor kids are more likely to be delinquints, better family planning cuts down on both.
To suggest that structured laboratory data can somehow be trumped by highly confounded trends is just silly. Do you guys know anything about science?
-Kahuna Burger
For a better perspective on the issue of this thread, read On Killing.
-Kahuna Burger
I suggest reading On Killing. In WWII soldiers (like the original poster's father, perhaps) had very low firing rates. They gave them guns, pointed at the enemy and said "shoot", but in general, they didn't do much shooting. Troop leaders talked about walking up and down the lines, kicking soldiers to get them to fire their damn guns. These were men from a more rural nation than today, most of whom had probably handled guns well before being drafted.
By vietnam, the Army had heard of this psychology thing, and was using it to try to reduce soldier aversion to firing on other human beings. They used desensitisation and script building - the same factors, and in some similar ways, that modern psychologists worry about with violent media. Even though its likely that a smaller percentage of vietnam soldiers had handled weapons previous to the draft than their WWII counterparts, firing rates went way, way up.
Now, to go back to your earlier question, its possible that the entire draft pool of the vietnam war just happened to be more violent than those called up for WWII. Its also possible that people's behavior can be effected by stimuli and training. The fact that we don't present all of this stimuli and training on purpose, doesn't mean that it can't have an effect. It also doesn't mean that one round of Doom can turn a healthy person into a killer. But then, one cigarrette won't turn a healthy person into a corpse either, and that doesn't mean they're safe.
-Kahuna Burger
Correlation: Evil violent person tends to like games that happen to be violent.
Strawmanning: Rediculously exagerated descriptions of real causation.
Real causation: Exposure to violent video games has a tendency to increase the violent responses in any person with an accelerated effect in people who have other violence indicators.
To put in in other terms, you might as well have said -
Causation: puffing on one cigarrette will cause an otherwise completely healthy person to die of cancer within a year.
Correlation: people who have unhealthy habits and living situations otherwise also smoke cigarrettes.
The real answer, as above, is accellerated causation : Smoking is bad for you, but not in a individually predicatable way, and the effects will be increased in people with other unhealthy life factors.
You know, if there was a way to get demographic data on all you guys, we could have a real study going here. Just post a well designed, straightforward study on anything related to computers that has a non-positive outcome. Then post a link to it on /. and watch the responses. We could title it "The effects of negitive news on over-sensitive non-psych educated geeks who think they know everything."
If you want to get a less personalized veiw of the effect of external stimuli on violence, read On Killing. It starts with the firing rates of soldiers in WWII vs vietnam and how the army brought them up. pretty interesting.
-Kahuna Burger
Ah, I was afraid that no one had made that point on online reference and I was too late to fit it in anywhere. Thank you!.
I have had numerous problems with spreadsheets, image proccessing programs and others where I want it to do something, but I don't know what they would call it. And since the help often only searches by the first word of the term they have choosen to use, the online help is almost as frustrating as just trying different things until something works. I find it much easier to browse for something in a paper manual, especially if its a "I'll know it when I see it" situation.
-Kahuna Burger
Should homeopathic or naturapathic web sites be .meds? What about AIDS dissidents? (people who loudly insist that HIV and AIDS are unrelated and AIDS is not sexually transmitted) I certainly don't have all the answers (or even all the questions), but I would want a .med domain to be a source of dependable information - on the other hand, I'd like dependable information on naturapathy too, and wouldn't want to see everything outside of the narrow veiw of "real medicine" excluded.
Just some thoughts.
-Kahuna Burger
The problem is, I'm not in particularly "unfortunate circumstances" yet there's no way I could do this. On the other hand if they consider not being able to have no income for a year unfortunate, I should be encourgaing them in other charitable activities. ;?
-Kahuna Burger
Unfortunately, i think you mean the really rich people, not just the smart - or those who still live with their parents, or have a spouse who can support both of them for a year.
Have you guys really thought about this? Its not just that you cannot earn money during that time, its that you still have to live! You have to have food, shelter and an internet hook up, with approx one day a week to earn money in (assuming the 6 days 12 hours included study time. If not, good luck finding time to shower.) And if this program really isn't acredited, that means no grants, or student loans.
So anyone who doesn't have a) someone capable and willing to completely support you for the course of one year, including paying the internet charges and any computer upgrades or repairs, or b) an entire years salery in your disposable savings, this is just a crazy idea. I could probably qualify for the program, but wouldn't even consider it. Its just not free. Its incredibly expensive.
And non-acredited? Please! Just go out and buy some good comp sci books, audit some comunity college lectures then write a nice essay telling your prospective employer what you learned. It will be worth just as much, or little, and you can read the books on the commuter train.
SUDDEN TRAIN OF THOUGHT SWITCH! Hey! I wonder if the on line notes and such will be AvantGo compatible? RETURN TO FORMER THOUGHTS. Then you can read that too, while pursuing a personal study program.
-Kahuna Burger