"If permitted to proceed, this case would sound the death knell for any website or bulletin board allowing members of the public to exchange opinions."
Frankly, I think they're missing the point. From the website in question :
"Take better classes: R e a d t h e R e v i e w s Who's best to take and who should you avoid?"
"Teacher Review was created to help foster communication among the City College of San Francisco student body and to be a useful tool for students to use in obtaining a more rewarding educational experience.... we can discover instructors who are conducive to our learning style without ever setting foot in a classroom."
Now I'm sure that there are plenty of "websites or bulliten boards" where students "exchange opinions". The difference is that they don't set themselves up as a media resource. I see this website as trying to do just that, and thus I hold them to some standards of accountability. Its the difference between sponsering a "vacation discussion group" and claiming to be "a resource for planning your vaction and avoiding tourist traps." Teacher review tried to have it both ways, and I don't have much sympathy for them. An accurate disclosure would read something like this:
No attempt has been made to verify the accuracy of statements made below. "Reviews" are submitted by volunteers, rather than solicited from a fair representation of students, do not require accountability, and are sometimes submitted based on heresay by students who have never taken classes by the professor in question. As a result, this website may or may not have any value whatsoever for a student looking for a challenging but instuctive course.
Now you could do a good job of teacher reviews by forbidding annonymous postings, asking what class they took and what grade they recieved and then soliciting opinions from other students who aren't self selecting by bile before giving a ranking, but that would be work. Work, however, it what is needed to bill yourself as a resource worth listening to. Otherwise, you should just be honest and call yourself a discussion forum with no claims to be providing information that would allow a student to safely dismiss or pick an instructor "without setting foot in the classroom."
The myth might give you leverage in your salery, but I've noticed that it leads to some really unrealistic discussions here on/. I've seen people with problems from sexual harrassment to ethical dilemmas told that "in this market you can immediately find another job so you have no right to complain." Aside from issues of health coverage, golden handcuffs and that fact that "immediately" can mean different things if you are living close to the edge (and no matter where you work, anyone with a new baby or who's just bought a house is usually close to the edge) it usually makes me think people have been reading their own PR too much. A realistic view of your own situation is always healthy.
No. Read the post, genius. He didn't register coke.ch because it's "cool"; he registered it because coke (cocaine) is/was the subject matter of the pages on the site.
Except that other people have observed that no pages are currently up. Were they taken down as part of a legal fight, hadn't gotten around to it yet, or we are being fed a line?
What would you suggest? "cocaine-killed-my-friend-and-i-dont-want-it-to-ha ppen-to-anyone-else.ch"?
"cokekills.ch"
"cocaine.ch"
"nocoke.ch"
"killercoke.ch"
"dont_do_it.ch"
"getoutraged.ch" (used in a MA antismoking campaign as org or com, great url)
There are tons of legitamate and just as usefull names that do not seem to be a corporate website. If he didn't think about the international use of the name as a trademark, he has my sympathy, but I'll wait to hear a little more before I throw in support. If he suspected that Coke could get pissy about the name and was serious about wanting to do something useful, he should have picked a different name.
"coke" doesn't mean "Coca Cola" in either French or German.
So what does it say on the side of the can? Or bottles or any promotional signs they give out? People have said that you order a Coke some other way, well, frankly, so what? You can order a "tonic" in some areas and get a coke. The question of trademark is whether they are using "Coke" in their advertising or packaging.
Once we figure that out, we can argue about whether a domain being used to combat cocaine addiction has a common use that trumps the trademark, but I'd like to hear from someone who knows what a coke can looks like in the country in question before you flame people about if they have any right to the word or not.
In my own case, my employers cannot afford to pay me what I could realistically get elsewhere. Instead, they offer me a number of "fringe benifits", including unlimited internet connection time ( as long as the work is done on time;).
I agree that in cases where non-work related access is being openly provided, the rules change a little. I hadn't heard of any companies making that an explicit offer before. Interesting.
Hmmm. I found the best way to strike THIS one down was that, if you censor or otherwise filter the feed, you are exercising editorial control - therefore, are directly responsible (and legally liable) for anything that gets through the filter......
I doubt it. From what I know of sexual harrassment lawsuits (esp hostile work environment, which this would be addressing) its all about "good faith efforts". The fact that a company tries to prevent employees from putting porn up on their screens protects them even if some employees do - just like posting a sexual harrassment policy makes them less liable for it being broken, not more.
Frankly, I don't think there's much of an argument to be made against companies using filterware. I'm writing this on break, but outside of downloading tax forms, there's really nothing I could be doing on the web that I can legitamately bitch about being told to do from home. Why shouldn't a company do their best to block porn if it will give them a leg up on hostile work environment? What do they have to lose?
You'd think that people would actually care when they heard stuff like that, wouldn't you? Check out Rei's Anime and Manga Page. It's blocked by Bess because it contains nudity.
...
The long and short of it is, people don't seem to care about this. It's generally shrugged off as "acceptable inconvenience," which has a lot to do with "I didn't want to see that page anyways."
Not to dismiss your example, but I think this case is different in ways that may make people more likely to care.
In the case of blocking an anime site, one: the people who would block nudity probably really don't want to see it anyway. I know all anime isn't porn, but it is usually a little more riske than people who would buy filterware go for. Two: most filterware users would likely give the company the benifit of the doubt in terms of it being a mistake, not censorship. "oh, maybe there was a picture on there that confused whatever image search they use, or they had a banner ad for something that had nudity in the ad, I don't know, but they wouldn't block the site wrong on purpose..."
In this case, however, neither of those rationalizations apply. People who use the software are exactly those who would be interested in knowing about the sites that are blocked, and there is no way to claim that this is anything but a deliberate false blocking. If someone with name recognition (there was a gentleman from EFF at the Boston fundraiser who would be optimal but I've forgotten his name) wrote a collumn on this specific situation, it probably would get press, and talking about this instance may help get more interest in the more general mistakes and misconducts.
The old Flip Wilson line "The devil made me do it" is an abandonment of personal responsibility. rioters who are at fault, not the so-called inciter. If they use force against people or property, they should be brought to One is free to say what one wants; one is also free to decide what to do about it. It is the justice.
I find it disturbing the extent to which the cult of "personal responsibility" is allowed to overwhelm soceital responsibility in these cases. Basically, you're saying that if everytime a certain person speaks, an innocent gets killed, it doesn't matter. Not only will we not hold that person responsible to deaths which arguably would not have occured if they hadn't been there, we won't even try to prevent it from happening again.
Hey, an inflamatory speaker is coming to town. Almost every speaking event he has held in the past has been followed by listeners injuring or killing members of the group he opposes. I guess we'll just hold a few spaces in the emergency room and a few others in jail. But god forbid we touch that sacred cow of freedom of expression to prevent someone from dying.
Personal responsibility is a great thing. Except when it clouds your mind to actually solving problems instead of laying blame for them. When a person harms another person, they hold the legal blame. But the fact that you can't hold an instigator legally responsible for the violence that follows them doesn't mean you have to stand back and let them just keep speaking. There are other rights than free speech. Some are even more important. Real ethics are about balance, not using personal responsibility to find the one person for blame for every action and declaring everything that happened up to their personal decision irrelevant.
I was just commenting the other day at work that I wanted a pneumatic tube system in my building. I do tax returns that have to be signed by a guy in legal. problem is, legal isn't just on another floor, its ina different elevator section (ie, I have to go down to the lobby to take a different elevator up to his floor, then down and up again to get back.)
I also have to get checks from another floor. I'd love it if they could just "tube" them to me.
IMO, most people get way too worked up when they hear about how many citizens the FBI maintains files on. Just because they've got a file on somebody doesn't mean that they're being watched and that their privacy is being invaded...it just means that they've done something that got their attention, and that they've made a note of it in case any problems arise later. No big deal!
From "The American President":
"She's got an FBI file"
"Jesus christ, so what, my mother has an FBI file!"
"Yeah, but we've got art."
I agree that people get a little worked up about the very existance of an FBI file. Its a matter of whether the file notes that you were arrested as part of civil disobedience on the capitol steps and not much else, or if they have launched an investigation of you.
Ironicaly, requesting "your" FBI file is probably a great way to get one.:)
Note that one can only steal actual property. Stealing ideas is a non-concept. There is no such thing as "owning" an idea.
No. You have made three assertions which are just that - assertions based on nothing but your opinion of the issue.
Stealing ideas is a well developed concept. I have it. Say "he stole my idea" and I have an instant understanding of the class of action you are accusing him of. Hence, a concept. If you don't agree with legal aplication of this concept, say that.
Theft of something other than physical property and ownership of ideas are both well devoloped concepts as well, socially and legaly. They are based on the idea that mental work is valuable and barring convergent developement, an individual has the right to credit and/or first implementation of their ideas.
If you don't like intelectual property, argue against it. Don't pull this "assert axioms that mean I'm right to begin with" crap.
PS, do you really not have a concept of theft of an idea? Like people say it and you just blank with no idea of what they could be describing? If so, that could be sort of cool. You might even be able to make a stipend as a research subject at your local Psych department.
I agree with your point, but US Law does state that anyone working 8 hours or more during polling hours (Polling statiosn are usually open 10-12 hours) must be given 2 hours to vote during the General Election.
I'm glad to hear that, since it would help those (like medical interns) that are working crazy shifts, but "working time" and "time you have to spend between leaving and getting home" aren't always linked, especially for commuters.
Another thing I am reminded of is that several districts in I think South Carolina did not get to vote in the republican primary. The party leadership claimed this was due to "lack of volunteers" though the districts happened to be largely black ones that were expected to favor McCain. If they weren't just lying through their teeth, or even if they did have a shortage and chose to allocate prejudicaily, it does enhance the argument for having alternative voting methods avalible. Just a thought.
Such an action seems to be giving-in the people who are not motivated enough to drive to the polls to cast their votes.
er, what if you don't own a car? retoricly speaking, since I live in a densly populated area and have been able to walk to my polling place most years, but...
You may have noticed that voting takes place on a workday. What if you commute long distances or work double shifts? even in national elections, most places don't allow you to choose a polling place near your work so you can vote on your lunch break. If you leave for work at 6am and get home at 8pm, tough, you don't vote.
What if you have a job where you travel a lot at hard to predict intervals? I took (in joke) to blaming the outcome of a close race here on a housemate who had to fly to chicago at the last minute to courier deliver something for her company. The last minute happened to be election day.
I have friends who's lives are so hectic that they register for absentee ballots as a matter of course. Bottom line is, people's lives are not always "9 to 5, work in the same town as you live" but voting still is. Secure internet voting is a way to allow greater political involvement, not just of the lazy, but of the hectic motivated. Works for me.
if you wanted to vote, you have to enter a PIN that was mailed out to before the election. I assume that, if someone tries to use an invalid PIN, or a PIN that isn't 'real,' then you can't vote.
hmmm, I wonder if they send them to the entire voting list or only people who have re-registered that year. Here in Cambridge, you only get voter info if you filled out the little "census and re-registration" card that they send you every year. But everytime I go and vote, the lists include housemates who moved out long ago and people who lived here before my landlord even bought the house. If they sent to everyone and had as bad a policy on inactive voters as we do around here, yeah, people who lived in say an appartment complex with a high turnover could cast 20 votes just by gathering up the envelopes in the return to sender stack in the mailroom. Or, better yet, recruit a couple of mail carriers to just keep all the notifications that they know don't live there anymore.
Not saying this would realisticly effect an election, just thinking about possible holes. Addmittedly a collection of people in different districts with good memories and the ability to read upside down can quarduple or more their votes around here if they want to put in the effort, so take it as you will.
As a DEVOUT porn-monkey, I must inform you (like you don't already know...) that the RILLY GOOD STUFF is a bitch and a half to find. And anyway, generally you won't find it on the web, you'll find it on IRC or (rarely) on USENET. Do these filters even touch IRC?
well, I'm certainly not a "porn monkey" but no, I don't already know that because it isn't true. whether it's "good" or not, I can find plenty of porn that goes well beyond "pictures of nude people" on the web, in non-porn related searches or domain name mistakes. (samesexmarriage.org is a political site in CA, samesexmarriage.com is a hardcore porn site. Gonzo.com is porn, dunno how jim henson co feels about that.)
I'm sorry if your dedicated searches are not producing enough sick, humiliating stuff for your standards. but that doesn't mean that whats there is tame by anyone elses standards.
Then let them NOT access the Internet. Their underdeveloppment will only be the fault of their parents. So, eventually, those underdevellopped kids will be darwinly weeded-out of the universe.
Some people think that kids have the right not to be screwed up by their parents. We're usually the people who are fairly happy and successful with the help of social support but would still be working at McDonalds if we had to count totally on our parents for help in advancing ourselves. For these people, making even stupid parents comfortable with something that may expand their kid's horizins is a worthy goal.
I still am not *completely* opposed to filtering... there are sooo many people out there whom are so terrified that their kids will *gasp* find a nude picture on the net, or they might come across something that implys that there may in fact not be a god, or whatever, and these people would not allow their children to use the internet if it weren't for this sort of option.
Um, not to get off topic, but could we please stop pretending that porn is nothing but "nude pictures"? I have heard people compare the range avalible on the internet to a kid being able to read "our bodies our selves" and other such silliness.
If you are pro-porn-choice, be honest about what you are talking about. On line porn includes (but is not limited to) stuff which can be 1. graphicly disgusting (a picture of a man shitting into a woman's mouth) 2. emotionally disturbing (B&D S&M) or 3. humiliating or frightning to those who identify with the subject (teen, pre teen or "oops" sites.)
You do not need to be a puritan to imagine that a kid particularly could be confused or disturbed by such things, especially if they don't have the sort of relationship with their parents which allows them to ask about it and sort out why it makes them feel that way. Now we can argue about what the best way to deal with this is, from better parenting to start out with to censorware, but could we acknowledge the reality of the problem instead of brushing it under the rug? To hear this group sometimes, you would think the porn content of the internet was mildly more raunchy than a display of renisance sculpture. It is unneccassarily insulting and condesending to the people we should be reaching out to, and it prevents rational discussion of solutions that work for everyone.
A far better solution, in my books, is to put the machines with Internet access where an adult can see the monitors over the kids shoulder. After all, the only thing stronger than a fourteen year old male libido is that same fourteen year old's fear of public humiliation, hey? If there is a good chance that they'll get caught browsing porn, they'll censor themselves.
Problem - legitamate but embarrassing searches. Go ahead and look for cures for adolescent bed wetting, its just a librarian! Try to find some semi annonymous info on sexual abuse recovery or gay teens. That would be fun. Or just look for info on "different sex twins" for your family topic report and die of embarrassment if someone walks by while you look at a page full of porn site hits.
Is the implication that an equal proportion of.com sites are erroneously blocked as well, or is there something about edus that makes them more likely to be picked on?
Also I would like to point out that this would not stop anyone from re-doing the research themselves and using the information from their own research in any way shape or form.
Not to be snotty, but "you are right in theory, but..."
In practice, these companies have every intention of trying to protect "their" gene sequences as proprietory. Pharmecutical companies have done more rediculous things and had the courts back them up. Example:
Guy is getting some tests done at a hospital and they find that he has some sort of immunity/protien/useful cell property that could help them develope a treatment. Guy agrees to let them take a cell culture. Research proceeds apace and treatment is developed. Pharmacutical company associated with hospital research department patents treatment and the cell line it came from. Guy who's cells they are sues for ownership of his own cell line, loses. This means that not only does this company own their treatment, they own this guys unique cell line. He cannot choose to cooperate with another hospital so that they can independently develope the treatment and compete.
Now if this one company honestly wants to protect their right to sell info, al la a map maker, while allowing anyone else to independently produce the same info and give it away, that would be great. It would also be completely out of charecter with the history and stated goals of companies outside the Human Genome Project. So forgive us our cynicism.
On a side note, I get sick and tired of hearing about how these companies have to have patents to protect "their" investments. Do you have any idea how much of their research is done with government money, either directly, though "development" tax breaks or partnerships with universities supported by NSA grants? And then they turn around and talk about research costs and that they're a private business that has to make a profit.
Personally, I believe that pharmacutical companies should be given a simple choice. Either you are a private business looking out for your own bottom line and your research costs, in which case you will get no government support, including tax breaks and partnering with any government sponsered research facilities, OR you get all the benifits of societal support that we give pharmacutical and biotech companies in exchange for acceping a modified "public interest" patent on your developments. A Public Interest Patent (PIP) would have a significantly shorter expiration period than standard and would not be enforcable against authenticly convergent research. (insert research companies helping develope an audit proceedure for challenges to authentic convergency here).
If they are going to spout free market retoric to defend making a literal killing on life saving drugs, they should be willing to take their chances in a real free market.
Compare that to the Tennessee Department of Transportation which has included an onscure little checkbox on the driver's license renewal form, which instructs the department NOT to sell your personal information--INCLUDING YOUR MUGSHOT--to third parties. In other words, if you miss that little checkbox, which most people do, you are "authorizing" the TDOT to sell your info. If that doesn't raise your holy indignation, nothing will.
As I recal, a law was recently (passed? upheld?) which forbid DMVs from releasing personal info except in narrow cases. One of the big pushers behind the law were abortion rights activists. Seems pro-lifers in some areas with lax DMVs would write down liscense plate numbers for women entering clinics then get their home addresses and harrass them.
-Kahuna Burger
Re:Doesn't everyone say this?
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Hmmm... A long time ago I decided to try to say something profound, and this is what I came up with:
"Every generation believes that it is the pinacle of civilization. The ones that came before were primitive and the one after will surely decend into barbary."
Be better if I could spell, but people have been saying "how could they have lived before X" and "The younger generation is out of control" since the ancient greeks, so why should they ever stop?
The freedom to marry group that I work with set up a page to do this with state reps to oppose a local DOMA. We included a short form opening and closing, largely to prevent our oponents from using our own site against us, but people wrote tons of personal comments and it was very effective.
If this is the first time this has been used for a tech cause, its pretty ironic. I've noticed that while activists are getting more and more involved with on-line organizing, the on-line crowd actually lags. I think its the herding cats thing - That and it's hard to decide how to fix the roof when half the house is out trying to rent a bulldozer.
I think that for many people, we're talking about two different kinds of privacy here. When I went to a casino the other night, my nicoe and I "waved to the eyes in the sky". There are cameras everywhere. But so what? I'm in a public place, afterall, am I going to stand at the craps table and pretend no one can see me?
In this case, however, we are talking about personal corespondence - a place where a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy. It's the difference between a camera in the casino or at an intersection and a camera in my house.
So some brits may not like the public cameras or the private invasion. Most I would guess are used to the idea that you don't expect privacy in public but still have an expectation of privacy in private communications. But I doubt they are the same issue for most people.
Slashdot Mirror
Frankly, I think they're missing the point. From the website in question :
"Take better classes: R e a d t h e R e v i e w s Who's best to take and who should you avoid?"
"Teacher Review was created to help foster communication among the City College of San Francisco student body and to be a useful tool for students to use in obtaining a more rewarding educational experience. ... we can discover instructors who are conducive to our learning style without ever setting foot in a classroom."
Now I'm sure that there are plenty of "websites or bulliten boards" where students "exchange opinions". The difference is that they don't set themselves up as a media resource. I see this website as trying to do just that, and thus I hold them to some standards of accountability. Its the difference between sponsering a "vacation discussion group" and claiming to be "a resource for planning your vaction and avoiding tourist traps." Teacher review tried to have it both ways, and I don't have much sympathy for them. An accurate disclosure would read something like this:
No attempt has been made to verify the accuracy of statements made below. "Reviews" are submitted by volunteers, rather than solicited from a fair representation of students, do not require accountability, and are sometimes submitted based on heresay by students who have never taken classes by the professor in question. As a result, this website may or may not have any value whatsoever for a student looking for a challenging but instuctive course.
Now you could do a good job of teacher reviews by forbidding annonymous postings, asking what class they took and what grade they recieved and then soliciting opinions from other students who aren't self selecting by bile before giving a ranking, but that would be work. Work, however, it what is needed to bill yourself as a resource worth listening to. Otherwise, you should just be honest and call yourself a discussion forum with no claims to be providing information that would allow a student to safely dismiss or pick an instructor "without setting foot in the classroom."
-Kahuna Burger
-Kahuna Burger
Except that other people have observed that no pages are currently up. Were they taken down as part of a legal fight, hadn't gotten around to it yet, or we are being fed a line?
What would you suggest? "cocaine-killed-my-friend-and-i-dont-want-it-to-ha ppen-to-anyone-else.ch"?
"cokekills.ch"
"cocaine.ch"
"nocoke.ch"
"killercoke.ch"
"dont_do_it.ch"
"getoutraged.ch" (used in a MA antismoking campaign as org or com, great url)
There are tons of legitamate and just as usefull names that do not seem to be a corporate website. If he didn't think about the international use of the name as a trademark, he has my sympathy, but I'll wait to hear a little more before I throw in support. If he suspected that Coke could get pissy about the name and was serious about wanting to do something useful, he should have picked a different name.
-Kahuna Burger
So what does it say on the side of the can? Or bottles or any promotional signs they give out? People have said that you order a Coke some other way, well, frankly, so what? You can order a "tonic" in some areas and get a coke. The question of trademark is whether they are using "Coke" in their advertising or packaging.
Once we figure that out, we can argue about whether a domain being used to combat cocaine addiction has a common use that trumps the trademark, but I'd like to hear from someone who knows what a coke can looks like in the country in question before you flame people about if they have any right to the word or not.
-Kahuna Burger
I agree that in cases where non-work related access is being openly provided, the rules change a little. I hadn't heard of any companies making that an explicit offer before. Interesting.
-Kahuna Burger
I doubt it. From what I know of sexual harrassment lawsuits (esp hostile work environment, which this would be addressing) its all about "good faith efforts". The fact that a company tries to prevent employees from putting porn up on their screens protects them even if some employees do - just like posting a sexual harrassment policy makes them less liable for it being broken, not more.
Frankly, I don't think there's much of an argument to be made against companies using filterware. I'm writing this on break, but outside of downloading tax forms, there's really nothing I could be doing on the web that I can legitamately bitch about being told to do from home. Why shouldn't a company do their best to block porn if it will give them a leg up on hostile work environment? What do they have to lose?
-Kahuna Burger
The long and short of it is, people don't seem to care about this. It's generally shrugged off as "acceptable inconvenience," which has a lot to do with "I didn't want to see that page anyways."
Not to dismiss your example, but I think this case is different in ways that may make people more likely to care.
In the case of blocking an anime site, one: the people who would block nudity probably really don't want to see it anyway. I know all anime isn't porn, but it is usually a little more riske than people who would buy filterware go for. Two: most filterware users would likely give the company the benifit of the doubt in terms of it being a mistake, not censorship. "oh, maybe there was a picture on there that confused whatever image search they use, or they had a banner ad for something that had nudity in the ad, I don't know, but they wouldn't block the site wrong on purpose..."
In this case, however, neither of those rationalizations apply. People who use the software are exactly those who would be interested in knowing about the sites that are blocked, and there is no way to claim that this is anything but a deliberate false blocking. If someone with name recognition (there was a gentleman from EFF at the Boston fundraiser who would be optimal but I've forgotten his name) wrote a collumn on this specific situation, it probably would get press, and talking about this instance may help get more interest in the more general mistakes and misconducts.
-Kahuna Burger
I find it disturbing the extent to which the cult of "personal responsibility" is allowed to overwhelm soceital responsibility in these cases. Basically, you're saying that if everytime a certain person speaks, an innocent gets killed, it doesn't matter. Not only will we not hold that person responsible to deaths which arguably would not have occured if they hadn't been there, we won't even try to prevent it from happening again.
Hey, an inflamatory speaker is coming to town. Almost every speaking event he has held in the past has been followed by listeners injuring or killing members of the group he opposes. I guess we'll just hold a few spaces in the emergency room and a few others in jail. But god forbid we touch that sacred cow of freedom of expression to prevent someone from dying.
Personal responsibility is a great thing. Except when it clouds your mind to actually solving problems instead of laying blame for them. When a person harms another person, they hold the legal blame. But the fact that you can't hold an instigator legally responsible for the violence that follows them doesn't mean you have to stand back and let them just keep speaking. There are other rights than free speech. Some are even more important. Real ethics are about balance, not using personal responsibility to find the one person for blame for every action and declaring everything that happened up to their personal decision irrelevant.
-Kahuna Burger
I also have to get checks from another floor. I'd love it if they could just "tube" them to me.
P-tube reclaimation army! bring back the tube!
-Kahuna Burger
From "The American President":
"She's got an FBI file"
"Jesus christ, so what, my mother has an FBI file!"
"Yeah, but we've got art."
I agree that people get a little worked up about the very existance of an FBI file. Its a matter of whether the file notes that you were arrested as part of civil disobedience on the capitol steps and not much else, or if they have launched an investigation of you.
Ironicaly, requesting "your" FBI file is probably a great way to get one. :)
-Kahuna Burger
Nah, thats first sunday in june and much, Much cooler. :)
Though maybe I can get a pride for pride attendance deal going with my NICOE this year.
-Kahuna Burger
No. You have made three assertions which are just that - assertions based on nothing but your opinion of the issue.
Stealing ideas is a well developed concept. I have it. Say "he stole my idea" and I have an instant understanding of the class of action you are accusing him of. Hence, a concept. If you don't agree with legal aplication of this concept, say that.
Theft of something other than physical property and ownership of ideas are both well devoloped concepts as well, socially and legaly. They are based on the idea that mental work is valuable and barring convergent developement, an individual has the right to credit and/or first implementation of their ideas.
If you don't like intelectual property, argue against it. Don't pull this "assert axioms that mean I'm right to begin with" crap.
PS, do you really not have a concept of theft of an idea? Like people say it and you just blank with no idea of what they could be describing? If so, that could be sort of cool. You might even be able to make a stipend as a research subject at your local Psych department.
-Kahuna Burger
I'm glad to hear that, since it would help those (like medical interns) that are working crazy shifts, but "working time" and "time you have to spend between leaving and getting home" aren't always linked, especially for commuters.
Another thing I am reminded of is that several districts in I think South Carolina did not get to vote in the republican primary. The party leadership claimed this was due to "lack of volunteers" though the districts happened to be largely black ones that were expected to favor McCain. If they weren't just lying through their teeth, or even if they did have a shortage and chose to allocate prejudicaily, it does enhance the argument for having alternative voting methods avalible. Just a thought.
-Kahuna Burger
er, what if you don't own a car? retoricly speaking, since I live in a densly populated area and have been able to walk to my polling place most years, but...
You may have noticed that voting takes place on a workday. What if you commute long distances or work double shifts? even in national elections, most places don't allow you to choose a polling place near your work so you can vote on your lunch break. If you leave for work at 6am and get home at 8pm, tough, you don't vote.
What if you have a job where you travel a lot at hard to predict intervals? I took (in joke) to blaming the outcome of a close race here on a housemate who had to fly to chicago at the last minute to courier deliver something for her company. The last minute happened to be election day.
I have friends who's lives are so hectic that they register for absentee ballots as a matter of course. Bottom line is, people's lives are not always "9 to 5, work in the same town as you live" but voting still is. Secure internet voting is a way to allow greater political involvement, not just of the lazy, but of the hectic motivated. Works for me.
-Kahuna Burger
hmmm, I wonder if they send them to the entire voting list or only people who have re-registered that year. Here in Cambridge, you only get voter info if you filled out the little "census and re-registration" card that they send you every year. But everytime I go and vote, the lists include housemates who moved out long ago and people who lived here before my landlord even bought the house. If they sent to everyone and had as bad a policy on inactive voters as we do around here, yeah, people who lived in say an appartment complex with a high turnover could cast 20 votes just by gathering up the envelopes in the return to sender stack in the mailroom. Or, better yet, recruit a couple of mail carriers to just keep all the notifications that they know don't live there anymore.
Not saying this would realisticly effect an election, just thinking about possible holes. Addmittedly a collection of people in different districts with good memories and the ability to read upside down can quarduple or more their votes around here if they want to put in the effort, so take it as you will.
-Kahuna Burger
well, I'm certainly not a "porn monkey" but no, I don't already know that because it isn't true. whether it's "good" or not, I can find plenty of porn that goes well beyond "pictures of nude people" on the web, in non-porn related searches or domain name mistakes. (samesexmarriage.org is a political site in CA, samesexmarriage.com is a hardcore porn site. Gonzo.com is porn, dunno how jim henson co feels about that.)
I'm sorry if your dedicated searches are not producing enough sick, humiliating stuff for your standards. but that doesn't mean that whats there is tame by anyone elses standards.
-Kahuna Burger
Some people think that kids have the right not to be screwed up by their parents. We're usually the people who are fairly happy and successful with the help of social support but would still be working at McDonalds if we had to count totally on our parents for help in advancing ourselves. For these people, making even stupid parents comfortable with something that may expand their kid's horizins is a worthy goal.
Just a thought.
-Kahuna Burger
Um, not to get off topic, but could we please stop pretending that porn is nothing but "nude pictures"? I have heard people compare the range avalible on the internet to a kid being able to read "our bodies our selves" and other such silliness.
If you are pro-porn-choice, be honest about what you are talking about. On line porn includes (but is not limited to) stuff which can be 1. graphicly disgusting (a picture of a man shitting into a woman's mouth) 2. emotionally disturbing (B&D S&M) or 3. humiliating or frightning to those who identify with the subject (teen, pre teen or "oops" sites.)
You do not need to be a puritan to imagine that a kid particularly could be confused or disturbed by such things, especially if they don't have the sort of relationship with their parents which allows them to ask about it and sort out why it makes them feel that way. Now we can argue about what the best way to deal with this is, from better parenting to start out with to censorware, but could we acknowledge the reality of the problem instead of brushing it under the rug? To hear this group sometimes, you would think the porn content of the internet was mildly more raunchy than a display of renisance sculpture. It is unneccassarily insulting and condesending to the people we should be reaching out to, and it prevents rational discussion of solutions that work for everyone.
-Kahuna Burger
Problem - legitamate but embarrassing searches. Go ahead and look for cures for adolescent bed wetting, its just a librarian! Try to find some semi annonymous info on sexual abuse recovery or gay teens. That would be fun. Or just look for info on "different sex twins" for your family topic report and die of embarrassment if someone walks by while you look at a page full of porn site hits.
-Kahuna Burger
-Kahuna Burger
Not to be snotty, but "you are right in theory, but..."
In practice, these companies have every intention of trying to protect "their" gene sequences as proprietory. Pharmecutical companies have done more rediculous things and had the courts back them up. Example:
Guy is getting some tests done at a hospital and they find that he has some sort of immunity/protien/useful cell property that could help them develope a treatment. Guy agrees to let them take a cell culture. Research proceeds apace and treatment is developed. Pharmacutical company associated with hospital research department patents treatment and the cell line it came from. Guy who's cells they are sues for ownership of his own cell line, loses. This means that not only does this company own their treatment, they own this guys unique cell line. He cannot choose to cooperate with another hospital so that they can independently develope the treatment and compete.
Now if this one company honestly wants to protect their right to sell info, al la a map maker, while allowing anyone else to independently produce the same info and give it away, that would be great. It would also be completely out of charecter with the history and stated goals of companies outside the Human Genome Project. So forgive us our cynicism.
On a side note, I get sick and tired of hearing about how these companies have to have patents to protect "their" investments. Do you have any idea how much of their research is done with government money, either directly, though "development" tax breaks or partnerships with universities supported by NSA grants? And then they turn around and talk about research costs and that they're a private business that has to make a profit.
Personally, I believe that pharmacutical companies should be given a simple choice. Either you are a private business looking out for your own bottom line and your research costs, in which case you will get no government support, including tax breaks and partnering with any government sponsered research facilities, OR you get all the benifits of societal support that we give pharmacutical and biotech companies in exchange for acceping a modified "public interest" patent on your developments. A Public Interest Patent (PIP) would have a significantly shorter expiration period than standard and would not be enforcable against authenticly convergent research. (insert research companies helping develope an audit proceedure for challenges to authentic convergency here).
If they are going to spout free market retoric to defend making a literal killing on life saving drugs, they should be willing to take their chances in a real free market.
-Kahuna Burger
As I recal, a law was recently (passed? upheld?) which forbid DMVs from releasing personal info except in narrow cases. One of the big pushers behind the law were abortion rights activists. Seems pro-lifers in some areas with lax DMVs would write down liscense plate numbers for women entering clinics then get their home addresses and harrass them.
-Kahuna Burger
"Every generation believes that it is the pinacle of civilization. The ones that came before were primitive and the one after will surely decend into barbary."
Be better if I could spell, but people have been saying "how could they have lived before X" and "The younger generation is out of control" since the ancient greeks, so why should they ever stop?
-Kahuna Burger
If this is the first time this has been used for a tech cause, its pretty ironic. I've noticed that while activists are getting more and more involved with on-line organizing, the on-line crowd actually lags. I think its the herding cats thing - That and it's hard to decide how to fix the roof when half the house is out trying to rent a bulldozer.
-Kahuna Burger
In this case, however, we are talking about personal corespondence - a place where a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy. It's the difference between a camera in the casino or at an intersection and a camera in my house.
So some brits may not like the public cameras or the private invasion. Most I would guess are used to the idea that you don't expect privacy in public but still have an expectation of privacy in private communications. But I doubt they are the same issue for most people.
-Kahuna Burger