What a coincidence. I'm just starting a remarkably similar survey for my statistics class.
"An investigation into the relative offensive nature of selected cuss words and racial slurs."
Will you be using the words in or out of context? I ask because it seems to me that the offensive/assaultive strenght of many words depend on how they are used. For instance, "my ass hurts" vs "you're an ass" or to be more extreme "I wanted him in my cunt fucking me" vs "Fuck you, you cunt".
Language is all about context, and while I do find some words pretty damn offensive without any context, most can be moderated or enhanced by the way they are used. After a few turns round westminster, for instance, it might take you a while to remember why the phrase "all my bitches" can be offesive.:)
Comparing it to how some states (or at least Oregon) votes, how does something get put on the ballot even before it can be voted on?
It depends on the size of the company. By roberts rules, generaly one person makes a motion, and the chair/parlimentarian/whatever asks for a second (or two). If the required second(s) are given, then the motion is discussed. there is then a motion to vote, or a motion to table. There is a heirarchy in this process, even in non-heirarchical organizations. More expereinced, respected people will make motions out of the blue, and they are usually seconded for discussion as a matter of course. A newer member who had something they wanted to bring up would informally talk it arround to make sure there were at least a couple of other people who thought it would be worthwhile.
Its interesting that non-profits often work this way while "money-making" companies don't. I put money-making in quotes because non-profits regularly launch sucessful bids to make money, its just that the goal of that money is not to simply accumulate or pad some CEO's salery. So a collective company could simply manage itself as a non-profit organization whose overall goal was to provide a good standard of living for the members.
There's a big difference between deciding whether to link to a page and deciding whether to censor it out of a broad swath of the internet namespace like a TLD.
Not really. All the pages that currently exist will still exist, will still be accessable, will still make all the claims that they make now. But there will also be a set of pages with a higher bar to entry.
Is it censorship if I write a personal advice page about being audited and they don't let me put it under.gov? Is it censorship for a non-profit group that prints medical advice pamphlets to exercise editorial control? I don't see any censorship here, except to the extent that letting people know which sites may be full of shit is somehow "censoring" them.
or those of you willing to take off your slashdot blinders for a second, consider the repetitive strain injuries of assembly line workers, the workers in meat processing plants, sweatshops, and packaging operations where people repeat the same motions over and over and over again, reaching twisting bending, etc...
Agh, flashbacks! My dad worked at a beef processing plant (otherwise known as a slaughterhouse) for several years. RSI hell! People go home from those places unable to unclench their hand for hours or with cramps in the one arm thats just gone up and down for 4 hours straight. Assuming you manage not to miss the meat and crush your hand bones (my dad had a chain mail glove and a kevlar glove as souveniers of his time there) the nerve damage gets you eventually. I'm not even going to go into fun stuff like freezer work.
Another area this will help with is medical labs. Techs running the same tests over and over again.
Considering a friend of mine almost died from a cat bite partly because her employers didn't have a first aid kit on hand, I'm pretty pro-OSHA./.ers tend to identify with the employers (but how will my stock options be effected) but these guidelines are going to help a lot of people.
Funny final note on meat plants. Sinclair wrote The Jungle orriginally to reveal the poor working conditions that meat packers worked under. His goal was to improve the life of laborers. But the public response was focused on what the book said about the quality of their food and reform of working conditions didn't come until years later. OSHA is neccassary because the average person isn't going to worry about what another human being had to go through to bring them a product. They only care about the intersection of price and quality.
They have been infulenced by outside forces and therefore have their own intrests in each website as opposed to fighting for the good of the Internet.
Nitpick, perhaps, but this proposal is not for the good of the internet, it is to promote health. The outside influences should be restricted to promoting health rather than one groups economic interests, but I don't think we need a broad coalition of sys admins and router managers involved.
Its also funny that so many people are just assuming that alternative and complementary therapies will be ignored, instead of recomending that their advocacy groups try to get involved. Instead of assuming that chiropactic medicine, for example, will be completely excluded, the question should be "is a recognized chiro group getting involved to help seperate good chiro from bad chiro?" Unhelpful or dangerous alternative practitioners are a greater danger to the field than mainstream medicine could ever hope to be.
Answer: Noone cares what the WHO does or thinks. By getting the force of law behind them (through ICANN's power over TLDs), they are hoping to grab legitimacy and importance by force-- when they certainly haven't earned it.
Oh yeah, a international health organization respected worldwide and having done more for health than any other group in frigging history is trying to "grab legitamacy and importance by force". What the hell are you babbling about?
WHO has earned legitamacy a thousand times over, and I hate to break it to you, but they don't need a lousy domain to do it. What they are doing here has nothing to do with getting power or importance or any other the other petty little goal that is all you can envision. They are following their mission of improved worldwide health onto the internet where they can do some good. And stupid little twerps like you scream censorship when they try to improve people's lives with additional information.
The day people start judging the reliability of medical information based on the URL is going to be a sad day for medicine. Personally, I like to judge web sites based on their content rather then on their URL. If my expertise is insufficient to let me judge, I usually go to a reliable portal like Open Directory. I sure don't base my trust on the URL.
*snort* you go to a "reliable portal" but don't want people to judge trustworthyness by a reviewed URL group? You just contridicted yourself.
The problem with judging sites based on content, is that they can just plain lie. They can claim references, they can claim studies, and its really not realistic to expect the average joe to track down every claim. We have doctors and researchers and experts for a reason.
If you think about it, what the med student proposed to say is really no different than telling someone "the Time Life references on complementary therapies are pretty good, and so are these other publishers, but anything else you should be aware that there is no editorial control for accuracy in most cases." This is great guidence for someone who wants to judge by content, but needs some sort of trust baseline before they can accurately judge.
I'm tired of this crazy internet attitude where people honestly think you can throw all the claims into the same pot and the accurate ones will rise to the top naturally. reputation and review are part of any real marketplace of information, and that is exactly what WHO is trying to bring into this. More power to them.
You can bet they'll try. The AMA and other "establishment" medical organizations don't want you to know about anything outside of their god complexes. Accupuncure, herbal remedies, and other alternatives to the western model of hospitialization, overmedication and invasive surgery are simply not tolerated (in the US at least)
Gee, good thing WHO isn't the US, isn't it (rolls eyes). I hate to break your paranoid bubble, but WHO is an international organisation (first hint : the W stands for "world" not "wow the United States is great and noone else knows anything) and draws heavily from European nations (where midwifery is the norm). And the "medical establishment" isn't as monolithic as you seem to think, even in the US. For instance, if you're smart (or lucky) the midwives you worked with were CNWs or certified nurse midwives. They are part of the medical establishment, even if they argue with other parts. There are also obsetricians who work with midwives in case a high risk condition emerges.
Anyway, the worldwide "medical establishment" has eliminated smallpox, decreased the danger of polio and generally improved the lives of millions of people. Maybe you shouldn't insult thousands of dedicated people just because you had a bitchy OB/GYN.
Alternative medicine is a weird name anyway. Isn't acupuncture now used by lots of doctors anyway? When does something stop being called 'alternative'?
"alternative" is a bad name because it implies that you have to do one or the other. Many of the non-wacko practitioners of such fields as herbalism, accupressure/puncture, massage, etc now refer to their practice as "complementary" or "suplementary". This sort of use is supported by many mainstream doctors as well, with the understanding that you have to tell your herbalist what "regular" medicines you're on, and your doctor what herbs you're taking. It's all chemicals, whether its produced in a medical plant or a medicinal plant. (ok, that pun probably failed miserably, I was trying to play off of plant=green thing, herb, vs plant=manufacturing building.)
Note to the orriginal poster - what the hell are you talking about? WHO is not the AMA, and from what I have seen, has a broad yet appropriately scientific attitude on alternative/complementary medicine. And when did the WTO come into this? Lose the ultra-independant mindset, a large organization dedicated to world health acting as a gatekeeper for all the BS out there is a good thing, and the snake oil peddlers can still hang out in.com making folks like you believe them even more because "the medical establishment is afraid of our challenge to their power, and refuses to let our wisdome be heard!" What a ripe load of BS.
Is it cheating to just submit the ballot Cambridge uses? The ballot I vote on has each canidate's name in it own box, and a circle inside the box that you fill in by pen. Then they get fed into an optical reader. Easy peasy, the voting space for your choice is clearly divided from anyone elses and visually bound to your choice.
Punch cards? what's up with that?
I'm actually starting to enjoy the ambiguity of it all (though that may be because of a nagging conviction that the final outcome will be really depressing.) and kind of hope that no one will know the decision until the electoral college actually gets together and officially ballots. I definitly don't think anyone should conceed until after the EC has spoken. Everyone should just sit back and take a big ol' chill pill and enjoy the funky uncertainty. pretend the vote is in december and you sent in your absentee ballot REAL early.:)
he fact that the riding voted very similarly in the last election means nothing whatsoever to you? (ie, Buchanan/spoiled ballots)
If it were true it would mean quite a lot to me. But the actual news sources I have seen have indicated that the spoiled ballot count is in fact quite different, and to be honest, I'm not sure what you're talking about when you speak of Bucannan's votes in former elections. Bucannan has run for the republican party nomination before, but to my knowlege he has not run in a national election in recent memory - this is his first break from the republicans to run third party. Maybe you should check your sources.
I generally ignore it when random/.ers present "facts" that have no backup in the reputable news sources I read. And the headlines here were pretty amousing too. Ambiguity seems to offend many people - including you apparently since you speak of "losers" in a race that as far as I can see, is not yet settled.
There were no complaints whatsoever before the results were discovered to be so close, including in the several weeks leading up to the election.
Sorry to be smarmy, but "nice try, but no". Complaints from voters began within hours of the polls opening. Poll workers, the election commission, etc, no one is arguing that the ballot confused a lot of people and people were unhappy about it well before the issue of closeness even came up.
And frankly, the approval by dem or gop is irrelevant to me. The people complaining are the voters who feel that they have lost their right to cast the ballot they wanted. If their complaints are valid, and if the statements I'm seeing about the ballot design violating election law are correct, it shouldn't matter who signed off on what. No one can give up the rights of another citizen for them, and an illegal ballot doesn't become legal because a flunky didn't recognize it "in time".
MHO, but as long as the suits are being pressed by voters, I'm behind them all the way.
Their law states that the first and second candidates listed on the ballot are always Republican and Democrat respectively. Plus, all punch holes must be lined up on the right side of all the candidate. Two features of this ballot's formatting were not in accordance with Florida law, and it was reviewed and passed when it shouldn't have been.
The third rule broken, that may tie this all together is that according to my paper, the ballots are supposed to be one printed page, facing one blank page. This and all the talk about the ballots being "approved" makes me wonder at what point said approval took place. I wouldn't be suprized if the approval being touted was of the proof sheets (approving order, spelling, inclusion, etc) and then at some point in the printing process some genius decided to save space (or was confused by their instructions to have the first page be the presidential candidates) by throwing the two pages of the same section facing each other.
This makes a lot more sense, IMHO than the idea that there was an unquestioned acceptance of the final form of a ballot that broke counry election law and was at least partially confusing on its face (insert standard rant about/.ers who assume that their particular skill set is intelligence and for something to be confusing to someone else but not to them is a sign that the other person is stupid) and definitly confusing to someone who was used to the correct format of that ballot. (people have asked how someone could vote president, then everything else, then only realize they had made a mistake after handing in their ballot. It makes perfect sense to me if you consider these people as expereinced voters in this county. You get your ballot, you vote for president, just as you would normally. You barely even think about the facing page info. you flip through and do the rest of the ballot, then hand it in. as it is being fed through the reader, you see the facing page info again and realize for the first time that those ballot options (which you didn't look at carefully because you had already found your candidate) don't have their circles to the right, but on the left, intermingled with the ones you had been paying attention to. By this time your ballot is gone and you can only look at other blank ballots and try to figure out if this bizzare (and as it turns out illegal) irregularity in your normal ballot has caused you to misvote.)
If someone snuck into your office and replaced your qwerty keyboard with a dvorak (?) one during the night, and you came in and semi touched typed your password, are you a moron because the new keyboard has the correct key/letter combinations clearly labled, or did you make a reasonable mistake based on an unexpected, and somewhat confusing change in format? If you don't totally realize this until after you've hit enter, is that your stupid mistake, and you'll just have to be blocked out of your machine and deal with it, or is it something that needs to be reset and re-entered, now that you understand the changes made?
Somebody cuts me off on the road, I get their license plate, look it up on my handy CD-ROM, and well, if I weren't such a nice guy, that person might start getting strange phone calls in the night, or have even worse things happen.
Worse indeed. I remember hearing recently about a proposal (nationwide, in one state?) to severly limit that sort of public access to liscense plate information. One of the biggest proponents was a local reproductive rights group, because protesters had taken to writing down liscense plate numbers of women coming to local clinics and launching harrassment campaigns against them.
Have we been so busy focusing on "Internet" privacy and controlling our information in corporate databases that we forgot about all the information in GOVERNMENT databases that's accessible to anyone just for the asking?
I share your concern about "just for the asking" but the two databases mentioned here are IMHO totally legitiamate records for government or law enforcement use. But once I believe that, we run into a catch 22 between privacy and buracracy. If you are doing a legitamate search for information and have to jump through a lot of hoops to prove your worthyness, theres annoyance at "government bloat" and "useless drones being paid out of MY tax dollars". But if you find that someone else has illegitamately accessed your info, you are understandably mad.
Personally I am all in favor of stronger controlls on plate information, which I think in most cases is only the business of law enforcement. Voter registration info on the other hand, in my state only tells you name adress, age, party affiliation and if they voted in the last election. It doesn't do much for a harrasser etc that the phone book wouldn't, but can be invaluable for a candidate for local election, or other political organizers. It does not ever tell anyone how you voted, which is the truely private and protected part of a democracy.
You are missing the point. He was asked a question with four specifc groups listed to give an example of what was being asked about - 3 non "of the Book" religions and those who did not have a religion at all. He/they responded with an affirmation of the rights of four example groups that are in the exact catagory the question was trying to move out of - religions "of the Book".
This is not zealotry to point out that when asked about one group, he explicitly affirmed the rights of a completely contrasting group. It is pointing out his prejudice.
I also noticed that while Haeglins answers were more inclusive as to which religions he supported, he was even more explicit about his support for religion over non-religion. The Supreme Court has consistantly held that freedom of religion does include freedom from religion. There is also evidence that the "founding father's intent" was not just to avoid holding one religion over another, but to avoid establishing religions as a whole as privileged over a lack thereof.
"Non-denominational" doesn't cut it when dealing with church state separation.
[end rant, made more annoyed and soapboxy by the news this morning that some catholic action league/christian coalition assholes with a bug up their ass have succeeded in killing my city's decades old DP registry, just because they can.]
Answer: because of your automatic unquestioning belief that the system is running as well as we can make it run.
Again, you assume that because my belief disagrees with yours that it is "automatic" and "unquestioning". This is the arrogence that I object to. You focus on my arrogence of tone, because of the way I phrase things and your assumptions of why. Do you worry at all about your own arrogence of content?
I note once again that you had nothing to say when I pointed out your obvious failure to understand in the 'shit happens' part of your original post.
"obvious failure of understanding" again because I have not agreed with you. I have nothing to say, because I have spelled out my thoughts on the matter in detail in another post in this thread, and you have said nothing that I regard as needing reply. Not because I am obviously right, but simply because you and I seem to disagree on the issue on a level that isn't worth running my head up against.
Question: Is that failure to respond because of an unwillingness to admit that you might be wrong
I might be wrong. So might you. For whatever reason, you have been largly talking past me rather than to my actual beliefs, so I don't see any value coming of exchange on that topic.
I pointed out examples of arrogant behavior in those words. You respond that it is arrogant of me to presume to do so. That is not arrogant behavior on my part: I could be wrong in what I had to say, but it is not arrogance to make those statements.
No, what I object to is your assumptions about parts of my charecter that you could not have hoped to know from my words. You stated that "if something like that happened" to me is would knock out my pseudo sophistication. This was not a comment on my words, it was an assumption that they were without any expereince or contemplation. It is in fact incredibly arrogent. It is no different than a poster who once commented that my attitudes on staying together for the sake of the children were probably due to my "lack of expereince with these sort of family problems". There was a (completely erroneous) assumption that since I disagreed with him, I must not have any actual knowlege, and that assumption was arrogent, in the same way that your constant assumptions about my expereience or consideration have been arrogent.
In my experience people are unlikely to call someone a "Pompous arrogant ass" unless they have reason to do so.
*laugh* we are both talking about the internet aren't we? The reason to do so is called a flame. It is almost valueless in terms of content, and would only have any real meaning to me if it had been backed up in the more polite terms of the real world by people who weren't flaming me. I could just as well say that in my expereince no one calls someone "kiddo" unless they have been given a reason to be condesending, but you would just blame that exchange on my charecter traits and not your own. I have no more reason to take your flames seriously as comments on my charecter than you do mine, less, because of the overthetop nature of your insults.
Do you think I spent one moment sitting back and thinking "I wonder if I really am a facist?" when several posters flamed me that way? Why should I take your "critiques" any more seriously?
Anyway, I've had enough bouncing for a dead thread, see you around the dot.
I've had the same expereince. Pure luck comes into play at the very begining where you have to click around till you get an open space, and often at the very end where you can end up backed into a four square ending with a diagonal one way but you don't know which.
At my time of greatest addiction, I think I broke the 100 sec barrier, but I use the "clear all the spaces that arn't flagged around this number" semi-cheat, so I don't know if I am worthy of contention.
I notice with interest that you didn't have anything to say about any of the important points that I made in my post.
Apparently we have a disagreement about how important they were.
For example: it is obvious to me that you think in a simplistic, primitive, Aristotelian, the world is black and white fashion. As such your thought patterns do not match the far more complex Yin and Yang nature of reality.
hmmm.... and here I, actually having access to accurate information about how I think, was thinking that my responses were based on my growing appriciation of the ambiguity of the real world, and an annoyance at the orriginal poster who seemed to conclude that if he didn't do anything wrong but still suffered, that it must be the result of evil, malevolence or a fundemental flaw in the system. Now, why would pointing out that a system, running as well as we can run it can still make mistakes, be a result of a black/white worldview.
Evidence of arrogance on your part: your condescending use of the word 'kiddo' indicates a contemptuous attitude toward anyone who is not 'sophisticated' enough to agree with you.
Actually, it was aimed straight at a person who was arrogent enough to believe that he could assume knowlege of what I had or had not been through in my life by whether or not my end conclusions matched up with his. It is not your disagreement with me that is causing my (admittedly not polite) responses, it is the level of disgust I have built up towards people who presume to tell me what I think, how I think, what I have seen, what I have expereinced, because in their black and white world, no one could have the same amount of expereince, the same level of intelligence, and the same willingness to look at things objectively and yet come to a different conclusion than they have.
I don't know anything about you. I don't know if your comments here actually reflect your actions in the real world, or if you go into an "ultra-ideological" mode on line, as some do. I don't know who you plan on voting for, I don't even know if you live in america. I don't know if you have spent years in prison for a crime you never committed, got away with a crime someone else served time for or have never even gotten stopped for a traffic ticket. All I know, is that on the basis of a few comments thrown out into a specfic part of the net to clear my brain between bouts of writing an article on pet photographers, you have presumed to know my worldveiw, my personal expereince with injustice, my stage of philosophical maturity, and my own assumptions about how much I know or have yet to learn. And on the basis of what I do know about you, I don't like you much.
Your posts are moderated up because they appeal to people who are proud of having taken the first (big) step toward understanding and who now believe that they know how the world works. Let me suggest that you try pulling your pompous head out of your arrogant ass and look around more carefully; there is more yet for you to learn.
Maybe I get moderated up because even in my most flamish moments (which this isn't one of, but my previous response to you was) I don't use phrases like "pompous head out of your arrogent ass". Just a thought.
Actually the usual reason I get moderated is that around here, my attitudes are a bit contrarian, and people find it interesting and insightful when someone challenges their assumptions without using obscinities, insults or lables. I know I do, and I wish more people arround here could do the same for me. Instead, its a pretty sad statement about the level of discussion here that your post "arrogent ass" and all, is one of the more polite disagreements I have recieved.
Remember though, KahunaBurger is a bonafide fascist, if Mussolini were running for office, he'd be out with a "he makes the trains run on time" placard waving to people from a street corner.
*laugh* Hey, I've been called a facist before by this crowd, but when did I get bonafide? Maybe I could add that to my business card - "Facist as bonafide by some loser on slashdot who doesn't agree with my politics."
I don't think the trains line would get anywhere in my neck of the woods, tho. The MBTA runs on an OK schedule generally. Maybe "he'll make them stop running an express train to harvard when you're at central and already late."
Heck, he's probably a member of one of our more corrupt PDs in this country (like LAPD, for instance).
hmmm... The guy manages to err on my gender, occupation, state of residence and political leanings all in on post. Nice job, if you had managed to make incorrect assumptions about my OS as well, it could have been a loser clean sweep.
I can only hope that something like that story happens to you someday; it will knock some of the arrogance and pseudo sophistication out of you.
Sorry, kiddo, as I responded to an earlier Kahuna fan, "something like that story" did in fact happen to someone I'm very close to and knocked a good deal of maturity into me. My attitude is also informed by my study of signal detection theory (understanding type I and Type II errors and how they are linked is sort of enlightening in dealing with multiple fields, including law) and my growing appriciation for acceptance of ambiguity.
I'm sorry if you find my attitude arrogent. I can't expect to communicate with people if my attitude turns them off of my message. Of course if my message is sent out into a pit of libertarian raving like/. has turned into, its hard to judge if my attitude is actualy at fault or not.
What I can't figure out is why, with the mouth foaming negitive responses I seem to be getting, I can't get moderated down to save my life these days.
They are *supposed* to err on the side of the rights of citizens.
yes, yes they are. You will notice that the people who had suffered damage in this case were also citizens. Those citizens had the right to have a crime against them investigated. The cops had an obligation to not run rampant over the rights of the citizen being ivestigated as well. The part where your response becomes strange is when you realize that they didn't.
Lets actually look at this kids story. He had just gotten fired. He still had access to the systems of the people who just fired him and accessed them that morning. The systems were maliciously compromized. Now what part of "erring on the side of the rights of citizens" wouldn't make him a suspect? The part where anyone saying "oh, this is a mistake, I'm innocent or possibly framed" causes police officers to respond "oh, sorry for bothering you, we would never continue a reasonable investigation after someone says they're innocent"? Of course he was investigated.
Saying "shit happens" is a cop out.
Sometimes, saying "shit happens" is the only mature response to a situation. Specifically, it is the mature response when the system, running as best it can in the best ballance we have come to, nonetheless fails you. The immature response is to attck the system and call the police names when their actions aren't what you like. The even less mature response is to assume that the entire system must be overhauled to avoid ever making that mistake (even if it would lead to many more mistakes of an equally unpleasant kind)
My NICOE was threatened with a frivilous assault charge by a girl subleting with us who bragged that "the police will take my word cause I'm the female" and "your life will be screwed even if you win". She knew how to use the laws in our state to screw someone. After I stayed up for 36 hours straight, crashed for 12 hours and stayed up another 36 all because I was so overwhellemed with rage at her actions that I couldn't sleep, she moved out without making good on the threat, and life returned to normal. The point of this story is that before this incident, I supported the domestic violence and restraining order laws that she had threatened my NICOE with. After it happened, I still supported those same laws. Why? Because the laws cannot be written to prevent all such possible abuses without making them totally toothless, and it would be immature for me to change my overall assessments of the risks and benifits just because I had had personal expereince with the risks. The mature response was not to rail against the system as intrinsicly broken or the authorities as evil, but to say "We had a psycho sublet. Shit happens. Glad thats over." In fact, I would say the decision criteria that needed to be changed based on the incident was our system for picking housemates/sublets, not anything in the MA criminal code.
The mature response to the orriginal poster's situation is (IMHO) similar. "Though either coincidence or malevolence, someone I had a apparent motive against, suffered damage I was capable of right after the potentially motivating situation. This caused a lot of stress, but no end charges. Shit happens. Glad that's mostly over without charges filed. Next time I will encourage them to change passwords and such the day that I leave as a protection for myself as well as them."
This is the mature use of "shit happens", its no copout, the copout is pretenting that the system could work right every single time, or at least should work wrong in the way that never causes you any trouble.
Assuming complete accuracy (unlikely recalling an oft told story with high emotional connotations well after the event) is that sometimes shit happens. Thats it. Its not that the cops hate you, its not that you can't trust anyone, its that sometimes something nasty happens to someone that you had the cababilty of doing, right after that someone did something expected to piss you off. And guess what, that makes you the prime suspect. Not because of persecution, or legal incompentence, or vindictiveness, just because of what happened.
From your story, it sounds like you didn't do anything wrong except try to log into the system after you had been fired (as a kid you wouldn't know better, but you probably should have asked to arrange a time to come back and transfer files with a current sys admin) but just because you didn't do anything wrong doesn't mean that there is something evil or incompentent about suspicion towards you. Sometimes shit just happens that way.
I hope that someday you will get a little perspective and be able to think about this unfortunate event maturely, but for now, your story is an example to us on the interactions between computer users and the law - just not neccassarily the example you intended.
Is this the same page that the post is talking about? I'm just curious because hemos said that "the new york times reported" but this is a link to an opinion piece, not expected to be a objective (or even as objective as I can expect from NYT) news source.
It also admitted towards the end that they actually were looking for something different than the actual official census answers, but voluntarily filed supplementary sheets done throughout the year.
I'm not sure you understand what censorware claims to do. The companies say they don't block anything that isn't necessary, meaning they block only specific pages instead of whole sites.
Well, since there is no product that self describes as "censorware", there is nothing that "censorware claims to do". And your idea that filterware companies should, could or claim to block only individual pages sounds pretty silly. I mean, seriously, you actually expect them to block every single page within any given porn site individually, and just keep checking back and entering each day's new pages after a careful examination of each page? I would LOVE to see anywhere is their self description that actually warrents that.
Now they may well be obligated/want to avoid blocking entire domains that are non-centralized. An individual college student putting blockable material on his university page need not lead to the blocking of the entire university site. But a page such as a.celebrity.com that is clearly a centralized site can certainly be blocked entirely if a large number of pages contain blockable material and the intent of the rest of the site is to promote that blockable material.
Come on, do you think that a filterware list should make sure not to block the big black page on a porn site that says nothing but "you must be 18 or older"? I suspect that either you are the one who doesn't understand filterware, or that you are just playing the "strawman hypocrisy game".
; however, I think sniping on Slashdot after checking one data point just isn't good enough.
Good enough for what?
Good enough to declare the entire thing a sham? no, of course not.
Good enough to be concerned about peacefires actions? When they are calling other people liars and claiming that there were no "borderline" cases in those they declared "falsely blocked", yeah it is.
Good enough to make a comment on/. encouraging a more skeptical view of Peacefires "studies" than had currently been given? You bet your ass.
I made it perfectly clear that I was commenting only on the one page, but that it was the only page I had checked. I also made it clear that I did not have time to sit around cutting and pasting all the sites (why didn't they include links, anyway?) but that I wanted t give a heads up to anyone who wanted to investigate the investigators.
I would note that in many cases, a single example out of many investigated has been enough to discredit any filterware arround here. I find nothing inapropriate about people finding a single example that only seeks to call peacefire into question interesting.
Slashdot Mirror
"An investigation into the relative offensive nature of selected cuss words and racial slurs."
Will you be using the words in or out of context? I ask because it seems to me that the offensive/assaultive strenght of many words depend on how they are used. For instance, "my ass hurts" vs "you're an ass" or to be more extreme "I wanted him in my cunt fucking me" vs "Fuck you, you cunt".
Language is all about context, and while I do find some words pretty damn offensive without any context, most can be moderated or enhanced by the way they are used. After a few turns round westminster, for instance, it might take you a while to remember why the phrase "all my bitches" can be offesive. :)
-Kahuna Burger
It depends on the size of the company. By roberts rules, generaly one person makes a motion, and the chair/parlimentarian/whatever asks for a second (or two). If the required second(s) are given, then the motion is discussed. there is then a motion to vote, or a motion to table. There is a heirarchy in this process, even in non-heirarchical organizations. More expereinced, respected people will make motions out of the blue, and they are usually seconded for discussion as a matter of course. A newer member who had something they wanted to bring up would informally talk it arround to make sure there were at least a couple of other people who thought it would be worthwhile.
Its interesting that non-profits often work this way while "money-making" companies don't. I put money-making in quotes because non-profits regularly launch sucessful bids to make money, its just that the goal of that money is not to simply accumulate or pad some CEO's salery. So a collective company could simply manage itself as a non-profit organization whose overall goal was to provide a good standard of living for the members.
-Kahuna Burger
Not really. All the pages that currently exist will still exist, will still be accessable, will still make all the claims that they make now. But there will also be a set of pages with a higher bar to entry.
Is it censorship if I write a personal advice page about being audited and they don't let me put it under .gov? Is it censorship for a non-profit group that prints medical advice pamphlets to exercise editorial control? I don't see any censorship here, except to the extent that letting people know which sites may be full of shit is somehow "censoring" them.
Kahuna Burger
Agh, flashbacks! My dad worked at a beef processing plant (otherwise known as a slaughterhouse) for several years. RSI hell! People go home from those places unable to unclench their hand for hours or with cramps in the one arm thats just gone up and down for 4 hours straight. Assuming you manage not to miss the meat and crush your hand bones (my dad had a chain mail glove and a kevlar glove as souveniers of his time there) the nerve damage gets you eventually. I'm not even going to go into fun stuff like freezer work.
Another area this will help with is medical labs. Techs running the same tests over and over again.
Considering a friend of mine almost died from a cat bite partly because her employers didn't have a first aid kit on hand, I'm pretty pro-OSHA. /.ers tend to identify with the employers (but how will my stock options be effected) but these guidelines are going to help a lot of people.
Funny final note on meat plants. Sinclair wrote The Jungle orriginally to reveal the poor working conditions that meat packers worked under. His goal was to improve the life of laborers. But the public response was focused on what the book said about the quality of their food and reform of working conditions didn't come until years later. OSHA is neccassary because the average person isn't going to worry about what another human being had to go through to bring them a product. They only care about the intersection of price and quality.
Kahuna Burger
Nitpick, perhaps, but this proposal is not for the good of the internet, it is to promote health. The outside influences should be restricted to promoting health rather than one groups economic interests, but I don't think we need a broad coalition of sys admins and router managers involved.
Its also funny that so many people are just assuming that alternative and complementary therapies will be ignored, instead of recomending that their advocacy groups try to get involved. Instead of assuming that chiropactic medicine, for example, will be completely excluded, the question should be "is a recognized chiro group getting involved to help seperate good chiro from bad chiro?" Unhelpful or dangerous alternative practitioners are a greater danger to the field than mainstream medicine could ever hope to be.
-Kahuna Burger
Oh yeah, a international health organization respected worldwide and having done more for health than any other group in frigging history is trying to "grab legitamacy and importance by force". What the hell are you babbling about?
WHO has earned legitamacy a thousand times over, and I hate to break it to you, but they don't need a lousy domain to do it. What they are doing here has nothing to do with getting power or importance or any other the other petty little goal that is all you can envision. They are following their mission of improved worldwide health onto the internet where they can do some good. And stupid little twerps like you scream censorship when they try to improve people's lives with additional information.
-Kahuna Burger
*snort* you go to a "reliable portal" but don't want people to judge trustworthyness by a reviewed URL group? You just contridicted yourself.
The problem with judging sites based on content, is that they can just plain lie. They can claim references, they can claim studies, and its really not realistic to expect the average joe to track down every claim. We have doctors and researchers and experts for a reason.
If you think about it, what the med student proposed to say is really no different than telling someone "the Time Life references on complementary therapies are pretty good, and so are these other publishers, but anything else you should be aware that there is no editorial control for accuracy in most cases." This is great guidence for someone who wants to judge by content, but needs some sort of trust baseline before they can accurately judge.
I'm tired of this crazy internet attitude where people honestly think you can throw all the claims into the same pot and the accurate ones will rise to the top naturally. reputation and review are part of any real marketplace of information, and that is exactly what WHO is trying to bring into this. More power to them.
-Kahuna Burger
Gee, good thing WHO isn't the US, isn't it (rolls eyes). I hate to break your paranoid bubble, but WHO is an international organisation (first hint : the W stands for "world" not "wow the United States is great and noone else knows anything) and draws heavily from European nations (where midwifery is the norm). And the "medical establishment" isn't as monolithic as you seem to think, even in the US. For instance, if you're smart (or lucky) the midwives you worked with were CNWs or certified nurse midwives. They are part of the medical establishment, even if they argue with other parts. There are also obsetricians who work with midwives in case a high risk condition emerges.
Anyway, the worldwide "medical establishment" has eliminated smallpox, decreased the danger of polio and generally improved the lives of millions of people. Maybe you shouldn't insult thousands of dedicated people just because you had a bitchy OB/GYN.
Kahuna Burger
"alternative" is a bad name because it implies that you have to do one or the other. Many of the non-wacko practitioners of such fields as herbalism, accupressure/puncture, massage, etc now refer to their practice as "complementary" or "suplementary". This sort of use is supported by many mainstream doctors as well, with the understanding that you have to tell your herbalist what "regular" medicines you're on, and your doctor what herbs you're taking. It's all chemicals, whether its produced in a medical plant or a medicinal plant. (ok, that pun probably failed miserably, I was trying to play off of plant=green thing, herb, vs plant=manufacturing building.)
Note to the orriginal poster - what the hell are you talking about? WHO is not the AMA, and from what I have seen, has a broad yet appropriately scientific attitude on alternative/complementary medicine. And when did the WTO come into this? Lose the ultra-independant mindset, a large organization dedicated to world health acting as a gatekeeper for all the BS out there is a good thing, and the snake oil peddlers can still hang out in .com making folks like you believe them even more because "the medical establishment is afraid of our challenge to their power, and refuses to let our wisdome be heard!" What a ripe load of BS.
-Kahuna Burger
Punch cards? what's up with that?
I'm actually starting to enjoy the ambiguity of it all (though that may be because of a nagging conviction that the final outcome will be really depressing.) and kind of hope that no one will know the decision until the electoral college actually gets together and officially ballots. I definitly don't think anyone should conceed until after the EC has spoken. Everyone should just sit back and take a big ol' chill pill and enjoy the funky uncertainty. pretend the vote is in december and you sent in your absentee ballot REAL early. :)
-Kahuna Burger
If it were true it would mean quite a lot to me. But the actual news sources I have seen have indicated that the spoiled ballot count is in fact quite different, and to be honest, I'm not sure what you're talking about when you speak of Bucannan's votes in former elections. Bucannan has run for the republican party nomination before, but to my knowlege he has not run in a national election in recent memory - this is his first break from the republicans to run third party. Maybe you should check your sources.
I generally ignore it when random /.ers present "facts" that have no backup in the reputable news sources I read. And the headlines here were pretty amousing too. Ambiguity seems to offend many people - including you apparently since you speak of "losers" in a race that as far as I can see, is not yet settled.
But on to a fresher thread.
-Kahuna Burger
Sorry to be smarmy, but "nice try, but no". Complaints from voters began within hours of the polls opening. Poll workers, the election commission, etc, no one is arguing that the ballot confused a lot of people and people were unhappy about it well before the issue of closeness even came up.
And frankly, the approval by dem or gop is irrelevant to me. The people complaining are the voters who feel that they have lost their right to cast the ballot they wanted. If their complaints are valid, and if the statements I'm seeing about the ballot design violating election law are correct, it shouldn't matter who signed off on what. No one can give up the rights of another citizen for them, and an illegal ballot doesn't become legal because a flunky didn't recognize it "in time".
MHO, but as long as the suits are being pressed by voters, I'm behind them all the way.
-Kahuna Burger
The third rule broken, that may tie this all together is that according to my paper, the ballots are supposed to be one printed page, facing one blank page. This and all the talk about the ballots being "approved" makes me wonder at what point said approval took place. I wouldn't be suprized if the approval being touted was of the proof sheets (approving order, spelling, inclusion, etc) and then at some point in the printing process some genius decided to save space (or was confused by their instructions to have the first page be the presidential candidates) by throwing the two pages of the same section facing each other.
This makes a lot more sense, IMHO than the idea that there was an unquestioned acceptance of the final form of a ballot that broke counry election law and was at least partially confusing on its face (insert standard rant about /.ers who assume that their particular skill set is intelligence and for something to be confusing to someone else but not to them is a sign that the other person is stupid) and definitly confusing to someone who was used to the correct format of that ballot. (people have asked how someone could vote president, then everything else, then only realize they had made a mistake after handing in their ballot. It makes perfect sense to me if you consider these people as expereinced voters in this county. You get your ballot, you vote for president, just as you would normally. You barely even think about the facing page info. you flip through and do the rest of the ballot, then hand it in. as it is being fed through the reader, you see the facing page info again and realize for the first time that those ballot options (which you didn't look at carefully because you had already found your candidate) don't have their circles to the right, but on the left, intermingled with the ones you had been paying attention to. By this time your ballot is gone and you can only look at other blank ballots and try to figure out if this bizzare (and as it turns out illegal) irregularity in your normal ballot has caused you to misvote.)
If someone snuck into your office and replaced your qwerty keyboard with a dvorak (?) one during the night, and you came in and semi touched typed your password, are you a moron because the new keyboard has the correct key/letter combinations clearly labled, or did you make a reasonable mistake based on an unexpected, and somewhat confusing change in format? If you don't totally realize this until after you've hit enter, is that your stupid mistake, and you'll just have to be blocked out of your machine and deal with it, or is it something that needs to be reset and re-entered, now that you understand the changes made?
-Kahuna Burger
Worse indeed. I remember hearing recently about a proposal (nationwide, in one state?) to severly limit that sort of public access to liscense plate information. One of the biggest proponents was a local reproductive rights group, because protesters had taken to writing down liscense plate numbers of women coming to local clinics and launching harrassment campaigns against them.
Have we been so busy focusing on "Internet" privacy and controlling our information in corporate databases that we forgot about all the information in GOVERNMENT databases that's accessible to anyone just for the asking?
I share your concern about "just for the asking" but the two databases mentioned here are IMHO totally legitiamate records for government or law enforcement use. But once I believe that, we run into a catch 22 between privacy and buracracy. If you are doing a legitamate search for information and have to jump through a lot of hoops to prove your worthyness, theres annoyance at "government bloat" and "useless drones being paid out of MY tax dollars". But if you find that someone else has illegitamately accessed your info, you are understandably mad.
Personally I am all in favor of stronger controlls on plate information, which I think in most cases is only the business of law enforcement. Voter registration info on the other hand, in my state only tells you name adress, age, party affiliation and if they voted in the last election. It doesn't do much for a harrasser etc that the phone book wouldn't, but can be invaluable for a candidate for local election, or other political organizers. It does not ever tell anyone how you voted, which is the truely private and protected part of a democracy.
-Kahuna Burger
This is not zealotry to point out that when asked about one group, he explicitly affirmed the rights of a completely contrasting group. It is pointing out his prejudice.
I also noticed that while Haeglins answers were more inclusive as to which religions he supported, he was even more explicit about his support for religion over non-religion. The Supreme Court has consistantly held that freedom of religion does include freedom from religion. There is also evidence that the "founding father's intent" was not just to avoid holding one religion over another, but to avoid establishing religions as a whole as privileged over a lack thereof.
"Non-denominational" doesn't cut it when dealing with church state separation.
[end rant, made more annoyed and soapboxy by the news this morning that some catholic action league/christian coalition assholes with a bug up their ass have succeeded in killing my city's decades old DP registry, just because they can.]
-Kahuna Burger
Again, you assume that because my belief disagrees with yours that it is "automatic" and "unquestioning". This is the arrogence that I object to. You focus on my arrogence of tone, because of the way I phrase things and your assumptions of why. Do you worry at all about your own arrogence of content?
I note once again that you had nothing to say when I pointed out your obvious failure to understand in the 'shit happens' part of your original post.
"obvious failure of understanding" again because I have not agreed with you. I have nothing to say, because I have spelled out my thoughts on the matter in detail in another post in this thread, and you have said nothing that I regard as needing reply. Not because I am obviously right, but simply because you and I seem to disagree on the issue on a level that isn't worth running my head up against.
Question: Is that failure to respond because of an unwillingness to admit that you might be wrong
I might be wrong. So might you. For whatever reason, you have been largly talking past me rather than to my actual beliefs, so I don't see any value coming of exchange on that topic.
I pointed out examples of arrogant behavior in those words. You respond that it is arrogant of me to presume to do so. That is not arrogant behavior on my part: I could be wrong in what I had to say, but it is not arrogance to make those statements.
No, what I object to is your assumptions about parts of my charecter that you could not have hoped to know from my words. You stated that "if something like that happened" to me is would knock out my pseudo sophistication. This was not a comment on my words, it was an assumption that they were without any expereince or contemplation. It is in fact incredibly arrogent. It is no different than a poster who once commented that my attitudes on staying together for the sake of the children were probably due to my "lack of expereince with these sort of family problems". There was a (completely erroneous) assumption that since I disagreed with him, I must not have any actual knowlege, and that assumption was arrogent, in the same way that your constant assumptions about my expereience or consideration have been arrogent.
In my experience people are unlikely to call someone a "Pompous arrogant ass" unless they have reason to do so.
*laugh* we are both talking about the internet aren't we? The reason to do so is called a flame. It is almost valueless in terms of content, and would only have any real meaning to me if it had been backed up in the more polite terms of the real world by people who weren't flaming me. I could just as well say that in my expereince no one calls someone "kiddo" unless they have been given a reason to be condesending, but you would just blame that exchange on my charecter traits and not your own. I have no more reason to take your flames seriously as comments on my charecter than you do mine, less, because of the overthetop nature of your insults.
Do you think I spent one moment sitting back and thinking "I wonder if I really am a facist?" when several posters flamed me that way? Why should I take your "critiques" any more seriously?
Anyway, I've had enough bouncing for a dead thread, see you around the dot.
-Kahuna Burger
At my time of greatest addiction, I think I broke the 100 sec barrier, but I use the "clear all the spaces that arn't flagged around this number" semi-cheat, so I don't know if I am worthy of contention.
-Kahuna Burger
Apparently we have a disagreement about how important they were.
For example: it is obvious to me that you think in a simplistic, primitive, Aristotelian, the world is black and white fashion. As such your thought patterns do not match the far more complex Yin and Yang nature of reality.
hmmm.... and here I, actually having access to accurate information about how I think, was thinking that my responses were based on my growing appriciation of the ambiguity of the real world, and an annoyance at the orriginal poster who seemed to conclude that if he didn't do anything wrong but still suffered, that it must be the result of evil, malevolence or a fundemental flaw in the system. Now, why would pointing out that a system, running as well as we can run it can still make mistakes, be a result of a black/white worldview.
Evidence of arrogance on your part: your condescending use of the word 'kiddo' indicates a contemptuous attitude toward anyone who is not 'sophisticated' enough to agree with you.
Actually, it was aimed straight at a person who was arrogent enough to believe that he could assume knowlege of what I had or had not been through in my life by whether or not my end conclusions matched up with his. It is not your disagreement with me that is causing my (admittedly not polite) responses, it is the level of disgust I have built up towards people who presume to tell me what I think, how I think, what I have seen, what I have expereinced, because in their black and white world, no one could have the same amount of expereince, the same level of intelligence, and the same willingness to look at things objectively and yet come to a different conclusion than they have.
I don't know anything about you. I don't know if your comments here actually reflect your actions in the real world, or if you go into an "ultra-ideological" mode on line, as some do. I don't know who you plan on voting for, I don't even know if you live in america. I don't know if you have spent years in prison for a crime you never committed, got away with a crime someone else served time for or have never even gotten stopped for a traffic ticket. All I know, is that on the basis of a few comments thrown out into a specfic part of the net to clear my brain between bouts of writing an article on pet photographers, you have presumed to know my worldveiw, my personal expereince with injustice, my stage of philosophical maturity, and my own assumptions about how much I know or have yet to learn. And on the basis of what I do know about you, I don't like you much.
Your posts are moderated up because they appeal to people who are proud of having taken the first (big) step toward understanding and who now believe that they know how the world works. Let me suggest that you try pulling your pompous head out of your arrogant ass and look around more carefully; there is more yet for you to learn.
Maybe I get moderated up because even in my most flamish moments (which this isn't one of, but my previous response to you was) I don't use phrases like "pompous head out of your arrogent ass". Just a thought.
Actually the usual reason I get moderated is that around here, my attitudes are a bit contrarian, and people find it interesting and insightful when someone challenges their assumptions without using obscinities, insults or lables. I know I do, and I wish more people arround here could do the same for me. Instead, its a pretty sad statement about the level of discussion here that your post "arrogent ass" and all, is one of the more polite disagreements I have recieved.
Kahuna Burger
*laugh* Hey, I've been called a facist before by this crowd, but when did I get bonafide? Maybe I could add that to my business card - "Facist as bonafide by some loser on slashdot who doesn't agree with my politics."
I don't think the trains line would get anywhere in my neck of the woods, tho. The MBTA runs on an OK schedule generally. Maybe "he'll make them stop running an express train to harvard when you're at central and already late."
Heck, he's probably a member of one of our more corrupt PDs in this country (like LAPD, for instance).
hmmm... The guy manages to err on my gender, occupation, state of residence and political leanings all in on post. Nice job, if you had managed to make incorrect assumptions about my OS as well, it could have been a loser clean sweep.
-Kahuna Burger
Sorry, kiddo, as I responded to an earlier Kahuna fan, "something like that story" did in fact happen to someone I'm very close to and knocked a good deal of maturity into me. My attitude is also informed by my study of signal detection theory (understanding type I and Type II errors and how they are linked is sort of enlightening in dealing with multiple fields, including law) and my growing appriciation for acceptance of ambiguity.
I'm sorry if you find my attitude arrogent. I can't expect to communicate with people if my attitude turns them off of my message. Of course if my message is sent out into a pit of libertarian raving like /. has turned into, its hard to judge if my attitude is actualy at fault or not.
What I can't figure out is why, with the mouth foaming negitive responses I seem to be getting, I can't get moderated down to save my life these days.
-Kahuna Burger
yes, yes they are. You will notice that the people who had suffered damage in this case were also citizens. Those citizens had the right to have a crime against them investigated. The cops had an obligation to not run rampant over the rights of the citizen being ivestigated as well. The part where your response becomes strange is when you realize that they didn't.
Lets actually look at this kids story. He had just gotten fired. He still had access to the systems of the people who just fired him and accessed them that morning. The systems were maliciously compromized. Now what part of "erring on the side of the rights of citizens" wouldn't make him a suspect? The part where anyone saying "oh, this is a mistake, I'm innocent or possibly framed" causes police officers to respond "oh, sorry for bothering you, we would never continue a reasonable investigation after someone says they're innocent"? Of course he was investigated.
Saying "shit happens" is a cop out.
Sometimes, saying "shit happens" is the only mature response to a situation. Specifically, it is the mature response when the system, running as best it can in the best ballance we have come to, nonetheless fails you. The immature response is to attck the system and call the police names when their actions aren't what you like. The even less mature response is to assume that the entire system must be overhauled to avoid ever making that mistake (even if it would lead to many more mistakes of an equally unpleasant kind)
My NICOE was threatened with a frivilous assault charge by a girl subleting with us who bragged that "the police will take my word cause I'm the female" and "your life will be screwed even if you win". She knew how to use the laws in our state to screw someone. After I stayed up for 36 hours straight, crashed for 12 hours and stayed up another 36 all because I was so overwhellemed with rage at her actions that I couldn't sleep, she moved out without making good on the threat, and life returned to normal. The point of this story is that before this incident, I supported the domestic violence and restraining order laws that she had threatened my NICOE with. After it happened, I still supported those same laws. Why? Because the laws cannot be written to prevent all such possible abuses without making them totally toothless, and it would be immature for me to change my overall assessments of the risks and benifits just because I had had personal expereince with the risks. The mature response was not to rail against the system as intrinsicly broken or the authorities as evil, but to say "We had a psycho sublet. Shit happens. Glad thats over." In fact, I would say the decision criteria that needed to be changed based on the incident was our system for picking housemates/sublets, not anything in the MA criminal code.
The mature response to the orriginal poster's situation is (IMHO) similar. "Though either coincidence or malevolence, someone I had a apparent motive against, suffered damage I was capable of right after the potentially motivating situation. This caused a lot of stress, but no end charges. Shit happens. Glad that's mostly over without charges filed. Next time I will encourage them to change passwords and such the day that I leave as a protection for myself as well as them."
This is the mature use of "shit happens", its no copout, the copout is pretenting that the system could work right every single time, or at least should work wrong in the way that never causes you any trouble.
-Kahuna Burger
From your story, it sounds like you didn't do anything wrong except try to log into the system after you had been fired (as a kid you wouldn't know better, but you probably should have asked to arrange a time to come back and transfer files with a current sys admin) but just because you didn't do anything wrong doesn't mean that there is something evil or incompentent about suspicion towards you. Sometimes shit just happens that way.
I hope that someday you will get a little perspective and be able to think about this unfortunate event maturely, but for now, your story is an example to us on the interactions between computer users and the law - just not neccassarily the example you intended.
Kahuna Burger
It also admitted towards the end that they actually were looking for something different than the actual official census answers, but voluntarily filed supplementary sheets done throughout the year.
-Kahuna Burger
Well, since there is no product that self describes as "censorware", there is nothing that "censorware claims to do". And your idea that filterware companies should, could or claim to block only individual pages sounds pretty silly. I mean, seriously, you actually expect them to block every single page within any given porn site individually, and just keep checking back and entering each day's new pages after a careful examination of each page? I would LOVE to see anywhere is their self description that actually warrents that.
Now they may well be obligated/want to avoid blocking entire domains that are non-centralized. An individual college student putting blockable material on his university page need not lead to the blocking of the entire university site. But a page such as a.celebrity.com that is clearly a centralized site can certainly be blocked entirely if a large number of pages contain blockable material and the intent of the rest of the site is to promote that blockable material.
Come on, do you think that a filterware list should make sure not to block the big black page on a porn site that says nothing but "you must be 18 or older"? I suspect that either you are the one who doesn't understand filterware, or that you are just playing the "strawman hypocrisy game".
-Kahuna Burger
Good enough for what?
Good enough to declare the entire thing a sham? no, of course not.
Good enough to be concerned about peacefires actions? When they are calling other people liars and claiming that there were no "borderline" cases in those they declared "falsely blocked", yeah it is.
Good enough to make a comment on /. encouraging a more skeptical view of Peacefires "studies" than had currently been given? You bet your ass.
I made it perfectly clear that I was commenting only on the one page, but that it was the only page I had checked. I also made it clear that I did not have time to sit around cutting and pasting all the sites (why didn't they include links, anyway?) but that I wanted t give a heads up to anyone who wanted to investigate the investigators.
I would note that in many cases, a single example out of many investigated has been enough to discredit any filterware arround here. I find nothing inapropriate about people finding a single example that only seeks to call peacefire into question interesting.
-Kahuna Burger