As far as I'm concerned 2600 should have just removed it and said, "remember, it's still everywhere else". They would have saved time and money.
This fight needed to be fought. Sure, meekly complying with the bully would have kept 2600 et al out of court, but where would we be in terms of getting fair use back? The MPAA might be fighting a battle that, in all practicality, is as good as lost, but that doesn't mean they deserve the legal clout the DMCA gives them. What would happen if more laws (similar to the one alluded to on 2600 now, regarding reverse engineering - anybody got more info on that?) further restricting your rights to use/peruse/disseminate information get passed?
I don't like slippery slopes - and the good folks at 2600 are fighting tooth and nail to keep us from taking the first step down this one. They deserve our help, everyone - support the EFF!
Society does have a tendency to fear -- and thus discriminate against -- "hackers" or anyone with a reasonable amount of technical knowledge. Why? People fear what they don't understand -- and even mor, they fear people who do understand what they cannot.
I kept wondering when Kaplan was gonna say something along the lines of, "if he weighs as much as a duck...":P
Mystery Science Theatre is unknown outside the USA. Perhaps this is why - the "wit" involved is the kind that keeps "comedy" shows like SNL going after too, too many years without even the slightest piece of talent.
In defense of the show, many fans (myself included) felt that the general level of wit (yes, there was some, once upon a time) and the modicum of intelligent humor that the show displayed just tanked after the departure of creator Joel Hodgeson (sp?). Mike Nelson didn't show nearly the sense of timing or have nearly as effective a delivery as Joel's droll, offhanded lines; the show's writing suffered similarly although whether by coincidence or by his hand is an exercise left to the reader and individual fan.
There is actually a world outside of your computer. hehehe.
As per the old Bradbury tale, if I can't see it, it doesn't exist. The universe is composed of the limits of the cubicle/office/trashed apartment.
(Of course, by that logic, reading at +1 means that most trolls don't exist - hey, I like that thinking.:P)
Dell savings: Where's the beef?
on
LinuxWorld
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· Score: 1
Dell claimed the Linux-based manufacturing system is saving the company "several million dollars per year."
It would be interesting to know just where the savings is coming from; anyone got figures from Dell? Is it from possibly reduced R&D per unit value gained, despite that they're spending "the most" [sic] on Linux right now? Are they saving money from not having to buy MS licenses and products for these boxen? Shorter dev/production cycles? Support savings?
On a slightly related note, I wonder what the margins are for Dell Linux boxen; maybe they charge more because (among other reasons) they can charge more. After all, why would they argue with higher margins?:P
All the cool software tools that were on NeXT will be available on OS X when it comes out, for those of you who don't know. Objective C, Project Builder and the other RAD tools, etc. This was part of the deal when Apple bought it.
With that said, then, fond memories of using a NeXT back at school led me to go to great lengths to acquire one after graduation, just for grins. Since getting it, I debated about digging up a text or two and learning ObjC. I had thought that any efforts I put into such a learning attempt would be just character-building and/or fun (in the sick-n-twisted way), but is it possible that I could actually put this to some use in the foreseeable future?
It's sufficient to know what it does. From that, I can infer how it can be abused. And from there, decide I don't want anything to do with it.
Agreed; we know that phone taps for voice calls can be and are abused, which is why we would never accept a central switch through which all voice calls are routed and screened and possibly stored. This in spite of knowing how such would work in detail.
(Not that I've just added that much to the discussion, but the comparison seems valid to me.)
Don't open the source; destroy it.
Aside from waiting for congressional or executive action to throw this thing straight into hell, what would politically and/or legally knowledgeable/. readers say is a good way for the average schmoe to fight this? I'm aware of the necessity of encrypting emails, security, and whatnot - but I don't want to know how to deal with it. I want to know how to help kill it (albeit in a civic-minded manner).:)
Puh-leeeeeeze. Unless the FBI all of a sudden raises its number of employees by a factor of ten thousand or so, surveillance on every American citizen is not possible.
Someone else has already pointed out the activites (mostly politically oriented) that could bring you under a watchful eye, using such a system; I'd be more concerned with unscrupulous "gubmnit" employees using it for personal gain, malicious intent, or entertainment. What happens when Sally Federalintern decides she's got a crush on some guy, and starts dumping his privacy for her own little stalking attempts? Or when Joe Supervisor decides he's going to find out who amongst his friends and acquaintances is gay, so he can start a vigilante gay-bashing club?
Any system that can invade privacy wrongly will be used to invade privacy wrongly, because a sizeable percentage of the population is made up of immoral scum (or even people with weak moments and bad judgement), and the body of federal employees is drawn from that population.
Ahhh, yes, "wintel" emulation on the Mac. I remember using Win3.1 under Softwindows on an old gf's PPC Mac, way back in, ummm, early '95. She used it for a DOS-based C compiler she had to use for a programming class; I thought it was a hoot to play Solitaire, since the EMU was running slowly enough on that box that the bouncing card animation at the end of the game took several minutes.
Minesweeper was a problem, since the Mac only had a one-button mouse.:)
The comments in ITALICS are those of the person who submitted the topic. The little bit at the end about owning some classic games is emmet's - everything else has nothing to do with him. C'mon, how much brainpower does it take to figure that out?!?
More than I had last night at that hour, apparently. My apologies to Emmett.:)
A lot of us wax more than a little nostalgic for the games of yore, remembering just how much time and effort we sunk into playing them and how we couldn't get enough. Likewise, we do quit a bit of criticizing of newer games, calling them "boring" (Emmett's editorial blip about "Starcraft" being a perfect example) for their inability to capture us with the same simplicity.
I'll be among the first to admit that simplicity has a seductive and effective elegance to it, but I've got to wonder how much of our captivation with (and resulting rose-colored lenses for) the classic games stemmed simply from the novelty of video gaming? As time has gone by, and games have grown (or not), and gaming has gotten more demanding and jaded, are we just harder to impress because it just ain't new and different anymore?
I wonder what Touretzky would do if I printed up t-shirt's with all his credit card numbers, addresses, social security numbers and then sold them. By his argument it would be legal (and right) to do so, because he incorrectly believes that anything which can be printed on a t-shirt (regardless of how the information was gathered) can be freely given to the world without consequence.
Soooooooo many people here on/. seem to have a problem understanding that there is a difference between civil liabilities due to free speech and any restriction placed upon that speech. The example given by the previous poster is spurious at best; it would be perfectly legal to disseminate that information, provided that (a) no laws had been broken in obtaining it, and (b) no legally-binding restrictions were being broken in giving out that information. Are there civil repercussions for what people might do with that information? Hell yeah! Doesn't make it any less free speech, does it? Slander and libel are excellent examples - you're free to say/print what you want about a person/place/thing, but be prepared for the responsiblities and liabilities that your words might incur.
Free speech - as in protected speech - is expression that does not violate criminal statutes by its very existence; it's free speech to tell everyone your neighbor buggers his dog, if you didn't break laws finding it out. That doesn't mean that he doesn't have a right to sue your ass into the ground if it's untrue.
Hey - for those of us who've had only sporadic tastes of anime since college, can someone differentiate something for me? I watched most of BGC (in original packaging) way back when, but never finished it. I thought about trying to find it on rental video again lately, but I see different packaging and the title "BGC 2040" and the storylines don't quite sound familiar (as listed on the back). Same series, or a sequel/prequel? "Bubblegum Crash" was a short-run sequel (of sorts), right? Or am I misremembering?:)
...but his decidedly set tone ("Microsoft is evil") makes this hard to take a little seriously. I'm also not sure this is news, as wasn't this discussed pretty widely just about everywhere when MS first rolled out Passport? It's not like they were keeping the "central-repository-for-your-personal-data" thing a secret, since they wanted to sell it as a benefit.
Aside from which, if all you use is Hotmail, then there's pretty limited real information you hafta give them. After all, you could put "Ms. Wicked Witch, OftheEast, Oz" as name and address and still get an account.
Other solutions? use a different OS and browser (duh). Unfortunately, since most people are sheep...
There is a definate fear in teh disabled community especially that by using genetics you are in fact devaluing people by saying what is perfect (which is subjective anyway)
As an example - cochlear implants are being met with a great deal of negataive response from the deaf community, who see such medical advances as the source for potential erosion of deaf culture.
TO offer counselling to pepeople who might possibly have a chance of an inherited disease is ludicrous. We all have our faults. My father was born with Spina Biffida but lives a normal fulfilled life. We all carry imperfections which are what make us.
Can you imagine growing up with such a monkey on your back? Parents of juvenile diabetics have spoken time and again of the sometimes-suicidal thoughts and tendencies of their children, all because these kids are growing up with the knowledge that they have a disease that could well cripple or kill them before they're 25. It's one thing to educate people who are considering (or have received) sperm or ova donations about the potential risks involved in these circumstances - another to tell an individual in gross statistical detail about the genetic axe hanging over their head.
(I'll leave the Gattaca references and allusions to the dozens of other people that will make them.)
On the other hand I just caught "The Iron Giant" the other day on HBO, and I must say it was one of the best animated films I've ever seen! It had everything Titan:AE lacked...
What first made me want to see TIG was an interview with Brad Bird, director and screenwriter for the film. He had a passing familiarity with the book by British author Ted Hughes (which had a somewhat different plotline, as well as location and theme), but had a different take on it: in his words, what if a gun had a soul, and chose not to be a gun? In the course of writing the script, he chose early Cold War America for its blend of nationalist paranoia and seeming innocence.
The movie was excellent. Few films have pushed my buttons quite like that - and I certainly didn't expect it from a piece of American animation.
[OT] Ralph Bakshi and "low-tech motion-capture"
on
End Of Fox Animation
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· Score: 1
Does anyone remember Ralph Bakshi's animation from the 70's? Some of them were "Fritz The Cat", "American Pop", and "Wizards". One of his techniques (used to great effect in "American Pop") was to shoot live actors, then trace over their images for his animation. It was sort of a low-tech motion-capture, but it gave the movies a very warm, mature feel.
This technique was also used in many, many scenes in Bakshi's "Lord of the Rings," with fairly dramatic effect. The Orcs in the Rankin/Bass production might have been a little more true to Tolkeinn's images, but those in Bakshi's film were much darker, grittier, and more memorable.
The report focus on a lot of smaller details which have been improved, such as the minimum font size in the browser etc.
Gawd, I gotta agree there; I found myself trying to read some stuff on C|Net's Gamecenter on an archaic 14" monitor @640x480. Even at that, the text was so small (KDE 1.1, Netscape 4.7) as to nearly be unreadable! Talk about eyestrain...
I guess the idea is really who cares?... Sometimes it seems that people act like you are losing some right by not being able to watch a DVD movie.
I'm not altogether concerned about it being movies, so much as information that's being restricted. What happens when some publisher decides to start distributing e-books in DVD-like format? According to the logic of (and precedent pursued by) the MPAA, even if the information on that disc is in the public domain, by accessing the data thereon in either an unanticipated or unintended manner, the reader would be committing a federal offense. (This in spite of the legality of the purchase said reader made in the first place.) Again, who cares, so long as the information is available in other, less restrictive formats? There's always the potential that those formats could cease to be available, for whatever reason; although the likelihood of that happening in some cases isn't all that high, it's still concerning.
All that aside, it's a ridiculous restriction on published information and private property; would you buy a book for which the publisher demanded that you read with their special reading lamp? And if, for whatever reason, you bought the book (perhaps because it was the only format in which it was available, or the best, cheapest, most easily available, etc.), would you really restrict yourself to buying and using their lamp? I bet I'd be out under a shade tree on a nice day, reading by natural light, or using some awful department-store bedside lamp - and I think most people would, too.
You have to be 17 (legally) to see and R rated movie. You need to be of age to look at "adult material" (ie porn). Why should a video game this is violent or sexual in nature be any different?
Others have already mentioned about the R-rating being an industry-regulated (MPAA-mandated) issue, so I'll leave that alone. You gotta wonder what's up with keeping all these things from teenagers - no porn, violent video games, etc. - in a state where the age of consent is 16.
Someone please explain why our legistlative bodies haven't put a stop to this kind of thing?
They haven't put a stop to it because it's an effective way to kill legislation from "the opposition" that you don't like. Example: conservative democrat thinks that a welfare reform bill goes too far, but has enough support to likely pass. Through the rider mechanisms, he attaches, say, sizeable grants for the study of Mapplethorpe's influence on modern art. Every homophobe, puppet-of-the-religious-right, and general prude takes one look at that and nixes the whole thing. Poof! Unliked legislation gets off the floor and, if it's lucky, back to committee.
If you're a politician, an excellent stalling or killing technique, but if you're an average joe who's wondering why many necessary bills die (and how shite like this nearly comes to pass or does pass), then it just seems awful.
Shame on you Toysmart...I would have expected better from a toy company.
Why on earth would you have expected better? A company is still a company (or a section of a corporate megalith, depending), regardless of whether they sell toys or guns. After all, eToys certainly qualifies as a toy company, and we know what we think of them...
Did Toysmart have a specific privacy agreement of which they would now be in violation, like others mentioned on/.? It would be interesting to see how this compares to the other failed dot-coms that are selling (or trying to sell) personal info. Is the FTC investigating and considering pursuing others, and this is just the first (semi) high-profile case? Or is there something different about Toysmart that makes them a target?
As many laws as those clowns in Congress make each year to protect big businesses, you'd think they'd find time to help protect the Constitution.
But it's not in their best interests to protect the Constitution, since their constituencies aren't providing them half as much cash as corporate sponsors and PACs. Katz might rail about corporatism and its effect on society, but the more concerning thing (to me, at least) is how you get popular control of government back from corporate/conglomerate interests. The problem in trying is that any candidate who doesn't pander to big money isn't gonna get the media exposure and other such rot (which costs oh-so-much) that it takes to win elections in the States.
I think you're going to find a common theme here - people with a clue are going beat themselves senseless trying to get the unwashed masses (hell, even coworkers and friends) to believe civil liberties online is as important as it is. Even r/t civiil liberties aren't a big concern among most people - just ask the average guy what he thinks of the ACLU, particularly when they're defending the rights of someone unpopular.
Slashdot Mirror
This fight needed to be fought. Sure, meekly complying with the bully would have kept 2600 et al out of court, but where would we be in terms of getting fair use back? The MPAA might be fighting a battle that, in all practicality, is as good as lost, but that doesn't mean they deserve the legal clout the DMCA gives them. What would happen if more laws (similar to the one alluded to on 2600 now, regarding reverse engineering - anybody got more info on that?) further restricting your rights to use/peruse/disseminate information get passed?
I don't like slippery slopes - and the good folks at 2600 are fighting tooth and nail to keep us from taking the first step down this one. They deserve our help, everyone - support the EFF!
I kept wondering when Kaplan was gonna say something along the lines of, "if he weighs as much as a duck...":P
In defense of the show, many fans (myself included) felt that the general level of wit (yes, there was some, once upon a time) and the modicum of intelligent humor that the show displayed just tanked after the departure of creator Joel Hodgeson (sp?). Mike Nelson didn't show nearly the sense of timing or have nearly as effective a delivery as Joel's droll, offhanded lines; the show's writing suffered similarly although whether by coincidence or by his hand is an exercise left to the reader and individual fan.
As per the old Bradbury tale, if I can't see it, it doesn't exist. The universe is composed of the limits of the cubicle/office/trashed apartment.
(Of course, by that logic, reading at +1 means that most trolls don't exist - hey, I like that thinking.:P)
It would be interesting to know just where the savings is coming from; anyone got figures from Dell? Is it from possibly reduced R&D per unit value gained, despite that they're spending "the most" [sic] on Linux right now? Are they saving money from not having to buy MS licenses and products for these boxen? Shorter dev/production cycles? Support savings?
On a slightly related note, I wonder what the margins are for Dell Linux boxen; maybe they charge more because (among other reasons) they can charge more. After all, why would they argue with higher margins? :P
Do you really think that they understand free(dom) software with this sort of statement (about Y2K)?
Heh - he needs to get acquainted with shrink-wrap EULAs. Then he'd find out about how much a statement like that one was worth.;)
All the cool software tools that were on NeXT will be available on OS X when it comes out, for those of you who don't know. Objective C, Project Builder and the other RAD tools, etc. This was part of the deal when Apple bought it.
With that said, then, fond memories of using a NeXT back at school led me to go to great lengths to acquire one after graduation, just for grins. Since getting it, I debated about digging up a text or two and learning ObjC. I had thought that any efforts I put into such a learning attempt would be just character-building and/or fun (in the sick-n-twisted way), but is it possible that I could actually put this to some use in the foreseeable future?
It's sufficient to know what it does. From that, I can infer how it can be abused. And from there, decide I don't want anything to do with it.
Agreed; we know that phone taps for voice calls can be and are abused, which is why we would never accept a central switch through which all voice calls are routed and screened and possibly stored. This in spite of knowing how such would work in detail.
(Not that I've just added that much to the discussion, but the comparison seems valid to me.)
Don't open the source; destroy it.
Aside from waiting for congressional or executive action to throw this thing straight into hell, what would politically and/or legally knowledgeable /. readers say is a good way for the average schmoe to fight this? I'm aware of the necessity of encrypting emails, security, and whatnot - but I don't want to know how to deal with it. I want to know how to help kill it (albeit in a civic-minded manner).:)
Puh-leeeeeeze. Unless the FBI all of a sudden raises its number of employees by a factor of ten thousand or so, surveillance on every American citizen is not possible.
Someone else has already pointed out the activites (mostly politically oriented) that could bring you under a watchful eye, using such a system; I'd be more concerned with unscrupulous "gubmnit" employees using it for personal gain, malicious intent, or entertainment. What happens when Sally Federalintern decides she's got a crush on some guy, and starts dumping his privacy for her own little stalking attempts? Or when Joe Supervisor decides he's going to find out who amongst his friends and acquaintances is gay, so he can start a vigilante gay-bashing club?
Any system that can invade privacy wrongly will be used to invade privacy wrongly, because a sizeable percentage of the population is made up of immoral scum (or even people with weak moments and bad judgement), and the body of federal employees is drawn from that population.
My Apple Mac runs DOS
Ahhh, yes, "wintel" emulation on the Mac. I remember using Win3.1 under Softwindows on an old gf's PPC Mac, way back in, ummm, early '95. She used it for a DOS-based C compiler she had to use for a programming class; I thought it was a hoot to play Solitaire, since the EMU was running slowly enough on that box that the bouncing card animation at the end of the game took several minutes.
Minesweeper was a problem, since the Mac only had a one-button mouse.:)
The comments in ITALICS are those of the person who submitted the topic. The little bit at the end about owning some classic games is emmet's - everything else has nothing to do with him.
C'mon, how much brainpower does it take to figure that out?!?
More than I had last night at that hour, apparently. My apologies to Emmett.:)
A lot of us wax more than a little nostalgic for the games of yore, remembering just how much time and effort we sunk into playing them and how we couldn't get enough. Likewise, we do quit a bit of criticizing of newer games, calling them "boring" (Emmett's editorial blip about "Starcraft" being a perfect example) for their inability to capture us with the same simplicity.
I'll be among the first to admit that simplicity has a seductive and effective elegance to it, but I've got to wonder how much of our captivation with (and resulting rose-colored lenses for) the classic games stemmed simply from the novelty of video gaming? As time has gone by, and games have grown (or not), and gaming has gotten more demanding and jaded, are we just harder to impress because it just ain't new and different anymore?
I wonder what Touretzky would do if I printed up t-shirt's with all his credit card numbers, addresses, social security numbers and then sold them. By his argument it would be legal (and right) to do so, because he incorrectly believes that anything which can be printed on a t-shirt (regardless of how the information was gathered) can be freely given to the world without consequence.
Soooooooo many people here on /. seem to have a problem understanding that there is a difference between civil liabilities due to free speech and any restriction placed upon that speech. The example given by the previous poster is spurious at best; it would be perfectly legal to disseminate that information, provided that (a) no laws had been broken in obtaining it, and (b) no legally-binding restrictions were being broken in giving out that information. Are there civil repercussions for what people might do with that information? Hell yeah! Doesn't make it any less free speech, does it? Slander and libel are excellent examples - you're free to say/print what you want about a person/place/thing, but be prepared for the responsiblities and liabilities that your words might incur.
Free speech - as in protected speech - is expression that does not violate criminal statutes by its very existence; it's free speech to tell everyone your neighbor buggers his dog, if you didn't break laws finding it out. That doesn't mean that he doesn't have a right to sue your ass into the ground if it's untrue.
Hey - for those of us who've had only sporadic tastes of anime since college, can someone differentiate something for me? I watched most of BGC (in original packaging) way back when, but never finished it. I thought about trying to find it on rental video again lately, but I see different packaging and the title "BGC 2040" and the storylines don't quite sound familiar (as listed on the back). Same series, or a sequel/prequel? "Bubblegum Crash" was a short-run sequel (of sorts), right? Or am I misremembering? :)
...but his decidedly set tone ("Microsoft is evil") makes this hard to take a little seriously. I'm also not sure this is news, as wasn't this discussed pretty widely just about everywhere when MS first rolled out Passport? It's not like they were keeping the "central-repository-for-your-personal-data" thing a secret, since they wanted to sell it as a benefit.
Aside from which, if all you use is Hotmail, then there's pretty limited real information you hafta give them. After all, you could put "Ms. Wicked Witch, OftheEast, Oz" as name and address and still get an account.
Other solutions? use a different OS and browser (duh). Unfortunately, since most people are sheep...
There is a definate fear in teh disabled community especially that by using genetics you are in fact devaluing people by saying what is perfect (which is subjective anyway)
As an example - cochlear implants are being met with a great deal of negataive response from the deaf community, who see such medical advances as the source for potential erosion of deaf culture.
TO offer counselling to pepeople who might possibly have a chance of an inherited disease is ludicrous. We all have our faults. My father was born with Spina Biffida but lives a normal fulfilled life. We all carry imperfections which are what make us.
Can you imagine growing up with such a monkey on your back? Parents of juvenile diabetics have spoken time and again of the sometimes-suicidal thoughts and tendencies of their children, all because these kids are growing up with the knowledge that they have a disease that could well cripple or kill them before they're 25. It's one thing to educate people who are considering (or have received) sperm or ova donations about the potential risks involved in these circumstances - another to tell an individual in gross statistical detail about the genetic axe hanging over their head.
(I'll leave the Gattaca references and allusions to the dozens of other people that will make them.)
On the other hand I just caught "The Iron Giant" the other day on HBO, and I must say it was one of the best animated films I've ever seen! It had everything Titan:AE lacked...
What first made me want to see TIG was an interview with Brad Bird, director and screenwriter for the film. He had a passing familiarity with the book by British author Ted Hughes (which had a somewhat different plotline, as well as location and theme), but had a different take on it: in his words, what if a gun had a soul, and chose not to be a gun? In the course of writing the script, he chose early Cold War America for its blend of nationalist paranoia and seeming innocence.
The movie was excellent. Few films have pushed my buttons quite like that - and I certainly didn't expect it from a piece of American animation.
Does anyone remember Ralph Bakshi's animation from the 70's? Some of them were "Fritz The Cat", "American Pop", and "Wizards". One of his techniques (used to great effect in "American Pop") was to shoot live actors, then trace over their images for his animation. It was sort of a low-tech motion-capture, but it gave the movies a very warm, mature feel.
This technique was also used in many, many scenes in Bakshi's "Lord of the Rings," with fairly dramatic effect. The Orcs in the Rankin/Bass production might have been a little more true to Tolkeinn's images, but those in Bakshi's film were much darker, grittier, and more memorable.
The report focus on a lot of smaller details which have been improved, such as the minimum font size in the browser etc.
Gawd, I gotta agree there; I found myself trying to read some stuff on C|Net's Gamecenter on an archaic 14" monitor @640x480. Even at that, the text was so small (KDE 1.1, Netscape 4.7) as to nearly be unreadable! Talk about eyestrain...
I guess the idea is really who cares?
I'm not altogether concerned about it being movies, so much as information that's being restricted. What happens when some publisher decides to start distributing e-books in DVD-like format? According to the logic of (and precedent pursued by) the MPAA, even if the information on that disc is in the public domain, by accessing the data thereon in either an unanticipated or unintended manner, the reader would be committing a federal offense. (This in spite of the legality of the purchase said reader made in the first place.) Again, who cares, so long as the information is available in other, less restrictive formats? There's always the potential that those formats could cease to be available, for whatever reason; although the likelihood of that happening in some cases isn't all that high, it's still concerning.
All that aside, it's a ridiculous restriction on published information and private property; would you buy a book for which the publisher demanded that you read with their special reading lamp? And if, for whatever reason, you bought the book (perhaps because it was the only format in which it was available, or the best, cheapest, most easily available, etc.), would you really restrict yourself to buying and using their lamp? I bet I'd be out under a shade tree on a nice day, reading by natural light, or using some awful department-store bedside lamp - and I think most people would, too.
You have to be 17 (legally) to see and R rated movie. You need to be of age to look at "adult material" (ie porn). Why should a video game this is violent or sexual in nature be any different?
Others have already mentioned about the R-rating being an industry-regulated (MPAA-mandated) issue, so I'll leave that alone. You gotta wonder what's up with keeping all these things from teenagers - no porn, violent video games, etc. - in a state where the age of consent is 16.
Someone please explain why our legistlative bodies haven't put a stop to this kind of thing?
They haven't put a stop to it because it's an effective way to kill legislation from "the opposition" that you don't like. Example: conservative democrat thinks that a welfare reform bill goes too far, but has enough support to likely pass. Through the rider mechanisms, he attaches, say, sizeable grants for the study of Mapplethorpe's influence on modern art. Every homophobe, puppet-of-the-religious-right, and general prude takes one look at that and nixes the whole thing. Poof! Unliked legislation gets off the floor and, if it's lucky, back to committee.
If you're a politician, an excellent stalling or killing technique, but if you're an average joe who's wondering why many necessary bills die (and how shite like this nearly comes to pass or does pass), then it just seems awful.
Shame on you Toysmart...I would have expected better from a toy company.
Why on earth would you have expected better? A company is still a company (or a section of a corporate megalith, depending), regardless of whether they sell toys or guns. After all, eToys certainly qualifies as a toy company, and we know what we think of them...
Did Toysmart have a specific privacy agreement of which they would now be in violation, like others mentioned on /.? It would be interesting to see how this compares to the other failed dot-coms that are selling (or trying to sell) personal info. Is the FTC investigating and considering pursuing others, and this is just the first (semi) high-profile case? Or is there something different about Toysmart that makes them a target?
As many laws as those clowns in Congress make each year to protect big businesses, you'd think they'd find time to help protect the Constitution.
But it's not in their best interests to protect the Constitution, since their constituencies aren't providing them half as much cash as corporate sponsors and PACs. Katz might rail about corporatism and its effect on society, but the more concerning thing (to me, at least) is how you get popular control of government back from corporate/conglomerate interests. The problem in trying is that any candidate who doesn't pander to big money isn't gonna get the media exposure and other such rot (which costs oh-so-much) that it takes to win elections in the States.
I think you're going to find a common theme here - people with a clue are going beat themselves senseless trying to get the unwashed masses (hell, even coworkers and friends) to believe civil liberties online is as important as it is. Even r/t civiil liberties aren't a big concern among most people - just ask the average guy what he thinks of the ACLU, particularly when they're defending the rights of someone unpopular.