Well, race is coincidental in some sense- there is nothing inherent about any 'race' that pegs them to destiny in a certain class. However, in the US, it is rather undeniable that various non-white minority 'races' have a much larger chance at being a part of the proletariat or the lumpen. It doesn't neccesarily occur this way outside the US, so it is hard to avoid wondering what is going on, and knowing that it has nothing to do with racial genetics.
Actually, what might be way more fun is GTA: München 1923. Or some year in there, I don't feel like looking it up. Anywho, a game where you pick either the side of the Reds or the Fascists, and engage in lots of awesome battles. Lots of street fighting in the interwar years throughout Germany, as various militant factions of the left battled what we today generally consider the militant/extremist right. If you pick the Left, you have missions including defending the Munich Soviet; if you pick the Right, you are a member of the Freikorps and are doing your best to destroy it- players on the right also get to be a part of Hitler's 1923 (?) Beerhall putsch.
If I had me mod points, I'd mod the above post even higher...
Right on, man!
I do Smalltalk when I can- I'm with you, it *is* the best language we have right now. I just started a job doing Java servlets and... well, I miss Squeak and Seaside. I miss beign able to run the image on my local machine rather than the server, and sprinkle in inspectors, etc etc to trouble shoot problems. I feel like I'm working with a line editor like sed and assembler with Java, productivity-wise. Oh well! Maybe I'll convince them that the best thing to do is a rewrite in Smalltalk.:D
A lot of those "Apple Fan Tradition" arguments bug the hell out of me. But this isn't a bad case of that, IMHO. The couple replies were just saying that THEY don't listen to the radio and couldn't care less if there was a tuner on whatever media player they had. If you absolutely need one, don't get an iPod. Duh. If you don't really care about having builtin AM/FM, then why should anyone else care if your iPod's lack of a radio?
I don't know why Apple doesn't have a radio tuner in any of the iPods. By the way, did you hear that you won't be able to copy any media you didn't purchase to your iPod in the latest (released today IIRC) iTunes and iPod Software update? Like you said, you have to pay for it, through them. They have some wacky scheme where to get your photos on your iPod, you have to get a.Mac account ($99/year!), upload the photos there, and then purchase them from Apple for a nickel each. Ha! What will they think of next to lock you in?
Umm... that can't be the first time you've heard someone use the "It's a feature, not a bug!" line? He was joking. I'll assume you knew that and are just being extra sneaky.
I won't lie... I like Apple and their products quite a bit. I use Macs when I can, an iBook is my main machine. Etc. Etc. But there is nothing worse than the kind of Mac nerd that would reply to your post and make some sort of really lame "it's a feature, not a bug" argument about your complaints. I hate that.
Worse than a Grandmother who thinks the monitor is the computer are people who call support and LIE about rebooting when you've asked them too.
I used to work a University helpdesk, mostly faculty and staff calling. I can't count how many times someone called up with some problems- especially some weird little niggle- for which I'd recommend a reboot as the first part of troubleshooting. Especially on Windows- most problems seem to be solved by a reboot, and there are many problems that can only be fixed that way, that have no other rational source. I will forever curse those who call up with some problem like that, and when I asked them to reboot, they either said "I already did," and refuse to do it again, or pretended to do it then, but were given away at the incredible speed at which it happened. Yeah right, pal. Usually, after much cajoling I'd get them to reboot again, and the problem would be solved. Big surprise.
PBS and NPR "require donations" about as much as a lot of OSS projects do. That is, they don't require it, but ask you for donations and generally use a rhetoric of "if you use the service or software that you should pay something for it."
"They did so for one reason: It turned out that those were the key ingredients for the development of the iPod."
Not just "It turned out..." But saying "They did so for one reason" implies that all of this research into storage, electrochemistry etc was done toward the end of the iPod, or something like it.
I mean, yeah, the story is way overblown, but so was the "Al Gore Invented the Internet" thing, and people don't hesitate to bring that up whenever someone says "Al Gore." *shrug*
Comparing a gambling addiction to a heroin addiction is both ignorant and incredibly insulting to real addicts. There is no comparison. Heroin addicts can think of nothing else. It runs their lives. They'd sell their baby for their next hit.
Gambling addicts simply have addictive, compulsive personalities. There's no Betty Ford Clinic for gambling addicts, and there's a reason. It's not even in the same league as drug addicts.
I don't think you can really talk. You've obviously seen a lot of after school specials on drug addiction, maybe a few movies like "Permanent Midnight" and "Requiem for a Dream." There are plenty of opiate addicts who would not sell their baby for their next hit, and for whom there really aren't any external hints to the rest of society that they are an addict. You have met many opiate addicts- coworkers, family, friends, clerks at the store- they didn't look like desperate, strung out junkies, hawking off stolen goods to buy a bag of dope.
On the other hand, there are gambling addicts who have sold out their friends and family to get just a little more money to blow on whatever their preffered game is.
This is exaclty whats wrong with them. The market for these things, like the market for Newton's, will be fairly small because you get a much less functional device for the same price in a package which just isnt small enough to carry around. If I've got to carry a 3 lb, non-pocketable brick, I might as well be carrying my 5 lb laptop.
But that's just it. If a company were to make the Newton today- top of the line-type specs and the exact same physical screen size (but a higher-res) it wouldn't have to be a 3 lb non-pocketable brick like these things.
Even the Newton wasn't that- the Newton 2x00s weighed 1-1.4 lbs depending on what kind of batteries you had. The earlier Newtons were quite a bit smaller, but the Newton 2x00s were the top of the line, the last models made, and the Newts most beloved by most Newton enthusiasts. I don't debate that for most people a Newton is too big to fit in a pocket, even though I carried my 2100 around in my back pocket or in cargo pants of jeans with no problem.
Even if it doesn't fit in your pants, at least it is small enough to keep in your hands, like a lot of the paper-based day planners people carry around. A 5"x8" 1 lb Newton is easy to tote; a 5 lb laptop is not. I have owned a couple different laptops- a 7 lb Dell and a 5 lb iBook- and both of them never left the house for me to take to work or class more than a couple times.
Doctors and Lawyers loved the Newton, and some might buy these things, but the functionality offered by the newton has largely been replaced by other, smaller devices (though not as elegantly as the newton did); Even the newton was too big to see widespread adoption.
I don't presume to tell the world they should use the device I want. But with hardware and software as it is today, there *is* room in the market for something in the middle like the Newton 2x00. The thing is that a Newton 2100-like device would be quite a bit smaller and lighter than the Newton 2100 itself was. It would be easy enough to shave an inch or so off the length, make it a lot thinner (.25-.5" thick), and give it the kind of capabilities that make it more of a computer.
Actually, something like this exists- the Samsung Nexio S160. There's a newer model too. I think there was a newer model too. That is pretty close to what I'd like, just about exactly. But even when there is room in the market for something like this, even when people want it, there is no way they're going to speak $1200-1500 on it when they can get a PocketPC $250-450- everything but the screen being the same or better.
Why does Microsoft have to go and push some big honkin device like this instead? These Origami tablets truly are big enough that you should (and probably are) asking "if it's this big, why not bring a laptop?" There have been a few powerful pocketable computers I've used that have been very close to the sweet spot of size vs functionality vs price:
1. Newton 2100 2. Jornada 720 3. Sigmarion 3 4. Nexio S160 5. Sony Vaio U-Series 6. OQO
It's a shame, because the stuff it takes to make what I and others want- and those products prove it. The first two products are discontinued, and finding software for tem is getting harder and harder. Numbers 3 and 4 are only available via import from the Far East, and also have software compatibility issues- they both run the relatively-new Windows CE 4.x, but since they aren't available directly in the European and American markets, software is somewhat hard to find, with most software being written for PocketPC- incompatible with vanilla WinCE [1]. The Sig3 only comes in Japanese. The last two are really, really expensive ($2000+), and while they look like they'd be great for me, I just couldn't deal with carrying around a $2500 device in my pocket, subject to the abuse my Axim X51v or Jornada 720 recieve, let alone the kind of abuse my Newton 2100 took in stride.
[1] Think of WinCE as vanilla Linux with X11 installed. PocketPC is that, plus GNOME/GTK.
why do they gotta make these things so big and fat?
all i want is something the size of my former Newton MP2x00. It is the sweet spot between huge tablet PCs (I will not carry around an 7 lb tablet just like a notebook- sorry) and too small PDAs (3-4" screens don't cut it for a lot of things). I want something that will fit in a pair of my pants with deep pockets, or in a jacket pocket- something the Newton MP2x00 did, as well as various handheld PCs (Jornada 720, Sigmarion 3, HP200lx) I've had or tried.
*sigh*
I'd go buy a sony U50/70 but there's no way I'm spending USD $2000 on a device I carry around with me all the time. Something $500-1000 is more like it, but with our luck it'll end up being more like $800-1200 for one of these things.
Oh well... I guess I'll have to keep using CE devices for now, taking a PDA and using it as a computer. It works pretty well, don't get me wrong- but the hardware (mostly the screensize) doesn't cut it.
Call me crazy, but wasn't the premise of Ubuntu to concentrate on making a great desktop OS on a select few platforms, with the argument that Debian is more for having universal portability across a wide array of platforms?
That was my first reaction, too. My second thought was that I sure wouldn't say no to having the Ubuntu polish on the likes of the sad-excuse-for-a-pda that is the Zaurus Linux-based PDAs. If anyone can do it in the community now out of these existing distros, I'd put my money on Ubuntu.
I know in this case google didn't work out for you, but I can't say I've ever had to do more than the following:
1. Norton AV pops and says "Danger! Danger! Virus found! Something.Win32.A2; clean failed; quarantine (failed|successful)." 2. Then I google "Something.Win32.A2" and usually the first link is Symantec's page on that virus/worm. 3. Click that link. Read that page. 4. Either download the removal tool, which is on that page, or follow the manual removal directions they give.
Not sure about MSNM worms or even if something like Norton detects them. But I can't say I've ever had any viral/worm experience above and beyond the above in the last 5 years; and that is not as an individual running Windows, but as someone who does desktop support for a few labfulls of PCs at a university library and a bunch of staff machines and the same held true when I worked the Uni-wide helpdesk.
Gore didn't run in 2004, that was Kerry. These are voting machine anomolies from 2004- not the stuff from 2000 which is well documented. But I'll still take you if it means anything.
The the follow-upper said, apparently VTune won't install on an AMD machine. But it still makes no sense to me- why would it matter what CPU is in use in a JIT/VM system like.NET? In the language I use (Squeak Smalltalk) which is similar enough to.NET, I use a built-in profiler that works on any CPU and any OS- it's written in Smalltalk itself, not some C app from the outside. Why wouldn't something like that exist for.NET?
law breakers should be the last people to criticize a perceived bad influence.
Sorry, I call bullshit. You may subscribe to a Judeo-Christian outlook on life, believing that only he without sin should cast the first stone, but that doesn't go for all of us automatically. Why is it that people reject the morality of someone like a prostitute or drug addict, but has no problem accepting the moralizing of the alcohol-addicted pedophile that you usually call Pastor? Maybe you don't know he is an alcoholic pedophile; you nod along in church on Sunday to his insightful thoughts. If you knew the truth, would it make everything he said untrue?
Contrary to popular belief, various forms of law breakers are people too. Being a drug addict or a streetwalker doesn't turn you into an inhuman monster, incapable of rational thought. Nor does it mean you no longer can have an opinion.
Indeed, most prostitutes- and a lot of sex workers in general- end up where they are not because it was what they dreamed about doing when they were young. However, you too are guilty of a black and white view of things. Not all prostitutes are dirty crack addicts, forced into a life of selling their own body to get the money to buy the next rock. Or whatever other stereotype of a streetwalker you want to use. Contrary to puritanical American "conventional wisdom," there are prostitutes and other sex workers who do indeed enjoy their job. Not surprisingly, this is usually in places where prostitution is legal, and there is a clean and regulated market, where people persue it as a matter of choice. Like legal sex workers, oftentimes it is a job they do for a relatively short period and make decent money (compared to the menial jobs other folks their age maybe engaged in).
I'm not trying to say that places where prostitution is legal is some wonderland of joy, where women are worshipped as goddesses and treated like queens... but it is far from the streetwalking drug addict stereotype we're fed in the US. It is easy to just feel pity on anyone who "sells their body" but I've also talked to a lot of women, some of them who have been sex workers, who found it more appealing to "sell their body" in a legal, safe, clean and regulated system than to "sell their brain" like the rest of us.
I even imagine there are little girls somewhere who might even want to do that when they grow up, but I do agree that it is rare. But then again, most jobs aren't the jobs kids sit and think "golly gee, that's what I want to do when I grow up!" A society of nothing but firemen, police officers, presidents, vetrinarians, astronauts, teachers, and professional athletes wouldn't be the most productive.
P.S. What is the E.U.'s position (if any) on censorship?
I don't know enough to answer your question, but I can tell you that the recent Muhammad comic controversy has brought about a case in EU court that will certainly have a hand in deciding it. Free speech VS Freedom of religion, or that is how the BBC world service spun it when I heard about it on the radio.
I'm sure you've never broken a rule in your life. Don't cast the stone.
It seems just as bad to assume that everyone else lives by your christian moral system. There are plenty of folks, both christian-cum-hypocrits and non-christians who have no qualms pointing out the flaws and sins of other folk, without regard to their sins, whether lesser or not.
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Well, race is coincidental in some sense- there is nothing inherent about any 'race' that pegs them to destiny in a certain class. However, in the US, it is rather undeniable that various non-white minority 'races' have a much larger chance at being a part of the proletariat or the lumpen. It doesn't neccesarily occur this way outside the US, so it is hard to avoid wondering what is going on, and knowing that it has nothing to do with racial genetics.
Citadel (esp Cit-86) out-shoots WWIV any day of the week. :D
Actually, what might be way more fun is GTA: München 1923. Or some year in there, I don't feel like looking it up. Anywho, a game where you pick either the side of the Reds or the Fascists, and engage in lots of awesome battles. Lots of street fighting in the interwar years throughout Germany, as various militant factions of the left battled what we today generally consider the militant/extremist right. If you pick the Left, you have missions including defending the Munich Soviet; if you pick the Right, you are a member of the Freikorps and are doing your best to destroy it- players on the right also get to be a part of Hitler's 1923 (?) Beerhall putsch.
Now that is a game I'd totally play.
Sorry, it was just sarcasm, based on the statement:
Personally I suspect that a radio offering free music goes against the wish of Apple that you pay for everything.
If they could get you to pay for a subscription to listen to the radio, that'd be a different kettle of fish.
If I had me mod points, I'd mod the above post even higher...
... well, I miss Squeak and Seaside. I miss beign able to run the image on my local machine rather than the server, and sprinkle in inspectors, etc etc to trouble shoot problems. I feel like I'm working with a line editor like sed and assembler with Java, productivity-wise. Oh well! Maybe I'll convince them that the best thing to do is a rewrite in Smalltalk. :D
Right on, man!
I do Smalltalk when I can- I'm with you, it *is* the best language we have right now. I just started a job doing Java servlets and
A lot of those "Apple Fan Tradition" arguments bug the hell out of me. But this isn't a bad case of that, IMHO. The couple replies were just saying that THEY don't listen to the radio and couldn't care less if there was a tuner on whatever media player they had. If you absolutely need one, don't get an iPod. Duh. If you don't really care about having builtin AM/FM, then why should anyone else care if your iPod's lack of a radio?
.Mac account ($99/year!), upload the photos there, and then purchase them from Apple for a nickel each. Ha! What will they think of next to lock you in?
I don't know why Apple doesn't have a radio tuner in any of the iPods. By the way, did you hear that you won't be able to copy any media you didn't purchase to your iPod in the latest (released today IIRC) iTunes and iPod Software update? Like you said, you have to pay for it, through them. They have some wacky scheme where to get your photos on your iPod, you have to get a
Umm... that can't be the first time you've heard someone use the "It's a feature, not a bug!" line? He was joking. I'll assume you knew that and are just being extra sneaky.
I won't lie... I like Apple and their products quite a bit. I use Macs when I can, an iBook is my main machine. Etc. Etc. But there is nothing worse than the kind of Mac nerd that would reply to your post and make some sort of really lame "it's a feature, not a bug" argument about your complaints. I hate that.
Anywho, thanks and have a nice day!
Worse than a Grandmother who thinks the monitor is the computer are people who call support and LIE about rebooting when you've asked them too.
I used to work a University helpdesk, mostly faculty and staff calling. I can't count how many times someone called up with some problems- especially some weird little niggle- for which I'd recommend a reboot as the first part of troubleshooting. Especially on Windows- most problems seem to be solved by a reboot, and there are many problems that can only be fixed that way, that have no other rational source. I will forever curse those who call up with some problem like that, and when I asked them to reboot, they either said "I already did," and refuse to do it again, or pretended to do it then, but were given away at the incredible speed at which it happened. Yeah right, pal. Usually, after much cajoling I'd get them to reboot again, and the problem would be solved. Big surprise.
PBS and NPR "require donations" about as much as a lot of OSS projects do. That is, they don't require it, but ask you for donations and generally use a rhetoric of "if you use the service or software that you should pay something for it."
For the record, let's get the whole sentence:
"They did so for one reason: It turned out that those were the key ingredients for the development of the iPod."
Not just "It turned out..." But saying "They did so for one reason" implies that all of this research into storage, electrochemistry etc was done toward the end of the iPod, or something like it.
I mean, yeah, the story is way overblown, but so was the "Al Gore Invented the Internet" thing, and people don't hesitate to bring that up whenever someone says "Al Gore." *shrug*
Comparing a gambling addiction to a heroin addiction is both ignorant and incredibly insulting to real addicts. There is no comparison. Heroin addicts can think of nothing else. It runs their lives. They'd sell their baby for their next hit.
Gambling addicts simply have addictive, compulsive personalities. There's no Betty Ford Clinic for gambling addicts, and there's a reason. It's not even in the same league as drug addicts.
I don't think you can really talk. You've obviously seen a lot of after school specials on drug addiction, maybe a few movies like "Permanent Midnight" and "Requiem for a Dream." There are plenty of opiate addicts who would not sell their baby for their next hit, and for whom there really aren't any external hints to the rest of society that they are an addict. You have met many opiate addicts- coworkers, family, friends, clerks at the store- they didn't look like desperate, strung out junkies, hawking off stolen goods to buy a bag of dope.
On the other hand, there are gambling addicts who have sold out their friends and family to get just a little more money to blow on whatever their preffered game is.
This is exaclty whats wrong with them. The market for these things, like the market for Newton's, will be fairly small because you get a much less functional device for the same price in a package which just isnt small enough to carry around. If I've got to carry a 3 lb, non-pocketable brick, I might as well be carrying my 5 lb laptop.
But that's just it. If a company were to make the Newton today- top of the line-type specs and the exact same physical screen size (but a higher-res) it wouldn't have to be a 3 lb non-pocketable brick like these things.
Even the Newton wasn't that- the Newton 2x00s weighed 1-1.4 lbs depending on what kind of batteries you had. The earlier Newtons were quite a bit smaller, but the Newton 2x00s were the top of the line, the last models made, and the Newts most beloved by most Newton enthusiasts. I don't debate that for most people a Newton is too big to fit in a pocket, even though I carried my 2100 around in my back pocket or in cargo pants of jeans with no problem.
Even if it doesn't fit in your pants, at least it is small enough to keep in your hands, like a lot of the paper-based day planners people carry around. A 5"x8" 1 lb Newton is easy to tote; a 5 lb laptop is not. I have owned a couple different laptops- a 7 lb Dell and a 5 lb iBook- and both of them never left the house for me to take to work or class more than a couple times.
Doctors and Lawyers loved the Newton, and some might buy these things, but the functionality offered by the newton has largely been replaced by other, smaller devices (though not as elegantly as the newton did); Even the newton was too big to see widespread adoption.
I don't presume to tell the world they should use the device I want. But with hardware and software as it is today, there *is* room in the market for something in the middle like the Newton 2x00. The thing is that a Newton 2100-like device would be quite a bit smaller and lighter than the Newton 2100 itself was. It would be easy enough to shave an inch or so off the length, make it a lot thinner (.25-.5" thick), and give it the kind of capabilities that make it more of a computer.
Actually, something like this exists- the Samsung Nexio S160. There's a newer model too. I think there was a newer model too. That is pretty close to what I'd like, just about exactly. But even when there is room in the market for something like this, even when people want it, there is no way they're going to speak $1200-1500 on it when they can get a PocketPC $250-450- everything but the screen being the same or better.
Why does Microsoft have to go and push some big honkin device like this instead? These Origami tablets truly are big enough that you should (and probably are) asking "if it's this big, why not bring a laptop?" There have been a few powerful pocketable computers I've used that have been very close to the sweet spot of size vs functionality vs price:
1. Newton 2100
2. Jornada 720
3. Sigmarion 3
4. Nexio S160
5. Sony Vaio U-Series
6. OQO
It's a shame, because the stuff it takes to make what I and others want- and those products prove it. The first two products are discontinued, and finding software for tem is getting harder and harder. Numbers 3 and 4 are only available via import from the Far East, and also have software compatibility issues- they both run the relatively-new Windows CE 4.x, but since they aren't available directly in the European and American markets, software is somewhat hard to find, with most software being written for PocketPC- incompatible with vanilla WinCE [1]. The Sig3 only comes in Japanese. The last two are really, really expensive ($2000+), and while they look like they'd be great for me, I just couldn't deal with carrying around a $2500 device in my pocket, subject to the abuse my Axim X51v or Jornada 720 recieve, let alone the kind of abuse my Newton 2100 took in stride.
[1] Think of WinCE as vanilla Linux with X11 installed. PocketPC is that, plus GNOME/GTK.
why do they gotta make these things so big and fat?
all i want is something the size of my former Newton MP2x00. It is the sweet spot between huge tablet PCs (I will not carry around an 7 lb tablet just like a notebook- sorry) and too small PDAs (3-4" screens don't cut it for a lot of things). I want something that will fit in a pair of my pants with deep pockets, or in a jacket pocket- something the Newton MP2x00 did, as well as various handheld PCs (Jornada 720, Sigmarion 3, HP200lx) I've had or tried.
*sigh*
I'd go buy a sony U50/70 but there's no way I'm spending USD $2000 on a device I carry around with me all the time. Something $500-1000 is more like it, but with our luck it'll end up being more like $800-1200 for one of these things.
Oh well... I guess I'll have to keep using CE devices for now, taking a PDA and using it as a computer. It works pretty well, don't get me wrong- but the hardware (mostly the screensize) doesn't cut it.
Call me crazy, but wasn't the premise of Ubuntu to concentrate on making a great desktop OS on a select few platforms, with the argument that Debian is more for having universal portability across a wide array of platforms?
That was my first reaction, too. My second thought was that I sure wouldn't say no to having the Ubuntu polish on the likes of the sad-excuse-for-a-pda that is the Zaurus Linux-based PDAs. If anyone can do it in the community now out of these existing distros, I'd put my money on Ubuntu.
I know in this case google didn't work out for you, but I can't say I've ever had to do more than the following:
1. Norton AV pops and says "Danger! Danger! Virus found! Something.Win32.A2; clean failed; quarantine (failed|successful)."
2. Then I google "Something.Win32.A2" and usually the first link is Symantec's page on that virus/worm.
3. Click that link. Read that page.
4. Either download the removal tool, which is on that page, or follow the manual removal directions they give.
Not sure about MSNM worms or even if something like Norton detects them. But I can't say I've ever had any viral/worm experience above and beyond the above in the last 5 years; and that is not as an individual running Windows, but as someone who does desktop support for a few labfulls of PCs at a university library and a bunch of staff machines and the same held true when I worked the Uni-wide helpdesk.
Good luck!
direct democracy? you're talking DOWNLOADING COMMUNISM, son.
Gore didn't run in 2004, that was Kerry. These are voting machine anomolies from 2004- not the stuff from 2000 which is well documented. But I'll still take you if it means anything.
Is anyone else not surprised?
The the follow-upper said, apparently VTune won't install on an AMD machine. But it still makes no sense to me- why would it matter what CPU is in use in a JIT/VM system like .NET? In the language I use (Squeak Smalltalk) which is similar enough to .NET, I use a built-in profiler that works on any CPU and any OS- it's written in Smalltalk itself, not some C app from the outside. Why wouldn't something like that exist for .NET?
I'm with you man. As far as I'm concerned, "Freedom of Religion" isn't legit unless it counts "Freedom from religion."
law breakers should be the last people to criticize a perceived bad influence.
Sorry, I call bullshit. You may subscribe to a Judeo-Christian outlook on life, believing that only he without sin should cast the first stone, but that doesn't go for all of us automatically. Why is it that people reject the morality of someone like a prostitute or drug addict, but has no problem accepting the moralizing of the alcohol-addicted pedophile that you usually call Pastor? Maybe you don't know he is an alcoholic pedophile; you nod along in church on Sunday to his insightful thoughts. If you knew the truth, would it make everything he said untrue?
Contrary to popular belief, various forms of law breakers are people too. Being a drug addict or a streetwalker doesn't turn you into an inhuman monster, incapable of rational thought. Nor does it mean you no longer can have an opinion.
Indeed, most prostitutes- and a lot of sex workers in general- end up where they are not because it was what they dreamed about doing when they were young. However, you too are guilty of a black and white view of things. Not all prostitutes are dirty crack addicts, forced into a life of selling their own body to get the money to buy the next rock. Or whatever other stereotype of a streetwalker you want to use. Contrary to puritanical American "conventional wisdom," there are prostitutes and other sex workers who do indeed enjoy their job. Not surprisingly, this is usually in places where prostitution is legal, and there is a clean and regulated market, where people persue it as a matter of choice. Like legal sex workers, oftentimes it is a job they do for a relatively short period and make decent money (compared to the menial jobs other folks their age maybe engaged in).
I'm not trying to say that places where prostitution is legal is some wonderland of joy, where women are worshipped as goddesses and treated like queens... but it is far from the streetwalking drug addict stereotype we're fed in the US. It is easy to just feel pity on anyone who "sells their body" but I've also talked to a lot of women, some of them who have been sex workers, who found it more appealing to "sell their body" in a legal, safe, clean and regulated system than to "sell their brain" like the rest of us.
I even imagine there are little girls somewhere who might even want to do that when they grow up, but I do agree that it is rare. But then again, most jobs aren't the jobs kids sit and think "golly gee, that's what I want to do when I grow up!" A society of nothing but firemen, police officers, presidents, vetrinarians, astronauts, teachers, and professional athletes wouldn't be the most productive.
Just some thoughts.
(rimshot)
(rimjob)
P.S. What is the E.U.'s position (if any) on censorship?
I don't know enough to answer your question, but I can tell you that the recent Muhammad comic controversy has brought about a case in EU court that will certainly have a hand in deciding it. Free speech VS Freedom of religion, or that is how the BBC world service spun it when I heard about it on the radio.
I'm sure you've never broken a rule in your life. Don't cast the stone.
It seems just as bad to assume that everyone else lives by your christian moral system. There are plenty of folks, both christian-cum-hypocrits and non-christians who have no qualms pointing out the flaws and sins of other folk, without regard to their sins, whether lesser or not.