> There's nothing terrible in LotR for sexual/violent content (there's violence, but nothing excessively described) but it still aims itself at an audience based on the vocabulary it uses.
No terrible violent content? People get stabbed to death with swords, shot with arrows, set on fire, drowned, etc. I don't have a problem with these things, but let's not pretend that LotR is not very violent.
> Come to think of it...next hurricane that hits....this would come in handy against looters. Gotta make sure and keep the iPod charged....target rich environment!!
Why the hell would you use a sniper rifle to defend your home against looters? Is your garden really that big?
> The corporations that freely take advantage of that brokenness are equally to blame however. They're not forced to use a plainly broken system for their undeserved gain.
I thought a free market encouraged corporations to do _anything_ they can get away with to gain an advantage? It is, after all, their responsibility to maximize their shareholders' wealth... * So in a way they can't be blamed for exploiting a broken system, it is their responsibility to do so.
> It may be the manufacturer's fault that their ATM is broken and will give me $20 of the bank's money if I type in 1234, but I will be prosecuted if I stand there and bleed it dry.
That's because stealing $20 is a crime, while threatening to sue people for hundreds of thousands of dollars for sharing music unless they settle for thousands of dollars apparently isn't.
* I guess one interpretation would be that a corporation SHOULD break the law when it can make a profit by doing so.
> But I would not argue that taking and having pictures of oneself, even a young girl in nude provocative poses, makes that same person a child pornographer.
Could that be because you associate being a child pornographer with being a criminal? Surely if someone produces material that is considered child pornography this makes that person a child pornographer, by definition?
The problem is that the law appears not consider the circumstances under which the child pornography is made. Of course, there are some advantages to this approach, such as eliminating the need to prove that the child was harmed by the pornographer ("I didn't traumatize this homeless girl, she was like this when I found her"), but also introduces some problems such as the one that triggered this whole discussion (being abused by yourself?):)
> I think the possession/distributing charge for the boys could hold up, though there may be some leeway as they are minors.
Double standard much? Are you seriously suggesting that when an underage girl makes a picture of herself, she is not a child pornographer, but when she gives that picture to a boy, he is suddenly a pervert in possession of child pornography (that has no creater because the girl is not a child pornographer)?
> Mere candid pictures of someone that happens to be nude shouldn't be porn unless you're using it to get off (or help someone else get off).
That's odd. So if someone were to find a perfectly legal picture of some naked teenager on the intertubes, download it, and jerk off to it, suddenly that person would be in possession of child pornography? What you are saying is, it is possible for someone to 'create' child porn from legal pictures by being in a certain state of mind?
I find it interesting that you blame the CEO of a company when your justice system is handing out the verdicts. The fact that the RIAA can get away with these claims says more about your country than the RIAA's CEO. Are you Liberty-Tree-watering patriots really this blind? A penalty of $150.000 per song is a symptom, not the disease.
But hey, why listen to a bloody foreigner. What do I know?
That's one way of looking at it. Then again, maybe these people will end up in hospital and get some (expensive) medical treatment rather than just dropping dead unannounced the moment they stop working, giving Indea a competitive disadvantage.
If by a 'full circle' you mean that you are able to identify one of the millions of ideas from the past that has, when interpreted in a certain way, certain superficial similarities with a theory in modern physics, then yes, amazing!
Fair enough, but is a single human life superior to a complete species of mammals? I can't say I'd care much if tritonman killed a solenodon. But let's go WAAAAAY offtopic and consider a hypothetical situation wherin he is able and willing to destroy ALL solenodon and the only way to stop him is to kill him (he is standing next to his custom built solenodon doomsday device and about to press 'on', you have a chance to take him out with your sniper rifle)? What if he wasn't exterminating solenodon but cows?
Can it even kill us? I couldn't find any information about how dangerous the venom was. Even if a bite could kill a human, that wouldn't make these creatures more dangerous that many types of insects, spiders, and snakes, and these poor critters are extremely rare and both variants of solenodons live on islands.
Anyway, you can kill people too and you as an individual are (obviously) not needed in the food chain, nor is your family. If I were you I'd hope others hold life in a higher regard than you do.
> Has anyone ever gone to Mars or brought peace to the middle east? Surely if this has been possible for a long time it must be possible for you to point to two or three reliable articles where someone has done this.
This Gutmann guy tells us how overwritten data could be recovered. Reading his paper makes one suspect this would all be very easy for one with access to scanning probe microscopy, and he suggests a scanning probe microscope could be built for as little as $1400. The paper has been 'in the wild' for over 10 years now. Why can't I find any articles wherein his techniques have been used to recover just a single sector that has been overwritten 5 times? By the looks of it such an experiment could be performed for relatively little money, and any university who would do such an experiment would gain much publicity. Either nobody has ever tried this very cheap and easy thing that would make that person very famous, or it is impossible.
Which makes it, off course, completely different from going to Mars or bringing peace to the middle east. The former is extremely expensive, and nobody knows an acceptable way to solve the latter. Neither of these problems apply to the paper you mentioned, or so the writer suggests.
Has anyone ever actually recovered data that had been overwritten 10 times? Or merely 5 times? Surely if this has been possible for a long time it must be possible for you to point to two or three reliable articles where someone has done this (I couldn't find any, but my google-skills might have failed) and not merely proposed it might be possible in theory.
Am I crazy when I think that when one gets to the point where one is overwriting with random data 10+ times and degaussing afterwards, the chance of some enemy recovering your data is pretty much zero, and the money such a recovery would require would be enough to buy a hundred spies? No point in destroying your data to the point where only divine intervention could restore it when it is several orders of magnitude easier to steal the data before it is destroyed, right?
Why adapt to people who hold irrational ideas? If people think an 'Orgone Generator' is going to help them, they are free to purchase it themselves. Once you start giving in to peoples irrational believes they'll just see that as proof that they were right and science was wrong.
Step one and two should be sufficient. Also if you do step four you can skip all the other steps. Dumping the remains of a harddrive that has been overwritten three times, degaused, crushed, and melted into slag into a toxic waste dump seems like a useless step from a security perspective but may make sense if the slag contains toxic waste.
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> There's nothing terrible in LotR for sexual/violent content (there's violence, but nothing excessively described) but it still aims itself at an audience based on the vocabulary it uses.
No terrible violent content? People get stabbed to death with swords, shot with arrows, set on fire, drowned, etc. I don't have a problem with these things, but let's not pretend that LotR is not very violent.
I suppose I'm an idiot for thinking that objects, either my own or those of my neighbors, are not worth killing for.
> Come to think of it...next hurricane that hits....this would come in handy against looters. Gotta make sure and keep the iPod charged....target rich environment!!
Why the hell would you use a sniper rifle to defend your home against looters? Is your garden really that big?
> The corporations that freely take advantage of that brokenness are equally to blame however. They're not forced to use a plainly broken system for their undeserved gain.
I thought a free market encouraged corporations to do _anything_ they can get away with to gain an advantage? It is, after all, their responsibility to maximize their shareholders' wealth... * So in a way they can't be blamed for exploiting a broken system, it is their responsibility to do so.
> It may be the manufacturer's fault that their ATM is broken and will give me $20 of the bank's money if I type in 1234, but I will be prosecuted if I stand there and bleed it dry.
That's because stealing $20 is a crime, while threatening to sue people for hundreds of thousands of dollars for sharing music unless they settle for thousands of dollars apparently isn't.
* I guess one interpretation would be that a corporation SHOULD break the law when it can make a profit by doing so.
> But I would not argue that taking and having pictures of oneself, even a young girl in nude provocative poses, makes that same person a child pornographer.
Could that be because you associate being a child pornographer with being a criminal? Surely if someone produces material that is considered child pornography this makes that person a child pornographer, by definition?
The problem is that the law appears not consider the circumstances under which the child pornography is made. Of course, there are some advantages to this approach, such as eliminating the need to prove that the child was harmed by the pornographer ("I didn't traumatize this homeless girl, she was like this when I found her"), but also introduces some problems such as the one that triggered this whole discussion (being abused by yourself?) :)
Are you feeling up that picture, you pervy blind man?!
> I think the possession/distributing charge for the boys could hold up, though there may be some leeway as they are minors.
Double standard much? Are you seriously suggesting that when an underage girl makes a picture of herself, she is not a child pornographer, but when she gives that picture to a boy, he is suddenly a pervert in possession of child pornography (that has no creater because the girl is not a child pornographer)?
> Mere candid pictures of someone that happens to be nude shouldn't be porn unless you're using it to get off (or help someone else get off).
That's odd. So if someone were to find a perfectly legal picture of some naked teenager on the intertubes, download it, and jerk off to it, suddenly that person would be in possession of child pornography? What you are saying is, it is possible for someone to 'create' child porn from legal pictures by being in a certain state of mind?
I find it interesting that you blame the CEO of a company when your justice system is handing out the verdicts. The fact that the RIAA can get away with these claims says more about your country than the RIAA's CEO. Are you Liberty-Tree-watering patriots really this blind? A penalty of $150.000 per song is a symptom, not the disease.
But hey, why listen to a bloody foreigner. What do I know?
> probably for books and movies too
I don't think this will apply to books. How many book-related 'special fan material' do you have? To how many book concerts did you go this year?
We're morons about the whole magic mushroom thing though. Current government is being a bitch about drugs.
That's one way of looking at it. Then again, maybe these people will end up in hospital and get some (expensive) medical treatment rather than just dropping dead unannounced the moment they stop working, giving Indea a competitive disadvantage.
> Amazing how things come full circle.
If by a 'full circle' you mean that you are able to identify one of the millions of ideas from the past that has, when interpreted in a certain way, certain superficial similarities with a theory in modern physics, then yes, amazing!
Reminds me of this: http://www.bash.org/?178890
> "I feel guilty when I masturbate... because the wife is trying to get pregnant, but she is out of town today."
You must be either awesome or awful at this masturbation thing that doing it on one day makes sex impossible on the next.
Because hiring cannibals makes the company look bad.
Behold ladies and gentlemen, a false dichotomy in its natural habitat. Be careful not to apply logic in its vicinity.
> A human life is superior to an animal's life.
Fair enough, but is a single human life superior to a complete species of mammals? I can't say I'd care much if tritonman killed a solenodon. But let's go WAAAAAY offtopic and consider a hypothetical situation wherin he is able and willing to destroy ALL solenodon and the only way to stop him is to kill him (he is standing next to his custom built solenodon doomsday device and about to press 'on', you have a chance to take him out with your sniper rifle)? What if he wasn't exterminating solenodon but cows?
Can it even kill us? I couldn't find any information about how dangerous the venom was. Even if a bite could kill a human, that wouldn't make these creatures more dangerous that many types of insects, spiders, and snakes, and these poor critters are extremely rare and both variants of solenodons live on islands.
Anyway, you can kill people too and you as an individual are (obviously) not needed in the food chain, nor is your family. If I were you I'd hope others hold life in a higher regard than you do.
> Has anyone ever gone to Mars or brought peace to the middle east? Surely if this has been possible for a long time it must be possible for you to point to two or three reliable articles where someone has done this.
This Gutmann guy tells us how overwritten data could be recovered. Reading his paper makes one suspect this would all be very easy for one with access to scanning probe microscopy, and he suggests a scanning probe microscope could be built for as little as $1400. The paper has been 'in the wild' for over 10 years now. Why can't I find any articles wherein his techniques have been used to recover just a single sector that has been overwritten 5 times? By the looks of it such an experiment could be performed for relatively little money, and any university who would do such an experiment would gain much publicity. Either nobody has ever tried this very cheap and easy thing that would make that person very famous, or it is impossible.
Which makes it, off course, completely different from going to Mars or bringing peace to the middle east. The former is extremely expensive, and nobody knows an acceptable way to solve the latter. Neither of these problems apply to the paper you mentioned, or so the writer suggests.
Has anyone ever actually recovered data that had been overwritten 10 times? Or merely 5 times? Surely if this has been possible for a long time it must be possible for you to point to two or three reliable articles where someone has done this (I couldn't find any, but my google-skills might have failed) and not merely proposed it might be possible in theory.
I live in the Netherlands, you insensitive clod!
Am I crazy when I think that when one gets to the point where one is overwriting with random data 10+ times and degaussing afterwards, the chance of some enemy recovering your data is pretty much zero, and the money such a recovery would require would be enough to buy a hundred spies? No point in destroying your data to the point where only divine intervention could restore it when it is several orders of magnitude easier to steal the data before it is destroyed, right?
Why adapt to people who hold irrational ideas? If people think an 'Orgone Generator' is going to help them, they are free to purchase it themselves. Once you start giving in to peoples irrational believes they'll just see that as proof that they were right and science was wrong.
Step one and two should be sufficient. Also if you do step four you can skip all the other steps. Dumping the remains of a harddrive that has been overwritten three times, degaused, crushed, and melted into slag into a toxic waste dump seems like a useless step from a security perspective but may make sense if the slag contains toxic waste.
I very much doubt they do all those things.