Most of the newer portable audio players have more than enough room, but if technologies like this become the norm for distributing audio, then the amount of songs that a player could hold would be more than halved...
Yes we have more "room" but the general trend has been to switch to flash-memory based players where more than 8 gigs of space is expensive. Add that with the rise of video, applications, photos and other large files on digital audio players and you will soon find out that there really isn't that much room.
I don't know why you say it is obvious she wasn't selling them. The Fine Article says that someone else was caught with them (apparently without the required prescription) and she was accused of providing them. That removes the "obvious she wasn't selling" part for me. It's not proof she was, just no longer an obvious assumption she wasn't.
Well, first off, ibuprofen isn't an expensive drug so there is no financial incentive. Secondly, the same effect can be had by just taking a few more OTC pills. As for the providing part, its commonplace for people who have a sudden headache to ask someone for some ibuprofen, the 13 year old girl knew that she took them for her headaches so it would help the other person. This sort of thing happens *gasp* in adult society too, yet we think nothing of it. But when this takes place in a school situation suddenly the girl is a drug dealer.
Unfortunately, apparently neither girl had the "get out of jail free" card to justify carrying them. If you allow drugs without that prescription, the school then has to start drawing the line "which drugs are ok", and I, for one, don't think the schools have the understanding or ability to draw that line correctly, or SHOULD have the responsibility of drawing the line.
Its easy, no harm, not illegal, not a distraction, should be permitted. At most the parents should be called and asked if it is ok for the girl to be taking ibuprofen. Ibuprofen isn't directly harmful, it isn't illegal, it more than likely wasn't a distraction so it should be permitted. And while this should not be written in the rules, it should be effective policy by all staff members. This makes it trivial to get out the "bad drugs" while letting people take legitimate drugs. Cocaine, illegal, harmful and can easily be a distraction, therefore its banned. Antacids, not illegal, not harmful, and probably not a distraction, should not be banned.
That prevents the schools from becoming a place where kids whose parents love pills distribute them to kids whose parents don't approve, or to kids who are allergic or react badly to whatever it is.
By the time a kid is 13 they should know what they are allergic to and know not to get it. For example, I am allergic to peanuts and penicillin, even when I was in Kindergarten whenever something that could possibly have peanuts in it was served, I would ask if it had peanuts in it. Similarly, whenever I went to the doctor for a bacterial infection, I would mention I was allergic to penicillin. By the time someone is 13 they better know what they are allergic to and know how to find out what things are, otherwise they should not take it.
No, a "no drugs" policy is more reasonable than an arbitrary "some ok, some not" that can result in rules-lawyering and elective enforcement, and maybe worse.
Oh yes, because having someone strip searched for possible possession of ibuprofen is totally reasonable! Heck! Lets just start searching kids at the door for all kinds of harmful drugs such as cough drops, allergy pills, and even inhalers!
Elective enforcement is actually a good thing because it should prevent things like this from happening in the future.
Here's two points based on the FA that need to be made. First, one of the lawyers said that the school had no reason to believe that the girl was carrying the pills in her underwear or next to her body. I disagree. Another student accused her of supplying the pills. If they did not find the source in her locker or in her purse, then they had to be somewhere else. The next most logical place is stuck in her bra. While it was not likely, it was far from "no reason to believe".
Theres a saying, know when to fight your battles. In this case if you can't find the alleged ibuprofen, just admit that the source was lying and go on with your day. Had this been something actually dangerous such as a loaded firearm, or even illegal drugs, this might be at least somewhat warranted, but ibuprofen? Secondly, the girl had no disciplinary record, she wasn't known as the local drug dealer so why try to force the issue?
Except about once a month Steam will force you to go online otherwise you are locked out of your games. If Steam let you stay offline forever, that wouldn't be a problem, but with mandatory internet checks, it isn't perfect by any means.
No, overprotective parents do. Theres no reason why reasonably competent parents with a decent education can't successfully educate a child from home. The problem then is when its those parents that go "OMG!!! My child wants to be friends with someone who is different from us!!!!11!11!" and then the kid goes on to college where they either end up almost dying from alcohol/drugs or is a social recluse (more then the average/.er even). There are a few reasons why homeschooling would be a benefit, for example, in high crime areas, it may not honestly be that safe to send your kid to a public school, especially if the family is from a ethnic background that clashes with the normal people. Private schools can be good but some parents don't have the money or lack a good private school that meets their requirements (for example, if there are only Catholic schools around, and you aren't Catholic, I wouldn't send my kid there).
Either way, does it matter? The question when you are going to act on all laws/rules is, did anyone get hurt or their rights violated. If the answer is no, and someone wasn't acting recklessly (like going 50 in a 25 mph zone), then the law/rule should not be enforced or it should carry little to no punishment. In this case it is quite obvious the girl was not high on painkillers, wasn't selling them, and didn't even have solid evidence she even had them when she was accused. Such things should be dismissed with no consequence. A 13 year old should be perfectly allowed to carry ibuprofen, even prescription strength (which is only equal to like 3 regular pills) on their person especially if there was some need for them.
...But would the laws apply if they weren't rated or targeted towards Europe? Because the PC is a rather open platform, not every single thing is going to have to be rated by the European rating board, and if they keep the ESRB ratings they can easily prove that they were rated for European parents who would be worried.
On a console most everything would have to be rated before release, but in the realm of digital downloads, would you even need to get your product rated?
...Except for the fact that most digital copies tend to want you online as often as possible. Where most boxed games just want you online for about ~5 minutes when you install it.
You will still have to reconnect to the internet from time-to-time in order to play the game still though. Sure, it doesn't require a continuous internet connection, but for someone who may travel to simi-remote locations, you may not have internet whenever Steam decides to say "Hey, go online otherwise I'm going to lock you out of your games". It is still DRM. It is surely not illegal to play a single player game with no net connection.
Implemtation costs of those tecnhical measures ARE the costs of taking advantage of the global market. What other costs of global markets would you have them assume?
Well, for one thing, it doesn't make any sense. If I sell the same game in say, Europe for twice as much as in the USA for the same game, that is taking advantage of it without any other costs. Technical measures are simply there so someone in Europe doesn't figure out about this price gouging and change their region to the USA. Now, if you are going to release a game in China, you have to translate it into Chinese, this would raise prices and it would be justified, but similarly, you don't need technical measures because unless someone knows Chinese, they aren't going to want to buy it, even if it is somehow cheaper. Similarly, the ordinary person who speaks Chinese isn't going to get the English version even if it is cheaper.
Region locking when it is the exact same code is equivalent to price gouging. Now, when there are some things that need to be changed (language, technical format of PAL vs NTSC, etc) it isn't, but when the exact same code is electronically delivered to Europe for twice as much and the same code costs less when electronically delivered to North America, it is nothing more than glorified price gouging.
Running a server requires some technical knowhow. The more you attempt to "dumb it down" the higher chances you have with someone who really doesn't know what they are doing to admin a server. This is a bad thing for a few reasons, A) A GUI or any other "helper" program makes your server more insecure, a simple command line install running only Apache and a firewall is going to have less security holes by default then the person running Apache, a Firewall all under X and KDE. B) It is very, very, very, easy to socially engineer GUI attacks. On the other hand, its a lot harder on a command line because most of the documentation is standardized. C) If you don't even know what you are doing, how are you securing your box? If someone can't understand a command line, how are they possibly going to understand the complexities in making a server reasonably secure?
The overworked IT guy should know how to run a server using the command line if one of his principle duties is running a server. A command line is no slower than a GUI (its faster in most cases) to someone who knows how to use it. If you hire someone to run a server, they better know what they are doing.
Um, how much spam does the average/.er even get per day? I have gotten exactly one spam message that has made it past Gmail's spam filtering this year (2009) and it was quick and easy to delete. I don't give my e-mail address out to everyone, but I do sign up to many things with it yet still it is very rare for spam to make it to even my spam filter. So is spam really that large of problem in 2009?
Yes, I believe that gun ownership is guaranteed under the second amendment to the US constitution. Secondly, guns do not make people unsafe, the lack of guns make people unsafe. Criminals will always get guns, did banning cocaine stop the use of cocaine? No. "Assault weapons" are no more dangerous then any other form of firearm, so yes I believe that you should be able to own them.
As for your comment of physical censorship, I would like to point out that censorship is the banning of ideas or information, which is always more dangerous than a ban on some substance.
If you drew up a list of challenges facing Obama and his administration (or McCain, Clinton, etc, had someone else been elected), the problem of the status and enforcement of copyright laws in regards to digital media wouldn't have made it onto the first two pages of a single spaced list.
...And that is one of the reasons why we need a third party presence in the USA, to make sure that they do. You fail to see that our current copyright system benefits only the RIAA, MPAA, etc. Not the artists, actors, writers, etc that make those music and movies possible. You completely fail to see that by suing ordinary people for "damages" worth more than the song to the extent that it would be better to physically steal the CD from Wal-Mart where there is a direct loss of income, compared to downloading an MP3 where there is no direct loss, doesn't affect the economy. You fail to see that the growing lawsuits have lead many people to dismiss P2P as nothing more than just warez when it could really lead to substantial growth of the internet and by extension, the global and US economies. You fail to see that the software patent minefield is moving development of software to countries that do not recognize software patents. You fail to see that in the past, even though the Japanese could make better cars, the Swiss better watches, the Chinese cheaper goods, America could always produce the best entertainment, and it was widely exported. Today, the RIAA is destroying that one advantage America has.
Tell me then, how is the economy supposed to succeed with no restrictions on businesses and taxpayer money being thrown at them? It can't. Similarly, we can't not have a huge deficit and keep lowering taxes while increasing government programs, it doesn't work. If you decrease taxes you should decrease government programs. Similarly, if you raise taxes you increase government programs. Either one of those two work, but when you mismatch them by increasing taxes yet doing nothing with them, or decreasing taxes while spending like theres no tomorrow, you get problems.
Who would have ever guessed that most software is single-threaded rather then multi-threaded, and the programmers of Linux and Windows don't really feel like optimizing everything for 8-core CPUs that won't be released for quite some time and won't end up in the average user's box for 3 or more years.
First, the RIAA is basically irrelevant in this day and age. There is no need to make sure that the record labels continue. Record labels do not add anything to culture, or to the economy, artists do. The record labels do more harm than good to the artists. Back before the internet, it was important to be signed on to a record label for a few reasons.
A) Recording the song, today though, with a small investment anyone can record songs that sound about as good as professionally done songs.
B) Giving the song air time. Today, radio is a dead medium. Sure, it reaches some people, but internet radio, music video games (Guitar Hero, Rock Band, Tap Tap, etc), online promotions, YouTube, etc will reach a larger number of people, and all those do not require a record label.
C) Giving the album store space. Today, most music sales are digital, its not too hard to put a song on iTunes, Amazon MP3, etc. And while a record label will certainly help getting you into a physical store, that is not the only way.
Today, all the functions of a record label can be done by the band and a few others. There is no need to make sure the record companies survive, only the artists. Because the record companies do not help the artist, why keep them?
Because most third parties either more liberal or conservative seem to stick with proven policies rather then trying to "compromise" and screwing the public by the result. For example, its great for the economy to remove restrictions on companies, but similarly, you then don't throw a bunch of tax dollars at them and tell them to spend them however they want. If you are going to remove restrictions, you then remove government influence so they don't get "bailed out" at taxpayer expense. If you are going to "bail out" private companies, you are going to restrict what the companies can do. The more conservative parties would not bail out companies but they would reduce regulation. The more liberal parties would bail out companies, but they would have many more restrictions. In either the economy would at least have a chance to prosper.
Copyright would be the same thing. Either companies are allowed to include DRM and it is legal to break the DRM and copyright is loosened. Or companies are not allowed to include DRM but copyright law would be strengthened from its original (not today, but when it was first made) idea. In the current situation, DRM is allowed and it is illegal to break and strong, lengthy copyrights. The public loses today.
Perhaps this might be the thing to spark a true third-party movement in the USA? Have we not seen time and time again how neither Republicans nor Democrats are any different in the grand scheme of things? I can't remember how often I had been told that Obama was going to change things for the better, how somehow Obama was going to not be in the corporation's or the party's pocketbook because he got most of his campaign funds from independent donates... and what does he do when he gets elected? He carries on policies that have always failed, meanwhile undermining capitalism and sending our country deeper into recession by both his words and by the laws he wants to pass. A third party could change this, if our congress could include more than Republicans, Democrats and the odd Independent, our country would be a much, much, much, better place.
That's the problem. Some censorship is critical to national security, or other types of security. Right now nuclear devices are too hard to build for any single idiot. Fusion research may change that. Would you want THOSE plans public ? Or censored ?
There is a difference between non public or under a NDA than censored. For example, is an author's work that he never published censored? No. Its simply not published. While nuclear blueprints would certainly be non-published, and in the contract to which you sell your soul to a country when you become a government officer, they may forbid you to release such documents. That is not censorship, that is just not publishing them.
Now if, someone were to write "How to make a weapon of mass destruction for under $200" and the government forbid people to buy the book or the book to be published and the creators did not sign a contract that forbid such action, yes, that would be censorship.
And for your comment on flaw finding, you assume that the average person can simply find a flaw by looking at detailed blueprints that an entire team of architects could not find. That is unlikely, most terrorists are average people having little to no specialized skills, they aren't a professional architect, they aren't going to be able to find these said flaws. Give a script kiddy the source to the Linux kernel and tell them to find a buffer overflow, they won't be able to do it. Similarly, an ordinary terrorist isn't going to be able to find these magical faults in buildings with the blueprints.
In DNA manipulation, some procedures aren't all that difficult, even to do in your own garage. Preparing a bioweapon isn't hard (it's not killing yourself in the process and delivering the weapon that are the problematic parts), perhaps it should be published how it's done, with extra emphasis on those parts where the terrorists that have tried had real trouble with (e.g. an ineffective delivery device for sarin gas was the only thing that prevented the tokyo subway from being filled with that gas. Can't have that... let's publish a few DIY plans).
Exactly, so what though? It is improbable to impossible that an ordinary person could successfully make a devastating bioweapon. Even a skilled biochemist would have much, much, difficulty. Its equivalent to saying that an ordinary person could somehow make effective weapons that took a large team of scientists many years to do, and even then it rarely worked.
You assume that someone could, and would publish "How to make a bioweapon 101" and assume that the average terrorist could read, comprehend, and carry out the steps if they were in fact correct. You can't buy Anthrax at your local store, you aren't going to find old bottles of smallpox in an abandoned warehouse, etc.
Child porn stimulates abusing children sexually for financial gain. Censorship can prevent the financial gain, thereby lowering child abuse. Of course this is a good thing.
Sure, lowering child abuse is a good thing, but censorship is not the way to go. Already, child porn has been elevated to a thinkcrime. Where by not doing any action that directly harms anyone, you are committing a crime. You are, in effect making information illegal. Now, non-free governments always start by restricting things that are "bad", but soon "bad" encompasses more, and more things until you get a situation like China. What do you think that the Chinese think that their government is censoring? Not free speech, but immoral, and generally "bad" things.
Let's face it, censoring some things should be done. Basically anything that crosses a certain threshold of criticality and cannot easily be modified should be a secret, and it should be a crime to divulge such information to anyone who does not need to know. Everything from building weaknesses to certain scientific results...
None of the countries who censor the internet are ever portrayed as "free". Though the governments of those countries claim that they are free, even the media and the average Joe know that they are not free. On the the other hand, all the western civilizations try to claim that they are the most free nation on the face of the earth. Ever. And the mainstream media buys into that, all the while they are doing things that if they were taking place in another country would make that country seem more "non-free" by the media.
So wait, tell me where this censorship is going to stop?
First they came for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up,
because I wasn't a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up,
because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak up,
because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me,
and by that time there was no one
left to speak up for me.
Have you not seen throughout history that those who censor end up censoring *everything*? Sure, first everyone can agree that child porn is bad, but if we don't speak out against this who knows what will be next.
How is that voluntary? In most cases you can only slightly "choose" your ISP, and even then you simply have to get the least evil. Voluntary for the ISPs, but that is not voluntary for the end user, not in the least.
Take a look at the USA constitution to see where will it stop. The answer is, it won't ever stop. Whenever a government manages to circumvent a freedom for some "great" reason, they continue, and continue, and continue. First they let wiretaps be admissible in court, today, the government via the "Patriot" Act allows any US citizen to be wiretapped to fight against "terrorism". Its a downward spiral, first its always something that most people agree with, then they start rapidly expanding and next thing you know you are living under tyranny.
Actually, because Alienware = Dell, they aren't that expensive... But similarly, I don't think you really need the latest CPU, video card, and a 2 TB HD. The nice thing about Alienware was (before Dell made them crappy), is they were very good "baseline" systems to buy for gaming. For example, a mid-range Alienware was going to play more games then the mid-range Dell. However, any quality went downhill fast, when I decided to get one in 2005, it was one of the worst laptops I ever had, the motherboard died, twice, and the power cord enjoyed melting itself. Currently its in a drawer because its motherboard died a third time and I didn't feel like talking to someone who couldn't speak English.
When I had to take in an iPod for repair at an Apple store, they were rather friendly and replaced it promptly. It sure beats talking on the phone to some guy who speaks little English and trying to convince him that it was really the power supply that was dead, not just the power cord he kept telling me that he would send a replacement. Sure, it would have been a more fair comparison if I had walked into a physical store and done it, but there are Apple stores everywhere, I haven't seen a "HP Store" where I could take in a HP computer in for repair.
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Most of the newer portable audio players have more than enough room, but if technologies like this become the norm for distributing audio, then the amount of songs that a player could hold would be more than halved...
Yes we have more "room" but the general trend has been to switch to flash-memory based players where more than 8 gigs of space is expensive. Add that with the rise of video, applications, photos and other large files on digital audio players and you will soon find out that there really isn't that much room.
I don't know why you say it is obvious she wasn't selling them. The Fine Article says that someone else was caught with them (apparently without the required prescription) and she was accused of providing them. That removes the "obvious she wasn't selling" part for me. It's not proof she was, just no longer an obvious assumption she wasn't.
Well, first off, ibuprofen isn't an expensive drug so there is no financial incentive. Secondly, the same effect can be had by just taking a few more OTC pills. As for the providing part, its commonplace for people who have a sudden headache to ask someone for some ibuprofen, the 13 year old girl knew that she took them for her headaches so it would help the other person. This sort of thing happens *gasp* in adult society too, yet we think nothing of it. But when this takes place in a school situation suddenly the girl is a drug dealer.
Unfortunately, apparently neither girl had the "get out of jail free" card to justify carrying them. If you allow drugs without that prescription, the school then has to start drawing the line "which drugs are ok", and I, for one, don't think the schools have the understanding or ability to draw that line correctly, or SHOULD have the responsibility of drawing the line.
Its easy, no harm, not illegal, not a distraction, should be permitted. At most the parents should be called and asked if it is ok for the girl to be taking ibuprofen. Ibuprofen isn't directly harmful, it isn't illegal, it more than likely wasn't a distraction so it should be permitted. And while this should not be written in the rules, it should be effective policy by all staff members. This makes it trivial to get out the "bad drugs" while letting people take legitimate drugs. Cocaine, illegal, harmful and can easily be a distraction, therefore its banned. Antacids, not illegal, not harmful, and probably not a distraction, should not be banned.
That prevents the schools from becoming a place where kids whose parents love pills distribute them to kids whose parents don't approve, or to kids who are allergic or react badly to whatever it is.
By the time a kid is 13 they should know what they are allergic to and know not to get it. For example, I am allergic to peanuts and penicillin, even when I was in Kindergarten whenever something that could possibly have peanuts in it was served, I would ask if it had peanuts in it. Similarly, whenever I went to the doctor for a bacterial infection, I would mention I was allergic to penicillin. By the time someone is 13 they better know what they are allergic to and know how to find out what things are, otherwise they should not take it.
No, a "no drugs" policy is more reasonable than an arbitrary "some ok, some not" that can result in rules-lawyering and elective enforcement, and maybe worse.
Oh yes, because having someone strip searched for possible possession of ibuprofen is totally reasonable! Heck! Lets just start searching kids at the door for all kinds of harmful drugs such as cough drops, allergy pills, and even inhalers!
Elective enforcement is actually a good thing because it should prevent things like this from happening in the future.
Here's two points based on the FA that need to be made. First, one of the lawyers said that the school had no reason to believe that the girl was carrying the pills in her underwear or next to her body. I disagree. Another student accused her of supplying the pills. If they did not find the source in her locker or in her purse, then they had to be somewhere else. The next most logical place is stuck in her bra. While it was not likely, it was far from "no reason to believe".
Theres a saying, know when to fight your battles. In this case if you can't find the alleged ibuprofen, just admit that the source was lying and go on with your day. Had this been something actually dangerous such as a loaded firearm, or even illegal drugs, this might be at least somewhat warranted, but ibuprofen? Secondly, the girl had no disciplinary record, she wasn't known as the local drug dealer so why try to force the issue?
Except about once a month Steam will force you to go online otherwise you are locked out of your games. If Steam let you stay offline forever, that wouldn't be a problem, but with mandatory internet checks, it isn't perfect by any means.
No, overprotective parents do. Theres no reason why reasonably competent parents with a decent education can't successfully educate a child from home. The problem then is when its those parents that go "OMG!!! My child wants to be friends with someone who is different from us!!!!11!11!" and then the kid goes on to college where they either end up almost dying from alcohol/drugs or is a social recluse (more then the average /.er even). There are a few reasons why homeschooling would be a benefit, for example, in high crime areas, it may not honestly be that safe to send your kid to a public school, especially if the family is from a ethnic background that clashes with the normal people. Private schools can be good but some parents don't have the money or lack a good private school that meets their requirements (for example, if there are only Catholic schools around, and you aren't Catholic, I wouldn't send my kid there).
Either way, does it matter? The question when you are going to act on all laws/rules is, did anyone get hurt or their rights violated. If the answer is no, and someone wasn't acting recklessly (like going 50 in a 25 mph zone), then the law/rule should not be enforced or it should carry little to no punishment. In this case it is quite obvious the girl was not high on painkillers, wasn't selling them, and didn't even have solid evidence she even had them when she was accused. Such things should be dismissed with no consequence. A 13 year old should be perfectly allowed to carry ibuprofen, even prescription strength (which is only equal to like 3 regular pills) on their person especially if there was some need for them.
...But would the laws apply if they weren't rated or targeted towards Europe? Because the PC is a rather open platform, not every single thing is going to have to be rated by the European rating board, and if they keep the ESRB ratings they can easily prove that they were rated for European parents who would be worried.
On a console most everything would have to be rated before release, but in the realm of digital downloads, would you even need to get your product rated?
...Except for the fact that most digital copies tend to want you online as often as possible. Where most boxed games just want you online for about ~5 minutes when you install it.
You will still have to reconnect to the internet from time-to-time in order to play the game still though. Sure, it doesn't require a continuous internet connection, but for someone who may travel to simi-remote locations, you may not have internet whenever Steam decides to say "Hey, go online otherwise I'm going to lock you out of your games". It is still DRM. It is surely not illegal to play a single player game with no net connection.
Implemtation costs of those tecnhical measures ARE the costs of taking advantage of the global market. What other costs of global markets would you have them assume?
Well, for one thing, it doesn't make any sense. If I sell the same game in say, Europe for twice as much as in the USA for the same game, that is taking advantage of it without any other costs. Technical measures are simply there so someone in Europe doesn't figure out about this price gouging and change their region to the USA. Now, if you are going to release a game in China, you have to translate it into Chinese, this would raise prices and it would be justified, but similarly, you don't need technical measures because unless someone knows Chinese, they aren't going to want to buy it, even if it is somehow cheaper. Similarly, the ordinary person who speaks Chinese isn't going to get the English version even if it is cheaper.
Region locking when it is the exact same code is equivalent to price gouging. Now, when there are some things that need to be changed (language, technical format of PAL vs NTSC, etc) it isn't, but when the exact same code is electronically delivered to Europe for twice as much and the same code costs less when electronically delivered to North America, it is nothing more than glorified price gouging.
Running a server requires some technical knowhow. The more you attempt to "dumb it down" the higher chances you have with someone who really doesn't know what they are doing to admin a server. This is a bad thing for a few reasons, A) A GUI or any other "helper" program makes your server more insecure, a simple command line install running only Apache and a firewall is going to have less security holes by default then the person running Apache, a Firewall all under X and KDE. B) It is very, very, very, easy to socially engineer GUI attacks. On the other hand, its a lot harder on a command line because most of the documentation is standardized. C) If you don't even know what you are doing, how are you securing your box? If someone can't understand a command line, how are they possibly going to understand the complexities in making a server reasonably secure?
The overworked IT guy should know how to run a server using the command line if one of his principle duties is running a server. A command line is no slower than a GUI (its faster in most cases) to someone who knows how to use it. If you hire someone to run a server, they better know what they are doing.
Um, how much spam does the average /.er even get per day? I have gotten exactly one spam message that has made it past Gmail's spam filtering this year (2009) and it was quick and easy to delete. I don't give my e-mail address out to everyone, but I do sign up to many things with it yet still it is very rare for spam to make it to even my spam filter. So is spam really that large of problem in 2009?
Yes, I believe that gun ownership is guaranteed under the second amendment to the US constitution. Secondly, guns do not make people unsafe, the lack of guns make people unsafe. Criminals will always get guns, did banning cocaine stop the use of cocaine? No. "Assault weapons" are no more dangerous then any other form of firearm, so yes I believe that you should be able to own them.
As for your comment of physical censorship, I would like to point out that censorship is the banning of ideas or information, which is always more dangerous than a ban on some substance.
If you drew up a list of challenges facing Obama and his administration (or McCain, Clinton, etc, had someone else been elected), the problem of the status and enforcement of copyright laws in regards to digital media wouldn't have made it onto the first two pages of a single spaced list.
Tell me then, how is the economy supposed to succeed with no restrictions on businesses and taxpayer money being thrown at them? It can't. Similarly, we can't not have a huge deficit and keep lowering taxes while increasing government programs, it doesn't work. If you decrease taxes you should decrease government programs. Similarly, if you raise taxes you increase government programs. Either one of those two work, but when you mismatch them by increasing taxes yet doing nothing with them, or decreasing taxes while spending like theres no tomorrow, you get problems.
Who would have ever guessed that most software is single-threaded rather then multi-threaded, and the programmers of Linux and Windows don't really feel like optimizing everything for 8-core CPUs that won't be released for quite some time and won't end up in the average user's box for 3 or more years.
First, the RIAA is basically irrelevant in this day and age. There is no need to make sure that the record labels continue. Record labels do not add anything to culture, or to the economy, artists do. The record labels do more harm than good to the artists. Back before the internet, it was important to be signed on to a record label for a few reasons.
A) Recording the song, today though, with a small investment anyone can record songs that sound about as good as professionally done songs.
B) Giving the song air time. Today, radio is a dead medium. Sure, it reaches some people, but internet radio, music video games (Guitar Hero, Rock Band, Tap Tap, etc), online promotions, YouTube, etc will reach a larger number of people, and all those do not require a record label.
C) Giving the album store space. Today, most music sales are digital, its not too hard to put a song on iTunes, Amazon MP3, etc. And while a record label will certainly help getting you into a physical store, that is not the only way.
Today, all the functions of a record label can be done by the band and a few others. There is no need to make sure the record companies survive, only the artists. Because the record companies do not help the artist, why keep them?
Because most third parties either more liberal or conservative seem to stick with proven policies rather then trying to "compromise" and screwing the public by the result. For example, its great for the economy to remove restrictions on companies, but similarly, you then don't throw a bunch of tax dollars at them and tell them to spend them however they want. If you are going to remove restrictions, you then remove government influence so they don't get "bailed out" at taxpayer expense. If you are going to "bail out" private companies, you are going to restrict what the companies can do. The more conservative parties would not bail out companies but they would reduce regulation. The more liberal parties would bail out companies, but they would have many more restrictions. In either the economy would at least have a chance to prosper.
Copyright would be the same thing. Either companies are allowed to include DRM and it is legal to break the DRM and copyright is loosened. Or companies are not allowed to include DRM but copyright law would be strengthened from its original (not today, but when it was first made) idea. In the current situation, DRM is allowed and it is illegal to break and strong, lengthy copyrights. The public loses today.
Perhaps this might be the thing to spark a true third-party movement in the USA? Have we not seen time and time again how neither Republicans nor Democrats are any different in the grand scheme of things? I can't remember how often I had been told that Obama was going to change things for the better, how somehow Obama was going to not be in the corporation's or the party's pocketbook because he got most of his campaign funds from independent donates... and what does he do when he gets elected? He carries on policies that have always failed, meanwhile undermining capitalism and sending our country deeper into recession by both his words and by the laws he wants to pass. A third party could change this, if our congress could include more than Republicans, Democrats and the odd Independent, our country would be a much, much, much, better place.
That's the problem. Some censorship is critical to national security, or other types of security. Right now nuclear devices are too hard to build for any single idiot. Fusion research may change that. Would you want THOSE plans public ? Or censored ?
There is a difference between non public or under a NDA than censored. For example, is an author's work that he never published censored? No. Its simply not published. While nuclear blueprints would certainly be non-published, and in the contract to which you sell your soul to a country when you become a government officer, they may forbid you to release such documents. That is not censorship, that is just not publishing them.
Now if, someone were to write "How to make a weapon of mass destruction for under $200" and the government forbid people to buy the book or the book to be published and the creators did not sign a contract that forbid such action, yes, that would be censorship.
And for your comment on flaw finding, you assume that the average person can simply find a flaw by looking at detailed blueprints that an entire team of architects could not find. That is unlikely, most terrorists are average people having little to no specialized skills, they aren't a professional architect, they aren't going to be able to find these said flaws. Give a script kiddy the source to the Linux kernel and tell them to find a buffer overflow, they won't be able to do it. Similarly, an ordinary terrorist isn't going to be able to find these magical faults in buildings with the blueprints.
In DNA manipulation, some procedures aren't all that difficult, even to do in your own garage. Preparing a bioweapon isn't hard (it's not killing yourself in the process and delivering the weapon that are the problematic parts), perhaps it should be published how it's done, with extra emphasis on those parts where the terrorists that have tried had real trouble with (e.g. an ineffective delivery device for sarin gas was the only thing that prevented the tokyo subway from being filled with that gas. Can't have that ... let's publish a few DIY plans).
Exactly, so what though? It is improbable to impossible that an ordinary person could successfully make a devastating bioweapon. Even a skilled biochemist would have much, much, difficulty. Its equivalent to saying that an ordinary person could somehow make effective weapons that took a large team of scientists many years to do, and even then it rarely worked.
You assume that someone could, and would publish "How to make a bioweapon 101" and assume that the average terrorist could read, comprehend, and carry out the steps if they were in fact correct. You can't buy Anthrax at your local store, you aren't going to find old bottles of smallpox in an abandoned warehouse, etc.
Child porn stimulates abusing children sexually for financial gain. Censorship can prevent the financial gain, thereby lowering child abuse. Of course this is a good thing.
Sure, lowering child abuse is a good thing, but censorship is not the way to go. Already, child porn has been elevated to a thinkcrime. Where by not doing any action that directly harms anyone, you are committing a crime. You are, in effect making information illegal. Now, non-free governments always start by restricting things that are "bad", but soon "bad" encompasses more, and more things until you get a situation like China. What do you think that the Chinese think that their government is censoring? Not free speech, but immoral, and generally "bad" things.
Let's face it, censoring some things should be done. Basically anything that crosses a certain threshold of criticality and cannot easily be modified should be a secret, and it should be a crime to divulge such information to anyone who does not need to know. Everything from building weaknesses to certain scientific results ...
None of the countries who censor the internet are ever portrayed as "free". Though the governments of those countries claim that they are free, even the media and the average Joe know that they are not free. On the the other hand, all the western civilizations try to claim that they are the most free nation on the face of the earth. Ever. And the mainstream media buys into that, all the while they are doing things that if they were taking place in another country would make that country seem more "non-free" by the media.
First they came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up, because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me.
Have you not seen throughout history that those who censor end up censoring *everything*? Sure, first everyone can agree that child porn is bad, but if we don't speak out against this who knows what will be next.
How is that voluntary? In most cases you can only slightly "choose" your ISP, and even then you simply have to get the least evil. Voluntary for the ISPs, but that is not voluntary for the end user, not in the least.
Take a look at the USA constitution to see where will it stop. The answer is, it won't ever stop. Whenever a government manages to circumvent a freedom for some "great" reason, they continue, and continue, and continue. First they let wiretaps be admissible in court, today, the government via the "Patriot" Act allows any US citizen to be wiretapped to fight against "terrorism". Its a downward spiral, first its always something that most people agree with, then they start rapidly expanding and next thing you know you are living under tyranny.
Actually, because Alienware = Dell, they aren't that expensive... But similarly, I don't think you really need the latest CPU, video card, and a 2 TB HD. The nice thing about Alienware was (before Dell made them crappy), is they were very good "baseline" systems to buy for gaming. For example, a mid-range Alienware was going to play more games then the mid-range Dell. However, any quality went downhill fast, when I decided to get one in 2005, it was one of the worst laptops I ever had, the motherboard died, twice, and the power cord enjoyed melting itself. Currently its in a drawer because its motherboard died a third time and I didn't feel like talking to someone who couldn't speak English.
When I had to take in an iPod for repair at an Apple store, they were rather friendly and replaced it promptly. It sure beats talking on the phone to some guy who speaks little English and trying to convince him that it was really the power supply that was dead, not just the power cord he kept telling me that he would send a replacement. Sure, it would have been a more fair comparison if I had walked into a physical store and done it, but there are Apple stores everywhere, I haven't seen a "HP Store" where I could take in a HP computer in for repair.