If your goal is to be "modded down into flamebait hell", I'd say that you are doing a pretty shoddy job
It certainly isn't my goal, but I understand that certain of my views are highly controversial and thus liable to be regarded as flamebait. I don't particularly let it affect my posting though.
That said, the difference between insightful and flamebait is smaller than you'd think.
Sometimes the difference is so small that they share identity.
Your "enemies" are less likely to see your comments and subsequently mod you down.
I have at least one that periodically likes to use all of his/her mod points to "Overate" days old posts in one swell foop. I can live with that.
On the other hand, I believe that the moderation system is about visibility.
Absolutely.
. ..since I often forget that the score is influenced by "friend" status, the chance of me modding you up is low...
Well, you learn something new every day. Most of the world, under American pressure, does not handle the issue with quite that degree of rationality.
I expect the/you Brits will be hearing from Ashcroft soon, if you haven't already (see the current brouhaha over copyright terms).
This doesn't mean that the issue is irrelevant to Americans, however, as the Justice Department under Ashcroft has now started prosecuting Americans for their legal behavior out of the country, thus it is concievable that Americans could be prosecuted for viewing images in Britain that are legal in Britain, but not in America.
KFG
Re:Journalistic credentials
on
Black Hat
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
2) Why the fuck would bootleggers use better quality reproduction systems than the legitimate distributors?
Because they are in free market competition with the legitimate product.
For the protected product you make maximum profit by producing inferior quality items that degrade and must be repurchased periodically.
For the illegitimate product you make maximum profit by producing a superior item, but selling it at a vastly lower price.
It's a market thing.
Nor is the practice restricted to places like China. Major American distributors have been known to set up their own pressing plants and pass off the output as the legitimate product.
KFG
Re:Does anybody know...
on
Black Hat
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Anyway, it's meant as a joke.
It is what is called "irony." Saying the opposite of what you mean. The joke is that the books are for those intelligent people who feel like dummies because they have been reading people who actually are and thus "don't get" what are actually simple concepts if simply, and intellegently, explained.
Andre LaMothe's Windows Game Programming for Dummies, for instance, gives the most concise and intelligently understandable introduction to the Windows SDK and Direct X I have ever seen.
And Windows game programming is not a subject for actual dummies.
Actually, while you get my point correctly, you get the facts slightly wrong.
What I was saying is that if you were 60 and had a 15 year old girlfriend in Canada and a 16 year old girlfriend in Vermont it would be perfectly legal to hit it, but not to take its picture.
The case where both partners are under the age of consent is uninteresting. It is the case where one partner is over the age of majority at 18 and the other under the age of majority (and thus not legal for pics) but over the age of consent (and thus legal for sex) where the philosophical interest lies.
1)Child pornography by Federal American law is depicting "children" under 18 in sexual acts or situations.
In my state the age of consent is 17. In the closest neighboring state it is 16. In a country just a 4 hour drive away from me it is 14. In the next closest country, one I have driven to, it is 12.
By black letter law.
You need to read up on the age of consent yourself.
. ..that doesn't mean we cannot recognize those who are definitely children.
The age of universal agreement would seem to be under 12. Is that the age you had in mind for child pornography, or is there perhaps still some area of disagreement here? In any case the age of 18 is black letter law.
3)A pedophile is, legally, one who engages in acts with children which are prohibited.
You also need to read up on the current methods being used to test for paedophilia. They use a "dick polygraph" now, only unlike the regular kind it's even less accurate (assuming that's even possible) and have legally compelled people to be subjected to it, "for the children."
You're a troll, and you would appear revel in posting flame bait. Positively none of what you've said has any factual basis. ..
4) And this is simply false, a troll and flamebait.
go ahead and wait a year to buy a new system but by that time DOOM3 might not be as fun to play as it would be next month (with all the media attention of the game, friends discussing gameplay, etc.)
You are talking about participating in a fad, not about playing a fun game.
Sure... wait and buy a year old system to play a year old game.
Which will then only cost you twenty bucks instead of fifty.
Consider it as being akin to someone paying you a grand or three to wait a year, because it is. There's some old saying about saving pennies that seems apropos.
Taking a data point of one the grey ponytails listen to Fairport Convention, Silly Wizard, Tom Waits, Bach, The Beatles, Imrat Khan, Ry Cooder, Tibetan Chants, Country Joe and the Fish, Janis Joplin, Leo Kottke, Squirrel Nut Zippers, Benny Goodman, Johnny Winter, Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, Pete Seeger, TMBG, Elbow, Miles, Leon Redbone, Herbie Hancock, Hubert Laws. ..and so on.
Pretty much a bit of everything but Britney and German Oompah music. Oh, alright, I guess The Archies are out too.
Oh Lord, won't you buy me, Windows XP. My friends all use Linux and are trying to convert me. I wait for registration, each day until three So oh Lord, won't you buy me, Windows XP.
. ..everyone can agree that child pornography is bad and is rightly illegal. ..
Although almost no one can agree precisely on just what child pornography is, since even the concept of "child" is highly amorphous. ("Honey, I'd really like to just take your picture, but that might be a crime, so why don't we just fuck. That's black letter legal.")
A friend of mine has come up with the only working definition that seems to apply. Child pornography is whatever gives a particular judge in a particular case a hardon.
In practice that means that one is only convicted of child pornography by someone who could be legally classified as a paedophile.
Knowledge is a fluid. The indvidual mind an area of higher concetration of knowledge than outside the individual mind (although the total knowledge outside the mind may be greater it is more diffuse) seperated from the less dense field of knowledge by a semi-permeable membrane.
The order of magnitude was completely irrelevant to the problems being demonstrated by my professor, his intent being to most clearly demonstrate the physical concept, not derive a number. He could have used a value of 1000 just as effectively, but less efficiently.
For your $27k/year you are not directly taught the concept of significant digits. You're supposed to sort of pick it up by osmosis. I groked it from my freshman physics professor always using 10m/s/s as the value of gravitational acceleration, but he never explained the use, I had to think about it myself and figure out what he was up to and why.
Since most people seem incapable of picking up concepts such as this by osmosis ( most people being seemingly incapable of exerting original deductive thought and needing to be "taught" everything explicitly) most people, even those in the hard sciences, never do.
It is harder to pick up the concept in the computer science curriculum, since it is rarely even encountered casually there. It is a literalist field where every digit is generally regarded as significant. Thus the brouhaha over Intel's claim that the Pentium rounding flaw didn't matter because it wouldn't effect most people, ever, the error occuring outside the realm of significant digits for most computations.
The fact of the matter is that they were right mathmatically, but the issue wasn't one of being right mathmatically, it was an issue of being right with regards to delivering product that functioned as expected. It was a consumer issue, not a mathmatical issue.
Sorry. That's why you get for talking about this on Slashdot.
Yeah, In know. I try to follow Asimov's dictum that there is no point in discussing religion with people whose standpoint is that reason does not apply, but sometimes the spirit is weak.
The Original Sin was succumbing to Lucifer's temptation. ..
I can find no reference to the Lucifer you speak of in the English, Hebrew or Greek texts of Genesis.
KFG
Re:Personally, I would go one step further.
on
Game with God
·
· Score: 1
Well thank God that at least unfettered and random violence against demons, zombies and aliens is depicted in stunning realism.
KFG
Re:Semi-serious?
on
Game with God
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Nope, 'twas disobedience.
In the sense that one might punish a child for trying to stick a screwdriver in an electrical outlet. There is, however, a reason behind the proscription against doing so.
In the case of the child it is the protection of the child. In case of Adam and Eve is the protection of God. The reason behind the proscription, which you will find explicitly in Genesis, is that the acquisition of knowledge by man would make man akin to the Gods in power.
When man is akin to the Gods in power than man will have no need of God, and thus have no reason to obey.
Original sin in not disobedience. It is knowledge of the difference between good and evil. That is why a baby who has as yet commited no act of disobedience is still a bearer of orginal sin. He/she still carries the innate ability to discern morality and shame as his birthright through Adam and Eve who tasted of the fruit of knowledge. The sin resides in the baby even before it can commit any act. Heirarchical church structures, however, have found it to their advantage in compelling behavior to the edict of man posing as God to teach it as disobedience.
While I agree with your post in basis the American patent system was inspired by the fact that it was possible to maintain trade/product secrets, thus losing them to humanity when the secret holders went out of business/died.
The founding fathers were fully cognizant of the issue and the laws they wrote were devised to deal with it. Those laws have largely been abandoned in favor of private profit.
Slashdot Mirror
I always read parent's sig as K effin G, eh, maybe its just me.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that this is the case, however, it works for me.
KFG
If your goal is to be "modded down into flamebait hell", I'd say that you are doing a pretty shoddy job
.since I often forget that the score is influenced by "friend" status, the chance of me modding you up is low...
:)
It certainly isn't my goal, but I understand that certain of my views are highly controversial and thus liable to be regarded as flamebait. I don't particularly let it affect my posting though.
That said, the difference between insightful and flamebait is smaller than you'd think.
Sometimes the difference is so small that they share identity.
Your "enemies" are less likely to see your comments and subsequently mod you down.
I have at least one that periodically likes to use all of his/her mod points to "Overate" days old posts in one swell foop. I can live with that.
On the other hand, I believe that the moderation system is about visibility.
Absolutely.
. .
I can live with that too.
KFG
Well, you learn something new every day. Most of the world, under American pressure, does not handle the issue with quite that degree of rationality.
I expect the/you Brits will be hearing from Ashcroft soon, if you haven't already (see the current brouhaha over copyright terms).
This doesn't mean that the issue is irrelevant to Americans, however, as the Justice Department under Ashcroft has now started prosecuting Americans for their legal behavior out of the country, thus it is concievable that Americans could be prosecuted for viewing images in Britain that are legal in Britain, but not in America.
KFG
2) Why the fuck would bootleggers use better quality reproduction systems than the legitimate distributors?
Because they are in free market competition with the legitimate product.
For the protected product you make maximum profit by producing inferior quality items that degrade and must be repurchased periodically.
For the illegitimate product you make maximum profit by producing a superior item, but selling it at a vastly lower price.
It's a market thing.
Nor is the practice restricted to places like China. Major American distributors have been known to set up their own pressing plants and pass off the output as the legitimate product.
KFG
Anyway, it's meant as a joke.
It is what is called "irony." Saying the opposite of what you mean. The joke is that the books are for those intelligent people who feel like dummies because they have been reading people who actually are and thus "don't get" what are actually simple concepts if simply, and intellegently, explained.
Andre LaMothe's Windows Game Programming for Dummies, for instance, gives the most concise and intelligently understandable introduction to the Windows SDK and Direct X I have ever seen.
And Windows game programming is not a subject for actual dummies.
KFG
no, like this-
I bow to your superior version.
Hai!
KFG
I'm not sure anything explains Oklahoma.
KFG
Actually, while you get my point correctly, you get the facts slightly wrong.
What I was saying is that if you were 60 and had a 15 year old girlfriend in Canada and a 16 year old girlfriend in Vermont it would be perfectly legal to hit it, but not to take its picture.
The case where both partners are under the age of consent is uninteresting. It is the case where one partner is over the age of majority at 18 and the other under the age of majority (and thus not legal for pics) but over the age of consent (and thus legal for sex) where the philosophical interest lies.
KFG
1)Child pornography by Federal American law is depicting "children" under 18 in sexual acts or situations.
.that doesn't mean we cannot recognize those who are definitely children.
.
In my state the age of consent is 17. In the closest neighboring state it is 16. In a country just a 4 hour drive away from me it is 14. In the next closest country, one I have driven to, it is 12.
By black letter law.
You need to read up on the age of consent yourself.
. .
The age of universal agreement would seem to be under 12. Is that the age you had in mind for child pornography, or is there perhaps still some area of disagreement here? In any case the age of 18 is black letter law.
3)A pedophile is, legally, one who engages in acts with children which are prohibited.
You also need to read up on the current methods being used to test for paedophilia. They use a "dick polygraph" now, only unlike the regular kind it's even less accurate (assuming that's even possible) and have legally compelled people to be subjected to it, "for the children."
You're a troll, and you would appear revel in posting flame bait. Positively none of what you've said has any factual basis. .
4) And this is simply false, a troll and flamebait.
KFG
go ahead and wait a year to buy a new system but by that time DOOM3 might not be as fun to play as it would be next month (with all the media attention of the game, friends discussing gameplay, etc.)
You are talking about participating in a fad, not about playing a fun game.
KFG
Sure ... wait and buy a year old system to play a year old game.
Which will then only cost you twenty bucks instead of fifty.
Consider it as being akin to someone paying you a grand or three to wait a year, because it is. There's some old saying about saving pennies that seems apropos.
KFG
Wait a year and buy the same system used for two hundred bucks.
Sometimes patience really is a virtue.
KFG
Taking a data point of one the grey ponytails listen to Fairport Convention, Silly Wizard, Tom Waits, Bach, The Beatles, Imrat Khan, Ry Cooder, Tibetan Chants, Country Joe and the Fish, Janis Joplin, Leo Kottke, Squirrel Nut Zippers, Benny Goodman, Johnny Winter, Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, Pete Seeger, TMBG, Elbow, Miles, Leon Redbone, Herbie Hancock, Hubert Laws. . .and so on.
Pretty much a bit of everything but Britney and German Oompah music. Oh, alright, I guess The Archies are out too.
KFG
Oh Lord, won't you buy me, Windows XP.
My friends all use Linux and are trying to convert me.
I wait for registration, each day until three
So oh Lord, won't you buy me, Windows XP.
KFG
It's a nice hack, don't get me wrong, but there's a reason why helicopters use a 2 handed control system rather than a mouse.
I've found that using a flight yoke or wheel and pedal set to make nifty little 3D controlers without any need for string or hot glue.
The flight yoke is even a device dedicated to 3D navigation. Go figure.
KFG
I've no mod points, but anyways. +1 insightfull.
Given the emotional nature of the issue I took it for granted before posting that I would be modded down into flamebait hell.
S'alright. I am content with the quality of my "enemies."
KFG
You are applying reason to an issue which the general public has been trained to attack with a purely emotional knee-jerk response.
KFG
. . .everyone can agree that child pornography is bad and is rightly illegal. . .
Although almost no one can agree precisely on just what child pornography is, since even the concept of "child" is highly amorphous. ("Honey, I'd really like to just take your picture, but that might be a crime, so why don't we just fuck. That's black letter legal.")
A friend of mine has come up with the only working definition that seems to apply. Child pornography is whatever gives a particular judge in a particular case a hardon.
In practice that means that one is only convicted of child pornography by someone who could be legally classified as a paedophile.
KFG
Knowledge is a fluid. The indvidual mind an area of higher concetration of knowledge than outside the individual mind (although the total knowledge outside the mind may be greater it is more diffuse) seperated from the less dense field of knowledge by a semi-permeable membrane.
The order of magnitude was completely irrelevant to the problems being demonstrated by my professor, his intent being to most clearly demonstrate the physical concept, not derive a number. He could have used a value of 1000 just as effectively, but less efficiently.
KFG
Ever heard of rounding?
For your $27k/year you are not directly taught the concept of significant digits. You're supposed to sort of pick it up by osmosis. I groked it from my freshman physics professor always using 10m/s/s as the value of gravitational acceleration, but he never explained the use, I had to think about it myself and figure out what he was up to and why.
Since most people seem incapable of picking up concepts such as this by osmosis ( most people being seemingly incapable of exerting original deductive thought and needing to be "taught" everything explicitly) most people, even those in the hard sciences, never do.
It is harder to pick up the concept in the computer science curriculum, since it is rarely even encountered casually there. It is a literalist field where every digit is generally regarded as significant. Thus the brouhaha over Intel's claim that the Pentium rounding flaw didn't matter because it wouldn't effect most people, ever, the error occuring outside the realm of significant digits for most computations.
The fact of the matter is that they were right mathmatically, but the issue wasn't one of being right mathmatically, it was an issue of being right with regards to delivering product that functioned as expected. It was a consumer issue, not a mathmatical issue.
KFG
Sorry. That's why you get for talking about this on Slashdot.
Yeah, In know. I try to follow Asimov's dictum that there is no point in discussing religion with people whose standpoint is that reason does not apply, but sometimes the spirit is weak.
KFG
The Original Sin was succumbing to Lucifer's temptation. . .
I can find no reference to the Lucifer you speak of in the English, Hebrew or Greek texts of Genesis.
KFG
Well thank God that at least unfettered and random violence against demons, zombies and aliens is depicted in stunning realism.
KFG
Nope, 'twas disobedience.
In the sense that one might punish a child for trying to stick a screwdriver in an electrical outlet. There is, however, a reason behind the proscription against doing so.
In the case of the child it is the protection of the child. In case of Adam and Eve is the protection of God. The reason behind the proscription, which you will find explicitly in Genesis, is that the acquisition of knowledge by man would make man akin to the Gods in power.
When man is akin to the Gods in power than man will have no need of God, and thus have no reason to obey.
Original sin in not disobedience. It is knowledge of the difference between good and evil. That is why a baby who has as yet commited no act of disobedience is still a bearer of orginal sin. He/she still carries the innate ability to discern morality and shame as his birthright through Adam and Eve who tasted of the fruit of knowledge. The sin resides in the baby even before it can commit any act. Heirarchical church structures, however, have found it to their advantage in compelling behavior to the edict of man posing as God to teach it as disobedience.
KFG
While I agree with your post in basis the American patent system was inspired by the fact that it was possible to maintain trade/product secrets, thus losing them to humanity when the secret holders went out of business/died.
The founding fathers were fully cognizant of the issue and the laws they wrote were devised to deal with it. Those laws have largely been abandoned in favor of private profit.
KFG