Generally, if it doesn't require linux kernel modules or binary-only linux drivers, anything that'll work in X for Linux will work for FreeBSD. As for games, I've been able to get most Loki games working on my FreeBSD 4.2 workstation with absolutely no problems at all. Loki is going to be officially support FreeBSD soon from what has been written. YES, FreeBSD can run StarOffice. Check out http://www.freebsd.org/ports for a list of easy to install ported applications. There are over 4,300 of them now!
"IMHO this is kinda an endless circle. I live in canada, don't own anything more dangerous than a hunting knife I take camping, and have never, ever needed anything more violent for any reason. I've never been mugged, shot at, stabbed, or had a gun pulled on me at a bar."
Guess what? I live in Montreal, and I've been mugged at gunpoint. Fortunately the 30 year old coke addict decided to beat me instead of shooting me. This sort of this is not as uncommon around here as you think. If a crackhead who can't afford 20$ for his next hit can get his hands on a gun with little problems, anyone can. It is not in any way difficult to purchase a gun in Montreal for under 200$ CDN. Anyone who wants one can get one.
FYI, the bastard was caught and did 3 years. Not long enough in my opinion, but it was a victory nonetheless. I find it sickening that Canadian laws prevented me from being able to defend myself against an attack that was a clear and present danger to my life.
I do not mean to belittle your beliefs with these statements, I respect others beliefs and hope that they respect mine even when they disagree. I have personally always wondered something though..
Is suicide going against God? Surely, if God did not feel it was your time to die, He would not allow it to happen.
If God did not believe it was your time to die, would He allow someone else to successfully murder you? Surely He would be able to stop it.
Please don't take this as an attack, it's just something I've always wondered personally.
Disclaimer: I'm not a believer in any organized religions, I have my own ideas about such things. I believe in a higher power of a sort, but not in the sense that organized religions describe God as. I capitalize God/He out of respect, not out of personal belief.
That, is not the current state of our soceity. Killing a human being is wrong, with the exceptions of self-defense, etc. The argument is over whether an unborn mass of tissue is a human being. I don't believe that it is, and since the law agrees with me, I'm in the "legal" right. Advocating the murder of abortion doctors is *wrong* -- Even if abortion was illegal, it would *still* be wrong since there was no trial and due process of law. This of course does not get into the abortion when pregency was due to rape/incest/etc where the woman made no choice to have unprotected sex, and it get into the cases where abortions must be done or the woman will die.
I agree totally about responsibility, but what happens when failure to follow the order results in your death? I know that in the US and most (all?) civilized countries, it's a soldier's responsibility to refuse to carry out an illegal order, and that would hold up if said soldier was put in a courtmartial for failure to follow an order, but do you really think that would hold up in Nazi germany? A soldier refusing to commit a "war crime" would be taken out and shot by their government without any doubt. You cannot FORCE a person to do the noble thing and sacrifice their life for another.
Sounds like a clear cut case of duress to me.
Disclaimer 1: I'm not in any way defending the actions of the Nazis, I think that Hitler was a sick fuck, but many people will commit illegal acts when there's a gun pointed at their head.
I'm not disagreeing with you about the skill of the administrator making a huge difference, but how do you patch holes that Microsoft has neglected to release a patch for yet? They can be rather tardy with their patch releases at times..
Disclaimer: I'm not a Linux zealot, please don't classify me as one:)
Well James, I don't think that effect is completely known. It's my expierence that in many cases, unjust restrictions may drive people to ignore them as it is. Look at alcohol and minors. In countries that allow minors to drink, there are virtually no alcohol related problems with minors, at the very least no more so than with normal adults.. However, in the good old USA, you see extreme alcohol related problems with minors. I like to call that the 'forbiddin fruit' effect.
Thank you for the debate James, you expressed your views very well, and have definately made me think deeper about this issue. I wish all slashdot debates were as productive and amicable as this one has been. Sleep well.:)
I'm still not sure about media displayed violence on tv/movies/video games play a role in real world violence. I will digress on this when there is solid evidence saying otherwise. This is what I believe:
1) psychologically disturbed, violent children are attracted to violent video games, and play them.
2) this makes absolutely no difference, because if their head is messed up, something in the real world will make them snap, that's all there is to it. Be it the school bully, the girlfriend cheating, being cut off on the road, etc etc.
I cannot for a MOMENT believe that tv/movies/games turn normal, psychologically correct children into killers. That's absurd. Something must be wrong with them first for them to be killers.
You make a very good point, however I think that in many cases the parents do NOT have this control you describe. I'm 19, and in Canada that's legal age for everything, but I agree that I would not want my nonexistant kid walking into a bar... HOWEVER, if I signed some certificate (perhaps a new ID) that said my kid was specifically allowed to do so, the government should step back and allow it.
I might add by the way, that in the US if a parent gives their child alcohol under 21, it counts as CHILD ABUSE. Yes, you heard me. I was upset to no ends when my Dad couldn't let me have wine with dinner in a US resturant for Christmas when I was 18. He's a former police officer, and is the one who told me about this. This was in Fort Wayne, Indiana btw..
Well, I will say that I'm not a parent.. (I'm only 19, so a lot of this is fresh in my head).. I'm not going to pretend I have a solution for bad parenting, if I did, the world would be a much better place. In my opinion, all laws of this sort are unjustified until there is SOLID, PROVEN, evidence supporting these claims. I firmly believe that psychologically disturbed, violent children are attratched to violent games and could be triggered by them. They could (and often are) be triggered by someone saying the wrong thing, or the school bully beating them up.. Which I might add is COMMONPLACE in every high school, and that for the most part, the school administration IGNORES it, and wonders why these children are angry.
Those of us with our heads together will deal with our anger, and those who are not mentally sound, or are incapable of dealing with violence and anger, will act out accordingly. Now, that said, I do not believe that any normal, well balanced, psychologically correct child will act out violence due to playing a video game.
I agree that there will have to be a set age, but why not on a sliding scale? Children from age 1-17 have the same rights (or lack thereof) until they hit 18. Then they have all these rights and responsibilities that they don't know what to do with. Why doesn't the law adjust the rights of a minor as their age increases?
I still must disagree with giving up liberties for a bit of safety from the 0.01% -- that 0.01% are the price we pay for freedom. Enacting martial law would put an instant stop to ALL gang violence, and just about most crime, but no one would ever consider doing that a rational action. We can be free and mostly safe, or not free and totally safe - take your pick. You can't have both.
This may sound a bit cold to say, but I'm going to say it anyhow. My brother was murdered in 1996 at 19 years old. (No apologies please, I hate that). However, I do not even for a moment think that sheltering kids from any form of violence, like video games, will help anything. I'm not that naive. I bet a whole lot more people kill for a person's money, like they did to my brother. The person(s) were never caught either.
Video games aren't the cause of all this, nor even the symptom. It's the fucked up people in the world out there that think a couple hundred dollars is worth taking someone's life for. This has been going on much longer than movies, tv, video games, etc ever existed.
There's the thing though. You say "12 and under", and to a point, I might even agree with that. However, that is up to the parents. A blanket law cannot judge the maturity of a child or teenager. Making a law that says everyone under 18 is too immature to handle a violent video game is absurd.
I agree that we shouldn't be putting 12 year olds in front of these games and saying "have fun", but when you get into 14,15,16.. etc - I think that a reasonable number of children CAN handle it under the condition that their parents actually sit down, talk to them about violence (and other "taboos"), explain the consequences, etc etc.
As for guns, I grew up with guns, I've been shooting them in some form since I was about 10 years old. My father was a pilot for the police department and is now a DoD worker. I was taught in extreme detail about guns, and forced to be able to take them apart and put them back together before I could shoot one. Aside from that, to give me the proper respect and fear required of guns, he showed me a crime scene photo of a young lady who was shot in the head with a shotgun. It was tough to look at, but it explained far better than any words, the actual consequences of shooting a human being. Things like this did not ALLOW me to blur the line between reality and fiction when it came to violence. I feel this was very important to my development as a teenager.
Now, should we do what my father did to all the kids out there? Probably not, but my father deemed that I was mature and competent enough to handle it, and that is the key. The courts cannot decide that, it must be left up to the parents.
As for violence increases this year, I'm not sure there are any - we won't know until the official reports come out. However, if there are, I would imagine that a disturbed kid realising that he can become instantly famous by shooting some school kid that treats him terribly has a much larger impact on the situation than video games.
Except that the US Department of Justice reports that youth violence is at an all time low since 1983 (IIRC).. How do you explain this, while still blaming video games?
This should definately be embraced by the community. To see this much common sense out of a court is a refreshing change. We definately should not shield our children from the world until they turn 18, it is silly. That doesn't mean that I'm against rules and guidance, but that parents should TEACH their children about violence, sex, etc.. and prepare them for the situations so they have the common sense to make an informed decision.
UGH! My step mother is getting all that grouplotto junk as well, 15+ a day. Since her ISP refuses to do mail filtering, I made her a mail account on my private qmail server which does tons of filtering thanks to Michael Graff's qmail addition at flame.org and she's been happy ever since.
It's sad that I even had to do that though, it should NOT be required.
Heh, in Canada and most(all?) of Europe, codeine is available over the counter (though somewhat controlled) in a tylenol(paracetamol)/asprin + 8mg codeine form. Thus, the codeine comment was a bit inappropriate; however I totally agree with you about education and common sense, that's how I was raised, and while I'm only 19 at the time, I think I've turned out pretty well. Being around guns and playing wolf3d with dad when I was younger didn't twist my mind. Hell, dad made me memorize the basic rules to gun safety and be able to take them apart and put them back together (seriously) before he'd let me shoot one. To this day, I've *never* pointed a weapon at a person, loaded or not (because unloaded guns are treated as loaded, duh) and hope I never have to.
They didn't reclaim a damn thing, we were out of operation for less than two weeks.:) I might add, that since this is all perfectly legal for us Canadians, they had no right to "reclaim" anything. They cannot claim lost sales from a country that they *cannot* legally operate in.
As one of those people who was burned by DTV in that little ambush, I have to agree that it was a fairly brilliant attack that most of us, as much as we hate to admit it, respected. OTOH, what we're doing is *NOT* in violation of *ANY* Canadian law, so I'd question their ability to legally damage our equipment, but who has the money to argue that?
That is the unfortunate truth to security; things are only as secure as the weakest link. I would argue that until the current state of email clients, usages, and so forth changes; we should have zero expectation of privacy in email. I would love to think [P]GP[G] will change the world in email privacy, but I suspect that Joe User will just get their key stolen through a javascript hole in their web browser (AKA mail client).
It's not stealing in Canada. All this directv "hacking" is perfectly legal here, they have no right whatsoever to touch us. Ah well, big corporation fucks a country's sovereign rights again.
While I agree that *ANYTHING* involving the harm and violation of children, like real child pornography does, should be stopped, I don't feel it right to ban VIRTUAL (read: FAKE, NON EXISTANT, ETC) explicit content.
Where is the line drawn? What about the book "The Colour Purple" which was standard reading when I was in high school? It depicted the sexual abuse of a minor. The person who looks at fake child porn may be sick, but no children are actually being harmed. It is distasteful as hell, but it shouldn't be illegal.
To put another spin on this; What if I, as a 19 year old male, decided to write a story about my first sexual encounter? Of course I'd change names and obvious details to protect the woman's privacy, but that could still be classified as illegal under this. That isn't right. (PS. I'd never do that, I have more respect both for women and myself.)
Fiction is not real life. People need to learn that. Hell, I grew up with guns, was taught how to use them safely, and play Quake all the time. I have NEVER pointed a gun (loaded or not, since any responsible person ALWAYS treats a gun as loaded) at person in my life, and hope to god I never have to.
Slashdot Mirror
Generally, if it doesn't require linux kernel modules or binary-only linux drivers, anything that'll work in X for Linux will work for FreeBSD. As for games, I've been able to get most Loki games working on my FreeBSD 4.2 workstation with absolutely no problems at all. Loki is going to be officially support FreeBSD soon from what has been written. YES, FreeBSD can run StarOffice. Check out http://www.freebsd.org/ports for a list of easy to install ported applications. There are over 4,300 of them now!
Matt
"IMHO this is kinda an endless circle. I live in canada, don't own anything more dangerous than a hunting knife I take camping, and have never, ever needed anything more violent for any reason. I've never been mugged, shot at, stabbed, or had a gun pulled on me at a bar."
Guess what? I live in Montreal, and I've been mugged at gunpoint. Fortunately the 30 year old coke addict decided to beat me instead of shooting me. This sort of this is not as uncommon around here as you think. If a crackhead who can't afford 20$ for his next hit can get his hands on a gun with little problems, anyone can. It is not in any way difficult to purchase a gun in Montreal for under 200$ CDN. Anyone who wants one can get one.
FYI, the bastard was caught and did 3 years. Not long enough in my opinion, but it was a victory nonetheless. I find it sickening that Canadian laws prevented me from being able to defend myself against an attack that was a clear and present danger to my life.
Matt
I do not mean to belittle your beliefs with these statements, I respect others beliefs and hope that they respect mine even when they disagree. I have personally always wondered something though..
Is suicide going against God? Surely, if God did not feel it was your time to die, He would not allow it to happen.
If God did not believe it was your time to die, would He allow someone else to successfully murder you? Surely He would be able to stop it.
Please don't take this as an attack, it's just something I've always wondered personally.
Disclaimer: I'm not a believer in any organized religions, I have my own ideas about such things. I believe in a higher power of a sort, but not in the sense that organized religions describe God as. I capitalize God/He out of respect, not out of personal belief.
That, is not the current state of our soceity. Killing a human being is wrong, with the exceptions of self-defense, etc. The argument is over whether an unborn mass of tissue is a human being. I don't believe that it is, and since the law agrees with me, I'm in the "legal" right. Advocating the murder of abortion doctors is *wrong* -- Even if abortion was illegal, it would *still* be wrong since there was no trial and due process of law. This of course does not get into the abortion when pregency was due to rape/incest/etc where the woman made no choice to have unprotected sex, and it get into the cases where abortions must be done or the woman will die.
I agree totally about responsibility, but what happens when failure to follow the order results in your death? I know that in the US and most (all?) civilized countries, it's a soldier's responsibility to refuse to carry out an illegal order, and that would hold up if said soldier was put in a courtmartial for failure to follow an order, but do you really think that would hold up in Nazi germany? A soldier refusing to commit a "war crime" would be taken out and shot by their government without any doubt. You cannot FORCE a person to do the noble thing and sacrifice their life for another.
Sounds like a clear cut case of duress to me.
Disclaimer 1: I'm not in any way defending the actions of the Nazis, I think that Hitler was a sick fuck, but many people will commit illegal acts when there's a gun pointed at their head.
Disclaimer 2: I'm a Canadian, not an American.
2.5 Mbps download, 768 Kbps upload is what I have here in Montreal, Canada from UUNet.. err WorldCom.
It's very reliable and I'm generally working on top speed depending on the speed of the other site.
Matt
I'm not disagreeing with you about the skill of the administrator making a huge difference, but how do you patch holes that Microsoft has neglected to release a patch for yet? They can be rather tardy with their patch releases at times..
:)
Disclaimer: I'm not a Linux zealot, please don't classify me as one
Well James, I don't think that effect is completely known. It's my expierence that in many cases, unjust restrictions may drive people to ignore them as it is. Look at alcohol and minors. In countries that allow minors to drink, there are virtually no alcohol related problems with minors, at the very least no more so than with normal adults.. However, in the good old USA, you see extreme alcohol related problems with minors. I like to call that the 'forbiddin fruit' effect.
Thank you for the debate James, you expressed your views very well, and have definately made me think deeper about this issue. I wish all slashdot debates were as productive and amicable as this one has been. Sleep well.
Matt
I'm still not sure about media displayed violence on tv/movies/video games play a role in real world violence. I will digress on this when there is solid evidence saying otherwise. This is what I believe:
1) psychologically disturbed, violent children are attracted to violent video games, and play them.
2) this makes absolutely no difference, because if their head is messed up, something in the real world will make them snap, that's all there is to it. Be it the school bully, the girlfriend cheating, being cut off on the road, etc etc.
I cannot for a MOMENT believe that tv/movies/games turn normal, psychologically correct children into killers. That's absurd. Something must be wrong with them first for them to be killers.
Matt
You make a very good point, however I think that in many cases the parents do NOT have this control you describe. I'm 19, and in Canada that's legal age for everything, but I agree that I would not want my nonexistant kid walking into a bar
I might add by the way, that in the US if a parent gives their child alcohol under 21, it counts as CHILD ABUSE. Yes, you heard me. I was upset to no ends when my Dad couldn't let me have wine with dinner in a US resturant for Christmas when I was 18. He's a former police officer, and is the one who told me about this. This was in Fort Wayne, Indiana btw..
Matt
Well, I will say that I'm not a parent .. (I'm only 19, so a lot of this is fresh in my head) .. I'm not going to pretend I have a solution for bad parenting, if I did, the world would be a much better place. In my opinion, all laws of this sort are unjustified until there is SOLID, PROVEN, evidence supporting these claims. I firmly believe that psychologically disturbed, violent children are attratched to violent games and could be triggered by them. They could (and often are) be triggered by someone saying the wrong thing, or the school bully beating them up.. Which I might add is COMMONPLACE in every high school, and that for the most part, the school administration IGNORES it, and wonders why these children are angry.
Those of us with our heads together will deal with our anger, and those who are not mentally sound, or are incapable of dealing with violence and anger, will act out accordingly. Now, that said, I do not believe that any normal, well balanced, psychologically correct child will act out violence due to playing a video game.
I agree that there will have to be a set age, but why not on a sliding scale? Children from age 1-17 have the same rights (or lack thereof) until they hit 18. Then they have all these rights and responsibilities that they don't know what to do with. Why doesn't the law adjust the rights of a minor as their age increases?
I still must disagree with giving up liberties for a bit of safety from the 0.01% -- that 0.01% are the price we pay for freedom. Enacting martial law would put an instant stop to ALL gang violence, and just about most crime, but no one would ever consider doing that a rational action. We can be free and mostly safe, or not free and totally safe - take your pick. You can't have both.
Matt
This may sound a bit cold to say, but I'm going to say it anyhow. My brother was murdered in 1996 at 19 years old. (No apologies please, I hate that). However, I do not even for a moment think that sheltering kids from any form of violence, like video games, will help anything. I'm not that naive. I bet a whole lot more people kill for a person's money, like they did to my brother. The person(s) were never caught either.
Video games aren't the cause of all this, nor even the symptom. It's the fucked up people in the world out there that think a couple hundred dollars is worth taking someone's life for. This has been going on much longer than movies, tv, video games, etc ever existed.
Matt
There's the thing though. You say "12 and under", and to a point, I might even agree with that. However, that is up to the parents. A blanket law cannot judge the maturity of a child or teenager. Making a law that says everyone under 18 is too immature to handle a violent video game is absurd.
I agree that we shouldn't be putting 12 year olds in front of these games and saying "have fun", but when you get into 14,15,16.. etc - I think that a reasonable number of children CAN handle it under the condition that their parents actually sit down, talk to them about violence (and other "taboos"), explain the consequences, etc etc.
As for guns, I grew up with guns, I've been shooting them in some form since I was about 10 years old. My father was a pilot for the police department and is now a DoD worker. I was taught in extreme detail about guns, and forced to be able to take them apart and put them back together before I could shoot one. Aside from that, to give me the proper respect and fear required of guns, he showed me a crime scene photo of a young lady who was shot in the head with a shotgun. It was tough to look at, but it explained far better than any words, the actual consequences of shooting a human being. Things like this did not ALLOW me to blur the line between reality and fiction when it came to violence. I feel this was very important to my development as a teenager.
Now, should we do what my father did to all the kids out there? Probably not, but my father deemed that I was mature and competent enough to handle it, and that is the key. The courts cannot decide that, it must be left up to the parents.
As for violence increases this year, I'm not sure there are any - we won't know until the official reports come out. However, if there are, I would imagine that a disturbed kid realising that he can become instantly famous by shooting some school kid that treats him terribly has a much larger impact on the situation than video games.
Matt
Except that the US Department of Justice reports that youth violence is at an all time low since 1983 (IIRC).. How do you explain this, while still blaming video games?
Matt
This should definately be embraced by the community. To see this much common sense out of a court is a refreshing change. We definately should not shield our children from the world until they turn 18, it is silly. That doesn't mean that I'm against rules and guidance, but that parents should TEACH their children about violence, sex, etc.. and prepare them for the situations so they have the common sense to make an informed decision.
Matt
UGH! My step mother is getting all that grouplotto junk as well, 15+ a day. Since her ISP refuses to do mail filtering, I made her a mail account on my private qmail server which does tons of filtering thanks to Michael Graff's qmail addition at flame.org and she's been happy ever since.
It's sad that I even had to do that though, it should NOT be required.
Matt
Heh, in Canada and most(all?) of Europe, codeine is available over the counter (though somewhat controlled) in a tylenol(paracetamol)/asprin + 8mg codeine form. Thus, the codeine comment was a bit inappropriate; however I totally agree with you about education and common sense, that's how I was raised, and while I'm only 19 at the time, I think I've turned out pretty well. Being around guns and playing wolf3d with dad when I was younger didn't twist my mind. Hell, dad made me memorize the basic rules to gun safety and be able to take them apart and put them back together (seriously) before he'd let me shoot one. To this day, I've *never* pointed a weapon at a person, loaded or not (because unloaded guns are treated as loaded, duh) and hope I never have to.
:P
But this is getting off topic, so I'll stop
Matt
Crime is real low under martial law too.. Peace of the gun is never acceptable. Realize that.
Matt
They didn't reclaim a damn thing, we were out of operation for less than two weeks.
Cheers.
As one of those people who was burned by DTV in that little ambush, I have to agree that it was a fairly brilliant attack that most of us, as much as we hate to admit it, respected. OTOH, what we're doing is *NOT* in violation of *ANY* Canadian law, so I'd question their ability to legally damage our equipment, but who has the money to argue that?
Matt
.. which you can fix with a dpbb or a modified unlooper, check www.dssware.com for details
Matt
That is the unfortunate truth to security; things are only as secure as the weakest link. I would argue that until the current state of email clients, usages, and so forth changes; we should have zero expectation of privacy in email. I would love to think [P]GP[G] will change the world in email privacy, but I suspect that Joe User will just get their key stolen through a javascript hole in their web browser (AKA mail client).
Matt
It's not stealing in Canada. All this directv "hacking" is perfectly legal here, they have no right whatsoever to touch us. Ah well, big corporation fucks a country's sovereign rights again.
Matt
Do what I did, so you never have to check this again:
/etc/hosts:
# Get around NY Times registration
#
208.48.26.223 www.nytimes.com
Matt
While I agree that *ANYTHING* involving the harm and violation of children, like real child pornography does, should be stopped, I don't feel it right to ban VIRTUAL (read: FAKE, NON EXISTANT, ETC) explicit content.
Where is the line drawn? What about the book "The Colour Purple" which was standard reading when I was in high school? It depicted the sexual abuse of a minor. The person who looks at fake child porn may be sick, but no children are actually being harmed. It is distasteful as hell, but it shouldn't be illegal.
To put another spin on this; What if I, as a 19 year old male, decided to write a story about my first sexual encounter? Of course I'd change names and obvious details to protect the woman's privacy, but that could still be classified as illegal under this. That isn't right. (PS. I'd never do that, I have more respect both for women and myself.)
Fiction is not real life. People need to learn that. Hell, I grew up with guns, was taught how to use them safely, and play Quake all the time. I have NEVER pointed a gun (loaded or not, since any responsible person ALWAYS treats a gun as loaded) at person in my life, and hope to god I never have to.
Cheers,
Matt