Of course spin is necessary. How else are they going to justify their little police angels being treated differently than the regular citizen when there is media coverage?
If a citizen commits a crime on camera, the news media invariably gets a copy of the footage and, at least in America, blares it all over the evening news, and brings in "experts" to comment on what happened in it, and occasionally brings in a lawyer to talk about what possible legal penalties could be faced. Often, the suspect's face isn't blurred (unless they're under 18, and the only reason for that is that it's the law forced on the media), and people very infrequently refer to the suspect as "the suspect" or "the accused".
If a police officer commits a crime on camera and the news media does the above, the police department goes ape shit. "You're putting this officer's life in danger because people now know he's a police officer!" "You shouldn't be convicting him in the court of public opinion!" "Until we've done our internal investigation (a time when the officer is on PAID leave, he gets a vacation for breaking the law), we won't comment but stop showing the footage!" Often, the media blurs out the face of the officer, and very often refers to him as "the accused" or "the suspect".
If media like that is laid out for all to see without commentary, who's going to give the police that special treatment that they so want but don't deserve?
That leaves them with only one other choice - deleting the footage to protect their superstar thugs.
What happens when you upload a video of the police abusing a citizen (assuming you can smuggle your copy out of the situation)? Do they auto-delete or does the spin machine automatically fire up?
Thank you for restoring my faith in humanity. I had assumed that there were more McDonald's in the world than libraries in the US. Around my apartment, there are no fewer than 4 McDonald's within walking distance, but only one branch library.
I had begun to think that maybe Americans liked cheap, disgusting food more than they liked reading.
That's even worse than what I thought you were saying. The only way "other viewpoints" should be taught is if there is a class specifically for those viewpoints?
No, only if those viewpoints aren't germane to the topic at hand. The origin of life isn't taught in science class because we don't know the origin of life. We know the origin of the universe, but we don't know with scientific certainty the origin of life. Therefore, it's not taught in science class, or at least in any science class (grade school, high school, and college) I've ever taken because we don't know. Just because we don't know doesn't mean we should teach the untestable alternative in its place in science class to placate those who believe in the alternative absent evidence.
Nonsense. The Bill Of Rights is not a "community standard". You were talking about "community standards", not the Constitution. That's the context in which I replied.
Okay, I'll admit, the response I posted, now that I read it again, is a bit outlandish and unfair. Let's say that a community judges anything involving the realistic depiction of sexuality to be obscene. Further, let's say that someone publishes a book in which a character's masturbatory scenes are graphically depicted. It's happened before. Guess what? The court sided with the publisher regardless of what the community considered obscene. And then this happened. Even though community standards are taken into account, they are not the only factor in determining if something is obscene and can be banned. That was the point that I was trying to make.
Whatever the parents decide is best for their kids.
What if someone is gay and their parents decide the best "cure" for gay people is to kill them?
Schools shouldn't be forcing viewpoints down people's throats, but they shouldn't interfere when a student is seeking out more information on a viewpoint.
That sounds very much like you are saying that teaching "other viewpoints" is something you require of the schools, unless those viewpoints are something you don't agree with and then nobody should have the right to require schools to teach them.
I'm saying that if a school has a class that explores other viewpoints (such as religion class or a philosophy class), then nothing should be off-limits. Any idea that a student brings to the table that is germane to the topic should be discussed. Elementary and high schools, by and large, do not have these classes.
Schools at the elementary and high school level are intended to teach basic concepts to, not make experts out of the children. Even the lower levels of collegiate study are required to work at this level, in this day of information explosion.
These levels of education teach basic facts, and this is what they should focus on. What I was referring to with "intellectual freedom bills" are the bills being pressed through by a religious minority as a trojan horse to teach intelligent design which is an untestable hypothesis which is not fact and should not be taught in a basic science course. If it's brought up in the context of a religion or philosophy course, then it should be entertained. It is not germane where facts are taught.
To expect that would be to remove the "community" from the "community standards". It is perfectly reasonable, and perfectly acceptable, for a community to decide they they will not "follow the crowd" and to maintain what they feel are acceptable standards for them and their children.
By that standard, the community standard of nullifying the bill of rights in a town is okay if everyone in the town agrees with it. If someone from out of town passes through and is treated according to those community standards, the court system will side with the passer-through and kick the community standards to the curb. What I'm trying to say (and said very clumsily above, I might add) is that community standards are only one part of determining whether something is obscene. Prevailing attitudes in society as a whole are another.
Then teach your own worldview on your own time. The taxpayers pay school tax to provide an environment for learning that is open for exploration for everyone, not just the kids of a certain worldview. They shouldn't be required to stunt the intellectual growth of other kids just to serve your viewpoint.
Education is represented by a flame to represent enlightenment. An ideally enlightened person entertains notions contrary to the ones they hold because they understand that they can be wrong. This doesn't mean that they blindly accept new ideas, but it does mean that when their notions are challenged that they don't try to close off avenues of inquiry that make them uncomfortable to others in the hope that they can ward off challenges to their own worldview.
When did the school board (the representatives of the people) vote on the list of websites to be blocked?
They didn't. That's my point. That the filters now are claimed to represent community standards even though the community didn't have a say through their elected officials about it. Therefore, arguing that they are representative of community standards is bullshit.
It's not a reversal of position. It's a central thesis of my position.
Local community standards aren't the sole factor to be considered when these lists are approved either. The standards of society as a whole are a factor that must be balanced as well. For example, if the local community feels that miscegenation is deviant, that's fine and dandy, but trying to ban something as obscene even given that local standard would likely be seen as overly restrictive because society as a whole doesn't share that value.
Both of those options can be prohibitively costly.
Schools are representative of the district they serve, and as such, generally reflect the values held by that district, for better or for worse. If you send your kids to public school, then they will be taught in accordance to those local values. That is the way that public school works and has worked in the past.
It's the same with some of the people at the teabagging rallies. They are arguing "no taxation without representation" but are completely missing the point. Their viewpoints were represented at the polling place, but their candidate lost because the majority of the people in their district disagreed with them. They had and still have representation, but because it's not the obedient, bow-before-me type, they threaten to destroy the very system that (some would argue) enriched them at the expense of others for the last 8 years.
Representation doesn't always mean getting your way, and freedom of speech imparts no obligation on others to listen. Thomas Jefferson understood this. Why can't everyone else?
Of course no one actually follows this, but only says it to allow the viewing of some viewpoints with which others disagree, but not others. They should be allowed to read about advocacy for homosexual lifestyles, but should they be allowed to read about advocacy for white nationalism or holocaust denial?
Yes, they should be able to read about white nationalism because it's an idea. In my opinion, a racist, backwards, ignorant idea, but an idea none the less. They should be able to read about Holocaust denial as well for the same reasons.
Now, as to whether schools should "teach the controversy", that's a different matter. Schools should teach facts about science and history in science and history class. If schools offer courses to foster discussion about viewpoints (and in my opinion, they should), then all viewpoints brought by students should be heard in that case. In no way should schools endeavor to stop students from reading about viewpoints not presented in class, but that doesn't mean they have to teach discredited ideas in class.
People that disagree with you are not necessarily nut jobs, and to call them that only makes you look like an ignorant and intolerant person.
For example, I don't consider Bill O'Reilly (whom I disagree with in a lot of things) a nut job. I think his rage is misguided and I think some of his positions are ignorant, poorly thought out, sexist, racist, and backward, but I don't think he is a nut job. I think that he thinks that he's doing what is best for America. That doesn't mean he's not misguided and (factually) wrong in some cases.
I disagree with the ACLU signing on to some cases because I know they're going to take a PR hit, but I have no doubt that their primary concern is civil rights for everybody - innocent and guilty - no matter their religious position, race, county of origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, or age.
In dire situations, they may be the only willing defender of your civil rights.
ACLU of Tennessee is not currently suing, but they've sent letters to 109 schools doing this, saying that if someone raises this is an issue, they'll take the case.
Affected, not effected
I find that people generally think the ACLU are a bunch of nut jobs until the ACLU is on their side (with respect to gun ownership rights, illegal searches and seizure, and freedom to practice religion). It's only when atheists or progressives are represented that these people think the ACLU is being run by nut jobs.
Well, yes and no. I think what gets lost in this discussion is the age level of the kids using the internet. There are things I'd let my kids view at 16 years old, that I wouldn't want them to view at 8 or 12 years old.
That's one of the flaws of the current filtering system - it's indiscriminate. It filters all results for all age groups that way, and it's so expensive that a district can't afford to deploy a separate system for each school and age group. I'm not arguing that the age of the students shouldn't be a factor - it clearly should, and younger children should have more supervision on the Internet regardless of if they're at school.
It's interesting how somebody that implies that perhaps there are certain elements of society that want to separate children from kids to indoctrinate them with values the parents find offensive is arguing for more restrictions on their ability to access the internet. To me, it looks like an argument that the only way to save us from a nanny state is to implement a nanny state.
I would rather see an age-limiting system (say like the movies - G, PC, etc.), and let the parents sign off on their kids being able to see or not see items in a given ratings category.
The problem is "Who makes that determination?" Do the parents? Then you're going to have a blocklist for every student. Community standards? Then what happens in a backwards community? Are those children less deserving of a well rounded education? Do the censorware companies? What if they get it wrong? What if a site that's G gets hacked and replaced with hardcore porn? Who is responsible in that case?
But at the same time, their ability to reason and made judgments on any given issue is limited by their age.
As a child, my ability to reason grew the most when I was exposed to things that weren't things I thought I could handle. Watching a family member die at a young age helped me grow when it came to life and death. Seeing a friend destroy himself, literally overdose on heroine, in front of me showed me more graphically than any textbook why I didn't want to do drugs (and why drug prohibition is a miserable failure). I'm not saying that we should be allowing 5th graders access to hardcore pornography, but challenging ideas and situations are important because they generally stimulate intellectual and personal growth.
People love to demonize parents for not getting involved in the lives of the children but when those children are outside of their control for eight hours a day what are they to do?
Let the children learn that there are other viewpoints out there. That's what school is supposed to be for.
I figure most of this comes down from haters who look for any chance to embarrass or otherwise annoy religious oriented Americans who send their kids to public school.
When they stop trying to embarrass or otherwise annoy me by trying to ram through "academic freedom" bills that force teachers to teach a fairytale as science and act as a wedge to break down the church/state separation, then they'll earn my sympathy and respect. When they stop putting their fingers in their ears and shouting out that "abstinence is the only way, sex is sinful and dirty, and condoms will give you AIDS", then I'll be concerned about what they think. When they stop telling people that the genitals of the person they like are more important than the love that they have for them, then I'll entertain their cries of oppression.
Let them be more involved, but realize freedoms you claim the students don't have should not be granted by the system over the wishes of their parents.
If they feel that their children are being exposed to viewpoints that they don't agree with, let them home school their kids or send them to a private school.
While I agree that there should be local control of schools, the reason this lawsuit was filed was to challenge what the locality thinks should be acceptable and if those standards are reasonable. Community standards, the basis of most obscenity claims, were never meant to be static and unchanging - they were meant to be influenced by society as a whole. What works for one community may not work for another, but reasonable community standards are important.
I'm sure that you'll find some towns in the south that feel showing a black man and a white woman kissing is obscene. Luckily, society as a whole as advanced passed that racist and backward world view, and any obscenity trial involving that community will take that into account.
Yes, everyone who wants a gets a copy in my scenario. It's basically what we have now: an album is released and someone rips it and shares it on BitTorrent. Someone else downloads it and burns it for free. People that don't pay for a copy of the music get it right now. That's a fact. What the commercial outlets do right now with respects to this can only charitably be described as "schizophrenic".
On one hand, they try to shut down all of those sites. They whack a few of the bigger ones and a thousand more show up. They are basically playing a masturbatory game of whack-a-mole against their fans, never realizing that the more they try, the harder people will push back. People who want music for free can get it and will get it, no matter how many online music stores are put up and no matter how cheap you make music.
On the other hand, they aren't exactly trying their hardest to win over people. Suing individuals, subjecting them to legal harassment, and trying to get the legislature to violate our rights so they can find out who downloaded the tracks of the week without paying them are just some of the things they do. They had to be dragged, kicking and screaming into selling music online, and they've made their biggest blunder by forcing the stores to implement tiered pricing right when many people were getting used to a buck a song.
My scenarios take into account something that the RIAA and the MPAA don't: reality. The reality is that people, given the technology and the ability, are going to spread free copies of your work around. They're just going to do that, and in many cases (for example, smaller indie bands that aren't going to see a profit off an album) it's a good thing as it spreads the product further. People buy merchandise which can't be instantly and freely reproduced through the Internet. There's more interest in the next album. ticket sales for live shows go up. It also saves society and the RIAA/MPAA money - when products are produced this way, the RIAA/MPAA won't have to have masses and masses of lawyers on retainer and won't have to have companies like MediaDefender on the payroll to police their fans. Law enforcement will be able to focus on actual crimes with actual victims.
The escrow process is also effectively market research - you set a budget for an album and post the escrow numbers. People, if they're interested, contribute. After you've hit the escrow number, you make the album with the money you took in and post the results for everyone to have. If you don't hit the escrow number, you know that there aren't people interested in your album, and you've saved yourself and your artists time producing an album that there's no interest for. Or you adjust your budget and scale back the number of people working on that project.
Sure, you're going to have some freeloaders, however, by following the escrow model, you've already broken even - there's nothing saying that people can't continue contributing to the escrow account after you've passed the escrow amount - then you have profit. You can even offer limited runs of physical CDs to make profit if there's demand for it, not to mention the merchandise and concert ticket sales.
The difference between the marketer's vision and my vision is that mine has reality at 12 o'clock, not at 6.
You are right: physical goods (cars) are not the same as non-physical goods (music). However, let's take your example to an extreme.
Non-physical goods have a marginal cost of zero after the first copy is sold. Therefore, in a world where lossless, free, unlimited copying takes place, in order to be guaranteed to at least recoup the cost of production, you must charge your entire cost of production for the first unit that you sell because after the first unit, there's a chance that no money is going to be flowing in - everyone can get a copy from someone else.
One solution to this is an escrowed release. People who want to donate whatever amount they feel like donating to an account, and when the balance in that account goes over a certain known amount, the work gets released for free to anybody. To be really slick, allow users to revoke their donation for free (minus perhaps a small, reasonable service charge that only covers the cost of the bank transfer in and out and only goes to the bank - that the seller makes no money off of). This allows people to pay what they want for an album or movie, ensures that you will break even, and leaves open the possibility for someone who likes the work to give you money even after the escrow period is over, allowing you to turn a profit. It also allows you to sell merchandise and tour in the remaining time.
Another solution to this is to do a hybrid escrowed release where you set the price equal to somewhere below the break-even point based on expected revenue from merchandising and concerts. This lowers the cost of the work to everyone, and your touring in support of the album can drum up interest and get people donating quickly.
Another solution is direct, mass patronage for artists with the stipulation that the works so produced belong to society and not to the patrons. This is much like the escrow model, but instead of paying for a single work, you're supporting many works.
Another solution is to eschew monetary rewards for non-physical work. The problem with this is that there's already money on the table and people that want to keep it flowing into their pockets, so this is not likely to work on an industry-wide basis. Those of us who write code like getting paid for the work we put in, no matter how non-physical.
But comparing the duplication of scare resources to the duplication of non-physical goods is disingenuous at best.
I'm talking about the manual pages, not the comments in the code. If a programmer waits to document the code that they are writing, then you are correct, they are bad programmers.
However, waiting to write a manpage, tutorial, or quickstart is something that can be done after the program works properly. Otherwise you've got a manpage, tutorial, or quickstart that will have to be constantly updated as you make changes to the program.
I've written Perl scripts that were well commented and became the backbone a small, end-user system. What was the last part of the deliverable that I worked on? A help guide - I wanted to make sure that my code worked and worked well. The code was always commented, but it was more important to me that it worked and maintenance programmers could work on it. The help guide was something I put together for the users, but it was the lowest priority.
Your comment reminds me of something I like to call "Whiny End User Syndrome". You are getting free software - software that you can use as you please, software that comes with the source code so you can study how it works, software that you can redistribute freely, and software you can modify and redistribute the changed version of. This software doesn't spring out of the ether, fully formed, tested, and documented for the end user - that takes time. Certainly I'm not saying that developers should skip writing documentation for the end user out of some malice for end users, but documentation (specifically end-user documentation) takes time away from coding and making your program more capable or bug-free.
In the end, either way, the programmer is screwed. If he spends a lot of time on documentation, there are a lot of users that cry, "Focus on features! We want more features and we don't care that it comes at the expense of the docs!" Then, when you spend a lot of time on features instead of documentation, these same users cry, "This is a great feature, but we need more documentation!" It's twice as bad when the code you've written is put out there because it's a clever hack and you never intend for end users to use it; you've put it out there because you want it to be available to the next poor soul that has to do the same thing you did.
So no, calling every developer that puts end-user documentation off until they're done making something stable a bad developer is painting with a mighty broad brush, and is unjustified.
A cap on download speeds is a cap on bandwidth implicitly. You can't download more than [(seconds in that month) * (kilobyte/second) / 10^6] gigabytes in a month.
A cap on bandwidth is a cap on download speeds implicitly. Assuming you don't want to pay overage, your effective constant download rate is [(cap in gigabytes * 10^6) / (seconds in a month)] kB/s.
So for the month of September (it's round with 30 days): 2592000 seconds in September (30 days * 24 hrs/day * 60 min/hr * 60 sec/min = 2592000)
Assume that we cap at 2 mbps (it's a good round number): 2,000,000 bits/second * (1 byte / 8 bits) = 250000 bytes/sec = 250 KB/sec (standard telco math - 1KB = 1000 B)
That means the max I can download is: 250 KB/sec * 2592000 seconds = 648000000 kilobytes / 10^6 = 648 gigabytes
That, of course, assumes that you can get that consistently at all hours of the day. The problem, of course, is that no ISP network is set up for that (which is why they want download caps), and no ISP is going to guarantee that to its residential customers.
Programming a game can be a labor of love. It can be an artistic expression that doesn't require millions of dollars, prima dona rockstar programmers, glossy ads in gaming magazines (if you can find one these days), and gouging your customers.
We've lost this ethic in computer games. The indies are doing great work, but complaining that you can't charge $60 for their game is lunacy. The primary justification that large game companies and publishers use for charging that much is that they have a large number of people working on their game, they have the cost of packaging and physical media, and they have the overhead of the retail shelf.
Costs which online-distributed indie games do not have. People see this and refuse to pay (what they perceive as) an inflated price. However, if we value the games by the innovation, fun, and experience they provide instead of their actual real cost, I'm sure indie games would come out on top.
This is one of the issues that pisses me off as a former open source programmer who gave up on it because of user whining.
When you're willing to spare the time to help a project write it or pay someone in that project to write it, then you can complain about lack of documentation. A programmer is a busy person - they usually have a full-time job to pay the bills (assuming their full-time job isn't to work on the project, in which case, you are completely justified in castigating them for a lack of documentation) and they work on free software in their free time. Often, they're more concerned with fixing bugs and working on the next addition than they are about if new people are using their software.
What I'm saying is that most programmers write the documentation after they're done coding, and if they're adding new features (often at the request of the same users complaining about lack of documentation), this occasionally falls by the wayside. One of the upsides of free software is that someone else can come along and help with the documentation.
Or the users can whine and the situation will never get better, programmers will walk away, and people still won't read the (better) documentation. Kudos to the walkthrough writer above for doing it right.
I'd just like for it to be known that many people, myself, fucking called this. Remember when Obama caved on telecom immunity? How did anybody think that he would put away the toys that Bush left out in the play room?
My letter to him when he voted for telecom immunity instead of growing a set:
Senator Obama:
Because of the miserable failure that George W Bush has been, I have been placing the candidates for this presidential election under strict scrutiny. Until yesterday, I was proud to tell my friends that I supported Barack Obama for President of the United States. Now, I fear that my interests and your interests are not aligned and I can no longer lend you my support.
Yesterday, while you did vote for the Dodd amendment, you failed to support a filibuster, and you failed to vote against the revised FISA bill that does for the telecom companies who have implemented surveillance against the American people what Gerald Ford did for Nixon.
Being President of the United States means sometimes taking an unpopular stance on an issue despite the outcry of the public. It sometimes means thinking in the long term instead of the short, 24-hour sound-bite news cycle. What you have done today is embolden the elements of the government that tapped Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and handed them a fresh set of excuses to listen to the phone calls and Internet traffic of the American people.
Maybe things work differently in Washington. Maybe the FBI, CIA, NSA, and the president have sworn to Representatives and Senators not to listen to their calls. Maybe the Republicans have sworn to the Democrats not to sabotage them like in the '70s during Watergate. Out in America, away from the halls of power, what protection does the citizen have against those who would gladly violate their expectation of privacy? Might I remind you that the president that suggested this bill also lied to start a war, approved the torture of innocent civilians, and believes himself to be above the law.
What you did today was sell The People down the river for political capital. I hope you are proud of yourself. I am not proud of you. You are no different than any other politician, using the politics of fear to get what you want. The only sort of Hope you offer is False Hope - the worst kind because by the time it is identified as such, it is too late.
A humble citizen,
MasterOfMagic (I put my actual name, but I'm not going to post it here)
Have they fixed their long-standing issues with styled subtitles? Many, many, many anime release groups specifically warn not to use VLC because it has issues with external subtitles, and specifically, SSA/ASS subtitles.
Which is another reason I use mplayer. (mencoder is the first reason)
Slashdot Mirror
Of course spin is necessary. How else are they going to justify their little police angels being treated differently than the regular citizen when there is media coverage?
If a citizen commits a crime on camera, the news media invariably gets a copy of the footage and, at least in America, blares it all over the evening news, and brings in "experts" to comment on what happened in it, and occasionally brings in a lawyer to talk about what possible legal penalties could be faced. Often, the suspect's face isn't blurred (unless they're under 18, and the only reason for that is that it's the law forced on the media), and people very infrequently refer to the suspect as "the suspect" or "the accused".
If a police officer commits a crime on camera and the news media does the above, the police department goes ape shit. "You're putting this officer's life in danger because people now know he's a police officer!" "You shouldn't be convicting him in the court of public opinion!" "Until we've done our internal investigation (a time when the officer is on PAID leave, he gets a vacation for breaking the law), we won't comment but stop showing the footage!" Often, the media blurs out the face of the officer, and very often refers to him as "the accused" or "the suspect".
If media like that is laid out for all to see without commentary, who's going to give the police that special treatment that they so want but don't deserve?
That leaves them with only one other choice - deleting the footage to protect their superstar thugs.
What happens when you upload a video of the police abusing a citizen (assuming you can smuggle your copy out of the situation)? Do they auto-delete or does the spin machine automatically fire up?
Thank you for restoring my faith in humanity. I had assumed that there were more McDonald's in the world than libraries in the US. Around my apartment, there are no fewer than 4 McDonald's within walking distance, but only one branch library.
I had begun to think that maybe Americans liked cheap, disgusting food more than they liked reading.
That's even worse than what I thought you were saying. The only way "other viewpoints" should be taught is if there is a class specifically for those viewpoints?
No, only if those viewpoints aren't germane to the topic at hand. The origin of life isn't taught in science class because we don't know the origin of life. We know the origin of the universe, but we don't know with scientific certainty the origin of life. Therefore, it's not taught in science class, or at least in any science class (grade school, high school, and college) I've ever taken because we don't know. Just because we don't know doesn't mean we should teach the untestable alternative in its place in science class to placate those who believe in the alternative absent evidence.
Nonsense. The Bill Of Rights is not a "community standard". You were talking about "community standards", not the Constitution. That's the context in which I replied.
Okay, I'll admit, the response I posted, now that I read it again, is a bit outlandish and unfair. Let's say that a community judges anything involving the realistic depiction of sexuality to be obscene. Further, let's say that someone publishes a book in which a character's masturbatory scenes are graphically depicted. It's happened before. Guess what? The court sided with the publisher regardless of what the community considered obscene. And then this happened. Even though community standards are taken into account, they are not the only factor in determining if something is obscene and can be banned. That was the point that I was trying to make.
Whatever the parents decide is best for their kids.
What if someone is gay and their parents decide the best "cure" for gay people is to kill them?
Schools shouldn't be forcing viewpoints down people's throats, but they shouldn't interfere when a student is seeking out more information on a viewpoint.
That sounds very much like you are saying that teaching "other viewpoints" is something you require of the schools, unless those viewpoints are something you don't agree with and then nobody should have the right to require schools to teach them.
I'm saying that if a school has a class that explores other viewpoints (such as religion class or a philosophy class), then nothing should be off-limits. Any idea that a student brings to the table that is germane to the topic should be discussed. Elementary and high schools, by and large, do not have these classes.
Schools at the elementary and high school level are intended to teach basic concepts to, not make experts out of the children. Even the lower levels of collegiate study are required to work at this level, in this day of information explosion.
These levels of education teach basic facts, and this is what they should focus on. What I was referring to with "intellectual freedom bills" are the bills being pressed through by a religious minority as a trojan horse to teach intelligent design which is an untestable hypothesis which is not fact and should not be taught in a basic science course. If it's brought up in the context of a religion or philosophy course, then it should be entertained. It is not germane where facts are taught.
To expect that would be to remove the "community" from the "community standards". It is perfectly reasonable, and perfectly acceptable, for a community to decide they they will not "follow the crowd" and to maintain what they feel are acceptable standards for them and their children.
By that standard, the community standard of nullifying the bill of rights in a town is okay if everyone in the town agrees with it. If someone from out of town passes through and is treated according to those community standards, the court system will side with the passer-through and kick the community standards to the curb. What I'm trying to say (and said very clumsily above, I might add) is that community standards are only one part of determining whether something is obscene. Prevailing attitudes in society as a whole are another.
Then teach your own worldview on your own time. The taxpayers pay school tax to provide an environment for learning that is open for exploration for everyone, not just the kids of a certain worldview. They shouldn't be required to stunt the intellectual growth of other kids just to serve your viewpoint.
Education is represented by a flame to represent enlightenment. An ideally enlightened person entertains notions contrary to the ones they hold because they understand that they can be wrong. This doesn't mean that they blindly accept new ideas, but it does mean that when their notions are challenged that they don't try to close off avenues of inquiry that make them uncomfortable to others in the hope that they can ward off challenges to their own worldview.
When did the school board (the representatives of the people) vote on the list of websites to be blocked?
They didn't. That's my point. That the filters now are claimed to represent community standards even though the community didn't have a say through their elected officials about it. Therefore, arguing that they are representative of community standards is bullshit.
It's not a reversal of position. It's a central thesis of my position.
Local community standards aren't the sole factor to be considered when these lists are approved either. The standards of society as a whole are a factor that must be balanced as well. For example, if the local community feels that miscegenation is deviant, that's fine and dandy, but trying to ban something as obscene even given that local standard would likely be seen as overly restrictive because society as a whole doesn't share that value.
Both of those options can be prohibitively costly.
Schools are representative of the district they serve, and as such, generally reflect the values held by that district, for better or for worse. If you send your kids to public school, then they will be taught in accordance to those local values. That is the way that public school works and has worked in the past.
It's the same with some of the people at the teabagging rallies. They are arguing "no taxation without representation" but are completely missing the point. Their viewpoints were represented at the polling place, but their candidate lost because the majority of the people in their district disagreed with them. They had and still have representation, but because it's not the obedient, bow-before-me type, they threaten to destroy the very system that (some would argue) enriched them at the expense of others for the last 8 years.
Representation doesn't always mean getting your way, and freedom of speech imparts no obligation on others to listen. Thomas Jefferson understood this. Why can't everyone else?
Of course no one actually follows this, but only says it to allow the viewing of some viewpoints with which others disagree, but not others. They should be allowed to read about advocacy for homosexual lifestyles, but should they be allowed to read about advocacy for white nationalism or holocaust denial?
Yes, they should be able to read about white nationalism because it's an idea. In my opinion, a racist, backwards, ignorant idea, but an idea none the less. They should be able to read about Holocaust denial as well for the same reasons.
Now, as to whether schools should "teach the controversy", that's a different matter. Schools should teach facts about science and history in science and history class. If schools offer courses to foster discussion about viewpoints (and in my opinion, they should), then all viewpoints brought by students should be heard in that case. In no way should schools endeavor to stop students from reading about viewpoints not presented in class, but that doesn't mean they have to teach discredited ideas in class.
People that disagree with you are not necessarily nut jobs, and to call them that only makes you look like an ignorant and intolerant person.
For example, I don't consider Bill O'Reilly (whom I disagree with in a lot of things) a nut job. I think his rage is misguided and I think some of his positions are ignorant, poorly thought out, sexist, racist, and backward, but I don't think he is a nut job. I think that he thinks that he's doing what is best for America. That doesn't mean he's not misguided and (factually) wrong in some cases.
I disagree with the ACLU signing on to some cases because I know they're going to take a PR hit, but I have no doubt that their primary concern is civil rights for everybody - innocent and guilty - no matter their religious position, race, county of origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, or age.
In dire situations, they may be the only willing defender of your civil rights.
Google is your friend.
And now to de-crapify your comment:
Well, yes and no. I think what gets lost in this discussion is the age level of the kids using the internet. There are things I'd let my kids view at 16 years old, that I wouldn't want them to view at 8 or 12 years old.
That's one of the flaws of the current filtering system - it's indiscriminate. It filters all results for all age groups that way, and it's so expensive that a district can't afford to deploy a separate system for each school and age group. I'm not arguing that the age of the students shouldn't be a factor - it clearly should, and younger children should have more supervision on the Internet regardless of if they're at school.
It's interesting how somebody that implies that perhaps there are certain elements of society that want to separate children from kids to indoctrinate them with values the parents find offensive is arguing for more restrictions on their ability to access the internet. To me, it looks like an argument that the only way to save us from a nanny state is to implement a nanny state.
I would rather see an age-limiting system (say like the movies - G, PC, etc.), and let the parents sign off on their kids being able to see or not see items in a given ratings category.
The problem is "Who makes that determination?" Do the parents? Then you're going to have a blocklist for every student. Community standards? Then what happens in a backwards community? Are those children less deserving of a well rounded education? Do the censorware companies? What if they get it wrong? What if a site that's G gets hacked and replaced with hardcore porn? Who is responsible in that case?
But at the same time, their ability to reason and made judgments on any given issue is limited by their age.
As a child, my ability to reason grew the most when I was exposed to things that weren't things I thought I could handle. Watching a family member die at a young age helped me grow when it came to life and death. Seeing a friend destroy himself, literally overdose on heroine, in front of me showed me more graphically than any textbook why I didn't want to do drugs (and why drug prohibition is a miserable failure). I'm not saying that we should be allowing 5th graders access to hardcore pornography, but challenging ideas and situations are important because they generally stimulate intellectual and personal growth.
People love to demonize parents for not getting involved in the lives of the children but when those children are outside of their control for eight hours a day what are they to do?
Let the children learn that there are other viewpoints out there. That's what school is supposed to be for.
I figure most of this comes down from haters who look for any chance to embarrass or otherwise annoy religious oriented Americans who send their kids to public school.
When they stop trying to embarrass or otherwise annoy me by trying to ram through "academic freedom" bills that force teachers to teach a fairytale as science and act as a wedge to break down the church/state separation, then they'll earn my sympathy and respect. When they stop putting their fingers in their ears and shouting out that "abstinence is the only way, sex is sinful and dirty, and condoms will give you AIDS", then I'll be concerned about what they think. When they stop telling people that the genitals of the person they like are more important than the love that they have for them, then I'll entertain their cries of oppression.
Let them be more involved, but realize freedoms you claim the students don't have should not be granted by the system over the wishes of their parents.
If they feel that their children are being exposed to viewpoints that they don't agree with, let them home school their kids or send them to a private school.
While I agree that there should be local control of schools, the reason this lawsuit was filed was to challenge what the locality thinks should be acceptable and if those standards are reasonable. Community standards, the basis of most obscenity claims, were never meant to be static and unchanging - they were meant to be influenced by society as a whole. What works for one community may not work for another, but reasonable community standards are important.
I'm sure that you'll find some towns in the south that feel showing a black man and a white woman kissing is obscene. Luckily, society as a whole as advanced passed that racist and backward world view, and any obscenity trial involving that community will take that into account.
Yes, everyone who wants a gets a copy in my scenario. It's basically what we have now: an album is released and someone rips it and shares it on BitTorrent. Someone else downloads it and burns it for free. People that don't pay for a copy of the music get it right now. That's a fact. What the commercial outlets do right now with respects to this can only charitably be described as "schizophrenic".
On one hand, they try to shut down all of those sites. They whack a few of the bigger ones and a thousand more show up. They are basically playing a masturbatory game of whack-a-mole against their fans, never realizing that the more they try, the harder people will push back. People who want music for free can get it and will get it, no matter how many online music stores are put up and no matter how cheap you make music.
On the other hand, they aren't exactly trying their hardest to win over people. Suing individuals, subjecting them to legal harassment, and trying to get the legislature to violate our rights so they can find out who downloaded the tracks of the week without paying them are just some of the things they do. They had to be dragged, kicking and screaming into selling music online, and they've made their biggest blunder by forcing the stores to implement tiered pricing right when many people were getting used to a buck a song.
My scenarios take into account something that the RIAA and the MPAA don't: reality. The reality is that people, given the technology and the ability, are going to spread free copies of your work around. They're just going to do that, and in many cases (for example, smaller indie bands that aren't going to see a profit off an album) it's a good thing as it spreads the product further. People buy merchandise which can't be instantly and freely reproduced through the Internet. There's more interest in the next album. ticket sales for live shows go up. It also saves society and the RIAA/MPAA money - when products are produced this way, the RIAA/MPAA won't have to have masses and masses of lawyers on retainer and won't have to have companies like MediaDefender on the payroll to police their fans. Law enforcement will be able to focus on actual crimes with actual victims.
The escrow process is also effectively market research - you set a budget for an album and post the escrow numbers. People, if they're interested, contribute. After you've hit the escrow number, you make the album with the money you took in and post the results for everyone to have. If you don't hit the escrow number, you know that there aren't people interested in your album, and you've saved yourself and your artists time producing an album that there's no interest for. Or you adjust your budget and scale back the number of people working on that project.
Sure, you're going to have some freeloaders, however, by following the escrow model, you've already broken even - there's nothing saying that people can't continue contributing to the escrow account after you've passed the escrow amount - then you have profit. You can even offer limited runs of physical CDs to make profit if there's demand for it, not to mention the merchandise and concert ticket sales.
The difference between the marketer's vision and my vision is that mine has reality at 12 o'clock, not at 6.
You are right: physical goods (cars) are not the same as non-physical goods (music). However, let's take your example to an extreme.
Non-physical goods have a marginal cost of zero after the first copy is sold. Therefore, in a world where lossless, free, unlimited copying takes place, in order to be guaranteed to at least recoup the cost of production, you must charge your entire cost of production for the first unit that you sell because after the first unit, there's a chance that no money is going to be flowing in - everyone can get a copy from someone else.
One solution to this is an escrowed release. People who want to donate whatever amount they feel like donating to an account, and when the balance in that account goes over a certain known amount, the work gets released for free to anybody. To be really slick, allow users to revoke their donation for free (minus perhaps a small, reasonable service charge that only covers the cost of the bank transfer in and out and only goes to the bank - that the seller makes no money off of). This allows people to pay what they want for an album or movie, ensures that you will break even, and leaves open the possibility for someone who likes the work to give you money even after the escrow period is over, allowing you to turn a profit. It also allows you to sell merchandise and tour in the remaining time.
Another solution to this is to do a hybrid escrowed release where you set the price equal to somewhere below the break-even point based on expected revenue from merchandising and concerts. This lowers the cost of the work to everyone, and your touring in support of the album can drum up interest and get people donating quickly.
Another solution is direct, mass patronage for artists with the stipulation that the works so produced belong to society and not to the patrons. This is much like the escrow model, but instead of paying for a single work, you're supporting many works.
Another solution is to eschew monetary rewards for non-physical work. The problem with this is that there's already money on the table and people that want to keep it flowing into their pockets, so this is not likely to work on an industry-wide basis. Those of us who write code like getting paid for the work we put in, no matter how non-physical.
But comparing the duplication of scare resources to the duplication of non-physical goods is disingenuous at best.
I was wondering when someone would do a Growl-like piece of software for *NIX without all of the nice themes and without per-application settings.
Chalk up another one for free software innovation.
I'm talking about the manual pages, not the comments in the code. If a programmer waits to document the code that they are writing, then you are correct, they are bad programmers.
However, waiting to write a manpage, tutorial, or quickstart is something that can be done after the program works properly. Otherwise you've got a manpage, tutorial, or quickstart that will have to be constantly updated as you make changes to the program.
I've written Perl scripts that were well commented and became the backbone a small, end-user system. What was the last part of the deliverable that I worked on? A help guide - I wanted to make sure that my code worked and worked well. The code was always commented, but it was more important to me that it worked and maintenance programmers could work on it. The help guide was something I put together for the users, but it was the lowest priority.
Your comment reminds me of something I like to call "Whiny End User Syndrome". You are getting free software - software that you can use as you please, software that comes with the source code so you can study how it works, software that you can redistribute freely, and software you can modify and redistribute the changed version of. This software doesn't spring out of the ether, fully formed, tested, and documented for the end user - that takes time. Certainly I'm not saying that developers should skip writing documentation for the end user out of some malice for end users, but documentation (specifically end-user documentation) takes time away from coding and making your program more capable or bug-free.
In the end, either way, the programmer is screwed. If he spends a lot of time on documentation, there are a lot of users that cry, "Focus on features! We want more features and we don't care that it comes at the expense of the docs!" Then, when you spend a lot of time on features instead of documentation, these same users cry, "This is a great feature, but we need more documentation!" It's twice as bad when the code you've written is put out there because it's a clever hack and you never intend for end users to use it; you've put it out there because you want it to be available to the next poor soul that has to do the same thing you did.
So no, calling every developer that puts end-user documentation off until they're done making something stable a bad developer is painting with a mighty broad brush, and is unjustified.
I know it's lame to reply to myself, but take a look at it from the other way: 100 GB cap in September:
(100 GB / 1 month) * (10^6 KB/ 1 GB) * (1 month / 2592000 seconds) = 38.6 KB/s * (8 bits / 1 byte) = 309 kbps.
So Time Warner wants you to pay the same for your large pipe as for a 300 kbps pipe, around six times faster than a 56K modem.
A cap on download speeds is a cap on bandwidth implicitly. You can't download more than [(seconds in that month) * (kilobyte/second) / 10^6] gigabytes in a month.
A cap on bandwidth is a cap on download speeds implicitly. Assuming you don't want to pay overage, your effective constant download rate is [(cap in gigabytes * 10^6) / (seconds in a month)] kB/s.
So for the month of September (it's round with 30 days):
2592000 seconds in September (30 days * 24 hrs/day * 60 min/hr * 60 sec/min = 2592000)
Assume that we cap at 2 mbps (it's a good round number):
2,000,000 bits/second * (1 byte / 8 bits) = 250000 bytes/sec = 250 KB/sec (standard telco math - 1KB = 1000 B)
That means the max I can download is:
250 KB/sec * 2592000 seconds = 648000000 kilobytes / 10^6 = 648 gigabytes
That, of course, assumes that you can get that consistently at all hours of the day. The problem, of course, is that no ISP network is set up for that (which is why they want download caps), and no ISP is going to guarantee that to its residential customers.
What do you need to fund a game? Food stamps and enough scratch to pay the electricity bill.
Programming a game can be a labor of love. It can be an artistic expression that doesn't require millions of dollars, prima dona rockstar programmers, glossy ads in gaming magazines (if you can find one these days), and gouging your customers.
We've lost this ethic in computer games. The indies are doing great work, but complaining that you can't charge $60 for their game is lunacy. The primary justification that large game companies and publishers use for charging that much is that they have a large number of people working on their game, they have the cost of packaging and physical media, and they have the overhead of the retail shelf.
Costs which online-distributed indie games do not have. People see this and refuse to pay (what they perceive as) an inflated price. However, if we value the games by the innovation, fun, and experience they provide instead of their actual real cost, I'm sure indie games would come out on top.
This is one of the issues that pisses me off as a former open source programmer who gave up on it because of user whining.
When you're willing to spare the time to help a project write it or pay someone in that project to write it, then you can complain about lack of documentation. A programmer is a busy person - they usually have a full-time job to pay the bills (assuming their full-time job isn't to work on the project, in which case, you are completely justified in castigating them for a lack of documentation) and they work on free software in their free time. Often, they're more concerned with fixing bugs and working on the next addition than they are about if new people are using their software.
What I'm saying is that most programmers write the documentation after they're done coding, and if they're adding new features (often at the request of the same users complaining about lack of documentation), this occasionally falls by the wayside. One of the upsides of free software is that someone else can come along and help with the documentation.
Or the users can whine and the situation will never get better, programmers will walk away, and people still won't read the (better) documentation. Kudos to the walkthrough writer above for doing it right.
I'd just like for it to be known that many people, myself, fucking called this. Remember when Obama caved on telecom immunity? How did anybody think that he would put away the toys that Bush left out in the play room?
My letter to him when he voted for telecom immunity instead of growing a set:
THIS IS FEDORAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!
Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted! Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
Oh yeah, well tonight, I in fact plan on dining in Hell.
Have they fixed their long-standing issues with styled subtitles? Many, many, many anime release groups specifically warn not to use VLC because it has issues with external subtitles, and specifically, SSA/ASS subtitles.
Which is another reason I use mplayer. (mencoder is the first reason)