No, but there is a such thing as too much User Friendly. How many hours have I wasted reading cartoons that 1% of the population would even understand, much less think amusing....
"That's right, your Honor, according to the data we have researched, the biggest collection of illegal mp3's on the internet belongs to this character named "CowboyNeal." We'd like to formally request a warrant to search his hard drive."
If you could all agree not to break the law you'd be better off. Of course such an agreement depends on the record companies being trustworthy...
That's not true at all; it depends on the law actually being enforced. It is nice when people agree not to break the law, but if they won't agree to, they are forced to; either way the law works. In theory anyway:)
Great post... I agree mostly but I wonder though if the constitutional conflict in such a case is provable - there is no need to guess at a President's intent when he makes it so clear in a statement like the WP quote. He isn't just choosing to ignore the Constitution, he is in fact stating openly and unmistakably that he intends to violate its spirit and letter. Unfortunately, the separation of church and state - far more serious a matter than "trampling the rights of atheists" - is not valued highly by most of Congress, so you're right that we're not likely to see any Constitutional remedy here. But there is a remedy - the fury of the voters, who could, at least in theory, elect leaders who do care about that part of the First Amendment. Unfortunately that fury has only been cultivated by the wrong side of this debate, so we're not likely to see that remedy either.
Still my fave, and they stopped making them years ago. Apple's keyboards have gone downhill ever since. I have two Apple Extended Keyboards and I will keep using them until the keys don't work anymore. They're huge, heavy (but not too heavy), and the keys have the perfect balance between "soft" and "clunk" when you pound on them. I even spilled tequila on one of them and didn't fry it (don't try this at home though; I'm sure I got lucky.... heh, friends don't let friends code drunk). My heart sunk when I bought a 7100/66 back in the day and, expecting another extended keyboard, I opened the box to find a smaller, mushier keyboard (I forget its name, but I threw it away it sucked so bad).
Anyway here's a pic if you like to drool over pics of keyboards (the page itself is not so informative unless you speak Japanese). You can probably still buy these things used on ebay... if you use a Mac and have an ADB input (I don't think they have them on the newest ones but I'm not sure) that you don't mind using your keyboard in, pick one up!! This keyboard rules over all others.... I'm so obsessed with this keyboard that I'm considering getting a USB to ADB adapter so I can plug it into my tibook.
You obviously haven't visited afganastan in the past 2 years. Kicking the talaban out was most definatly the right thing to do. As a group I'd put them up there with the brown coats.
You obviously haven't visited Afghanistan ever, nor read a book about war in some time. It's the Taliban, and we didn't really kick them out; most of them simply switched sides. And it's the brown shirts, and while both the brown shirts and the Taliban are bad news, they are nothing like one another. The military force we backed in Afghanistan is known for the same abuses as the Taliban; in fact the guy who first came up with te idea of throwing acid in women's faces who weren't wearing burqas was a Northern Alliance hero.
At least on the Palm; I've tried it on the other 3 platforms and didn't like any of those versions. But it's great to be standing in an elevator or sitting at a meeting and clicking your PDA madly looking like you're working, when really you're buying heroin in Brooklyn and selling it in the Bronx!
Actually, there aren't thousands of men like bin Laden (fortunately). When I say 'like bin Laden', I mean millionares, with the motivation, brilliance, determination, and the lack of morals it takes to mastermind horrendous acts of terrorism.
Perhaps not thousands but certainly more than a handful. And if you take the word "millionaires" out of the above sentence there are probably more than a few thousand who fit the description. Motivation, brilliance, and determination are not uncommon characteristics of people in the Islamic world, and, sadly, the same is true of an intense fear and hatred of America. The final characteristic, "lack of morals," is of course a Western judgement. Thankfully, most Muslims probably still don't share the moral code that condones attacks on civilians, but far too many of them do, and every American bombing run and IDF incursion likely creates more who share such a code. It doesn't help when the US military admits that they keep accidentally destroying civilians but that they don't care, as they did today when they admitted to bombing a wedding party.
Don't get me wrong, I think bin Laden's moral code is several steps closer to lunacy than any of the Palestinian suicide bombers, for example, or than anything we might be creating by bombing weddings in Afghanistan. But the point is there are probably more than enough true loonies around who will be ready to lead the rest of the incensed Islamic world to more horrific martyrdoms long after bin Laden is destroyed. The only real long term solution is to destroy the support base for such loonies, by actually addressing that festering anger against America. If America simply were to strive to live up to some of its own rhetoric regarding democracy, freedom, human rights, that simple step would make a huge difference.
When I read posts like the parent comment, I sometimes wish for additional nuclear proliferation. If the more of the third world got the bomb, perhaps they would all the sudden be our close personal friends like Pakistan is all of the sudden. Those nukes have sent more US aid to Pakistan than all the charity commercials on television.
Interesting perspective. You might find this article interesting; it goes into both the reasons Islamic nations should want to build nuclear weapons (international prestige) and argues the notion of such nations using nuclear weapons irrationally ignores the realpolitik motivations of most state leaders.
Just curious, are you going to censor the Harry Potter series from your daughter?
If you have to ask that question, then you have absolutely no idea what the discussion is about.
Frankly, as far as "occult" goes, Harry Potter is as much a threat to your daughter as Marilyn Manson (and in fact Mr. Manson remains far more Christian, if that is an issue). The "occult," and the reasons we accept censorship of ideas that fall in that category, is precisely what this discussion is about. You're the one who's been bringing up irrelevancies such as what happens if your daughter is bombarded by animal sex on the internet.
Also, just an aside: I'm no angel on the internet, but I have never come across animal sex, unless you count the goeatse guy. I think unless your daughter is specifically seeking out animal sex sites, she's unlikely to be constantly bombarded by them.
I have a feeling you would be the kind of parent watching your kid start to hang around with the druggie crowd, and then saying to yourself, "well, [wring hands] he has a right to pick his friends [wring hands] I shouldn't interfere, it'll just drive him to do it more [wring hands] I better just stand back and let him 'find himself'".
You have no idea what kind of parent I would be. Neither do I for that matter, but, of the two of us, there is only one qualified to comment on that. Were I a parent I would probably find the above insulting.
I suggest you read over the discussion; we're talking about censoring "occult" material from teenagers, not protecting your 8-year old from drugs or goatse.cx.
If my child is going down some unhealthy freaky path, then I need to know about it.
How, by examining the logs of what sites she tried to go to that were blocked? jeez.
The First Amendment is irrelevent to someone under legal adult age.
You're wrong even in strict legal terms, but that's not the point. Of course parents have the right to censor their child's reading habits (though only a moron believes that they'll be truly effective). But in a free society I would think we'd err on the side of more speech rather than little, even for kids.
For whatever reason, too many people think that every child should be deluged with as much as much raw Internet sewage as possible at as early an age as possible.... I don't think it's particularly healthy for little girls to see constant images of animal sex porn.
Nor do I. But we're not talking about obscenity here (which is already illegal in the form you're talking about); we're talking about "occult" ideas. If your child wants to study Rosicrucianism, or the Gnostics, or the Kabbalah, or the ancient Greek magicians, you'd rather censor and stigmatize the subject matter?
Just curious, are you going to censor the Harry Potter series from your daughter?
Simple, because the "occult" is not a religion, it's an obsession that many teenagers go through
Have you ever tried to talk to teenagers interested in the "occult"? Sure, there are some obsessive losers in the bunch, but many of them are both intelligent and articulate. And the last thing I would want to do is restrict their access to information about the ideas they care most about, even at the risk that a few of them will read something that will make them want to sleep in coffins and slash their wrists. It shocks my conscience that any American parent would think otherwise.
Studying religion is one thing, wearing black and pretending your some sort of "dark lord" is whole 'nother thing
Perhaps, but either is well within the domain of the First Amendment. While as a parent I would be concerned if I had a child doing such things, I would think the appropriate response in a society that values diversity of ideas would be to actually talk to your children rather than prevent them from downloading freakin' Marilyn Manson photos. And focus on conduct, not ideas. If your kid is sacrificing goats in the name of Cthulu, the solution should be a firm discussion about what you find unsavory about such behavior rather than trying to prevent it by making sure your child can't find any information about Cthulu anywhere....
Why is it that "occult" is considered a category that merits censorship? Would people not be outraged if they had a category like "Episcopelean" or "Jewish" and censored stuff in that category? "Occult" is even less specific; why is it considered legitimate, in a nation that values free speech and liberty of thought (not to mention free choice of religion), to suppress ideas based on a label like "occult"? To my reading "occult" is a category of knowledge that encompasses a variety of mystical traditions, ancient and modern. Why do people feel we must protect children from the "occult," and why do we not frown upon people who feel that way the way we would frown upon those who felt we must protect our children from Jews, for example?
If I was a parent I'd be thanking Zeus that they blocked that freak's site.
Marilyn is no more extreme than Alice Cooper or Lou Reed or freakin' David Bowie. Sure, he looks pretty crazy, but no crazier than the dude that works in the local video store (and he's spent a lot more on his wardrobe). I'm no fan of his music, but reading interviews with him he is hardly "freakish" or "extreme"; he votes Republican; his views are not that far out of the mainstream, and after his music was blamed for Columbine he wrote one of the most intelligent responses to the tragedy that I came across in the media that spring (including on slashdot; my apologies JonKatz). The only reason he's so controversial is that he's intentionally giving the finger to the religious right, which is most likely his family background. So he takes a lot of his symbolism from Christianity and performs in a manner that is provocative and mocking. Of course it pisses those people off, it's meant to, but it's hardly a threat to your children unless you want to keep them closed-minded. (It's definitely not a threat to your children if you believe in Zeus, as the parent post implies!)
You got to admire how clever he is too (though admittedly he's picking on an easy target); in response to many of the criticisms of his treatment of Christianity he promised in this interview to "balance my songs with a wholesome Bible reading" so fans can "examine the virtues of wonderful 'Christian' stories of disease, murder, adultery, suicide, and child sacrifice. Now that seems like 'entertainment' to me."
The obvious choice for Gamespy should have been the Sircam virus. You're playing Unreal II and all of a sudden this girl shows up.... just before she blows you away she says:
It's more convenient than you think. How did the hiker get stranded in the first place? My theory is that the phone company had a hand in getting him lost in the first place. Who benefits? Suddenly here is a heartwarming story that makes the phone solicitors look like benign life-saving angels rather than annoying pricks paid to disrupt our most precious moments of peace....
Committing a crime is a crime. Abbetting one is also a crime. Prosecuting someone for a crime is not extortion.
True, if you're a cop. If you're a business, and you're not prosecuting, but intimidating a company into giving you money, what else can an honest man call it?
So the RIAA is intimidating companies into restricting mp3 traffic on their own networks and, at least in one case, paying them a handsome settlement. True, most companies have perfectly legitimate reasons for doing so (waste of time, bandwidth, etc.), and I wouldn't argue that they shouldn't restrict such traffic, but I don't like the RIAA sticking its nose into private businesses with legal threats. How long before they escalate to BSA-style tactics? Will they demand internal network audits or bandwidth usage reports from companies suspected of trading music? Will they ultimately demand the right to search hard drives for illegal copies of their precious new Eminem/Moby duet? Will they have offices raided in search of illegal data? And, finally, will they simply present suspected companies with a bill for each suspected download?
Sigh. Why doesn't the RIAA just admit that they have found a new business model in the post-mp3 world: it's called extortion.
Slashdot Mirror
No, but there is a such thing as too much User Friendly. How many hours have I wasted reading cartoons that 1% of the population would even understand, much less think amusing....
"That's right, your Honor, according to the data we have researched, the biggest collection of illegal mp3's on the internet belongs to this character named "CowboyNeal." We'd like to formally request a warrant to search his hard drive."
That's not true at all; it depends on the law actually being enforced. It is nice when people agree not to break the law, but if they won't agree to, they are forced to; either way the law works. In theory anyway :)
Great post... I agree mostly but I wonder though if the constitutional conflict in such a case is provable - there is no need to guess at a President's intent when he makes it so clear in a statement like the WP quote. He isn't just choosing to ignore the Constitution, he is in fact stating openly and unmistakably that he intends to violate its spirit and letter. Unfortunately, the separation of church and state - far more serious a matter than "trampling the rights of atheists" - is not valued highly by most of Congress, so you're right that we're not likely to see any Constitutional remedy here. But there is a remedy - the fury of the voters, who could, at least in theory, elect leaders who do care about that part of the First Amendment. Unfortunately that fury has only been cultivated by the wrong side of this debate, so we're not likely to see that remedy either.
This was meant to be a reply to the main thread; not the c-64 thread. I guess friends shouldn't let friends browse slashdot drunk either.
Anyway here's a pic if you like to drool over pics of keyboards (the page itself is not so informative unless you speak Japanese). You can probably still buy these things used on ebay... if you use a Mac and have an ADB input (I don't think they have them on the newest ones but I'm not sure) that you don't mind using your keyboard in, pick one up!! This keyboard rules over all others.... I'm so obsessed with this keyboard that I'm considering getting a USB to ADB adapter so I can plug it into my tibook.
Keyboards do matter.
You obviously haven't visited Afghanistan ever, nor read a book about war in some time. It's the Taliban, and we didn't really kick them out; most of them simply switched sides. And it's the brown shirts, and while both the brown shirts and the Taliban are bad news, they are nothing like one another. The military force we backed in Afghanistan is known for the same abuses as the Taliban; in fact the guy who first came up with te idea of throwing acid in women's faces who weren't wearing burqas was a Northern Alliance hero.
BTW - my current high score is 164,737,425 :)
Perhaps not thousands but certainly more than a handful. And if you take the word "millionaires" out of the above sentence there are probably more than a few thousand who fit the description. Motivation, brilliance, and determination are not uncommon characteristics of people in the Islamic world, and, sadly, the same is true of an intense fear and hatred of America. The final characteristic, "lack of morals," is of course a Western judgement. Thankfully, most Muslims probably still don't share the moral code that condones attacks on civilians, but far too many of them do, and every American bombing run and IDF incursion likely creates more who share such a code. It doesn't help when the US military admits that they keep accidentally destroying civilians but that they don't care, as they did today when they admitted to bombing a wedding party.
Don't get me wrong, I think bin Laden's moral code is several steps closer to lunacy than any of the Palestinian suicide bombers, for example, or than anything we might be creating by bombing weddings in Afghanistan. But the point is there are probably more than enough true loonies around who will be ready to lead the rest of the incensed Islamic world to more horrific martyrdoms long after bin Laden is destroyed. The only real long term solution is to destroy the support base for such loonies, by actually addressing that festering anger against America. If America simply were to strive to live up to some of its own rhetoric regarding democracy, freedom, human rights, that simple step would make a huge difference.
Interesting perspective. You might find this article interesting; it goes into both the reasons Islamic nations should want to build nuclear weapons (international prestige) and argues the notion of such nations using nuclear weapons irrationally ignores the realpolitik motivations of most state leaders.
Frankly, as far as "occult" goes, Harry Potter is as much a threat to your daughter as Marilyn Manson (and in fact Mr. Manson remains far more Christian, if that is an issue). The "occult," and the reasons we accept censorship of ideas that fall in that category, is precisely what this discussion is about. You're the one who's been bringing up irrelevancies such as what happens if your daughter is bombarded by animal sex on the internet.
Also, just an aside: I'm no angel on the internet, but I have never come across animal sex, unless you count the goeatse guy. I think unless your daughter is specifically seeking out animal sex sites, she's unlikely to be constantly bombarded by them.
I have a feeling you would be the kind of parent watching your kid start to hang around with the druggie crowd, and then saying to yourself, "well, [wring hands] he has a right to pick his friends [wring hands] I shouldn't interfere, it'll just drive him to do it more [wring hands] I better just stand back and let him 'find himself'".
You have no idea what kind of parent I would be. Neither do I for that matter, but, of the two of us, there is only one qualified to comment on that. Were I a parent I would probably find the above insulting.
I suggest you read over the discussion; we're talking about censoring "occult" material from teenagers, not protecting your 8-year old from drugs or goatse.cx.
How, by examining the logs of what sites she tried to go to that were blocked? jeez.
The First Amendment is irrelevent to someone under legal adult age.
You're wrong even in strict legal terms, but that's not the point. Of course parents have the right to censor their child's reading habits (though only a moron believes that they'll be truly effective). But in a free society I would think we'd err on the side of more speech rather than little, even for kids.
For whatever reason, too many people think that every child should be deluged with as much as much raw Internet sewage as possible at as early an age as possible.... I don't think it's particularly healthy for little girls to see constant images of animal sex porn.
Nor do I. But we're not talking about obscenity here (which is already illegal in the form you're talking about); we're talking about "occult" ideas. If your child wants to study Rosicrucianism, or the Gnostics, or the Kabbalah, or the ancient Greek magicians, you'd rather censor and stigmatize the subject matter?
Just curious, are you going to censor the Harry Potter series from your daughter?
Have you ever tried to talk to teenagers interested in the "occult"? Sure, there are some obsessive losers in the bunch, but many of them are both intelligent and articulate. And the last thing I would want to do is restrict their access to information about the ideas they care most about, even at the risk that a few of them will read something that will make them want to sleep in coffins and slash their wrists. It shocks my conscience that any American parent would think otherwise.
Studying religion is one thing, wearing black and pretending your some sort of "dark lord" is whole 'nother thing
Perhaps, but either is well within the domain of the First Amendment. While as a parent I would be concerned if I had a child doing such things, I would think the appropriate response in a society that values diversity of ideas would be to actually talk to your children rather than prevent them from downloading freakin' Marilyn Manson photos. And focus on conduct, not ideas. If your kid is sacrificing goats in the name of Cthulu, the solution should be a firm discussion about what you find unsavory about such behavior rather than trying to prevent it by making sure your child can't find any information about Cthulu anywhere....
So I can kill some peasant by pushing a button.
You must be new around here.
Why is it that "occult" is considered a category that merits censorship? Would people not be outraged if they had a category like "Episcopelean" or "Jewish" and censored stuff in that category? "Occult" is even less specific; why is it considered legitimate, in a nation that values free speech and liberty of thought (not to mention free choice of religion), to suppress ideas based on a label like "occult"? To my reading "occult" is a category of knowledge that encompasses a variety of mystical traditions, ancient and modern. Why do people feel we must protect children from the "occult," and why do we not frown upon people who feel that way the way we would frown upon those who felt we must protect our children from Jews, for example?
If I was a parent I'd be thanking Zeus that they blocked that freak's site.
Marilyn is no more extreme than Alice Cooper or Lou Reed or freakin' David Bowie. Sure, he looks pretty crazy, but no crazier than the dude that works in the local video store (and he's spent a lot more on his wardrobe). I'm no fan of his music, but reading interviews with him he is hardly "freakish" or "extreme"; he votes Republican; his views are not that far out of the mainstream, and after his music was blamed for Columbine he wrote one of the most intelligent responses to the tragedy that I came across in the media that spring (including on slashdot; my apologies JonKatz). The only reason he's so controversial is that he's intentionally giving the finger to the religious right, which is most likely his family background. So he takes a lot of his symbolism from Christianity and performs in a manner that is provocative and mocking. Of course it pisses those people off, it's meant to, but it's hardly a threat to your children unless you want to keep them closed-minded. (It's definitely not a threat to your children if you believe in Zeus, as the parent post implies!)
You got to admire how clever he is too (though admittedly he's picking on an easy target); in response to many of the criticisms of his treatment of Christianity he promised in this interview to "balance my songs with a wholesome Bible reading" so fans can "examine the virtues of wonderful 'Christian' stories of disease, murder, adultery, suicide, and child sacrifice. Now that seems like 'entertainment' to me."
That explains it! Every time I try to download a Metallica song, I instead get an endless loop of Celine Dion singing "Hava Nagila."
It's more convenient than you think. How did the hiker get stranded in the first place? My theory is that the phone company had a hand in getting him lost in the first place. Who benefits? Suddenly here is a heartwarming story that makes the phone solicitors look like benign life-saving angels rather than annoying pricks paid to disrupt our most precious moments of peace....
True, but if I'm going to freeze to death, I'd much rather do it drunk.
That would be Black Lab Linux.
True, if you're a cop. If you're a business, and you're not prosecuting, but intimidating a company into giving you money, what else can an honest man call it?
Fucking Idiot.
Nice sig.
Sigh. Why doesn't the RIAA just admit that they have found a new business model in the post-mp3 world: it's called extortion.