I accept that I am a male between the ages of 20 and 30. I also accept that I have neither begat nor raised children. That said I disagree with your entire angle here.
Childraising should not (in my inexperienced opinion) be about policing your child. If you teach them right from wrong when they are young, they will most likely figure out the right thing to do in most situations. You don't have to watch their every move. Sure, they'll go off the rails here and there, but they will more than likely straighten out with a little help.
If you look on childraising as a "police" situation, they will view themselves as criminals. The best way to raise a problem child is to punish him/her for every grievance without explaining why what they did was wrong. It teaches them to push you until you snap. Soon they realise they can keep pushing a long time.
Admittedly, censorship laws could aid the parent, but so could laws against private cars. You teach your child how to cross roads. If you teach him/her that it is wrong to look up porn, they probably won't much until they are at least 13, at which point no force in the world could prevent them.
Every problem child I have ever met I could trace back to shabby parenting. I know, it's my experience, it isn't particularly valid, but I have met dedicated drug-users who were otherwise model citizens with a strong work ethic, morals and a sense of purpose. And I have met people who didn't drink and were the most arrogant, self-obsessed cases of arrested developement I have ever known. Guess which ones were the children of divorced marriages.
Parents bear in my opinion, responsibilty for the person they raised. Complaining that it's not as easy as all that is ridiculous. Didn't you know it was going to be hard?
I made a comment further doen the list onm this subject (Australia and Censorship)
A summary of Australian censorship powers is as follows:
The Government has the power to censor anything, if they see fit. It's in our laws.
Freedom of the press is NOT assured in Australian law at all.
The bulk of censorship power is held by the customs office, whose policies on the matter are set by the attorny generals department. For most of the last two decades, the attornay-general's policy was not to censor. This seems to have changed with the new government.
Australia is the least censored country in the world, or at least it was in '95, when I researched all this stuff.
Essentially, the only reaon Australians have ever avoided censorship, is because the government didn't want to censor.
Note: There was heavier censorship in the fiftiess and sixties. There always is under liberal government. Just adds weight to the argument that anyone claiming to be liberal just wants to tell you what to do "for the sake of society."
a) I'm an Australian. We recently had the lowest murder by gunshot rate in the world. Murders are still a shocking and newsworthy item here. We still have one of the world's lowest murders per year. Not usre if it is the lowest though.
b) All cultures raise loads of maniacs. Most cultures try not to arms them.
This is a VERY valid point. (even though it seems to be a tautology.) One of the hallmarks of a successful modern nation is a free press, and by extension minimal censorship. There are very few countries which could be deemed successful economically, which have anything but the most minor censorship.
By economically successful, I mean nations with high GDP, low poverty rates, and acceptable foreign debt.
Through most of the 1980's and early 90's, Australia lead the world in not censoring anything. In that time, the only things that were placed on the censored list were books containing detailed instructions for things like torture (this was an actual case. A book was distributed in the country for about a week on the subject, before being banned).
This is odd, considering Australia has a whole set of laws granting censorship powers to various arms of the government and public service (mostly resting in customs, and the attorney-generals department). The reason for the lack of censorship last decade was the decision of the attorney-general Michael Lavarch to deliberately NOT censor. This all changed when Government changed hands. Almost as soon as the liberals had moved into their new offices, censorship was a big issue.
The best solution to censorship is people in power who don't want to censor. That is, almost noone in our current federal government.
So, with this in mind, my best solution to Australian internet censorship: Don't push them. The liberal government is highly reactionary. If you point out that their laws are unworkable, they will make them workable. I'm not saying ignore it and it will go away, so much as this is not a problem anyway. If you must have X rated material, you will get it one way or another. I can't see ISP's having even a 40% success rate at blocking any class of download. Especially if it is non-text based.
In addition, these laws are as you describe them, a dealmaker with Senator Harradine. The gorvernment is not so likely to put them on the front burner. Chances are, they will sit in commitees and review sessions until the next election, when the government will more than likely be voted out of power, as they nearly were last election. In the unlikely event of them reaching the senate, chances are they will be blocked by the Labor party and democrats until the government is either forced to give up, or call a referendum (unlikely).
Summary: Just because Australian politicians say thy're going to do something, doesn't mean they will, or even intended to in the first place.
I reply hesitantly to this. Criticising the United States often leads to long annoying threads composed of nothing more than flames. However, I feel that Mr. Coward is somewhat mistaken on the subject of the violence problem in the US.
You don't really get anywhere blaming the US culture/society for the actions of two citizens. All cultures raise people who are more violent or antisocial than the norm. Often these people are from fairly well of segements of the population. All nations have played host to people who have put their thoughts into action with regrettable results. It is by no means unique to the US.
On the other hand, there appear to be a host of nasty things that occur more frequently in the US than in any other peaceful and civilised nation. Some of the reasons for this are fairly obvious, and some are not. America has the worlds highest murder rate per capita AND overall simply because of lax gun control. (Note: I said peaceful and civilised. Murders are of course more frequent during wars and times of instability.)Murders would probably be fairly frequent in England too, if everybody older than 18 could buy a gun.It's not a facet of American culture so much as it is a problem of American law.
There are of course, two sides to this argument, and if the US government thinks the freedom to bear arms (and it is a freedom) outweighs the cost in lives then so be it. They are better placed to make that decision than I.
I recently read an article on the comparitive efficiency, regarding cost/output of various power sources. Fission scored higher than solar. (actually fission scores higher than everything, right now). This makes your suggestion a little confusing. Why should the US government spend millions on switching to a less efficient power source than their current one, only to have it superseded by fusion, which would probably be even more efficient than fission, and certainly much cleaner.
Furthermore, 6000 square miles is an immense space. It's actually about 2/3 of Maryland.
Sony seem to have been trying to do that for years. As soon as everyone had a CD player, they started talking about minidiscs. (at least 5 years ago) They're still trying to supersede CDs so we will all have to go out and buy a new player. They probably couldn't care less about the format, as long as it's theirs. Not that Matsushita aren't trying the same scam.
There's a limit to how much quality is worth having. Most of that quality would be lost on the amp/speakers of most hi-fis. Not to mention the limits to the limited difference in clarity discernable by the human ear. Noticed how sound cards still only work with 16 bits for wave sounds? This is why. Still, I can't think of many uses for that much storage, unless it's recordable, which it won't be.
Natural Insect Resistance
on
Gene Leakage
·
· Score: 1
Haven't there been plants around with natural insect resistances (to particular insects) for aeons? Even POISON plants? In those millions of years they've had to interbreed, those insect resistant and poison producing genes have done a pretty poor job of destroying the ecosystem.
A lot of comments here seem to be jumping the gun on where DOJ might go if they win the suit. (Which certainly looks likely given Microsoft's pathetic witnesses.) When I last checked, the DOJ had given no hints as to what they wanted to do to reduce Microsoft's ability to employ anti-competitive practises. Many commentators have suggested it is unlikely that Microsoft would be broken up into smaller divisions. This would do little to damage their OS monopoly, although it might reduce their ability to bundle IE with everything. It's nevertheless a little extreme given the scope of the case, which pertains only to the browser welding issue. Similar suits have usually resulted in MS being ordered to cease doing whatever is causing offense. (For instance, Sun's Java suit) While extreme action cannot be ruled out, we're dreaming if we think that Microsoft will be split up.
My guess is that apple is covering their butts on this one. The US government is a bit nuts about software exports, as we all know. Cryptography in particular, but exporting anything to, say, Cuba, would bring them down on apple like a ton of bricks. Apple can't control where all their downloads go so the have to transfer responsibility to the user. The government would kick their ass whether the section was there or not. This just means a mild tap, rather than a severe boot.
Remember that article that was here a week or so ago, about a linux cluster built out of NetFinities equalling the performance of a 5.5 million dollar cray system. Wonder if they tried that with NT? Lacks features like a fox! If a so called low-features OS can do that, well hell, I'm going to make a no features OS. It'll run at light speed!
It's a little hard not to be. People who are able to use linux or other unix systems can't help but hold themselves in higher esteem than the average Win98 user. We've learned a lot more, we can do a lot more, in theory. People who can code in something other than Visual Basic can consider that an achievement. It's a marketable skill, and not the simplest thing in the world to learn. Many of us put a lot of effort into figuring things out for ourselves.
When you've achieved something for yourself, it's almost a reflex to take a dim view of anyone who spends your time asking you things which you considered to be blindingly obvious. You'll find the same thing in almost any reasonably skilled field. Garage mechanics can be pretty arrogant too, in their own way.
As far as I've noticed AMD has been closing the gap fairly rapidly in regards to performance and popularity. The only reason intel released the celeron chips on slot 1 boards was to try to lock AMD out of the low end chip market. I wouldn't be surprised if their fear of AMD popularity was the reason behind the mediocre increase in performance from the PIII chips. Like maybe P3 was kind of a rush job.
I totally agree. It's not about major corporations vs. minor corporations. There aren't a whole hell of a lot of small companies producing chips for the x86, or any other computer for that matter. It's kind of an irrelevant point.
It's about competition. If one major company can push another major company of the top seat, this implies competition is alive and kicking. Especially if the older company has held the top spot for years, and has started selling based on name recognition rather than product. Competition brings down prices, and there isn't enough competition in certain sectors of the PC market.
If you look at it from the point of view of someone who has never seen or touched a PC before, Microsoft has made them easier to use. It's a lot easier for a virgin user to pick up Window98 than to learn Linux. Or good ol' DOS for that matter. Then again, if they can't use a computer, they could buy a mac, hehe
Seems to me that most piracy is related to overpriced software. I'll comcede the point that many software companies aren't rich as Microsoft, especially not games companies. (Interplay is in serious trouble right now, I heard). But seriously, Microsoft for one is raking the cash in with big rakes, If they cut their prices on Office software, and OS, they might get a few more people buying instead of "stealing." And while I support companies charging what the market will bear, If people are stealing things with such alarming frequency, I tend to think the market isn't bearing it so well.
I honesly don't see how that's relevant at all. Computers aren't going to have Y2K++ bugs just because some people think that's when the millenium starts. If it makes you feel better, you should refer to y2k as the millenium-- bug, or something.
Slashdot Mirror
I accept that I am a male between the ages of 20 and 30. I also accept that I have neither begat nor raised children. That said I disagree with your entire angle here.
Childraising should not (in my inexperienced opinion) be about policing your child. If you teach them right from wrong when they are young, they will most likely figure out the right thing to do in most situations. You don't have to watch their every move. Sure, they'll go off the rails here and there, but they will more than likely straighten out with a little help.
If you look on childraising as a "police" situation, they will view themselves as criminals. The best way to raise a problem child is to punish him/her for every grievance without explaining why what they did was wrong. It teaches them to push you until you snap. Soon they realise they can keep pushing a long time.
Admittedly, censorship laws could aid the parent, but so could laws against private cars. You teach your child how to cross roads. If you teach him/her that it is wrong to look up porn, they probably won't much until they are at least 13, at which point no force in the world could prevent them.
Every problem child I have ever met I could trace back to shabby parenting. I know, it's my experience, it isn't particularly valid, but I have met dedicated drug-users who were otherwise model citizens with a strong work ethic, morals and a sense of purpose. And I have met people who didn't drink and were the most arrogant, self-obsessed cases of arrested developement I have ever known. Guess which ones were the children of divorced marriages.
Parents bear in my opinion, responsibilty for the person they raised. Complaining that it's not as easy as all that is ridiculous. Didn't you know it was going to be hard?
I made a comment further doen the list onm this subject (Australia and Censorship)
A summary of Australian censorship powers is as follows:
The Government has the power to censor anything, if they see fit. It's in our laws.
Freedom of the press is NOT assured in Australian law at all.
The bulk of censorship power is held by the customs office, whose policies on the matter are set by the attorny generals department. For most of the last two decades, the attornay-general's policy was not to censor. This seems to have changed with the new government.
Australia is the least censored country in the world, or at least it was in '95, when I researched all this stuff.
Essentially, the only reaon Australians have ever avoided censorship, is because the government didn't want to censor.
Note: There was heavier censorship in the fiftiess and sixties. There always is under liberal government. Just adds weight to the argument that anyone claiming to be liberal just wants to tell you what to do "for the sake of society."
a) I'm an Australian. We recently had the lowest murder by gunshot rate in the world. Murders are still a shocking and newsworthy item here. We still have one of the world's lowest murders per year. Not usre if it is the lowest though.
b) All cultures raise loads of maniacs. Most cultures try not to arms them.
This is a VERY valid point. (even though it seems to be a tautology.)
One of the hallmarks of a successful modern nation is a free press, and by extension minimal censorship. There are very few countries which could be deemed successful economically, which have anything but the most minor censorship.
By economically successful, I mean nations with high GDP, low poverty rates, and acceptable foreign debt.
Through most of the 1980's and early 90's, Australia lead the world in not censoring anything. In that time, the only things that were placed on the censored list were books containing detailed instructions for things like torture (this was an actual case. A book was distributed in the country for about a week on the subject, before being banned).
This is odd, considering Australia has a whole set of laws granting censorship powers to various arms of the government and public service (mostly resting in customs, and the attorney-generals department). The reason for the lack of censorship last decade was the decision of the attorney-general Michael Lavarch to deliberately NOT censor. This all changed when Government changed hands. Almost as soon as the liberals had moved into their new offices, censorship was a big issue.
The best solution to censorship is people in power who don't want to censor. That is, almost noone in our current federal government.
So, with this in mind, my best solution to Australian internet censorship: Don't push them.
The liberal government is highly reactionary. If you point out that their laws are unworkable, they will make them workable. I'm not saying ignore it and it will go away, so much as this is not a problem anyway. If you must have X rated material, you will get it one way or another. I can't see ISP's having even a 40% success rate at blocking any class of download. Especially if it is non-text based.
In addition, these laws are as you describe them, a dealmaker with Senator Harradine. The gorvernment is not so likely to put them on the front burner. Chances are, they will sit in commitees and review sessions until the next election, when the government will more than likely be voted out of power, as they nearly were last election. In the unlikely event of them reaching the senate, chances are they will be blocked by the Labor party and democrats until the government is either forced to give up, or call a referendum (unlikely).
Summary: Just because Australian politicians say thy're going to do something, doesn't mean they will, or even intended to in the first place.
I reply hesitantly to this. Criticising the United States often leads to long annoying threads composed of nothing more than flames. However, I feel that Mr. Coward is somewhat mistaken on the subject of the violence problem in the US.
You don't really get anywhere blaming the US culture/society for the actions of two citizens. All cultures raise people who are more violent or antisocial than the norm. Often these people are from fairly well of segements of the population. All nations have played host to people who have put their thoughts into action with regrettable results. It is by no means unique to the US.
On the other hand, there appear to be a host of nasty things that occur more frequently in the US than in any other peaceful and civilised nation. Some of the reasons for this are fairly obvious, and some are not. America has the worlds highest murder rate per capita AND overall simply because of lax gun control. (Note: I said peaceful and civilised. Murders are of course more frequent during wars and times of instability.)Murders would probably be fairly frequent in England too, if everybody older than 18 could buy a gun.It's not a facet of American culture so much as it is a problem of American law.
There are of course, two sides to this argument, and if the US government thinks the freedom to bear arms (and it is a freedom) outweighs the cost in lives then so be it. They are better placed to make that decision than I.
I recently read an article on the comparitive efficiency, regarding cost/output of various power sources. Fission scored higher than solar. (actually fission scores higher than everything, right now). This makes your suggestion a little confusing. Why should the US government spend millions on switching to a less efficient power source than their current one, only to have it superseded by fusion, which would probably be even more efficient than fission, and certainly much cleaner.
Furthermore, 6000 square miles is an immense space. It's actually about 2/3 of Maryland.
Sony seem to have been trying to do that for years. As soon as everyone had a CD player, they started talking about minidiscs. (at least 5 years ago) They're still trying to supersede CDs so we will all have to go out and buy a new player. They probably couldn't care less about the format, as long as it's theirs. Not that Matsushita aren't trying the same scam.
There's a limit to how much quality is worth having. Most of that quality would be lost on the amp/speakers of most hi-fis. Not to mention the limits to the limited difference in clarity discernable by the human ear. Noticed how sound cards still only work with 16 bits for wave sounds? This is why.
Still, I can't think of many uses for that much storage, unless it's recordable, which it won't be.
Haven't there been plants around with natural insect resistances (to particular insects) for aeons? Even POISON plants? In those millions of years they've had to interbreed, those insect resistant and poison producing genes have done a pretty poor job of destroying the ecosystem.
A lot of comments here seem to be jumping the gun on where DOJ might go if they win the suit. (Which certainly looks likely given Microsoft's pathetic witnesses.)
When I last checked, the DOJ had given no hints as to what they wanted to do to reduce Microsoft's ability to employ anti-competitive practises. Many commentators have suggested it is unlikely that Microsoft would be broken up into smaller divisions. This would do little to damage their OS monopoly, although it might reduce their ability to bundle IE with everything. It's nevertheless a little extreme given the scope of the case, which pertains only to the browser welding issue.
Similar suits have usually resulted in MS being ordered to cease doing whatever is causing offense. (For instance, Sun's Java suit)
While extreme action cannot be ruled out, we're dreaming if we think that Microsoft will be split up.
My guess is that apple is covering their butts on this one. The US government is a bit nuts about software exports, as we all know. Cryptography in particular, but exporting anything to, say, Cuba, would bring them down on apple like a ton of bricks. Apple can't control where all their downloads go so the have to transfer responsibility to the user. The government would kick their ass whether the section was there or not. This just means a mild tap, rather than a severe boot.
Remember that article that was here a week or so ago, about a linux cluster built out of NetFinities equalling the performance of a 5.5 million dollar cray system. Wonder if they tried that with NT? Lacks features like a fox!
If a so called low-features OS can do that, well hell, I'm going to make a no features OS. It'll run at light speed!
It's a little hard not to be. People who are able to use linux or other unix systems can't help but hold themselves in higher esteem than the average Win98 user. We've learned a lot more, we can do a lot more, in theory. People who can code in something other than Visual Basic can consider that an achievement. It's a marketable skill, and not the simplest thing in the world to learn. Many of us put a lot of effort into figuring things out for ourselves.
When you've achieved something for yourself, it's almost a reflex to take a dim view of anyone who spends your time asking you things which you considered to be blindingly obvious. You'll find the same thing in almost any reasonably skilled field. Garage mechanics can be pretty arrogant too, in their own way.
As far as I've noticed AMD has been closing the gap fairly rapidly in regards to performance and popularity. The only reason intel released the celeron chips on slot 1 boards was to try to lock AMD out of the low end chip market. I wouldn't be surprised if their fear of AMD popularity was the reason behind the mediocre increase in performance from the PIII chips. Like maybe P3 was kind of a rush job.
I totally agree. It's not about major corporations vs. minor corporations. There aren't a whole hell of a lot of small companies producing chips for the x86, or any other computer for that matter. It's kind of an irrelevant point.
It's about competition. If one major company can push another major company of the top seat, this implies competition is alive and kicking. Especially if the older company has held the top spot for years, and has started selling based on name recognition rather than product. Competition brings down prices, and there isn't enough competition in certain sectors of the PC market.
If you look at it from the point of view of someone who has never seen or touched a PC before, Microsoft has made them easier to use. It's a lot easier for a virgin user to pick up Window98 than to learn Linux. Or good ol' DOS for that matter. Then again, if they can't use a computer, they could buy a mac, hehe
Seems to me that most piracy is related to overpriced software. I'll comcede the point that many software companies aren't rich as Microsoft, especially not games companies. (Interplay is in serious trouble right now, I heard). But seriously, Microsoft for one is raking the cash in with big rakes, If they cut their prices on Office software, and OS, they might get a few more people buying instead of "stealing." And while I support companies charging what the market will bear, If people are stealing things with such alarming frequency, I tend to think the market isn't bearing it so well.
I honesly don't see how that's relevant at all. Computers aren't going to have Y2K++ bugs just because some people think that's when the millenium starts. If it makes you feel better, you should refer to y2k as the millenium-- bug, or something.