You're an idiot. Most people don't want to see 13-year-old girls naked.
First of all, thanks for your kind words.
Second, many 13-year-olds of today appear to be 18-year-olds, due to the growth hormones that we feed our livestock. This ends up in the food products created from the livestock, and leads to secondary sexual characteristics (i.e., breasts) developing faster than they ever have in the human race's existence. Other additives may also promote fatty tissue growth, such as HFCS (high fructose corn syrup) and others.
Evidence of crimes is meant to be turned over to the police, not used as a masturbatory aid!
I was never discussing masturbation. I was discussing the potential (and documented) abuse of laws like these. However: people will masturbate to anything. Some people masturbate to "Faces of Death", which is also evidence that a crime was committed; however, you can rent that at most non-chain video stores. Others may masturbate to "Cops", which again is evidence of crimes committed (sometimes by the perps, sometimes by the cops themselves).
As Jethro Tull so eloquently put it, "I may make you feel but I can't make you think." I apologize that something I said touched a nerve.
Most other responses lump me in with the sickos because I appear to be defending their behavior, which I most certainly am not. That's why I started this mini-thread with "This may be unpopular." I realized the type of vitriolic responses it would garner, and I thank you for your civility.
I disagree with your first paragraph, but you're right, the hammer is the object prior to the injury whereas the child porn is the evidence of the injury. To be completely accurate, it is not carrying around the hammer, or bloodied skull remnants, it's carrying pictures of the murder. "Faces of Death" is not illegal to possess, as another response mentioned.
I agree that it may be able to be traced back to the creator. That's a fairly slippery slope, though; many people download porn (of any kind) via Usenet or Freenet, both of which are basically untraceable.
I suppose another perspective is, what percentage of people in possession of these images are creators of them? And for what percentage is the possession actually an alternative to creating them -- which means that fewer children would actually harmed by not making possession illegal?
You're right, I don't have all the answers, but I think I have some useful questions.
Furthermore, if you're NOT going to treat finding child porn on someone as serious, then you've automatically given true offenders a plausible way out.
"If you're NOT going to treat finding a hammer on someone as serious, then you've automatically given skull crushers a plausible way out."
See how ridiculous it sounds when it isn't "about the children?"
The people who we should spending our tax law enforcement dollars on are the people who are actually and actively creating victims. Someone looking at a picture (or in possession of a hammer) is not doing anything to create a victim. It's when the child abuse happens, or the hammer is swung at a skull, that the crime takes place.
But I'm not defining the law, simply finding holes in its application. I apologize if I have offended you.
The current rules against child porn are more like outlawing "faces of death" videos because they depict actual people dying.
Exactly. As I stated in another response, what we have outlawed is possession of evidence that a crime was committed. But since it's "for the children," nobody will speak up for fear of being labeled "against the children."
If there isn't demand, then there isn't supply. Meaning if noone seeks child porn then no child porn will be made. We can extend this to say that if we can reduce the demand for child porn, we can reduce the number of children abused to create it.
The only way to reduce the demand is to eliminate all humans.
We are driven by basic desires. One of these desires is to ensure that we are genetically related to the children that we spend our resources in rearing. Prior to contraception, the best way to achieve that was to impregnate a woman as soon as she is capable of being impregnated. Sooner is wasted energy (from a biological perspective, because she won't end up pregnant), and later runs the risk that someone else (the alpha male perhaps; we are tribal/herd-like still) has previously impregnated her and #2 will be rearing #1's child, not his own.
The problem with the above factual analysis is that women reach biologically reproductive age much sooner than the law allows them to be sexually active.
Yes, there are sickos out there who create and consume abuse of infants and 8-year-olds. That does not mean that we should, as a society, attempt to cause the greatest amount of collateral damage while bringing these abominations of life to justice!
My great-great-great-grandmother was legally married at 13. Our laws have changed; our bodies have not.
I hope that it is plain that nowhere in here am I defending those who abuse children, create child porn, or distribute and use it. I'm simply stating that creating laws that outlaw possession of anything (including drugs, books, and money[1]) makes it very easy to punish someone who hasn't actually committed a crime.
[1]--If you don't declare that you're taking more than $10,000 through an airport (perhaps only for international flights, I'm not positive), the police are allowed to take it. Similarly, the RICO laws allow them to plant some coke in your car, then confiscate the car and sell it at auction; even if you have the ability to defend yourself legally, the car is gone. Same goes with houses, yachts, and other large-value items; there have been documented cases of abuse of this law, so I'm again ashamed that we allow it to persist. It is blatantly unconstitutional, as are the drug laws; back in the 20's it took a Constitutional Amendment to outlaw alcohol, but we've allowed our rights to erode so much that we even outlawed the amino acid Tryptophan (naturally occurring in turkey, as we experience every Thanksgiving) for almost ten years (1991 to 2002).
I agree that eliminating the demand would make the supply less profitable. That works with all commodities. But you've gotta change biological nature (not even human nature; all organisms want to maximize their resource expenditures on their own genes, and minimize said expenses on others' genes (yes, adoption and "altruism" are exceptions, but you'll generally find a self-serving motive for the latter, perhaps as simple as "feeling better", and the former is usually the path of last resort when unable to bear children of one's own, celebrities excepted)). And we haven't done such a good job at eliminating demand of any of the "vices" that we've made illegal; alcohol prohibition helped create the mafia, and current drug prohibition is dividing our populace and disenfranchising far more blacks than it does whites (by making drug crimes felonies, and selectively prosecuting, we are taking away their right to vote).
And, sure, forget that digital images are numbers; forget the idea of taking things at their lowest level. Let's look at the highest level: we are imprisoning people because they possess evidence that a crime was committed. They had nothing to do with the crime. Again, this scares me because it can be abused so easily. And since it's linked to the "won't somebody think of the children" meme, using it as planted evidence will likely always be a way to control unpopular-but-not-illegal people.
The only way to prove you were affected is to be affected. The fact you were affected you can't prove even when you are affected because the fact that you were is to remain a state secret.
And, if you know you were affected, chances are high that you're already in Guantanamo and can no longer effectively bring suit.
Please, please direct your energies and eloquent prose towards our Congress and Senate. And share the letters you write, here, so that the rest of us can send similar letters.
In fact, perhaps the EFF, ACLU, or other groups might have methods of contacting several of these legislators with a single click? I urge you in the strongest terms to share your views with those groups, so that they can help both educate the populace, and give us a platform to make this view heard.
I will gladly donate to such a cause. And I agree completely that standing should remain required for suits; they went about it the wrong way. Of course, not being able to ask, "was I spied upon?" makes it difficult for them to even know whether they were harmed, and the answer "state secret, sorry" means they can't know -- but your option of impeachment makes perfect sense. I agree as well, though, that corruption abounds and may make it difficult to achieve.
What's mind-boggling is that a blow job is grounds for them to get up in arms, but thousands of wrongful deaths, no-bid contracts, illegal domestic surveillance, international kidnapping (sorry, extraordinary rendition), redefining torture to mean "tactics we don't use", killing the imprisoned, torturing suspects!!! (anyone can be suspected of a crime; punishment should only come after a judgment of guilty!), aren't. It's a sad day (well, 8 years) for true patriots.
Please don't call it kiddie-porn. It's child abuse.
This may be unpopular, but how can numbers possibly be a significant enough threat to land one in prison? (A digital image file is a very large number.)
Yes, by all means, find the people who perpetrated the original crime of your term child abuse (or more emotionally, sexual assault of a defenseless child), and bring them to justice.
However, once a society makes owning a number a crime, it makes it very easy to "frame" people who hold unpopular-but-not-illegal beliefs: just push some child pornography into their computer, or easier, "find" some photos in their car.
This is very scary stuff. I am ashamed that we have made it illegal to have a number (or a photo), not out of any desire to obtain and retain said numbers or photos, but simply because the threat of abuse of this type of law is obvious and has already happened (witness RIAA witch hunts).
And the reason it's scary is because I truly care about the injured victims and want restitution. Going after third parties does not help, and creates a police state in which unpopular beliefs like mine can be silenced through selective evidence planting.
Similarly, felons should retain the right to vote, especially since having the wrong number can make you a felon.
However, if I'm cruising around in my "Built Ford Tough" Warthog in Halo 3 and then looking over the stats in the post-match Pepsi rundown, I'd like to pay a little less than the full price. If you're going to subject me to crap advertising that I'd like to escape and expect to charge me just so that I can be subjected to it, I'm not going to spend $60 on your game or $50 on your online service.
You said it.
The McDonald's ads look surprisingly distasteful (pun...), especially after having watched "Super Size Me" -- in response to that movie, they stopped selling the "super size" portion.
How about instead, removing the HFCS from their products? Real change is expensive though, and simple PR moves are less of an "expense".
I suppose there's some benefit from being told what else is out there, but if I'm playing on Xbox Live I think I'd only want to know about games that I haven't already purchased, that are similar to games I have already purchased. Not an ad for a food product that is known to cause health issues.
You know, I don't follow sports much, but decided to watch a game the other day. Even the announcers are into product placement every, like, 2 minutes or so. It's shameless. So I have no doubt that it'll creep into sports games, and from there to many others.
Similarly, I just re-played Crackdown (Xbox 360) again for the first time in several months, and there are now "starting spots" in the game which try to sell you add-on packs for the game. Wish those could be disabled, I already bought the game...
The goal is to scare people away from file sharing [...]
Well, they convinced me: I have purchased enough CDs over the years to listen for months without hearing a repeat. Nowadays the only CDs I purchase are from local acts, to help support them. Plus, it's nice to talk to the artist and be appreciated, rather than "another face in the crowd of 50,000" at a stadium as they're whisked away by their security.
What's amusing is that Metallica was Napster's biggest "advertiser" back in the mid-90s.
Perhaps I'm just old, and music isn't as important as other things in life.
Yes, civilization come and go but very rarely have we abandoned anything of consequence unless the whole city was founded on a natural resource that ran out or something like that.
What about disasters? We should have abandoned NOLA, and didn't; perhaps the ancients did abandon the planet back when the extinction rock hit?
[...] can you give me a rational idea of why would you assume that pooling resources for the greater good is inherently a bad idea?
Well, it sounds like you just described the health insurance industry: they pool their customer's payments to them (resources), in order to promote the general well-being of all their customers (greater good).
The only problem is that they want to take in more than they pay out, which means, on a collective level, we're all getting fleeced.
Canada and European countries seem to be doing a better job managing this than the USA. Someone else mentioned that in their state, health insurance companies must operate as non-profits. I would vote for such a proposal on the national level.
Sorry, have to disagree here: there was a building in Florida built out of basically sand and seashells, which killed people when it collapsed. Building codes help prevent that kind of thing.
Thinking further, though, perhaps you're right: the builders can be tried for negligent homicide under existing (pre-building-code) laws; why should the rest of us be dragged down when we're perfectly capable of nailing the right boards together? Ok, now I'm conflicted...
Completely agree about the TLAs, though (A=agencies); two more to remove are the FDA and AMA, which prop up allopathic medicine ("pills for your ills!"), and ignore Eastern-style medicine even when a US head of state was given an emergency appendectomy in 1971, and was in considerable pain and received nothing more than acupuncture which, to his great surprise, drastically reduced the pain. Allopathic medicine sometimes has cure rates lower than so-called "alternative", but nobody selling a pill is ever investigated for "making false claims" when only 20% of their subjects are cured of their illness; whereas an "alternative" method that "only" cures 80% is scorned. (Interesting note from Wikipedia: "In China, placebo-controlled studies are often not performed as it believed to be unethical to pretend to give patients bonafide treatment.")
Read about Royal Rife to get a warm fuzzy feeling about the AMA.
Yeah, big money has ruined our American way of life. I see this release of information as both confirming it -- and also, at the same time, a ray of light in that perhaps more people will learn about the types of things that our government has done, and clamor to elect officials who will clean up our act.
Then again, the cynic in me wonders at the timing of this release; what current "bad things" are being done that will not be talked about because the airwaves will be full of talk of past "bad things"?
I agree with the other responders, and just wanted to point out that "our only neighbors" are sucking the blood right out of us, now that it's summer. There are so many damned mosquitoes around here! And no, I have no issue with killing them, or microbes on another planet, as their goal is also to use us as fuel. (Similarly, communication only exists for manipulation.)
Cory Doctorow wrote an okay book (most of his writing is great; this one seemed to drag, although has some neat devices, like the use of any arbitrary name as long as it started with the same letter to describe each character), Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town.
In fact, wikipedia summarizes it quite nicely, so here's the relevant part:
Alan befriends Kurt, a thirtysomething punk who operates a dumpster-diving operation. Kurt uses computer components that he retrieves from the trash and turns them into functioning Wi-Fi access points. Kurt's goal is to blanket the entire neighborhood with free and secure Internet access by attaching his access points to buildings with the permission of their owners. Kurt's plan doesn't really get off the ground until he forms a partnership with Alan, who puts a more professional face on the operation and sweet-talks many local owners into allowing the access points to use their space and a small amount of their electricity.
After reading this (before, really, but this solidified the idea), I have wanted to do this but not had the time. Perhaps this new "ads everywhere!" world will help motivate myself and others of a like mind to begin implementing the idea.
The biggest hurdle is it costs $30 a month or so to stay connected. Starting an initiative like this would initially costs thousands, if not out of my wallet, then out of my clock...
Their web page says they will continue to provide service as long as they are in business. Not very reassuring, I know, but it works now. And since it communicates over the internet, I'm sure one (or a group, i.e. an open source project) can intercept the request and provide the data after scraping, say, TVguide.com...
I bought a ReplayTV 4500 on eBay for around $200. There's no way I could have built a rig myself that inexpensively which does everything the ReplayTV does. Sure, they're not making the hardware any longer, but it did come with lifetime activation, worth $299. The company is still in business, but no longer selling hardware; they have ReplayPC now which I think is around $50 plus $20 per year, not a bad solution either if you're building (but if you're building you might as well go with Myth).
I absolutely love the auto-commercial skip feature! (Myth has this also.) Just don't get the 5500 model, as it was removed from that release in an attempt to stave off the lawsuits; they "lost", folded and were bought by the company now providing ReplayPC. (Lost in quotes because they ran out of money defending themselves, so the trial didn't need to finish...)
With the ReplayTV, you can use DVArchive to transfer shows to your PC; they're in MPEG-2 format, ready to burn to DVD. You can set it up to auto-download as well.
If you're worried about them gathering data on how you watch (for instance freeze-framing the money shots, etc.) then just watch on your PC with VLC. But then you don't get the commercial skip functionality. However, it does download the index file, so I suppose someone could add that to VLC. Other than the "viewing habits" data it sends back it doesn't seem to have any "limiting" features, like broadcast flag support etc.
I've also heard good things about Vista's Media Center, but haven't used it myself.
Slashdot Mirror
First of all, thanks for your kind words.
Second, many 13-year-olds of today appear to be 18-year-olds, due to the growth hormones that we feed our livestock. This ends up in the food products created from the livestock, and leads to secondary sexual characteristics (i.e., breasts) developing faster than they ever have in the human race's existence. Other additives may also promote fatty tissue growth, such as HFCS (high fructose corn syrup) and others.
I was never discussing masturbation. I was discussing the potential (and documented) abuse of laws like these. However: people will masturbate to anything. Some people masturbate to "Faces of Death", which is also evidence that a crime was committed; however, you can rent that at most non-chain video stores. Others may masturbate to "Cops", which again is evidence of crimes committed (sometimes by the perps, sometimes by the cops themselves).
As Jethro Tull so eloquently put it, "I may make you feel but I can't make you think." I apologize that something I said touched a nerve.
Thank you for understanding.
Most other responses lump me in with the sickos because I appear to be defending their behavior, which I most certainly am not. That's why I started this mini-thread with "This may be unpopular." I realized the type of vitriolic responses it would garner, and I thank you for your civility.
I disagree with your first paragraph, but you're right, the hammer is the object prior to the injury whereas the child porn is the evidence of the injury. To be completely accurate, it is not carrying around the hammer, or bloodied skull remnants, it's carrying pictures of the murder. "Faces of Death" is not illegal to possess, as another response mentioned.
I agree that it may be able to be traced back to the creator. That's a fairly slippery slope, though; many people download porn (of any kind) via Usenet or Freenet, both of which are basically untraceable.
I suppose another perspective is, what percentage of people in possession of these images are creators of them? And for what percentage is the possession actually an alternative to creating them -- which means that fewer children would actually harmed by not making possession illegal?
You're right, I don't have all the answers, but I think I have some useful questions.
"If you're NOT going to treat finding a hammer on someone as serious, then you've automatically given skull crushers a plausible way out."
See how ridiculous it sounds when it isn't "about the children?"
The people who we should spending our tax law enforcement dollars on are the people who are actually and actively creating victims. Someone looking at a picture (or in possession of a hammer) is not doing anything to create a victim. It's when the child abuse happens, or the hammer is swung at a skull, that the crime takes place.
But I'm not defining the law, simply finding holes in its application. I apologize if I have offended you.
Exactly. As I stated in another response, what we have outlawed is possession of evidence that a crime was committed. But since it's "for the children," nobody will speak up for fear of being labeled "against the children."
The only way to reduce the demand is to eliminate all humans.
We are driven by basic desires. One of these desires is to ensure that we are genetically related to the children that we spend our resources in rearing. Prior to contraception, the best way to achieve that was to impregnate a woman as soon as she is capable of being impregnated. Sooner is wasted energy (from a biological perspective, because she won't end up pregnant), and later runs the risk that someone else (the alpha male perhaps; we are tribal/herd-like still) has previously impregnated her and #2 will be rearing #1's child, not his own.
The problem with the above factual analysis is that women reach biologically reproductive age much sooner than the law allows them to be sexually active.
Yes, there are sickos out there who create and consume abuse of infants and 8-year-olds. That does not mean that we should, as a society, attempt to cause the greatest amount of collateral damage while bringing these abominations of life to justice!
My great-great-great-grandmother was legally married at 13. Our laws have changed; our bodies have not.
I hope that it is plain that nowhere in here am I defending those who abuse children, create child porn, or distribute and use it. I'm simply stating that creating laws that outlaw possession of anything (including drugs, books, and money[1]) makes it very easy to punish someone who hasn't actually committed a crime.
[1]--If you don't declare that you're taking more than $10,000 through an airport (perhaps only for international flights, I'm not positive), the police are allowed to take it. Similarly, the RICO laws allow them to plant some coke in your car, then confiscate the car and sell it at auction; even if you have the ability to defend yourself legally, the car is gone. Same goes with houses, yachts, and other large-value items; there have been documented cases of abuse of this law, so I'm again ashamed that we allow it to persist. It is blatantly unconstitutional, as are the drug laws; back in the 20's it took a Constitutional Amendment to outlaw alcohol, but we've allowed our rights to erode so much that we even outlawed the amino acid Tryptophan (naturally occurring in turkey, as we experience every Thanksgiving) for almost ten years (1991 to 2002).
I agree that eliminating the demand would make the supply less profitable. That works with all commodities. But you've gotta change biological nature (not even human nature; all organisms want to maximize their resource expenditures on their own genes, and minimize said expenses on others' genes (yes, adoption and "altruism" are exceptions, but you'll generally find a self-serving motive for the latter, perhaps as simple as "feeling better", and the former is usually the path of last resort when unable to bear children of one's own, celebrities excepted)). And we haven't done such a good job at eliminating demand of any of the "vices" that we've made illegal; alcohol prohibition helped create the mafia, and current drug prohibition is dividing our populace and disenfranchising far more blacks than it does whites (by making drug crimes felonies, and selectively prosecuting, we are taking away their right to vote).
And, sure, forget that digital images are numbers; forget the idea of taking things at their lowest level. Let's look at the highest level: we are imprisoning people because they possess evidence that a crime was committed. They had nothing to do with the crime. Again, this scares me because it can be abused so easily. And since it's linked to the "won't somebody think of the children" meme, using it as planted evidence will likely always be a way to control unpopular-but-not-illegal people.
Like, for instance, a rival senator.
And, if you know you were affected, chances are high that you're already in Guantanamo and can no longer effectively bring suit.
Please, please direct your energies and eloquent prose towards our Congress and Senate. And share the letters you write, here, so that the rest of us can send similar letters.
In fact, perhaps the EFF, ACLU, or other groups might have methods of contacting several of these legislators with a single click? I urge you in the strongest terms to share your views with those groups, so that they can help both educate the populace, and give us a platform to make this view heard.
I will gladly donate to such a cause. And I agree completely that standing should remain required for suits; they went about it the wrong way. Of course, not being able to ask, "was I spied upon?" makes it difficult for them to even know whether they were harmed, and the answer "state secret, sorry" means they can't know -- but your option of impeachment makes perfect sense. I agree as well, though, that corruption abounds and may make it difficult to achieve.
What's mind-boggling is that a blow job is grounds for them to get up in arms, but thousands of wrongful deaths, no-bid contracts, illegal domestic surveillance, international kidnapping (sorry, extraordinary rendition), redefining torture to mean "tactics we don't use", killing the imprisoned, torturing suspects!!! (anyone can be suspected of a crime; punishment should only come after a judgment of guilty!), aren't. It's a sad day (well, 8 years) for true patriots.
This may be unpopular, but how can numbers possibly be a significant enough threat to land one in prison? (A digital image file is a very large number.)
Yes, by all means, find the people who perpetrated the original crime of your term child abuse (or more emotionally, sexual assault of a defenseless child), and bring them to justice.
However, once a society makes owning a number a crime, it makes it very easy to "frame" people who hold unpopular-but-not-illegal beliefs: just push some child pornography into their computer, or easier, "find" some photos in their car.
This is very scary stuff. I am ashamed that we have made it illegal to have a number (or a photo), not out of any desire to obtain and retain said numbers or photos, but simply because the threat of abuse of this type of law is obvious and has already happened (witness RIAA witch hunts).
And the reason it's scary is because I truly care about the injured victims and want restitution. Going after third parties does not help, and creates a police state in which unpopular beliefs like mine can be silenced through selective evidence planting.
Similarly, felons should retain the right to vote, especially since having the wrong number can make you a felon.
You said it.
The McDonald's ads look surprisingly distasteful (pun...), especially after having watched "Super Size Me" -- in response to that movie, they stopped selling the "super size" portion.
How about instead, removing the HFCS from their products? Real change is expensive though, and simple PR moves are less of an "expense".
I suppose there's some benefit from being told what else is out there, but if I'm playing on Xbox Live I think I'd only want to know about games that I haven't already purchased, that are similar to games I have already purchased. Not an ad for a food product that is known to cause health issues.
You know, I don't follow sports much, but decided to watch a game the other day. Even the announcers are into product placement every, like, 2 minutes or so. It's shameless. So I have no doubt that it'll creep into sports games, and from there to many others.
Similarly, I just re-played Crackdown (Xbox 360) again for the first time in several months, and there are now "starting spots" in the game which try to sell you add-on packs for the game. Wish those could be disabled, I already bought the game...
Well, they convinced me: I have purchased enough CDs over the years to listen for months without hearing a repeat. Nowadays the only CDs I purchase are from local acts, to help support them. Plus, it's nice to talk to the artist and be appreciated, rather than "another face in the crowd of 50,000" at a stadium as they're whisked away by their security.
What's amusing is that Metallica was Napster's biggest "advertiser" back in the mid-90s.
Perhaps I'm just old, and music isn't as important as other things in life.
Yes. Yes you are.
I know a guy what can help with that...
Mod parent "+1, Owes me a Mt. Dew"
Wi-i-i-i-ilbur, is that you?
What about disasters? We should have abandoned NOLA, and didn't; perhaps the ancients did abandon the planet back when the extinction rock hit?
Well, it sounds like you just described the health insurance industry: they pool their customer's payments to them (resources), in order to promote the general well-being of all their customers (greater good).
The only problem is that they want to take in more than they pay out, which means, on a collective level, we're all getting fleeced.
Canada and European countries seem to be doing a better job managing this than the USA. Someone else mentioned that in their state, health insurance companies must operate as non-profits. I would vote for such a proposal on the national level.
Sorry, have to disagree here: there was a building in Florida built out of basically sand and seashells, which killed people when it collapsed. Building codes help prevent that kind of thing.
Thinking further, though, perhaps you're right: the builders can be tried for negligent homicide under existing (pre-building-code) laws; why should the rest of us be dragged down when we're perfectly capable of nailing the right boards together? Ok, now I'm conflicted...
Completely agree about the TLAs, though (A=agencies); two more to remove are the FDA and AMA, which prop up allopathic medicine ("pills for your ills!"), and ignore Eastern-style medicine even when a US head of state was given an emergency appendectomy in 1971, and was in considerable pain and received nothing more than acupuncture which, to his great surprise, drastically reduced the pain. Allopathic medicine sometimes has cure rates lower than so-called "alternative", but nobody selling a pill is ever investigated for "making false claims" when only 20% of their subjects are cured of their illness; whereas an "alternative" method that "only" cures 80% is scorned. (Interesting note from Wikipedia: "In China, placebo-controlled studies are often not performed as it believed to be unethical to pretend to give patients bonafide treatment.")
Read about Royal Rife to get a warm fuzzy feeling about the AMA.
Yeah, big money has ruined our American way of life. I see this release of information as both confirming it -- and also, at the same time, a ray of light in that perhaps more people will learn about the types of things that our government has done, and clamor to elect officials who will clean up our act.
Then again, the cynic in me wonders at the timing of this release; what current "bad things" are being done that will not be talked about because the airwaves will be full of talk of past "bad things"?
Oh, it won't.
Just wait until Cheney declares the senate to be enemy combatants.
'Course, it'll be interesting to see him extricate himself, seeing as he's their president and not part of the executive branch...
Well, context is important. If it was near a protruding nail on the stair handrail, for instance, the answer is easy.
"Fracture" was an excellent movie.
I agree with the other responders, and just wanted to point out that "our only neighbors" are sucking the blood right out of us, now that it's summer. There are so many damned mosquitoes around here! And no, I have no issue with killing them, or microbes on another planet, as their goal is also to use us as fuel. (Similarly, communication only exists for manipulation.)
Yeah, but who sends the content down to the other side of that VPN? (I'm assuming you didn't mean "a VPN to the content host"...)
Cory Doctorow wrote an okay book (most of his writing is great; this one seemed to drag, although has some neat devices, like the use of any arbitrary name as long as it started with the same letter to describe each character), Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town.
In fact, wikipedia summarizes it quite nicely, so here's the relevant part:
After reading this (before, really, but this solidified the idea), I have wanted to do this but not had the time. Perhaps this new "ads everywhere!" world will help motivate myself and others of a like mind to begin implementing the idea.
The biggest hurdle is it costs $30 a month or so to stay connected. Starting an initiative like this would initially costs thousands, if not out of my wallet, then out of my clock...
Their web page says they will continue to provide service as long as they are in business. Not very reassuring, I know, but it works now. And since it communicates over the internet, I'm sure one (or a group, i.e. an open source project) can intercept the request and provide the data after scraping, say, TVguide.com...
Can they insert ads into an https stream? Let's everyone just start using that protocol.
I bought a ReplayTV 4500 on eBay for around $200. There's no way I could have built a rig myself that inexpensively which does everything the ReplayTV does. Sure, they're not making the hardware any longer, but it did come with lifetime activation, worth $299. The company is still in business, but no longer selling hardware; they have ReplayPC now which I think is around $50 plus $20 per year, not a bad solution either if you're building (but if you're building you might as well go with Myth).
I absolutely love the auto-commercial skip feature! (Myth has this also.) Just don't get the 5500 model, as it was removed from that release in an attempt to stave off the lawsuits; they "lost", folded and were bought by the company now providing ReplayPC. (Lost in quotes because they ran out of money defending themselves, so the trial didn't need to finish...)
With the ReplayTV, you can use DVArchive to transfer shows to your PC; they're in MPEG-2 format, ready to burn to DVD. You can set it up to auto-download as well.
If you're worried about them gathering data on how you watch (for instance freeze-framing the money shots, etc.) then just watch on your PC with VLC. But then you don't get the commercial skip functionality. However, it does download the index file, so I suppose someone could add that to VLC. Other than the "viewing habits" data it sends back it doesn't seem to have any "limiting" features, like broadcast flag support etc.
I've also heard good things about Vista's Media Center, but haven't used it myself.