Col. Tigh: We're dangerously low on fuel Cmdr. Adama: Bring the fleet to a halt.
Uh... yeah... must be because of all that interstellar drag. The next line should have been:
Col. Tigh: I said WE'RE LOW ON FUEL.
But in all honesty, I was so young when Galactica was made, I really just watched it because I liked to pretend I was Boxie... a six yaron old snot nosed brat living on the coolest ship in a rag-tag fugitive fleet, fleeing the Cylon tyranny.
You have reacted to the post without having read and understood what he was saying. You've greatly distorted what was said and essentially changed the subject.
He was stating historical perspective, and concluding that relationships in our time are substantially unlike they had been in the past.
You did not refute any of what he said, but committed a laundry list of logical and argumentative fallacies.
Oh, and it works in most CD-ROM drives that are out already.
Although I had not read the HD-Burn pitch before, the article you linked to implies ordinary CD-ROM drives cannot read the HD-Burn discs but DVD-ROM drives could if they had modified firmware (meaning essentially none of them can now).
Hot air will have lower density in a closed system
Really? Let's say we have a system that is a box 1 meter on each side with 1 gram of air in it at 0 degress C. The density of air in this closed system is 1gm^-3. Let's say we heat up the interior of the cube to 273 C. What is the density of the closed system now? Are you sure it is less? Where did the lost mass go?
It's air moving from the light side to the dark side around the edges of the foil that does the push.
Huh? If a molecule of air bounces off the light side, what would compel it to make a trip around the edge to the dark side? Some force would have to steer it "around". What is that force? This makes no sense at all.
Having it work like a jet engine makes much more sense. A molecule of air the strikes the dark side will bounce off with more energy than it originally had because the dark side is warmer and a warmer air molecule is moving faster.
Re:Mensa is right based on Ockhams razor
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One observation though is that the question itself is not numerical at all; it is meaningless mathematically speaking.
If it is meaningless, why would so many people come up with the answer "5"? It is not meaningless to ask "What property does one of these numbers not have that the others have?" That sort of pattern recognition is the heart of all sorts of analysis.
Another thing is that the for the "numerical" solution you have the burden of proof that the literal interpretation is illegal.
That is categorically incorrect. It is possible that two people starting from two different frames of reference on the same data can come to two different conclusions and both be correct. That's what the original post was saying. There is nothing invalid about "5" being an answer.
However we tend to like "5" as the answer better because of what the previous post said, it is ridiculous not to consider the numerical aspects of the numbers first, and only when no reasonable property can be found that satisfies the criteria should we consider the numbers as shapes.
Re:Mensa is right based on Ockhams razor
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Well, I am probably extrapolating it beyond what he would ever have done; but I am not the first to realize it's applicability to this type of problem.
So you are saying because numerical symbols are simpler to explain as shapes than as a field of philosophy, that any problem involving numbers should first consider their shape since any solution involving that would be simpler to explain?
No, you haven't realized a valid use of Ockham's razor. You are simply using the validity given to it, and twisting its meaning to make your argument seem more valid.
Ockham's razor, as it applies to philosophy, eliminates one of two theories trying to explain the same thing. For example, why do planets in the sky move in such a peculiar way? One theory says "the sun is at the center and we and the other 8 are going around it" the other theory spends a few pages of explanation about the earth being at the center and the planets going around it, and on another sub orbital on their major orbit... all kinds of craziness. Clearly one requires less multiplications than the other.
If you want to apply Ockham's razor here, you must have two theories explaining the same thing. But they don't. One theory says "8", the other says "5".
By your logic, 1 + 1 = X, because you can make an "X" by crossing the two shapes and it is much easier to explain two shapes overlapping than elementary arithmetic. Just because there is an easier explanation to get a different answer doesn't mean the easier explanation is right, or that Ockham's razor is in any way involved.
This is a circular argument. The whole point with the other solution is that "8" can be analyzed by just the properties of the symbol itself, and not by the properties of the mathematical abstraction. You assume it is a mathematical abstraction, and then use that assumption to prove itself.
Please quote me proving that it is a mathematical abstraction. I assume that they are numbers and not shapes and then using that assumption evaluate that one and only one is prime. But that doesn't prove that they are abstractions, merely that there is a valid answer if they are.
Re:Mensa is right based on Ockhams razor
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But the whole point with this question type is that the answer you get depend very much on what assumptions you make.
The question should be unambiguous, otherwise you are testing to see if people "think like you". If you call it an intelligence test then you must be the definition of intelligence. The question should have opened by stating that these symbols should not be interpretted as representing mathematical numbers.
The Mensa/ Ockham's razor based approach is to find the solution which makes the fewest possible assumptions.
I think you are misusing Ockham's razor. Ockham said entitites should not contain any uneccesary multiplications. Theorizing that one number is unique because it is prime and the others are not does not contain any unecessary assumptions as primality is a basic feature of certain numbers that is true of them regardless of the system used to express them.
Re:Mensa is right based on Ockhams razor
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If they are deliberately creating questions that have a "correct but not the answer we were looking for" solution, then they are knowingly creating poor tests of intelligence. What they are really looking for then is "people who think like we do" not "very intelligent people".
It's sort of like the old biased college aptitude tests and the cup/saucer question where kids from well off white families would know that cup and saucer go together, but poor minority kids had probably never encountered a saucer in their life.
Re:Visualizing the solution...
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As someone who used to find it fun to grab Mensa intelligence tests and search for "alternate correct answers" or "arguably ambiguous questions" I can assure you this sort of thing happens all the time... Take a question from their website sample test for example:
Which word of four letters can be added to the front of the following words to create other English words?
CARD BOX CODE BAG HASTE
Well, "HASTE" pretty much gives the answer away. But wait, what is a postbox, postcode or postbag? I could make a guess as to what they are, but I've never heard ANY of them used before. As it turns out, all three of those terms are exactly what they sound like, but are generally used in the U.K. or Australia. For example "postcode" did not enter Webster's American Dictionary until 1967. I filed this one under "biased towards other nationality or experience with foreign lingo".
It's hard to create an unbiased test intelligence, I agree. But I do expect those who write the tests to be smarter than the average genius and actively looking for slip ups like words that are colloquialisms of smaller areas or lists that contain one symmetric and one prime number and asking which is unique.
Re:Mensa is right based on Ockhams razor
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Well, according to Ockhams razor I would argue that Mensa is right. The concept of symmetry is much simpler than the concept of prime numbers.
That really isn't fair because the question has taken shapes which we recognize as symbols representing an abstract concept and changed their meaning into "simple shapes". It would be natural for someone to look for some unique fundamental property about one of these numbers that is not shared with the others. In this case the people writing the test should have made sure that there were zero or two or more squares, cubes, primes, numbers which can be achieved by multiplying two other numbers, etc..
Furthermore, the accuracy of that answer given depends on font and typeset. Few people write the number 8 with square symmetry by hand, and I've seen many font faces with assymetric 8's.
You said that anything that passed through the skin of an airplane would pass through you and not be dangerous.
Actually that wasn't what I said. Since these are all things based on probabilities, I used words rooted in the same. You might notice that you didn't use the same language and actually said that 2 inches of lead will protect you from gamma radiation when, of course, a high enough level of gamma radiation would find that just a pebble in the road.
Gamma radiation will only hurt you if it gives up some of its energy into your tissue, and that will only happen if it collides with an electron shell of some tissue. It's a probability game between the size of the electron shell and the wavelength of the photon. X-rays have a longer wavelength and are less likely to pass through you without hitting something.
My argument is roentgen for roentgen, X-rays are more dangerous to humans than the higher energy forms of radiation piercing the airplane's skin.
According to the Southern Illinois University Center for Environmental and Health Science:
Units of radiation exposure: "It is the energy of ionizing radiation that causes damage to biological tissue. If radiation passes straight through tissue without giving up any of its energy, it will do no damage."
Why don't you break down your rebuttal (or lack thereof) further?
Are you implying that gamma radiation passes through lead and concrete but not through bone? Or are you implying that gamma radiation can pass through you and still do damage?
You know... I have heard this sort of line time and again, and frankly I'm quite sick of it (I'm not attacking you, I'm attacking the person in the story who made the comment)...
Not all radiation is the same!
I'm tired of hearing "Oh you are exposed to more radiation on a trip from L.A. to New York than from getting an X-Ray"... Oh REALLY... Tell you what, let's put a piece of aircraft aluminum in front of your film and see if you can expose through it... What? You can't? What if you set it really high? X-Rays don't penetrate aluminum very well? I see...
I know this isn't exactly what was said here, but... X-ray radiation is used because it is the right energy level to be blocked in different amounts by different body tissues. When we say "blocked" what we mean is "the energy of the X-ray is absorbed by your tissues". X-rays will ionize chemicals in your cells, and that can cause cancer. When a high energy photon smashes into your bodily tissue and is stopped, that's when the potential for bad things happens.
Most of the ionizing radiation coming from sunshine doesn't make it to the ground. Most of what makes it to us from sunshine is the longer wavelength stuff, like infrared, visible light and UV which don't have don't have much ionization potential (well, the UV has some, as is well documented) and the very short wavelength stuff that would most likely pass right through you since 50 miles of atmosphere hadn't stopped it already. The radiation you receive on a flight from L.A. to New York had a short enough wavelength to penetrate the aircraft's aluminum skin, chances are pretty good it will pass through you without stopping.
I do not think this thing is safe... and what really irritates me is it will be YEARS before a cancer caused by it shows up, so it will be impossible to hold them accountable.
*sigh*. I'm going to be flamed to death on this one, but I'm still signing my name. I'm just going to pull on my asbestos underwear
In other words, you call me a troll but are basically saying you know you're trolling... Very chic.
Since the majority of your post basically says "they're bad people!" and doesn't address the topic, I think I've provided more reply than the post merits.
Could you give an in depth description of what filter was used, and what filtering level it was on? I did a research report on this very subject using numbers provided by the ALA and companies providing internet filters both to home computers and library/corporate settings. We got figures for both false negative and false positive results.
Your scenario indicates that you have experience with a single piece of software, which sounds as though it were on a liberal security setting and are using that one point of reference to draw a conclusion to the general state of filtering software.
The numbers thes ALA and filtering software people were giving indicated on very high filtering levels, it was common to see 20% of all reproductive health sites blocked. Not very rare. It doesn't sound as though the filters you used were "very strict".
If her last resort in a possibly life threatening situtation is internet access at a library then either your scenario is absurd or just around the corner this girl will hit another terrible situation that something as small as internet filters will destroy her life.
Information is usually the first thing someone turns to. The internet contains a lot of information. The internet will not usually be her last resort, it will be her first. How many times has something as little as information destroyed things?
You are missing the larger picture, like locks, they keep honest people honest, it just helps. Believe or not everyone has thought of stealing at some point in their life, but they didn't because society setup strucutres and rules that helped them mentally overcome that desire.
Yes, but what lock was put on things to help people avoid the desire to steal? If strictures and rules were all it took, there would be need for a mandate for a "filter". Simply saying "don't surf porn or we'll revoke your internet use privelege" would have been adequate.
A child that had no desire nor intention of looking up smut online that accidently bumps into for whatever reasons then becomes weakened
Weakened how? Can you point to some tangible research on this or are you speculating? My own non-scientific experience with tween and now teen neices has indicated that when they see something like porn their response is usually "eewe" or "gross" or "yuck" and they back up to the previous page they were looking at. They didn't seem particularly weakened, and they rarely ever ran into porn even though they had free run of the internet.
This is a common illusion in our society that keeping things secret is somehow better for the girl. This is propogated by people who want to hide what they do, if people would come out, admit their mistakes and move on, then perhaps children would have better roll models to follow and this would be non-issue entirely.
What do you think would happen if everyone in the young woman's high school (or maybe Junior High) new she had V.D.? Since keeping it a secret only provides an illusion of betterment, what would result would come that would be better for her?
Teenagers are often a very cruel bunch. She'd be called all sorts of derogatory names: slut, whore, filth, infected, etc.. Rejection and persecution by peers is the sort of thing that makes young women suicidal. I have trouble seeing this as better, but according to you keeping it is only an illusion that keeping it private is better. Explain it to me.
Healthy kindergartners with knowledge of adult perversion makes it harder for them to act normal in school. Constant subjection to this kind of thing can lead to suicides, depression and numerous other mentally debilitating states.
This again sounds like speculation. Was this fact brought up in the court case? It would have crushed the ALA's case. You would think this would be front and center in the legislation and defending the legislation against the civil libertarians. Do you have a reference to a peer reviewed research study on this matter?
If you really think porn is good for kids, this discussion is pointless...
I don't think porn is good for kids. I do think that censorship is bad for society, and I think kids are generally uninterested by porn and given the choice would just ignore it. This concept of "we're okay with a little censorship because it serves the greater good" is a dangerous slippery slope.
If there would be repercussions to your mental health if someone noticed you getting a book and reading it, would that present a deterrent to getting the book? It's a lot easier to browse information anonymously on the internet than in the library.
Are you seriously trying to make the argument that internet filters will cause a girl to be permenantly disabled by an STD?
Although it is uncommon for Syphillis to progress to the point of heart disease or brain damage, it is not uncommon for diseases like chlamydia to progress to infertility, particularly among poor minorities.
What would she have done 3 years ago when her library didn't even have internet... sounds stupid to blame a small limitation on very new point of information access as the cause of _any_ social problems.
What my argument is, is that the internet can provide superior privacy and anonymity to these young women that would embolden them to do the research before a permanent problem sets in.
I have 3 kids, I don't want them going to the library and seeing some pervert surfing porn.
Unless you missed reading the ruling in this case, you should already know that is an invalid argument. The law protects children surfing the net from porn, the pervert can still ask to have the filters removed. Furthermore, it is known that no filter blocks all porn.
Things that are illegal in public like indecent exposure should be illegal in _public_ libraries.
Should a book on indecent exposure be illegal in a public library?
Here's one for you, look at the libraries with no computers, they don't get any internet at all. So why all the complaints about a system that at it's core is targeting the future mental health of our entire country?
You need to re-word that question. I don't believe either system is targeting mental health, and can't figure out which one you are referring to.
So what if it's not perfect, nothing is, but at least they are trying to do something good for kids...
There are a myriad of better alternatives than legislating what children have access to. You're a parent, how about an agreement between you and the library about what your children see. Or do you think the government knows better than you do?
Besides, I bet their's dozens of _books_ on STD's... Also if her embarassement supercedes her ability to care for her health, then she will have a very difficult life lesson to learn regardless of her information resources... Even if she finds out she has an STD from her boyfriend, she still has to tell someone.... Is she going to go to the doctor by her self? Then what difference would it make if she read about the STD from a book or on the net?
No matter what happens, she has access to the information, or at least to people that do, regardless of net access...
It seems rather judgemental of you to decide what lessons she learns and when. Modesty? Embarrassment? Too bad! You have decided that she either lose them both or suffer infertility. Thems the breaks. Do you understand that young women in this situation have a lot of mental anguish to deal with?
Yes they will have to go to a doctor... but once they know the procedure, the details of the exam, and the importance of dealing with it early, they will be more likely to find a free clinic to go to. The internet gives them the ability to do this in a way that can be instantly updated (a book from 1956 on STDs probably will not help) and doesn't involve some other cruel girls noticing her taking the STD book off the book shelf and spreading rumors about her.
Gauranteeing her access to private, anonymous information is the mental health service to the public.
I understand that some sites get blocked that aren't pornographic, but so what.
So what? Let's say that some young woman believes her boyfriend has given her an STD. She is poor and cannot afford a computer at home, so she goes to research female sexual health online in the library. Unfortunately such a pornographic site as this is blocked, the young woman would have to go and ask the librarian to remove filtering so she can research her "problem". Doubly unfortunate is that the stigma of having an STD is so great, she is too embarrassed to ask because she doesn't want to direct any attention towards herself (she feels bad enough already). Thus she doesn't do the research, and it turns out she has syphillis. By the time the disease is caught, serious heart complications she will live with for the rest of her life have set in.
A simple course of antibiotics could have killed the bacteria long before this, of course... but she didn't know that because there were filters on the computers, and those filters could not distinguish between a picture of a woman trying to arouse men by exhibiting her vagina, and a picture of a woman with chancres on her vagina.
*This* is the constitutionally protected speech the filters block that we are worried about. I'd rather have 100 perverts view pictures of vile pornography than have 1 young woman end up sterile or worse because she did not have access to information on reproductive health. That is why I am opposed to filters.
I think your pdf viewer automatically detects and removes the word "Plaintiff's". Because what you said is true if you insert "Plaintiff's".
He is prohibited from trading/transmitting Plaintiff's copyrighted works.
The defendant shall not engage in or sell software that encourages copying of Plaintiff's copyrighted works.
He is obligated to implement measures which attempt to prevent the illegal copying of RIAA's (well their member company's) copyrighted materials. And if RIAA ever implements a system to prevent finding of this copyrighted material, he must implement it in his phynd service.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, not mention really, really bad physics.
Col. Tigh: We're dangerously low on fuel
Cmdr. Adama: Bring the fleet to a halt.
Uh... yeah... must be because of all that interstellar drag. The next line should have been:
Col. Tigh: I said WE'RE LOW ON FUEL.
But in all honesty, I was so young when Galactica was made, I really just watched it because I liked to pretend I was Boxie... a six yaron old snot nosed brat living on the coolest ship in a rag-tag fugitive fleet, fleeing the Cylon tyranny.
You have reacted to the post without having read and understood what he was saying. You've greatly distorted what was said and essentially changed the subject.
He was stating historical perspective, and concluding that relationships in our time are substantially unlike they had been in the past.
You did not refute any of what he said, but committed a laundry list of logical and argumentative fallacies.
Man, I wish I had my Tolstoy with me... there's a section at the end of Anna Karenina
Try here
Project Gutenberg is your friend!
So would there be several species in a genus, or several families in a genus?
I think the poster was correct.
Oh, and it works in most CD-ROM drives that are out already.
Although I had not read the HD-Burn pitch before, the article you linked to implies ordinary CD-ROM drives cannot read the HD-Burn discs but DVD-ROM drives could if they had modified firmware (meaning essentially none of them can now).
Hot air will have lower density in a closed system
Really? Let's say we have a system that is a box 1 meter on each side with 1 gram of air in it at 0 degress C. The density of air in this closed system is 1gm^-3. Let's say we heat up the interior of the cube to 273 C. What is the density of the closed system now? Are you sure it is less? Where did the lost mass go?
It's air moving from the light side to the dark side around the edges of the foil that does the push.
Huh? If a molecule of air bounces off the light side, what would compel it to make a trip around the edge to the dark side? Some force would have to steer it "around". What is that force? This makes no sense at all.
Having it work like a jet engine makes much more sense. A molecule of air the strikes the dark side will bounce off with more energy than it originally had because the dark side is warmer and a warmer air molecule is moving faster.
One observation though is that the question itself is not numerical at all; it is meaningless mathematically speaking.
If it is meaningless, why would so many people come up with the answer "5"? It is not meaningless to ask "What property does one of these numbers not have that the others have?" That sort of pattern recognition is the heart of all sorts of analysis.
Another thing is that the for the "numerical" solution you have the burden of proof that the literal interpretation is illegal.
That is categorically incorrect. It is possible that two people starting from two different frames of reference on the same data can come to two different conclusions and both be correct. That's what the original post was saying. There is nothing invalid about "5" being an answer.
However we tend to like "5" as the answer better because of what the previous post said, it is ridiculous not to consider the numerical aspects of the numbers first, and only when no reasonable property can be found that satisfies the criteria should we consider the numbers as shapes.
Well, I am probably extrapolating it beyond what he would ever have done; but I am not the first to realize it's applicability to this type of problem.
So you are saying because numerical symbols are simpler to explain as shapes than as a field of philosophy, that any problem involving numbers should first consider their shape since any solution involving that would be simpler to explain?
No, you haven't realized a valid use of Ockham's razor. You are simply using the validity given to it, and twisting its meaning to make your argument seem more valid.
Ockham's razor, as it applies to philosophy, eliminates one of two theories trying to explain the same thing. For example, why do planets in the sky move in such a peculiar way? One theory says "the sun is at the center and we and the other 8 are going around it" the other theory spends a few pages of explanation about the earth being at the center and the planets going around it, and on another sub orbital on their major orbit... all kinds of craziness. Clearly one requires less multiplications than the other.
If you want to apply Ockham's razor here, you must have two theories explaining the same thing. But they don't. One theory says "8", the other says "5".
By your logic, 1 + 1 = X, because you can make an "X" by crossing the two shapes and it is much easier to explain two shapes overlapping than elementary arithmetic. Just because there is an easier explanation to get a different answer doesn't mean the easier explanation is right, or that Ockham's razor is in any way involved.
This is a circular argument. The whole point with the other solution is that "8" can be analyzed by just the properties of the symbol itself, and not by the properties of the mathematical abstraction. You assume it is a mathematical abstraction, and then use that assumption to prove itself.
Please quote me proving that it is a mathematical abstraction. I assume that they are numbers and not shapes and then using that assumption evaluate that one and only one is prime. But that doesn't prove that they are abstractions, merely that there is a valid answer if they are.
But the whole point with this question type is that the answer you get depend very much on what assumptions you make.
The question should be unambiguous, otherwise you are testing to see if people "think like you". If you call it an intelligence test then you must be the definition of intelligence. The question should have opened by stating that these symbols should not be interpretted as representing mathematical numbers.
The Mensa/ Ockham's razor based approach is to find the solution which makes the fewest possible assumptions.
I think you are misusing Ockham's razor. Ockham said entitites should not contain any uneccesary multiplications. Theorizing that one number is unique because it is prime and the others are not does not contain any unecessary assumptions as primality is a basic feature of certain numbers that is true of them regardless of the system used to express them.
If they are deliberately creating questions that have a "correct but not the answer we were looking for" solution, then they are knowingly creating poor tests of intelligence. What they are really looking for then is "people who think like we do" not "very intelligent people".
It's sort of like the old biased college aptitude tests and the cup/saucer question where kids from well off white families would know that cup and saucer go together, but poor minority kids had probably never encountered a saucer in their life.
As someone who used to find it fun to grab Mensa intelligence tests and search for "alternate correct answers" or "arguably ambiguous questions" I can assure you this sort of thing happens all the time... Take a question from their website sample test for example:
Which word of four letters can be added to the front of the following words to create other English words?
CARD BOX CODE BAG HASTE
Well, "HASTE" pretty much gives the answer away. But wait, what is a postbox, postcode or postbag? I could make a guess as to what they are, but I've never heard ANY of them used before. As it turns out, all three of those terms are exactly what they sound like, but are generally used in the U.K. or Australia. For example "postcode" did not enter Webster's American Dictionary until 1967. I filed this one under "biased towards other nationality or experience with foreign lingo".
It's hard to create an unbiased test intelligence, I agree. But I do expect those who write the tests to be smarter than the average genius and actively looking for slip ups like words that are colloquialisms of smaller areas or lists that contain one symmetric and one prime number and asking which is unique.
Well, according to Ockhams razor I would argue that Mensa is right. The concept of symmetry is much simpler than the concept of prime numbers.
That really isn't fair because the question has taken shapes which we recognize as symbols representing an abstract concept and changed their meaning into "simple shapes". It would be natural for someone to look for some unique fundamental property about one of these numbers that is not shared with the others. In this case the people writing the test should have made sure that there were zero or two or more squares, cubes, primes, numbers which can be achieved by multiplying two other numbers, etc..
Furthermore, the accuracy of that answer given depends on font and typeset. Few people write the number 8 with square symmetry by hand, and I've seen many font faces with assymetric 8's.
(e) is as good, if not better, an answer as (f).
You said that anything that passed through the skin of an airplane would pass through you and not be dangerous.
Actually that wasn't what I said. Since these are all things based on probabilities, I used words rooted in the same. You might notice that you didn't use the same language and actually said that 2 inches of lead will protect you from gamma radiation when, of course, a high enough level of gamma radiation would find that just a pebble in the road.
Gamma radiation will only hurt you if it gives up some of its energy into your tissue, and that will only happen if it collides with an electron shell of some tissue. It's a probability game between the size of the electron shell and the wavelength of the photon. X-rays have a longer wavelength and are less likely to pass through you without hitting something.
My argument is roentgen for roentgen, X-rays are more dangerous to humans than the higher energy forms of radiation piercing the airplane's skin.
According to the Southern Illinois University Center for Environmental and Health Science:
Units of radiation exposure: "It is the energy of ionizing radiation that causes damage to biological tissue. If radiation passes straight through tissue without giving up any of its energy, it will do no damage."
Why don't you break down your rebuttal (or lack thereof) further?
Are you implying that gamma radiation passes through lead and concrete but not through bone? Or are you implying that gamma radiation can pass through you and still do damage?
You know... I have heard this sort of line time and again, and frankly I'm quite sick of it (I'm not attacking you, I'm attacking the person in the story who made the comment)...
Not all radiation is the same!
I'm tired of hearing "Oh you are exposed to more radiation on a trip from L.A. to New York than from getting an X-Ray"... Oh REALLY... Tell you what, let's put a piece of aircraft aluminum in front of your film and see if you can expose through it... What? You can't? What if you set it really high? X-Rays don't penetrate aluminum very well? I see...
I know this isn't exactly what was said here, but... X-ray radiation is used because it is the right energy level to be blocked in different amounts by different body tissues. When we say "blocked" what we mean is "the energy of the X-ray is absorbed by your tissues". X-rays will ionize chemicals in your cells, and that can cause cancer. When a high energy photon smashes into your bodily tissue and is stopped, that's when the potential for bad things happens.
Most of the ionizing radiation coming from sunshine doesn't make it to the ground. Most of what makes it to us from sunshine is the longer wavelength stuff, like infrared, visible light and UV which don't have don't have much ionization potential (well, the UV has some, as is well documented) and the very short wavelength stuff that would most likely pass right through you since 50 miles of atmosphere hadn't stopped it already. The radiation you receive on a flight from L.A. to New York had a short enough wavelength to penetrate the aircraft's aluminum skin, chances are pretty good it will pass through you without stopping.
I do not think this thing is safe... and what really irritates me is it will be YEARS before a cancer caused by it shows up, so it will be impossible to hold them accountable.
*sigh*. I'm going to be flamed to death on this one, but I'm still signing my name. I'm just going to pull on my asbestos underwear
In other words, you call me a troll but are basically saying you know you're trolling... Very chic.
Since the majority of your post basically says "they're bad people!" and doesn't address the topic, I think I've provided more reply than the post merits.
Could you give an in depth description of what filter was used, and what filtering level it was on? I did a research report on this very subject using numbers provided by the ALA and companies providing internet filters both to home computers and library/corporate settings. We got figures for both false negative and false positive results.
Your scenario indicates that you have experience with a single piece of software, which sounds as though it were on a liberal security setting and are using that one point of reference to draw a conclusion to the general state of filtering software.
The numbers thes ALA and filtering software people were giving indicated on very high filtering levels, it was common to see 20% of all reproductive health sites blocked. Not very rare. It doesn't sound as though the filters you used were "very strict".
If her last resort in a possibly life threatening situtation is internet access at a library then either your scenario is absurd or just around the corner this girl will hit another terrible situation that something as small as internet filters will destroy her life.
Information is usually the first thing someone turns to. The internet contains a lot of information. The internet will not usually be her last resort, it will be her first. How many times has something as little as information destroyed things?
You are missing the larger picture, like locks, they keep honest people honest, it just helps. Believe or not everyone has thought of stealing at some point in their life, but they didn't because society setup strucutres and rules that helped them mentally overcome that desire.
Yes, but what lock was put on things to help people avoid the desire to steal? If strictures and rules were all it took, there would be need for a mandate for a "filter". Simply saying "don't surf porn or we'll revoke your internet use privelege" would have been adequate.
A child that had no desire nor intention of looking up smut online that accidently bumps into for whatever reasons then becomes weakened
Weakened how? Can you point to some tangible research on this or are you speculating? My own non-scientific experience with tween and now teen neices has indicated that when they see something like porn their response is usually "eewe" or "gross" or "yuck" and they back up to the previous page they were looking at. They didn't seem particularly weakened, and they rarely ever ran into porn even though they had free run of the internet.
This is a common illusion in our society that keeping things secret is somehow better for the girl. This is propogated by people who want to hide what they do, if people would come out, admit their mistakes and move on, then perhaps children would have better roll models to follow and this would be non-issue entirely.
What do you think would happen if everyone in the young woman's high school (or maybe Junior High) new she had V.D.? Since keeping it a secret only provides an illusion of betterment, what would result would come that would be better for her?
Teenagers are often a very cruel bunch. She'd be called all sorts of derogatory names: slut, whore, filth, infected, etc.. Rejection and persecution by peers is the sort of thing that makes young women suicidal. I have trouble seeing this as better, but according to you keeping it is only an illusion that keeping it private is better. Explain it to me.
Healthy kindergartners with knowledge of adult perversion makes it harder for them to act normal in school. Constant subjection to this kind of thing can lead to suicides, depression and numerous other mentally debilitating states.
This again sounds like speculation. Was this fact brought up in the court case? It would have crushed the ALA's case. You would think this would be front and center in the legislation and defending the legislation against the civil libertarians. Do you have a reference to a peer reviewed research study on this matter?
If you really think porn is good for kids, this discussion is pointless...
I don't think porn is good for kids. I do think that censorship is bad for society, and I think kids are generally uninterested by porn and given the choice would just ignore it. This concept of "we're okay with a little censorship because it serves the greater good" is a dangerous slippery slope.
If there would be repercussions to your mental health if someone noticed you getting a book and reading it, would that present a deterrent to getting the book? It's a lot easier to browse information anonymously on the internet than in the library.
Are you seriously trying to make the argument that internet filters will cause a girl to be permenantly disabled by an STD?
Although it is uncommon for Syphillis to progress to the point of heart disease or brain damage, it is not uncommon for diseases like chlamydia to progress to infertility, particularly among poor minorities.
What would she have done 3 years ago when her library didn't even have internet... sounds stupid to blame a small limitation on very new point of information access as the cause of _any_ social problems.
What my argument is, is that the internet can provide superior privacy and anonymity to these young women that would embolden them to do the research before a permanent problem sets in.
I have 3 kids, I don't want them going to the library and seeing some pervert surfing porn.
Unless you missed reading the ruling in this case, you should already know that is an invalid argument. The law protects children surfing the net from porn, the pervert can still ask to have the filters removed. Furthermore, it is known that no filter blocks all porn.
Things that are illegal in public like indecent exposure should be illegal in _public_ libraries.
Should a book on indecent exposure be illegal in a public library?
Here's one for you, look at the libraries with no computers, they don't get any internet at all. So why all the complaints about a system that at it's core is targeting the future mental health of our entire country?
You need to re-word that question. I don't believe either system is targeting mental health, and can't figure out which one you are referring to.
So what if it's not perfect, nothing is, but at least they are trying to do something good for kids...
There are a myriad of better alternatives than legislating what children have access to. You're a parent, how about an agreement between you and the library about what your children see. Or do you think the government knows better than you do?
Besides, I bet their's dozens of _books_ on STD's... Also if her embarassement supercedes her ability to care for her health, then she will have a very difficult life lesson to learn regardless of her information resources... Even if she finds out she has an STD from her boyfriend, she still has to tell someone.... Is she going to go to the doctor by her self? Then what difference would it make if she read about the STD from a book or on the net?
No matter what happens, she has access to the information, or at least to people that do, regardless of net access...
It seems rather judgemental of you to decide what lessons she learns and when. Modesty? Embarrassment? Too bad! You have decided that she either lose them both or suffer infertility. Thems the breaks. Do you understand that young women in this situation have a lot of mental anguish to deal with?
Yes they will have to go to a doctor... but once they know the procedure, the details of the exam, and the importance of dealing with it early, they will be more likely to find a free clinic to go to. The internet gives them the ability to do this in a way that can be instantly updated (a book from 1956 on STDs probably will not help) and doesn't involve some other cruel girls noticing her taking the STD book off the book shelf and spreading rumors about her.
Gauranteeing her access to private, anonymous information is the mental health service to the public.
I understand that some sites get blocked that aren't pornographic, but so what.
So what? Let's say that some young woman believes her boyfriend has given her an STD. She is poor and cannot afford a computer at home, so she goes to research female sexual health online in the library. Unfortunately such a pornographic site as this is blocked, the young woman would have to go and ask the librarian to remove filtering so she can research her "problem". Doubly unfortunate is that the stigma of having an STD is so great, she is too embarrassed to ask because she doesn't want to direct any attention towards herself (she feels bad enough already). Thus she doesn't do the research, and it turns out she has syphillis. By the time the disease is caught, serious heart complications she will live with for the rest of her life have set in.
A simple course of antibiotics could have killed the bacteria long before this, of course... but she didn't know that because there were filters on the computers, and those filters could not distinguish between a picture of a woman trying to arouse men by exhibiting her vagina, and a picture of a woman with chancres on her vagina.
*This* is the constitutionally protected speech the filters block that we are worried about. I'd rather have 100 perverts view pictures of vile pornography than have 1 young woman end up sterile or worse because she did not have access to information on reproductive health. That is why I am opposed to filters.
Ahhh, yes...
Third, litigation takes a lot of time.
I think your pdf viewer automatically detects and removes the word "Plaintiff's". Because what you said is true if you insert "Plaintiff's".
He is prohibited from trading/transmitting Plaintiff's copyrighted works.
The defendant shall not engage in or sell software that encourages copying of Plaintiff's copyrighted works.
He is obligated to implement measures which attempt to prevent the illegal copying of RIAA's (well their member company's) copyrighted materials. And if RIAA ever implements a system to prevent finding of this copyrighted material, he must implement it in his phynd service.