"the car will also take pictures when it determines the atmosphere
inside is a happy one"
Location: Leaving vet's office.
Occupants: Driver -- sobbing uncontrolably
Canine animal -- wrapped in a blanket, not moving
Facts: Vets help animals. Animals in pain do not rest peacefully.
Humans sometimes cry when happy/relieved of stress. A hurt animal is
a cause of stress.
Analysis: The vet has healed the animal. The human is sobbing with joy.
Evaluation: Tell the driver a knock-knock joke and take picture to
remember this happy occasion.
While I've over-exaggerated the capabilities and intelligence of the
car, it does highlight an important issue to keep in mind. As we make
products that start to emulate human behavior and emotions, it makes
it possible for that product to hurt us through its lack of true
empathy.
If, say, I were to find out that I was dying of cancer, I wouldn't
care that my toaster oven continued to sit on the counter and toast
toast -- it's just a machine. But if it were to ask my how my day was
going and then respond to the cancer news with "Gee, that's
interesting! Have a great day!", I'd end up forfeiting the security
deposit on my apartment due to the damage caused by smashing that damn
insensitive, smarmy piece of crap against the wall until its
electronic shrieks turned into whimpering beeps.
"I've been trying to submit (what I consider to be) a bug to CERT
that allows spammers to KNOW if an account is alive, and being
checked. All a spamer has to do is include a 1-pixel image in the
email"
Sounds like a standard email web bug to me. CERT might be ignoring
you, not because it isn't a problem, but because it's already a known
issue. A quick google search on '"web
bugs" email' gives several thousands hits. There's also been some
web bug coverage on Slashdot -- I'm fairly sure that I first heard
about them either on here or in comp.risks.
"I have never seen the name "elmegil" in use in any way by anyone
but myself. QED."
I'm honestly at a loss to explain that. It doesn't seem to be on any
of the dictionary lists I have and even a google search on it is
relatively sparse. The closest thing I can think of would be a
spammer using terms picked up on the web to populate their wordlist.
Still, I admit that it's very much a stretch of the imagination.
Even so, I would certainly feel better if someone were to do the
"unused account spam test" with an account name that is listed
absolutely nowhere and conforms to the traditional standards for a
good password. However, in the absence of such a test being done, the
evidence certainly points toward Microsoft being at fault.
"Granted there are the samana islands but honestly?"
I found matches for 'samana' in 'net/inet-machines.Z',
'places/World.factbook.Z', 'random/Ethnologue.gz', and
'american/dic-0294.tar.gz'. I believe I downloaded these
wordlists from sable.ox.ac.uk, which no longer seems to be providing
them.
Re:if they really wanted to stop spam
on
MSN Forces Outlook POP
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
"I signed up for hotmail before MS ever took it over. I never used
the email address in any form online, never even had any mail to
it."
How guessable was the address? I've seen spammers try dictionary-based email guessing attacks on our work domain, which only has a few dozen email addresses. With hotmail, the hit rate for a dictionary-based attack has to be amazing. It might even be worthwhile for spammers to try suffixing up to two digits on each dictionary "word". The entire process would be not unlike trying to crack unix passwords, only much more effective.
It gets even worse, of course. Once a single spammer gets a hit on your address, he can turn around and sell your address to more spammers. The number of spammers with your address will only increase.
"As I see it, any kind of DoS attack on one of our users, will effectively be an attack on our gateway/firewall, and our commonly shared bandwith."
Usually, yes, however you need to be careful about sweeping generalizations. It looks like the RIAA is trying to fill up the upload slots on the P2P "server" in your neighborhood -- usually this is only 10 or so connections. So your neighbor's P2P client sees it as 10 out of the maximum 10 upload connections being in use (100% utilization), but those connections may only be running at 10 bytes per second (or faster if there's a minimum speed threshold). As a result, your firewall only sees it as minimal bandwidth and connection utilization, even though it's clogging up the machine further along. I could, however, be misinterpreting the RIAA's plan.
Still, I think it's a stupid thing to do overall. But it's just not stupid in this one small way. Regardless, people should try baiting them with songs that only superficially appear to be illegal material (if the service only checks filenames and sizes) -- then they not only have a decent legal standing with the RIAA DoSes them, but the RIAA has no means to counter-attack.
"I realized those telemarketers are often people struggling in
dead-end jobs for lousy pay, and yelling at them makes their already
dismal days that much worse."
Of course someone calling me to waste my time, requiring that I stop
what I'm doing, walk across the apartment, and answer the phone, helps
make my already dismal day that much worse, too.
"This consent is not transferable to any other entity; if a list is
sold to another entity (person, corporation, or whatever), that entity
may send a single notice asking for permission, but no more until
permission is gained. Failure to respond to that notice must be taken
as denial of permission."
Unfortunately, this clause would open the flood gates for a lot of
spamming. Let's imagine a fictional world where the unsubscribe
addresses for every spammer actually work. Now let's imagine that
company A acquires your email address:
Company A: Can we spam you?
*Company A sells their list to Company B and Company C.*
You (to Company A): No!
*Company B sells their list to Company D and Company E.*
*Company C sells their list to Company F.*
Company B: Can we--
You (to Company B): No!
Company C: Can we spam you?
Company D: Can we spam you?
Company E: Can we spam you?
Company F: Can we spam you?
As it is, I receive numerous spams that read at the bottom, "This is a one time mailing. Nothing is necessary to remove you from our mailing list." But it fails to address the fact that the email address in question is on 50 billion copies of an outdated list. I receive over 20 spams per week to an old address that was only ever listed in our WHOIS information (and hasn't been listed for over a year). The problem is that just skimming spams seems to indicate that it's a new company doing it each time.
There is not a man (or woman?) on the planet that can read the bible
(intentionally or unintentionally) and not be affected by it.
Religion is the greatest threat to society today. The deep-rooted
effects of these morals and values have yet to be fully understood,
but it has already been proven that most fanatics, suicide bombers,
terrorists, and inquisitioners either were motivated or inspired by
religion before actually committing acts of violence and murder.
I don't doubt there is a link between pornography and sex offenders.
However, for your bishop to flat-out blame it for all sex crimes,
without any supporting evidence, is akin to blaming religion for the
acts of religious nutjobs who don't represent the mainstream ideals of
that religion.
"With so many other more effective and simple methods of encryption
(read: PGP), why would anyone go to all the trouble?"
You're comparing apples and oranges. Steganography isn't encryption
-- it's concealment. If I send a PGP-encrypted message, regardless of
whether or not they can break it, every eavesdropper knows that I just
sent a PGP-encrypted message. If I use stenography to hide a message,
an eavesdropper might miss the message, but would be able to decode it
if it's discovered. If I use both, it's a win-win situation.
"I'm sorry, but if a company fucked me over by not giving me my
paycheck, and not offering an explanation, things are either going to
start disappearing from the office,"
However, if the company's going under anyway, then all you're really doing is stealing for the company's other creditors (including the other employees), rather than from the company itself. Also, I suggest you RTFA with regard to the leasing company issue -- in many cases, you're just stealing from the company that leased the item to your company.
Did anyone else notice that when they preempted Cowboy Bebop earlier, they actually replaced it with something that could be construed as worse?
During one of the Cowboy Bebop time slots last week, they showed some classic Friz Freleng cartoons. Right after the one with Bugs Bunny playing a Franz Liszt composition on the piano (Rhaspody Rabbit?), they featured one with people building a skyscraper in time to music. As the building reached completion, a flag was raised at the top that read "Umpire State". Then one of the characters slammed the door at the bottom, and the entire thing came tumbling down into a pile of bricks.
Talk about a mistake -- it's one thing to continue showing previously scheduled Cowboy Bebop episodes despite the tragedy (something that I would support), but it's a whole new level of tastelessness to go out of your way to preempt the existing programming and show what they did.
"However, when was the last time you actually went to a porn page
for stock quotes, news headlines, driving directions or hotel
accomodations, etc?"
You haven't heard of Naked News? (Warning: nudity -- I'm not sure how bad the main page is, since I'm using lynx at the moment. But it's not a hoax.) It's big enough that it actually got regular television news coverage when they were looking for male anchors to balance out the cast.
"I was talking about censorship in the harsh, final definition -
its banned and therefore very hard/impossible to access."
Well, in that sense, you're correct. It's not something that abridges
free speech. However, I still feel that it's an important issue, and
the term 'censorship' is still accurate.
"But in this case, ClearChannel (who i`ve never heard of before
now) seem to be censoring themselves."
The own a lot of radio stations. According to this Salon article from April, they owned 1,200 stations, and they've got representation in 247 of the 250 largest markets. In my local market, I'm aware of at least 4 Clear Channel stations (2 of them talk radio where "Clear Channel" was mentioned regularly, 1 of them I discovered only recently when they mentioned using news coverage from one of their "Clear Channel sister stations", and 1 I discovered just now from the Salon article), and I suspect there are more as it's not always obvious that it's a Clear Channel station.
So, as a result, they're censorsing a non-trivial portion of American airwaves. It may be self-imposed censorship, but it's not immune to scrutiny, especially by people who listen to the stations in question.
"The entire list seems to be, much like the FBI's monitoring
program, generated from keywords."
On the other hand, a keyword could be all it takes for a DJ to
generate some completely tasteless, pseudo-innocuous on-air comment
that would get a station in deep shit.
Imagine, for example:
"We here at KPX wish to express our deepest regret over what happened
in the WTC incident. I know I, personally, would give my life if it
meant saving the victims of the horrible tragedy. (pause) And now
Dave Matthews' Band, 'Crash into Me'."
Still, I think in a number of cases, Clear Channel has erred on the
side of raging stupidity ("Imagine" is especially appropriate right
now, with all the racial violence going on in the US; "Walk like an
Egyptian" seems to be a racist choice of equating any and all
Middle-Easterners with the terrorists).
"Yes. Thats exactly it. Otherwise another company/individual can do
it."
No. Your repeated postings seem to indicate an inability to differentiate between "censorship of the American public as a whole" (for example, the FCC declaring that you can't show bare breasts on broadcast television) and "censorship by a corporate entity of its own content" (for example, Fox Family channel voluntarily censoring the word "damn" as part of the more family friendly programming they want to produce).
Now, just because something isn't government censorship doesn't mean it's not censorship. However, just because something isn't government censorship doesn't mean it's a good thing. It also doesn't mean it's a bad thing. Each case must be examined on its own merits. Also, it being a bad thing is not synonymous with illegal. For example, if a given publisher chose to stop carrying stories on Linux, that wouldn't be illegal (as far as I know), but it would certainly be a bad thing. They would receive certainly criticism (rightfully so, IMO) for their non-illegal censorship.
Of course all that being said, things get a little more interesting. Clear Channel isn't on equal footing with other companies. Like Microsoft, they enjoy a rather large market share. Furthermore, they've been granted the right to use a limited, public resource (part of the radio spectrum) by the government. This places there actions under much greater scrutiny. Unlike, say, the widget manufacturing industry, a new-comer can't decide to pop into the radio market and start playing the songs in question. As such, their situation is closer to government censorship. However, regardless, their overall actions are still censorship and should be scrutinized by consumers.
"Supposedly Win95 shipped with something like 50K unresolved
bugs"
Which is a meaningless figure since a bug can be anything from the
rather important "Win95 fails to boot on Tuesdays" to the less
important "Win95 looks horrible in 16 color mode" to the trivial/inane
"Win95 lacks a space invaders-type game".
When your bug system covers everything from show stoppers to feature
requests, the bug count becomes fairly meaningless, other than as a
source of potential work for the developers.
"Perhaps they pulled it because they studied the demograph that watches and it decided maybe they should be something a little more constructive, like watching the news?"
It is not Cartoon Network's place to tell me what I should be watching. Futhermore, I've seen the news. The world trade centers have been hit by a terrorist attack. I know this. The pentagon has been hit by a terrorist attack. I know this, too. Another plane went down in Pennsylvania when the hostages bravely fought back. I also know this. The FBI is rounding up suspected terrorists. Yet another thing I know. Finally, rescue crews are working night and day, on little-to-no sleep, to save as many survivors from the collapsed building as possible. Like all the previous things, I know this.
So I can tune into the news and watch the plane crash footage for the 2,749th time while analysts argue over the causes and such, or I can try and partially move on with my life. Forget what happened? Certainly not. Stop obsessing over what happened? Yes.
Entertainment television is one of the few escapes from the non-stop barage of WTC information that I'm being hit with. Taking that away from me only serves to further my cynicism and desensitization. Thank you, mass media, for trying to turn me into a cold, unfeeling monster.
"There was something in the preview blurb about Zim getting paranoid after seeing the FBI warning on a videotape."
That seemed to be everyone's first thoughts on another message board where this was discussed. The odd thing is that they also preempted the showing earlier today (Sunday, 1pm) -- it was supposed to be the "Parent Teacher Night; Walk of Doom". The latter part does involve Zim wandering around a large city (and even going up in one of the skyscrapers), but I don't see any reason to pull it.
"I also noticed lots of other self censorship on the movie channels. You'll never see Fight Club air on TV ever again. Deterrence, a movie about a U.S.-Iraqi conflict (where Bagdad gets nuked at the end) was pulled as was Showtime's version of On the Beach."
That really, really sucks. Deterrence was a great movie that makes you think about a number of the issues. Several times, during discussions on the WTC issue, it would come up as a movie that should be watched.
"Besides- who says the government CAN"T break them already?"
The fact that they're passing legislation to add mandatory backdoors is a pretty big clue that they probably can't break some crypto already. A known backdoor significantly decreases confidence in a crypto-system and will cause the bad guys to be more vague and/or use the uncrackable but less convenient "one time pad".
"1) 3D fighting games, 2) 3D racing games, 3) 3D shooting
games"
What it really boils down to is a single category of "games which have
a physical arcade advantage over home game systems". Fighting games
-- two joysticks and a steady stream of opponents. Racing games --
steering wheel, pedals, and (sometimes) movement of the entire game.
Shooting games -- dual guns with better performance than home systems
(continuous tracking versus tracking when someone shoots).
Now that home systems can generally compete with the big boys as far
as graphics go, it's really just about the peripherals.
"Who cares if it lacks some whiz-bang feature that most people
hardly use, if it costs nothing?"
Are we talking about the same StarOffice here? The copy I've had the
gross misfortune of using (version 5.2 -- the latest version, AFAIK)
possess such useless features as:
A help-agent window that will not close when I click its little 'X' -- the best I can do is minimize it and shove the title-bar mostly off-screen.
A user-interface that duplicates the Windows desktop for no good reason
A built-in web browser -- at least MS has the excuse that all they're doing is providing a few hooks to IE
But wait! That's not all. You also get:
A level of stability that makes Microsoft Office look damn good in comparison
Mediocre support for Office document formats (admittedly, this is a tricky proposition, but it's also the one reason I actually use StarOffice)
Random interface bugs that'll make you yell, scream, and curse
"there are many artificial systems designed to interact with humans
even now that fool humans."
The point of the Loebner test (that yearly, gimmicky, Turing-inspired
spectacle that purports to be engaging in a Turing test) is to fool
humans. A number of people in the AI field consider the Loebner test
a joke. It has as much to do with true AI, as Battlebots has to do
with hard-core robotics. That isn't to say it's not fun, and that
isn't to say some interesting ideas don't come out of it, but for the
most part, it's the AI-equivilant of over-glorified RC cars, rather
than the AI-equivilant of Mars rovers.
The point of the Turing test, on the other hand, is almost more of
just a definition of intelligence. It's trying to describe a machine
being capable of engaging in the type of dialogue that a human can
engage in (which involves being able to learn new concepts, discuss
philosophical issues, and so forth). It isn't trying to describe a
machine that uses a few pre-programmed catch phrases and algorithms
(such as Eliza's ever popular "swap first and second person and
rephrase it as a question") to make people think it's aware.
"Are we taking potshots at MS for absolutely no reason now?"
I think the point is that if you were to make a list of people who
could afford to plop down $80 million for a plane without batting an
eyelash, and then were to sort the list by order of name recognition,
Bill Gates would be at the top of that list. BFD -- Slashdot took a
horrible, horrible potshot at Bill by implying that he's rich. Next
they'll start accusing Stephen Hawking of understanding physics.
I don't think medical radiation is quite the same thing -- you don't have private companies with zero accountability manipulating the effects of medical radiation to push their own political agendas.
In contrast, a so-called "anti-pornography" filter can (and in many cases does) delibrately censor sites containing information that is critical of the company producing the filter (Peacefire, anyway?) or that focuses on gay rights (a non-pornographic issue that is contrary to the religious-oriented nature of some of the filter companies). This same material, if presented in book form, would most likely not be blocked.
Futhermore, there have been cases where "anti-pornography" filters have been found to block the sites of various politicians. Whether on purpose or accidental, this underscores just how drastic the results of giving carte blanche censorship power to a private company can be.
Overall, we have a hard enough time trying to define pornography in a regular, open context. To just hand this decision off to a private company with no oversight and less regulation than a corner hotdog vendor.
Slashdot Mirror
Location: Leaving vet's office.
Occupants: Driver -- sobbing uncontrolably
Canine animal -- wrapped in a blanket, not moving
Facts: Vets help animals. Animals in pain do not rest peacefully. Humans sometimes cry when happy/relieved of stress. A hurt animal is a cause of stress.
Analysis: The vet has healed the animal. The human is sobbing with joy.
Evaluation: Tell the driver a knock-knock joke and take picture to remember this happy occasion.
While I've over-exaggerated the capabilities and intelligence of the car, it does highlight an important issue to keep in mind. As we make products that start to emulate human behavior and emotions, it makes it possible for that product to hurt us through its lack of true empathy.
If, say, I were to find out that I was dying of cancer, I wouldn't care that my toaster oven continued to sit on the counter and toast toast -- it's just a machine. But if it were to ask my how my day was going and then respond to the cancer news with "Gee, that's interesting! Have a great day!", I'd end up forfeiting the security deposit on my apartment due to the damage caused by smashing that damn insensitive, smarmy piece of crap against the wall until its electronic shrieks turned into whimpering beeps.
Sounds like a standard email web bug to me. CERT might be ignoring you, not because it isn't a problem, but because it's already a known issue. A quick google search on '"web bugs" email' gives several thousands hits. There's also been some web bug coverage on Slashdot -- I'm fairly sure that I first heard about them either on here or in comp.risks.
I'm honestly at a loss to explain that. It doesn't seem to be on any of the dictionary lists I have and even a google search on it is relatively sparse. The closest thing I can think of would be a spammer using terms picked up on the web to populate their wordlist. Still, I admit that it's very much a stretch of the imagination.
Even so, I would certainly feel better if someone were to do the "unused account spam test" with an account name that is listed absolutely nowhere and conforms to the traditional standards for a good password. However, in the absence of such a test being done, the evidence certainly points toward Microsoft being at fault.
I found matches for 'samana' in 'net/inet-machines.Z', 'places/World.factbook.Z', 'random/Ethnologue.gz', and 'american/dic-0294.tar.gz'. I believe I downloaded these wordlists from sable.ox.ac.uk, which no longer seems to be providing them.
How guessable was the address? I've seen spammers try dictionary-based email guessing attacks on our work domain, which only has a few dozen email addresses. With hotmail, the hit rate for a dictionary-based attack has to be amazing. It might even be worthwhile for spammers to try suffixing up to two digits on each dictionary "word". The entire process would be not unlike trying to crack unix passwords, only much more effective.
It gets even worse, of course. Once a single spammer gets a hit on your address, he can turn around and sell your address to more spammers. The number of spammers with your address will only increase.
Usually, yes, however you need to be careful about sweeping generalizations. It looks like the RIAA is trying to fill up the upload slots on the P2P "server" in your neighborhood -- usually this is only 10 or so connections. So your neighbor's P2P client sees it as 10 out of the maximum 10 upload connections being in use (100% utilization), but those connections may only be running at 10 bytes per second (or faster if there's a minimum speed threshold). As a result, your firewall only sees it as minimal bandwidth and connection utilization, even though it's clogging up the machine further along. I could, however, be misinterpreting the RIAA's plan.
Still, I think it's a stupid thing to do overall. But it's just not stupid in this one small way. Regardless, people should try baiting them with songs that only superficially appear to be illegal material (if the service only checks filenames and sizes) -- then they not only have a decent legal standing with the RIAA DoSes them, but the RIAA has no means to counter-attack.
Of course someone calling me to waste my time, requiring that I stop what I'm doing, walk across the apartment, and answer the phone, helps make my already dismal day that much worse, too.
Unfortunately, this clause would open the flood gates for a lot of spamming. Let's imagine a fictional world where the unsubscribe addresses for every spammer actually work. Now let's imagine that company A acquires your email address:
Company A: Can we spam you?
*Company A sells their list to Company B and Company C.*
You (to Company A): No!
*Company B sells their list to Company D and Company E.*
*Company C sells their list to Company F.*
Company B: Can we--
You (to Company B): No!
Company C: Can we spam you?
Company D: Can we spam you?
Company E: Can we spam you?
Company F: Can we spam you?
As it is, I receive numerous spams that read at the bottom, "This is a one time mailing. Nothing is necessary to remove you from our mailing list." But it fails to address the fact that the email address in question is on 50 billion copies of an outdated list. I receive over 20 spams per week to an old address that was only ever listed in our WHOIS information (and hasn't been listed for over a year). The problem is that just skimming spams seems to indicate that it's a new company doing it each time.
I don't doubt there is a link between pornography and sex offenders. However, for your bishop to flat-out blame it for all sex crimes, without any supporting evidence, is akin to blaming religion for the acts of religious nutjobs who don't represent the mainstream ideals of that religion.
You're comparing apples and oranges. Steganography isn't encryption -- it's concealment. If I send a PGP-encrypted message, regardless of whether or not they can break it, every eavesdropper knows that I just sent a PGP-encrypted message. If I use stenography to hide a message, an eavesdropper might miss the message, but would be able to decode it if it's discovered. If I use both, it's a win-win situation.
However, if the company's going under anyway, then all you're really doing is stealing for the company's other creditors (including the other employees), rather than from the company itself. Also, I suggest you RTFA with regard to the leasing company issue -- in many cases, you're just stealing from the company that leased the item to your company.
During one of the Cowboy Bebop time slots last week, they showed some classic Friz Freleng cartoons. Right after the one with Bugs Bunny playing a Franz Liszt composition on the piano (Rhaspody Rabbit?), they featured one with people building a skyscraper in time to music. As the building reached completion, a flag was raised at the top that read "Umpire State". Then one of the characters slammed the door at the bottom, and the entire thing came tumbling down into a pile of bricks.
Talk about a mistake -- it's one thing to continue showing previously scheduled Cowboy Bebop episodes despite the tragedy (something that I would support), but it's a whole new level of tastelessness to go out of your way to preempt the existing programming and show what they did.
You haven't heard of Naked News? (Warning: nudity -- I'm not sure how bad the main page is, since I'm using lynx at the moment. But it's not a hoax.) It's big enough that it actually got regular television news coverage when they were looking for male anchors to balance out the cast.
Well, in that sense, you're correct. It's not something that abridges free speech. However, I still feel that it's an important issue, and the term 'censorship' is still accurate.
"But in this case, ClearChannel (who i`ve never heard of before now) seem to be censoring themselves."
The own a lot of radio stations. According to this Salon article from April, they owned 1,200 stations, and they've got representation in 247 of the 250 largest markets. In my local market, I'm aware of at least 4 Clear Channel stations (2 of them talk radio where "Clear Channel" was mentioned regularly, 1 of them I discovered only recently when they mentioned using news coverage from one of their "Clear Channel sister stations", and 1 I discovered just now from the Salon article), and I suspect there are more as it's not always obvious that it's a Clear Channel station.
So, as a result, they're censorsing a non-trivial portion of American airwaves. It may be self-imposed censorship, but it's not immune to scrutiny, especially by people who listen to the stations in question.
On the other hand, a keyword could be all it takes for a DJ to generate some completely tasteless, pseudo-innocuous on-air comment that would get a station in deep shit.
Imagine, for example:
"We here at KPX wish to express our deepest regret over what happened in the WTC incident. I know I, personally, would give my life if it meant saving the victims of the horrible tragedy. (pause) And now Dave Matthews' Band, 'Crash into Me'."
Still, I think in a number of cases, Clear Channel has erred on the side of raging stupidity ("Imagine" is especially appropriate right now, with all the racial violence going on in the US; "Walk like an Egyptian" seems to be a racist choice of equating any and all Middle-Easterners with the terrorists).
No. Your repeated postings seem to indicate an inability to differentiate between "censorship of the American public as a whole" (for example, the FCC declaring that you can't show bare breasts on broadcast television) and "censorship by a corporate entity of its own content" (for example, Fox Family channel voluntarily censoring the word "damn" as part of the more family friendly programming they want to produce).
Now, just because something isn't government censorship doesn't mean it's not censorship. However, just because something isn't government censorship doesn't mean it's a good thing. It also doesn't mean it's a bad thing. Each case must be examined on its own merits. Also, it being a bad thing is not synonymous with illegal. For example, if a given publisher chose to stop carrying stories on Linux, that wouldn't be illegal (as far as I know), but it would certainly be a bad thing. They would receive certainly criticism (rightfully so, IMO) for their non-illegal censorship.
Of course all that being said, things get a little more interesting. Clear Channel isn't on equal footing with other companies. Like Microsoft, they enjoy a rather large market share. Furthermore, they've been granted the right to use a limited, public resource (part of the radio spectrum) by the government. This places there actions under much greater scrutiny. Unlike, say, the widget manufacturing industry, a new-comer can't decide to pop into the radio market and start playing the songs in question. As such, their situation is closer to government censorship. However, regardless, their overall actions are still censorship and should be scrutinized by consumers.
Which is a meaningless figure since a bug can be anything from the rather important "Win95 fails to boot on Tuesdays" to the less important "Win95 looks horrible in 16 color mode" to the trivial/inane "Win95 lacks a space invaders-type game".
When your bug system covers everything from show stoppers to feature requests, the bug count becomes fairly meaningless, other than as a source of potential work for the developers.
It is not Cartoon Network's place to tell me what I should be watching. Futhermore, I've seen the news. The world trade centers have been hit by a terrorist attack. I know this. The pentagon has been hit by a terrorist attack. I know this, too. Another plane went down in Pennsylvania when the hostages bravely fought back. I also know this. The FBI is rounding up suspected terrorists. Yet another thing I know. Finally, rescue crews are working night and day, on little-to-no sleep, to save as many survivors from the collapsed building as possible. Like all the previous things, I know this.
So I can tune into the news and watch the plane crash footage for the 2,749th time while analysts argue over the causes and such, or I can try and partially move on with my life. Forget what happened? Certainly not. Stop obsessing over what happened? Yes.
Entertainment television is one of the few escapes from the non-stop barage of WTC information that I'm being hit with. Taking that away from me only serves to further my cynicism and desensitization. Thank you, mass media, for trying to turn me into a cold, unfeeling monster.
That seemed to be everyone's first thoughts on another message board where this was discussed. The odd thing is that they also preempted the showing earlier today (Sunday, 1pm) -- it was supposed to be the "Parent Teacher Night; Walk of Doom". The latter part does involve Zim wandering around a large city (and even going up in one of the skyscrapers), but I don't see any reason to pull it.
"I also noticed lots of other self censorship on the movie channels. You'll never see Fight Club air on TV ever again. Deterrence, a movie about a U.S.-Iraqi conflict (where Bagdad gets nuked at the end) was pulled as was Showtime's version of On the Beach."
That really, really sucks. Deterrence was a great movie that makes you think about a number of the issues. Several times, during discussions on the WTC issue, it would come up as a movie that should be watched.
The fact that they're passing legislation to add mandatory backdoors is a pretty big clue that they probably can't break some crypto already. A known backdoor significantly decreases confidence in a crypto-system and will cause the bad guys to be more vague and/or use the uncrackable but less convenient "one time pad".
What it really boils down to is a single category of "games which have a physical arcade advantage over home game systems". Fighting games -- two joysticks and a steady stream of opponents. Racing games -- steering wheel, pedals, and (sometimes) movement of the entire game. Shooting games -- dual guns with better performance than home systems (continuous tracking versus tracking when someone shoots).
Now that home systems can generally compete with the big boys as far as graphics go, it's really just about the peripherals.
Are we talking about the same StarOffice here? The copy I've had the gross misfortune of using (version 5.2 -- the latest version, AFAIK) possess such useless features as:
But wait! That's not all. You also get:
The point of the Loebner test (that yearly, gimmicky, Turing-inspired spectacle that purports to be engaging in a Turing test) is to fool humans. A number of people in the AI field consider the Loebner test a joke. It has as much to do with true AI, as Battlebots has to do with hard-core robotics. That isn't to say it's not fun, and that isn't to say some interesting ideas don't come out of it, but for the most part, it's the AI-equivilant of over-glorified RC cars, rather than the AI-equivilant of Mars rovers.
The point of the Turing test, on the other hand, is almost more of just a definition of intelligence. It's trying to describe a machine being capable of engaging in the type of dialogue that a human can engage in (which involves being able to learn new concepts, discuss philosophical issues, and so forth). It isn't trying to describe a machine that uses a few pre-programmed catch phrases and algorithms (such as Eliza's ever popular "swap first and second person and rephrase it as a question") to make people think it's aware.
I think the point is that if you were to make a list of people who could afford to plop down $80 million for a plane without batting an eyelash, and then were to sort the list by order of name recognition, Bill Gates would be at the top of that list. BFD -- Slashdot took a horrible, horrible potshot at Bill by implying that he's rich. Next they'll start accusing Stephen Hawking of understanding physics.
In contrast, a so-called "anti-pornography" filter can (and in many cases does) delibrately censor sites containing information that is critical of the company producing the filter (Peacefire, anyway?) or that focuses on gay rights (a non-pornographic issue that is contrary to the religious-oriented nature of some of the filter companies). This same material, if presented in book form, would most likely not be blocked.
Futhermore, there have been cases where "anti-pornography" filters have been found to block the sites of various politicians. Whether on purpose or accidental, this underscores just how drastic the results of giving carte blanche censorship power to a private company can be.
Overall, we have a hard enough time trying to define pornography in a regular, open context. To just hand this decision off to a private company with no oversight and less regulation than a corner hotdog vendor.