But the minute they show it to anyone else, it becomes child pornography.
This, oddly enough, does make sense. According to the law, people under the age of 18 are irrational beings. Therefore, a person over 18 could not ever be "allowed" to see such pictures as the person under 18 has no rational ability to allow the person over 18 to see such a picture.
Also, the kids could write about their sexual encounters in their diaries, but the second they show the diary to anyone its child pornography.
I think the law in the States differs here. Well, I know at least that a fictional account of people under 18 having sex is not illegal (hence the term virtual child porn). I guess a diary or such would be illegal though. I wonder what happens if a parent reads a child's diary... Would the parent have to report the diary to the police or potentially face child pornography charges?
By the way, simply posessing a picture of a naked 12 year old is not child pornography.
Yeah, it depends on the definition of pornography. Here in the states, it's really vauge in that it's anything that causes "lustful desires" in an "average person."
Needless to say the government was outraged at this ruling, specifically that the defendent, something Sharp, was allowed to write stories about little kids as long as he didn't show them to anyone else.
Well shit, I have to say that I would agree with the Supreme Court on this one. Free thought at least is an absolute. As long as you do not distribute what your thoughts are, I cannot see how anything could be considered illegal.
You obviously don't know what kind of a problem insurance is in New Jersey. I have never gotten a moving violation, have good grades, and have never gotten into an accident. Since I have only been driving for 3 years, am male, and am under 25, I pay twice as much for insurance than a 26 year old female regardless of how well or poorly we each drive.
Your senarios are not the norm, they are exceptions. With opt-in speed checking, at least the insurance companies give me a means to prove, and be rewarded, for good driving.
It's really simple, I would be a more considerate driver if it meant I could save $1,000 dollars a year on insurance. If I only had to go 65 mph on the expressway instead of 75 mph, well, that's fine by me.
I'm sorry, but I do not understand how you can say that it isn't fair to charge drivers who are more dangerous more money for insurance.
Note that that is why I suggested having something monitor the braking habits too. Someone who is constantly slamming on the breaks and accelerating fast obviously has a higher risk of getting into an accident.
I heard about this about 6 months ago being experimented with in Europe. It's a wonderful idea, especially in New Jersey which has the highest car insurance rate of probably anywhere.
The way it worked in this test program was a small monitor would gauge your speed (now that I think about it, another monitor guaging breaking habits could also be useful) such that if you were obeying the speed limits, you would get a discount on your insurance.
Insurance companies want to base rates on potential of accidents, and therefore, currently use statistics to determine rates. This means that I have an extrordinarily high insurance rate even though I'm a good driver simply because of my age and gender.
The idea isn't to fine people automatically (like in Demolition Man) but to reward people for good driving habits. The real piece of technology that needed improvement was GPS -> speed limit mapping, once that is perfected, I personally can't wait to sign up for this type of program.
We shouldn't elect people to Congress and then coerce them into voting like we want, we should elect people to Congress who vote like we want because they think like we do.
Well, we better get rid of everybody in Congress because I guarentee they do not think they way the majority of Americans do:)
Child pornography is illegal because the pictures are evidence of a criminal act.
If you see child pornography, and do not alert the police, you an accomplish after the fact to the sexual assault of a child.
Same kind of deal if you see picture (or video) of a murder and do not report it to the authorities.
So, child pornography properly falls into this category. I guess it's questionable though if a 20 year old possesses a picture of a 17 year old since there tends to be a 4-5 year grace period in most states for things like statutory rape.
Of course, the real question is whether or not it is illegal for a 12 year old to possess a picture of another naked 12 year old:) And what about a 12 year old taking a sexual picture of themself. Would that be illegal?
Thoreau on Activism vs. Civil Disobedience
on
On Hacktivism
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· Score: 5, Interesting
I am of the opinion that activism is amoral whereas civil disobedience is not only moral, but one's duty. I think a good portion of hackitivism is not civil disobedience but instead just activism. At any rate, here is a quote from Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience" which is probably the most elegant statement I've ever read regarding the limits (and requirements) of protest.
If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go: perchance it will wear smooth--certainly the machine will wear out. If the injustice has a spring, or a pulley, or a rope, or a crank, exclusively for itself, then perhaps you may consider whether the remedy will not be worse than the evil; but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.
So, in my mind, hacking a web page can never really be justified--no matter what the cause is. On the other hand, refusing to obey government censorship (in places like China) by hacking through their censors is, in my mind, is a very noble thing.
I'd rather send the message that you only get to screw me over, or try to with reckless disregard for the rights of American citizens, exactly once.
That's not the message your sending though. Frankly, the ramifications of such bills were far too technical for most people to understand. In fact, if you saw the Silicion Valley Summit III (or whatever number it was most recently), most of the top corporate leaders didn't know what the SSSCA was when asked their opinions.
So, Hollings doesn't see this as taking away rights. As far as he is concerned, Disney gave him a bill that he probably didn't really understand, and he introduced it and got reamed for it. What does he do? He tries to appease those people who got pissed at him by introducing something that I'm sure his PR people told him would make us happy.
Now, if we say "FU" to Hollings he's just going to throw his hands up and say nevermind and go back to introducing corporate bills.
Instead, if we say, "Thank you, keep it up and we may start supporting you," then we have just made a political ally. Money is an indirect way to obtain votes, popularility is a direct way to obtain votes, no matter what, being a popular politician will always take precedence over gaining money from corporations (note the whole Enron thing where so many politicians gave back Enron contributions).
You are simply jaded if you think Hollings is any different than any other politician.
Do not think of a politician as an "upholder and defender of the Constitution," but instead, think of a politician as a servant of the masses. A politician's job is to make people happy so that they vote for him.
I don't care how much money Disney is giving, if a bill will cause him to lose re-election, he wouldn't support it. The masses ultimately have more power than any corporation, unfortunately, we don't use it.
All politicians are dangerous, but a politician that has nothing to lose, has the potential to do serious damage. What happens if Hollings has 2 years left in his term, but knows he won't be re-elected because of the SSSCA? He's gonna to do nothing but give out favors to big corporations.
This is simply the way the system works. Either we learn how to work through the system, or we begin to figure out how to change the system. Throwing hissy fits doesn't accomplish anything though.
Listen, if Hollings is sponsering this bill because he wants to "make-up" with the tech-community, then the worst thing the tech-community can do is continue to boycott him.
Make the message clear, that the community will support good bill but go ape-shit crazy on bad ones. If he gets a bad reaction still, he's just going to write off the tech community as a special interest group that he has no chance of winning over. In that case, he'll say screw you to all of us and just go on taking blood money from disney.
Don't make it personal, it's simply politics. We just have to play the game.
My thoughts
on
Revolution OS
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
I was fortunate enough to see the movie on Sundance. I really liked the movie although I do not expect non-geeks to enjoy it (in fact, I watched it with a bunch of non-geeks and they absolutely hated it).
I thought Stallman was portrayed in a pretty positive manner (which IMHO is good as he does alot for the community but gets a heck of a lot of criticism for his views). ESR just came off as a total prick, touting his Bazaar essay as "changing the world." Bruce Perens came off as a business man and the whole OSI thing tended to be viewed as a way to commericialize Free Software (which I do believe is true to some extent).
What really suprised me though was how Linus came off in the movie. He almost seemed indifferent and a little aggreviated with Linux. I don't know, he definitely wasn't passionate about it which kind of disappointed me.
My favorite scene that illustrated the difference between Linus and RMS was at a LinuxWorld expo keynote where both were on stage. RMS is rambling off about how important free software is, trying to rally the world, and Linus just kind of was goofing around on the stage with his little daughter, totally oblivious to anything RMS was saying.
Good movie though, I will definitely buy it when it comes out on video.
Results are all that matters. Excessive effort is for masochists and bleeding hearts ("but boss, I worked all weekend!").
In an academic environment, I have to respectfully disagree. The reason is simply, the product is not necessarily the code that the student writes, but the knowledge that the student gains. While I would agree with that logic if it applied to a student somehow gaining knowledge, that is not the circumstance that I believe this policy addresses.
There is a fine line between peer tutoring and cheating. I can say, as someone who is often approached for help, that there are two types of people who seek help. The first type are those just looking for an answer. The second are those who are actually looking to understand an answer.
I have to imagine that most students go to other students--as opposed to going to a professor--in order to receive an answer. Really, why would you pay to goto a university if you are not learning from the people who are being paid to teach?
What I have always done, is explicitly license my code under the GPL. Following this policy, I never have hestitated sharing my code. This at least gives me the protection to say that a person illegally used my code without citing it (something that could not be said without some sort of license). Most people never seem to notice the license.
The other reason I just give my code is I believe it is more helpful for someone to sit down with a solution and then try to apply that to their own code than it would be to just have the necessary steps to obtaining a solution given to them.
At any rate, remembering the kind of ridiculusly easy tasks that were assigned in intro to comp sci, if I got caught asking for help, I would probably be so embarassed that I would leave the university on my own *ducks to avoid the karma bitchslap*
The issue at hand has nothing to do with socialism.
It absolutely does. What it boils down to is what are individuals responsibilities to society.
From a capitalist perspective, an individual is only responsible for himself.
From a socialist perspective, an individual only takes what is needed.
The argument is that since Africa is more "needy," the capitalists should pay to support their "need."
Unfortunately, I cannot see how high-speed internet access could not be classified as a false-need so I think it is even hard to make this argument from a socialist perspective.
So what does it mean that kuro5hin has no ad associated with it;-)
Re:How to make this work.
on
e-Denounce
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· Score: 2
*Exceptions: Mozilla, OpenOffice, maybe XMMS and the Gimp.
Don't forget AbiWord and Gnumeric. These are two excellent desktop applications.
For Joe Public this *may* be enough, but there are lots of people who need more.
Ok..
But poor font support [blogspot.com]
I'm sorry, but I don't understand the importance of fonts. Perhaps I am obtuse, but I do not see the need for anti-aliasing or any of that stuff.
quirky cut and paste
I _live_ for Linux cut and paste! That's the main reason I'm helpless on a Windows box. Not to mention the fact that I can use real editor commands in most text areas (C-A, C-K, C-E). Very useful.
printers/hardware that are difficult to configure...
Never had a printer or hardware problem. I had them on Windows because I always lose those stupid disks, but not in Linux. I think the printer thing is hearsay for the most part.
Re:How to make this work.
on
e-Denounce
·
· Score: 2
>How do you check if UDMA support is enabled on your hard drives in linux?
dmesg | grep -i dma
Or, you can do it the Right(TM) way:
# hdparm/dev/hda
or whatever your drive is... Look at using_dma (it will say either on or off).
Re:How to make this work.
on
e-Denounce
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· Score: 2
I think you would be suprised. Ask some free software developers why they develop free software. Usually, the responsible will be that while the "Free" idea is important - and they usually agree with it - the quality and challenge of the software is more important.
Most free software developers are in it for a love of programming, not for political reasons.
Re:How to make this work.
on
e-Denounce
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
If noone could pirate software, far more people would end up using free software. Think about it.
I would rather more people use free software because it is of higher quality than commerical software. I personally get a bit disturbed when people say, "I didn't want to pay lots of money, so I decided to use this." These are the first people who then bitch about stuff as if they are paying for support.
People who right free software are not just trying to write free - as in beer - stuff for the moochers of the net, they are trying to write quality software.
I don't use Linux because it's free in either sense of the word. I use it because it's better than Windows.
The current generation of kids growing up is going to be nothing but a bunch of computer crazed, game addicted losers who spend all their time in some virtual world slaying some pixel dragon.
Wait a second, I think it is more reasonable for a high school kid to be playing a video game as he has no real responsibility in life yet. If you, as an adult, have created a life for yourself where you spend 3 years playing a video game, well, I would say that you are the loser my friend.
Being young is about experimenting. Play lots of video games, drink lots of beer, sleep with all sorts of girls who drink lots of beer. Then you grow up. At least these kids have youth as an excuse.
BTW: I can speak on behalf of this "current generation" of computer geeks in saying that I despise video games and spend no time playing them. There are just as many adult "game addicted losers."
Oh well, I'm glad I quit (again).
You "quit" a video game? What in the world makes you get up out of bed in the morning? To treat a video game with such mysticism, I simply cannot understand it. It's funny that you qualify your statement with "(again)" because I have a feeling that you are simply acknowledging the inevitable, that you will eventually go back to consuming your time with video games.
I'm sorry to be harsh man, but your sense of philanthropy is most disgusting. You comment that if you played video games as a kid, you'd be making $6 an hour, well, assuming you making the code monkey's salary now, you can't possibly be any happier. It doesn't matter if you make 15k a year or 35k a year if your still leading a miserable existance.
Almost got me on this one. A little too long though:) Started to get bored and therefore began to actually think about what you were proposing...
The reason that our forefathers saw it necessary to provide explicit protection for the right to bear arms was in order to make sure that people had a means to overthrow the government should the government become tyrannical. This is why the 4th ammendment contains the "well-regulated militia" clause. They didn't intend for any bum to run around with a gun, but instead wanted to make sure that a community could create a militia in order to defend themselves (which the British weren't allowing them to do).
For those who responded that our forefathers were very insightful, well, that isn't entirely true. A lot of what is contained in the bill of rights is very specific (such as the 3nd ammendment - quartering of troops) or my personal favorite, the $20 figure of the 7th ammendment.
I dunno, I find it hard to belief that driving a car in an inalienable right. Being secure in one's possessions is though so I definitely think that the handling of private material should be severely - and publicly - auditted to ensure our privacy.
Slashdot Mirror
But the minute they show it to anyone else, it becomes child pornography.
This, oddly enough, does make sense. According to the law, people under the age of 18 are irrational beings. Therefore, a person over 18 could not ever be "allowed" to see such pictures as the person under 18 has no rational ability to allow the person over 18 to see such a picture.
Also, the kids could write about their sexual encounters in their diaries, but the second they show the diary to anyone its child pornography.
I think the law in the States differs here. Well, I know at least that a fictional account of people under 18 having sex is not illegal (hence the term virtual child porn). I guess a diary or such would be illegal though. I wonder what happens if a parent reads a child's diary... Would the parent have to report the diary to the police or potentially face child pornography charges?
By the way, simply posessing a picture of a naked 12 year old is not child pornography.
Yeah, it depends on the definition of pornography. Here in the states, it's really vauge in that it's anything that causes "lustful desires" in an "average person."
Needless to say the government was outraged at this ruling, specifically that the defendent, something Sharp, was allowed to write stories about little kids as long as he didn't show them to anyone else.
Well shit, I have to say that I would agree with the Supreme Court on this one. Free thought at least is an absolute. As long as you do not distribute what your thoughts are, I cannot see how anything could be considered illegal.
What a fucking moron you are.
You obviously don't know what kind of a problem insurance is in New Jersey. I have never gotten a moving violation, have good grades, and have never gotten into an accident. Since I have only been driving for 3 years, am male, and am under 25, I pay twice as much for insurance than a 26 year old female regardless of how well or poorly we each drive.
Your senarios are not the norm, they are exceptions. With opt-in speed checking, at least the insurance companies give me a means to prove, and be rewarded, for good driving.
It's really simple, I would be a more considerate driver if it meant I could save $1,000 dollars a year on insurance. If I only had to go 65 mph on the expressway instead of 75 mph, well, that's fine by me.
I'm sorry, but I do not understand how you can say that it isn't fair to charge drivers who are more dangerous more money for insurance.
Note that that is why I suggested having something monitor the braking habits too. Someone who is constantly slamming on the breaks and accelerating fast obviously has a higher risk of getting into an accident.
I heard about this about 6 months ago being experimented with in Europe. It's a wonderful idea, especially in New Jersey which has the highest car insurance rate of probably anywhere.
The way it worked in this test program was a small monitor would gauge your speed (now that I think about it, another monitor guaging breaking habits could also be useful) such that if you were obeying the speed limits, you would get a discount on your insurance.
Insurance companies want to base rates on potential of accidents, and therefore, currently use statistics to determine rates. This means that I have an extrordinarily high insurance rate even though I'm a good driver simply because of my age and gender.
The idea isn't to fine people automatically (like in Demolition Man) but to reward people for good driving habits. The real piece of technology that needed improvement was GPS -> speed limit mapping, once that is perfected, I personally can't wait to sign up for this type of program.
We shouldn't elect people to Congress and then coerce them into voting like we want, we should elect people to Congress who vote like we want because they think like we do.
:)
Well, we better get rid of everybody in Congress because I guarentee they do not think they way the majority of Americans do
Child pornography is illegal because the pictures are evidence of a criminal act.
:) And what about a 12 year old taking a sexual picture of themself. Would that be illegal?
If you see child pornography, and do not alert the police, you an accomplish after the fact to the sexual assault of a child.
Same kind of deal if you see picture (or video) of a murder and do not report it to the authorities.
So, child pornography properly falls into this category. I guess it's questionable though if a 20 year old possesses a picture of a 17 year old since there tends to be a 4-5 year grace period in most states for things like statutory rape.
Of course, the real question is whether or not it is illegal for a 12 year old to possess a picture of another naked 12 year old
So, in my mind, hacking a web page can never really be justified--no matter what the cause is. On the other hand, refusing to obey government censorship (in places like China) by hacking through their censors is, in my mind, is a very noble thing.
I'd rather send the message that you only get to screw me over, or try to with reckless disregard for the rights of American citizens, exactly once.
That's not the message your sending though. Frankly, the ramifications of such bills were far too technical for most people to understand. In fact, if you saw the Silicion Valley Summit III (or whatever number it was most recently), most of the top corporate leaders didn't know what the SSSCA was when asked their opinions.
So, Hollings doesn't see this as taking away rights. As far as he is concerned, Disney gave him a bill that he probably didn't really understand, and he introduced it and got reamed for it. What does he do? He tries to appease those people who got pissed at him by introducing something that I'm sure his PR people told him would make us happy.
Now, if we say "FU" to Hollings he's just going to throw his hands up and say nevermind and go back to introducing corporate bills.
Instead, if we say, "Thank you, keep it up and we may start supporting you," then we have just made a political ally. Money is an indirect way to obtain votes, popularility is a direct way to obtain votes, no matter what, being a popular politician will always take precedence over gaining money from corporations (note the whole Enron thing where so many politicians gave back Enron contributions).
Don't get emotional about it, just play the game.
You are simply jaded if you think Hollings is any different than any other politician.
Do not think of a politician as an "upholder and defender of the Constitution," but instead, think of a politician as a servant of the masses. A politician's job is to make people happy so that they vote for him.
I don't care how much money Disney is giving, if a bill will cause him to lose re-election, he wouldn't support it. The masses ultimately have more power than any corporation, unfortunately, we don't use it.
All politicians are dangerous, but a politician that has nothing to lose, has the potential to do serious damage. What happens if Hollings has 2 years left in his term, but knows he won't be re-elected because of the SSSCA? He's gonna to do nothing but give out favors to big corporations.
This is simply the way the system works. Either we learn how to work through the system, or we begin to figure out how to change the system. Throwing hissy fits doesn't accomplish anything though.
Listen, if Hollings is sponsering this bill because he wants to "make-up" with the tech-community, then the worst thing the tech-community can do is continue to boycott him.
Make the message clear, that the community will support good bill but go ape-shit crazy on bad ones. If he gets a bad reaction still, he's just going to write off the tech community as a special interest group that he has no chance of winning over. In that case, he'll say screw you to all of us and just go on taking blood money from disney.
Don't make it personal, it's simply politics. We just have to play the game.
I was fortunate enough to see the movie on Sundance. I really liked the movie although I do not expect non-geeks to enjoy it (in fact, I watched it with a bunch of non-geeks and they absolutely hated it).
I thought Stallman was portrayed in a pretty positive manner (which IMHO is good as he does alot for the community but gets a heck of a lot of criticism for his views). ESR just came off as a total prick, touting his Bazaar essay as "changing the world." Bruce Perens came off as a business man and the whole OSI thing tended to be viewed as a way to commericialize Free Software (which I do believe is true to some extent).
What really suprised me though was how Linus came off in the movie. He almost seemed indifferent and a little aggreviated with Linux. I don't know, he definitely wasn't passionate about it which kind of disappointed me.
My favorite scene that illustrated the difference between Linus and RMS was at a LinuxWorld expo keynote where both were on stage. RMS is rambling off about how important free software is, trying to rally the world, and Linus just kind of was goofing around on the stage with his little daughter, totally oblivious to anything RMS was saying.
Good movie though, I will definitely buy it when it comes out on video.
The largest reason for people to purchase anything is impulse. The novelity of the moment causes people to spend money they usually wouldn't spend.
When you do not give people instant gratification, they simply lose interest.
Better yet, let them use the software for 30 days, and after a week they'll never use the software again.
Evaluation periods just don't work.
Your right. I just checked the cover page and it says (C) ISO.
Well, the ISO standard and ANSI standard are identical except the ANSI standard is like $13 whereas the ISO standard is like $250.
So I have and follow the ANSI standard. Much nicer IMHO.
But (B) is bullshit.
I, for the most part, agree with this.
Results are all that matters. Excessive effort is for masochists and bleeding hearts ("but boss, I worked all weekend!").
In an academic environment, I have to respectfully disagree. The reason is simply, the product is not necessarily the code that the student writes, but the knowledge that the student gains. While I would agree with that logic if it applied to a student somehow gaining knowledge, that is not the circumstance that I believe this policy addresses.
There is a fine line between peer tutoring and cheating. I can say, as someone who is often approached for help, that there are two types of people who seek help. The first type are those just looking for an answer. The second are those who are actually looking to understand an answer.
I have to imagine that most students go to other students--as opposed to going to a professor--in order to receive an answer. Really, why would you pay to goto a university if you are not learning from the people who are being paid to teach?
What I have always done, is explicitly license my code under the GPL. Following this policy, I never have hestitated sharing my code. This at least gives me the protection to say that a person illegally used my code without citing it (something that could not be said without some sort of license). Most people never seem to notice the license.
The other reason I just give my code is I believe it is more helpful for someone to sit down with a solution and then try to apply that to their own code than it would be to just have the necessary steps to obtaining a solution given to them.
At any rate, remembering the kind of ridiculusly easy tasks that were assigned in intro to comp sci, if I got caught asking for help, I would probably be so embarassed that I would leave the university on my own *ducks to avoid the karma bitchslap*
The issue at hand has nothing to do with socialism.
It absolutely does. What it boils down to is what are individuals responsibilities to society.
From a capitalist perspective, an individual is only responsible for himself.
From a socialist perspective, an individual only takes what is needed.
The argument is that since Africa is more "needy," the capitalists should pay to support their "need."
Unfortunately, I cannot see how high-speed internet access could not be classified as a false-need so I think it is even hard to make this argument from a socialist perspective.
http://www.gutenberg.org
is the official url IIRC
absolutely wonderful resource. they have a ton of books and the transcriptions are of pretty high quality--the have an excellent qa process.
/me stands up and cheers!
Ahh, it would take a geek to think this :) (don't feel bad, my initial reaction was the same)
:)
I am sure most commonly phrase in regards to the word "free" is likely to be "free sex," not "free software."
Have to think like a regular person for a minute to see that one
Free sex better than free software? I dunno, that O(1) scheduler is pretty sexy...
So what does it mean that kuro5hin has no ad associated with it ;-)
*Exceptions: Mozilla, OpenOffice, maybe XMMS and the Gimp.
Don't forget AbiWord and Gnumeric. These are two excellent desktop applications.
For Joe Public this *may* be enough, but there are lots of people who need more.
Ok..
But poor font support [blogspot.com]
I'm sorry, but I don't understand the importance of fonts. Perhaps I am obtuse, but I do not see the need for anti-aliasing or any of that stuff.
quirky cut and paste
I _live_ for Linux cut and paste! That's the main reason I'm helpless on a Windows box. Not to mention the fact that I can use real editor commands in most text areas (C-A, C-K, C-E). Very useful.
printers/hardware that are difficult to configure...
Never had a printer or hardware problem. I had them on Windows because I always lose those stupid disks, but not in Linux. I think the printer thing is hearsay for the most part.
>How do you check if UDMA support is enabled on your hard drives in linux?
/dev/hda
dmesg | grep -i dma
Or, you can do it the Right(TM) way:
# hdparm
or whatever your drive is... Look at using_dma (it will say either on or off).
I think you would be suprised. Ask some free software developers why they develop free software. Usually, the responsible will be that while the "Free" idea is important - and they usually agree with it - the quality and challenge of the software is more important.
Most free software developers are in it for a love of programming, not for political reasons.
If noone could pirate software, far more people would end up using free software. Think about it.
I would rather more people use free software because it is of higher quality than commerical software. I personally get a bit disturbed when people say, "I didn't want to pay lots of money, so I decided to use this." These are the first people who then bitch about stuff as if they are paying for support.
People who right free software are not just trying to write free - as in beer - stuff for the moochers of the net, they are trying to write quality software.
I don't use Linux because it's free in either sense of the word. I use it because it's better than Windows.
The current generation of kids growing up is going to be nothing but a bunch of computer crazed, game addicted losers who spend all their time in some virtual world slaying some pixel dragon.
Wait a second, I think it is more reasonable for a high school kid to be playing a video game as he has no real responsibility in life yet. If you, as an adult, have created a life for yourself where you spend 3 years playing a video game, well, I would say that you are the loser my friend.
Being young is about experimenting. Play lots of video games, drink lots of beer, sleep with all sorts of girls who drink lots of beer. Then you grow up. At least these kids have youth as an excuse.
BTW: I can speak on behalf of this "current generation" of computer geeks in saying that I despise video games and spend no time playing them. There are just as many adult "game addicted losers."
Oh well, I'm glad I quit (again).
You "quit" a video game? What in the world makes you get up out of bed in the morning? To treat a video game with such mysticism, I simply cannot understand it. It's funny that you qualify your statement with "(again)" because I have a feeling that you are simply acknowledging the inevitable, that you will eventually go back to consuming your time with video games.
I'm sorry to be harsh man, but your sense of philanthropy is most disgusting. You comment that if you played video games as a kid, you'd be making $6 an hour, well, assuming you making the code monkey's salary now, you can't possibly be any happier. It doesn't matter if you make 15k a year or 35k a year if your still leading a miserable existance.
Almost got me on this one. A little too long though :) Started to get bored and therefore began to actually think about what you were proposing...
The reason that our forefathers saw it necessary to provide explicit protection for the right to bear arms was in order to make sure that people had a means to overthrow the government should the government become tyrannical. This is why the 4th ammendment contains the "well-regulated militia" clause. They didn't intend for any bum to run around with a gun, but instead wanted to make sure that a community could create a militia in order to defend themselves (which the British weren't allowing them to do).
For those who responded that our forefathers were very insightful, well, that isn't entirely true. A lot of what is contained in the bill of rights is very specific (such as the 3nd ammendment - quartering of troops) or my personal favorite, the $20 figure of the 7th ammendment.
I dunno, I find it hard to belief that driving a car in an inalienable right. Being secure in one's possessions is though so I definitely think that the handling of private material should be severely - and publicly - auditted to ensure our privacy.
Good try, but no dice man.