> Sometimes, I really feel like killing an american for the pleasure
Really? What a sweetheart. If you'd care to supply your name and address I'm sure we could find some nice biker-dude to give you an opportunity. But maybe Anonymous Coward describes you better than we thought. Tell you what, next time the Germans decide they like the weather in Paris, we'll let them keep it.
> I've been on the net since the late 80's and I've yet to find porn by accident.
Actually this is quite easy to do - try hitting a search engine for "Bambi" or something, and like as not you'll get Bambi's House of Delight as well as the Disney version. This is a good argument for smarter/kid-approved search engines though, which is a lot different than a complete filter block.
> Oh, and a library doesn't have the right to decide what it wants to put on its shelves? If so, can't it decide what it wants to put on its computers?
Theoretically all libraries (WHICH ARE PAID FOR BY THE ENTIRE PULBIC, NOT JUST THE MAJORITY) would offer ALL books ever written. Why wouldn't they? Which of the world's religions would you put off-limits? What pagan ritual is too "filthy" to be legitimate research, or simply INTERESTING?
Physically they can't have ALL books, because there's never enough money or space. On the net those restrictions don't apply. The shelves and computers are both owned by the public - ALL of the public, not just the majority. It doesn't mean you have to tolerate public masturbation in the library, but if these filters prevent one woman with breast cancer from learning more about a cure they've done real and grievous damage.
In addition, almost any child can get all the porn they want under Daddy's side of the bed, or in the closet where he keeps his Hustler mags.
The Constitution of my country provides for many more and broad freedoms than that of the U.S. , and as such it is nearly impossible to get a wire tap for a private citizen. An Internet tap is equally as difficult.
Really? Could you tell us where that is, and what the immigration requirements are?:-)
I don't think our Constitution is particularly lacking, but there's no question we're cursed with some of the most arrogant and clueless lawmakers anywhere.
Dude, at 15 you might want to lighten up a little.
I realize that all the skill and knowledge I have can be lost with a single sip of the evil, and thats something I don't want to risk.
That's really not true. Who told you that? They're either lying or are highly misinformed. Trust me on this - you could do a hit of acid now and again, or a few pints/joints, and lose nothing but your stiff outlook. Being needlessly judgemental and uptight can hurt you as much in life (and in the computer biz!) as any booze or drug use.
Computers are not everything in life. Much of your "skill and knowledge" will be obsoleted soon! So who cares if you remember every bit? Yeah, I can write assembly for 6-7 processors, and it's been 10 years (almost your whole life) since anyone asked me to! When you get older, you may find that a few beers with those folks will be among your best memories.
Is there any reason why Red Hat or VA can't ante up for a license from the evil bastards at MPA? It's got to be in their interest to have a proper DVD player util for their systems, no?
Um, which 2010 did you see? In the real one they sent a probe down to the big monolith and nearly got whacked for their trouble, then made it HOME, thanks to HAL. They didn't get destroyed!
And yeah, I'm real impressed that the Chinese have the capability to do a manned mission to orbit the planet - 30 years after we landed on the moon! Maybe now they'll be confident enough to stop jailing random scholars, Falun Gong members and anybody who says boo! too loudly.
Knowledgeable people shouldn't have to take steps to protect privacy that is constitutionally guaranteed them
They're also constitutionally guaranteed to be able to walk across the street, but that doesn't mean you don't watch out for trucks. Besides, in most cases you're talking about people who willingly give up information. I allow the NY Times to know who I am because I want to read the paper. So give a bogus name and address if you want! It doesn't usually matter.
And people who are not knowledgeable, which is still most Americans when it comes to the Net, have no way of protecting themselves
That's where the lawsuits against these companies like DoubleClick come into play. Otherwise you might as well lobby for a Ministry of Privacy which, of course, would know everything about everyone.:-)
I'm not going to boycott all movies. Who would know? How many people will read your anti-movie list? Making it public would be interesting, but as you note there are problems with that. You could also argue that boycotting all forms of watching movies unfairly hits a lot of other people, like ushers at theaters, the girl behind the videostore counter ("sorry, have to cut you, business is bad") and so on.
What I've done is sent them an email saying I'm going to boycott all DVDs, and won't start replacing my large tape/laserdic library until they knock off the lawsuits. This is more specifically targeted, which will make it show up in the books more obviously. You know, like "Hey Fred, we're selling tapes and theatre tickets, but those DVDs are going nowhere! Hmmm..."
An overall drop might make them think it's just a broad downturn and they need to turn the screws harder to "protect" their investment. If we all stop buying DVDs they'll need to consider what would happen if the format actually failed entirely due to their evil efforts.
It seems to have worked with DIVX!
Re:Is Censorship/control ALWAYS bad?
on
China and the MPA
·
· Score: 1
In summary: To each when they are truly ready for it, and only then. Full democracy and freedom are appropriate for societies that have matured enough to support it.
If that's true then certainly America doesn't need to apply either. The World Wrestling Federation has a lot more exposure in America than Jefferson or Plato, that's fer sure. I've heard Americans who should know better denying the Holocaust happened. I don't stop them from saying it - I tell them about the survivors I've known.
How would you enforce your "friendly" censorship on these people? How do you stop rumors? How do you stop people from sending crazy emails? What becomes a state secret? Sounds like the latest Chinese plan to "protect" their citizens.
Sorry, but the answer is YES - censorship is always bad. The answer to negative speech is MORE speech.
Wait a minute, if he's not allowed to possess or use a computer as terms of his parole what would he *do* with it when he got it, other than violate those terms?
Still, interesting that they didn't crack it already.
It makes sense to bundle it, but not to require it or attach it to the kernel. But hell, I lost 3 yrs of my life to OS/2 before the MS FUD and PC mag biz killed it, so I won't pretend to be neutral.
Nice to have a rational debate for a change! Like I said, I think it comes down to who you are and what you're doing. I agree, if you're looking to make the most of your net expression it's great to get everything in the box. I was really impressed the first time I installed Red Hat. And I'd certainly agree that WebTV etc. is not using the net to its fullest, but it's good enough for those who want that kind of thing. That's the rub, there's this huge difference between what us programmer-types want and what most people can deal with.
Dude, the program sucks. It emulates vt100. No color
You're right, if I really needed it to be a full-featured terminal window it would suck, but all I use telnet for is to check the stats on my ISDN router.:-)
more people leave their computers always on
That's really a big issue for some people. I can't tell you the number of times people say "Are you going to leave all that on?" when we're heading out. A surprising number of people are really paranoid about electrical fires I guess. Then I remind them their 'fridge is running all the time, the water heater, furnace, etc. etc. Ah well...
Mom may become interested in the source of her webserver
I appreciate your kind comments re. my mom's interest in the code, but like most people for her the PC is just a tool to look up puppies or furniture or whatever. While car analogies are overused, my mom DOES have a heavy foot on the accelerator, but you'll never find her under the hood. (Hell, she just bought a new car and thought it had a 6cyl engine when it has a 250HP V8!) Most people really want to go in the other direction, i.e. a ROM-based appliance-type thingie. There's still a ton of (reasonably) well-educated people out there that just hate the damn things, even if they can use them effectively when needed.
Anyway, I'll won't argue that the OS doesn't count if you're really trying to get the most out of the net, it's just that in my experience most people don't really want that much.
In any case you should be thankful for Freud - he's indirectly responsible for a breakthrough in local anesthesia. His friend the eye doctor (can't remember the name) noticed the numbing effect on mucous membranes and found that he could use cocaine to anesthesize the eye. Imagine undergoing an eye operation with no anesthesia!
The OS I and others use to connect to the internet really, really does matter.
Well, it really really depends on what you're doing on the net. There are apparently people happy with WebTV.
If they kewn (sic) and felt that a webserver should come with the OS, would a company like Microsoft give their webserver away?
Um well yes they do actually, if you buy NT Server. It's used by many commercial sites and is quite full-featured. I'm a Netscape man myself, but you have to give them their due. And if you're using FrontPage (the package most used by neophytes to publish web content) it includes a "Personal Web server" which does, in fact, work just fine. Or you can get one for free, as others have pointed out.
Has anyone tried to use the default Windows telnet out of the box?
Uh yes, actually it works just fine for my needs, thank you.
People cannot utilize their machine to its fullest sense because their OS does not allow that use
I think generally speaking they can't utilize it to its fullest because they don't have the knowledge or the need. It takes work. Most people want to plug something into the wall and have it work. There is a huge disconnect here between what programmers/hobbyists do and the other 98% of the population.
If these people are flocking to AOL and MS because of its ease of use, does that mean they should be denied basic computational and communicative power because they chose a path with a low learning curve?
Who's denying anyone? Again, this stuff is all available. Free, most of it. What's the difference between a Linux distrib and a ZDNet collection of Windows utilities other than the moralistic attitude? (Yeah, I know you get the source. My mom is NOT going to modify and compile her browser, thanks anyway.)
When you start out driving most people buy a car that's easy to start and run. If you turn out to be a gear-head, THEN you get something that may be harder to start-up and maintain, but gives you other benefits. (i.e. has 600 HP) That's a completely natural progression.
Easy access to content serving for the public will be a set-top box with a built-in firewall and webserver. Not a problem. For others, they'll soon realize that they can run a little webserver on their PC over the cable modem or DSL. But most people won't want to deal with the hazards. They don't want to leave the PC on all the time, and don't want to deal with the script kiddies who want to take you down for fun.
By the way, everybody who's tried to hack my systems so far has been running Linux, and most are running a webserver on the machine with no content at all - they probably don't even know they're running the service. Looks great for the "community".
No, it was much higher than the initial IPO price when this started. I don't have the #'s handy, but the drop was significant. Still not necessarily a causal relationship, but way more significant.
Well, there doesn't seem to be any point continuing here, since you'll always just move on to "I know it must be so and you'll find out someday."
You're not adressing the main point - you just can't know everything that happened in someone's life 2000 years ago. You believe the Bible. I doubt it's literal accuracy. When all's said and done, you guys can do nothing more than claim the truth as your own, because the Bible said so. Sorry, but that's not good enough.
The only empirical evidence you can have is a live Christ. Let me know when he shows up.
Flamebait my ass! Read the bloody thing - that's exactly what he's floating here, via an ego-stroking email. What I wrote is called a "relevant comment". If you don't agree with it then post a reply, don't smack me down with your moderator stick. Guess I should just start writing Natalie Portman poems.
Go ahead now, moderate this as off-topic. We all know we must not DARE challenge a pin-headed moderator.
How come you don't just say that the reports of him coming back were one of the apostles dressed a lot like him?
Just trying to stay focused - any of the above are obvious possibilities as well, you could go on for awhile listing them. Look, it's fine with me if you believe this stuff, but you CAN NOT KNOW that it's true. The fact that it was written in the Bible means nothing. It was written by humans, not God, and humans make mistakes, are biased, misinterpret, are fooled by magicians, and outright lie for their own good or political purposes. That's just the way it is.
I argue these points because I *do* care about truth, and you can't KNOW the truth of the words you base your entire faith on. You can trust, and believe, but you can't KNOW. The truth is you don't need to look any farther than your nose to see an incredible universe, and know for sure WE didn't create it. I don't need any more proof of "God" than that. You need to have "faith" because you're trying to believe things which you logically know are impossible, or at least highly improbable. All I need to do is smell the flowers and knock on wood.
And if they found an ancient Bible with the previously missing foreward: "Written for all my friends and my lovely wife, this epic play will be performed next Tuesday at Herod's" it wouldn't phase ME at all.
Slashdot Mirror
> Sometimes, I really feel like killing an american for the pleasure
Really? What a sweetheart. If you'd care to supply your name and address I'm sure we could find some nice biker-dude to give you an opportunity. But maybe Anonymous Coward describes you better than we thought. Tell you what, next time the Germans decide they like the weather in Paris, we'll let them keep it.
> I've been on the net since the late 80's and I've yet to find porn by accident.
Actually this is quite easy to do - try hitting a search engine for "Bambi" or something, and like as not you'll get Bambi's House of Delight as well as the Disney version. This is a good argument for smarter/kid-approved search engines though, which is a lot different than a complete filter block.
> Oh, and a library doesn't have the right to decide what it wants to put on its shelves? If so, can't it decide what it wants to put on its computers?
Theoretically all libraries (WHICH ARE PAID FOR BY THE ENTIRE PULBIC, NOT JUST THE MAJORITY) would offer ALL books ever written. Why wouldn't they? Which of the world's religions would you put off-limits? What pagan ritual is too "filthy" to be legitimate research, or simply INTERESTING?
Physically they can't have ALL books, because there's never enough money or space. On the net those restrictions don't apply. The shelves and computers are both owned by the public - ALL of the public, not just the majority. It doesn't mean you have to tolerate public masturbation in the library, but if these filters prevent one woman with breast cancer from learning more about a cure they've done real and grievous damage.
In addition, almost any child can get all the porn they want under Daddy's side of the bed, or in the closet where he keeps his Hustler mags.
The Constitution of my country provides for many more and broad freedoms than that of the U.S. , and as such it is nearly impossible to get a wire tap for a private citizen. An Internet tap is equally as difficult.
:-)
Really? Could you tell us where that is, and what the immigration requirements are?
I don't think our Constitution is particularly lacking, but there's no question we're cursed with some of the most arrogant and clueless lawmakers anywhere.
Dude, at 15 you might want to lighten up a little.
I realize that all the skill and knowledge I have can be lost with a single sip of the evil, and thats something I don't want to risk.
That's really not true. Who told you that? They're either lying or are highly misinformed. Trust me on this - you could do a hit of acid now and again, or a few pints/joints, and lose nothing but your stiff outlook. Being needlessly judgemental and uptight can hurt you as much in life (and in the computer biz!) as any booze or drug use.
Computers are not everything in life. Much of your "skill and knowledge" will be obsoleted soon! So who cares if you remember every bit? Yeah, I can write assembly for 6-7 processors, and it's been 10 years (almost your whole life) since anyone asked me to! When you get older, you may find that a few beers with those folks will be among your best memories.
Is there any reason why Red Hat or VA can't ante up for a license from the evil bastards at MPA? It's got to be in their interest to have a proper DVD player util for their systems, no?
Meet the new boss
Same as the old Boss...
Um, which 2010 did you see? In the real one they sent a probe down to the big monolith and nearly got whacked for their trouble, then made it HOME, thanks to HAL. They didn't get destroyed!
And yeah, I'm real impressed that the Chinese have the capability to do a manned mission to orbit the planet - 30 years after we landed on the moon! Maybe now they'll be confident enough to stop jailing random scholars, Falun Gong members and anybody who says boo! too loudly.
Knowledgeable people shouldn't have to take steps to protect privacy that is constitutionally guaranteed them
:-)
They're also constitutionally guaranteed to be able to walk across the street, but that doesn't mean you don't watch out for trucks. Besides, in most cases you're talking about people who willingly give up information. I allow the NY Times to know who I am because I want to read the paper. So give a bogus name and address if you want! It doesn't usually matter.
And people who are not knowledgeable, which is still most Americans when it comes to the Net, have no way of protecting themselves
That's where the lawsuits against these companies like DoubleClick come into play. Otherwise you might as well lobby for a Ministry of Privacy which, of course, would know everything about everyone.
I'm not going to boycott all movies. Who would know? How many people will read your anti-movie list? Making it public would be interesting, but as you note there are problems with that. You could also argue that boycotting all forms of watching movies unfairly hits a lot of other people, like ushers at theaters, the girl behind the videostore counter ("sorry, have to cut you, business is bad") and so on.
What I've done is sent them an email saying I'm going to boycott all DVDs, and won't start replacing my large tape/laserdic library until they knock off the lawsuits. This is more specifically targeted, which will make it show up in the books more obviously. You know, like "Hey Fred, we're selling tapes and theatre tickets, but those DVDs are going nowhere! Hmmm..."
An overall drop might make them think it's just a broad downturn and they need to turn the screws harder to "protect" their investment. If we all stop buying DVDs they'll need to consider what would happen if the format actually failed entirely due to their evil efforts.
It seems to have worked with DIVX!
In summary: To each when they are truly ready for it, and only then. Full democracy and freedom are appropriate for societies that have matured enough to support it.
If that's true then certainly America doesn't need to apply either. The World Wrestling Federation has a lot more exposure in America than Jefferson or Plato, that's fer sure. I've heard Americans who should know better denying the Holocaust happened. I don't stop them from saying it - I tell them about the survivors I've known.
How would you enforce your "friendly" censorship on these people? How do you stop rumors? How do you stop people from sending crazy emails? What becomes a state secret? Sounds like the latest Chinese plan to "protect" their citizens.
Sorry, but the answer is YES - censorship is always bad. The answer to negative speech is MORE speech.
Why do you think he's here and not at the NY Times, or even Wired? Did you know he wrote for Wired? :-)
Wait a minute, if he's not allowed to possess or use a computer as terms of his parole what would he *do* with it when he got it, other than violate those terms?
Still, interesting that they didn't crack it already.
Well, all I can tell you is I never had a browser actually crash NT itself before they tried to weld it in.
It makes sense to bundle it, but not to require it or attach it to the kernel. But hell, I lost 3 yrs of my life to OS/2 before the MS FUD and PC mag biz killed it, so I won't pretend to be neutral.
Nice to have a rational debate for a change! Like I said, I think it comes down to who you are and what you're doing. I agree, if you're looking to make the most of your net expression it's great to get everything in the box. I was really impressed the first time I installed Red Hat. And I'd certainly agree that WebTV etc. is not using the net to its fullest, but it's good enough for those who want that kind of thing. That's the rub, there's this huge difference between what us programmer-types want and what most people can deal with.
:-)
Dude, the program sucks. It emulates vt100. No color
You're right, if I really needed it to be a full-featured terminal window it would suck, but all I use telnet for is to check the stats on my ISDN router.
more people leave their computers always on
That's really a big issue for some people. I can't tell you the number of times people say "Are you going to leave all that on?" when we're heading out. A surprising number of people are really paranoid about electrical fires I guess. Then I remind them their 'fridge is running all the time, the water heater, furnace, etc. etc. Ah well...
Mom may become interested in the source of her webserver
I appreciate your kind comments re. my mom's interest in the code, but like most people for her the PC is just a tool to look up puppies or furniture or whatever. While car analogies are overused, my mom DOES have a heavy foot on the accelerator, but you'll never find her under the hood. (Hell, she just bought a new car and thought it had a 6cyl engine when it has a 250HP V8!) Most people really want to go in the other direction, i.e. a ROM-based appliance-type thingie. There's still a ton of (reasonably) well-educated people out there that just hate the damn things, even if they can use them effectively when needed.
Anyway, I'll won't argue that the OS doesn't count if you're really trying to get the most out of the net, it's just that in my experience most people don't really want that much.
Cheers...
In any case you should be thankful for Freud - he's indirectly responsible for a breakthrough in local anesthesia. His friend the eye doctor (can't remember the name) noticed the numbing effect on mucous membranes and found that he could use cocaine to anesthesize the eye. Imagine undergoing an eye operation with no anesthesia!
The OS I and others use to connect to the internet really, really does matter.
Well, it really really depends on what you're doing on the net. There are apparently people happy with WebTV.
If they kewn (sic) and felt that a webserver should come with the OS, would a company like Microsoft give their webserver away?
Um well yes they do actually, if you buy NT Server. It's used by many commercial sites and is quite full-featured. I'm a Netscape man myself, but you have to give them their due. And if you're using FrontPage (the package most used by neophytes to publish web content) it includes a "Personal Web server" which does, in fact, work just fine. Or you can get one for free, as others have pointed out.
Has anyone tried to use the default Windows telnet out of the box?
Uh yes, actually it works just fine for my needs, thank you.
People cannot utilize their machine to its fullest sense because their OS does not allow that use
I think generally speaking they can't utilize it to its fullest because they don't have the knowledge or the need. It takes work. Most people want to plug something into the wall and have it work. There is a huge disconnect here between what programmers/hobbyists do and the other 98% of the population.
If these people are flocking to AOL and MS because of its ease of use, does that mean they should be denied basic computational and communicative power because they chose a path with a low learning curve?
Who's denying anyone? Again, this stuff is all available. Free, most of it. What's the difference between a Linux distrib and a ZDNet collection of Windows utilities other than the moralistic attitude? (Yeah, I know you get the source. My mom is NOT going to modify and compile her browser, thanks anyway.)
When you start out driving most people buy a car that's easy to start and run. If you turn out to be a gear-head, THEN you get something that may be harder to start-up and maintain, but gives you other benefits. (i.e. has 600 HP) That's a completely natural progression.
Easy access to content serving for the public will be a set-top box with a built-in firewall and webserver. Not a problem. For others, they'll soon realize that they can run a little webserver on their PC over the cable modem or DSL. But most people won't want to deal with the hazards. They don't want to leave the PC on all the time, and don't want to deal with the script kiddies who want to take you down for fun.
By the way, everybody who's tried to hack my systems so far has been running Linux, and most are running a webserver on the machine with no content at all - they probably don't even know they're running the service. Looks great for the "community".
No, it was much higher than the initial IPO price when this started. I don't have the #'s handy, but the drop was significant. Still not necessarily a causal relationship, but way more significant.
Too bad he can't spell defense.
Well, there doesn't seem to be any point continuing here, since you'll always just move on to "I know it must be so and you'll find out someday."
You're not adressing the main point - you just can't know everything that happened in someone's life 2000 years ago. You believe the Bible. I doubt it's literal accuracy. When all's said and done, you guys can do nothing more than claim the truth as your own, because the Bible said so. Sorry, but that's not good enough.
The only empirical evidence you can have is a live Christ. Let me know when he shows up.
Flamebait my ass! Read the bloody thing - that's exactly what he's floating here, via an ego-stroking email. What I wrote is called a "relevant comment". If you don't agree with it then post a reply, don't smack me down with your moderator stick. Guess I should just start writing Natalie Portman poems.
Go ahead now, moderate this as off-topic. We all know we must not DARE challenge a pin-headed moderator.
Ah, now we get down to it - Couldn't YOU be our saviour, Mr. Katz?
How come you don't just say that the reports of him coming back were one of the apostles dressed a lot like him?
Just trying to stay focused - any of the above are obvious possibilities as well, you could go on for awhile listing them. Look, it's fine with me if you believe this stuff, but you CAN NOT KNOW that it's true. The fact that it was written in the Bible means nothing. It was written by humans, not God, and humans make mistakes, are biased, misinterpret, are fooled by magicians, and outright lie for their own good or political purposes. That's just the way it is.
I argue these points because I *do* care about truth, and you can't KNOW the truth of the words you base your entire faith on. You can trust, and believe, but you can't KNOW. The truth is you don't need to look any farther than your nose to see an incredible universe, and know for sure WE didn't create it. I don't need any more proof of "God" than that. You need to have "faith" because you're trying to believe things which you logically know are impossible, or at least highly improbable. All I need to do is smell the flowers and knock on wood.
And if they found an ancient Bible with the previously missing foreward: "Written for all my friends and my lovely wife, this epic play will be performed next Tuesday at Herod's" it wouldn't phase ME at all.
I think we need to have more negative moderation to account for crap like this. It would be occasionally amusing if they weren't serious.