I am sure I can see the reasoning though (being serious now): If we piss of the Jews they will complain vs. if we piss off the Muslims the radicals will riot, burn things, etc.
The day we stop discussing facts/history because somebody may be offended is the day we are all screwed.
Recorded history has always been about not pissing off those with power to hurt the historians or the historians families. The problem isn't that some one will be offended. The problem is that this offended party/group has the power to hurt/kill the historians/teachers/professors. It's when it becomes normal that offended parties can run around and beat the crap out of people bad mouthing them without worrying about any legal recourse that we'd be screwed. Histroy/society has always been like this. You piss of the wrong entity, and you got to run for cover. The US, EU, Russia and China are all like that. The subjects and groups within each that'll beat the crap out of you are different, but the principle is the same: becareful who you piss off and if they can find you.
If it was Wal-mart, would Microsoft cut them off or give them a stern warning?
Nah, I don't really see this is much of an issues for Walmart because items such as beer, tobacco, some spray paints & paint thinner (and other solvents that you can get high from), and various over the counter drugs all require a DL and for the purchaser to be over a certain age. It should be almost trival to have M rated games treated like those other items. The requireing a DL alone is sort of an age limit for 15-18+. If they actually check the DL, most have something like a red border around the picture or something if the person is under age for either beer products or tobacco. I don't see how this is a big deal for major chains to enforce. If anything the ATF could be expanded to incould expanded to include all age monitored sales and have that body incharge of enforcing the rules. I doubt it would be that simple though.
Will these have a replace every 5 years life span reguardless its ever been out of the box? Current bullet proof vests have the manufactured date on there and it's generally policy to replace them 5 years from manufactured date. This is just a cost of doing business with bullet proof vests that the police field recongizes and they budget for it. Do these new ones need to be replaced on that time table though?
My next door neighbors are first generation immigrants from El Salvador. They have a three bedroom house which the two parents, three kids, his dad, her mom, share the house with two renters who live in the basement. 9 people in a 1700 square foot house! This is in one of the wealthiest counties in the States. The mom and dad have two jobs. The grandmother has a job, and the dad has occasional work on a third job. These are people who have little education and very poor English skills. They are thrilled to have the opportunity to live in this country, and they are making it happen. It's tough going, but a better deal than in Central America, and they consider it a privilege to have American citizenship. Perhaps we should, too.
Um, we could all live with 8-12 people in what we'd consider a 2-3 bedroom house without a bath. (For bath, you go to a public one down the street.) Yes, we could live like that, but we've chosen not to. I'm married with 2 kids and paying my mortage. Each of my brothers have their own homes that they are paying for each unmarried. My parents have a 4 bedroom house most likely paid for by now. Yes, all of us and some cousins could live in my parents home. That's not how our cutlure is geared for; it is generally looked down on in distaste. If you want to openly live like that, you've got to move into a neighborhood/culture where that's the accepted norm.
What's even stupider is that the calculations themselves serve no purpose. Anyone with an napkin and a pencil can tell you whether or not the calculation is feasible on a given size computer cluster. The expected time to crack in a brute force application of a seive is entirely predictable. So what does cracking one prove?
People who do this are more than harmless idiots. They waste money.
I wonder if there is an open source hardware project devoted to building purpose built encryption crackers. I'd think that most governments would spend atleast a million on encryption breaking per year. Heck, most large corporations could afford million dollar encryption breaking projects if they could see a ROI. I could see industrial espionage units privately having this tech.
What exactly is the whole premise behind this idea, if not to protect those who do wrong from being called out or caught? Isn't the whole point of being a whistleblower or informant that you can either help put bad guys behind bars or expose a corporate scandal or safety breach without fear of reprisal, because your identity is kept secret? Or am I completely missing the point here? It just seems to be that the whole point of this website is to give bad guys the ability to track down and "punish" those who actually help the authorities curtail their wrongdoings.
Who care's about physically punishing these guys? If it was me, I'd just use the list to black ball any one that happens to be it. I'd just say that these individuals make poor employees due to not meeting my standards. (My standards would be being loyal to me.) The HR departments at major companies could "punish" these guys alot more than "criminals" ever could. Who cares about going after you? All I care about is not employing you. Go make your living under someone else.
Wiki died the day that intrest groups found it and realized they could sway public opinion by marginalizing a site which supposedly has accurate information.
Yeah, but it's still useful for finding out who this guy is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CmdrTaco. I don't pay attention and when a name actually pops up repeatedly, I like to know who the person is supposed to be. Take this person: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Clinton I could tell you vaguely that she the first lady married to Bill Clinton. I can't say that I've cared or kept up with her career though when her name keeps popping up on the news and such wikipedia is a handy quick reference.
I don't really use wikipedia for the hard science info. I just use it to find out who these pop culture people actually are and why I keep hearing their name in the news. After getting an idea of who they are, I can go back to ignoring them again.
Wow, a real product. Every time I read about holographic storage, particularly on Slashdot, it's in the same sort of context in which you'd read about quantum computing or Star Trek-style teleportation
I'm not even sure to treat this as legit till it's been in use for 6 months to a year. Holographic storage has seemed more of a funding black hole than fusion or Duke Nukem Forever. I'd love to see real fusion or holographic storage being sold and used, but I'm not holding my breath.
Yes, we have crappily-coded sites like MySpace. On the other hand, 10 years ago the idea of visiting a website was inordinately dorky, and being online meant you were a social outcast. Now, it seems like being offline is considered freakish.
So, ten years ago myspace would have been slashdot?
Automatically storing files locally with contents and names that are defined remotely is a security risk. It would not be a security breach in itself, but it could create an opportunity to exploit unrelated bugs which would otherwise not be remotely exploitable.
I'd rather live with the potential risk rather than have a useless cache. The (near only) main reason I use IE's cache is to easily/near trivally grab crap out of there. It's possible, but really difficult and annoying to grab crap out of the fire fox cache. Heck, the DVD folks should copy the open source content protection model and just stick the entire dvd into a difficult to read cache, and they wouldn't need DRM because no one would be casually copying anything, and the only way to view it would be through the proper legit means for nearly everyone.
As far as they've said they mean all their vehicles will have hybrid drivetrains. The only sad thing is going to be our grandkids asking us what it means to drive "stick".
Oh, they'll think that it was just a slang phrase for sex.
That said, I agree that it's absurd that we can even think of locking people up for life for copying bits. There are easier and more humane ways to go about this. For example, probation, being forbidden to own/operate a computer, etc.
You can still be a totally productive member of society without a computer. Being locked up in a cell is hardly productive.
How about taking away there home and transportation options as well? They are criminals so they don't need the stuff law abiding people like us do.
Yes, I am over 30... thanks for asking. I'm a member of the "hear a pin drop" generation of telephony users, whose standards appear to be a bit higher than the kids', and who just might have a bit of perspective that the under-30 set has yet to achieve. Don't get me wrong: I have and use a cell phone. But I have and use a landline more often, because I've come to depend on the features it offers... and which wireless does not.
Um, I just turned 29. I've never been able to hear a pin drop on any phone. To me that was just an ad campaign. We have a landline and a cell phone. You know what I've never experienced on land lines except talking to cell phone users? Static and disconnections.
The cell phone is great for getting in touch with my wife while she is running around town. It's a problem that cell phones don't like to have clear calls in Walmart or Target and some times even at home. It's never been as bad as ad's make it out to be, but it exists which is highly annoying. I've always had some high pitch hearing loss. The static and/or background noise will cause me to miss parts of the discussion that's the other current downfall of cell phones.
You know what's even more annoying is not being able to get through. I've never encountered that dailing to some one's land line, but frequently get that trying to call cell phones.
Maybe this change in rating schemes will take some of the marketability out of hybrids and raise awareness for diesel... though more likely it will just encourage people to say fuck it and buy an RV to drive their kids to soccer practice.
I doubt it has anything to do with Americans being the way they are. Hummer driving, like driving V12 Benzes and BWMs 200kph on the autobahn, is conspicuous consumption. This is a species-wide phenomenon which proves they have the resources to burn & some like Freud would say, proves their fitness for reproduction in attracting the female of the species.
You know I've never thought of it like that. So if I invent a car that runs off burning hundred dollar bills, then the ultra rich should be using that as the ulimate status symbol saying basically, "I've got soo much damn money, that I can burn it and not care." It's one thing for us little people to want a 100 mpg vehicle because we can't afford gas; it's entirely another when you can drive around in 5 mpg vehicle to show off your relative wealth and not even notice the fuel expense.
What is with all the Hummer Hatred? It's too damn big. You youngsters probably don't remember this, but there was a time when you could actually see what's going on ahead of you in traffic.
I don't have anything against the Hummer or SUVs. If I use "too big" as an excuse, I can hate semis, all trucks, SUVs, minivans, and large cars all because they block my vision. Can I then use that excuse to say we should ban fat and tall people because I'm short and they block my vision?
I've never been into FPS. I've played Doom, Quake, and a few others, and I came to the conclusion that I suck at them. Halo may be popular with some people, but that crowd isn't the target market for main course of Wii games. Um, is Halo popluar compared to any game played with a deck of cards? Not really. I like video games as much as the next person, but really I have to admit that games like Halo aren't popular. Games like Tetris are popular. My mom, my wife and my kids will all happily play tetris and actually like it. Will they all play Halo? Not really.
What's the next slashdot headline? Xbox losing the Japanese audience because it doesn't have Legend of Zelda, Final Fanstay or Dragon Quest?
Every guy who buys a land barge drives it around feeling like the Big Man About Town, but to everyone else on the street he's either invisible or just a dickhead who doesn't give a rat's ass about the environmental cost of what he's doing. Seriously, do you ever see someone driving past in a new Hummer and say to yourself, "Wow, I really admire whoever's driving that beast. I'd like to be his friend!". If he was a slob or an idiot before, he's now a slob or an idiot with an SUV.
Nobody cares. It took most of my life and a fair amount of wasted money to finally learn that.
That's not what passes through my head. I think damn I wonder how that girl can afford that SUV when gas prices are killing me and I know that I make more than she does. She being a data entry clerk making 8 something an hour and me being general computer guy at 12-13 an hour. I'd love to be able to buy my wife a vehicle like that. My wife has a Taurus and it feels so tiny. My dad, brother, and mom all drive SUVs. I'd love to be able to send $60-80 for a tank of gus, but the $45 a tank is killing me.
That and I wonder why on earth my brother is paying more for his vehicle payment than my house payments. The environment never, ever comes into my mind. The closest that I come to thinking of the "environment" is when I'm turning and can't see if any traffic is running a light because of larger vehicles (be it SUVs, trucks or semis.)
Sorry, it's simple envy of how they can afford those things that passes though my mind. Sort of like seeing a home computer dream rig costing 4-5K and wondering how their wife let them spend the money on that. Some things just seem impossible financial decisions for families on a small budget to make.
Now, as a non-user of Microsoft products and a victim of attacks by unpatched machines, some of them corporate, it's clear that the current strategy just shifts the costs off of the companies and onto me. If it just crashed their networks I couldn't care less. But it's more than that.
So I need to side with the proposal - the users need to improve their security. They can do this by having rolling patches from Microsoft or picking a more secure product to use. I don't care how they do it, but they need to stop expecting me to pay for their poor performance.
Why the hell should I change anything about how we do business to suit your wants or needs? If we are doing business without problems with somewhat hacked machines, but those hacked machines are bringing down your computers, why should we even care?
Please enlighten me why I should spend resources/effort on fixing your problem? I don't have a problem, you have the problem. You can't change my behavior, and I'm happy doing what I want. Why should I care if our company shits on you, and you can't do anything about it?
Answer: I won't change until a group slaps my company and forces me to change.
We're just used to violence, we could watch hours and hours of movies with incredibly detailed and cruel murders, but most people are grossed out by child porn. So the natural reaction is to ban every possible depiction, because people are grossed out. Well, let me tell you: gross things aren't illegal, when noone is harmed, and there's no victim. They're just gross, that's all.
I'm grossed out by the thought of other people going to the bathroom and those TV operating rooms. So do we need to ban everyone from going to the bathroom because it grosses folks out, and recording operating rooms because it disturbs some people?
What we do know, however, is that pornography's impact on those who view it is considered so detrimental that you can't get randomized, control-group studies approved and that those studies which were randomized and controlled (and led to the conclusion that it was too detrimental to ethically get people to watch porn) found statistically significant connections between exposure to porn and a lower support of women's rights, a declining importance of marriage, and laxer attitude towards rape punishment.
First I've heard that theory. That sounds like a religious group and/or social group (women's rights groups or others) that doesn't believe that behavior is "good or moral" making a decision and then finding/creating studies to support it.
I don't think that I've ever supported "women's rights." I think that it was some time around say 16 or so that I first was exposed to any porn. I've been against minitory and womens rights because from my point of view; they already have more rights than I do. I'm not allowed to form a white males rights group without being called racist or a male chauvinist pig or both and more nastier names so why should I support them being able to bash me?
I've always thought that "marriage" was over rated. I'm married and will stick it out till one of us dies. My mother-in-law has been married 3 times. I have lots of friends whose parents have been divorced. It's no big deal if it isn't a "messy" divorce. The problem with marriage is that the government and individuals don't go into it thinking of it as just a contract between two parties/families. Rich people have thought in terms of marriage contracts for centuries. It would solve alot of our marriage/divorce issues if the government treated marriage as just a contract between two people that can be severed at a future date with prearranged terms and conditions.
By your logic, porn makes me have bad/negative thoughts against your social issues so porn needs to be banned/limited. Um, no. I don't like your social/moral issues all by themselves. I don't really need a reason to like porn.
When the idea of national ID cards were suggested to Reagan it was received negatively. He responded by sarcastically suggesting tattooing bar codes on everybody's heads. That killed the issue during his administration.
I'd rather have a federal drivers license/ID card rather than all the different state driver's licenses and IDs. I'd also like the feds to be incharge of car titles and license plates on all cars. Is that a popular idea? Nope. I'd rather have a stronger federal government and weaker state governments, but that's just me. I think that the voting age needs to be dropped to 12 so folks don't need to listen to me.
Slashdot Mirror
I am sure I can see the reasoning though (being serious now): If we piss of the Jews they will complain vs. if we piss off the Muslims the radicals will riot, burn things, etc.
The day we stop discussing facts/history because somebody may be offended is the day we are all screwed.
Recorded history has always been about not pissing off those with power to hurt the historians or the historians families. The problem isn't that some one will be offended. The problem is that this offended party/group has the power to hurt/kill the historians/teachers/professors. It's when it becomes normal that offended parties can run around and beat the crap out of people bad mouthing them without worrying about any legal recourse that we'd be screwed. Histroy/society has always been like this. You piss of the wrong entity, and you got to run for cover. The US, EU, Russia and China are all like that. The subjects and groups within each that'll beat the crap out of you are different, but the principle is the same: becareful who you piss off and if they can find you.
If it was Wal-mart, would Microsoft cut them off or give them a stern warning?
Nah, I don't really see this is much of an issues for Walmart because items such as beer, tobacco, some spray paints & paint thinner (and other solvents that you can get high from), and various over the counter drugs all require a DL and for the purchaser to be over a certain age. It should be almost trival to have M rated games treated like those other items. The requireing a DL alone is sort of an age limit for 15-18+. If they actually check the DL, most have something like a red border around the picture or something if the person is under age for either beer products or tobacco. I don't see how this is a big deal for major chains to enforce. If anything the ATF could be expanded to incould expanded to include all age monitored sales and have that body incharge of enforcing the rules. I doubt it would be that simple though.
Will these have a replace every 5 years life span reguardless its ever been out of the box? Current bullet proof vests have the manufactured date on there and it's generally policy to replace them 5 years from manufactured date. This is just a cost of doing business with bullet proof vests that the police field recongizes and they budget for it. Do these new ones need to be replaced on that time table though?
My next door neighbors are first generation immigrants from El Salvador. They have a three bedroom house which the two parents, three kids, his dad, her mom, share the house with two renters who live in the basement. 9 people in a 1700 square foot house! This is in one of the wealthiest counties in the States. The mom and dad have two jobs. The grandmother has a job, and the dad has occasional work on a third job. These are people who have little education and very poor English skills. They are thrilled to have the opportunity to live in this country, and they are making it happen. It's tough going, but a better deal than in Central America, and they consider it a privilege to have American citizenship. Perhaps we should, too.
Um, we could all live with 8-12 people in what we'd consider a 2-3 bedroom house without a bath. (For bath, you go to a public one down the street.) Yes, we could live like that, but we've chosen not to. I'm married with 2 kids and paying my mortage. Each of my brothers have their own homes that they are paying for each unmarried. My parents have a 4 bedroom house most likely paid for by now. Yes, all of us and some cousins could live in my parents home. That's not how our cutlure is geared for; it is generally looked down on in distaste. If you want to openly live like that, you've got to move into a neighborhood/culture where that's the accepted norm.
What's even stupider is that the calculations themselves serve no purpose. Anyone with an napkin and a pencil can tell you whether or not the calculation is feasible on a given size computer cluster. The expected time to crack in a brute force application of a seive is entirely predictable. So what does cracking one prove?
d ard
People who do this are more than harmless idiots. They waste money.
I thought it was for the entertainment value. It reminds me of the slashdot stories of DES getting broken "quickly."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Encryption_Stan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EFF_DES_cracker
I wonder if there is an open source hardware project devoted to building purpose built encryption crackers. I'd think that most governments would spend atleast a million on encryption breaking per year. Heck, most large corporations could afford million dollar encryption breaking projects if they could see a ROI. I could see industrial espionage units privately having this tech.
What exactly is the whole premise behind this idea, if not to protect those who do wrong from being called out or caught? Isn't the whole point of being a whistleblower or informant that you can either help put bad guys behind bars or expose a corporate scandal or safety breach without fear of reprisal, because your identity is kept secret? Or am I completely missing the point here? It just seems to be that the whole point of this website is to give bad guys the ability to track down and "punish" those who actually help the authorities curtail their wrongdoings.
Who care's about physically punishing these guys? If it was me, I'd just use the list to black ball any one that happens to be it. I'd just say that these individuals make poor employees due to not meeting my standards. (My standards would be being loyal to me.) The HR departments at major companies could "punish" these guys alot more than "criminals" ever could. Who cares about going after you? All I care about is not employing you. Go make your living under someone else.
It's pretty bad that in order to get funding for upgraded power lines, it has to be billed as "terrorist proof" for DHS money.
Nothing really against the project, except that I'd have thought it would be a strict DOE project. Oh, I'm still too naive.
Wiki died the day that intrest groups found it and realized they could sway public opinion by marginalizing a site which supposedly has accurate information.
Yeah, but it's still useful for finding out who this guy is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CmdrTaco. I don't pay attention and when a name actually pops up repeatedly, I like to know who the person is supposed to be. Take this person: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Clinton I could tell you vaguely that she the first lady married to Bill Clinton. I can't say that I've cared or kept up with her career though when her name keeps popping up on the news and such wikipedia is a handy quick reference.
I don't really use wikipedia for the hard science info. I just use it to find out who these pop culture people actually are and why I keep hearing their name in the news. After getting an idea of who they are, I can go back to ignoring them again.
Wow, a real product. Every time I read about holographic storage, particularly on Slashdot, it's in the same sort of context in which you'd read about quantum computing or Star Trek-style teleportation
I'm not even sure to treat this as legit till it's been in use for 6 months to a year. Holographic storage has seemed more of a funding black hole than fusion or Duke Nukem Forever. I'd love to see real fusion or holographic storage being sold and used, but I'm not holding my breath.
Yes, we have crappily-coded sites like MySpace. On the other hand, 10 years ago the idea of visiting a website was inordinately dorky, and being online meant you were a social outcast. Now, it seems like being offline is considered freakish.
So, ten years ago myspace would have been slashdot?
Automatically storing files locally with contents and names that are defined remotely is a security risk. It would not be a security breach in itself, but it could create an opportunity to exploit unrelated bugs which would otherwise not be remotely exploitable.
I'd rather live with the potential risk rather than have a useless cache. The (near only) main reason I use IE's cache is to easily/near trivally grab crap out of there. It's possible, but really difficult and annoying to grab crap out of the fire fox cache. Heck, the DVD folks should copy the open source content protection model and just stick the entire dvd into a difficult to read cache, and they wouldn't need DRM because no one would be casually copying anything, and the only way to view it would be through the proper legit means for nearly everyone.
As far as they've said they mean all their vehicles will have hybrid drivetrains. The only sad thing is going to be our grandkids asking us what it means to drive "stick".
Oh, they'll think that it was just a slang phrase for sex.
That said, I agree that it's absurd that we can even think of locking people up for life for copying bits. There are easier and more humane ways to go about this. For example, probation, being forbidden to own/operate a computer, etc.
You can still be a totally productive member of society without a computer. Being locked up in a cell is hardly productive.
How about taking away there home and transportation options as well? They are criminals so they don't need the stuff law abiding people like us do.
Yes, I am over 30... thanks for asking. I'm a member of the "hear a pin drop" generation of telephony users, whose standards appear to be a bit higher than the kids', and who just might have a bit of perspective that the under-30 set has yet to achieve. Don't get me wrong: I have and use a cell phone. But I have and use a landline more often, because I've come to depend on the features it offers... and which wireless does not.
Um, I just turned 29. I've never been able to hear a pin drop on any phone. To me that was just an ad campaign. We have a landline and a cell phone. You know what I've never experienced on land lines except talking to cell phone users? Static and disconnections.
The cell phone is great for getting in touch with my wife while she is running around town. It's a problem that cell phones don't like to have clear calls in Walmart or Target and some times even at home. It's never been as bad as ad's make it out to be, but it exists which is highly annoying. I've always had some high pitch hearing loss. The static and/or background noise will cause me to miss parts of the discussion that's the other current downfall of cell phones.
You know what's even more annoying is not being able to get through. I've never encountered that dailing to some one's land line, but frequently get that trying to call cell phones.
Maybe this change in rating schemes will take some of the marketability out of hybrids and raise awareness for diesel... though more likely it will just encourage people to say fuck it and buy an RV to drive their kids to soccer practice.
Don't give them ideas.
I doubt it has anything to do with Americans being the way they are. Hummer driving, like driving V12 Benzes and BWMs 200kph on the autobahn, is conspicuous consumption. This is a species-wide phenomenon which proves they have the resources to burn & some like Freud would say, proves their fitness for reproduction in attracting the female of the species.
You know I've never thought of it like that. So if I invent a car that runs off burning hundred dollar bills, then the ultra rich should be using that as the ulimate status symbol saying basically, "I've got soo much damn money, that I can burn it and not care." It's one thing for us little people to want a 100 mpg vehicle because we can't afford gas; it's entirely another when you can drive around in 5 mpg vehicle to show off your relative wealth and not even notice the fuel expense.
What is with all the Hummer Hatred?
It's too damn big. You youngsters probably don't remember this, but there was a time when you could actually see what's going on ahead of you in traffic.
I don't have anything against the Hummer or SUVs. If I use "too big" as an excuse, I can hate semis, all trucks, SUVs, minivans, and large cars all because they block my vision. Can I then use that excuse to say we should ban fat and tall people because I'm short and they block my vision?
I've never been into FPS. I've played Doom, Quake, and a few others, and I came to the conclusion that I suck at them. Halo may be popular with some people, but that crowd isn't the target market for main course of Wii games. Um, is Halo popluar compared to any game played with a deck of cards? Not really. I like video games as much as the next person, but really I have to admit that games like Halo aren't popular. Games like Tetris are popular. My mom, my wife and my kids will all happily play tetris and actually like it. Will they all play Halo? Not really.
What's the next slashdot headline? Xbox losing the Japanese audience because it doesn't have Legend of Zelda, Final Fanstay or Dragon Quest?
Every guy who buys a land barge drives it around feeling like the Big Man About Town, but to everyone else on the street he's either invisible or just a dickhead who doesn't give a rat's ass about the environmental cost of what he's doing. Seriously, do you ever see someone driving past in a new Hummer and say to yourself, "Wow, I really admire whoever's driving that beast. I'd like to be his friend!". If he was a slob or an idiot before, he's now a slob or an idiot with an SUV.
Nobody cares. It took most of my life and a fair amount of wasted money to finally learn that.
That's not what passes through my head. I think damn I wonder how that girl can afford that SUV when gas prices are killing me and I know that I make more than she does. She being a data entry clerk making 8 something an hour and me being general computer guy at 12-13 an hour. I'd love to be able to buy my wife a vehicle like that. My wife has a Taurus and it feels so tiny. My dad, brother, and mom all drive SUVs. I'd love to be able to send $60-80 for a tank of gus, but the $45 a tank is killing me.
That and I wonder why on earth my brother is paying more for his vehicle payment than my house payments. The environment never, ever comes into my mind. The closest that I come to thinking of the "environment" is when I'm turning and can't see if any traffic is running a light because of larger vehicles (be it SUVs, trucks or semis.)
Sorry, it's simple envy of how they can afford those things that passes though my mind. Sort of like seeing a home computer dream rig costing 4-5K and wondering how their wife let them spend the money on that. Some things just seem impossible financial decisions for families on a small budget to make.
Now, as a non-user of Microsoft products and a victim of attacks by unpatched machines, some of them corporate, it's clear that the current strategy just shifts the costs off of the companies and onto me. If it just crashed their networks I couldn't care less. But it's more than that.
So I need to side with the proposal - the users need to improve their security. They can do this by having rolling patches from Microsoft or picking a more secure product to use. I don't care how they do it, but they need to stop expecting me to pay for their poor performance.
Why the hell should I change anything about how we do business to suit your wants or needs? If we are doing business without problems with somewhat hacked machines, but those hacked machines are bringing down your computers, why should we even care?
Please enlighten me why I should spend resources/effort on fixing your problem? I don't have a problem, you have the problem. You can't change my behavior, and I'm happy doing what I want. Why should I care if our company shits on you, and you can't do anything about it?
Answer: I won't change until a group slaps my company and forces me to change.
We're just used to violence, we could watch hours and hours of movies with incredibly detailed and cruel murders, but most people are grossed out by child porn. So the natural reaction is to ban every possible depiction, because people are grossed out. Well, let me tell you: gross things aren't illegal, when noone is harmed, and there's no victim. They're just gross, that's all.
I'm grossed out by the thought of other people going to the bathroom and those TV operating rooms. So do we need to ban everyone from going to the bathroom because it grosses folks out, and recording operating rooms because it disturbs some people?
What we do know, however, is that pornography's impact on those who view it is considered so detrimental that you can't get randomized, control-group studies approved and that those studies which were randomized and controlled (and led to the conclusion that it was too detrimental to ethically get people to watch porn) found statistically significant connections between exposure to porn and a lower support of women's rights, a declining importance of marriage, and laxer attitude towards rape punishment.
First I've heard that theory. That sounds like a religious group and/or social group (women's rights groups or others) that doesn't believe that behavior is "good or moral" making a decision and then finding/creating studies to support it.
I don't think that I've ever supported "women's rights." I think that it was some time around say 16 or so that I first was exposed to any porn. I've been against minitory and womens rights because from my point of view; they already have more rights than I do. I'm not allowed to form a white males rights group without being called racist or a male chauvinist pig or both and more nastier names so why should I support them being able to bash me?
I've always thought that "marriage" was over rated. I'm married and will stick it out till one of us dies. My mother-in-law has been married 3 times. I have lots of friends whose parents have been divorced. It's no big deal if it isn't a "messy" divorce. The problem with marriage is that the government and individuals don't go into it thinking of it as just a contract between two parties/families. Rich people have thought in terms of marriage contracts for centuries. It would solve alot of our marriage/divorce issues if the government treated marriage as just a contract between two people that can be severed at a future date with prearranged terms and conditions.
By your logic, porn makes me have bad/negative thoughts against your social issues so porn needs to be banned/limited. Um, no. I don't like your social/moral issues all by themselves. I don't really need a reason to like porn.
When the idea of national ID cards were suggested to Reagan it was received negatively. He responded by sarcastically suggesting tattooing bar codes on everybody's heads. That killed the issue during his administration.
I'd rather have a federal drivers license/ID card rather than all the different state driver's licenses and IDs. I'd also like the feds to be incharge of car titles and license plates on all cars. Is that a popular idea? Nope. I'd rather have a stronger federal government and weaker state governments, but that's just me. I think that the voting age needs to be dropped to 12 so folks don't need to listen to me.
It "looked like nano-technology"? Those contractors have really good vision.
Maybe they were bored and thought it would be a great joke to play on some one up the chain.
325 webcam drivers anyone? [slashdot.org] I mean, what else other than boredom would prompt someone to write 325 webcam drivers?
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325 possibly hot chicks waiting for web cam drivers