Some guy sold me a bag of Mike & Ike for $50 and when it didn't do anything we realized it was Good & Plenty.
My girlfriend gave me grief about it and I was like, "why don't you score it next time, it's not like any of you bitches have red-green color blindness!"
It's only one instance of a larger trend of robots replacing humans in situations where frankly humans don't belong (flying at Mach 3, going into space, landing on Mars, disarming bombs, etc.). Robotic solutions are becoming easier to implement than all this fiddling with oxygen and pressure suits and life support. People are already using robots to play fetch with their dogs and soon the dogs themselves will be robots as well.
OK, I feel bad now for not saying in that post that I doubt that's what the kid was doing. The press certainly didn't do him any favors by carefully revealing everything in this story except for the actual "private act" he got busted for. Even so, it's pretty obvious that you wouldn't want to have a laptop from this school in the same room with you unless your pants were on.
I agree with you mostly. I tried to emigrate to Australia a few years ago and they told me to go to hell for having a chronic health condition. So did Canada and NZ. I hope you can excuse me for being sour.
You miss the point. It isn't the censorship itself. It's more the fact that the banned sites list is fundamentally uneditable- it's being maintained by the government and not you, or (more likely) your ISP whom you are (supposed to be) free to cease business with if you want.
Even if the government mandated that ISP service include "censorship service", that wouldn't be as stifling as a government-maintained list for all ISPs that you can't do anything about.
A fundamental idea here (in theory, if not in practice lately) is that a government cannot be trusted with things like this. They teach you that in school when they go over the Bill of Rights. The document makes no sense at all without that assumption. It's not a list of what the government will allow the citizens, it's supposed to be a list of things the citizens will not allow the government to control. While censorship itself is not automatically something that would be forbidden by the First Amendment, the fact that the censorship is controlled by the government and not its citizens is what would make it a clear violation.
If some government employee in charge of maintaining that list quickly reviewed this site and and simply added slashdot.org to the list after spotting a typical FP troll, how would you feel about that? Someone in the government could add all Thatcherite sites to the list for all you know, and leave communist sites alone. At least here it would be possible to jump ISPs if you don't like the censorship they're applying. In your country your only option would to be to petition your government. They may institute mechanisms where you complain and they review the list (that might be done here too) but it still amounts to a petition to the government.
In practice, concepts like this tend to be carelessly talked over and avoided when we implement obnoxious things (like torture), but we are still supposed to talk about them.
Well, partly, there is mere altruism. We sincerely pity you Australians because your Government is wrapping your entire country inside a parental filter.
But we're also protesting the general principle of centralized censorship. Not exactly the mere fact that your own country is implementing these things to affect YOU. That won't impact us directly; everybody knows that. But it is still alarming that someone is making these decisions. Your adoption of this official list will lend the entire concept credibility that it wouldn't otherwise have, around the world, including here. And it's going to be difficult to explain to people the subtle problems behind state-maintained lists of censored sites- as any country might implement them.
I love the use of passive voice, instead of saying "I'm the one idiot who thinks the Hubble has anything to do with this story" you can say "one might have to wonder."
The "wonder" phrasing was just making fun of the article summary that you didn't read.
The Hubble misfocusing problem wasn't due to English-metric stuff. A contractor was assembling an optical apparatus and was supposed to be adjusting the focal length to a point inside some hollow cylindrical cap with a hole bored in its center. When adjusting their eyepiece they missed the hole, and centered instead on a shiny point near the edge of the cap that was also reflecting laser light, because the paint had been scratched there. They couldn't get the focus knob to rotate far enough as they would need to get this paint scratch into focus, so they drove out to a hardware store, bought some flat washers, inserted them on the threaded rods holding up the laser, and elevated the focusing section out a bit so they could dial the focus length to properly get the length to the scratch right.
I don't agree with putting pressure on people "too fat to fly". If it becomes acceptable to filter your plane's passengers for girth, anyone who wasn't asleep in business school knows that you rip up the seats yet again and cram even more people into each flight.
State run religion such as the Church of England is what they where trying to prevent.
Someone's been running around on the talk shows this week because for the past several days the separation of church and state has been all about protecting churches from the state and we specifically do not need to protect the state from churches all of a sudden.
Creationism theory's "higher intelligence" explanation does NOT have to be associated to God as the religious and non-religious communities insist."
Then you're saying that their creationist theories shouldn't be called "creationism theory" because you have a creationist theory that works differently. It's not even wrong- it just doesn't mean anything. It's more about who gets to have their shit referred to as "creationism theory".
This isn't the sort of fight that happens when we build theories based on where evidence leads us, BTW.
These products should be on the manufacturer to document to their resellers which states they are and are not legal for sale in, and the resellers then and only then could be held liable (if the manufacturer never clarified, then sue the manufacturer).
That's crazy. Amazon would be held liable for notifying every reseller in the world of their local laws. Should a seller of perhaps anything on the internet be held liable for contacting resellers in every jurisdiction out there and telling them why they might get in trouble distributing radar detectors or sex toys or Satanic Verses where they are? Maybe Amazon can afford to do all that crap, but anyone else trying to sell books on the Internet would be crushed.
For access to content on line that may be "objectionable", and for where a fee is paid for access, the site may be asked to request "are you located in one of the following municipalities:?" and if so refuse your membership (or get this data from the credit card used for payment). However, since there's no manufacturer, just a publisher, it should be up to the State or local entity to provide sufficient notice to the publisher to implement such a system if they are not based in the local state, and to cover the costs of that implementation if it is not a state law.
Can you imagine the scenario you're fleshing out? People would get emails every week...
"Because you're selling one or more of the following products
___LEATHER BALL STRAP (LARGE)___
___LEATHER BALL STRAP (MED)_____
___JOY OF SEX_____
___ULYSSES_____
___JOY OF GAY SEX____
you must cease all sales to Georgia. However we in the State of Georgia are ready to help. Enclosed is a link to our site educating you how to apply for the voucher system that our State offers to sellers like you who need to implement seller controls for your sales to customers in Georgia in a way that complies with state law."
I'm going to get whooshed for replying to that, but they do, except when diseases kill us faster than we can replenish our pool of Slashdotty sarcastic contrarian commenters.
Slashdot Mirror
uixon8wg2gvw
Some guy sold me a bag of Mike & Ike for $50 and when it didn't do anything we realized it was Good & Plenty.
My girlfriend gave me grief about it and I was like, "why don't you score it next time, it's not like any of you bitches have red-green color blindness!"
Stupidity is a meta-motivation, not a motivation itself. Being stupid makes certain motivations possible.
Well, it's unfortunate that the idea doesn't work if both companies are given the finger they deserve.
There has to be a way to set up a game server for this, so the war in Afghanistan can be handled by the PS3 community.
#dronepilate: Got missile lock, about to fire
#badassbomber: Hold off dude, it looks like a wedding
#dronepilate: I hate weddings
It's only one instance of a larger trend of robots replacing humans in situations where frankly humans don't belong (flying at Mach 3, going into space, landing on Mars, disarming bombs, etc.). Robotic solutions are becoming easier to implement than all this fiddling with oxygen and pressure suits and life support. People are already using robots to play fetch with their dogs and soon the dogs themselves will be robots as well.
OK, I feel bad now for not saying in that post that I doubt that's what the kid was doing. The press certainly didn't do him any favors by carefully revealing everything in this story except for the actual "private act" he got busted for. Even so, it's pretty obvious that you wouldn't want to have a laptop from this school in the same room with you unless your pants were on.
It's only a matter of time until these devices have fingerprint sensor capability, so Apple gets the index finger, and Adobe gets the middle finger.
And furthermore, WTF is their problem with masturbation?
I agree with you mostly. I tried to emigrate to Australia a few years ago and they told me to go to hell for having a chronic health condition. So did Canada and NZ. I hope you can excuse me for being sour.
You miss the point. It isn't the censorship itself. It's more the fact that the banned sites list is fundamentally uneditable- it's being maintained by the government and not you, or (more likely) your ISP whom you are (supposed to be) free to cease business with if you want.
Even if the government mandated that ISP service include "censorship service", that wouldn't be as stifling as a government-maintained list for all ISPs that you can't do anything about.
A fundamental idea here (in theory, if not in practice lately) is that a government cannot be trusted with things like this. They teach you that in school when they go over the Bill of Rights. The document makes no sense at all without that assumption. It's not a list of what the government will allow the citizens, it's supposed to be a list of things the citizens will not allow the government to control. While censorship itself is not automatically something that would be forbidden by the First Amendment, the fact that the censorship is controlled by the government and not its citizens is what would make it a clear violation.
If some government employee in charge of maintaining that list quickly reviewed this site and and simply added slashdot.org to the list after spotting a typical FP troll, how would you feel about that? Someone in the government could add all Thatcherite sites to the list for all you know, and leave communist sites alone. At least here it would be possible to jump ISPs if you don't like the censorship they're applying. In your country your only option would to be to petition your government. They may institute mechanisms where you complain and they review the list (that might be done here too) but it still amounts to a petition to the government.
In practice, concepts like this tend to be carelessly talked over and avoided when we implement obnoxious things (like torture), but we are still supposed to talk about them.
Well, partly, there is mere altruism. We sincerely pity you Australians because your Government is wrapping your entire country inside a parental filter.
But we're also protesting the general principle of centralized censorship. Not exactly the mere fact that your own country is implementing these things to affect YOU. That won't impact us directly; everybody knows that. But it is still alarming that someone is making these decisions. Your adoption of this official list will lend the entire concept credibility that it wouldn't otherwise have, around the world, including here. And it's going to be difficult to explain to people the subtle problems behind state-maintained lists of censored sites- as any country might implement them.
I love the use of passive voice, instead of saying "I'm the one idiot who thinks the Hubble has anything to do with this story" you can say "one might have to wonder."
The "wonder" phrasing was just making fun of the article summary that you didn't read.
I did.
It's probably the most famous example of a misconstructed space module, and ordinarily one might have to wonder if it was an imperial/metric snafu.
Whenever they attempt to introduce metric here, the first thing you see is old ladies on the TV news bitching about the road signs being wrong.
The Hubble misfocusing problem wasn't due to English-metric stuff. A contractor was assembling an optical apparatus and was supposed to be adjusting the focal length to a point inside some hollow cylindrical cap with a hole bored in its center. When adjusting their eyepiece they missed the hole, and centered instead on a shiny point near the edge of the cap that was also reflecting laser light, because the paint had been scratched there. They couldn't get the focus knob to rotate far enough as they would need to get this paint scratch into focus, so they drove out to a hardware store, bought some flat washers, inserted them on the threaded rods holding up the laser, and elevated the focusing section out a bit so they could dial the focus length to properly get the length to the scratch right.
I don't agree with putting pressure on people "too fat to fly". If it becomes acceptable to filter your plane's passengers for girth, anyone who wasn't asleep in business school knows that you rip up the seats yet again and cram even more people into each flight.
State run religion such as the Church of England is what they where trying to prevent.
Someone's been running around on the talk shows this week because for the past several days the separation of church and state has been all about protecting churches from the state and we specifically do not need to protect the state from churches all of a sudden.
Creationism theory's "higher intelligence" explanation does NOT have to be associated to God as the religious and non-religious communities insist."
Then you're saying that their creationist theories shouldn't be called "creationism theory" because you have a creationist theory that works differently. It's not even wrong- it just doesn't mean anything. It's more about who gets to have their shit referred to as "creationism theory".
This isn't the sort of fight that happens when we build theories based on where evidence leads us, BTW.
That's certainly an interesting little background story you have. So what are you getting your PhD in anyway?
(Assuming you can get your computer to boot Windows again, I mean.)
I guess this means secessionist groups must now register in South Carolina.
What is this world coming to?
These products should be on the manufacturer to document to their resellers which states they are and are not legal for sale in, and the resellers then and only then could be held liable (if the manufacturer never clarified, then sue the manufacturer).
That's crazy. Amazon would be held liable for notifying every reseller in the world of their local laws. Should a seller of perhaps anything on the internet be held liable for contacting resellers in every jurisdiction out there and telling them why they might get in trouble distributing radar detectors or sex toys or Satanic Verses where they are? Maybe Amazon can afford to do all that crap, but anyone else trying to sell books on the Internet would be crushed.
For access to content on line that may be "objectionable", and for where a fee is paid for access, the site may be asked to request "are you located in one of the following municipalities:?" and if so refuse your membership (or get this data from the credit card used for payment). However, since there's no manufacturer, just a publisher, it should be up to the State or local entity to provide sufficient notice to the publisher to implement such a system if they are not based in the local state, and to cover the costs of that implementation if it is not a state law.
Can you imagine the scenario you're fleshing out? People would get emails every week...
"Because you're selling one or more of the following products
___LEATHER BALL STRAP (LARGE)___
___LEATHER BALL STRAP (MED)_____
___JOY OF SEX_____
___ULYSSES_____
___JOY OF GAY SEX____
you must cease all sales to Georgia. However we in the State of Georgia are ready to help. Enclosed is a link to our site educating you how to apply for the voucher system that our State offers to sellers like you who need to implement seller controls for your sales to customers in Georgia in a way that complies with state law."
The Supreme Court issues unbelievably stupid judgments, so unbelievably stupid doesn't factor into it.
I'm going to get whooshed for replying to that, but they do, except when diseases kill us faster than we can replenish our pool of Slashdotty sarcastic contrarian commenters.
Have you ever had a former Playboy Bunny in bed with you? I'd bet you'd go off the rails yourself to keep that going.