What is a minor indeed? And what the fuck is pornography? When I was 12, I got on the internet for the first time, for obvious reasons: Because I'd heard that there was porn there. So I set out to get porn, and what kind of porn do you think I was looking for? I was looking for porn of kids my age, what you are so negatively calling kiddie-porn.
Now, I would be the first person to stand up and say that no children should be forced to do anything, including anything sexual. But if we've defining "children" as anyone under 18, then there are lots of "children" out there who have sex. Let me say that again, they have sex, totally voluntarily. Hell, they even enjoy it! I started having sex when I was 15, and I was trying to have sex since I was 12. This is natural, and I think the real change that needs to take place is not in legislation, but in our rediculous sexual taboos.
Joshua
BTW, it should be noted that this is not an attack on Seumas' post that I am replying to, this just seemed like a good place to put this.
I haven't looked rediculously hard, but I can't find any mention of how fast this thing is supposed to be. Anyone know?
What we really need is a storage medium that can access fast enough to where access time isn't really an issue, and then we can simply do away with ram, once we can have a solid state storage that accesses faster than RAM does today. That will be a very big technilogical step, IMHO.
Joshua
Digital Signatures...
on
eLection '04
·
· Score: 1
Perhaps digital signatures such as in PGP could be incorporated somehow with the webform. People could be e-mailed their government identification key, and snail mailed their password. If a system was decided on, it could be used for many more things than voting.
You know, in all seriousness, I've never had a relationship with a girl as geeky as I am. I would love to be with a girl who I can talk about/. and coding and the new machine I just bought with... a girl who wants to help me network my new apartment. There can't be that many of them though, as I've met very very very few... *sigh*...
You know, that makes me seriously wonder. How many women are there on slashdot? I'm fairly certain men are the majority, but how high is that majority? Any females out there, do please raise your hand.:)
please don't force your views on me, and I won't force mine on you.
Why are you here? Is there a reason you read/. and participate in these discussions? I have a reason. I like it here because this is a place where my views are questioned and I can question other people's views and have intelligent (sometimes) discussions and debates about issues that I (and the rest of us, I suppose) feel are important or interesting. Does that mean we're imposing our views on eachother? I think it means we're discussing and questioning our views, and expressing them to eachother, which, IMHO, is rather worth doing.
I think it's a very good and positive thing when a government asks people for feedback and input. Maybe they should start a slash (or some other) site to ask questions like that on a regular basis.;-)
Certainly, I want to be able to access my addresses and notes and e-mail and everything else from wherever I am, but I don't want them stored on some far-away server. I want them stored on my machine, serving that data out to wherever I want to access it from, via the web.
Now, I know you will say that most users can't/don't want to do that, and you're right, but eventually (long term here guys), dedicated and fairly high-bandwidth connections are becomming more and more common, and hopefully usability will eventually increase as well. In the end, that's where I hope we can get.
How many people have not experienced SOME kind of connection outage in the last year?
I work for a fairly small company in Boston. We have one DSL that goes from our main office to the internet, and a DSL in each remote site that goes straight back to our main office, so they can be on our internal network. In the past few weeks, they have stopped working more times than I can count. Sometimes they come out to our sites to do something else, and break our DSL just for the hell of it. They're workman seem less and less compitent all the time.
Now, this is great and all. I mean, I'm glad people are getting high bandwidth connections, but how long will we need these fiber lines? Wireless is getting better and better and better everyday, and bandwidth on it is getting bigger. I wouldn't be surprised if by the time he's done laying lines, we have stable, fast, and always connected wireless via satelite, and his lines are unnecessary.
They can't drag everyone to court, and the more people that host it, the more difficult it will be for them to bring lawsuits. How many people have been sued over DeCSS compared to the amount of people hosting it? Hosting the Windows Source would represent a protest.
Despite popular opinion here, I like this article, and some other of Katz' writing.
What is slashdot, except a never-ending, online meeting of the geek community? Now, I know that it is not totally representative, but in concept, that's what it is. I can see a time when there are huge meetings like this one for certain interest groups, as well as smaller ones for geographical locations, and maybe even physical communities.
Online communities represent a new media that simply can't be bought out by any corporations. I think this is an amazing idea, and will change lots of things. I'm excited to be alive in this time, and witness to these changes.
I see several main possibilities here. The first is that this is real, and will be a great boon to the open source movement. I think that when we get our hands on the code that we're going to see some pretty nasty stuff in there.
Another possibility is that this is an untrue rumor, possibly started by Micro$oft in an attempt to push through the Draft Cybercrime Treaty, or for other, unknown reasons.
Either way, the lawsuits will start flying like mad quite soon, and things will change.
...what in the hell would hackers want with Microsoft's plans?
Real hackers, who are advocates of OSS and not very big fans of M$ have every reason to open up that source. This could theoretically topple M$ to quite a degree. It will be very interesting to watch what happens in the near future.
I don't know about you all, but I would host it everywhere I could! At work, at home. Hell, I'm going to be running a slash site soon, and I'll bloody well put it there. I can't wait till it begins to circulate (as I suspect it most certainly will).
If it's a outside job and the crackers beat MS' secuity, now the whole world+dog knows that MS software sucks in protecting data.
If only this could be the case, but I have this sneaking suspicion that M$ and the media will use this incident to talk about how bad all those "hackers" are and attempt to totally gloss over the fact that it is simply lack of security in their OS that is the problem.
Online interaction can be equally eye-opening, and the irrelevance of
physical distance might sometimes make it more so; but I think online
communities can also exaggerate people's existing tendency to huddle
into insular cliques that are self-validating but ultimately pretty
stagnant.
Since I've been on/. (as well as other online communities), it has caused exposure to people and ideas that I wouldn't have come into contact with without these places. I learned things I never would have learned in meatspace, and I've changed my opinions and ideals through interesting and intelligent debate. I think this can only be a good thing.
The people whom I know in meatspace, I did not really choose. I know them because we both happen to be in the same place, met the same people, etc, and it's all rather a haphazard way to meet people. On the internet, however, I can talk to people who have similar interests to me, and I can more carefully choose my friends. If I am an outcast in meatspace, and have no friends, there is a much better chance of finding people of like-minds in cyberspace, because the pool of people is so much bigger. I think this is an amazing and wonderful thing, and I think forums like/. are making a huge step in making the net what it can be.
Touring is one music-based business model. It is a way for musicians to make money, by performing their music for people, in meatspace.
Most musicians today, don't fully implement this business model. They tour, but only to promote their albums. They rely on the fact that they continue to get paid for sales of their album for a really long time. The internet will eventually make this business model totally not-feasable.
Lemme say that again, pretty soon, musicians will not be able to make lots and lots of money by selling their studio-recorded works. This simply means that the business model has to change, and I can see more bands returning to live-performances, and releasing studio albums and recordings of live shows to get people into them, and then make their money by touring. Hell, Phish manages it, and so do lots of others.
Where does the idea come from that a musician has the right to work once (record an album) and get paid for it indefinitely? I love music, and I'm all for paying musicians, every time they perform, but not every time I listen to recording made from a performance they did at an earlier date.
Slashdot is lots of things, but mainly it is a way for people to talk about what is currently happening in the geek world. If there is a rumor circulating about something, then there is nothing wrong with reporting the existence of that rumor. If there is an article about something, slashdot is a place to talk about it. If I want to read the straight news, I go to a news site. If I want to stay informed about geek issues, I read slashdot.
Despite popular slashdot opinion, I think this is a good article, and something worth bringing up, but I am a very nit-picky person when it comes to things like this.
I personally use mostly 'email', but often 'e-mail' as well if I happen to feel the desire. I never capitalize the 'e'. I'd like to mention as well that IMHO, people on the internet (especially young AOLers and script kiddies) seem to think that just because you're typing something on a computer, in an email, IRC, usenet, or something to that effect, that they simply don't have to bother with pesky things like sentances or punctuation or captilization. This bothers me. Is gramar any less important to getting your ideas across because the medium you're writing it on is a digital one?
Linux has suffered similar problems to the Macintosh: people avoid buying them because "there just isn't enough software for them." They proceed to then buy Windows boxes.
I'm sure this is probably true, but I think there is a fundamental shift going on in what people use their computers for today. The number of apps people are needing is dropping, because people are doing more and more on the web. I think this trend is even true for non-geeks as well as geeks, and that means that less and less software will be needed. We don't need lots of Office apps, we just need good ones.
Slashdot Mirror
What is a minor indeed? And what the fuck is pornography? When I was 12, I got on the internet for the first time, for obvious reasons: Because I'd heard that there was porn there. So I set out to get porn, and what kind of porn do you think I was looking for? I was looking for porn of kids my age, what you are so negatively calling kiddie-porn.
Now, I would be the first person to stand up and say that no children should be forced to do anything, including anything sexual. But if we've defining "children" as anyone under 18, then there are lots of "children" out there who have sex. Let me say that again, they have sex, totally voluntarily. Hell, they even enjoy it! I started having sex when I was 15, and I was trying to have sex since I was 12. This is natural, and I think the real change that needs to take place is not in legislation, but in our rediculous sexual taboos.
Joshua
BTW, it should be noted that this is not an attack on Seumas' post that I am replying to, this just seemed like a good place to put this.
I haven't looked rediculously hard, but I can't find any mention of how fast this thing is supposed to be. Anyone know?
What we really need is a storage medium that can access fast enough to where access time isn't really an issue, and then we can simply do away with ram, once we can have a solid state storage that accesses faster than RAM does today. That will be a very big technilogical step, IMHO.
Joshua
Perhaps digital signatures such as in PGP could be incorporated somehow with the webform. People could be e-mailed their government identification key, and snail mailed their password. If a system was decided on, it could be used for many more things than voting.
Just a thought...
Joshua
You know, in all seriousness, I've never had a relationship with a girl as geeky as I am. I would love to be with a girl who I can talk about /. and coding and the new machine I just bought with... a girl who wants to help me network my new apartment. There can't be that many of them though, as I've met very very very few... *sigh*...
Joshua
By the way, hot Slashdot females, I voted.
:)
You know, that makes me seriously wonder. How many women are there on slashdot? I'm fairly certain men are the majority, but how high is that majority? Any females out there, do please raise your hand.
Joshua
I found this one rather amusing... Ahhh, Photoshop.
Joshua
please don't force your views on me, and I won't force mine on you.
/. and participate in these discussions? I have a reason. I like it here because this is a place where my views are questioned and I can question other people's views and have intelligent (sometimes) discussions and debates about issues that I (and the rest of us, I suppose) feel are important or interesting. Does that mean we're imposing our views on eachother? I think it means we're discussing and questioning our views, and expressing them to eachother, which, IMHO, is rather worth doing.
Why are you here? Is there a reason you read
Joshua
It's a shame that a better question (one a little more pertinent to the concern to their readers) wasn't chosen by the /. editors.
/. editors didn't chose the questions that were submitted to the candidates, we did! They were the highest moderated comments.
The
Joshua
I think it's a very good and positive thing when a government asks people for feedback and input. Maybe they should start a slash (or some other) site to ask questions like that on a regular basis. ;-)
Joshua
Certainly, I want to be able to access my addresses and notes and e-mail and everything else from wherever I am, but I don't want them stored on some far-away server. I want them stored on my machine, serving that data out to wherever I want to access it from, via the web.
Now, I know you will say that most users can't/don't want to do that, and you're right, but eventually (long term here guys), dedicated and fairly high-bandwidth connections are becomming more and more common, and hopefully usability will eventually increase as well. In the end, that's where I hope we can get.
Joshua
How many people have not experienced SOME kind of connection outage in the last year?
I work for a fairly small company in Boston. We have one DSL that goes from our main office to the internet, and a DSL in each remote site that goes straight back to our main office, so they can be on our internal network. In the past few weeks, they have stopped working more times than I can count. Sometimes they come out to our sites to do something else, and break our DSL just for the hell of it. They're workman seem less and less compitent all the time.
Joshua
Now, this is great and all. I mean, I'm glad people are getting high bandwidth connections, but how long will we need these fiber lines? Wireless is getting better and better and better everyday, and bandwidth on it is getting bigger. I wouldn't be surprised if by the time he's done laying lines, we have stable, fast, and always connected wireless via satelite, and his lines are unnecessary.
Joshua
I certainly do use the home feature! It's set to slashdot. ;)
Joshua
They can't drag everyone to court, and the more people that host it, the more difficult it will be for them to bring lawsuits. How many people have been sued over DeCSS compared to the amount of people hosting it? Hosting the Windows Source would represent a protest.
Joshua
Despite popular opinion here, I like this article, and some other of Katz' writing.
What is slashdot, except a never-ending, online meeting of the geek community? Now, I know that it is not totally representative, but in concept, that's what it is. I can see a time when there are huge meetings like this one for certain interest groups, as well as smaller ones for geographical locations, and maybe even physical communities.
Online communities represent a new media that simply can't be bought out by any corporations. I think this is an amazing idea, and will change lots of things. I'm excited to be alive in this time, and witness to these changes.
Joshua
I see several main possibilities here. The first is that this is real, and will be a great boon to the open source movement. I think that when we get our hands on the code that we're going to see some pretty nasty stuff in there.
Another possibility is that this is an untrue rumor, possibly started by Micro$oft in an attempt to push through the Draft Cybercrime Treaty, or for other, unknown reasons.
Either way, the lawsuits will start flying like mad quite soon, and things will change.
Joshua
...what in the hell would hackers want with Microsoft's plans?
Real hackers, who are advocates of OSS and not very big fans of M$ have every reason to open up that source. This could theoretically topple M$ to quite a degree. It will be very interesting to watch what happens in the near future.
Joshua
I don't know about you all, but I would host it everywhere I could! At work, at home. Hell, I'm going to be running a slash site soon, and I'll bloody well put it there. I can't wait till it begins to circulate (as I suspect it most certainly will).
Joshua
If it's a outside job and the crackers beat MS' secuity, now the whole world+dog knows that MS software sucks in protecting data.
If only this could be the case, but I have this sneaking suspicion that M$ and the media will use this incident to talk about how bad all those "hackers" are and attempt to totally gloss over the fact that it is simply lack of security in their OS that is the problem.
Joshua
Online interaction can be equally eye-opening, and the irrelevance of physical distance might sometimes make it more so; but I think online communities can also exaggerate people's existing tendency to huddle into insular cliques that are self-validating but ultimately pretty stagnant.
/. (as well as other online communities), it has caused exposure to people and ideas that I wouldn't have come into contact with without these places. I learned things I never would have learned in meatspace, and I've changed my opinions and ideals through interesting and intelligent debate. I think this can only be a good thing.
Since I've been on
Joshua
You make a very, very good point here...
/. are making a huge step in making the net what it can be.
The people whom I know in meatspace, I did not really choose. I know them because we both happen to be in the same place, met the same people, etc, and it's all rather a haphazard way to meet people. On the internet, however, I can talk to people who have similar interests to me, and I can more carefully choose my friends. If I am an outcast in meatspace, and have no friends, there is a much better chance of finding people of like-minds in cyberspace, because the pool of people is so much bigger. I think this is an amazing and wonderful thing, and I think forums like
Joshua
Touring is one music-based business model. It is a way for musicians to make money, by performing their music for people, in meatspace.
Most musicians today, don't fully implement this business model. They tour, but only to promote their albums. They rely on the fact that they continue to get paid for sales of their album for a really long time. The internet will eventually make this business model totally not-feasable.
Lemme say that again, pretty soon, musicians will not be able to make lots and lots of money by selling their studio-recorded works. This simply means that the business model has to change, and I can see more bands returning to live-performances, and releasing studio albums and recordings of live shows to get people into them, and then make their money by touring. Hell, Phish manages it, and so do lots of others.
Where does the idea come from that a musician has the right to work once (record an album) and get paid for it indefinitely? I love music, and I'm all for paying musicians, every time they perform, but not every time I listen to recording made from a performance they did at an earlier date.
Joshua
Slashdot is lots of things, but mainly it is a way for people to talk about what is currently happening in the geek world. If there is a rumor circulating about something, then there is nothing wrong with reporting the existence of that rumor. If there is an article about something, slashdot is a place to talk about it. If I want to read the straight news, I go to a news site. If I want to stay informed about geek issues, I read slashdot.
Joshua
Despite popular slashdot opinion, I think this is a good article, and something worth bringing up, but I am a very nit-picky person when it comes to things like this.
I personally use mostly 'email', but often 'e-mail' as well if I happen to feel the desire. I never capitalize the 'e'. I'd like to mention as well that IMHO, people on the internet (especially young AOLers and script kiddies) seem to think that just because you're typing something on a computer, in an email, IRC, usenet, or something to that effect, that they simply don't have to bother with pesky things like sentances or punctuation or captilization. This bothers me. Is gramar any less important to getting your ideas across because the medium you're writing it on is a digital one?
Joshua
Linux has suffered similar problems to the Macintosh: people avoid buying them because "there just isn't enough software for them." They proceed to then buy Windows boxes.
I'm sure this is probably true, but I think there is a fundamental shift going on in what people use their computers for today. The number of apps people are needing is dropping, because people are doing more and more on the web. I think this trend is even true for non-geeks as well as geeks, and that means that less and less software will be needed. We don't need lots of Office apps, we just need good ones.
Joshua