Who was it that said that the greatest danger to law enforcement was unenforceable laws?
This is the case here. Congress (and all the people who are paying for them) are trying to change the reality of a society that's very rapidbly becoming a 'free information' country. They're trying to put limits on something that is changing the world very rapidly and in a very chaotic manner. You can call it 'destructive' if you want to, since it's certainly destroying organizations and businesses that survive by controlling information, but it's jsut change.
The problem with trying to control this change is that you can't legislate fish into flying or birds into swimming. Just look at Prohibition if you need an example. A small subsection of the country's population tried to legislate away people's rights to get drunk and wasted. They had good intentions. Alcoholism is certainly a problem and destroys many, many lives. By making a law that was disliked and unenforceable, however, the country opened itself up to the ravages of organized crime more than ever before.
Look at the 'War on Drugs'. Hard drugs (and even some 'soft' drugs) ruin lives and kill people. That doesn't change the fact that people want to get high or stoned. You think that columbian drug lords would have vast fortunes with which to buy submarines and advanced IT installations if the American government hadn't created a situation in which it was more profitable to do dusiness in an illegal manner than legally?
Information is in the same boat. Companys claim billions and billions of dollars of 'lost sales' (cough *bullshit* cough) on music, software, game, and video piracy. People want to use the stuff in a 'fair use' way. Even moreso, they want to pirate it and not pay for it. All the government is going to do by creating a law that makes it more difficult to legally share information is make more people into criminals who weren't before.
Which, in my humble opinion, going to be a lot more interesting than a fanpiece like 'Superman Vs. Batman'. Well, if you get to make both, why not?
The problem with the Ender's Game movie is that the studio is apparently trying to submarine Petersen's efforts into getting a cast that he feels is realistic for the story. You can read the AICN rumour here: http://www.aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=12681
Essentially, it boils down to the fact that Petersen wants to include a racially mixed cast to reflect the in-book and real-world race ratios at the time Ender's Game is supposed to be set. The studio has vetoed his plans claiming that white audiences won't want to go unless the adults in the movie are all white.
From the rumour:
He was flat out told "Not a chance in hell. There will be a handful of token characters from other races but every other child will be white." As the studio execs pointed out, if there are too many background characters that aren't white, white people will be afraid to go see it.
Throught he wonders of plastic surgery, computer animation, and modern robotics, Michael Jackson has transformed himself from a 40-year old black man into a 12 year old Japanese girl. Keep an eye out for the accompanying sailor costume and magic wand in his next video.
From a quick count on the shelf behind me I've got 20 PA books, mostly Xanth titles, that I paid full price for in bookstores. All the rest were read in various libraries.
From your in-story commentary and author's notes, we have a glimmering of your opinion on people who don't pay for books.
What is your opinion of people who borrow the books you've written from libraries. Also, what is your opinion of fan-authors who write fanstories based on your work?
...When you're wiring about 500 workstations and servers over a reasonably sized office. You run into having to buy literally *miles* of cable when you wire even a medium-sized IT office. At that volume, buying Cat6 or Cat5 is non-trivially less expensive than fiber.
I read the article at another source, but am left wondering how the content of 'Leopard Walk up to Dragon' is any different than the reams and reams of bad Harry fanfiction available on sites like Fanfiction.net.
While it's being sold as Rowling's work, that is the only crime I see being committed, unless the publishers want to stamp out all original Harry fiction in the name of 'protecting their copyright'. Even the most zealous of intellectual property holders, Paramount, doesn't do a thing to inhibit the vast, vast legions of Trek ficcers and slash writers because they know exactly badly they'd alienate their fan communities. Lucas doesn't either. In fact, SW stories flourish on sites like theforce.net.
I imagine that 'Leopard Walk up to Dragon' is probably a fanstory that got snapped up by an unscrupulous pirate publisher. The real author is probably not getting the credit he or she deserves for being so dedicated as to write a novel-length fan story and the legitimate Harry Potter publishers are going to make everyone's lives miserable because of it.
Re:Reasonable Interface?! Have you used Blender?
on
Blender Goes Open Source
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I agree with Taco, too. The interface of blender, when compared to other modeller's interfaces, sucks donkey balls.
It may be very quick for someone who takes the time to learn it and become one with the app, but as someone who's sat down with several modellers over time, yes, including candy-coated Bryce, it's almost unfathomable. The icons are meaningless, the tools are painful to use, and the vast array of options given to the user make absolutely no sense. It wouldn't be so bad, but understanding of all these is required to do anything at all in the modeller.
I've spent quite a bit of time with different modellers, but when I tried to do something so simple as to create a rendered sphere in Blender, it took me almost two hours to figure out that the reason my image was coming out blank was that Blender does not provide default lighting... like every other modeller out there does.
Blender can and has been used to create some fantastic graphics. I'm so glad that it's been open sourced so that development can continue. As a graphic artist, however, I strongly encourage the design team to *completely* revamp the interface. It may what programmers want, but it's definietely *NOT* what artists want.
If you'd read the article, you'd realize that the Computer (?!?) scientist who answered the fifthgrader's question went over why it was much more likely that the sun would reach the end of its life cycle or we'd be hit by an asteroid before the moon crashed into us.
One interesting fact he mentioned is that the moon's gravity is very slowly lengthening the Earth's day, something that will probably have a significant impact on life on the planet if it continues for long enough.
Uhmm... Yeah. The Gamebody has a Z80 clone processor, IIRC. Here are some specs I dug up:
CPU: 8-bit (Similar to the Z80 processor.) Main RAM: 8K Byte Video RAM: 8K Byte Screen Size 2.6" Resolution: 160x144 (20x18 tiles) Max # of sprites: 40 Max # sprites/line: 10 Max sprite size: 8x16 Min sprite size: 8x8 Clock Speed: 4.194304 MHz (4.295454 MHz for Super GB) Horiz Sync: 9198 KHz (9420 KHz for Super GB) Vert Sync: 59.73 Hz (61.17 Hz for Super GB) Sound: 4 channels with stereo sound Power: DC6V 0.7W (DC3V 0.7W for GB Pocket)
So, basically, any mp3 player for gameboy will be doing all the processing, storage, and DSP *in the cartridge* while using the Gameboy's integrated controls and speakers for playback.
How is digital technology anything more than a continuation of the development of techologies that made information cheaper to reproduce that started in the 15th century [prodigi.bl.uk]?
Digital technology has, for the first time in human history, eliminated a scarcity. Before, there was always a scarcity in terms of information that could be stored. Books, vinyl albums, papers, documents, and the like had to be stored. They could be duplicated, but only at a relatively high expense.
The introduction of digital technology in the mix has eliminated that expense, driving the 'supply-side' of the supply and demand equation for information to infinity. Copyright is now the *only* thing propping up the sale of information.
IANAL, but if I undestand correctly, the great deal of Western law is based on 'common law', the practice of allowing previous court decisions to affect future decisions.
The problem with trying to apply laws to the Internet is that digital technology has caused a wave of obsolescence in any kind of existing communication, information technology, and dozens of other of societal concepts we hold near and dear. Law based on past precidents rather than fairness and equitable behavior can't hope to keep up through such an incredible wave of advancement.
Take copyright, for (our favorite) example. It's an artificial scarcity placed on information to encourage development of new information, bit it music, data, scientific research, or text.
Since digital technology has forever completely erased the possibility of having a finite supply of any kind of information, the length and breadth of copyright law is dying-- screaming, kicking, doing it's best to cling to existance in a scary new world inhospitable to it, but dying nonetheless. Like symbiotic bacteria, only the lawyers are keeping the dinosaurs of companies that profit by control of information alive.
Other facets of law relating to digital technology will go through similiar changes. Those laws that can adapt will make the change, just like the small rodents and other mammals who survived the Yucatan blast when the dinosaurs were obliterated. We will find the fossils of those who can't in the strata of obsolete legal records.
Microsoft can kick and whine and scream all they want to, but it's far, far too late. They knew that all the other consoles get chipped. They knew that their hardware was ripe for a Linux/Mame/Etc.. port. They knew that they were going to have to fight this, even if every other console maker has been doing it from the beginning of time.
Sorry, Bill. Take a good look at Sony, your main source of competition. What have they done? Released a Linux kit... and therefore eventual Mame compatibility.
When I recently redesigned my site, I spent time creating a fairly robust table/css layout scheme. I implemented it and checked it in a variety of browsers... Including Lynx and Opera, just for you zealots/bigots.
Since I developed with Moz as my 'reference' browser, I didn't see the need to check in any other version of Netscape. Checked it multiple times in IE. After I was satisfied that it would work, I posted it. Low and behold I found that I had a few dozen emails the next morning from angry Netscape 4.x users wanting to know why the hell I took my site down.
It seems if you nest style delcarations inside a table element in Netscape 4 series browsers, it hides the affected text, rather than displaying what it doesn't understand anyway, ala the HTML spec.
The hell of this was that I *knew* that Netscape 4.0 behaved this way from an earlier site I designed, but hadn't even thought about it since Mozilla 0.7 came out.
Translate: "I'm afraid that if I help you with this solution, I'll be violating my previous employer's intellectual property rights."
as:
"I know you hired me because of my work in your field, but frankly, I'm lazy. I can't surf porn and read messageboards all day if I'm working on this solution for you. Here's a tidy excuse so you can feel better about the money you're wasting on me and my blatant goofing-off habit."
Okay, I *know* that everyone who's read LOTR *knows* Gandalf comes back as Gandalf the White and kicks some big-time ass. Those who *didn't* read and had the LOTR movie as their first and only exposure to Tolkein didn't!
My wife asked me, at the end of LOTR, "He's not really dead is he?"
"Of course he's dead, dear," I replied. "Didn't you see that great big pit he fell into? Even if he somehow managed to survive the fall, don't you think the Balrog would have survived it too?"
So here they come and spoil the fuck out of it for the non-readers with the damn trailer. Thanks a whole fucking lot, Peter Jackson.
(Seriously, looks like PJ and the actors have done some world class work here. Can't wait till X-Mas!)
Who, really, has secrets that are keeping them alive or incriminating evidence that just might get them arrested, imprisoned, or killed. To most people, this kind of utility is a joke. To a few people, however, this is a godsend...
Like, for instance, RAWA. These are the women who ran an underground women's rights movement in Afghanistan while the Taliban were in control. You may have seen their website with its grotesque pictures. They lived and worked in secrecy, in constant fear of being imprisoned or killed by the Taliban. Wouldn't a dead-man's(or -woman's) switch be just the thing to send off a 'Farewell. This is the evidence of my capture at the hands of the Taliban' message?
It's not just them, either. Dissidents in China could also use a utility like this... especially all those guys who just got their internet cafes shut down. Suppose the 2600 guys got raided by the MPAA^H^H^H^HFBI and were all put in prison. I imagine that Emanuel Goldstien has some juicy information he'd like to share in the event of his capture or death.
The Gotti family has been in the news a lot lately. Suppose that you were a mob informant and had information on them that was all that was standing between you and 'Sleeping with the Sopranos after next season'. A dead-man's switch would go a long way to allowing you to release that last little bit of information, even if the mafia got to you first.
As someone who makes lots of free sellable and href="http://www.furinkan.net/fanfic/">unsellab le content, I think The Wayback Machine is an invaluable resource. I can look back a see how big a dork I was and still am. I've also found stuff of mine that I've lost over time, amazed that anyone ever bothered to hold on to it.
Censorship in Australia is like the wearing of seatbelts in America. It is not mandatory.
FYI, depending on locality, the wearing of seatbelts *is* mandatory in the U.S.. In some states, you have to wear seatbelts in front and back. In some states you just have to wear them in the front seat. Cops *will* pull you over and give you a $50-100 (US) ticket if they see that you're not wearing them.
That's not to say that many people don't try to get away with it anyway. The last time I went to pay a traffic ticket (80MPH on the 60MPH freeway when I was late back from lunch) *most* of the people paying tickets had been busted for seatbelt violations.
As far as I know, it's really an age thing. The seatbelt laws didn't really get passed until the mid 1980's. Everyone in the generation driving before 1985 grouses about having to wear them or conveniently 'forgets' them when they get in the car. Most of the people in the generation driving *after* 1985 don't even think about it.
Besides being considerate (You don't go flying through the window and make a nasty mess for someone to clean up if you wreck), we all buy the saftey aspect. It's like running regular backups or firewalls. You just do it to feel safer.
Are IP's blocked? Are DNS lookups merely prohibited?
In almost all cases, an anonymous proxy will get around these guys. (We miss you, Safeweb!) If it's just DNS lookups being probhibited, there are many, many public DNS servers as well as a growing system of alternate DNS roots.
So, to the Aussie/.ers, how has this affected you? If it has affected you, have you been able to conveniently side-step it?
Personally, I'm fairly interested in all this, especially seeing who it's going to hurt today. Remember that 30 years ago is not ancient history. Many people who are still high-ranking members of government now were members of government then.
In the recent hooplah surrounding the new book, Pat Buchannan was named as a possible 'Deep Throat', something I seriously doubt. Still, it raises questions. Suppose that someone we respect *cough* *cough* is in actuality a criminal?
Concerns about global warming aside, the Earth's external temperature has fluctuated *wildly* during the 4 or 5 billion years our planet has been around. At times, such as when the atmosphere wasn't made primarily of oxygen for example, it has been much colder or hotter. Assuming that our planet's core does indeed act like a breeder reactor, something so slight as global warming is not going to significantly affect it.
Gracie, the gray tabby cat sleeps atop my PC case. If her bed is disturbed... and I do mean in any way... she cries for days on end. She can't be consoled. I have no choice but to hunt down the man what tried to jack my HDD and present his head to the cat like she does when she brings me mice.
Slashdot Mirror
Who was it that said that the greatest danger to law enforcement was unenforceable laws?
This is the case here. Congress (and all the people who are paying for them) are trying to change the reality of a society that's very rapidbly becoming a 'free information' country. They're trying to put limits on something that is changing the world very rapidly and in a very chaotic manner. You can call it 'destructive' if you want to, since it's certainly destroying organizations and businesses that survive by controlling information, but it's jsut change.
The problem with trying to control this change is that you can't legislate fish into flying or birds into swimming. Just look at Prohibition if you need an example. A small subsection of the country's population tried to legislate away people's rights to get drunk and wasted. They had good intentions. Alcoholism is certainly a problem and destroys many, many lives. By making a law that was disliked and unenforceable, however, the country opened itself up to the ravages of organized crime more than ever before.
Look at the 'War on Drugs'. Hard drugs (and even some 'soft' drugs) ruin lives and kill people. That doesn't change the fact that people want to get high or stoned. You think that columbian drug lords would have vast fortunes with which to buy submarines and advanced IT installations if the American government hadn't created a situation in which it was more profitable to do dusiness in an illegal manner than legally?
Information is in the same boat. Companys claim billions and billions of dollars of 'lost sales' (cough *bullshit* cough) on music, software, game, and video piracy. People want to use the stuff in a 'fair use' way. Even moreso, they want to pirate it and not pay for it. All the government is going to do by creating a law that makes it more difficult to legally share information is make more people into criminals who weren't before.
Which, in my humble opinion, going to be a lot more interesting than a fanpiece like 'Superman Vs. Batman'. Well, if you get to make both, why not?
The problem with the Ender's Game movie is that the studio is apparently trying to submarine Petersen's efforts into getting a cast that he feels is realistic for the story. You can read the AICN rumour here: http://www.aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=12681
Essentially, it boils down to the fact that Petersen wants to include a racially mixed cast to reflect the in-book and real-world race ratios at the time Ender's Game is supposed to be set. The studio has vetoed his plans claiming that white audiences won't want to go unless the adults in the movie are all white.
From the rumour:
He was flat out told "Not a chance in hell. There will be a handful of token characters from other races but every other child will be white." As the studio execs pointed out, if there are too many background characters that aren't white, white people will be afraid to go see it.
What? He's black?
Throught he wonders of plastic surgery, computer animation, and modern robotics, Michael Jackson has transformed himself from a 40-year old black man into a 12 year old Japanese girl. Keep an eye out for the accompanying sailor costume and magic wand in his next video.
From a quick count on the shelf behind me I've got 20 PA books, mostly Xanth titles, that I paid full price for in bookstores. All the rest were read in various libraries.
Mr. Anthony,
From your in-story commentary and author's notes, we have a glimmering of your opinion on people who don't pay for books.
What is your opinion of people who borrow the books you've written from libraries. Also, what is your opinion of fan-authors who write fanstories based on your work?
...When you're wiring about 500 workstations and servers over a reasonably sized office. You run into having to buy literally *miles* of cable when you wire even a medium-sized IT office. At that volume, buying Cat6 or Cat5 is non-trivially less expensive than fiber.
I read the article at another source, but am left wondering how the content of 'Leopard Walk up to Dragon' is any different than the reams and reams of bad Harry fanfiction available on sites like Fanfiction.net.
While it's being sold as Rowling's work, that is the only crime I see being committed, unless the publishers want to stamp out all original Harry fiction in the name of 'protecting their copyright'. Even the most zealous of intellectual property holders, Paramount, doesn't do a thing to inhibit the vast, vast legions of Trek ficcers and slash writers because they know exactly badly they'd alienate their fan communities. Lucas doesn't either. In fact, SW stories flourish on sites like theforce.net.
I imagine that 'Leopard Walk up to Dragon' is probably a fanstory that got snapped up by an unscrupulous pirate publisher. The real author is probably not getting the credit he or she deserves for being so dedicated as to write a novel-length fan story and the legitimate Harry Potter publishers are going to make everyone's lives miserable because of it.
I agree with Taco, too. The interface of blender, when compared to other modeller's interfaces, sucks donkey balls.
It may be very quick for someone who takes the time to learn it and become one with the app, but as someone who's sat down with several modellers over time, yes, including candy-coated Bryce, it's almost unfathomable. The icons are meaningless, the tools are painful to use, and the vast array of options given to the user make absolutely no sense. It wouldn't be so bad, but understanding of all these is required to do anything at all in the modeller.
I've spent quite a bit of time with different modellers, but when I tried to do something so simple as to create a rendered sphere in Blender, it took me almost two hours to figure out that the reason my image was coming out blank was that Blender does not provide default lighting... like every other modeller out there does.
Blender can and has been used to create some fantastic graphics. I'm so glad that it's been open sourced so that development can continue. As a graphic artist, however, I strongly encourage the design team to *completely* revamp the interface. It may what programmers want, but it's definietely *NOT* what artists want.
If you'd read the article, you'd realize that the Computer (?!?) scientist who answered the fifthgrader's question went over why it was much more likely that the sun would reach the end of its life cycle or we'd be hit by an asteroid before the moon crashed into us.
One interesting fact he mentioned is that the moon's gravity is very slowly lengthening the Earth's day, something that will probably have a significant impact on life on the planet if it continues for long enough.
Really, please. Mod this guy up. I'd love to download a daily blacklist of IP's to block from RIAA and their allies.
Uhmm... Yeah. The Gamebody has a Z80 clone processor, IIRC. Here are some specs I dug up:
CPU: 8-bit (Similar to the Z80 processor.)
Main RAM: 8K Byte
Video RAM: 8K Byte
Screen Size 2.6"
Resolution: 160x144 (20x18 tiles)
Max # of sprites: 40
Max # sprites/line: 10
Max sprite size: 8x16
Min sprite size: 8x8
Clock Speed: 4.194304 MHz (4.295454 MHz for Super GB)
Horiz Sync: 9198 KHz (9420 KHz for Super GB)
Vert Sync: 59.73 Hz (61.17 Hz for Super GB)
Sound: 4 channels with stereo sound
Power: DC6V 0.7W (DC3V 0.7W for GB Pocket)
So, basically, any mp3 player for gameboy will be doing all the processing, storage, and DSP *in the cartridge* while using the Gameboy's integrated controls and speakers for playback.
How is digital technology anything more than a continuation of the development of techologies that made information cheaper to reproduce that started in the 15th century [prodigi.bl.uk]?
Digital technology has, for the first time in human history, eliminated a scarcity. Before, there was always a scarcity in terms of information that could be stored. Books, vinyl albums, papers, documents, and the like had to be stored. They could be duplicated, but only at a relatively high expense.
The introduction of digital technology in the mix has eliminated that expense, driving the 'supply-side' of the supply and demand equation for information to infinity. Copyright is now the *only* thing propping up the sale of information.
IANAL, but if I undestand correctly, the great deal of Western law is based on 'common law', the practice of allowing previous court decisions to affect future decisions.
The problem with trying to apply laws to the Internet is that digital technology has caused a wave of obsolescence in any kind of existing communication, information technology, and dozens of other of societal concepts we hold near and dear. Law based on past precidents rather than fairness and equitable behavior can't hope to keep up through such an incredible wave of advancement.
Take copyright, for (our favorite) example. It's an artificial scarcity placed on information to encourage development of new information, bit it music, data, scientific research, or text.
Since digital technology has forever completely erased the possibility of having a finite supply of any kind of information, the length and breadth of copyright law is dying-- screaming, kicking, doing it's best to cling to existance in a scary new world inhospitable to it, but dying nonetheless. Like symbiotic bacteria, only the lawyers are keeping the dinosaurs of companies that profit by control of information alive.
Other facets of law relating to digital technology will go through similiar changes. Those laws that can adapt will make the change, just like the small rodents and other mammals who survived the Yucatan blast when the dinosaurs were obliterated. We will find the fossils of those who can't in the strata of obsolete legal records.
"No, Master!"
Microsoft can kick and whine and scream all they want to, but it's far, far too late. They knew that all the other consoles get chipped. They knew that their hardware was ripe for a Linux/Mame/Etc.. port. They knew that they were going to have to fight this, even if every other console maker has been doing it from the beginning of time.
Sorry, Bill. Take a good look at Sony, your main source of competition. What have they done? Released a Linux kit... and therefore eventual Mame compatibility.
When I recently redesigned my site, I spent time creating a fairly robust table/css layout scheme. I implemented it and checked it in a variety of browsers... Including Lynx and Opera, just for you zealots/bigots.
Since I developed with Moz as my 'reference' browser, I didn't see the need to check in any other version of Netscape. Checked it multiple times in IE. After I was satisfied that it would work, I posted it. Low and behold I found that I had a few dozen emails the next morning from angry Netscape 4.x users wanting to know why the hell I took my site down.
It seems if you nest style delcarations inside a table element in Netscape 4 series browsers, it hides the affected text, rather than displaying what it doesn't understand anyway, ala the HTML spec.
The hell of this was that I *knew* that Netscape 4.0 behaved this way from an earlier site I designed, but hadn't even thought about it since Mozilla 0.7 came out.
Translate: "I'm afraid that if I help you with this solution, I'll be violating my previous employer's intellectual property rights."
as:
"I know you hired me because of my work in your field, but frankly, I'm lazy. I can't surf porn and read messageboards all day if I'm working on this solution for you. Here's a tidy excuse so you can feel better about the money you're wasting on me and my blatant goofing-off habit."
Okay, I *know* that everyone who's read LOTR *knows* Gandalf comes back as Gandalf the White and kicks some big-time ass. Those who *didn't* read and had the LOTR movie as their first and only exposure to Tolkein didn't!
My wife asked me, at the end of LOTR, "He's not really dead is he?"
"Of course he's dead, dear," I replied. "Didn't you see that great big pit he fell into? Even if he somehow managed to survive the fall, don't you think the Balrog would have survived it too?"
So here they come and spoil the fuck out of it for the non-readers with the damn trailer. Thanks a whole fucking lot, Peter Jackson.
(Seriously, looks like PJ and the actors have done some world class work here. Can't wait till X-Mas!)
Who, really, has secrets that are keeping them alive or incriminating evidence that just might get them arrested, imprisoned, or killed. To most people, this kind of utility is a joke. To a few people, however, this is a godsend...
Like, for instance, RAWA. These are the women who ran an underground women's rights movement in Afghanistan while the Taliban were in control. You may have seen their website with its grotesque pictures. They lived and worked in secrecy, in constant fear of being imprisoned or killed by the Taliban. Wouldn't a dead-man's(or -woman's) switch be just the thing to send off a 'Farewell. This is the evidence of my capture at the hands of the Taliban' message?
It's not just them, either. Dissidents in China could also use a utility like this... especially all those guys who just got their internet cafes shut down. Suppose the 2600 guys got raided by the MPAA^H^H^H^HFBI and were all put in prison. I imagine that Emanuel Goldstien has some juicy information he'd like to share in the event of his capture or death.
The Gotti family has been in the news a lot lately. Suppose that you were a mob informant and had information on them that was all that was standing between you and 'Sleeping with the Sopranos after next season'. A dead-man's switch would go a long way to allowing you to release that last little bit of information, even if the mafia got to you first.
- locker-room full of silvery spandex bodysuits for the ladies and bulky kevlar-lined battle-space-suits for the guys
- Lots of dangerous air-locks, with only two doors.
- Weapons. Lots of weapons.
- A great friggin huge laser beam pointed right at the Earth.
As someone who makes lots of free sellable and href="http://www.furinkan.net/fanfic/">unsellab le content, I think The Wayback Machine is an invaluable resource. I can look back a see how big a dork I was and still am. I've also found stuff of mine that I've lost over time, amazed that anyone ever bothered to hold on to it.
Censorship in Australia is like the wearing of seatbelts in America. It is not mandatory.
FYI, depending on locality, the wearing of seatbelts *is* mandatory in the U.S.. In some states, you have to wear seatbelts in front and back. In some states you just have to wear them in the front seat. Cops *will* pull you over and give you a $50-100 (US) ticket if they see that you're not wearing them.
That's not to say that many people don't try to get away with it anyway. The last time I went to pay a traffic ticket (80MPH on the 60MPH freeway when I was late back from lunch) *most* of the people paying tickets had been busted for seatbelt violations.
As far as I know, it's really an age thing. The seatbelt laws didn't really get passed until the mid 1980's. Everyone in the generation driving before 1985 grouses about having to wear them or conveniently 'forgets' them when they get in the car. Most of the people in the generation driving *after* 1985 don't even think about it.
Besides being considerate (You don't go flying through the window and make a nasty mess for someone to clean up if you wreck), we all buy the saftey aspect. It's like running regular backups or firewalls. You just do it to feel safer.
Are IP's blocked? Are DNS lookups merely prohibited?
/.ers, how has this affected you? If it has affected you, have you been able to conveniently side-step it?
In almost all cases, an anonymous proxy will get around these guys. (We miss you, Safeweb!) If it's just DNS lookups being probhibited, there are many, many public DNS servers as well as a growing system of alternate DNS roots.
So, to the Aussie
"Fr15+ P05+!!!1!"
Personally, I'm fairly interested in all this, especially seeing who it's going to hurt today. Remember that 30 years ago is not ancient history. Many people who are still high-ranking members of government now were members of government then.
In the recent hooplah surrounding the new book, Pat Buchannan was named as a possible 'Deep Throat', something I seriously doubt. Still, it raises questions. Suppose that someone we respect *cough* *cough* is in actuality a criminal?
Concerns about global warming aside, the Earth's external temperature has fluctuated *wildly* during the 4 or 5 billion years our planet has been around. At times, such as when the atmosphere wasn't made primarily of oxygen for example, it has been much colder or hotter. Assuming that our planet's core does indeed act like a breeder reactor, something so slight as global warming is not going to significantly affect it.
Gracie, the gray tabby cat sleeps atop my PC case. If her bed is disturbed... and I do mean in any way... she cries for days on end. She can't be consoled. I have no choice but to hunt down the man what tried to jack my HDD and present his head to the cat like she does when she brings me mice.