Note that our (US) current system is not true capitalism and all (yes all) the recent problems are due to too much regulation rather than not enough
Maybe or maybe not. I wonder if the entire crisis could have been averted if the rating agencies had done their job properly and provided an accurate risk rating of mortgage-backed securities.
Perhaps additional regulation to limit conflicts of interest between rating agencies and the companies that create securities would be in order.
How many people in the USA lack food and shelter because of circumstances beyond their control, and how many of them lack food and shelter as a direct result of their own choices?
Is it right to take resources from productive people in order to allow other people to survive the consequences of their bad decisions?
You know what child porn is, right? Let me help you out here. It is where children, ages 10 and under are shown getting screwed (literally) or having other obscene sexual acts performed on them, often time violently.
I agree with this definition. The police should be prosecuting this kind of abuse.
If they give up the stupid "war on teen sexuality" and "war on cartoons" then many more resources would be available to prosecute the real child abusers.
1. At puberty, very few humans are mentally mature enough to make the decision to have sex, especially with an older and wiser person. While there are exceptions, the law must be made to protect the majority.
I don't agree with this part. If you replaced "humans" with "people raised in western culture during the last 50 years or so", then it would be much more accurate. The invention of childhood is historically recent and not shared by all cultures.
Historical evidence shows that humans are capable of accepting adult responsibilities at a much younger age than our culture acknowleges.
Porn does not stay with adults. It finds its way, somehow/sarcasm/ into the hands of children. It is used by pedophiles to convince children that sexual activity at their age is just fine and to ignore their reservations. What you do as an adult is not my business. As soon as it gets near my child or anyone else's child, yeah, it is society's business.
It depends on how you define child. Everything you said is well and good if we are talking about 5 year old children. They absolutely need to be protected.
Our laws, however, put 5 year old children in the same category as 17 year old "children". Is a 16 year old really just as sexually innocent as a 6 year old? Is the act of an adult having sex with a 15 year old morally equilivent to the act of having sex with a 8 year old? Do teenagers need to be punished with prison terms to "protect" them from the harm of taking naked pictures of themselves?
Protecting children is vital to a healthy society, but our legal system needs to cut out all the insane bullshit and focus on preventing real harm to actual children.
I use linux exclusively at home. I know that with a little google searching I could reconfigure my keyboard to behave how I want it to, but I would prefer a hardware device to work out of the box correctly, without needing software work-arounds.
Seriously? You want to get rid of three, sometimes useful, Lock keys and don't mind keeping the most worthless of them all, Scroll Lock, around?
Scroll lock: Does not get in my way and I do use it sometimes
Num lock: Exists for backwards compatibility with old computers that didn't understand 101 key keyboards. This has been useless since about 1990. I also tend to accidentally push it because of its location
Caps lock: I HAVE NEVER FOUND A LEGITIMATE USE FOR THIS MODE OF TYPING
F Lock: I could tolerate this one if the power-on default was on instead of off. I never use the F keys in their alternate mode and it is annoying to turn on the F lock every time I reboot the machine in order to use them.
*any* law that allows such ridiculous cases, with innocents being unfairly punished due to a 'technicality' is a bad law and cannot be said to be "working" by anyone with any amount of common sense.
That's not true. It really depends on the goal that law is trying to achieve. If the goal is to prevent harm to children, then you are correct. If the goal is to enforce a particular religious interpretation of proper sexual behavior, then this law makes perfect sense.
Second point, though, is good. Throwing out statutory rape...
I never said throw out statutory rape. I said that the age of consent should be puberty. This puts the law in agreement with biology.
Tautology much? Doesn't mean a damn thing, porn is illegal if it was illegal to make. But, it does get away from that even worse standard working bit on obscenity, "it's obscene if I say it's obscene, lemme see."
What I meant was, a recording of an illegal sex act can be banned. A recording of a legal act, or an imaginary act can not be banned.
One last thing, let's not forget that some people go through puberty very early, and puberty is happening at ever earlier ages due to the much healthier diet we have these days (or possibly due to growth hormones in food, depending on who you ask). Is a 9 year old girl who hits Puberty really old enough to consent? What about a woman like my wife, who didn't hit Puberty until she was 16? Is it fair to allow the 9 year old to start having sex while the 16 year old cannot? Who is to say a 9 year old is mentally ready for sex but a 16 year old, who had 7 YEARS more to psychologically mature, is not? How does THAT make any sense?
Determining if a person is mentally ready to begin sexual activity in any objective manner is basically impossible.
Determining if a person is physically ready to begin sexual activity is easy.
The law should be based on the objective criteria, not the subjective criteria and certainly not on arbitrary criteria.
There is no reason that a 9 year old can not make responsible decisions. Until the Victorians invented childhood, people took on adult rights and responsibilities at puberty.
Just because a teenage boy or girl has started Puberty does not then also mean that they have the maturity to understand the implications and ramifications of flashing their new "adult" bits to the world.
And what is the implications and ramifications really? Human beings have had the same body parts for a few million years now. Will the sky fall just because a teenager reveals the he/she *gasp* has genitals?
So a 16 year old brain is developed enough to be trusted with unsupervised control over 16 gallons of highly flammable liquid inside a 2 ton, 70 MPH projectile surrounded by hundreds of innocent bystanders on the highway, but not developed enough to make sexual decisions?
My problem is that by doing what you suggest, we would be introducing murkiness and complexity into a situation where we need clarity and simplicity.
Determining if a individual in a photograph is 17 years + 346 days old instead of 18 years + 1 day old is "clear and simple" where as determining if an individual is prepubescent or not is "murky and complex"?
Because the change from Childhood to Adulthood is a process that varies wildly from person to person
Agreed.
in order to have sanity we must have a simple method for societies to draw that line in the sand between Childhood and Adulthood
Agreed.
Using a variable and random ruler like the onset of puberty is just a recipe for disaster.
Puberty is not random. It is an objective biological condition which is relevant to a person's sexual behavior
Using an arbitrary age to define a state that "varies wildly from person to person" is a recipe for disaster
I am more concerned about stopping actual harm to real children than about keeping people from seeing dirty pictures.
This proposal would not make it more difficult to prosecute adult who have sex with young children. Actually a narrower definition would free up police resources that are now spent prosecuting harmless behavior.
Certain cases of CP would be more difficult to prove, but the cases of very young children would not have that problem. Aren't those the cases we really need to focus on anyway?
In a case where an individual is charged with statutory rape, the status of the victim would be determined by medical exam (standard procedure for all rape cases, child or adult). I don't see why you would have any registration or random blood tests.
Do you see the problem here? As arbitrary as using a specific age may be, it is much LESS arbitrary than dealing with the confusion surrounding the onset of Puberty in males, the embarrassment and privacy issues of the onset of menstruation in girls and the variable ages at which Puberty can begin.
Less arbitrary than an age which can vary from 9 to 21 years worldwide?
You dislike the current law. What would you suggest as an alternative? What is you proposed solution?
Setting an age of consent based on calendar age is arbitrary. The age of consent should be defined as puberty, as this is based on biology instead of politics.
Initiating sex with a minor by force, coercion, abuse of power, deceit, etc is punished as rape (just like if the victim was an adult)
Pornography is illegal if and only if it was created by performing an illegal act.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe or maybe not. I wonder if the entire crisis could have been averted if the rating agencies had done their job properly and provided an accurate risk rating of mortgage-backed securities.
Perhaps additional regulation to limit conflicts of interest between rating agencies and the companies that create securities would be in order.
How many people in the USA lack food and shelter because of circumstances beyond their control, and how many of them lack food and shelter as a direct result of their own choices?
Is it right to take resources from productive people in order to allow other people to survive the consequences of their bad decisions?
I can't take credit for inventing the handle
I agree with this definition. The police should be prosecuting this kind of abuse.
If they give up the stupid "war on teen sexuality" and "war on cartoons" then many more resources would be available to prosecute the real child abusers.
This isn't a linus vs windows issue. I'd still have many of the same complaints if I used Windows.
I don't think that keyboards should need to have drivers in the first place.
The particular keyboard that I found that "feature" on is a Logitech
I don't agree with this part. If you replaced "humans" with "people raised in western culture during the last 50 years or so", then it would be much more accurate. The invention of childhood is historically recent and not shared by all cultures.
Historical evidence shows that humans are capable of accepting adult responsibilities at a much younger age than our culture acknowleges.
It depends on how you define child. Everything you said is well and good if we are talking about 5 year old children. They absolutely need to be protected.
Our laws, however, put 5 year old children in the same category as 17 year old "children". Is a 16 year old really just as sexually innocent as a 6 year old? Is the act of an adult having sex with a 15 year old morally equilivent to the act of having sex with a 8 year old? Do teenagers need to be punished with prison terms to "protect" them from the harm of taking naked pictures of themselves?
Protecting children is vital to a healthy society, but our legal system needs to cut out all the insane bullshit and focus on preventing real harm to actual children.
I use linux exclusively at home. I know that with a little google searching I could reconfigure my keyboard to behave how I want it to, but I would prefer a hardware device to work out of the box correctly, without needing software work-arounds.
This is physically harmful (at least for girls) and in no way is a 2 year old able to give consent. So no problem calling this rape.
If the participants all give consent, then yes
Again, if consenting partners want to do that then it's not my business who they sleep with.
If no non-consenting human beings are harmed in the process, then why not?
Your right to swing your fist ends at my nose; do whatever you want unless and until it violates the rights of another person.
Not that difficult to understand
alt+sys rq
I wonder if the kernel keyboard driver could be easily hacked to force on the numlock function and prohibit any attempts to turn it off...
Scroll lock: Does not get in my way and I do use it sometimes
Num lock: Exists for backwards compatibility with old computers that didn't understand 101 key keyboards. This has been useless since about 1990. I also tend to accidentally push it because of its location
Caps lock: I HAVE NEVER FOUND A LEGITIMATE USE FOR THIS MODE OF TYPING
F Lock: I could tolerate this one if the power-on default was on instead of off. I never use the F keys in their alternate mode and it is annoying to turn on the F lock every time I reboot the machine in order to use them.
Because when the machine powers up the default is off - meaning that the F keys do not work as expected
That's not true. It really depends on the goal that law is trying to achieve. If the goal is to prevent harm to children, then you are correct. If the goal is to enforce a particular religious interpretation of proper sexual behavior, then this law makes perfect sense.
I never said throw out statutory rape. I said that the age of consent should be puberty. This puts the law in agreement with biology.
What I meant was, a recording of an illegal sex act can be banned. A recording of a legal act, or an imaginary act can not be banned.
Determining if a person is mentally ready to begin sexual activity in any objective manner is basically impossible.
Determining if a person is physically ready to begin sexual activity is easy.
The law should be based on the objective criteria, not the subjective criteria and certainly not on arbitrary criteria.
There is no reason that a 9 year old can not make responsible decisions. Until the Victorians invented childhood, people took on adult rights and responsibilities at puberty.
And what is the implications and ramifications really? Human beings have had the same body parts for a few million years now. Will the sky fall just because a teenager reveals the he/she *gasp* has genitals?
So a 16 year old brain is developed enough to be trusted with unsupervised control over 16 gallons of highly flammable liquid inside a 2 ton, 70 MPH projectile surrounded by hundreds of innocent bystanders on the highway, but not developed enough to make sexual decisions?
Determining if a individual in a photograph is 17 years + 346 days old instead of 18 years + 1 day old is "clear and simple" where as determining if an individual is prepubescent or not is "murky and complex"?
Agreed.
Agreed.
by Anonymous Coward on 10:41 29th December, 2008 (#26258803)
FAIL
I am more concerned about stopping actual harm to real children than about keeping people from seeing dirty pictures.
This proposal would not make it more difficult to prosecute adult who have sex with young children. Actually a narrower definition would free up police resources that are now spent prosecuting harmless behavior.
Certain cases of CP would be more difficult to prove, but the cases of very young children would not have that problem. Aren't those the cases we really need to focus on anyway?
In a case where an individual is charged with statutory rape, the status of the victim would be determined by medical exam (standard procedure for all rape cases, child or adult). I don't see why you would have any registration or random blood tests.
Less arbitrary than an age which can vary from 9 to 21 years worldwide?
In the majority of US states, the age of consent is 16 years old. Performing the act is legally acceptable but photographing it is a felony?
I'd say that the law is stupid, not the kids.