I'm having trouble understanding why there seem to be seperate laws and exceptions being proposed for porn.
I don't find porn sites particularly offensive. What I do find offensive is landing on religious sites using deceptive names. Or domain squatters. Especially domain squatters.
Why the focus on porn? Why are porn merchants any different from other merchants? I find many cosmetic company pages pretty darn nasty. Church pages... don't get me started...
What *should* one expect to find at www.cats.com ? Why is that ok and www.pussy.com not ?
> In my mind, the moon should be untouched, it is not territory owned by any particular country with which they can do as they please.
Just as most of our nations were thousands of years ago. It's difficult to get to, sure. But that was true of quite a few places on Earth not all that long ago.
> And particularly since the moon plays a role in several religions, I think it should remain relatively untouched.
I'd be unkeen to see the moon "defaced", although not for any religious reasons. But I don't have any real issues with mining the other side, perhaps. Or mining the bottom of deep craters on this site.
It'd certainly suck to see a huge "Coca Cola" logo across the moons face though.
All SPAM is offering some commercial product - and that product is never obscured, there's either a telephone number, web site, or mailing address to buy whatever junk they're selling. So it is, in fact, very easy to track down and prosecute most spammers...
In most of the spam that I've bothered looking at, the website or phone number is somewhere overseas. Usually in some country where international law doesn't mean much.
Also, how to you prove that it was the company being advertised that sent the spam, and not some competitor trying to get them in trouble?
Surely an opt-out list is *exactly* what the spammers want. That way they have a list of sure email addresses that they know people read.
If you don't put yourself on the list, spammers feel justified in harassing you and there'd be no sympathy from the court system. if you *do* put yourself on the list, you're an even better target because you've just verified your mail address for them.
Sure I'm going to take the 30-40 people who spam me daily from other countries to court for a slim chance at a measly $10.
I'm having difficulty understanding why violent sport and rampant commercialism is supposed to be interesting to geeks.
I'm a bit shocked at the number of you who are worshipping and paying to support the very jocks who beat you up at school and the same commercial interests who are trying to take away our freedoms and who fill our brains with mindwashing spam on a daily basis.
See, there's your problem right there. The messages are coming in through a method that *your* computer is setup to allow. You have specifically installed a piece of software to allow people to send you popup messages.
If you don't want to receive messages from people you don't know, stop installing software that receives them!
(and this really isn't meant to be a Windows flame. It's just that if you don't want your computer to behave a certain way, maybe you shouldn't install software that makes it behave that way.)
> A question tho, how does one differentiate between conventional animation and anime? Are all japanese animations anime??
I'm really really not an expert, but I *have* found that most of the "anime" I've tried watching is irritating and headache inducing. Sorry, there does often seem to be a good story there, but I can't get to it through the shocking framerate and flashing lights. Before you say I obviously haven't seen [insert favourite] note that I'm not talking about the *story*. I'm talking about the horrible display quality. Is there any good anime that is smooth and watcheable?
"animation" seems to be a lot smoother, and lets you get far enough to see there's rarely an actual story behind it:)
> You get charged for incoming calls on all the major carriers, as far as I know.
All the major carriers in the *US*, perhaps. There'd be an outrage if they tried that here (NZ). I believe they don't charge for incoming in Europe or Australia either.
You really have to pay for incoming messages? In a country where spamming is rampant?
The only thing stopping me switching to console is those horrid little thumb-wrecking controllers.
I know the newer consoles/can/ support a mouse and keyboard,
but until it's fully integrated with games, I'll stick with my PC thank you very much.
On the other hand, legal PC gaming requires giving a small fortune to Microsoft and still having an unreliable flaky platform so I'm not surprised fewer people are doing it.
> When I ask for a telephone number, I don't want the sender to make it easier to remember or > "make a point." I want their telephone number. Heck, if I'm storing it in a database as an > integer, allowing them to enter text will just result in a blank data value in > the database. Whoops.
That's something that really bugs me about forms that require a phone number with only integers.
What's my phone number? Is it what my neighbour would dial? Is it what someone in a different city in the same country would dial? Is it what you, the person asking would have to dial - which I'm very unlikely to know?
When I fill in my number I indicate that it's an "international" number with a + In my case +64-9-xxxxxxxx to indicate that it's New Zealand(64) - Auckland(9) - number
As far as I'm aware that's a standard.
if I don't put the plus, the number is pretty much useless to you. Most web forms don't seem to let me put it.
> so rumor, innuendo, and twisted, half-forgotten anecdotes substituted for proof. > If the government had the capabilities Poindexter describes during the McCarthy era, > it might not have done much against the hysteria, but that type of data would definitely > have refuted some of the more ridiculous allegations floating around (of course, > it would have generated grounds for a lot more, so you don't really know what would > have happened).
Yeah,
I think the problem will be that this time around, there *will* be factual evidence against whoever we wish to accuse. Presented by what some believe is a near-ultimate authority - "a supercomputer". Not enough proof to satisfy a good judge or scientist, but certainly enough for the layman or juror.
I think this will shift the mental line that people need to cross to become a peer-pressured accuser instead of a rational resister.
... the display dialog for resizing windows will also include the dimensions in milimeteres! Who
cares? It's another point of confusion that a) no one cares about (when was the last time you took a
ruler to determine the dimensions of your horizonal and vertical screen space in mm?)
I, for one, would love this feature. I don't care or often even know how many pixels across something needs to be for me to find it comfortable to read. And if when change to a screen with a higher resolution, I hate having to reconfigure all my applications to make the fonts readable again.
If I can specify everything in some absolute measurement - millimetres, inches, whatever - everything'll remain the size I want it and as readable as I want it no matter what display I happen to be sitting at. This is one of the very few reasons I liked the original MacIntoshes
I actually grabbed 2.5.39 a few days ago, all ready to upgrade my home system out and give it a good play.
After fixing 4 compile-stopper errors (yes, they've been reported on the kernel lists) I gave up.
Sorry, but if the thing hasn't even been tested to see if it/compiles/, that's not even good enough for a non-production, but still a pain to restore from backups home machine. I wasn't even using obscure device drivers or compile options.
(This is on PPC btw, one of the major platforms)
I'm happy to run development kernels and report bugs/issues. But when the risk of having to reinstall from backups gets too high, sorry, that's just too much work.
I accept that some development kernels will be substantially broken while major changes are happening, but those ones aren't the ones that people should be encouraged to test.
> Maybe now some of us who don't have hours a day > to waste levelling-up can begin to enjoy MMORPG's.
I accept that this is a problem, but I don't think this is the solution. Perhaps seperating "bought character" servers from the "spent time" ones might.
> Those who are complaining should really think > about why they're upset, and realise that it's >because they have an elitist attitude.
It's not that at all, at least for me.
I just got sick of wasting many more hours of gametime because the n'th level experienced tough adventury type I met deep in the dangerous parts of the world turned out to be someone who'd bought his character on eBay and got me killed over and over because he had no idea how to play the game.
In a game world, I expect a character with level n to have experience and abilities appropriate to the level. When they don't because it's a new player who's bought their way in, that breaks the world, and the game, for me. And it's not fun.
I do agree that casual gamers should be able to play these games too, but I think that mixing "bought" characters with "earned" characters destroys the game for the "earned" characters.
> To protect privacy, each ballot is identified by a single-use, > random identifier known only to the voter. That way each voter can > personally verify from the public data that his or her own votes > were correctly recorded
There's still a weakness there that isn't present in existing systems:
One of the things we need from a voting system is to make it impossible for other people to force you into voting the way they want you to. eg. an employer firing you if you don't vote for their uncle, or something.
The way the current system works is to give no way for anyone else, even if they're holding a gun to your head, to ever find out who you voted for.
To me, that's one of the most important features of a democratic election.
If you can verify that your vote was recorded successfully from outside the ballot area, so can someone holding a gun to your head.
> Not true, have you everheard of border routers, > you simply only allow outbound traffic through > your border router that origionates from your > firewall with a simple access list.
Easier said than done - remember wireless APs usually let the client choose their own IP address.
Sure, the physical wiring can fix that, but that's starting to get non-easy.
And two firewalls? Not many companies need that. Many have one for their LAN, with their servers hosted elsewhere.
...was lifting 15 times that payload into orbit in 1968! (and about 5 times as much to the Moon)
Why is this such a big deal?
Ok, maybe it's cheaper per kilo (can't you Americans bloody go metric like the rest of the planet), but the boasts of the payload weight seem a bit pointless.
> Could someone exactly explain the issue? The complaint doesn't make any sense. > I mean, really. Who could honestly care if the software's been opened, and resealed, and why?
It's somewhat irritating to buy a piece of software and find the registration key is all over the 'net and the game servers won't let you on.
I've personally bought a game that presumably was repackaged, since the CD was all scratched and the manual had dirty fingerprints all over it.
Sure, the shop replaced it with a fresh one, but that was 3 hours of my life wasted (the time trying to get it to work and returning it when it didn't).
When I buy a piece of software sold as "new", or a book,I expect it to actually be new! Anything else is a rip off. Doesn't matter if many people don't mind. It's false advertising, deceptive, and *I* mind.
Books - I enjoy the feel and smell of a fresh unread book.
> The advantage of interactive learning tools is that people who are not computer-literate often see everything on a computer as a game, and enjoys interacting with it, whereas they find a technical book boring.
> Personally, I would prefer a well-written book to anything on the web (reading from a computer screen is terrible, and switching back and forth between windows to try out examples is counterproductive).
I'd have to agree slightly and disagree slightly with you on those. I do agree that a good book is much easier and more pleasant to read from. However one area I think the computer can come into it is in the interactive part.
I don't mean flashy animations and stuff.
I mean things like presenting the student with a series of semi-randomly generated practice problems they can do. Then, and here's the clever bit, monitoring where they do well and where they do poorly, and presenting them with help in their weak areas and putting less focus on the areas they do well. Something a book can't do.
We use a simple semi-random question/answer web based system at my work to give students practice at various skills. It marks the questions on the spot, and shows the student which questions they get wrong a lot or right a lot so they know where to focus. It's very simple, but it's already becoming quite popular among students. And that's not even beginning to look at all the possibilities of it automatically changing the focus of the material it gives them.
I think we're still in the infancy of online learning systems. People are still thinking "powerpoint slides", when there's a terrific amount more we can do.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm having trouble understanding why there seem to be seperate laws and exceptions being proposed for porn.
I don't find porn sites particularly offensive. What I do find offensive is landing on religious sites using deceptive names. Or domain squatters. Especially domain squatters.
Why the focus on porn? Why are porn merchants any different from other merchants? I find many cosmetic company pages pretty darn nasty. Church pages... don't get me started...
What *should* one expect to find at www.cats.com ? Why is that ok and www.pussy.com not ?
- MugginsM
> In my mind, the moon should be untouched, it is not territory owned by any particular country with which they can do as they please.
Just as most of our nations were thousands of years ago. It's difficult to get to, sure. But that was true of quite a few places on Earth not all that long ago.
> And particularly since the moon plays a role in several religions, I think it should remain relatively untouched.
I'd be unkeen to see the moon "defaced", although not for any religious reasons. But I don't have any real issues with mining the other side, perhaps. Or mining the bottom of deep craters on this site.
It'd certainly suck to see a huge "Coca Cola" logo across the moons face though.
- MugginsM
In most of the spam that I've bothered looking at, the website or phone number is somewhere overseas. Usually in some country where international law doesn't mean much.
Also, how to you prove that it was the company being advertised that sent the spam, and not some competitor trying to get them in trouble?
- Muggins the MadSurely an opt-out list is *exactly* what the spammers want. That way they have a list of sure email addresses that they know people read.
If you don't put yourself on the list, spammers feel justified in harassing you and there'd be no sympathy from the court system. if you *do* put yourself on the list, you're an even better target because you've just verified your mail address for them.
Sure I'm going to take the 30-40 people who spam me daily from other countries to court for a slim chance at a measly $10.
- MugginsM
I'm having difficulty understanding why violent sport and rampant commercialism is supposed to be interesting to geeks.
I'm a bit shocked at the number of you who are worshipping and paying to support the very jocks who beat you up at school and the same commercial interests who are trying to take away our freedoms and who fill our brains with mindwashing spam on a daily basis.
I really don't get it.
- MugginsM
> I recently re-installed XP
See, there's your problem right there. The messages are coming in through a method that *your* computer is setup to allow. You have specifically installed a piece of software to allow people to send you popup messages.
If you don't want to receive messages from people you don't know, stop installing software that receives them!
(and this really isn't meant to be a Windows flame. It's just that if you don't want your computer to behave a certain way, maybe you shouldn't install software that makes it behave that way.)
- Muggins the Mad
> A question tho, how does one differentiate between conventional animation and anime? Are all japanese animations anime??
:)
I'm really really not an expert, but I *have* found that most of the "anime" I've tried watching is irritating and headache inducing. Sorry, there does often seem to be a good story there, but I can't get to it through the shocking framerate and flashing lights. Before you say I obviously haven't seen [insert favourite] note that I'm not talking about the *story*. I'm talking about the horrible display quality. Is there any good anime that is smooth and watcheable?
"animation" seems to be a lot smoother, and lets you get far enough to see there's rarely an actual story behind it
- Muggins the Mad
> You get charged for incoming calls on all the major carriers, as far as I know.
All the major carriers in the *US*, perhaps. There'd be an outrage if they tried that here (NZ). I believe they don't charge for incoming in Europe or Australia either.
You really have to pay for incoming messages? In a country where spamming is rampant?
Gosh.
- MugginsM
The only thing stopping me switching to console is
/can/ support a mouse and keyboard,
those horrid little thumb-wrecking controllers.
I know the newer consoles
but until it's fully integrated with games, I'll stick with my
PC thank you very much.
On the other hand, legal PC gaming requires giving a small fortune
to Microsoft and still having an unreliable flaky platform so
I'm not surprised fewer people are doing it.
- MugginsM
Ok, so if this goes ahead, what's to stop the big *software* companies getting their own levy added to this?
Then the photographers.
Heck, CDs can be used to record music or software that *I* produce, why can't I get some of that pie too?
- Muggins the Mad
> When I ask for a telephone number, I don't want the sender to make it easier to remember or
> "make a point." I want their telephone number. Heck, if I'm storing it in a database as an
> integer, allowing them to enter text will just result in a blank data value in
> the database. Whoops.
That's something that really bugs me about forms that require a phone number with only integers.
What's my phone number? Is it what my neighbour would dial? Is it what someone in a different
city in the same country would dial? Is it what you, the person asking would have to dial -
which I'm very unlikely to know?
When I fill in my number I indicate that it's an
"international" number with a +
In my case +64-9-xxxxxxxx
to indicate that it's New Zealand(64) - Auckland(9) - number
As far as I'm aware that's a standard.
if I don't put the plus, the number is pretty much useless to you. Most web forms don't seem
to let me put it.
- Muggins the Mad
> so rumor, innuendo, and twisted, half-forgotten anecdotes substituted for proof.
> If the government had the capabilities Poindexter describes during the McCarthy era,
> it might not have done much against the hysteria, but that type of data would definitely
> have refuted some of the more ridiculous allegations floating around (of course,
> it would have generated grounds for a lot more, so you don't really know what would
> have happened).
Yeah,
I think the problem will be that this time around, there *will* be factual evidence
against whoever we wish to accuse. Presented by what some believe is a near-ultimate
authority - "a supercomputer".
Not enough proof to satisfy a good judge or scientist, but certainly enough for
the layman or juror.
I think this will shift the mental line that people need to cross to become
a peer-pressured accuser instead of a rational resister.
- Muggins
Just think how much fun this would have been had it been possible during the commie hunting McCarthy era?
I'm wondering if the US is about to enter another one, except with "terrorists" instead of "commies".
With modern information databases, that can get very very scary indeed.
- Muggins the Mad
I, for one, would love this feature. I don't care or often even know how many pixels across something needs to be for me to find it comfortable to read. And if when change to a screen with a higher resolution, I hate having to reconfigure all my applications to make the fonts readable again.
If I can specify everything in some absolute measurement - millimetres, inches, whatever - everything'll remain the size I want it and as readable as I want it no matter what display I happen to be sitting at. This is one of the very few reasons I liked the original MacIntoshes
I actually grabbed 2.5.39 a few days ago, all
ready to upgrade my home system out and give
it a good play.
After fixing 4 compile-stopper errors (yes, they've been reported on the kernel lists) I gave up.
Sorry, but if the thing hasn't even been tested to see if it
even using obscure device drivers or compile
options.
(This is on PPC btw, one of the major platforms)
I'm happy to run development kernels and report
bugs/issues. But when the risk of having to reinstall from backups gets too high, sorry, that's just too much work.
I accept that some development kernels will be substantially broken while major changes are happening, but those ones aren't the ones that people should be encouraged to test.
- MugginsM
> Maybe now some of us who don't have hours a day
> to waste levelling-up can begin to enjoy MMORPG's.
I accept that this is a problem, but I don't think this is the solution. Perhaps seperating "bought character" servers from the "spent time" ones might.
> Those who are complaining should really think
> about why they're upset, and realise that it's
>because they have an elitist attitude.
It's not that at all, at least for me.
I just got sick of wasting many more hours of
gametime because the n'th level experienced
tough adventury type I met deep in the dangerous
parts of the world turned out to be someone
who'd bought his character on eBay and got me killed over and over because he had no idea how to play the game.
In a game world, I expect a character with level n to have experience and abilities appropriate to the level. When they don't because it's a new player who's bought their way in, that breaks the
world, and the game, for me. And it's not fun.
I do agree that casual gamers should be able to
play these games too, but I think that mixing "bought" characters with "earned" characters destroys the game for the "earned" characters.
- MugginsM
> To protect privacy, each ballot is identified by a single-use,
> random identifier known only to the voter. That way each voter can
> personally verify from the public data that his or her own votes
> were correctly recorded
There's still a weakness there that isn't present in existing systems:
One of the things we need from a voting system is to make it impossible
for other people to force you into voting the way they want you to. eg. an
employer firing you if you don't vote for their uncle, or something.
The way the current system works is to give no way for anyone else,
even if they're holding a gun to your head, to ever find out who
you voted for.
To me, that's one of the most important features of a democratic election.
If you can verify that your vote was recorded successfully from
outside the ballot area, so can someone holding a gun to your head.
- MugginsM
> Not true, have you everheard of border routers,
> you simply only allow outbound traffic through
> your border router that origionates from your
> firewall with a simple access list.
Easier said than done - remember wireless APs usually let the client choose their own IP address.
Sure, the physical wiring can fix that, but that's starting to get non-easy.
And two firewalls? Not many companies need that.
Many have one for their LAN, with their servers
hosted elsewhere.
- MugginsM
> 802.11b should always be placed OUTSIDE of the
> firewall (w/ firewall protecting your private
> network). Why is this so hard?
That'd be quite wonderful to me,
Because then, you see,
I could surf the 'net for absolutely free.
- MugginsM
...was lifting 15 times that payload into orbit in 1968! (and about 5 times as much to the Moon)
Why is this such a big deal?
Ok, maybe it's cheaper per kilo (can't you Americans bloody go metric like the rest of the planet),
but the boasts of the payload weight seem a bit pointless.
Or did I get the numbers wrong?
- Muggins the Mad
One of the reasons I switched to Mac was to get
dualboot Linux too
Bad enough they got IE in OSX, don't enourage them to add more.
Apple has a good thing going at the moment, don't let Microsoft break that too.
- MugginsM
> Could someone exactly explain the issue? The complaint doesn't make any sense.
> I mean, really. Who could honestly care if the software's been opened, and resealed, and why?
It's somewhat irritating to buy a piece of software and find the registration key is all over the 'net and the game servers won't let you on.
I've personally bought a game that presumably was repackaged, since the CD was all scratched and the manual
had dirty fingerprints all over it.
Sure, the shop replaced it with a fresh one, but that was 3 hours of my life wasted (the time trying to get it to work and returning it when it didn't).
When I buy a piece of software sold as "new", or a book,I expect it to actually be new! Anything else
is a rip off. Doesn't matter if many people don't mind.
It's false advertising, deceptive, and *I* mind.
Books - I enjoy the feel and smell of a fresh unread book.
- Muggins the Mad
Learn about spoilers!
Editors, learn about spoilers!
You've just told me how my favourite TV characters
end up with no way I could possibly have avoided seeing it (except by not reading slashdot).
Way to go.
btw: Forget the "few hours too early" apology, some of us won't get those episodes for *months*.
Bah.
From the security advisory:
Affected Releases:
Windows Production Releases.
Solaris Production Releases.
Linux Production Releases.
It's not specific to Windows.
Maybe the editors really don't read these things.
- MugginsM
> The advantage of interactive learning tools is that people who are not computer-literate often see everything on a computer as a game, and enjoys interacting with it, whereas they find a technical book boring.
> Personally, I would prefer a well-written book to anything on the web (reading from a computer screen is terrible, and switching back and forth between windows to try out examples is counterproductive).
I'd have to agree slightly and disagree slightly with you on those. I do agree that a good book is much easier and more pleasant to read from. However one area I think the computer can come into it is in the interactive part.
I don't mean flashy animations and stuff.
I mean things like presenting the student with a series of semi-randomly generated practice problems they can do. Then, and here's the clever bit, monitoring where they do well and where they do poorly, and presenting them with help in their weak areas and putting less focus on the areas they do well. Something a book can't do.
We use a simple semi-random question/answer web based system at my work to give students practice at various skills. It marks the questions on the spot, and shows the student which questions they get wrong a lot or right a lot so they know where to focus. It's very simple, but it's already becoming quite popular among students. And that's not even beginning to look at all the possibilities of it automatically changing the focus of the material it gives them.
I think we're still in the infancy of online learning systems. People are still thinking "powerpoint slides", when there's a terrific amount more we can do.
- MugginsM