It might be insecure however the effort required to change the outcome of a large election is enormous. Stuffing several ballots is easy...half a million is going to be near impossible to do without being detected. That is the danger of computer voting....it raises the possibility of massive voter fraud without the machinery and expense of a nationwide ballot stuffing campaign and the associated risk
People are going on and on about the iternet rating of porn as if it actually mattered. Sure a huge number of people think naked people are bad but so what. Our laws should be based on reasoned analysis and scientific data not delusional public opinion.
Reasearch has shown little/no negative effect on children from nudity. Hell in other perfectly functional cultures sex wasn't even consideed taboo. So the little kids see nasty por on the internet...we shouldn't care.
Ahh, but you miss the point no one *needs* to use the interet. Imagine I open a book store that happens to feature adult content, this should be legal. Now what if my bookstore becomes sooo popular that everyone uses it this should't force me to take down my adult content.
Sure maybe i have the best book store in the world so all the little kids want to do their reasearch at my place. TOO FUCKING BAD just b/c i am popular doesn't mean that I need to change my content.
Moreover search engines do not hijack you. You may freely choose not to use a private service which you know has the risk of taking you to a porn site.
Essentially internet regulation is based on the argument we can regulate a private service if it gets popular enough
Does anyone know anything about the ergonomic properties of logitech trackman marble fx. It looks all sleek and ergonomic but i know this doesn't mean anything.
I switched to this trackball from a normal mouse several months ago and started getting sore hands but i changed my typiung position for the worse and started typing more so i don't know if it was the trackman....should i keep using it? (BTW cut dow o posting to slashdot and other typing and pain went away.
But we aren't lying you are looking at it the wrong way. Imagine you have to sell a beer, will you put ugly people in your beer commercial? NO! Will you be lying because not only attractive people will drink the beer? No! No one actually believes that drinking beer will make them attractive and so forth but people are more likely to use something if it is associated with good looking people.
Similar issue for Linux. Yes go out and tell everyone that GNU coded most of it just like a little blurb at the bottom of a beer add saying (beer does not make you sexy) this will comunicate the information without hurting the media attention.
Yes, I grant that RMS has been a driving force behind free software. I am not saying he is bad, merely, this particular insistance is counterproductive. I don't care if Jesus Christ himself had created linux from void if it doesn't make the world a better place to put his name in the title (JesusOS) then he shouldn't demand it be put there.
Yes, I agree it doesn't say anything about whether god created *this* life my point is merely that many people (stupidly I think) hold to the notion that only god can create life as a very important tenant to them.
1) First, many people have asked why this affects religion. Technically it doesn't as organized religion is usually sophisticated enough not to rely on such shaky premises. But most people aren't philosophers and if you talk to them at least half of people justify there belif in God by claiming he is the only explanation for life.
Many people are intelligent enough that the overwhelming evidence for evolution is convincing. But as they still hold life mysterious they justify their belif in god as a corurpt version of the "life force" theories so popular before modern biology. They claim god is responsible for providing the breath of life in some sense. If we can make a bacteria, even if it is only from dead bacteria, we have shown no breath of life is necessery.
Does it challenge major world relgions? No! But it does challenge a huge number of peoples belif in god.
2) (offtopic) Targeted germ warfare. How long will it be before we can make a virus or bacterium harmless to nearly everyone (flu or some such) but owhen it infects someone with the right gene combincation it suddenly turns deadly. You don't like the russian prime minister invite him for dinner, find a piece of his hair, and a year later he will be struck down by an inexplicable diseases.
Read the article!!! Most of the article is explaining the position of the Catholic church on the development. I do not believe these were 'official' pronouncemnts but the article implied that the initial reaction was negative but eventually they said that making bacteria was okay as long as it was done for scientific purposes and not for immoral ones (dis-proving god etc..)
1) Many people have been complaining that the government shouldn't collect tax b/c they don't use this service or that service or they don't see the philosophical justification for tax. The justification is simple many probelms (such as funding basic research building roads) suffer from a sort of defection problem in which everyone benifits from the result but only one group shells out the money. The government tazes in order to ensure these kind of benifits continue.
2) Transactions between individuals. Does anyone actually know, have a good cite, whether transactions between private individuals are taxed, i.e. transactions of second hand goods between individuals. Several people have seemed to suggest affirmitively..but several people have also implied that buisness don't have to pay sales tax on their merchandise so perhaps peopls status as paying sales tax on the items originally exempts them.
3) Privacy. It would appear to raise serious privacy concerns if the government really did assign everyone numbers and track their private trades.
4) Sales tax seems like a VERY BAD idea. Consider sales tax, as oipposed to income tax, makes the exchange of goods more costly. I have some goods worth X dollars, but, because of sales tax I can only trade them in for goods worth.90*X dollars. From a purely economic point of view it would seem to be a very bad idea as transactions which would benifit everyone are not conducted because of the tax. Income tax on the other hand does not suffer from this problem as only total increase in wealth is taxed, i.e., sales tax seems to artificially slow down the rate at which exchanges are made while income tax does not.
Umm if you are selling it from an offshore site the government can just charge tarrifs when it enters the US. The reason state to state transactions are special is b/c the constitution specificallys forbids state to state tarrifs.
Do I dispute the fact that this kid may have been a little punk? No, although I certainly don't know enough to make that judgement myself. However just as we can't stop KKK members from organizing b/c of free speech issues the fact that this kid may have been a schmuck is irrelevant.
The point of the matter is the law is rightfully, IT IS ILLEGAL TO DISTRIBUE COPYRIGHT MATERIAL. The law is not it is illegal to disclose the location of copyrighted material. If you made 1000 windws CD's and I told someone that you had done so I merely passed along information I did not violate that law.
In addition the issue at hand is not whether the kid deserves to be punished or even if it IS illegal it is whether it SHOULD be illegal and I am arguing that it shouldn't
Yes but you are tacitly assuming the reader of the site is in a country where this is illegal. If I told you tomorrow I could hope a plane with you and fly fown to a country with liberal drug laws and give you some weed there I would be safe.
As the kid does not know the laws the reader of the site is subject to it seems ridiculous to hold him responsible
Yes, but this case falls somewhere in between the two. I know the fact that my neighbor is a fence...is it now illegal for me to convey this information to others? Certainly if I wanted to publish an article were I note this man is a fence it is clear I realize that many people will read this article and use it to obtain illegal items but I am clearly not aiding and abeting.
It seems this would only end up with everyone claiming they were publishing information merely for journalistic purposes only...cataloging illegal music on the web like those stupid disclaimers on warez sites.
>Next this has got nothing to do with freedom, read the article again. If something is not legal than that it is
Umm personal freedom is a property the legal system posseses. So despite the fact it may seem so we are not engaged in a discussion of whether this kid is doing good or bad but whether it is proper for the law to say he is doing bad.
Now I don't actually have any knowledge of sweden so I can't comment on that particular instance, however, I would like to point out some differences between the freedoms offered by the united states and that offered by many european countries.
Many european countries have much less puritanical cultures than the united states hence as a matter of fact they end up allowing many more things than the united states. For instance various sorts of drug use, nudity etc..
However, the united states, despite outlawing many things has much greater protections in the system for those who are extremyl at odds with society than many european countries. Sure, the culture may be much more lax there but if you fall outside (preech hate speech in germany, engage in sadomasochistic homosexual play in england etc..) the line or the will of the country changes in its attitude towards freedom you are much more at risk.
While I would much prefer to live in a liberal culture I must argue that the american system is better *as a political system* not necesserily in the niceness of living there. Sure in the short term freedom is nice b/c it lets you do things but this is not the real point of allowing personal liberties.
Free speech stops the flow of ideas in the society from stagnating due to conformity. It keeps society alive by presenting disenting opionions (hence freedoms which let you digress from the mainstream are much more important than freedoms that let you do things). Secondly freedoms serve their main political purpose when the government/society starts to turn bad. Hence the insulation of freedoms from the will of the majority is also an important system.
It is sort of a free beer/free speech issue. One kind of freedom gives you nice things to do and makes you happy. The other protects you against a rainy day and is better for philosophical reasons.
Yes, it doesn't look that bad because the only possible use for these mp3's is illegal, however, the precident it generates is terrible. It says the government is free to jail me if "the only consequences of the information I provide are illegal." Effectively this is what is being argued a 17year old has provided certain information (links to mp3's) and is being sued because this information can only be used for illegal purposes.
IT IS A HONEST TO GOODNESS FACT THAT AN MP3 RESIDES AT THE END OF THE LINK.
What if the WSJ was to do a report that pointed out the locations of illegal mp3s? Surely we wouldn't consider this to be illegal so we have put the government in the dangerous position of deciding what information can have a "legal" use and what information is only "illegal"
The bomb making parrelel is wonderful. A book that tells how to make bombs *should* be legal but it is giving information that can only be used for illegal purposes. Now the government has to decide when chemical eductation ends and illegal material starts. What about anarchistic manefestos? Marx? In fact the slipery slope continues until we are prohibeted from displaying material which challenges the current political framework because the necessery consequence of acting on such information is to do things which are currently illegal.
Also this is NOT equivalent to driving the getaway car. This kid is not accused with standing over their shoulder helping type in the URL he merely provided information.
Is warez.com a problem? No, for their is no underlying philosophical reason that someone shuold control all of their productions. In fact in a better world we would not have copyright laws. Copyright laws were adopted entierly pragmatically in order to make sure that new works were continued to be published. Is warz.com stoping microsofts next release? NO! As such it really isn't a problem. Besides even if it was the solution may be worse than the problem
I am not implying that a flawed belif should be spread merely that people should be allowed to keep their icons. Everyone knows that congress has just as much if not more power than the president yet very few feel an emotional or patriotic attachment to congress.
This has nothing to do with actual knowledge, hell it would be a good idea to put a little footnote in every article explaining that GNU contributed most of the code etc.., it is about image. Example from science: does anyone think that Einstein spun modern physics out of whole cloth? No, everyone knows he built on work done by others, but *Einsteins* theory of relativity generated far more interest and respect for physics than "A thgeory partially developed by einstein moslty building on the work of others" would ever have.
And rah for you, you get fired up by the concept of open source. We wish there were many more people out their who shared your belifs, unfortunatly, many people do not, or at least do not yet. Linux grabs their attention in a way FreeBSD never has. If not for this myth of Linus Linux would never have made it into the lime light and free software would have suffered a large setback.
>Is there any way we can let the media know that >we have GNU/Linux today because of both the GNU >Project and Linus Torvalds, and not just Linus?
Look this is a silly stupid ego issue for Stallman. Is it true that much of what is considerd linux is actually GNU software? Yes. Is it true that plenty of other people but Linus deserve credit? Yes.
Does this mean it will benifit linux or the public at large by forcing GNU/Linux down their throughts? No!
The myth of Linus and his singlehanded development of the operating system plays an important role in the media recognition of linux. People's imaginations are not fired up by commitees, they are fired up by individuals and strong leaders. There is a reason we consider the president of the US to represent the United States when in reality congress hasmore to do with the present state of the US than the president.
Linux is succeding where BSD did not b/c linux is sexy. Stallman would take this away from us with his self serving whining about getting credit. If he truly cared about free software rather than his own image he would let it go for the greater good.
This is ridiculous, whoever filed this suit should get their asses sued off for malicious prosection. EVEN if you grant the fact that linking to mp3's may be illegal it is clear that this law suit is not filled to set a legal precident or even to stop this kid from linking to mp3's. If either of these were the case they would have sued a *real* site like mp3.lycos.com (as someone already pointed out) or some smaller equivalent in sweden.
But no, they are suing a 17 year old. Isn't it clear that they are not trying to use the lawsuit to win but as a weapon in and of itself. Isn't this illegal (with various penalties) in most civilized countries?
Uhhh, what would this accomplish? Right now alot of our data goes through satelites doesn't do us any good. You aren't going to live on a satelite so even if your data is their they can still prosecute you! A real data haven would let those who are bold enough to post disenting opinions etc. live in the country free of fear of prosecution.
Best you could do with a satelite is anonymizers. While valuable no where near as good as a real data haven.
Slashdot Mirror
Not to mention the fact that the routing for such a system would be near impossible.
Given about 20 years of moves we would have 270 millin IPs scattered at random around the country.
It might be insecure however the effort required to change the outcome of a large election is enormous. Stuffing several ballots is easy...half a million is going to be near impossible to do without being detected. That is the danger of computer voting....it raises the possibility of massive voter fraud without the machinery and expense of a nationwide ballot stuffing campaign and the associated risk
Asmodean's real cool but that bitch still hasn't paid me the $30 he owes me!
First it in no way simulates molecules as both the article and the header imply...it merely uses iterated equations.
Secondnly, and more annoyingly it is still entierly digital...stupid reporters
People are going on and on about the iternet rating of porn as if it actually mattered. Sure a huge number of people think naked people are bad but so what. Our laws should be based on reasoned analysis and scientific data not delusional public opinion.
Reasearch has shown little/no negative effect on children from nudity. Hell in other perfectly functional cultures sex wasn't even consideed taboo. So the little kids see nasty por on the internet...we shouldn't care.
Ahh, but you miss the point no one *needs* to use the interet. Imagine I open a book store that happens to feature adult content, this should be legal. Now what if my bookstore becomes sooo popular that everyone uses it this should't force me to take down my adult content.
Sure maybe i have the best book store in the world so all the little kids want to do their reasearch at my place. TOO FUCKING BAD just b/c i am popular doesn't mean that I need to change my content.
Moreover search engines do not hijack you. You may freely choose not to use a private service which you know has the risk of taking you to a porn site.
Essentially internet regulation is based on the argument we can regulate a private service if it gets popular enough
Does anyone know anything about the ergonomic properties of logitech trackman marble fx. It looks all sleek and ergonomic but i know this doesn't mean anything.
I switched to this trackball from a normal mouse several months ago and started getting sore hands but i changed my typiung position for the worse and started typing more so i don't know if it was the trackman....should i keep using it? (BTW cut dow o posting to slashdot and other typing and pain went away.
If they steal a bunch of money they get prosecuted and sent to jail. If they blackmail the bank pays up and lays low to avoid bad press.
But we aren't lying you are looking at it the wrong way. Imagine you have to sell a beer, will you put ugly people in your beer commercial? NO! Will you be lying because not only attractive people will drink the beer? No! No one actually believes that drinking beer will make them attractive and so forth but people are more likely to use something if it is associated with good looking people.
Similar issue for Linux. Yes go out and tell everyone that GNU coded most of it just like a little blurb at the bottom of a beer add saying (beer does not make you sexy) this will comunicate the information without hurting the media attention.
Yes, I grant that RMS has been a driving force behind free software. I am not saying he is bad, merely, this particular insistance is counterproductive. I don't care if Jesus Christ himself had created linux from void if it doesn't make the world a better place to put his name in the title (JesusOS) then he shouldn't demand it be put there.
Yes, I agree it doesn't say anything about whether god created *this* life my point is merely that many people (stupidly I think) hold to the notion that only god can create life as a very important tenant to them.
1) First, many people have asked why this affects religion. Technically it doesn't as organized religion is usually sophisticated enough not to rely on such shaky premises. But most people aren't philosophers and if you talk to them at least half of people justify there belif in God by claiming he is the only explanation for life.
Many people are intelligent enough that the overwhelming evidence for evolution is convincing. But as they still hold life mysterious they justify their belif in god as a corurpt version of the "life force" theories so popular before modern biology. They claim god is responsible for providing the breath of life in some sense. If we can make a bacteria, even if it is only from dead bacteria, we have shown no breath of life is necessery.
Does it challenge major world relgions? No! But it does challenge a huge number of peoples belif in god.
2) (offtopic) Targeted germ warfare. How long will it be before we can make a virus or bacterium harmless to nearly everyone (flu or some such) but owhen it infects someone with the right gene combincation it suddenly turns deadly. You don't like the russian prime minister invite him for dinner, find a piece of his hair, and a year later he will be struck down by an inexplicable diseases.
Read the article!!! Most of the article is explaining the position of the Catholic church on the development. I do not believe these were 'official' pronouncemnts but the article implied that the initial reaction was negative but eventually they said that making bacteria was okay as long as it was done for scientific purposes and not for immoral ones (dis-proving god etc..)
1) Many people have been complaining that the government shouldn't collect tax b/c they don't use this service or that service or they don't see the philosophical justification for tax. The justification is simple many probelms (such as funding basic research building roads) suffer from a sort of defection problem in which everyone benifits from the result but only one group shells out the money. The government tazes in order to ensure these kind of benifits continue.
.90*X dollars. From a purely economic point of view it would seem to be a very bad idea as transactions which would benifit everyone are not conducted because of the tax. Income tax on the other hand does not suffer from this problem as only total increase in wealth is taxed, i.e., sales tax seems to artificially slow down the rate at which exchanges are made while income tax does not.
2) Transactions between individuals. Does anyone actually know, have a good cite, whether transactions between private individuals are taxed, i.e. transactions of second hand goods between individuals. Several people have seemed to suggest affirmitively..but several people have also implied that buisness don't have to pay sales tax on their merchandise so perhaps peopls status as paying sales tax on the items originally exempts them.
3) Privacy. It would appear to raise serious privacy concerns if the government really did assign everyone numbers and track their private trades.
4) Sales tax seems like a VERY BAD idea. Consider sales tax, as oipposed to income tax, makes the exchange of goods more costly. I have some goods worth X dollars, but, because of sales tax I can only trade them in for goods worth
Umm if you are selling it from an offshore site the government can just charge tarrifs when it enters the US. The reason state to state transactions are special is b/c the constitution specificallys forbids state to state tarrifs.
damn't that was posted as plain text. Forgot how to make html show up as literals
Do I dispute the fact that this kid may have been a little punk? No, although I certainly don't know enough to make that judgement myself. However just as we can't stop KKK members from organizing b/c of free speech issues the fact that this kid may have been a schmuck is irrelevant.
The point of the matter is the law is rightfully, IT IS ILLEGAL TO DISTRIBUE COPYRIGHT MATERIAL. The law is not it is illegal to disclose the location of copyrighted material. If you made 1000 windws CD's and I told someone that you had done so I merely passed along information I did not violate that law.
And I not that this all this kid did do was WRITE. He wrote etc.. he did not do ANYTHING but write.
In addition the issue at hand is not whether the kid deserves to be punished or even if it IS illegal it is whether it SHOULD be illegal and I am arguing that it shouldn't
Yes but you are tacitly assuming the reader of the site is in a country where this is illegal. If I told you tomorrow I could hope a plane with you and fly fown to a country with liberal drug laws and give you some weed there I would be safe.
As the kid does not know the laws the reader of the site is subject to it seems ridiculous to hold him responsible
Yes, but this case falls somewhere in between the two. I know the fact that my neighbor is a fence...is it now illegal for me to convey this information to others? Certainly if I wanted to publish an article were I note this man is a fence it is clear I realize that many people will read this article and use it to obtain illegal items but I am clearly not aiding and abeting.
It seems this would only end up with everyone claiming they were publishing information merely for journalistic purposes only...cataloging illegal music on the web like those stupid disclaimers on warez sites.
>Next this has got nothing to do with freedom, read the article again. If something is not legal than that it is
Umm personal freedom is a property the legal system posseses. So despite the fact it may seem so we are not engaged in a discussion of whether this kid is doing good or bad but whether it is proper for the law to say he is doing bad.
Now I don't actually have any knowledge of sweden so I can't comment on that particular instance, however, I would like to point out some differences between the freedoms offered by the united states and that offered by many european countries.
Many european countries have much less puritanical cultures than the united states hence as a matter of fact they end up allowing many more things than the united states. For instance various sorts of drug use, nudity etc..
However, the united states, despite outlawing many things has much greater protections in the system for those who are extremyl at odds with society than many european countries. Sure, the culture may be much more lax there but if you fall outside (preech hate speech in germany, engage in sadomasochistic homosexual play in england etc..) the line or the will of the country changes in its attitude towards freedom you are much more at risk.
While I would much prefer to live in a liberal culture I must argue that the american system is better *as a political system* not necesserily in the niceness of living there. Sure in the short term freedom is nice b/c it lets you do things but this is not the real point of allowing personal liberties.
Free speech stops the flow of ideas in the society from stagnating due to conformity. It keeps society alive by presenting disenting opionions (hence freedoms which let you digress from the mainstream are much more important than freedoms that let you do things). Secondly freedoms serve their main political purpose when the government/society starts to turn bad. Hence the insulation of freedoms from the will of the majority is also an important system.
It is sort of a free beer/free speech issue. One kind of freedom gives you nice things to do and makes you happy. The other protects you against a rainy day and is better for philosophical reasons.
Yes, it doesn't look that bad because the only possible use for these mp3's is illegal, however, the precident it generates is terrible. It says the government is free to jail me if "the only consequences of the information I provide are illegal." Effectively this is what is being argued a 17year old has provided certain information (links to mp3's) and is being sued because this information can only be used for illegal purposes.
IT IS A HONEST TO GOODNESS FACT THAT AN MP3 RESIDES AT THE END OF THE LINK.
What if the WSJ was to do a report that pointed out the locations of illegal mp3s? Surely we wouldn't consider this to be illegal so we have put the government in the dangerous position of deciding what information can have a "legal" use and what information is only "illegal"
The bomb making parrelel is wonderful. A book that tells how to make bombs *should* be legal but it is giving information that can only be used for illegal purposes. Now the government has to decide when chemical eductation ends and illegal material starts. What about anarchistic manefestos? Marx? In fact the slipery slope continues until we are prohibeted from displaying material which challenges the current political framework because the necessery consequence of acting on such information is to do things which are currently illegal.
Also this is NOT equivalent to driving the getaway car. This kid is not accused with standing over their shoulder helping type in the URL he merely provided information.
Is warez.com a problem? No, for their is no underlying philosophical reason that someone shuold control all of their productions. In fact in a better world we would not have copyright laws. Copyright laws were adopted entierly pragmatically in order to make sure that new works were continued to be published. Is warz.com stoping microsofts next release? NO! As such it really isn't a problem. Besides even if it was the solution may be worse than the problem
I am not implying that a flawed belif should be spread merely that people should be allowed to keep their icons. Everyone knows that congress has just as much if not more power than the president yet very few feel an emotional or patriotic attachment to congress.
This has nothing to do with actual knowledge, hell it would be a good idea to put a little footnote in every article explaining that GNU contributed most of the code etc.., it is about image. Example from science: does anyone think that Einstein spun modern physics out of whole cloth? No, everyone knows he built on work done by others, but *Einsteins* theory of relativity generated far more interest and respect for physics than "A thgeory partially developed by einstein moslty building on the work of others" would ever have.
And rah for you, you get fired up by the concept of open source. We wish there were many more people out their who shared your belifs, unfortunatly, many people do not, or at least do not yet. Linux grabs their attention in a way FreeBSD never has. If not for this myth of Linus Linux would never have made it into the lime light and free software would have suffered a large setback.
>Is there any way we can let the media know that >we have GNU/Linux today because of both the GNU >Project and Linus Torvalds, and not just Linus?
Look this is a silly stupid ego issue for Stallman. Is it true that much of what is considerd linux is actually GNU software? Yes. Is it true that plenty of other people but Linus deserve credit? Yes.
Does this mean it will benifit linux or the public at large by forcing GNU/Linux down their throughts? No!
The myth of Linus and his singlehanded development of the operating system plays an important role in the media recognition of linux. People's imaginations are not fired up by commitees, they are fired up by individuals and strong leaders. There is a reason we consider the president of the US to represent the United States when in reality congress hasmore to do with the present state of the US than the president.
Linux is succeding where BSD did not b/c linux is sexy. Stallman would take this away from us with his self serving whining about getting credit. If he truly cared about free software rather than his own image he would let it go for the greater good.
This is ridiculous, whoever filed this suit should get their asses sued off for malicious prosection. EVEN if you grant the fact that linking to mp3's may be illegal it is clear that this law suit is not filled to set a legal precident or even to stop this kid from linking to mp3's. If either of these were the case they would have sued a *real* site like mp3.lycos.com (as someone already pointed out) or some smaller equivalent in sweden.
But no, they are suing a 17 year old. Isn't it clear that they are not trying to use the lawsuit to win but as a weapon in and of itself. Isn't this illegal (with various penalties) in most civilized countries?
Uhhh, what would this accomplish? Right now alot of our data goes through satelites doesn't do us any good. You aren't going to live on a satelite so even if your data is their they can still prosecute you! A real data haven would let those who are bold enough to post disenting opinions etc. live in the country free of fear of prosecution.
Best you could do with a satelite is anonymizers. While valuable no where near as good as a real data haven.