Guess what, pal? It's called satire. You remember? "Poking fun at Man's institutions for the purpose of improving them."
If this company is involved in aiding other countries in suppressing access to the internet to their own populations for the purpose of controlling those populations, then indeed they are doing a wrong, and deserved to be poked, and hard.
"I should have been the first man on Mars, not him! Now I'll never get there."
"Fry, you went there this morning for doughnuts."
Re:we never landed on the moon (offtopic)
on
Mining On The Moon
·
· Score: 1
Although I heartily endorse relieving foolish mortals of their cash through preposterous entertainment lies, CSICOP has pointed out this show did go too far by suggesting NASA arranged the murders of 10 people to "keep it quite".
> right now we are forced to look at diferent ways
> of doing things because we are filling up with
> garbage
Actually, we can be extremely wasteful and not have to worry about running out of room for tens of thousands of years. It just seems like we are running out of room because they stupidly put burial mounds near populated areas, or along the highway where people drive by them all the time.
This idea is a leftover from 70's hysteria and is throroughly discredited. (As a side note, we should be burying yard waste in sealed landfills that do NOT break down. By mulching you increase C02, which increases global warming [if that exists, and if it is a problem.])
> The whole point of the "copy protection
> circumvenstion" was to allow for FAIR USE OF
> DIGITAL MATERIAL
The whole point of waist-high holes between the booths at a $0.25 video peepshows is to allow people in adjoining booths to engage in lively commentary about the various videos they are watching.
> That would be like being arrested in a foreign
> country while you're on vacation for having
> written a book in the United States that was
> illegal in the country you were vacationing in.
No, that would be like being arrested in a foreign country while you're at a conference in your field for having written software that allows people to bypass home security systems and then selling it in that country, knowing 99.999% of the buyers were thieves and not the legitimate homeowners.
As if remembering to clear all the pr0n links out of my recent files list, my recent URL's list, my browser cache, turning on "don't show hidden files", and emptying Real Play and Windows Media Player recent file lists every god damned time I shut down isn't hard enough already.
No, but we in America should be ashamed an American company might very well be participating in this.
Suppose someone in SA hacked a way around it, and SA asked this company to help them detect this person so they could be tried and their hands cut off?
> Whether "right" or "wrong", the Saudi government
> is free to do what it likes to it's citizens, no
> matter what we think.
Free in the sense of currently no one is stopping them, like free in the sense a mugger with no one watching can sneak up and hit someone on the head.
Free in the moral and ethical sense? No way. "Self determination" is a useless concept. If terrorists seized control of a stadium of people and declared political independence, is that bit of land expressing self determination?
Remember that a government is just another group of people. They have no power over people other than what is freely granted them by the population. I doubt that is the case there.
This is a war. It is fundamentally different from the normal course of things. You don't wait until you have proof that guy over there with the gun pointed at you is going to fire, because that proof is a bullet between your eyes, and by then its too late.
No, it isn't about pointing fingers and screaming. It's about people in power in other places who have directed attacks against the US, or, at the very least, encouraged such things loudly and publically. Both can, and should, be taken out, and hard.
> No offense intended, but western culture spreads
> like wildfire.
It is the result of a free choice, and nothing more.
> I am personally of the opinion that any means to
> prevent cultural death, though in a sense
> honorable, is futile.
I disagree that it is honorable whenever coercive tactics are used. No one is forcing people to go to McDonald's or drink Coke (or wear a Pittsburgh Steeler shirt while being filmed cheering the attacks against the US.)
If some alien civilization came down and started offering all sorts of cool products, like Mr. Fusion (and associated T shirts where they sponsor the Andromeda Asskickers) I won't sweat the loss of "American" culture, and yes, there is some.
I won't sit around demanding 30% local (i.e. US) content on the TV or in the theaters. If they promote sexual immersive virtual reality, I won't demand my government protect me from that floosie culture.
Heck, I'd probably try to get a programming job off-planet as soon as possible.
> There may be no inalienable rights to internet
> access everybody should have the rights to free
> speech.
Actually, you have the right to build things with your own property, and run lines between properties with the permission of everyone inbetween, and the right of free association, so yes! You do have an inalienable right to create and access the Internet.
> I'm not in favor of cultural imperialism, but the
> idea that people should be allowed to elect the
> people who govern them is an idea that should be
> exported.
I'd rather export the concept of freedom -- from the government. The idea that people, as soverign individuals, maintain their rights, and grant the government very limited powers over those rights, and none others.
I don't see any proof of Hitler actually killing Jews.
Well, you can see where this is leading. If some apologists don't want to believe, then it's become a religious issue with them. Pearls before swine, let them fester in their ignorance, and move on. Don't let them control foreign policy -- that's how we got to this day.
> One thing to notice is that the connection between
> Bin Laden and Sept. 11 is entirely by association.
> Some of the Sept. 11 hijackers are known to be
> associated with Al Qaida, and Bin Laden clearly
> shares the same beliefs as the hijackers. It
> doesn't follow that Bin Laden is responsible.
It does follow, though, that we leave his dead carcass by the road with his head on a pike.
For those who haven't been keeping up with current events, he has called for the death of Americans before and after the 11th. The moral cowardice of the West to go after these people who flap their gums and then hide in other sympathetic countries is what's gotten us to this point in time.
If what they're saying is true, that a US company is participating in limiting free speech in other countries, I've thought of some ad slogans for them:
"San Jose Secure Computing -- Participating In The Oppression Of People For Over Eight Years"
"Need To Oppress Your People? -- Call San Jose Secure Computing"
"Indiginous Population Learning Too Much? -- Call San Jose Secure Computing"
"What Is 'Truth', Anyway? Call San Jose Secure Computing, Now With New Under Your Thumb(TM) Technology!"
Slashdot Mirror
If we were anywhere near to fatally screwing up this planet, which we are not...
Guess what, pal? It's called satire. You remember? "Poking fun at Man's institutions for the purpose of improving them."
If this company is involved in aiding other countries in suppressing access to the internet to their own populations for the purpose of controlling those populations, then indeed they are doing a wrong, and deserved to be poked, and hard.
I like this better:
"I should have been the first man on Mars, not him! Now I'll never get there."
"Fry, you went there this morning for doughnuts."
Although I heartily endorse relieving foolish mortals of their cash through preposterous entertainment lies, CSICOP has pointed out this show did go too far by suggesting NASA arranged the murders of 10 people to "keep it quite".
Lunamen. They never got anywhere near an astro.
> right now we are forced to look at diferent ways
> of doing things because we are filling up with
> garbage
Actually, we can be extremely wasteful and not have to worry about running out of room for tens of thousands of years. It just seems like we are running out of room because they stupidly put burial mounds near populated areas, or along the highway where people drive by them all the time.
This idea is a leftover from 70's hysteria and is throroughly discredited. (As a side note, we should be burying yard waste in sealed landfills that do NOT break down. By mulching you increase C02, which increases global warming [if that exists, and if it is a problem.])
> The whole point of the "copy protection
> circumvenstion" was to allow for FAIR USE OF
> DIGITAL MATERIAL
The whole point of waist-high holes between the booths at a $0.25 video peepshows is to allow people in adjoining booths to engage in lively commentary about the various videos they are watching.
> That would be like being arrested in a foreign
> country while you're on vacation for having
> written a book in the United States that was
> illegal in the country you were vacationing in.
No, that would be like being arrested in a foreign country while you're at a conference in your field for having written software that allows people to bypass home security systems and then selling it in that country, knowing 99.999% of the buyers were thieves and not the legitimate homeowners.
> should be a metadata standard allowing webmasters
> to manually decrease the relevance of their pages
> for specific search terms and phrases."
Last time I checked, the problem was stopping XXX BRITNEY NIPSLIP from turning up as the result to "+car +transmission +repair".
Whatever happened to that 3D dancing/browser environment? Where's that when you need it?
As if remembering to clear all the pr0n links out of my recent files list, my recent URL's list, my browser cache, turning on "don't show hidden files", and emptying Real Play and Windows Media Player recent file lists every god damned time I shut down isn't hard enough already.
> Oh, wait, I think that I see. It's OK to have a
> benevolent dictatorship, right...?
Well, if you subscribe to vox populi, vox dei...
> You cannot stop one's desire of freedom.
No, but we in America should be ashamed an American company might very well be participating in this.
Suppose someone in SA hacked a way around it, and SA asked this company to help them detect this person so they could be tried and their hands cut off?
Ehh, as long as we get paid, I guess.
> Whether "right" or "wrong", the Saudi government
> is free to do what it likes to it's citizens, no
> matter what we think.
Free in the sense of currently no one is stopping them, like free in the sense a mugger with no one watching can sneak up and hit someone on the head.
Free in the moral and ethical sense? No way. "Self determination" is a useless concept. If terrorists seized control of a stadium of people and declared political independence, is that bit of land expressing self determination?
Remember that a government is just another group of people. They have no power over people other than what is freely granted them by the population. I doubt that is the case there.
Eight thousand dollars a minute plus no guarantee they aren't monitored, anyway.
> To critics of the sale of content filters,
> software company executives say that they are only
> providing politically neutral tools
That's like saying, hey! I'm only providing politically neutral gas chambers and crematoria.
Not at the time there wasn't.
This is a war. It is fundamentally different from the normal course of things. You don't wait until you have proof that guy over there with the gun pointed at you is going to fire, because that proof is a bullet between your eyes, and by then its too late.
No, it isn't about pointing fingers and screaming. It's about people in power in other places who have directed attacks against the US, or, at the very least, encouraged such things loudly and publically. Both can, and should, be taken out, and hard.
> No offense intended, but western culture spreads
> like wildfire.
It is the result of a free choice, and nothing more.
> I am personally of the opinion that any means to
> prevent cultural death, though in a sense
> honorable, is futile.
I disagree that it is honorable whenever coercive tactics are used. No one is forcing people to go to McDonald's or drink Coke (or wear a Pittsburgh Steeler shirt while being filmed cheering the attacks against the US.)
If some alien civilization came down and started offering all sorts of cool products, like Mr. Fusion (and associated T shirts where they sponsor the Andromeda Asskickers) I won't sweat the loss of "American" culture, and yes, there is some.
I won't sit around demanding 30% local (i.e. US) content on the TV or in the theaters. If they promote sexual immersive virtual reality, I won't demand my government protect me from that floosie culture.
Heck, I'd probably try to get a programming job off-planet as soon as possible.
I believe CNN and others are honoring a request by the US government not to show them for fear of secret messages instructing followers on activities.
> There may be no inalienable rights to internet
> access everybody should have the rights to free
> speech.
Actually, you have the right to build things with your own property, and run lines between properties with the permission of everyone inbetween, and the right of free association, so yes! You do have an inalienable right to create and access the Internet.
> I'm not in favor of cultural imperialism, but the
> idea that people should be allowed to elect the
> people who govern them is an idea that should be
> exported.
I'd rather export the concept of freedom -- from the government. The idea that people, as soverign individuals, maintain their rights, and grant the government very limited powers over those rights, and none others.
I don't see any proof of Hitler actually killing Jews.
Well, you can see where this is leading. If some apologists don't want to believe, then it's become a religious issue with them. Pearls before swine, let them fester in their ignorance, and move on. Don't let them control foreign policy -- that's how we got to this day.
> One thing to notice is that the connection between
> Bin Laden and Sept. 11 is entirely by association.
> Some of the Sept. 11 hijackers are known to be
> associated with Al Qaida, and Bin Laden clearly
> shares the same beliefs as the hijackers. It
> doesn't follow that Bin Laden is responsible.
It does follow, though, that we leave his dead carcass by the road with his head on a pike.
For those who haven't been keeping up with current events, he has called for the death of Americans before and after the 11th. The moral cowardice of the West to go after these people who flap their gums and then hide in other sympathetic countries is what's gotten us to this point in time.
And your black-tinted glasses blind you from even the brightest light of rationality.
If what they're saying is true, that a US company is participating in limiting free speech in other countries, I've thought of some ad slogans for them:
"San Jose Secure Computing -- Participating In The Oppression Of People For Over Eight Years"
"Need To Oppress Your People? -- Call San Jose Secure Computing"
"Indiginous Population Learning Too Much? -- Call San Jose Secure Computing"
"What Is 'Truth', Anyway? Call San Jose Secure Computing, Now With New Under Your Thumb(TM) Technology!"