If you liked this article and are interested in some technical background, you might also like Ross Anderson's essay: Why Cryptosystems Fail, which discusses some of the poor engineering that contributed to this situation.
US libraries are chartered as well, at the state or sometimes county or city level. The idea of providing open access to public information is essentially the same, driven by the 1st Amendment to the Constitution, but each state throws in their little tweaks based on definition of the public interest. In the US you also have the problem of preemption by federal laws, such as the infamous USA PATRIOT Act provisions, and the law mandating filtering for the library to receive federal money (drawn from a special tax on telecommunications, which some readers may recognize as a line in their mobile phone bill).
The problem with schools and libraries is also the same in the US, driven largely by the schools' mandate to act in loco parentis (in the place of the parent), which, in libraries, is usually trumped by the open access mandate.
The most common resolution to these sort of problems is for libraries to provide filtering on an opt-in or opt-out basis, and to have policies (as this library does) placing responsibility for misuse of Internet access on the user and treating violations as violations of the library's code of conduct.
The parent post, which explicitly cited numerous SAFETY FEATURES, did not claim that higher speeds decreased the risk of a fatal accident
The parent post *explicitly* cites nothing of the sort. However, the cited study implies it. I should have corrected for the poster's poor communication skills. My bad. I was reacting to a number of prior posters who have made exactly the aforementioned assertion, and to this statement from the parent:
Instead, we hear how increasing interstate highway speeds from 55 to 65 or 75 mph is going to create roads full of amateur F1 drivers and a general bloodbath.
Well, yes. Poster's strawman hyperbole aside, it seems obvious that if speed limits increase and average driver skill stays constant, there will be more injuries and fatalities. I believe we do agree on this point, but it sounds as though the poster of the parent does not. (I also found it amusing that the parent's poster wrote all of your arguments are based on anecdotes and fear a few sentences after I've seen mangled wrecks at 65 mph, 55 mph, 45 mph, but no matter.)
Argue against the point that the poster made, not the strawman that you wish that the poster had created.
Right back atcha. I never said zero risk. I said as close to zero as we as a society can get it. I trust you understand the difference or can have someone explain it to you. As you say, a-duh.
The parent post...did not claim that higher speeds decreased the risk of a fatal accident, it claimed that safer cars produced lower risks of accident and could permit higher speeds.
Yes, and the poster's premise was that we as a society should accept a similar level of risk to that which we have accepted in the past, because of said safety features. My point is that I think that's bad public policy, because...
you cannot argue that there is no benefit in higher speeds
...in my view, the economic benefits of speeding are manifestly *not* outweighed by additional injuries and fatalities. (Also, this is your second strawman, since I never argued there was no benefit, but who's counting?)
Also,
Yes they do, "asshole", don't get in a car.
Are you seriously asserting that pedestrians, cyclists, and persons lacking the ability to decide their own mode of transportation (e.g. small children) are not at risk from speeders? Please. As a daily pedestrian and cyclist, and in particular as a parent of small pedestrians and cyclists, I can personally assure you that that is not the case. This was why I used the term 'asshole'. I don't think you have clue one on the risks you as a speeder present to others, which makes you not only a faulty rationalizer but a bad citizen.
Finally,
You cannot argue that the risks of smoking injury have decreased
Yes, I can. If it is more likely today that I will survive the experience of smoking injury than it was twenty years ago due to medical advances (which it is), then the risk of fatality has decreased.
Perhaps you confuse the concepts of inherent and residual risk. The inherent risk (before mitigation) of smoking remains the same, but the residual risk (after mitigation) is lower than it was. If you don't understand this, perhaps a graduate of the Moron School can explain it to you. The aptness of the analogy is left as an exercise for the reader.
It should be added that that law does NOT apply uniformly to inanimate objects. The last object I encountered in my freeway lane was a refrigerator on its side. I could see over it, but I chose to swerve.
Automobile accident rates and automobile accident death rates have both significantly decreased over the last couple of decades, and during that same time speed limits have generally increased from the good 'ol double nickel.
I should think that better safety features on cars have accounted for most, if not all of the decrease in fatalities. Based on my own experience, and on knowledge of elementary physics, I strongly doubt there is a correlation between higher average speeds and increased safety.
While I do not have a cite or link for this, I just saw a study on motorcycle fatalities that showed a much more direct linkage between speed and fatalities, which it what we'd expect for a technology for which there have been no major safety advances.
If we were willing to accept a certain risk of accident in the past, then why can't we accept that a similar risk of accident now?
Because we are talking about preventable injuries and fatalities, you asshole, and in particular because not every person injured or killed by an automobile has a choice in the matter. The acceptable incidence rate for passenger children killed by automobiles, and for others whose 'acceptance' of this outcome is an accident of time and place, should be as close to zero as we as a society can get it.
By your logic, we should all smoke more because it's easier now to diagnose and treat lung cancer than it was twenty years ago, and too bad for the non-smokers breathing second-hand smoke.
Agreed. If they wanted to protect kids they should have created a.kids TLD for content specifically for children's use, making it quick-n-easy to whitelist the domain for kids to browse from ome/school/library networks, and making it easy to identify abusers of the TLD.
Try complaining to the bank or other business being targeted, and identify the ISP in your complaint.
As papers like this one reveal the methods of phishers, it's going to be much more difficult for ISPs to claim ignorance of the problem, because knowledge of tools and methods contribute to standards of due care from which liability arises. The threat of legal action might improve the overall response.
No, there are many activities legislators undertake to get things done, only one of which, albeit the most visible, is to sponsor legislation. That's why the great-great-grandparent post, and your parent post, imply the aforementioned strawman argument.
The linked article describes Gore's activities in this vein in some detail (for example, sponsoring hearings and drumming up committee/floor votes), as do other articles and quotes throughout the thread.
The poster didn't ask for proof of what Al Gore did, but specifically for links to sponsored legislation, etc. Since the poster had the opportunity to read paraphrases of the main points made in the linked article earlier in this thread, and those made by other sources (e.g. Snopes) cited in the thread, the implied argument from the poster in the context of the thread seemed to me to be: Gore didn't sponsor any bills, therefore he didn't "...take the initiative in creating the Internet". That's a strawman. Perhaps I assume too much.
This is exactly the same, just going the other direction now.
So, what you're saying is that you're gratuitously bashing UCS and PEER. I'm sure that makes you feel good, but why does it make UCS wrong?
And for the record, I'm sure their findings are just fine. Funny, that's not what you implied earlier: But since it's an organization with a decidedly and unabashedly liberal political agenda, I guess they must be telling the truth 100%
As I said, post a fact if you want someone to care. I'm not slagging you because you're conservative, I'm slagging you because you're an overcaffeinated idiot.
Something you're not, you know, used to, I'm sure.
Methinks you doth protest too much.
you know what? They'd find the SAME FUCKING THING, assuming they asked the questions in the same way. That's the point I'm making.
No, that's the point you're making now, which I actually
agreed with nine minutes earlier. Why didn't you say so the first time?
I'm still waiting to hear why their findings are suspect, other than that you don't like their politics. Post a relevant fact if you want anyone intelligent to pay attention to you.
I am a huge fan of Philip K. Dick's work, and the thought of Hollywood getting its mitts on any of his major works again would normally fill me with trepidation.
But, oddly enough, I have a good feeling about this one, just as I also had a good feeling about Peter Jackson's LOTR trilogy. I thought Jackson et al worked very hard to capture a look and feel that would correspond with the private imagery of the majority of LOTR readers, and while they compromised a few major story elements, the critical and market response shows that they largely succeeded.
The key to A Scanner Darkly, which Dick renders with Dostoyevskian brilliance, is the onset of psychosis in its principal characters due to drug abuse and addiction. As Dick himself has pointed out, the dreamlike dialog throughout the book absolutely nails the eroding states of mind of these lost souls just as it happened to a lot of his own contemporaries in the sixties and seventies, and this dialog is in turn absolutely central to the book - so much of the narrative is taken up with these burnouts freaking each other out for no apparent reason, talking about nothing into the wee hours, etc. etc., just as they do in Waking Life. So my take on this movie is that may be one of the few times that Linklater's admittedly annoying animation technique and directorial style may actually be the most appropriate way to render Dick's vision onscreen. This could actually be pretty cool.
Now the cast, that's something else again. Woody Harrelson? Keanu Reeves? I dunno...
Slashdot Mirror
One word: Lafayette.
If you liked this article and are interested in some technical background, you might also like Ross Anderson's essay: Why Cryptosystems Fail, which discusses some of the poor engineering that contributed to this situation.
Why don't they? It depends upon who you mean by 'they'.
Terror is a possibility. To the uneducated it may very well have seemed like sorcery.
US libraries are chartered as well, at the state or sometimes county or city level. The idea of providing open access to public information is essentially the same, driven by the 1st Amendment to the Constitution, but each state throws in their little tweaks based on definition of the public interest. In the US you also have the problem of preemption by federal laws, such as the infamous USA PATRIOT Act provisions, and the law mandating filtering for the library to receive federal money (drawn from a special tax on telecommunications, which some readers may recognize as a line in their mobile phone bill).
The problem with schools and libraries is also the same in the US, driven largely by the schools' mandate to act in loco parentis (in the place of the parent), which, in libraries, is usually trumped by the open access mandate.
The most common resolution to these sort of problems is for libraries to provide filtering on an opt-in or opt-out basis, and to have policies (as this library does) placing responsibility for misuse of Internet access on the user and treating violations as violations of the library's code of conduct.
Here is the library's Internet usage policy. It's not clear to me that anything that occurred violated that policy on its face.
The parent post, which explicitly cited numerous SAFETY FEATURES, did not claim that higher speeds decreased the risk of a fatal accident
...in my view, the economic benefits of speeding are manifestly *not* outweighed by additional injuries and fatalities. (Also, this is your second strawman, since I never argued there was no benefit, but who's counting?)
The parent post *explicitly* cites nothing of the sort. However, the cited study implies it. I should have corrected for the poster's poor communication skills. My bad. I was reacting to a number of prior posters who have made exactly the aforementioned assertion, and to this statement from the parent:
Instead, we hear how increasing interstate highway speeds from 55 to 65 or 75 mph is going to create roads full of amateur F1 drivers and a general bloodbath.
Well, yes. Poster's strawman hyperbole aside, it seems obvious that if speed limits increase and average driver skill stays constant, there will be more injuries and fatalities. I believe we do agree on this point, but it sounds as though the poster of the parent does not. (I also found it amusing that the parent's poster wrote all of your arguments are based on anecdotes and fear a few sentences after I've seen mangled wrecks at 65 mph, 55 mph, 45 mph, but no matter.)
Argue against the point that the poster made, not the strawman that you wish that the poster had created.
Right back atcha. I never said zero risk. I said as close to zero as we as a society can get it. I trust you understand the difference or can have someone explain it to you. As you say, a-duh.
The parent post...did not claim that higher speeds decreased the risk of a fatal accident, it claimed that safer cars produced lower risks of accident and could permit higher speeds.
Yes, and the poster's premise was that we as a society should accept a similar level of risk to that which we have accepted in the past, because of said safety features. My point is that I think that's bad public policy, because...
you cannot argue that there is no benefit in higher speeds
Also,
Yes they do, "asshole", don't get in a car.
Are you seriously asserting that pedestrians, cyclists, and persons lacking the ability to decide their own mode of transportation (e.g. small children) are not at risk from speeders? Please. As a daily pedestrian and cyclist, and in particular as a parent of small pedestrians and cyclists, I can personally assure you that that is not the case. This was why I used the term 'asshole'. I don't think you have clue one on the risks you as a speeder present to others, which makes you not only a faulty rationalizer but a bad citizen.
Finally,
You cannot argue that the risks of smoking injury have decreased
Yes, I can. If it is more likely today that I will survive the experience of smoking injury than it was twenty years ago due to medical advances (which it is), then the risk of fatality has decreased.
Perhaps you confuse the concepts of inherent and residual risk. The inherent risk (before mitigation) of smoking remains the same, but the residual risk (after mitigation) is lower than it was. If you don't understand this, perhaps a graduate of the Moron School can explain it to you. The aptness of the analogy is left as an exercise for the reader.
It should be added that that law does NOT apply uniformly to inanimate objects. The last object I encountered in my freeway lane was a refrigerator on its side. I could see over it, but I chose to swerve.
Automobile accident rates and automobile accident death rates have both significantly decreased over the last couple of decades, and during that same time speed limits have generally increased from the good 'ol double nickel.
I should think that better safety features on cars have accounted for most, if not all of the decrease in fatalities. Based on my own experience, and on knowledge of elementary physics, I strongly doubt there is a correlation between higher average speeds and increased safety.
While I do not have a cite or link for this, I just saw a study on motorcycle fatalities that showed a much more direct linkage between speed and fatalities, which it what we'd expect for a technology for which there have been no major safety advances.
If we were willing to accept a certain risk of accident in the past, then why can't we accept that a similar risk of accident now?
Because we are talking about preventable injuries and fatalities, you asshole, and in particular because not every person injured or killed by an automobile has a choice in the matter. The acceptable incidence rate for passenger children killed by automobiles, and for others whose 'acceptance' of this outcome is an accident of time and place, should be as close to zero as we as a society can get it.
By your logic, we should all smoke more because it's easier now to diagnose and treat lung cancer than it was twenty years ago, and too bad for the non-smokers breathing second-hand smoke.
With keywords like "a" and "the", this list would return close to 100% of all data communications. Obviously BS.
Agreed. If they wanted to protect kids they should have created a .kids TLD for content specifically for children's use, making it quick-n-easy to whitelist the domain for kids to browse from ome/school/library networks, and making it easy to identify abusers of the TLD.
According to this Gartner study (warning: PDF), the success rates for phishing are between 3-6%, similar to those for spam. It's a volume business.
Try complaining to the bank or other business being targeted, and identify the ISP in your complaint.
As papers like this one reveal the methods of phishers, it's going to be much more difficult for ISPs to claim ignorance of the problem, because knowledge of tools and methods contribute to standards of due care from which liability arises. The threat of legal action might improve the overall response.
When Evolution Is Outlawed
Only Outlaws Will Evolve
No, there are many activities legislators undertake to get things done, only one of which, albeit the most visible, is to sponsor legislation. That's why the great-great-grandparent post, and your parent post, imply the aforementioned strawman argument. The linked article describes Gore's activities in this vein in some detail (for example, sponsoring hearings and drumming up committee/floor votes), as do other articles and quotes throughout the thread.
The poster didn't ask for proof of what Al Gore did, but specifically for links to sponsored legislation, etc. Since the poster had the opportunity to read paraphrases of the main points made in the linked article earlier in this thread, and those made by other sources (e.g. Snopes) cited in the thread, the implied argument from the poster in the context of the thread seemed to me to be: Gore didn't sponsor any bills, therefore he didn't "...take the initiative in creating the Internet". That's a strawman. Perhaps I assume too much.
Straw man. Maybe this will help. I assume you know who the authors are.
After all, these people have some of the best clinical and occupational psychologists in the world working for them.
Maybe, but that doesn't mean that any of them were consulted with respect to this decision.
a planet that is billions of years old
That's not what the sticker on my biology textbook says.
This is exactly the same, just going the other direction now.
So, what you're saying is that you're gratuitously bashing UCS and PEER. I'm sure that makes you feel good, but why does it make UCS wrong?
And for the record, I'm sure their findings are just fine. Funny, that's not what you implied earlier: But since it's an organization with a decidedly and unabashedly liberal political agenda, I guess they must be telling the truth 100%
As I said, post a fact if you want someone to care. I'm not slagging you because you're conservative, I'm slagging you because you're an overcaffeinated idiot.
Something you're not, you know, used to, I'm sure.
Methinks you doth protest too much.
you know what? They'd find the SAME FUCKING THING, assuming they asked the questions in the same way. That's the point I'm making.
No, that's the point you're making now, which I actually agreed with nine minutes earlier. Why didn't you say so the first time?
I'm still waiting to hear why their findings are suspect, other than that you don't like their politics. Post a relevant fact if you want anyone intelligent to pay attention to you.
News flash: government agencies are political.
You were supposed to disclaim the forbidden thought, like everyone else who posted above.
I expect to see your post quoted here momentarily.
Heh, in the book, her character was a shoplifter too.
I am a huge fan of Philip K. Dick's work, and the thought of Hollywood getting its mitts on any of his major works again would normally fill me with trepidation.
But, oddly enough, I have a good feeling about this one, just as I also had a good feeling about Peter Jackson's LOTR trilogy. I thought Jackson et al worked very hard to capture a look and feel that would correspond with the private imagery of the majority of LOTR readers, and while they compromised a few major story elements, the critical and market response shows that they largely succeeded.
The key to A Scanner Darkly, which Dick renders with Dostoyevskian brilliance, is the onset of psychosis in its principal characters due to drug abuse and addiction. As Dick himself has pointed out, the dreamlike dialog throughout the book absolutely nails the eroding states of mind of these lost souls just as it happened to a lot of his own contemporaries in the sixties and seventies, and this dialog is in turn absolutely central to the book - so much of the narrative is taken up with these burnouts freaking each other out for no apparent reason, talking about nothing into the wee hours, etc. etc., just as they do in Waking Life. So my take on this movie is that may be one of the few times that Linklater's admittedly annoying animation technique and directorial style may actually be the most appropriate way to render Dick's vision onscreen. This could actually be pretty cool.
Now the cast, that's something else again. Woody Harrelson? Keanu Reeves? I dunno...