Re:there's an argument to be made....
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More On Tragedy
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Democracy? It has been about 1 year since East Timor had Australian then UN troops installed as peacekeepers. They have recently held their first democratic elections. It has been a decade since Kuwait was liberated by the UN coalition and they have not held any elections. So don't give me any crap about fighting for democracy.
Iran is another example. The Shah was such a democratic leader wasn't he? Deposed by a popular uprising. If the US government cared about democracy and the people they would be involved in Myanmar, Irian Jaya, ad infinitum.
And freedom of religion. How can a country which extolls freedom of religion force school children to swear allegiance to a flag? and utter the line "one country under God"?
I agree that terrorism is the enemy of every peron on this planet, and that the people in the WTC did not deserve this. However, to say that the US is blameless in this tragedy is wrong. The US is guilty of its own terrorism. The bombing of Baghdad, Tripoli, the funding of the Contras, the funding of the Bay of Pigs, Vietnam, Nagasaki, Hiroshima.
I do not and never could condone what has been done to the people of the United States, it never should have happened. This attack was a disgrace and those who are responsible have no right to be deemed part of the human race. However, those who say "why did this happen?" do not have very far to look. When your government forces its beliefs on others, expect some of them to fight back.
Have you any idea what you are talking about?.org.au domain names are not for businesses. They are registered free on behalf of non-profit organisations. The vast majority of non-profit organisations do not need domain names registered within a couple of days. With Robert Elz gone, I would not be surprised in auDA charged for.org.au or just deregulated them, being a bigger disservice to non-profit orgs. If you are a company and want service levels, get a.com.au, pay for it and get it quickly, leave.org.au for the non-profit people.
What Skylarov did is not illegal in Russia, in fact it is required by law. Under Russian law it is illegal to sell software which cannot be copied for backup. Adobe ebook was released without this function. So what Skylarov was doing was not only within the law in Russia, it was demanded by it
Re:looking forward to the russian response...
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Sklyarov Indicted
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I would love to see Russia indict Adobe. Under Russian law it is illegal to release software which cannot be copied for backup purposes. Maybe that would give Dubya a big enough headache to stick the DMCA up his arse.
Virtually anybody who wants a degree, in say Computer Science, can get one and at a fairly low cost by taking advantage of junior colleges and state universities
Yeah, that's the problem, anyone who wants one, gets one. The US system is not "much more open". It is a closed shop for the wealthy. If Einstein had been born in the US, he would not have had a university education becuase he could not have afforded it.
That has some really interesting points and it raises some interesting questions, but the guy is a troll. He questions the education system and the need for an education system but his idea that we should all piss off back to the Stone Age is moronic. He is questioning his own ideas about the meaning of life as much as he is the education but I am afraid that I found his argument to be a big wank. Aboriginal societies do not have schools because children learn what their elders do. In today's society, people do far too many diverse things for children to simply learn by watching. Get real. He has the right to question the education system, it needs to be looked at seriously, but this self righteous shit is the best he can come up with, then he might as well piss off into the Borneo jungles and see what he can learn.
Well, not only is Excite@Home in trouble, but Optus, the Australian partner is due to be taken over by Singtel, which is 70% owned by the Singapore government. Amid the recent allegations of spying on Australia by Singapore, it looks like the guys at Optus@Home are getting some practice in for when Singtel take over.
Oh yeah, and the Australian Defence Department uses Optus for satellite communications. So that means that we are allowing our second largest Telco, which has a record of snooping on its users, which also provides telecommunications services to the military and ASIO (Intelligence), to be taken over by a foreign government which has a track history of spying on us! Christ, I thought the western world had a dim enough view of Australian security without this shit.
Yes, but the.au.com domain is just a company selling subdomains at extortionate prices. They don't have the restrictions because they are simply selling subdomains of their own domain. Anyone can do it and they don't need to conform to any of the normal rules of ICANN (like dispute resolution, trademark and copyright issues etc). I prefer Robert Elz, he may be pedantic, he may be slow, but he does it for the love of it and has a passion for what he does. We need more people like him.
No. 2600 thought it was a jolly jape to mess around with a domain name. Somenone else obviously thought they required a dose of their own medicine. I don't care whose fault it is. It is irony.
Funnily enough, 2600 had their domain name hacked at NSI. I have lost the story url but it seems that over the past year persons unknown have hacked into NSI system and removed 2600.com from the database. It was then registered by another company.
You can check their version of the story out at 2600.com. They don't mention the fact that it was hijacked, but then, if you were a hacker group and had your domain name hacked, would you let the world know. I submitted the story, but it was rejected (as usual).
I have read with great interest what other slahdotters think about this and it seems that noone has so far questioned the belief system which makes a kid think that it is better to be dead than in jail.
From reading the article it sounds as though the kid was a bit of a classic over achiever, violin, tae kwon do, programming. But from what I have read, he was getting Cs and Ds at school. Maybe he was not being stimulated at school and that explains the low results from an obviously gifted child. I would suspect that his parents are very pushy. You don't do martial arts, violin and all the rest of it unless your parents are the pushy type.
I suspect that if he was trying to change his results to stave off his parents. It sounds like his parents had built a shrine to him and he was afraid to let them down. The fear of failure and disgrace can be very strong when all you have known is success and praise. He seems to have built his values round success and not been aware or able to comprehend that life is full of successes and failures. Everyone has failures and that if it goes wrong, you can't just stop the game and start again.
Anyway, that's my take on the situation. I know I felt in a very similar way when I was that age, but no way would I have hanged myself.
I had one of those, but I couldn't get it to swear. If it came across a word it didn't know it just spelled it out. How to disappoint a teenager in one easy step.
Wanted: Linux developers to debug shitty M$ code
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MS VP Speech Online
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Oh how I laughed my ass off when I read this article. Yes, Microsoft is trying to say that they need to adapt their business model if they want to keep making money, but I think that anyone can see that this is M$ bluster.
The business model I am speaking of for Phase 3 is the Commercial Software Model. The taxonomy of this model is built around 5 key elements:
Community: a strong support community of developers
Standards: promote collaboration and interoperability while supporting innovation and healthy competition
They put the two things of which they have least at the top of their list. At least they have their priorities right, even if they can't achieve them. For Christ's sake, Age of Empires II was brought out because the original wouldn't run on Win98! Interoperability be damned.
What they want is the benefit of Open source but maintain market dominance and stifle innovation. Shared source means having thousand of programmers debug their code, while gaining nothing from it. They want to make money by selling faulty goods and have unpaid enthusiasts fix it for free. Sounds like a good business model to me.
Healthy competition? Netscape, Mac, Linux. And standards? How many f$cking bugs fixes do they need to bring out before their software does what it is supposed to?
Yes, M$ need to change the business model, they need to extend their time to market and get their product to work before releasing it rather than build a marketing buzz and, once it is released, fix it (or not as the case may be).
Re:It IS fair use. Compare to the case with books.
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Ring-Tone Royalties
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I understand and agree with what you are saying but I would like to ask this; if you go to the library and take notes from a book and then sell people not the information you found, but how to find it, does that count as copyright violation? No. What most people are selling is the 4e 2B notation which is not the music itself. They are not selling the music, just directions on how to get your phone to beep to sound like it. Does this violate copyright?
One significant point which you don't mention, is that part of the problem is that marketing (Spawn of Satan) and especially M$ marketing have tried to convince the world that anyone can use a computer with no training, no knowledge and no idea of what it can do.
The reason that people think they can use a computer without ever having any training or knowledge, is that they have been told they can!
I constantly speak to people whose first comment is "I am computer illiterate" expecting that this will change what I have to say to them. I don't blame them, I blame the marketing turds who have told them that they are OK to fly blind.
Don't get me wrong, this is not a new phenomenon. Back in 197mumble, a friend of mine sold BBC computers in kit form and had a customer complain that it wouldn't work. I mean, how could it when he had glued all of the components in place? What is new is that computers are now being actively marketed as tools which do not require training.
Tech support in general sucks, both for people who need it and people who work it. Part of the reason is that half of your day is taken up by people who either haven't taken the time to find out something about the tool they use or refuse to do so.
Sorry. Just to clarify, you cannot buy alcohol in a pub on credit. You can buy alcohol on credit at an off-license (liquor store) or with a meal at a pub, but you cannot buy a pint over the counter at a pub on credit which is what the Master crud ad suggests.
I agree somewhat with the article. Many of the truths that we believe in today are the results of "spin doctoring" and revisionism. My main bone of contention is that it is not just corporations that manufacture reality. When people of a similar ilk join together they become more than the sum of their parts.
Take for example the NRA. This is an organisation that believes that you have a right to bear arms. They believe that this right is as unalienable as the right to freedom from oppression, the right to life. They have PR'ed and spin doctored their way around high school massacres, postal workers and insane gunwielding rednecks. They have influence because they have money. They have money to influence politicians, advertise their opinions and promote their cause. Most people either do not care or do not want guns. They, however, do not wield the money and influence to get their point across. Thus we have the siuation where the gun lobby is a very powerful one, based on the fact that their opposition is not as well funded or as well organised.
My second example is the medical community. I refer specifically to the AIDS/HIV debate. Now I must make it clear that I am in no way offering support to either side of the debate. There is still debate about whether HIV does in fact cause AIDS. It is still not proven, even though you will rarely hear this. There are still sizeable number of scientists working on this dilemma, but they are often ostracized and criticized. The medical establishment has decreed that there shall be no more debate over the cause of AIDS. I do not know who is right, but I object to the fact that they use strongarm tactics to quash debate.
The file sharing bullshit I can do without, but I thought that I would share my thoughts on this.
Actually, it is not 100% within the law. If a large company threatens legal action to have material removed it is breaking the law and can be heavily fined.
Parody is protected under the law and as such, Mastercard has left itself open to legal action for using it's weight to have material that it does not like removed.
Best case scenario, Mastercard get laughed out of court and the parody gets advertising beyond their wildest dreams
Worst case scenario, Mastercard get laughed out of court and get their asses sued off by rhf.
One other thing, in a Mastercard ad its says that you can buy pints in a pub in Ireland with Mastercard. Under European law you cannot buy alcohol on credit. That means there are some things that money can buy, but Mastercard can't.
Ah, well, maybe yes, maybe no. What M$ plan and what they implement are two entirely different things. What you are doing is speculation, what the previous \.er is doing is speculation. There is no right or wrong it is an opinion and as such, does not need validation or qualification.
See, that's the appeal of free speech, people can say what they want.
This is what we have in Australia.
The internet backbone is run by Telstra, formerly Telecom Australia, a semi privatised company with 51% goverment ownership. About 95% of ISPs buy their backbone access through Telstra with only very large ISPs able to afford the cost of putting in their own transatlantic lines so that situation is unlikely to change.
Dialup is available at local call access nationwide, with calls costing 25c or less, untimed. Most ISPs offer unlimted time for about $25 ($12.50US). WAP is available but very slow (as it is in the rest of the world) and broadband is also available in some metropolitan areas. Cable is available but the speeds are generally capped to protect the bandwidth. This is a good and a bad thing, it protects the network but many people don't like the cap. I think that if it keeps it stable, it is worth it. The cost is about $70 ($35US) a month for unlimited but capped.
ADSL has been available for about the past 6 months. It is being run out very differntly than in the US. Users need an ADSL modem at their location and a splitter rather than have it done at the exchange. Apparently, DSL providers are watching us with interest, to see if it comes out more stable than the shoddy network you guys seem to have. DSL is also pretty much a monopoly as Telstra owns all the phone exchanges.
With regards to other things, domain names in the.au domain are very restricted. You must be a registered Australian business to get one, and they can't be too generic or a place name or a dictionary word. they must also be derived from your registered business name. That means that if Coca-Cola tried to register Coke.com.au they wouldn't be able to as coke is not directly derivative of Coca Cola, it contains letters that the latter does not, get the picture. While this prevents the blatent abuses that the.com domain name boom has seen, it is a bit too restrictive and is under review as I understand it.
Porn is a hotspot in Oz. From my understanding, you cannot host offensive or pornographic content on a server in Australia. If you do, the government can fine you for each day it remains on view. I think the fines are about $10k a day, so pretty hefty fines. As far as I know, there is no porn hosted in Australia.
Email and privacy in the workplace is in a state of flux. I heard a while ago that the government is putting in place a law which will require companies to not look at emails and internet browsing done on ompany time. Apparently the government views having internet access at work like having a phone, it is fair to say that you can use it for personal use as well. I think this is a very sensible way to go.
On the other hand, it has been decided that any email you send is automatically copyrighted. That means that you can sue someone who forwards your email without your express permission. Now, it has been pointed out, in this very forum, that it could mean that forwarding spam to ubuse@provider.com could land you in court for breach of copyright.
Well, that's my take on the state of this nation
The dictionary definition of indecent is: adj.
Offensive to good taste; unseemly.
Offensive to public moral values; immodest source: dictionary.com
It specifies indecent content, that means anything that is offensive to good taste or can be termed immodest. Funnily enough, the term immodest means: "Not properly restrained in expression" source: dictionary.com
So technically, what the law is asking for is a piece of software which, by its very definition, violates the First Amendment. Constitutional lawyers will have a field day with this one.
If push came to shove with retailers, you can say that you are already supplying the filtering software if you supply IE. It has it's own content advisory facility. It's crap, but the law doesn't specify that it has to do it well, it just has to be supplied.
I would bet my life savings that this guy Garcia has been spammed becuase he visited a load of borderline illegal Japanese porn sites and he didn't want his wife/kids to know. Just a case of a handjerk reaction becoming a kneejerk reaction.
Perhaps the reason is that cars are made to transport people places, they only kill people accidentally most of the time. Guns are made to kill people, they serve no other purpose. We can teach our kids to stay off the road, we can educate drivers about slowing down in residential neighbourhoods.
We make people learn to drive and get a licence, for which they ned to pass a test. Any schmo can buy a gun. Nobody asks why someone wants a gun, nobody does a test to see if you are emotionally stable. Nobody checks to see if you have nutcase kids with a penchant for shooting their classmates.
by owning a gun I can defend myself, my family, and my property from criminals No, you can't. By owning a gun you can shoot someone else. There are no inherent defensive capabilities in a gun. It is not a shield it is an entirely offensive device. The obvious exception is that you can use it to deflect bullets, if you are Wonder Woman.
Many of the rights guaranteed in the Bill of Rights implicitly assume a basic right to privacy I have a right to privacy in my own home. I do not have the right to privacy in a public place. That is what the word public means. If I do not want to be in a public place I stay at home. If anyone wants to know what I do when I walk to work, let them. If you don't, either stay at home or buy a paper bag and put it over your head. You never know, it may be a fashion statement in a few years.
a gov't without morals will ultimately fail That is exactly what the US government was setup to be. The church is there for morals, the government is there to govern. Except you cannot govern without morals. I agree that a government needs to be moral, and whose moral compass they use is what elections are all about. The issue is that the US was setup with separation of church and state, it is illegal to promote religions within schools, yet each morning, every kid must pledge allegiance to a flag and recognise a nation "under God". I am sorry, but this is f*cked. I know that after the War of Independence (which was the right thing to do, probably) there was only about a third of the population who actually supported the new government. They had to build a nationalistic feeling so indoctrinated it into the schools. But it is no longer needed. It has worked so well, that people beleive the bullshit they are fed at school. Schools only teach American history. What most people learn in one or two semesters you take 10 years to teach (sorry, kneejerk reaction, no more digs, I promise).
To get to the end in a very roundabout way, what you, as an American, expect is very different from what most Brits expect. Yes, Britain is a class ridden society, yes America is full of gun toting nuts. Most people in Britain would prefer to lose a little freedom than be shot full of holes. I don't care about the cameras, most Britons don't care about the cameras, only the yanks seem to care about the cameras, and you don't live here (Thank God, oops, couldn't resist it). There, my tuppence-worth.
I have looked at Hacktivist.com and found that they just seem to be misguided techos. I mean planting toilet paper with masturbation techniques in elementary schools is remarkably stupid. If you want to make a point about MultiNationals, there are better ways. Tagging your name on nike.com is sad, replacing the pictures of shoes with sweatshop workers is better. I am not saying that there is no point in what they are doing, just that they seem to be thinking more about the technology they can use, rather than the point and impact of the exercise. Hactivism can be used to score points against the MegaCorps, but the guys who are currently doing it need to look at their reasoning, and I think that most of it is ego driven right now.
Technology is a tool, throw a spanner in the works
Why did you get a point? Insulting a forum to which you belong is just plain stupid. Everyone has a right to their opinion. I agree that we need to protect our kids from material which is beyond their comprehension and could be detrimental to their wellbeing, but I don't think that filtering software is the way to do it. Many parents today use TV, Computers, Libraries, MacDonalds, etc as babysitters for their kids because they can't be bothered to do the job themselves. If parents will not take responsibilty for their kids, then someone has to. A better way to do it would be to have computers with filtering software in the childrens' department and if they cannot access a site which has been blocked, they get a letter from their parents or school or doctor, whatever, that will allow them to use the unrestricted access available to the adults (who have to sign an agreement not to view pornography in a public place or else forfeit use of the service).
BTW, I am not a coder, I am entitled to my opinion, I went to a college that is older than your country and studied both politics and religion.
Slashdot Mirror
Iran is another example. The Shah was such a democratic leader wasn't he? Deposed by a popular uprising. If the US government cared about democracy and the people they would be involved in Myanmar, Irian Jaya, ad infinitum.
And freedom of religion. How can a country which extolls freedom of religion force school children to swear allegiance to a flag? and utter the line "one country under God"?
I agree that terrorism is the enemy of every peron on this planet, and that the people in the WTC did not deserve this. However, to say that the US is blameless in this tragedy is wrong. The US is guilty of its own terrorism. The bombing of Baghdad, Tripoli, the funding of the Contras, the funding of the Bay of Pigs, Vietnam, Nagasaki, Hiroshima.
I do not and never could condone what has been done to the people of the United States, it never should have happened. This attack was a disgrace and those who are responsible have no right to be deemed part of the human race. However, those who say "why did this happen?" do not have very far to look. When your government forces its beliefs on others, expect some of them to fight back.
Have you any idea what you are talking about? .org.au domain names are not for businesses. They are registered free on behalf of non-profit organisations. The vast majority of non-profit organisations do not need domain names registered within a couple of days. With Robert Elz gone, I would not be surprised in auDA charged for .org.au or just deregulated them, being a bigger disservice to non-profit orgs. If you are a company and want service levels, get a .com.au, pay for it and get it quickly, leave .org.au for the non-profit people.
What Skylarov did is not illegal in Russia, in fact it is required by law. Under Russian law it is illegal to sell software which cannot be copied for backup. Adobe ebook was released without this function. So what Skylarov was doing was not only within the law in Russia, it was demanded by it
I would love to see Russia indict Adobe. Under Russian law it is illegal to release software which cannot be copied for backup purposes. Maybe that would give Dubya a big enough headache to stick the DMCA up his arse.
Yeah, that's the problem, anyone who wants one, gets one. The US system is not "much more open". It is a closed shop for the wealthy. If Einstein had been born in the US, he would not have had a university education becuase he could not have afforded it.
That has some really interesting points and it raises some interesting questions, but the guy is a troll. He questions the education system and the need for an education system but his idea that we should all piss off back to the Stone Age is moronic. He is questioning his own ideas about the meaning of life as much as he is the education but I am afraid that I found his argument to be a big wank. Aboriginal societies do not have schools because children learn what their elders do. In today's society, people do far too many diverse things for children to simply learn by watching. Get real. He has the right to question the education system, it needs to be looked at seriously, but this self righteous shit is the best he can come up with, then he might as well piss off into the Borneo jungles and see what he can learn.
Well, not only is Excite@Home in trouble, but Optus, the Australian partner is due to be taken over by Singtel, which is 70% owned by the Singapore government. Amid the recent allegations of spying on Australia by Singapore, it looks like the guys at Optus@Home are getting some practice in for when Singtel take over.
Oh yeah, and the Australian Defence Department uses Optus for satellite communications. So that means that we are allowing our second largest Telco, which has a record of snooping on its users, which also provides telecommunications services to the military and ASIO (Intelligence), to be taken over by a foreign government which has a track history of spying on us! Christ, I thought the western world had a dim enough view of Australian security without this shit.
Yes, but the .au.com domain is just a company selling subdomains at extortionate prices. They don't have the restrictions because they are simply selling subdomains of their own domain. Anyone can do it and they don't need to conform to any of the normal rules of ICANN (like dispute resolution, trademark and copyright issues etc). I prefer Robert Elz, he may be pedantic, he may be slow, but he does it for the love of it and has a passion for what he does. We need more people like him.
No. 2600 thought it was a jolly jape to mess around with a domain name. Somenone else obviously thought they required a dose of their own medicine. I don't care whose fault it is. It is irony.
Funnily enough, 2600 had their domain name hacked at NSI. I have lost the story url but it seems that over the past year persons unknown have hacked into NSI system and removed 2600.com from the database. It was then registered by another company.
You can check their version of the story out at 2600.com. They don't mention the fact that it was hijacked, but then, if you were a hacker group and had your domain name hacked, would you let the world know. I submitted the story, but it was rejected (as usual).
I have read with great interest what other slahdotters think about this and it seems that noone has so far questioned the belief system which makes a kid think that it is better to be dead than in jail.
From reading the article it sounds as though the kid was a bit of a classic over achiever, violin, tae kwon do, programming. But from what I have read, he was getting Cs and Ds at school. Maybe he was not being stimulated at school and that explains the low results from an obviously gifted child. I would suspect that his parents are very pushy. You don't do martial arts, violin and all the rest of it unless your parents are the pushy type.
I suspect that if he was trying to change his results to stave off his parents. It sounds like his parents had built a shrine to him and he was afraid to let them down. The fear of failure and disgrace can be very strong when all you have known is success and praise. He seems to have built his values round success and not been aware or able to comprehend that life is full of successes and failures. Everyone has failures and that if it goes wrong, you can't just stop the game and start again.
Anyway, that's my take on the situation. I know I felt in a very similar way when I was that age, but no way would I have hanged myself.
I had one of those, but I couldn't get it to swear. If it came across a word it didn't know it just spelled it out. How to disappoint a teenager in one easy step.
Oh how I laughed my ass off when I read this article. Yes, Microsoft is trying to say that they need to adapt their business model if they want to keep making money, but I think that anyone can see that this is M$ bluster.
The business model I am speaking of for Phase 3 is the Commercial Software Model. The taxonomy of this model is built around 5 key elements:
Community: a strong support community of developers
Standards: promote collaboration and interoperability while supporting innovation and healthy competition
They put the two things of which they have least at the top of their list. At least they have their priorities right, even if they can't achieve them. For Christ's sake, Age of Empires II was brought out because the original wouldn't run on Win98! Interoperability be damned.
What they want is the benefit of Open source but maintain market dominance and stifle innovation. Shared source means having thousand of programmers debug their code, while gaining nothing from it. They want to make money by selling faulty goods and have unpaid enthusiasts fix it for free. Sounds like a good business model to me.
Healthy competition? Netscape, Mac, Linux. And standards? How many f$cking bugs fixes do they need to bring out before their software does what it is supposed to?
Yes, M$ need to change the business model, they need to extend their time to market and get their product to work before releasing it rather than build a marketing buzz and, once it is released, fix it (or not as the case may be).
I understand and agree with what you are saying but I would like to ask this; if you go to the library and take notes from a book and then sell people not the information you found, but how to find it, does that count as copyright violation? No. What most people are selling is the 4e 2B notation which is not the music itself. They are not selling the music, just directions on how to get your phone to beep to sound like it. Does this violate copyright?
One significant point which you don't mention, is that part of the problem is that marketing (Spawn of Satan) and especially M$ marketing have tried to convince the world that anyone can use a computer with no training, no knowledge and no idea of what it can do.
The reason that people think they can use a computer without ever having any training or knowledge, is that they have been told they can!
I constantly speak to people whose first comment is "I am computer illiterate" expecting that this will change what I have to say to them. I don't blame them, I blame the marketing turds who have told them that they are OK to fly blind.
Don't get me wrong, this is not a new phenomenon. Back in 197mumble, a friend of mine sold BBC computers in kit form and had a customer complain that it wouldn't work. I mean, how could it when he had glued all of the components in place? What is new is that computers are now being actively marketed as tools which do not require training.
Tech support in general sucks, both for people who need it and people who work it. Part of the reason is that half of your day is taken up by people who either haven't taken the time to find out something about the tool they use or refuse to do so.
Sorry. Just to clarify, you cannot buy alcohol in a pub on credit. You can buy alcohol on credit at an off-license (liquor store) or with a meal at a pub, but you cannot buy a pint over the counter at a pub on credit which is what the Master crud ad suggests.
I agree somewhat with the article. Many of the truths that we believe in today are the results of "spin doctoring" and revisionism. My main bone of contention is that it is not just corporations that manufacture reality. When people of a similar ilk join together they become more than the sum of their parts.
Take for example the NRA. This is an organisation that believes that you have a right to bear arms. They believe that this right is as unalienable as the right to freedom from oppression, the right to life. They have PR'ed and spin doctored their way around high school massacres, postal workers and insane gunwielding rednecks. They have influence because they have money. They have money to influence politicians, advertise their opinions and promote their cause. Most people either do not care or do not want guns. They, however, do not wield the money and influence to get their point across. Thus we have the siuation where the gun lobby is a very powerful one, based on the fact that their opposition is not as well funded or as well organised.
My second example is the medical community. I refer specifically to the AIDS/HIV debate. Now I must make it clear that I am in no way offering support to either side of the debate. There is still debate about whether HIV does in fact cause AIDS. It is still not proven, even though you will rarely hear this. There are still sizeable number of scientists working on this dilemma, but they are often ostracized and criticized. The medical establishment has decreed that there shall be no more debate over the cause of AIDS. I do not know who is right, but I object to the fact that they use strongarm tactics to quash debate.
The file sharing bullshit I can do without, but I thought that I would share my thoughts on this.
Actually, it is not 100% within the law. If a large company threatens legal action to have material removed it is breaking the law and can be heavily fined.
Parody is protected under the law and as such, Mastercard has left itself open to legal action for using it's weight to have material that it does not like removed.
Best case scenario, Mastercard get laughed out of court and the parody gets advertising beyond their wildest dreams
Worst case scenario, Mastercard get laughed out of court and get their asses sued off by rhf.
One other thing, in a Mastercard ad its says that you can buy pints in a pub in Ireland with Mastercard. Under European law you cannot buy alcohol on credit. That means there are some things that money can buy, but Mastercard can't.
Ah, well, maybe yes, maybe no. What M$ plan and what they implement are two entirely different things. What you are doing is speculation, what the previous \.er is doing is speculation. There is no right or wrong it is an opinion and as such, does not need validation or qualification.
See, that's the appeal of free speech, people can say what they want.
This is what we have in Australia. .au domain are very restricted. You must be a registered Australian business to get one, and they can't be too generic or a place name or a dictionary word. they must also be derived from your registered business name. That means that if Coca-Cola tried to register Coke.com.au they wouldn't be able to as coke is not directly derivative of Coca Cola, it contains letters that the latter does not, get the picture. While this prevents the blatent abuses that the .com domain name boom has seen, it is a bit too restrictive and is under review as I understand it.
The internet backbone is run by Telstra, formerly Telecom Australia, a semi privatised company with 51% goverment ownership. About 95% of ISPs buy their backbone access through Telstra with only very large ISPs able to afford the cost of putting in their own transatlantic lines so that situation is unlikely to change.
Dialup is available at local call access nationwide, with calls costing 25c or less, untimed. Most ISPs offer unlimted time for about $25 ($12.50US). WAP is available but very slow (as it is in the rest of the world) and broadband is also available in some metropolitan areas. Cable is available but the speeds are generally capped to protect the bandwidth. This is a good and a bad thing, it protects the network but many people don't like the cap. I think that if it keeps it stable, it is worth it. The cost is about $70 ($35US) a month for unlimited but capped.
ADSL has been available for about the past 6 months. It is being run out very differntly than in the US. Users need an ADSL modem at their location and a splitter rather than have it done at the exchange. Apparently, DSL providers are watching us with interest, to see if it comes out more stable than the shoddy network you guys seem to have. DSL is also pretty much a monopoly as Telstra owns all the phone exchanges.
With regards to other things, domain names in the
Porn is a hotspot in Oz. From my understanding, you cannot host offensive or pornographic content on a server in Australia. If you do, the government can fine you for each day it remains on view. I think the fines are about $10k a day, so pretty hefty fines. As far as I know, there is no porn hosted in Australia.
Email and privacy in the workplace is in a state of flux. I heard a while ago that the government is putting in place a law which will require companies to not look at emails and internet browsing done on ompany time. Apparently the government views having internet access at work like having a phone, it is fair to say that you can use it for personal use as well. I think this is a very sensible way to go.
On the other hand, it has been decided that any email you send is automatically copyrighted. That means that you can sue someone who forwards your email without your express permission. Now, it has been pointed out, in this very forum, that it could mean that forwarding spam to ubuse@provider.com could land you in court for breach of copyright.
Well, that's my take on the state of this nation
The dictionary definition of indecent is:
adj.
Offensive to good taste; unseemly.
Offensive to public moral values; immodest
source: dictionary.com
It specifies indecent content, that means anything that is offensive to good taste or can be termed immodest. Funnily enough, the term immodest means:
"Not properly restrained in expression"
source: dictionary.com
So technically, what the law is asking for is a piece of software which, by its very definition, violates the First Amendment. Constitutional lawyers will have a field day with this one.
If push came to shove with retailers, you can say that you are already supplying the filtering software if you supply IE. It has it's own content advisory facility. It's crap, but the law doesn't specify that it has to do it well, it just has to be supplied.
I would bet my life savings that this guy Garcia has been spammed becuase he visited a load of borderline illegal Japanese porn sites and he didn't want his wife/kids to know. Just a case of a handjerk reaction becoming a kneejerk reaction.
Perhaps the reason is that cars are made to transport people places, they only kill people accidentally most of the time. Guns are made to kill people, they serve no other purpose. We can teach our kids to stay off the road, we can educate drivers about slowing down in residential neighbourhoods.
We make people learn to drive and get a licence, for which they ned to pass a test. Any schmo can buy a gun. Nobody asks why someone wants a gun, nobody does a test to see if you are emotionally stable. Nobody checks to see if you have nutcase kids with a penchant for shooting their classmates.
by owning a gun I can defend myself, my family, and my property from criminals
No, you can't. By owning a gun you can shoot someone else. There are no inherent defensive capabilities in a gun. It is not a shield it is an entirely offensive device. The obvious exception is that you can use it to deflect bullets, if you are Wonder Woman.
Many of the rights guaranteed in the Bill of Rights implicitly assume a basic right to privacy
I have a right to privacy in my own home. I do not have the right to privacy in a public place. That is what the word public means. If I do not want to be in a public place I stay at home. If anyone wants to know what I do when I walk to work, let them. If you don't, either stay at home or buy a paper bag and put it over your head. You never know, it may be a fashion statement in a few years.
a gov't without morals will ultimately fail
That is exactly what the US government was setup to be. The church is there for morals, the government is there to govern. Except you cannot govern without morals. I agree that a government needs to be moral, and whose moral compass they use is what elections are all about. The issue is that the US was setup with separation of church and state, it is illegal to promote religions within schools, yet each morning, every kid must pledge allegiance to a flag and recognise a nation "under God". I am sorry, but this is f*cked. I know that after the War of Independence (which was the right thing to do, probably) there was only about a third of the population who actually supported the new government. They had to build a nationalistic feeling so indoctrinated it into the schools. But it is no longer needed. It has worked so well, that people beleive the bullshit they are fed at school. Schools only teach American history. What most people learn in one or two semesters you take 10 years to teach (sorry, kneejerk reaction, no more digs, I promise).
To get to the end in a very roundabout way, what you, as an American, expect is very different from what most Brits expect. Yes, Britain is a class ridden society, yes America is full of gun toting nuts. Most people in Britain would prefer to lose a little freedom than be shot full of holes. I don't care about the cameras, most Britons don't care about the cameras, only the yanks seem to care about the cameras, and you don't live here (Thank God, oops, couldn't resist it). There, my tuppence-worth.
Moderation is done at your own risk.
I have looked at Hacktivist.com and found that they just seem to be misguided techos. I mean planting toilet paper with masturbation techniques in elementary schools is remarkably stupid. If you want to make a point about MultiNationals, there are better ways. Tagging your name on nike.com is sad, replacing the pictures of shoes with sweatshop workers is better. I am not saying that there is no point in what they are doing, just that they seem to be thinking more about the technology they can use, rather than the point and impact of the exercise. Hactivism can be used to score points against the MegaCorps, but the guys who are currently doing it need to look at their reasoning, and I think that most of it is ego driven right now.
Technology is a tool, throw a spanner in the works
Why did you get a point? Insulting a forum to which you belong is just plain stupid. Everyone has a right to their opinion. I agree that we need to protect our kids from material which is beyond their comprehension and could be detrimental to their wellbeing, but I don't think that filtering software is the way to do it. Many parents today use TV, Computers, Libraries, MacDonalds, etc as babysitters for their kids because they can't be bothered to do the job themselves. If parents will not take responsibilty for their kids, then someone has to. A better way to do it would be to have computers with filtering software in the childrens' department and if they cannot access a site which has been blocked, they get a letter from their parents or school or doctor, whatever, that will allow them to use the unrestricted access available to the adults (who have to sign an agreement not to view pornography in a public place or else forfeit use of the service).
BTW, I am not a coder, I am entitled to my opinion, I went to a college that is older than your country and studied both politics and religion.