Aero was not inspired by Aqua. UAC is not inspired by... uh, Mac OS X doesn't even have anything like it, does it?
I frankly don't know how you can even say the former. A glossy, composited windowing system with lots of transparency, animated effects, live icons, etc.? Aero was inspired not by the rounded buttons and pinstripes of Aqua but its general capabilities. Aero is to the Windows XP interface what Aqua was to the Classic Mac OS interface. It's directly inspired by what Mac OS X does and was an attempt to steal back some of the limelight for a pretty interface.
As for UAC, what do you think Mac OS X's capability-based permission dialogs are? Have you never installed anything on the OS before?
(Also, how does NeXT = Apple by any stretch? At that time, Jobs was nowhere near Apple, and you can't count a NeXT product as an Apple one. Fanboi indeed).
Stop it. You keep trying to put words into my mouth to claim that I'm saying that Apple invented the dock. I've tried to spell out that you're making this crap up in my last post, but you seem intent on pressing the idea. That's a typical behavior of partisans, fanboys, and anyone else who sees the world as "people I agree with v. all those people who are wrong and thus all the same in what they believe."
But if you insist, I'll take a stab at the argument since you're going to pretend I made it anyway. So here goes...
I have a hard time saying that a company that results from a merger can't take credit for the products that one of the two companies made even if they took the name of the other one. It's not like Apple bought NeXT's IP and chucked all the staff like Caldera did with SCO. It's more like NeXT bought Apple with Apple's money. They jettisoned the Copeland project Apple's engineers had worked on for years and made OpenStep the basis of their new OS, they put NeXT's lead engineer in charge of development, they replaced their CEO is NeXT's CEO, and they kept on almost all of NeXT's development staff. Really, what more do you want? Does Apple have to call itself NeXT to earn credit?
Eh, that's my best shot at it. There. I've set up a nice straw man for you. (Aren't I a sweetheart?) Now feel free to ignore the rest of my post and rabidly attack it.
You see, this is part of the scam of carbon offsets. Planting trees is the biggest traditional offset.
However, what do you do with the trapped carbon after you've planted trees? If they burn (either as trees or as wood), then you've done nothing. If they die and rot, then you've done next to nothing. Planting trees is just sweeping the dust under the rug so that no one will notice. It's still "in the system" as it were.
Unless we take those trees and bury them right back in the ground where we got the coal and oil, it's just a delaying action.
I'm aware they didn't (and never said that they did), but it's worth noting that Stardock probably stole their idea from NeXT, the company that Apple absorbed to grab the basis for Mac OS X. After all, the NEXTSTEP dock predates the founding of Stardock. You could argue that they got the idea from Acorn, but it's tenuous at best since Acorn's iconbar was so limited in functionality compared to NeXT's dock.
Anyway, I seriously doubt that any company's software from the 80s or early 90s is providing inspiration or something resembling market pressure to encourage MS to update the taskbar. MS, as always, has been firmly following Apple on UI ideas. Just look at Aero and UAC.
Have these people lost their minds? I spend $60,000 for an automobile and now it will spam me while driving it? Are you serious, Lexus? What could possibly motivate these people to want to spam their customers AFTER a purchase?
I think they've realized that if you spend $60K on a sedan that you: (A) Have a lot of disposable income; and (B) Are susceptible to status marketing.
Plus, you've got to know that if they manage to finally pull off the dream goal of truly targeted marketing that some Lexus owners will be smugly proud of receiving "services" that are customized to their needs. That unrealistic fantasy has got to be part of what motivates the marketing goons to think this is an awesome idea.
Yeah, that's what I thought too. Who gives a flying crap (other than Preston Gralla obviously) about a taskbar?
I do, actually. It seems at first like a huge rip-off of Mac OS X's dock, and Microsoft is nothing if not consistent about trying to rip-off Apple.
However, after now having seen some videos of it, I've gone from fear and loathing to interest and appreciation. It looks like MS somehow learned from all the horrible mistakes of Mac OS X's dock and made their new taskbar act like the dock should have. Icons stay in place and don't dance around requiring you to hunt for things. Separation between different apps is easily visible, and the use of color makes it easy to tell what you're hovering over without having to look directly at it. Multiple windows from the same app are grouped together instead of creating clutter. There is clear separation between active apps (in the bar) and the list of apps you'd like to run (in the Start menu).
It brings tears to my eyes. I've hated Mac OS X's dock from the first day I had to use it. As a Classic Mac OS user, I missed my pop-up folders, my segregated menus, and having all my stuff stay in place so that I could click it without looking or even really thinking about it. I bemoaned how with Mac OS X and its "lickable" Aqua interface, Apple was putting flash over functionality when better UI was the whole reason I was a Mac user in the first place.
This jaded old Mac user who has moved to using the command prompt to do everything out of hatred for the new Finder and dock feels something akin to warmth for an MS product for the first time. *sniff*
That's, what, 28 incorrect base pairs out of 4000? I'm not a biologist, but is this considered an acceptable error rate? Even the hopes of 99.999% accuracy seems really awful when there are about 3 billion base pairs in a human genome.
I realize that we aren't going to be trying to make a cloned copy from this data, but what uses is this "good enough" for?
In any case, she kept going back to how I should be using outlook express instead. This is a lovely program that doesn't quite work how my grandmother can adjust, and on top of that the interface can't be enlarged.
Huh? I'll admit that I don't use the problem and have no way of checking this out myself since I don't have a Windows box, but why can't it be enlarged? Wouldn't turning up the system-wide font size do the trick, or is there some reason that you only want *that* program to be enlarged?
Capitalism at it's finest! The best sword is a double-edged one, says I.
Yes. Capitalism is never a greater thing than when one nigh-monopoly leverages its assets to try to crush and dominate secondary market only to years later have another massive industry giant in another field beat them at their own game while both trying to squeeze out the small businesses in the market./sarcasm
Opera for example has about 2 million users I think, if they can capture 10% more of Linux market they would double their user base.
Opera was first released for Linux with version 5.11 in 2001. If Opera hasn't been able to beat back the Netscape / Mozilla / Firefox juggernaut on Linux in all that time, then it isn't going to suddenly do so, especially since it still isn't open source AFAIK.
Seriously....Are you seriously comparing a drawing or a cartoon, which puts no lives at risk, to someone operating a vehicle while intoxicated?
It's a poor analogy and not even the same thing.
While it's an entirely different risk and set of actions, the two crimes are structured the same and have the same justifications. We punish both acts not because of they have hurt anyone but because they run the risk of future harm. In the case of DUI, you run the risk of an accident due to loss of control. In the case of child porn, ownership of child porn is an extremely common way for pedophiles to be to build a greater and greater interest in the act. Furthermore, a lack of law would encourage society to think of both acts as a morally neutral thing, thus encouraging more people to engage in drunk driving or pursuing a sexual interest in children. Both are considered malum in se crimes, and both a crimes with a strict liability element in most jurisdictions (being drunk or the picture being of an underage person).
Furthermore, both crimes are based on utilitarian notions of criminal law instead of retributivist notions. From a retributivist angle, both are wrong because no one has been hurt, and no real "crime" has occurred. From a utilitarian angle, punishing both is justified by reducing the risk of social harm by taking dangerous people off the streets. Both crimes have vocal minorities opposed to them because of the lack of a direct victim but are generally extremely well supported by the public.
Frankly, I think the two crimes have more similarities than differences.
Was your claim that 'all incandescent bulbs are made in the USA' sarcasm?
Yes. Obviously.
Because while SOME incandescent bulbs are still made in the USA...
See, that I didn't know. What bulbs are still made in the US? I thought they were all made in China now. Guess it's been a while since I had to buy a bulb thanks to owning CFLs which I've moved from apartment to apartment over the years.
There are a couple problems with that. Firstoff, if you were to take these examples from religious tomes and WITHOUT IDENTIFYING THE SOURCE, show them to ordinary people who don't know those passages exist, I think you'd find that most "right thinking" persons OF THAT RELIGION would find those passages "prurient".
No. You don't know what "prurient interest" means in a legal context.
Take the following quote from Ashcroft v. ACLU, 542 US 656, 679 (2004) (Breyer's dissent):
Insofar as material appeals to, or panders to, "the prurient interest," it simply seeks a sexual response. Insofar as "patently offensive" material with "no serious value" simply seeks that response, it does not seek to educate, it does not seek to elucidate views about sex, it is not artistic, and it is not literary.
In cruder, more layman's terms the "prurient interest" basically refers to material meant to give someone a boner. That simply doesn't apply here. This Biblical passage isn't intended to be sexy; it's meant to be kind of the opposite, and it completely lacks any descriptive content that could be considered obscene. A matter of fact statement like, "He raped her," isn't going to trigger any obscenity laws. A 5 page description of the act itself might.
And again the "patently offense" and "literary merit" prongs also knock this out.
Example -- the Puritans. Do you really think the average *normal* person of the era believed that showing a woman's ankle was "prurient"??
Yes. Do you have any reason to believe otherwise? I mean, have you seen how some Muslim cultures treat a woman showing her face in modern times?
You think "normal" people back then had the same mores as "normal" people today? Nonsense. This was a culture that publicly shamed adulterers (after executing them fell out of favor in the 1640s), kept slaves, and let mobs burn people at the stake for witchcraft. This was not a bunch of modern "regular Joes" oppressed by some wicked overclass. This was a fundamentalist culture alien to modern sensibilities.
As noted, these definitions are not usually the product of normal people ordinary to their culture.
Oh, Malarkey. Have you forgotten that it's ultimately a jury of your peers that decides whether material is obscene or not? If you try reading the decision in detail, you'll note the majority makes a comment on pp. 18 about the fact that the Miller test was given to the jury to consider. What do you think a jury is if not "normal people ordinary to their culture?"
That sentence had a first part as well, something about thinking that you're helping the environment. I'm not aware of any company making such claims about incandescent light bulbs.
*facepalm*
Okay. Think about this. Think real hard for a second. Why would we be talking about shipping costs "eating up" CFL savings unless shipping costs were unique to CFLs and not possessed by incandescents?
So the age old debate of how to tell art from porn has been solved? Of course not (and the terms are not mutually exclusive).
If this was on the borderline, I'd say you have a point, but chances are really good that these doujins aren't. The more extreme the fetish, the less likely a solid story or any artistic merit is involved. At any rate, unlike us, the court has actually had a chance to review the materials and has found them to be obscene. And unlike you the court knows what the legal standard for that is, which is very strict with regards to how little can be banned.
According to the decision, the doujins depicted children being raped and sodomized by adults. I very seriously doubt that this was handled in any "literary" fashion. Ultimately, it's up to the jury to decide, and the jury was presented with the full Miller standard. So why are you, an internet poster unfamiliar with the law, wiser than an entire 12 person jury?
What, did you check their birth certificates? How exactly do you claim to know the ages of fictional images?
...Seriously? Are you really that stupid?
How do you know what age the characters are? Oh, I don't know. Maybe there's a bio that tells the images. Maybe they're all in high school (or elementary school) and there's no indication that they've all been held back. Maybe it's just bleeding obvious to anyone reading the material because the entire target fetish is grossly underage girls. Lolicon as a genre doesn't involve teenagers of questionable age -- it involves children, and fans disdain mature looking women or older girls.
Again, you're pretending that all of porn is some bordercase case and can never be sensibly regulated. Lolicon isn't a borderline case at all.
"Shut up, shut up" - that's all you censorship people know, isn't it? Why don't you shut up - I don't see any artistic or literary merit in what you post, so let's say no more posts from you, or else you get to spend time in prison.
*sigh* I see that you're very tenacious in your ignorance of the law. I would like you to quit spreading FUD as a result of your gross ignorance and/or grow more informed about what the law actually is. For example, see Miller v. California, New York v. Ferber, and Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition. Could you please do that? Until then, you're just making an ass of yourself.
Of course, it's probably true that images in museums wouldn't be affected, but then it's even more ridiculous if the same images become illegal when found on somebody's hard drive. A selectively enforced law is a bad law. And don't think that laws are never used in stupid ways - from images in art galleries, to 30 year old album covers on online encyclopedias.
Look, you very obviously do not understand the law. "Artistic merit" does not go away just because a piece exhibited in a museum is photographed and stored on a computer. I love how many geeks on this site get all up in arms, flailing about and screaming about the death of all civil liberties because they apparently believe that no one with a law degree has any common sense remaining in their heads.
Most of the law is based on clear, common sense definitions. Laws themselves might not be wise, but the people forced to apply them aren't lobotomized twits following some mechanical script. When a "bad case" comes up, generally the reporting on it misses the legal reasoning, misses the background of the case, misses the judge's own opinion of the state of the law (with many judges giving extremely strong hints that the legislature needs to fix a bad law), etc.
If you read the case, you'll find the argument here in Section V, starting on pp. 13. Whorley attempted to argue that the statute was unconstitu
A huge crushing effect on art and literature is taking place with these idiotic prosecutions.
Dude. He's buying lolicon doujins, not Nabokov. This isn't art and literature -- it's porn.
Usually the drawings do not depict children at all. This applies to Japanese cartoon characters in particular as line drawings of cartoon characters never have genital hair as it is a cultural taboo in Japan.
Well, two problem here. In fact, most anime characters are teens under 18. Age of consent in Japan is 14, which lets them get away with having high schoolers in sexual situations. Anime protagonists that are of age in America are frankly the minority, weird censorship laws on pubic hair aside.
The second problem is that this was lolicon. It was in fact entirely about very underage children having sex, so really you're just flat out wrong with respect to this case.
Now museums and others must live in terror that a significant artists works just might be seen by some idiot as child pornography and there is a great chilling effect upon legitimate art and artists.
Oh, just read up on Miller and shut up with the hysterics.
The point at which the individual is biologically ready to reproduce.
Physiologically (e.g. safely with some minimum pelvis size)? Mentally (e.g. with some minimum of brain development or some test of maturity and responsibility)?
If the first, then by what threshold? What marginal rate of miscarriage would be acceptable? What physical complications are acceptable? Does the ability to deliver by C-section lower the age?
What about for boys? As soon as one is capable of ejaculation or merely erection?
Is your standard one that completely disregards the mental and emotional damages caused by underage sex, or do we only care about body damages and breedability? What does "capable of reproduction" even mean to you?
I should have been more clear. The rape criteria for minors above the age of consent would be the same as the rape criteria for adults. Sex with persons below the age of consent is still statutory rape.
i.e. No actual change to present day laws. That's the way it works already.
The Miller test is beside the point; he was convicted on a federal child pornography statute, not just the federal obscenity statute. The child porn statute forbids mere possession.
Actually, counts 1, 2, and 4 were on the obscenity statute and are the ones everyone is upset about. Count 3 was for child pornography involving pictures of actual children.
The three counts people are up in arms about are from 18 USC 1466A, which is under Chapter 71 (Obscenity). All of the elements of the crime either require the images to be "obscene" or just specify certain acts which meet the first two elements which must meet the third prong. The law was explicitly written with Miller in mind in the wake of a recent Supreme Court decision affirming that Miller applies to drawn images, unlike actual images of child porn which can be assumed to de facto obscene.
Also, you seem to be confused about another element between "a federal child pornography statute" and "the federal obscenity statute." Both chapters criminalize "mere possession." That's no distinction.
Theoretically, society. Just like pulling someone over for DUI before they get in a wreck. No one got hurt, and there is no victim (yet), but we still criminalize it because we think the behavior represents a danger of one day creating a victim.
Slashdot Mirror
Aero was not inspired by Aqua. UAC is not inspired by... uh, Mac OS X doesn't even have anything like it, does it?
I frankly don't know how you can even say the former. A glossy, composited windowing system with lots of transparency, animated effects, live icons, etc.? Aero was inspired not by the rounded buttons and pinstripes of Aqua but its general capabilities. Aero is to the Windows XP interface what Aqua was to the Classic Mac OS interface. It's directly inspired by what Mac OS X does and was an attempt to steal back some of the limelight for a pretty interface.
As for UAC, what do you think Mac OS X's capability-based permission dialogs are? Have you never installed anything on the OS before?
(Also, how does NeXT = Apple by any stretch? At that time, Jobs was nowhere near Apple, and you can't count a NeXT product as an Apple one. Fanboi indeed).
Stop it. You keep trying to put words into my mouth to claim that I'm saying that Apple invented the dock. I've tried to spell out that you're making this crap up in my last post, but you seem intent on pressing the idea. That's a typical behavior of partisans, fanboys, and anyone else who sees the world as "people I agree with v. all those people who are wrong and thus all the same in what they believe."
But if you insist, I'll take a stab at the argument since you're going to pretend I made it anyway. So here goes...
I have a hard time saying that a company that results from a merger can't take credit for the products that one of the two companies made even if they took the name of the other one. It's not like Apple bought NeXT's IP and chucked all the staff like Caldera did with SCO. It's more like NeXT bought Apple with Apple's money. They jettisoned the Copeland project Apple's engineers had worked on for years and made OpenStep the basis of their new OS, they put NeXT's lead engineer in charge of development, they replaced their CEO is NeXT's CEO, and they kept on almost all of NeXT's development staff. Really, what more do you want? Does Apple have to call itself NeXT to earn credit?
Eh, that's my best shot at it. There. I've set up a nice straw man for you. (Aren't I a sweetheart?) Now feel free to ignore the rest of my post and rabidly attack it.
Spend the money by planing some trees.
You see, this is part of the scam of carbon offsets. Planting trees is the biggest traditional offset.
However, what do you do with the trapped carbon after you've planted trees? If they burn (either as trees or as wood), then you've done nothing. If they die and rot, then you've done next to nothing. Planting trees is just sweeping the dust under the rug so that no one will notice. It's still "in the system" as it were.
Unless we take those trees and bury them right back in the ground where we got the coal and oil, it's just a delaying action.
I'm aware they didn't (and never said that they did), but it's worth noting that Stardock probably stole their idea from NeXT, the company that Apple absorbed to grab the basis for Mac OS X. After all, the NEXTSTEP dock predates the founding of Stardock. You could argue that they got the idea from Acorn, but it's tenuous at best since Acorn's iconbar was so limited in functionality compared to NeXT's dock.
Anyway, I seriously doubt that any company's software from the 80s or early 90s is providing inspiration or something resembling market pressure to encourage MS to update the taskbar. MS, as always, has been firmly following Apple on UI ideas. Just look at Aero and UAC.
Have these people lost their minds? I spend $60,000 for an automobile and now it will spam me while driving it? Are you serious, Lexus? What could possibly motivate these people to want to spam their customers AFTER a purchase?
I think they've realized that if you spend $60K on a sedan that you:
(A) Have a lot of disposable income; and
(B) Are susceptible to status marketing.
Plus, you've got to know that if they manage to finally pull off the dream goal of truly targeted marketing that some Lexus owners will be smugly proud of receiving "services" that are customized to their needs. That unrealistic fantasy has got to be part of what motivates the marketing goons to think this is an awesome idea.
Why? Because I own stock in GM.
Personally, I use Charmin, but I guess some people like to splurge on the fancy paper.
Yeah, that's what I thought too. Who gives a flying crap (other than Preston Gralla obviously) about a taskbar?
I do, actually. It seems at first like a huge rip-off of Mac OS X's dock, and Microsoft is nothing if not consistent about trying to rip-off Apple.
However, after now having seen some videos of it, I've gone from fear and loathing to interest and appreciation. It looks like MS somehow learned from all the horrible mistakes of Mac OS X's dock and made their new taskbar act like the dock should have. Icons stay in place and don't dance around requiring you to hunt for things. Separation between different apps is easily visible, and the use of color makes it easy to tell what you're hovering over without having to look directly at it. Multiple windows from the same app are grouped together instead of creating clutter. There is clear separation between active apps (in the bar) and the list of apps you'd like to run (in the Start menu).
It brings tears to my eyes. I've hated Mac OS X's dock from the first day I had to use it. As a Classic Mac OS user, I missed my pop-up folders, my segregated menus, and having all my stuff stay in place so that I could click it without looking or even really thinking about it. I bemoaned how with Mac OS X and its "lickable" Aqua interface, Apple was putting flash over functionality when better UI was the whole reason I was a Mac user in the first place.
This jaded old Mac user who has moved to using the command prompt to do everything out of hatred for the new Finder and dock feels something akin to warmth for an MS product for the first time. *sniff*
New Task Bar? Do the words "Titanic" and "rearranging the deckchairs" come to mind here?
I think the phrase "rearranging the deckchairs" comes to mind ANY time Balmer is involved.
Jetson! You're fired.
That's, what, 28 incorrect base pairs out of 4000? I'm not a biologist, but is this considered an acceptable error rate? Even the hopes of 99.999% accuracy seems really awful when there are about 3 billion base pairs in a human genome.
I realize that we aren't going to be trying to make a cloned copy from this data, but what uses is this "good enough" for?
In any case, she kept going back to how I should be using outlook express instead. This is a lovely program that doesn't quite work how my grandmother can adjust, and on top of that the interface can't be enlarged.
Huh? I'll admit that I don't use the problem and have no way of checking this out myself since I don't have a Windows box, but why can't it be enlarged? Wouldn't turning up the system-wide font size do the trick, or is there some reason that you only want *that* program to be enlarged?
But I don't even know her!
Capitalism at it's finest! The best sword is a double-edged one, says I.
Yes. Capitalism is never a greater thing than when one nigh-monopoly leverages its assets to try to crush and dominate secondary market only to years later have another massive industry giant in another field beat them at their own game while both trying to squeeze out the small businesses in the market. /sarcasm
Opera for example has about 2 million users I think, if they can capture 10% more of Linux market they would double their user base.
Opera was first released for Linux with version 5.11 in 2001. If Opera hasn't been able to beat back the Netscape / Mozilla / Firefox juggernaut on Linux in all that time, then it isn't going to suddenly do so, especially since it still isn't open source AFAIK.
Seriously....Are you seriously comparing a drawing or a cartoon, which puts no lives at risk, to someone operating a vehicle while intoxicated?
It's a poor analogy and not even the same thing.
While it's an entirely different risk and set of actions, the two crimes are structured the same and have the same justifications. We punish both acts not because of they have hurt anyone but because they run the risk of future harm. In the case of DUI, you run the risk of an accident due to loss of control. In the case of child porn, ownership of child porn is an extremely common way for pedophiles to be to build a greater and greater interest in the act. Furthermore, a lack of law would encourage society to think of both acts as a morally neutral thing, thus encouraging more people to engage in drunk driving or pursuing a sexual interest in children. Both are considered malum in se crimes, and both a crimes with a strict liability element in most jurisdictions (being drunk or the picture being of an underage person).
Furthermore, both crimes are based on utilitarian notions of criminal law instead of retributivist notions. From a retributivist angle, both are wrong because no one has been hurt, and no real "crime" has occurred. From a utilitarian angle, punishing both is justified by reducing the risk of social harm by taking dangerous people off the streets. Both crimes have vocal minorities opposed to them because of the lack of a direct victim but are generally extremely well supported by the public.
Frankly, I think the two crimes have more similarities than differences.
Was your claim that 'all incandescent bulbs are made in the USA' sarcasm?
Yes. Obviously.
Because while SOME incandescent bulbs are still made in the USA ...
See, that I didn't know. What bulbs are still made in the US? I thought they were all made in China now. Guess it's been a while since I had to buy a bulb thanks to owning CFLs which I've moved from apartment to apartment over the years.
There are a couple problems with that. Firstoff, if you were to take these examples from religious tomes and WITHOUT IDENTIFYING THE SOURCE, show them to ordinary people who don't know those passages exist, I think you'd find that most "right thinking" persons OF THAT RELIGION would find those passages "prurient".
No. You don't know what "prurient interest" means in a legal context.
Take the following quote from Ashcroft v. ACLU, 542 US 656, 679 (2004) (Breyer's dissent):
Insofar as material appeals to, or panders to, "the prurient interest," it simply seeks a sexual response. Insofar as "patently offensive" material with "no serious value" simply seeks that response, it does not seek to educate, it does not seek to elucidate views about sex, it is not artistic, and it is not literary.
In cruder, more layman's terms the "prurient interest" basically refers to material meant to give someone a boner. That simply doesn't apply here. This Biblical passage isn't intended to be sexy; it's meant to be kind of the opposite, and it completely lacks any descriptive content that could be considered obscene. A matter of fact statement like, "He raped her," isn't going to trigger any obscenity laws. A 5 page description of the act itself might.
And again the "patently offense" and "literary merit" prongs also knock this out.
Example -- the Puritans. Do you really think the average *normal* person of the era believed that showing a woman's ankle was "prurient"??
Yes. Do you have any reason to believe otherwise? I mean, have you seen how some Muslim cultures treat a woman showing her face in modern times?
You think "normal" people back then had the same mores as "normal" people today? Nonsense. This was a culture that publicly shamed adulterers (after executing them fell out of favor in the 1640s), kept slaves, and let mobs burn people at the stake for witchcraft. This was not a bunch of modern "regular Joes" oppressed by some wicked overclass. This was a fundamentalist culture alien to modern sensibilities.
As noted, these definitions are not usually the product of normal people ordinary to their culture.
Oh, Malarkey. Have you forgotten that it's ultimately a jury of your peers that decides whether material is obscene or not? If you try reading the decision in detail, you'll note the majority makes a comment on pp. 18 about the fact that the Miller test was given to the jury to consider. What do you think a jury is if not "normal people ordinary to their culture?"
The shipping costs are NOT unique to CFLs.
Very good. You get a gold star.
Now for a second gold star, what does this say for the claim that CFLs lose their advantages due to shipping?
That sentence had a first part as well, something about thinking that you're helping the environment. I'm not aware of any company making such claims about incandescent light bulbs.
*facepalm*
Okay. Think about this. Think real hard for a second. Why would we be talking about shipping costs "eating up" CFL savings unless shipping costs were unique to CFLs and not possessed by incandescents?
So the age old debate of how to tell art from porn has been solved? Of course not (and the terms are not mutually exclusive).
If this was on the borderline, I'd say you have a point, but chances are really good that these doujins aren't. The more extreme the fetish, the less likely a solid story or any artistic merit is involved. At any rate, unlike us, the court has actually had a chance to review the materials and has found them to be obscene. And unlike you the court knows what the legal standard for that is, which is very strict with regards to how little can be banned.
According to the decision, the doujins depicted children being raped and sodomized by adults. I very seriously doubt that this was handled in any "literary" fashion. Ultimately, it's up to the jury to decide, and the jury was presented with the full Miller standard. So why are you, an internet poster unfamiliar with the law, wiser than an entire 12 person jury?
What, did you check their birth certificates? How exactly do you claim to know the ages of fictional images?
...Seriously? Are you really that stupid?
How do you know what age the characters are? Oh, I don't know. Maybe there's a bio that tells the images. Maybe they're all in high school (or elementary school) and there's no indication that they've all been held back. Maybe it's just bleeding obvious to anyone reading the material because the entire target fetish is grossly underage girls. Lolicon as a genre doesn't involve teenagers of questionable age -- it involves children, and fans disdain mature looking women or older girls.
Again, you're pretending that all of porn is some bordercase case and can never be sensibly regulated. Lolicon isn't a borderline case at all.
"Shut up, shut up" - that's all you censorship people know, isn't it? Why don't you shut up - I don't see any artistic or literary merit in what you post, so let's say no more posts from you, or else you get to spend time in prison.
*sigh* I see that you're very tenacious in your ignorance of the law. I would like you to quit spreading FUD as a result of your gross ignorance and/or grow more informed about what the law actually is. For example, see Miller v. California, New York v. Ferber, and Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition. Could you please do that? Until then, you're just making an ass of yourself.
Better yet, read the decision.
Of course, it's probably true that images in museums wouldn't be affected, but then it's even more ridiculous if the same images become illegal when found on somebody's hard drive. A selectively enforced law is a bad law. And don't think that laws are never used in stupid ways - from images in art galleries, to 30 year old album covers on online encyclopedias.
Look, you very obviously do not understand the law. "Artistic merit" does not go away just because a piece exhibited in a museum is photographed and stored on a computer. I love how many geeks on this site get all up in arms, flailing about and screaming about the death of all civil liberties because they apparently believe that no one with a law degree has any common sense remaining in their heads.
Most of the law is based on clear, common sense definitions. Laws themselves might not be wise, but the people forced to apply them aren't lobotomized twits following some mechanical script. When a "bad case" comes up, generally the reporting on it misses the legal reasoning, misses the background of the case, misses the judge's own opinion of the state of the law (with many judges giving extremely strong hints that the legislature needs to fix a bad law), etc.
If you read the case, you'll find the argument here in Section V, starting on pp. 13. Whorley attempted to argue that the statute was unconstitu
CFLs made in China that are shipped to the US [use] a lot more fossil fuels than they save.
'Cause incandescents are all made in the US and don't share nearly the same shipping costs.
If it is a cartoon, or drawing, or created image than there is no crime in my opinion - because there is no victimization.
Neither do most DUI offenses. Should we decriminalize DUI unless an accident happens?
A huge crushing effect on art and literature is taking place with these idiotic prosecutions.
Dude. He's buying lolicon doujins, not Nabokov. This isn't art and literature -- it's porn.
Usually the drawings do not depict children at all. This applies to Japanese cartoon characters in particular as line drawings of cartoon characters never have genital hair as it is a cultural taboo in Japan.
Well, two problem here. In fact, most anime characters are teens under 18. Age of consent in Japan is 14, which lets them get away with having high schoolers in sexual situations. Anime protagonists that are of age in America are frankly the minority, weird censorship laws on pubic hair aside.
The second problem is that this was lolicon. It was in fact entirely about very underage children having sex, so really you're just flat out wrong with respect to this case.
Now museums and others must live in terror that a significant artists works just might be seen by some idiot as child pornography and there is a great chilling effect upon legitimate art and artists.
Oh, just read up on Miller and shut up with the hysterics.
The point at which the individual is biologically ready to reproduce.
Physiologically (e.g. safely with some minimum pelvis size)? Mentally (e.g. with some minimum of brain development or some test of maturity and responsibility)?
If the first, then by what threshold? What marginal rate of miscarriage would be acceptable? What physical complications are acceptable? Does the ability to deliver by C-section lower the age?
What about for boys? As soon as one is capable of ejaculation or merely erection?
Is your standard one that completely disregards the mental and emotional damages caused by underage sex, or do we only care about body damages and breedability? What does "capable of reproduction" even mean to you?
I should have been more clear. The rape criteria for minors above the age of consent would be the same as the rape criteria for adults. Sex with persons below the age of consent is still statutory rape.
i.e. No actual change to present day laws. That's the way it works already.
The Miller test is beside the point; he was convicted on a federal child pornography statute, not just the federal obscenity statute. The child porn statute forbids mere possession.
Actually, counts 1, 2, and 4 were on the obscenity statute and are the ones everyone is upset about. Count 3 was for child pornography involving pictures of actual children.
The three counts people are up in arms about are from 18 USC 1466A, which is under Chapter 71 (Obscenity). All of the elements of the crime either require the images to be "obscene" or just specify certain acts which meet the first two elements which must meet the third prong. The law was explicitly written with Miller in mind in the wake of a recent Supreme Court decision affirming that Miller applies to drawn images, unlike actual images of child porn which can be assumed to de facto obscene.
Also, you seem to be confused about another element between "a federal child pornography statute" and "the federal obscenity statute." Both chapters criminalize "mere possession." That's no distinction.
So, who exactly is the victim in this case?
Theoretically, society. Just like pulling someone over for DUI before they get in a wreck. No one got hurt, and there is no victim (yet), but we still criminalize it because we think the behavior represents a danger of one day creating a victim.