The silliness of the electronic voting machine -- and, also, online voting -- is that these contraptions are intended to (1) protect a voter from his own stupidity and (2) protect a voter from his own laziness.
There's also (3) possibly (0): Prevent a voter from protesting by deliberatly "spoiling" their ballot. It's possible that in complex elections a voter may be prevented from voting in a way which is within the rules, but not known to whoever wrote the software.
Additionally, the money they use will be channeled to local companies (which means more jobs, improvement of local skill pool, making it cheaper to repeat such transitions in other cities).
Definitely beats shoveling the money to american robber baron company by any stretch.
Though the exact effect on Germany's balance of trade depends on other factors, including the EUR/USD exchange rate and global state of the economy.
Wonder how this would compare with similar projects involving proprietary software. Assuming that it would be possible to blog in such a way without the software vendors and contractors setting their lawyers loose!
I have to seriously disagree. That is like saying "killing someone is never acceptable and making images of someone being killed even though they aren't really being killed is likewise unacceptable."
Which if acted on wouldn't leave much of the book, TV and movie industry )
Is the issue here just the "sexuality"? Is that the fierce demon we are all trying to keep away from our children?
Certainly in the US "sex" appears to be a much bigger taboo than "violence".
You know, I had to laugh at a recent Scientific American article entitled something like "Why Men Buy Sex". Both the title and the article implied (more than implied) that this trait is almost exclusive to men, which is nonsense.
True, men do it more often.
Probably because in many cultures it's PC to see men as buyers and women as sellers of sex. Things tend to be most PC when everyone involved pretends that something else is going on. If anything it's not "dressing up" prostitution as a date, relationship, etc which tends to be illegal.
But women do it too. Most often, though, it is older women, and they tend to do it in the way of "keeping" a younger man. (Even younger women do this sometimes. I had a housemate once...) Men do this too of course. But the idea that "buying" sex is exclusive to men is nothing more than horseshit.
As normal is merely a reference to social norm, it is bound to change as society does. As is that which is not normal. I wouldn't be surprised if at one point in history it was more abnormal to have sex over 60 than under 16.
But at that time both may have been quite rare because there were few adults over 60 or under 16.
Some countries 16, or even 14 year olds are legal to have sex with.
However laws concerning "child porn" do not always align well with age of consent laws.
I think people would be more worried about 0-16 vs 12-18.
Or even to distinguish those who actually are attracted to children something which current laws don't do well.
Problem is that younger bodies are maturing faster n faster
This is a problem because at the same time the concept of "legal adulthood" has been going up.
men are attracted to sexually mature females and they dont magically become that at 18, there are 14 year olds who can easily pass for much older.
It isn't so one sided. Young women (and men) have their own sexual desires. It's also quite common for women to be attracted to men who are older than them and/or who have material wealth. A 14 year old woman with this orientation is unlikely to be interested in other teenagers. (Even without factoring in that boys tend to mature later than girls.)
When Kevin Smith wrote a column saying he wasn't interested in the then 16-year old Brittany Spears, and how he felt it was wrong to market teenagers as sex symbols, he got hate mail saying every healthy man on the planet wants to sleep with young teenagers.
Some of these "healthy men" being teenagers themselves. Also 16 isn't "young" it's in the middle between 13 and 19. As well as being above the age of consent in many places, including parts of the US.
Just because something is creepy, doesn't mean it should be illegal. Never mind the civil rights, I 'm pissed off that Chatanooga's law enforcement community would waste tax money on such nonsense.
Most likely the average criminal in Chatanooga probably sees this as a very good thing. Since whilst the police are busy chasing "photoshoppers" they have less time and resources to spend on robbers, burglars, rapists, child molesters, etc
Kathryn Lyon, the author of "Witch Hunt", is herself an attorney and rented a home in Wenatchee specifically to observe what was going on. She and some others kept meticulous records (which apparently the police department and "Child Protective Services" refused to do). When a local pastor tried to object to what was being done to families without any evidence, he found himself and his wife charged with multiple counts of sexual molestation of children. (They were eventually acquitted.) When a child welfare worker also tried to intervene, he found himself similarly charged. When they spoke up about the case, a reporter from Spokane was also threatened with charges, as was Lyon herself.
It's more or less standard that anyone objecting to a witch hunt will be accused of being a "witch". The only people who tend to be immune from this are the "witchfinders" themselves...
They were abused by having their likeness (a picture of their face) pasted onto someone else's naked body. This is an intangible, virtual abuse, but still an abuse all of its own, esp. if the fellow also distributed said pics.
This is more severe than posting the faces of actors or public figures on naked bodies (an activity that can be defended as exempt from certain laws under constitutional protections, due to the overriding public interest).
According to the article one of the people involved is identified as looking like (or being) a known actor.
Frankly I am at the point of thinking that even if some of this type of art actually could be proven to cause the death of children at times perhaps it should still be allowed.
AFAIK such proof does not actually exist. Even though there have been such claims associated with many forms of art.
After all, the food served at fast food joints or allowing people to use cars also cause deaths to kids and neither fast food nor automobiles are essential elements of life.
IIRC in many parts of the US the minimum driving age is below the age of consent. The latter is also often below the minimum age for someone to be a porn model/actor. Shouldn't operating a machine capable of causing death to bystanders be considered more "adult" than having sex?
They sure did, then there was a law drafted that included virtual child pornography, but the drafters said it would only be used to attach additional charges onto people who have real child pornography.
Apparently enough fools believed them. Has there ever been a case where such a statement has actually been true?
They recently used the law (successfully) in the case of the guy who had a bunch of manga and some hentai.
They're using it now in this case.
One could argue that the basis for that decision is that if there are no real children, and there is no real pornography, then no one was victimized, and thusly no crime was committed. That hasn't stopped people from throwing around accusations of "child pornography" when people write Harry Potter fan-fic.
It dosn't even need to be "fan-fic". There are several places in the actual books, mostly in "The Goblet of Fire", which could be interpreted in that way. What looks to be going on in this case is selective enforcement using creative interpretations of the law. The latter justified as "criminals are being creative so we have to be".
If the underlying issue here is the exploitation of children, you could argue no children were exploited here.
Or even that it's the police and prosecutors who are doing the exploiting. Also are there no regular criminals, including child molesters, in that part of the world?
I agree with this ruling, and I think we need to start mass prosecution of Hollywood movie makers for murdering popular actors by depicting them getting killed in their movies.
You could even do them for "child porn", when they depict characters who are "underage" in sexual situations. Even if the actors playing them are old enough or the rules of the (fictional) setting are radically different with respect age of consent issues.
Oh and we need to make it illegal for taking pictures, since those steal a person's soul.
Where such laws exist they tend to consider some people's souls more valuable than others:)
Read up on the Satanic Ritual Abuse Panic of the 1980s, lots of families ruined there as well. Also see the Red Scares, there were two of those, the most famous being run by McCarthy. The US seems to enjoy having moral panics that destroy lots of innocent lives.
Such things are hardly unique to the US.
Apparently we're "Land of the free, home of the scared silly". *sigh*
Which will continue to be ironic whilst the US is "number one" for people in prison...
WTF do you need the actual data for? You don't know that a SSN is 9 numbers and possibly 2 dashes? Why do you need actual data on a computer that can be stolen?
It appears to quite often be the case with such "breaches" that there wasn't an especially good reason to be storing said data at all. However without data protection laws which are strongly enforced there is little incentive to store and process only data which is actually needed.
Over the last few years a lot of companies have sprang up using ffmpeg as a backend while shoving some putrid gui over the top which somehow justifies the pricetag (in this case "Video Encoder Engine for Adobe Flash" costs $600!).
They tend to fall into two camps, those who attempt to use the lgpl parts of ffmpeg and publish the license; and those who outright ignore the gpl or pretend they've followed it.
ffmpeg keeps a "Hall of shame" for these violaters but sothinkmedia have not yet been added.
A "Hall of shame" is hardly likely to be any discouragement to commercial pirates. The only way to deal with these is to apply copyright law.
Slashdot Mirror
The silliness of the electronic voting machine -- and, also, online voting -- is that these contraptions are intended to (1) protect a voter from his own stupidity and (2) protect a voter from his own laziness.
There's also (3) possibly (0): Prevent a voter from protesting by deliberatly "spoiling" their ballot. It's possible that in complex elections a voter may be prevented from voting in a way which is within the rules, but not known to whoever wrote the software.
In the broadest strokes, the GPL isn't that different from a EULA.
The only thing they have in common is the letter "L". You might just as well claim that an instruction manual isn't that different from a novel.
Additionally, the money they use will be channeled to local companies (which means more jobs, improvement of local skill pool, making it cheaper to repeat such transitions in other cities).
Definitely beats shoveling the money to american robber baron company by any stretch.
Though the exact effect on Germany's balance of trade depends on other factors, including the EUR/USD exchange rate and global state of the economy.
This blog chronicles the failure of this project: http://limuxwatch.blogspot.com/
Wonder how this would compare with similar projects involving proprietary software. Assuming that it would be possible to blog in such a way without the software vendors and contractors setting their lawyers loose!
I have to seriously disagree. That is like saying "killing someone is never acceptable and making images of someone being killed even though they aren't really being killed is likewise unacceptable."
Which if acted on wouldn't leave much of the book, TV and movie industry )
Is the issue here just the "sexuality"? Is that the fierce demon we are all trying to keep away from our children?
Certainly in the US "sex" appears to be a much bigger taboo than "violence".
What we societally consider children includes a large age range which are biologically mature.
Thus would be abnormal if they didn't have their own sex drives and attempt to subvert such ideas.
A biological imperative isn't an excuse but it also means by your statement the entire species is invariably broken.
Or rather than the laws are broken. Which wouldn't be too much of a suprise considering laws in other areas are demonstratably broken.
You know, I had to laugh at a recent Scientific American article entitled something like "Why Men Buy Sex". Both the title and the article implied (more than implied) that this trait is almost exclusive to men, which is nonsense.
True, men do it more often.
Probably because in many cultures it's PC to see men as buyers and women as sellers of sex. Things tend to be most PC when everyone involved pretends that something else is going on. If anything it's not "dressing up" prostitution as a date, relationship, etc which tends to be illegal.
But women do it too. Most often, though, it is older women, and they tend to do it in the way of "keeping" a younger man. (Even younger women do this sometimes. I had a housemate once...) Men do this too of course. But the idea that "buying" sex is exclusive to men is nothing more than horseshit.
Nor is it exclusive to heterosexuals.
Even when it is produced by the "child" that is the subject of the picture?
Or where the "child" is above an applicable age of consent.
Prosecuting someone under 18 for sexting using the current CP laws means that the punishment IS the abuse.
As well as showing how daft the law is.
Chemical "castration" can reduce sexual desire but even surgical castration is no guarantee that someone will change their sexual offending.
How would you "castrate" someone like Mary Kay Letourneau? As an example of a predatory child rapist who reoffended even after prison...
As normal is merely a reference to social norm, it is bound to change as society does. As is that which is not normal. I wouldn't be surprised if at one point in history it was more abnormal to have sex over 60 than under 16.
But at that time both may have been quite rare because there were few adults over 60 or under 16.
What exactly is deviant and what exactly is normal?
Society used to decry oral sex as deviant.
On the other side of the coin there could well be things considered "normal" which should be considered "deviant".
Some countries 16, or even 14 year olds are legal to have sex with.
However laws concerning "child porn" do not always align well with age of consent laws.
I think people would be more worried about 0-16 vs 12-18.
Or even to distinguish those who actually are attracted to children something which current laws don't do well.
Problem is that younger bodies are maturing faster n faster
This is a problem because at the same time the concept of "legal adulthood" has been going up.
men are attracted to sexually mature females and they dont magically become that at 18, there are 14 year olds who can easily pass for much older.
It isn't so one sided. Young women (and men) have their own sexual desires. It's also quite common for women to be attracted to men who are older than them and/or who have material wealth. A 14 year old woman with this orientation is unlikely to be interested in other teenagers. (Even without factoring in that boys tend to mature later than girls.)
When Kevin Smith wrote a column saying he wasn't interested in the then 16-year old Brittany Spears, and how he felt it was wrong to market teenagers as sex symbols, he got hate mail saying every healthy man on the planet wants to sleep with young teenagers.
Some of these "healthy men" being teenagers themselves. Also 16 isn't "young" it's in the middle between 13 and 19. As well as being above the age of consent in many places, including parts of the US.
Just because something is creepy, doesn't mean it should be illegal. Never mind the civil rights, I 'm pissed off that Chatanooga's law enforcement community would waste tax money on such nonsense.
Most likely the average criminal in Chatanooga probably sees this as a very good thing. Since whilst the police are busy chasing "photoshoppers" they have less time and resources to spend on robbers, burglars, rapists, child molesters, etc
Kathryn Lyon, the author of "Witch Hunt", is herself an attorney and rented a home in Wenatchee specifically to observe what was going on. She and some others kept meticulous records (which apparently the police department and "Child Protective Services" refused to do). When a local pastor tried to object to what was being done to families without any evidence, he found himself and his wife charged with multiple counts of sexual molestation of children. (They were eventually acquitted.) When a child welfare worker also tried to intervene, he found himself similarly charged. When they spoke up about the case, a reporter from Spokane was also threatened with charges, as was Lyon herself.
It's more or less standard that anyone objecting to a witch hunt will be accused of being a "witch". The only people who tend to be immune from this are the "witchfinders" themselves...
They were abused by having their likeness (a picture of their face) pasted onto someone else's naked body. This is an intangible, virtual abuse, but still an abuse all of its own, esp. if the fellow also distributed said pics.
This is more severe than posting the faces of actors or public figures on naked bodies (an activity that can be defended as exempt from certain laws under constitutional protections, due to the overriding public interest).
According to the article one of the people involved is identified as looking like (or being) a known actor.
Frankly I am at the point of thinking that even if some of this type of art actually could be proven to cause the death of children at times perhaps it should still be allowed.
AFAIK such proof does not actually exist. Even though there have been such claims associated with many forms of art.
After all, the food served at fast food joints or allowing people to use cars also cause deaths to kids and neither fast food nor automobiles are essential elements of life.
IIRC in many parts of the US the minimum driving age is below the age of consent. The latter is also often below the minimum age for someone to be a porn model/actor.
Shouldn't operating a machine capable of causing death to bystanders be considered more "adult" than having sex?
They sure did, then there was a law drafted that included virtual child pornography, but the drafters said it would only be used to attach additional charges onto people who have real child pornography.
Apparently enough fools believed them. Has there ever been a case where such a statement has actually been true?
They recently used the law (successfully) in the case of the guy who had a bunch of manga and some hentai. They're using it now in this case.
Which shouldn't be a surprise to anyone.
One could argue that the basis for that decision is that if there are no real children, and there is no real pornography, then no one was victimized, and thusly no crime was committed. That hasn't stopped people from throwing around accusations of "child pornography" when people write Harry Potter fan-fic.
It dosn't even need to be "fan-fic". There are several places in the actual books, mostly in "The Goblet of Fire", which could be interpreted in that way.
What looks to be going on in this case is selective enforcement using creative interpretations of the law. The latter justified as "criminals are being creative so we have to be".
If the underlying issue here is the exploitation of children, you could argue no children were exploited here.
Or even that it's the police and prosecutors who are doing the exploiting. Also are there no regular criminals, including child molesters, in that part of the world?
I agree with this ruling, and I think we need to start mass prosecution of Hollywood movie makers for murdering popular actors by depicting them getting killed in their movies.
:)
You could even do them for "child porn", when they depict characters who are "underage" in sexual situations. Even if the actors playing them are old enough or the rules of the (fictional) setting are radically different with respect age of consent issues.
Oh and we need to make it illegal for taking pictures, since those steal a person's soul.
Where such laws exist they tend to consider some people's souls more valuable than others
Read up on the Satanic Ritual Abuse Panic of the 1980s, lots of families ruined there as well. Also see the Red Scares, there were two of those, the most famous being run by McCarthy. The US seems to enjoy having moral panics that destroy lots of innocent lives.
Such things are hardly unique to the US.
Apparently we're "Land of the free, home of the scared silly". *sigh*
Which will continue to be ironic whilst the US is "number one" for people in prison...
WTF do you need the actual data for? You don't know that a SSN is 9 numbers and possibly 2 dashes? Why do you need actual data on a computer that can be stolen?
It appears to quite often be the case with such "breaches" that there wasn't an especially good reason to be storing said data at all. However without data protection laws which are strongly enforced there is little incentive to store and process only data which is actually needed.
At this point, social security numbers are so widely distributed that the only sensible thing to do is to publish them all in the phone book,
The point is they are "identifiers" rather than "authenticators".
so no one will be able to pretend they mean anything.
You underestimate the abilities of fools. Nothing is likely to stop them believing that a collection of identifiers equates to an authenticator.
I'm curious why universities need social security numbers at all.
Except for their current employees. Though by the sounds of things they don't bother to remove this information from the records of past employees...
Over the last few years a lot of companies have sprang up using ffmpeg as a backend while shoving some putrid gui over the top which somehow justifies the pricetag (in this case "Video Encoder Engine for Adobe Flash" costs $600!).
They tend to fall into two camps, those who attempt to use the lgpl parts of ffmpeg and publish the license; and those who outright ignore the gpl or pretend they've followed it. ffmpeg keeps a "Hall of shame" for these violaters but sothinkmedia have not yet been added.
A "Hall of shame" is hardly likely to be any discouragement to commercial pirates. The only way to deal with these is to apply copyright law.