Since the lawyers are the ultimate source of the problem
I can't tell if you are joking or not but you are so far off base it is funny!
A law regulating human behavior only exists because some problem exists. How about this scenario: your employer fires you because of your age, sex or race. Is it the lawyers' fault that your employer broke the law?
Not being able to retain a lawyer means you wouldn't be able to defend yourself. Do you really want to give up the right to sue to be able to gain relief? Or are you willing to let individuals, corporations and governements run roughshod over your rights?
And besides, those megabuck awards are often punitive in nature. If a corporation loses too many of those type of cases they will either go out of business or the board/stockholders will do something about it.
Granted, there is some lawsuit abuse, but do you really want to throw out the baby with the bathwater??? -- You think being a MIB is all voodoo mind control? You should see the paperwork!
Specifically, Congress was not involved in any way, shape, or form with the case. In Plessy v. Fergueson, the Supreme Court ruled that mandating
separate accommodations was within the powers of the states. Congress was therefore, by Supreme Court ruling, powerless to end segregation in any
state.
The only problem with your analysis is that the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments HAD been passed after the Civil War. When the Supreme Court refused to deny Plessy in effect they were ignoring those Amendments. Plessy was a bad decision, and it is curious that you would defend it in a public forum... -- You think being a MIB is all voodoo mind control? You should see the paperwork!
Fdisk/MBR is an undocumented command meant to be used to rebuild a trashed boot sector. PERIOD. It has absolutely NOTHING to do with monopoly leveraging, has NOTHING to do with "taking over your master boot record" and has NOTHING to do with the people in Redmond being "bastards."
Well, as someone who used OS/2 when Micro$oft was ACTIVELY trying to kill it off, it annoyed me to no end that I always had to install OS/2 first, then WinBlows, then reboot from the OS/2 disks to FIX the MBR after WinBlows removed the pointer to the OS/2 boot loader.
Now, if IBM can write a FDISK that could handle WinBlows AND Linux, and Linux programmers can write a FDISK that can handle OS/2 and WinBlows, why can't the MicroCrap programmers write a FDISK that DOESN'T SUCK???
Oh, you say that the uber-programmers that MicroScam hires CAN write a FDISK that isn't broken? Then it must be a marketing decision to keep distributing the broken FDISK... --
Now now... we know Jesus wasn't a fictional literary character. The Romans have records of him at the time. Now, whether he was really the sun of God is another debate. But denying his existance is a little trickier.
IIRC, Issac Asimov in one of his books mentioned how there was only ONE historical reference to Jesus. The historian Josephus mentioned Jesus, but it is only a second-hand reference. Other than that, nada. So you can't say for sure that Jesus DID exist.
Also, if you read Joseph Campbell, you will see how many primitive cultures have common myths -- including a "messiah" who comes to save the true believers through resurrection and rebirth, so it is highly likely that Jesus IS a fictional character. --
British-born Michael Foale and Swiss Claude Nicollier carried out the delicate operation of installing a new computer as they flew over Australia at an altitude of about 600km (360 miles) on Thursday.
I thought AIR was required to fly!:->
Orbited is the right word - nothing ruins a good science story than bad reporting. Some of these science writers need to learn how to pay attention to detail... --
1. The original poster attempted to establish debate rules in which he arrogated to himself the right to decide what evidence I would be allowed to introduce. I will not engage in any debate on any subject under such one-sided conditions.
It is just as one-sided when it is YOU that sets the rules of the debate. How about using standard debate rules, where ducking the question is not acceptable?
2. It's off-topic. Or have you forgotten that the topic here is "Censorware", not "the effects of pornography on children"?
Uhhh... "censorware" is used for what? Keeping porn from children. It is on-point to this discussion. Again you duck the question.
3. It's irrelevant. My point here was is, and will continue to be this: As a parent, it is my right and my responsibility to decide what is and what is not appropriate for my children.
No it is not "irrelevant". Again it is you that wants to decide the rules of the debate.
No government, no public institution, and certainly no self-styled "anti-censorship" crusader is in a better position to judge their best interests. I expect my public institutions and my government to respect my parental authority, not undermine it.
O.K. so YOU want to protect YOUR children. Censorware is business's/government's attempt to help YOU protect YOUR children. The only way business/government will undermine your parental authority is if they say "absolutely no censorship is allowed" because YOU want to censor YOUR children's content. They are on YOUR side, or haven't you noticed?
Note that I am not arguing for any of the following: [clip] Preventing adults - or even other peoples' children - from accessing pornography at public libraries. [clip] - Legislation attempting to define or control Internet content.
That's mighty white of you, masta. Yet you go on and say:
The only thing I ask is that public libraries and schools make a good-faith effort to respect my wishes as the parent of my children, This could take the form of point-of-delivery filtering software (as imperfect as it may currently be)
You obviously haven't studied much political science, have you? The only way governmental organizations can implement things is through budgeting and legislation or through bureaucratic regulation. For libraries and schools to impose filtering they have to get permission from the legislature or bureaucracy (until it gets overthrown by the courts as unconstitutional).
It could be in the form of a special library card for "checking out" Internet terminals. Or it could simply be a parental permission slip I sign that allows my children to access the Internet from libary or school terminals.
If YOUR kids have to get an "internet card" then MY kids have to too. If YOUR kids need a "permission slip" then MY kids will too. It is the nature of the beast. YOU may not trust YOUR children, but many more enlightened parents do trust THEIR kids to do the right thing, and THEIR kids respond by doing the right thing. Just because YOUR kids are either UNABLE or UNWILLING to do the right thing, that doesn't mean that other children aren't.
It is obvious that you are not going to provide any "non-religious evidence" that pornography is bad because you want to set the rules of the debate, something you accuse others of doing. Bah - I've wasted enough time on you! --
Kaiwen said: However, it is my responsibility as a parent to decide what, when, where and how my child learns.
Trepidity responded: I'd have to disagree with that. It's a parent's responsibility to guide a child's learning, but not to control it. Unless you keep your child locked up in a room, you are not going to be able to realistically control what, when, where, and how your child learns about everything. [snip] Parents are supposed to raise their children to think for themselves, not to indoctrinate them with viewpoints which are identical to their own.
Kaiwen, I know that you care about your children, but I feel that Trepidity is correct in this instance. My parents trusted me, and therefore they gave me lots of space when I was growing up. With that trust came responsibility, so I had to constantly prove to them that I was responsible enough to be trusted.
My parents were wise enough to know that they could not protect me from every conceiveable threat, but they were smart enough to at least give me the skills to identify and evalulate those threats and act accordingly. These skills continue to serve me well during my adulthood.
I've had friends whose parents were really strict when they were growing up. These kids quickly learn to challenge their parents rules, which they view as inflexible and unreasonable. The parents say "no sex" and the first thing they do is start sleeping around. The parents say "no drugs" and they become dealers. The parents say "stay in school" and they drop out.
My parents never said "don't do something just because we say so", they constantly gave me the information to make the right choices. They said sex is a beautiful thing between a man and a woman, but that there was also a downside to sex (i.e., STDs, AIDS, unwanted pregnancy). They told me that drugs were dangerous and gave me the reasons why.
Now if my parents had said "no sex or drugs" and left it at that, I would have viewed it as a challenge to try to get away with. Before you know it 10 years would have passed and I would have either a) been sick or dead, b) been addicted to drugs or c) paying huge child support checks for children I would never get to see. (The really sad part is that I have seen all three things happen to friends of mine).
Kaiwen, it is true that you need to love and protect your children, but it is important that you build up a good level of trust in your children. Impress upon them the importance of responsibility and they will (almost) always make the right decision. If you don't trust your children, they will most likely resent you and there is a good chance that they may become estranged from you when they grow up. --
As to my evidence, in fact, most of it is non-religious. I simply refuse to engage in any debate in which my opponent gets to arbitrarily pick and choose what evidence I'm allowed to introduce.
So you are not a lawyer, where the rules of evidence are chosen by the legal system. Or a scientist, where evidence is not accepted unless is it subject to peer review.
You keep going on about the "evidence" you possess, yet you don't share it with us. Come on, give us something -- a book or journal article, an internet URL, anything that would back up your assertion that porn is harmful. Otherwise it is just an unsupported opinion... --
In fact, the poster to which I replied made an even broader claim - not that exposure of minors to pornography is merely harmless, but that it is, in fact, beneficial.
What I've never understood is this: what harm does porn do to children viewing it? If they're pre-pubescent, it'll just be silly nekkid pictures; if they're pubescent it will be exciting and wonderful. Certainly how it was for me.
He is only referring to his opinion based on his personal experience that porn is harmless; I don't see where he says porn is beneficial. Exciting != beneficial. Wonderful != beneficial.
In another post you asked who compared information to drugs. It was you when you said:
Imagine if the FDA started approving drugs just because no one could prove them harmful.
The topic is porn. You brought up the FDA. So either you are veering off-topic or you are advocating a governmental organization akin to the FDA to approve what you think are harmful ideas (i.e., porn). If you are not, then why on earth did you bring up the FDA as an example?
How can you expect us to follow your train of thought when you cannot even remember what you said before? --
But the system is open, neutral and non-proprietary, and must remain so, according to Cailliau. ``One has to be extremely careful what it is that one regulates. We should not regulate the content but the behavior of people.
Let see... Humans have tried to change the behavior of others for years -- they're called laws. Even though humans have had laws against prostitution for thousands of years, you can still find prostitutes (if you know where to look:-> ). The US has had laws against the importation of drugs like cannibis for years, but all that those laws resulted in was 1) higher quality and 2) better availability of ganja!
What I don't understand is how they intend to separate content from behavior. If I smoked weed regularly (my behavior) I would probably want to put up some pro-legalization webpages (my content). If my webpages advocated mass consumpution of marijuana, could the powers that be still ban my website by saying that they are targeting my behavior, not my content? --
In 1965 President Johnson and the Demcrat controlled Congress and Sentate pass the "Great Frontier" welfare act. At the time the percentage of citizens in poverty was at its alltime lowest and the percent of literacy was at its alltime highest. After 35 years and 5 trillion dollars of socialist solutions those percentages have experienced sharp reversals and by 1994 we had achieved a 'grate society'.
Hmmm... where did you get those numbers? Have you adjusted for inflation? Can you provide a link or book reference? You are right about the Republicans though. They have had the presidency for 20 of the last 35 years and they have controlled Congress for the last decade. I'll wager that the rise in the number of homeless has accelerated since the Reagan years, when the Republicans gutted welfare.
Do you really trust the government more than you trust yourself?
No, but I trust the government more than Exxon, Southwestern Bell, Microsoft, etc. And I certainly trust the government more than most of my fellow "citizens" (yourself included)!
(Did you know that for every federal tax dollar earmarked for public schools, only 0.35 gets to a school - the other 0.65 is spent in collecting, processing, and distributing the money).
So corporations do not have any costs when it comes to sending out bills and collecting money? If schools were privatized probably only.35 cents would go to the schools,.60 cents would be costs (rent, salaries, office supplies, postage, etc.) and.05 would be profit. You don't really think that business would choose to make a little less profit in order to give a little more to the schools, do you?
I know I should not take the flamebait, but why comment as an AC? Are you afraid of being persecuted because of your political beliefs? Or is it that you have no balls? If you want us to value your opinion, get an account (or log in if you have one already). Otherwise people will dismiss you as a crackpot...
The reason government is the biggest threat is because it has a monopoly on legal coercive force... Corporations don't have armies.
Well, history shows that United Fruit did not need an army to overthrow the Guatamalan government in the fifties. Many corporations are also major polluters -- I can't remember the last time the government pointed a gun at me and coerced me to do something (I pay taxes willingly because I get back services - national defense, roads, schools, etc.) but I suffer each and every day from dirty air. Corporations (especially multinationals) are not as benign as Libertarians make them out to be!
He also attacked the current obsession with making things "easy to learn". My intepretation of this is that if something lets us accomplish more than what we could without it, and if it really had to be that hard, then we should be prepared to learn it rather than complain and do without it.
Kind of like unix itself. A major learning curve is required, but once you learn the basics you can do quite a few things. The more you use it, the more you learn and the better you get at it.
Of course, one has to enjoy learning (i.e., learning != "too much work") so it never seems like a chore. I myself love learning new stuff and in a perverse way like having problems with my system. That gives me a chance to look for the relevant information, read it and apply it.
It is a wonderful feeling knowing that you know how to acquire the knowledge needed to solve your problems, which in turn helps build your confidence in your abilities. Also, it turns out that finding the answer to your problem often takes a lot less time than reinstalling and reconfiguring the operating system! --
To a libertarian, "the government" is just another bunch of people
It is my understanding that to the libertarians, "the government" is the most evil bunch of people, as opposed to big corporations, who are always a good bunch of people, no matter of hard they hit your privacy and freedom of speech.
Bravo!!! I have never heard libertarianism defined so well before. After reading all the pro-libertarian propaganda that passes for "political discussion" here on slashdot, it is nice to see that there are a few souls here who have actually thought about politics, rather than mindlessly parroting something that they learned but have never really thought about...
The unfortunate problem is that I do not see the US as a democratic nation in its current form - it's far more socialist then it ever has been.
Democracy and socialism are not mutually exculsive. You can have a democratic socialist country (like Sweden) or a totalitarian socialist country (like Red China). The US is a democratic republic where we vote for representatives to govern us. If our representatives have socialist tendencies then we end up with socialist public policy initatives. Of course, if the people did not want socialistic governmental policies they can always defeat the incumbents who voted in those policies.
While you may decry socialism there have been some positive results because of it. For example, take social security. Isn't it better to that old people have shelter and health care made available to them or would you rather have a bunch of homeless elderly people dying of illnesses that can be easily treated by doctors? Or take welfare. Is it truly better to feed the poor or to have a lot of hungry indigent people running about? That sounds like a recipe for revolution to me.
Another example is the interstate highway system. Isn't it better that you can hop on a freeway and travel unimpeded all the way from the east to the west coast? Or would you rather have to go a couple of miles on a private toll road, stop, pay a toll, go a few more miles, stop, pay another toll, start moving again, repeating the cycle for the next 2000 miles?
I suggest you study up more on political and economic theory. The solution to most problems is not unbridled capitalism, as that is what causes a lot of the problems in the first place. The best way seems to be the system we have currently -- a relatively open market where capitalism can flourish to the benefit of those on the upper end of the economic spectrum mixed with socialist policies that can ameliorate the negative effects pure capitalism can have on those on the bottom.
how many Slashdotters here give a rat's ass about television, digital or otherwise?
I might be weird but I find that my TV is pretty much on when I am home. My computer is in the same room as my TV so I mainly watch TV while I am working/playing on my computer. I would like to turn the TV off more but the sad fact is that most radio programming is much, much worse (crappy, repetitive music and intrusive, too-loud commercials immediately come to mind).
Maybe this has something to do with me not living in the good ol' U. S. of A.?
Most likely. People in the U.S. watch a lot of TV, sometimes too much for their own good. It would be nice if people from the U.S. would pick up a book (or even a newspaper) every now and then... --
In the early 90s (when MS established most of their market dominance), OS/2 and WordPerfect did indeed cost the prices I quoted. OS/2 didn't even include TCP/IP -- that was an extra $300.
OS/2 Warp 3 (the red boxed edition) came out around Sept 1995 with an internet access kit for $99. Warp Connect with TCP/IP (the blue boxed edition) came out soon after for $149.
At that point DOS 7/Windows 4, ummm... I mean Windows 95 was just MS marketing vapor. Windows 3.1 did not come with a TCP/IP stack and you had to either pay for a full-featured stack or use a stripped-down version from an internet book. Do us a favor and don't go around spreading FUD... --
"THE MS PRICE NAZIS ARE BURNING BABIES AND EATING HOUSES!"
Don't you mean burning houses and eating babies?:-)
W2K will be as revolutionary to NT4/95 what NT4/95 was to Windows for Workgroups.
Maybe evolutionary but certainly NOT revolutionary. Evolutionary means that each iteration is an improvement over the previous incarnation, while revolutionary implies a whole new paradigm. By that standard it is Linux and the various BSDs that are revolutionary, not W2K... --
DS9 actually got better by the end. Contrast that to voyager. Here's an example dialog (description of standard plot) There. now you don't have to watch 80% of the voyager shows, since you have that formula.
You forgot the part where Tom Paris disobeys a direct order from Captain Janeway and is thrown into the brig. Invariably he is released at the end of the episode by the Captain, who tells Tuvok: "I'm not going to let Tom throw his career into the toilet, I'm giving him one more chance. This will be his last chance..." (until the next time he screws up, of course!) --
Slashdot Mirror
A law regulating human behavior only exists because some problem exists. How about this scenario: your employer fires you because of your age, sex or race. Is it the lawyers' fault that your employer broke the law?
Not being able to retain a lawyer means you wouldn't be able to defend yourself. Do you really want to give up the right to sue to be able to gain relief? Or are you willing to let individuals, corporations and governements run roughshod over your rights?
And besides, those megabuck awards are often punitive in nature. If a corporation loses too many of those type of cases they will either go out of business or the board/stockholders will do something about it.
Granted, there is some lawsuit abuse, but do you really want to throw out the baby with the bathwater???
--
You think being a MIB is all voodoo mind control? You should see the paperwork!
--
You think being a MIB is all voodoo mind control? You should see the paperwork!
--
You think being a MIB is all voodoo mind control? You should see the paperwork!
Fdisk /MBR is an undocumented command meant to be used to rebuild a trashed boot sector. PERIOD. It has absolutely NOTHING to do with monopoly leveraging, has NOTHING to do with "taking over your master boot record" and has NOTHING to do with the people in Redmond being "bastards."
Well, as someone who used OS/2 when Micro$oft was ACTIVELY trying to kill it off, it annoyed me to no end that I always had to install OS/2 first, then WinBlows, then reboot from the OS/2 disks to FIX the MBR after WinBlows removed the pointer to the OS/2 boot loader.
Now, if IBM can write a FDISK that could handle WinBlows AND Linux, and Linux programmers can write a FDISK that can handle OS/2 and WinBlows, why can't the MicroCrap programmers write a FDISK that DOESN'T SUCK???
Oh, you say that the uber-programmers that MicroScam hires CAN write a FDISK that isn't broken? Then it must be a marketing decision to keep distributing the broken FDISK...
--
thought AIR was required to fly!
Nope. The Dictionary gives as definition 1h of the verb "Of an aircraft or spacecraft: to travel through the air or through space."
My bad. I was thinking of birds and airplanes, with no dictionary handy.
You gotta love the English language. To paraphrase President Clinton: "that depends what 'is' is..."
--
Now now... we know Jesus wasn't a fictional literary character. The Romans have records of him at the time. Now, whether he was really the sun of God is another debate. But denying his existance is a little trickier.
IIRC, Issac Asimov in one of his books mentioned how there was only ONE historical reference to Jesus. The historian Josephus mentioned Jesus, but it is only a second-hand reference. Other than that, nada. So you can't say for sure that Jesus DID exist.
Also, if you read Joseph Campbell, you will see how many primitive cultures have common myths -- including a "messiah" who comes to save the true believers through resurrection and rebirth, so it is highly likely that Jesus IS a fictional character.
--
British-born Michael Foale and Swiss Claude Nicollier carried out the delicate operation of installing a new computer as they flew over Australia at an altitude of about 600km (360 miles) on Thursday.
:->
I thought AIR was required to fly!
Orbited is the right word - nothing ruins a good science story than bad reporting. Some of these science writers need to learn how to pay attention to detail...
--
1. The original poster attempted to establish debate rules in which he arrogated to himself the right to decide what evidence I would be allowed to introduce. I will not engage in any debate on any subject under such one-sided conditions.
It is just as one-sided when it is YOU that sets the rules of the debate. How about using standard debate rules, where ducking the question is not acceptable?
2. It's off-topic. Or have you forgotten that the topic here is "Censorware", not "the effects of pornography on children"?
Uhhh... "censorware" is used for what? Keeping porn from children. It is on-point to this discussion. Again you duck the question.
3. It's irrelevant. My point here was is, and will continue to be this: As a parent, it is my right and my responsibility to decide what is and what is not appropriate for my children.
No it is not "irrelevant". Again it is you that wants to decide the rules of the debate.
No government, no public institution, and certainly no self-styled "anti-censorship" crusader is in a better position to judge their best interests. I expect my public institutions and my government to respect my parental authority, not undermine it.
O.K. so YOU want to protect YOUR children. Censorware is business's/government's attempt to help YOU protect YOUR children. The only way business/government will undermine your parental authority is if they say "absolutely no censorship is allowed" because YOU want to censor YOUR children's content. They are on YOUR side, or haven't you noticed?
Note that I am not arguing for any of the following: [clip] Preventing adults - or even other peoples' children - from accessing pornography at public libraries. [clip] - Legislation attempting to define or control Internet content.
That's mighty white of you, masta. Yet you go on and say:
The only thing I ask is that public libraries and schools make a good-faith effort to respect my wishes as the parent of my children, This could take the form of point-of-delivery filtering software (as imperfect as it may currently be)
You obviously haven't studied much political science, have you? The only way governmental organizations can implement things is through budgeting and legislation or through bureaucratic regulation. For libraries and schools to impose filtering they have to get permission from the legislature or bureaucracy (until it gets overthrown by the courts as unconstitutional).
It could be in the form of a special library card for "checking out" Internet terminals. Or it could simply be a parental permission slip I sign that allows my children to access the Internet from libary or school terminals.
If YOUR kids have to get an "internet card" then MY kids have to too. If YOUR kids need a "permission slip" then MY kids will too. It is the nature of the beast. YOU may not trust YOUR children, but many more enlightened parents do trust THEIR kids to do the right thing, and THEIR kids respond by doing the right thing. Just because YOUR kids are either UNABLE or UNWILLING to do the right thing, that doesn't mean that other children aren't.
It is obvious that you are not going to provide any "non-religious evidence" that pornography is bad because you want to set the rules of the debate, something you accuse others of doing. Bah - I've wasted enough time on you!
--
Kaiwen said: However, it is my responsibility as a parent to decide what, when, where and how my child learns.
Trepidity responded: I'd have to disagree with that. It's a parent's responsibility to guide a child's learning, but not to control it. Unless you keep your child locked up in a room, you are not going to be able to realistically control what, when, where, and how your child learns about everything. [snip] Parents are supposed to raise their children to think for themselves, not to indoctrinate them with viewpoints which are identical to their own.
Kaiwen, I know that you care about your children, but I feel that Trepidity is correct in this instance. My parents trusted me, and therefore they gave me lots of space when I was growing up. With that trust came responsibility, so I had to constantly prove to them that I was responsible enough to be trusted.
My parents were wise enough to know that they could not protect me from every conceiveable threat, but they were smart enough to at least give me the skills to identify and evalulate those threats and act accordingly. These skills continue to serve me well during my adulthood.
I've had friends whose parents were really strict when they were growing up. These kids quickly learn to challenge their parents rules, which they view as inflexible and unreasonable. The parents say "no sex" and the first thing they do is start sleeping around. The parents say "no drugs" and they become dealers. The parents say "stay in school" and they drop out.
My parents never said "don't do something just because we say so", they constantly gave me the information to make the right choices. They said sex is a beautiful thing between a man and a woman, but that there was also a downside to sex (i.e., STDs, AIDS, unwanted pregnancy). They told me that drugs were dangerous and gave me the reasons why.
Now if my parents had said "no sex or drugs" and left it at that, I would have viewed it as a challenge to try to get away with. Before you know it 10 years would have passed and I would have either a) been sick or dead, b) been addicted to drugs or c) paying huge child support checks for children I would never get to see. (The really sad part is that I have seen all three things happen to friends of mine).
Kaiwen, it is true that you need to love and protect your children, but it is important that you build up a good level of trust in your children. Impress upon them the importance of responsibility and they will (almost) always make the right decision. If you don't trust your children, they will most likely resent you and there is a good chance that they may become estranged from you when they grow up.
--
So, how should we prevent kids from being harmed (your claim) by really-nasty-stuff-porn, exactly?
:->
Two things: a blindfold and some earmuffs . You know: "see no evil, hear no evil"
Hey Beavis, he said "muff"!!!
--
As to my evidence, in fact, most of it is non-religious. I simply refuse to engage in any debate in which my opponent gets to arbitrarily pick and choose what evidence I'm allowed to introduce.
So you are not a lawyer, where the rules of evidence are chosen by the legal system. Or a scientist, where evidence is not accepted unless is it subject to peer review.
You keep going on about the "evidence" you possess, yet you don't share it with us. Come on, give us something -- a book or journal article, an internet URL, anything that would back up your assertion that porn is harmful. Otherwise it is just an unsupported opinion...
--
In fact, the poster to which I replied made an even broader claim - not that exposure of minors to pornography is merely harmless, but that it is, in fact, beneficial.
Wrong! In his/her post, AC said:
What I've never understood is this: what harm does porn do to children viewing it? If they're pre-pubescent, it'll just be silly nekkid pictures; if they're pubescent it will be exciting and wonderful. Certainly how it was for me.
He is only referring to his opinion based on his personal experience that porn is harmless; I don't see where he says porn is beneficial. Exciting != beneficial. Wonderful != beneficial.
In another post you asked who compared information to drugs. It was you when you said:
Imagine if the FDA started approving drugs just because no one could prove them harmful.
The topic is porn. You brought up the FDA. So either you are veering off-topic or you are advocating a governmental organization akin to the FDA to approve what you think are harmful ideas (i.e., porn). If you are not, then why on earth did you bring up the FDA as an example?
How can you expect us to follow your train of thought when you cannot even remember what you said before?
--
But the system is open, neutral and non-proprietary, and must remain so, according to Cailliau. ``One has to be extremely careful what it is that one regulates. We should not regulate the content but the behavior of people.
:-> ). The US has had laws against the importation of drugs like cannibis for years, but all that those laws resulted in was 1) higher quality and 2) better availability of ganja!
Let see... Humans have tried to change the behavior of others for years -- they're called laws. Even though humans have had laws against prostitution for thousands of years, you can still find prostitutes (if you know where to look
What I don't understand is how they intend to separate content from behavior. If I smoked weed regularly (my behavior) I would probably want to put up some pro-legalization webpages (my content). If my webpages advocated mass consumpution of marijuana, could the powers that be still ban my website by saying that they are targeting my behavior, not my content?
--
In 1965 President Johnson and the Demcrat controlled Congress and Sentate pass the "Great Frontier" welfare act. At the time the percentage of citizens in poverty was at its alltime lowest and the percent of literacy was at its alltime highest. After 35 years and 5 trillion dollars of socialist solutions those percentages have experienced sharp reversals and by 1994 we had achieved a 'grate society'.
Hmmm... where did you get those numbers? Have you adjusted for inflation? Can you provide a link or book reference? You are right about the Republicans though. They have had the presidency for 20 of the last 35 years and they have controlled Congress for the last decade. I'll wager that the rise in the number of homeless has accelerated since the Reagan years, when the Republicans gutted welfare.
--
Do you really trust the government more than you trust yourself?
.35 cents would go to the schools, .60 cents would be costs (rent, salaries, office supplies, postage, etc.) and .05 would be profit. You don't really think that business would choose to make a little less profit in order to give a little more to the schools, do you?
No, but I trust the government more than Exxon, Southwestern Bell, Microsoft, etc. And I certainly trust the government more than most of my fellow "citizens" (yourself included)!
(Did you know that for every federal tax dollar earmarked for public schools, only 0.35 gets to a school - the other 0.65 is spent in collecting, processing, and distributing the money).
So corporations do not have any costs when it comes to sending out bills and collecting money? If schools were privatized probably only
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I know I should not take the flamebait, but why comment as an AC? Are you afraid of being persecuted because of your political beliefs? Or is it that you have no balls? If you want us to value your opinion, get an account (or log in if you have one already). Otherwise people will dismiss you as a crackpot...
The reason government is the biggest threat is because it has a monopoly on legal coercive force... Corporations don't have armies.
Well, history shows that United Fruit did not need an army to overthrow the Guatamalan government in the fifties. Many corporations are also major polluters -- I can't remember the last time the government pointed a gun at me and coerced me to do something (I pay taxes willingly because I get back services - national defense, roads, schools, etc.) but I suffer each and every day from dirty air. Corporations (especially multinationals) are not as benign as Libertarians make them out to be!
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He also attacked the current obsession with making things "easy to learn". My intepretation of this is that if something lets us accomplish more than what we could without it, and if it really had to be that hard, then we should be prepared to learn it rather than complain and do without it.
Kind of like unix itself. A major learning curve is required, but once you learn the basics you can do quite a few things. The more you use it, the more you learn and the better you get at it.
Of course, one has to enjoy learning (i.e., learning != "too much work") so it never seems like a chore. I myself love learning new stuff and in a perverse way like having problems with my system. That gives me a chance to look for the relevant information, read it and apply it.
It is a wonderful feeling knowing that you know how to acquire the knowledge needed to solve your problems, which in turn helps build your confidence in your abilities. Also, it turns out that finding the answer to your problem often takes a lot less time than reinstalling and reconfiguring the operating system!
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To a libertarian, "the government" is just another bunch of people
It is my understanding that to the libertarians, "the government" is the most evil bunch of people, as opposed to big corporations, who are always a good bunch of people, no matter of hard they hit your privacy and freedom of speech.
Bravo!!! I have never heard libertarianism defined so well before. After reading all the pro-libertarian propaganda that passes for "political discussion" here on slashdot, it is nice to see that there are a few souls here who have actually thought about politics, rather than mindlessly parroting something that they learned but have never really thought about...
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The unfortunate problem is that I do not see the US as a democratic nation in its current form - it's far more socialist then it ever has been.
Democracy and socialism are not mutually exculsive. You can have a democratic socialist country (like Sweden) or a totalitarian socialist country (like Red China). The US is a democratic republic where we vote for representatives to govern us. If our representatives have socialist tendencies then we end up with socialist public policy initatives. Of course, if the people did not want socialistic governmental policies they can always defeat the incumbents who voted in those policies.
While you may decry socialism there have been some positive results because of it. For example, take social security. Isn't it better to that old people have shelter and health care made available to them or would you rather have a bunch of homeless elderly people dying of illnesses that can be easily treated by doctors? Or take welfare. Is it truly better to feed the poor or to have a lot of hungry indigent people running about? That sounds like a recipe for revolution to me.
Another example is the interstate highway system. Isn't it better that you can hop on a freeway and travel unimpeded all the way from the east to the west coast? Or would you rather have to go a couple of miles on a private toll road, stop, pay a toll, go a few more miles, stop, pay another toll, start moving again, repeating the cycle for the next 2000 miles?
I suggest you study up more on political and economic theory. The solution to most problems is not unbridled capitalism, as that is what causes a lot of the problems in the first place. The best way seems to be the system we have currently -- a relatively open market where capitalism can flourish to the benefit of those on the upper end of the economic spectrum mixed with socialist policies that can ameliorate the negative effects pure capitalism can have on those on the bottom.
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how many Slashdotters here give a rat's ass about television, digital or otherwise?
I might be weird but I find that my TV is pretty much on when I am home. My computer is in the same room as my TV so I mainly watch TV while I am working/playing on my computer. I would like to turn the TV off more but the sad fact is that most radio programming is much, much worse (crappy, repetitive music and intrusive, too-loud commercials immediately come to mind).
Maybe this has something to do with me not living in the good ol' U. S. of A.?
Most likely. People in the U.S. watch a lot of TV, sometimes too much for their own good. It would be nice if people from the U.S. would pick up a book (or even a newspaper) every now and then...
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I do wonder if all that money could not be put to better use producing content that we viewers would actually want to see...
You hit the nail right on the head. Now if only the broadcasters would get it through their thick skulls that CONTENT IS KING!
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Trust Bill... Bill Gates was born with business genius... I AM going to use an Albert Einstein analogy here because it fits Bill Gates.
ROTFL -- this post is HILARIOUS!!! Someone needs to moderate this up so that others can read this gem!
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In the early 90s (when MS established most of their market dominance), OS/2 and WordPerfect did indeed cost the prices I quoted. OS/2 didn't even include TCP/IP -- that was an extra $300.
OS/2 Warp 3 (the red boxed edition) came out around Sept 1995 with an internet access kit for $99. Warp Connect with TCP/IP (the blue boxed edition) came out soon after for $149.
At that point DOS 7/Windows 4, ummm... I mean Windows 95 was just MS marketing vapor. Windows 3.1 did not come with a TCP/IP stack and you had to either pay for a full-featured stack or use a stripped-down version from an internet book. Do us a favor and don't go around spreading FUD...
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"THE MS PRICE NAZIS ARE BURNING BABIES AND EATING HOUSES!"
:-)
Don't you mean burning houses and eating babies?
W2K will be as revolutionary to NT4/95 what NT4/95 was to Windows for Workgroups.
Maybe evolutionary but certainly NOT revolutionary. Evolutionary means that each iteration is an improvement over the previous incarnation, while revolutionary implies a whole new paradigm. By that standard it is Linux and the various BSDs that are revolutionary, not W2K...
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DS9 actually got better by the end. Contrast that to voyager. Here's an example dialog (description of standard plot) There. now you don't have to watch 80% of the voyager shows, since you have that formula.
You forgot the part where Tom Paris disobeys a direct order from Captain Janeway and is thrown into the brig. Invariably he is released at the end of the episode by the Captain, who tells Tuvok: "I'm not going to let Tom throw his career into the toilet, I'm giving him one more chance. This will be his last chance..." (until the next time he screws up, of course!)
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