And if they weren't then you'd be yelling about how the video performace is so slow.
What's the bloody deal? If you install a crappy video driver even if it's not in the kernel is has hardware access which means that it can toast the system. So don't install crappy video drivers.
NT4 is no longer a microsoft product
you have an interesting interpretation of "discontinued". It does NOT mean that it's no longer a MS product, it just means that they're not supporting it anymore (which makes sense).
I absolutely agree with you there, and I do the same. I never use my originals.
However my arguement was that someone stated that they had a "right to copy". You don't have a right, you have a priviledge. There's a big difference there.
But frankly as long as they want to waste their money and time with these pointless endeavours just gives us that much more time until they either get it right or realize that it's impossible. And the more failed attempts that they have the worse it will look in the public's eye, so perhaps this is a good thing after all.
If it was so obvious, it would have been done already.
It was obvious, the problem is that the technology wasn't there at the time to do it.
Hey, does that mean that I can patent antigravity, emmissions free engines, an engine that runs of veggies, a computer that can read my thoughts, or any number of "obvious" ideas that the technology simply isn't there?
You can argue that he was patenting a method of implementation which is valid (patenting an idea, IMHO, should never be allowed). However it looks to me like the "implementation" was just as obvious of the idea of pausing in the first place. It's how to get the technology there that counts.
Its like if I said "well, you can build a zero emmissions car by (insert a LOT of jargon here on how to build a car) plus using a zero-emmissions engine". Does that mean that I can claim that as a patent? Of course not (but I'll bet you that if I filed it I'd get one anyways).
"pausing" anything is not innovative or new. Much less "pausing live TV". I don't care what you have to do in order to do it, I can guarantee you that 1000s of other people have thought "damn I gotta go to the washroom/fridge/answer the phone but I don't want to miss what's going to happen next!".
Dimply putting fancy jargon behind it (obviously without a device to acutally implement it, and since they never did much work on the implementation side of things just shows that this guy was patenting a simple idea). Check out my other post about the other things that this guy has patented. He's just patenting obvious ideas with fancy jargon (he uses the "circular buffer" concept in like ALL of them. Prior art? Check out the "outgoing" cassette in your 1980s answering machine, or just about any implementation of a FIFO buffer in existance, like your dos based keyboard buffer for example).
The might settle out of court just to avoid the cost of the lawsuit. Or they might think that this Pause Technology company doesn't have the money to back up a lengthy lawsuit and just call their bluff. Many times "filing a lawsuit" is just a scare tactic.
Umm, no, you're confusing explorer windows with internet explorer windows. There is no option to "open every internet explorer window in it's own process". And I don't know why you'd want the "open every explorer window in it's own process" anyways.
Thus you can just kill the root iexplore.exe process and all of the ie windows under that process (i.e. spawned from that site) will die with them. You *cannot* open a new iexplore.exe process from within internet explorer.
WHAT are you talking about? If you're on windows 9x then having iexplore.exe go wacky doesn't effect the rest of the processes, just kill all the internet explorer windows. If you're on windows 2000/Xp/NT just kill the root iexplore.exe process and all IE windows will go poof.
We chose our own groups (which usually helps to cut out the crappy people), and then the *group* was assigned a grade. We multiplied that grade by the number of people and then we each assigned every member in our group a grade. The grades per person were averaged and that was the grade that you got. This was done anonymously, so if someone didn't pull as much weight as you thought that you did, then give them less and that's more for the rest of you. I think that this idea worked out pretty well, too bad it wasn't used more often.
But seriously. There's a fine line between.. no scratch that, there's a night and day difference between registering typo sites and displaying a pile of non-porn ads, and registering those sites and trapping the user in a net where they can't get out and displaying pornography to them for the sole intent of making a buck. especially when said users could be children or people who find pornography offensive.
I've seen a few sites who grab a typo site and just use it to promote their own (not indecent) site, but also provide a link on their site to the site that "you might have wanted" instead. I think that's fair enough, no big harm there, but to intentionally trap people. Wow. I never thought I'd be praising government intervention on the internet...
Since this works off of body heat, this requires you to burn more calories! So now the overweight nerds out there can all have a GREAT excuse to (a) buy more gadgets and (b) not excercise!
"Aww, but I am exercising, I'm playing VirtualQuakeVII on my Palmiot! You have any idea how much processing juice that takes? I can feel myself getting thinner by the minute!"
I love how they admit that it's an imperfect solution, but in fact isn't this just what you guys have been asking for?
It allows you to exercise your fair rights to make a backup copy of your audio, and hinders the attempt to pirate the tracks.
"MP3's lead could change quickly, however, if CDs are routinely released with easily accessible Windows Media versions of songs onboard"
Oh, right, because now that we want to pirate we can't, because we can't rip the tracks, and it surely isn't possible to convert WMA into MP3 and distribute that. Or to just strip the WMA of the protection mechanism. Nope, can't do that.
Tried to poll their site to see how many other users use linux, and I'm sure that there is a way but I don't have the time to find it right now. I sure that you can get reports on who uses linux. If you want, punch in some high profile companies into that search and see who pops up, or go over to the "longest uptime" pages and notice that most are BSD/Linux.
(BTW - "da99@COFFEEhome.com minus caffeine" should be "da99@NOCOFFEEhome.com add caffeine")
(Please guys, hear me through before flaming or modding down.)
Can someone please explain to me the exact portions of the bill that state that
a) you will not be allowed to run linux
b) you will not be allowed to build your own PC from commodity parts
??
What I see is "unlawful to manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide or otherwise traffic in any interactive digital device that does not include and utilize certified security technologies that adhere to the security system standards.". Which is basically saying that "if you want to have something that you can view multimedia on, it has to have built in digital copyright controls on it".
So what you're saying is: "Hey, hell no we won't put such things into linux!.... Damn! now we can't use linux (to view videos or listen to music)" "Hell, I don't want to build a computer using those parts that have built in copy control..... damn, now I can't build my own computer!"
While I am not saying that this is a good thing, don't you think that you all are going just a wee bit over the deep end with the exaggerations on this one?
Please tell me if I'm wrong, but I don't think that it is nearly as bad as you are claiming it to be. If linux were to implement these technologies (which, of course, the people who make linux would really, really, truly rather not do) then you could still use it. If you bought the hardware that conformed (which, btw, all hardware sold will so I don't see the argument there?) then you can still build your own computer.
Now, with that aside, this "proposed" legislation is shitty for the customers, but why is it? If you think about it, they are not preventing us from doing anything that the majority of customers don't already do. Now let me qualify that. What you are legally allowed to do is buy something and watch it. What this prevents is piracy, which BTW is illegal anyways. Piracy in this case means viewing it when you're not allowed/making copies/etc. Yep, it sucks. However we always break these laws anyways.
Oh, can someone please explain to me how the ability to copy a movie or music is a funamentally basic human right?
In any case, as with all things, if this does get passed and these restrictions are put on, and if you don't like it, nobody is making you buy that movie or listen to that music... Sure you like to, but it's not a necessity. As has been said before (that seems to fall on deaf ears), vote with your wallet. Don't buy that stuff that has the restrictions that you don't agree with. If people adapt this mentality, then 1 of 2 things will happen:
1) the purchases of music/videos/etc will fall by the curb and the industries will be left scratching their heads going "wtf happened?"
-or-
2) the majority of people won't care and will still continue to buy the new restricted stuff anyways, and, in the eyes of the corps, they will not have lost.
Of course, if #2 happens then that means that you, my friends, are indeed in the minority and it's just because you want to illegally copy/pirate your stuff or get stuff for free, because the majority of people won't have seen a difference.
however if #1 happens, then it will turn out that everything that you are saying is correct, and justice will take care of itself.
Thus perhaps you should be putting your energies into the right place. If indeed this legislation does pass, (or even before it does), then lean on the same mechanisms that they use to promote this shit. Write your local newspapers. Create situations where this stuff truly is horrible. Tell your friends and neighbours. Put up billboards and posters. And certainly not the entire public are morons, they can see through shit, and if it is truly, absolutely horrible for the gross public then the gross public will respond.
Is everyone aware here that there are 5,000 children dying every month in iraq from malnutrition? check out the list of the top 30 atrocities of the 20th century, some of which are still continuing. And there's more that happens every day, in front of you, that you're too desensitized to look at. There's homeless (up to 700,000 each night sleeping on the streets, begging for money during the day), and many others.
Just a reminder that perhaps you guys with your DVD players and 28" televisions and well paying jobs and 1GHz+ computers might want to step back and take it all in perspective.
And finally, talk is cheap. If you are seriously angered by this, that's GREAT, seriously, so do something about it. I don't agree with this type of legislation any more than you do, but yelling/overexaggerating about it on/. isn't going to accomplish anything. And I'm not really sure that sending emails/real mail to your congress is going to do anything either. Educate the public at large and you'll find out if either everyone thinks the same way, or if you are indeed just in the minority. If you can't get your mother and your computer illiterate significant other to get the least bit roused by this, the perhaps it isn't that big a deal after all.
actually if they do switch to opt-in lists you'll find just about all email marketing businesses going chapter 11 as soon as the bill takes effect. Unless they can pull some sort of stupid "by NOT replying to this email you OPT-IN to receiving our advertising" then there will be no profit to be made in advertising only to people who want to get the advertising.
No, you're absolutely correct. Apparently Peter and timothy were too happy to actually read the article...
A directive regulating the distance selling of all other goods and services was adopted in 1997 and entered into force last year. Financial services were excluded from its scope since these were considered to require a separate set of rules. A law on unsolicited e-mail covering all other industries is expected early next year. The question of whether to apply opt-in or opt-out to e-mail marketing is provoking hot debate; the Commission favors opt-in, but many members of the European Parliament prefer the more industry-friendly opt-out approach.
So not only is the universal anti-email spam laws not on the table yet, but alsoneither of the laws have even been fully proposed yet, muchless passed. It's not a universal thing, and it has not even been drafted fully yet, nevermind passed.
As stated, industries much much much prefer the "opt-out" method, and thus since we know how much power the industry has over the laws, it's highly unlikely that they will be passed.
The only reason why the financial sector got this put into the bill is because the regulations for distance selling of their products were not decided in 1997 with the rest of the sectors because it was felt that finance required a different set of rules (why?) and since email marketing wasn't a problem 4 years ago, it wasn't an issue that needed addressing. It'll be interesting to see if it gets passed or just gets squashed or "removed at the last minute due to someone who was supposed to retype it" (a-la the "The Satellite Home Viewer Improvement Act of 1999" in the states).
woah dude, ok sorry, less the 900 numbers (some of which btw do require, and how are you supposed to check there as well?) face-to-face things require age checking because they can do it easily. It's not so easy on the phone or the internet.
And there's also a big difference between having someone "talk sexy" to you and viewing pornography or buying a gun.
Kiddie porn usually refers to the 5 year old or less than 12 year old kiddies, not the 17 year old kiddies. I think that a 40 year old who gets their kicks out of looking at 6 year olds get raped has something mentally wrong.
interesting. So like server X issues you a token, you sign it, pass the token to trusted party Y who verifies your signature, signs it itself, and returns it to you, and you return to server X. If all signatures match, then you can proceed.
No, I read your post, but there are certain things that should be age restricted. If not directly for the kids, then for the kids whose parents don't give a shite or are simply negligent.
Perhaps what you could do is to tag these sites that are deemed to be restricted in some countries, and then have the ISPs do the blocking to perform the age verification. I don't like where that road would head, but it would be a solution that wouldn't trample on international boundaries.
If there was some way to create a global user account that you somehow had to proove your age in order to create said account, it might seriously curb things while not being too much of a hassle. Something like a verisign vouched personal certificate (not the email one), but somehting much easier to get. Like through your bank or (aaak!) government office or even via some not-for-profit company that sets up kiosks in public places or banks or supermarkets that you pay a small fee to get a "personal online ID". However this wouldn't solve the problem of forgery and stealing, but if you have to show up somewhere in person to get your account, then the person who gets their account stolen has got some explaining to do.
Slashdot Mirror
1. video drivers in the kernel
And if they weren't then you'd be yelling about how the video performace is so slow.
What's the bloody deal? If you install a crappy video driver even if it's not in the kernel is has hardware access which means that it can toast the system. So don't install crappy video drivers.
NT4 is no longer a microsoft product
you have an interesting interpretation of "discontinued". It does NOT mean that it's no longer a MS product, it just means that they're not supporting it anymore (which makes sense).
correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't .hqx the same thing as .zip in PCs?
doesn't that mean that the only thing that it will do is run your decompressor automatically?
which is not a big deal at all?
I absolutely agree with you there, and I do the same. I never use my originals.
However my arguement was that someone stated that they had a "right to copy". You don't have a right, you have a priviledge. There's a big difference there.
But frankly as long as they want to waste their money and time with these pointless endeavours just gives us that much more time until they either get it right or realize that it's impossible. And the more failed attempts that they have the worse it will look in the public's eye, so perhaps this is a good thing after all.
If it was so obvious, it would have been done already.
It was obvious, the problem is that the technology wasn't there at the time to do it.
Hey, does that mean that I can patent antigravity, emmissions free engines, an engine that runs of veggies, a computer that can read my thoughts, or any number of "obvious" ideas that the technology simply isn't there?
You can argue that he was patenting a method of implementation which is valid (patenting an idea, IMHO, should never be allowed). However it looks to me like the "implementation" was just as obvious of the idea of pausing in the first place. It's how to get the technology there that counts.
Its like if I said "well, you can build a zero emmissions car by (insert a LOT of jargon here on how to build a car) plus using a zero-emmissions engine". Does that mean that I can claim that as a patent? Of course not (but I'll bet you that if I filed it I'd get one anyways).
but there's a difference.
"pausing" anything is not innovative or new. Much less "pausing live TV". I don't care what you have to do in order to do it, I can guarantee you that 1000s of other people have thought "damn I gotta go to the washroom/fridge/answer the phone but I don't want to miss what's going to happen next!".
Dimply putting fancy jargon behind it (obviously without a device to acutally implement it, and since they never did much work on the implementation side of things just shows that this guy was patenting a simple idea). Check out my other post about the other things that this guy has patented. He's just patenting obvious ideas with fancy jargon (he uses the "circular buffer" concept in like ALL of them. Prior art? Check out the "outgoing" cassette in your 1980s answering machine, or just about any implementation of a FIFO buffer in existance, like your dos based keyboard buffer for example).
The might settle out of court just to avoid the cost of the lawsuit. Or they might think that this Pause Technology company doesn't have the money to back up a lengthy lawsuit and just call their bluff. Many times "filing a lawsuit" is just a scare tactic.
If every IE window is a separate process
Umm, no, you're confusing explorer windows with internet explorer windows. There is no option to "open every internet explorer window in it's own process". And I don't know why you'd want the "open every explorer window in it's own process" anyways.
Thus you can just kill the root iexplore.exe process and all of the ie windows under that process (i.e. spawned from that site) will die with them. You *cannot* open a new iexplore.exe process from within internet explorer.
remember, IE is a part of Windows?
:)
thus, when IE dies, so does Windows.
WHAT are you talking about? If you're on windows 9x then having iexplore.exe go wacky doesn't effect the rest of the processes, just kill all the internet explorer windows. If you're on windows 2000/Xp/NT just kill the root iexplore.exe process and all IE windows will go poof.
what you said makes no sense.
We chose our own groups (which usually helps to cut out the crappy people), and then the *group* was assigned a grade. We multiplied that grade by the number of people and then we each assigned every member in our group a grade. The grades per person were averaged and that was the grade that you got. This was done anonymously, so if someone didn't pull as much weight as you thought that you did, then give them less and that's more for the rest of you. I think that this idea worked out pretty well, too bad it wasn't used more often.
However, the fact that Motorola licensed the technology indicates there may actually be some merit to this patent debate.
Or that they didn't want to get caught in a lengthy court battle that would inevitably cost more than just paying the royalties.
Gotta love the "justice" system.
Interesting... We're talking about one of the best minds of the 20th century (/sarcasm)
more patents by the same guy
my favorites:
Apparatus for testing lumber stiffness
(how to check the stiffness of wood. wierd trend he set here)
System for using a touchpad input device for cursor control and keyboard emulation
(it's called repatenting the touchpad)
Audio message exchange system
(you know how old answering machines use a looping cassette? well yeah, that in computer form)
Billing system and method
(*any* ebilling system would infringe on this patent)
Techniques for changing the behavior of a link in a hypertext document
(any dynamic page violates this patent)
can be found here
Wow... reminds me of the Aussie guy who patented the wheel...
(This comment did not pass the lameness filter)
er, I mean Zuccarini.
.. no scratch that, there's a night and day difference between registering typo sites and displaying a pile of non-porn ads, and registering those sites and trapping the user in a net where they can't get out and displaying pornography to them for the sole intent of making a buck. especially when said users could be children or people who find pornography offensive.
But seriously. There's a fine line between
I've seen a few sites who grab a typo site and just use it to promote their own (not indecent) site, but also provide a link on their site to the site that "you might have wanted" instead. I think that's fair enough, no big harm there, but to intentionally trap people. Wow. I never thought I'd be praising government intervention on the internet...
Since this works off of body heat, this requires you to burn more calories! So now the overweight nerds out there can all have a GREAT excuse to (a) buy more gadgets and (b) not excercise!
"Aww, but I am exercising, I'm playing VirtualQuakeVII on my Palmiot! You have any idea how much processing juice that takes? I can feel myself getting thinner by the minute!"
I love how they admit that it's an imperfect solution, but in fact isn't this just what you guys have been asking for?
It allows you to exercise your fair rights to make a backup copy of your audio, and hinders the attempt to pirate the tracks.
"MP3's lead could change quickly, however, if CDs are routinely released with easily accessible Windows Media versions of songs onboard"
Oh, right, because now that we want to pirate we can't, because we can't rip the tracks, and it surely isn't possible to convert WMA into MP3 and distribute that. Or to just strip the WMA of the protection mechanism. Nope, can't do that.
Oh wait...
Tried to poll their site to see how many other users use linux, and I'm sure that there is a way but I don't have the time to find it right now. I sure that you can get reports on who uses linux. If you want, punch in some high profile companies into that search and see who pops up, or go over to the "longest uptime" pages and notice that most are BSD/Linux.
(BTW - "da99@COFFEEhome.com minus caffeine" should be "da99@NOCOFFEEhome.com add caffeine")
(Please guys, hear me through before flaming or modding down.)
.... Damn! now we can't use linux (to view videos or listen to music)" "Hell, I don't want to build a computer using those parts that have built in copy control ..... damn, now I can't build my own computer!"
... Sure you like to, but it's not a necessity. As has been said before (that seems to fall on deaf ears), vote with your wallet. Don't buy that stuff that has the restrictions that you don't agree with. If people adapt this mentality, then 1 of 2 things will happen:
/. isn't going to accomplish anything. And I'm not really sure that sending emails/real mail to your congress is going to do anything either. Educate the public at large and you'll find out if either everyone thinks the same way, or if you are indeed just in the minority. If you can't get your mother and your computer illiterate significant other to get the least bit roused by this, the perhaps it isn't that big a deal after all.
Can someone please explain to me the exact portions of the bill that state that
a) you will not be allowed to run linux
b) you will not be allowed to build your own PC from commodity parts
??
What I see is "unlawful to manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide or otherwise traffic in any interactive digital device that does not include and utilize certified security technologies that adhere to the security system standards.". Which is basically saying that "if you want to have something that you can view multimedia on, it has to have built in digital copyright controls on it".
So what you're saying is: "Hey, hell no we won't put such things into linux!
While I am not saying that this is a good thing, don't you think that you all are going just a wee bit over the deep end with the exaggerations on this one?
Please tell me if I'm wrong, but I don't think that it is nearly as bad as you are claiming it to be. If linux were to implement these technologies (which, of course, the people who make linux would really, really, truly rather not do) then you could still use it. If you bought the hardware that conformed (which, btw, all hardware sold will so I don't see the argument there?) then you can still build your own computer.
Now, with that aside, this "proposed" legislation is shitty for the customers, but why is it? If you think about it, they are not preventing us from doing anything that the majority of customers don't already do. Now let me qualify that. What you are legally allowed to do is buy something and watch it. What this prevents is piracy, which BTW is illegal anyways. Piracy in this case means viewing it when you're not allowed/making copies/etc. Yep, it sucks. However we always break these laws anyways.
Oh, can someone please explain to me how the ability to copy a movie or music is a funamentally basic human right?
In any case, as with all things, if this does get passed and these restrictions are put on, and if you don't like it, nobody is making you buy that movie or listen to that music
1) the purchases of music/videos/etc will fall by the curb and the industries will be left scratching their heads going "wtf happened?"
-or-
2) the majority of people won't care and will still continue to buy the new restricted stuff anyways, and, in the eyes of the corps, they will not have lost.
Of course, if #2 happens then that means that you, my friends, are indeed in the minority and it's just because you want to illegally copy/pirate your stuff or get stuff for free, because the majority of people won't have seen a difference.
however if #1 happens, then it will turn out that everything that you are saying is correct, and justice will take care of itself.
Thus perhaps you should be putting your energies into the right place. If indeed this legislation does pass, (or even before it does), then lean on the same mechanisms that they use to promote this shit. Write your local newspapers. Create situations where this stuff truly is horrible. Tell your friends and neighbours. Put up billboards and posters. And certainly not the entire public are morons, they can see through shit, and if it is truly, absolutely horrible for the gross public then the gross public will respond.
Is everyone aware here that there are 5,000 children dying every month in iraq from malnutrition? check out the list of the top 30 atrocities of the 20th century, some of which are still continuing. And there's more that happens every day, in front of you, that you're too desensitized to look at. There's homeless (up to 700,000 each night sleeping on the streets, begging for money during the day), and many others.
Just a reminder that perhaps you guys with your DVD players and 28" televisions and well paying jobs and 1GHz+ computers might want to step back and take it all in perspective.
And finally, talk is cheap. If you are seriously angered by this, that's GREAT, seriously, so do something about it. I don't agree with this type of legislation any more than you do, but yelling/overexaggerating about it on
actually if they do switch to opt-in lists you'll find just about all email marketing businesses going chapter 11 as soon as the bill takes effect. Unless they can pull some sort of stupid "by NOT replying to this email you OPT-IN to receiving our advertising" then there will be no profit to be made in advertising only to people who want to get the advertising.
No, you're absolutely correct. Apparently Peter and timothy were too happy to actually read the article...
A directive regulating the distance selling of all other goods and services was adopted in 1997 and entered into force last year. Financial services were excluded from its scope since these were considered to require a separate set of rules. A law on unsolicited e-mail covering all other industries is expected early next year. The question of whether to apply opt-in or opt-out to e-mail marketing is provoking hot debate; the Commission favors opt-in, but many members of the European Parliament prefer the more industry-friendly opt-out approach.
So not only is the universal anti-email spam laws not on the table yet, but also neither of the laws have even been fully proposed yet, muchless passed. It's not a universal thing, and it has not even been drafted fully yet, nevermind passed.
As stated, industries much much much prefer the "opt-out" method, and thus since we know how much power the industry has over the laws, it's highly unlikely that they will be passed.
The only reason why the financial sector got this put into the bill is because the regulations for distance selling of their products were not decided in 1997 with the rest of the sectors because it was felt that finance required a different set of rules (why?) and since email marketing wasn't a problem 4 years ago, it wasn't an issue that needed addressing. It'll be interesting to see if it gets passed or just gets squashed or "removed at the last minute due to someone who was supposed to retype it" (a-la the "The Satellite Home Viewer Improvement Act of 1999" in the states).
I'm in Europe right now and have not seen any non visa/amex/mastercard credit cards. Are there any others?
Yes, anyone with a bank account here can get one, but in Canada at least you need to be 16 afaik (or have your parents give you one).
I knew a girl in highschool (age 14) who had a $9000 limit credit card on her father's account. Dayam.
But you can always add in a age verification thingy with the credit card check, that wouldn't be difficult.
woah dude, ok sorry, less the 900 numbers (some of which btw do require, and how are you supposed to check there as well?) face-to-face things require age checking because they can do it easily. It's not so easy on the phone or the internet.
And there's also a big difference between having someone "talk sexy" to you and viewing pornography or buying a gun.
Kiddie porn usually refers to the 5 year old or less than 12 year old kiddies, not the 17 year old kiddies. I think that a 40 year old who gets their kicks out of looking at 6 year olds get raped has something mentally wrong.
interesting. So like server X issues you a token, you sign it, pass the token to trusted party Y who verifies your signature, signs it itself, and returns it to you, and you return to server X. If all signatures match, then you can proceed.
No, I read your post, but there are certain things that should be age restricted. If not directly for the kids, then for the kids whose parents don't give a shite or are simply negligent.
Perhaps what you could do is to tag these sites that are deemed to be restricted in some countries, and then have the ISPs do the blocking to perform the age verification. I don't like where that road would head, but it would be a solution that wouldn't trample on international boundaries.
but it also reveals your identity
Wow... How do you propose any age verification system that doesn't require you to reveal who you are?
you know, I think you might be on to something.
If there was some way to create a global user account that you somehow had to proove your age in order to create said account, it might seriously curb things while not being too much of a hassle. Something like a verisign vouched personal certificate (not the email one), but somehting much easier to get. Like through your bank or (aaak!) government office or even via some not-for-profit company that sets up kiosks in public places or banks or supermarkets that you pay a small fee to get a "personal online ID". However this wouldn't solve the problem of forgery and stealing, but if you have to show up somewhere in person to get your account, then the person who gets their account stolen has got some explaining to do.
Yeah, not a perfect idea, but an interesting one.
What the need to do is legalize kiddy porn ... Before you freak, hear me out ...
I heard you out, and I still think that's a horrible idea.
Where you do get the kiddie porn if the act itself is illegal?
Oh yeah, that's right, either by breaking the law and molesting children, or by going to some country that doesn't care about such things.
Your reasoning behind your statement is the exact reason why virtual kiddie porn should be illegal, but certainly not the real thing.