"As far as I am aware, we know a lot less about the surface of Venus than we do about the surface of Mars or say, Mercury, or even Pluto."
Since the Magellan probe (which someone else already pointed you to), we've known more about the surface of Venus than we have about the Earth (oceans get in the way). Mars has been similarly mapped within the past decade or so, thanks to various orbiters. Mercury is something of the bastard child of the inner solar system; there's a probe on the way now, but the best we have is from a Mariner 10 fly-by that photographed most of one side of the planet before most of us were born.
Pluto... we're not even all that sure there is a "surface," at least for half of its orbit.
"Take Cuba for example. It's been over 45 years and our policy towards Cuba hasn't changed on iota, even after all the different administrations we've been through."
"As surveillance expands, people become free from danger, free to walk alone at night, free to work in a safe place, and free to buy any legal product or service without the threat of fraud."
Note that "free to dissent" doesn't appear in that list.
"Why does everyone blame SONY for disagreeing on formats?"
I can't speak for the poster, but personaly I think it'd be nice if Sony picked one format internally, at least. I can buy a Sony-made memory card and have it not fit into a Sony-made memory card reader.
"Oh BTW, MiniDisc is a great recording format."
It's magnetic media and it can't do digital-to-digital. In my opinion, the parent was correct to call it a "tape," as all it really did was act as a minicassette with a new form factor. It's more "tape"-ish than DAT in that respect.
"Sony's previous market introduction was too successfull... the Compact Audio Disc."
First off, it's "compact disc," no "audio" in the name. Second, it was developed by Philips, which isn't even from the same continent as Sony.
"people these days are engaging in what Linus Torvalds calls little more than a public wanking session trying to post comments more insightful than the rest."
"A couple of well placed nukes would finish the 7th fleet."
Including the submarines? A single Ohio class carries 24 SLBMs, and any nuclear attack by China would result in a nuclear response from the United States, which China would assuredly loose (China's nuclear arsenal is nowhere near parity with the United States).
China's nuclear arsenal is about as much a meaningful threat to the US as space-based weapons are a meaningful threat to China. Again, it would make more sense for China to get back down to earth and modernize and expand the PLA Navy.
"Further, for every job outsourced from the U.S., nine new jobs are actually created in the U.S."
As someone else pointed out the last time this came up as a topic, if demand for new compsci people was really so high, wages would go up. Otherwise, it looks more like an attempt to get more suckers to accept less pay, no overtime, etc.
"USA fears Chinese millitary so it tries to develop weapons that Chinese army cannot shoot down or destroy"
Personally, if I were China, I'd spend less time worrying about Buck Rogers and more time worrying about the Seventh Fleet. You know, something far more terrestrial, closer to home, and something the Chinese military really can't do much about. But that's just me.
It didn't always. It used to be a humorous typosquatter (something along the lines of "ZOMG, Slashdot has been hacked! That, or you typed in the wrong URL...").
"like hotels, for example - unless entry is restricted."
Even if the school in quesiton isn't one of the many with security guards and metal detectors posted at the entrances, they still aren't exactly open to the general public. Try seeing how long you can wander around the high school nearest you unhindered.
But even if the school is as "public" as you insist, I don't know of any school that doesn't keep any and all audio/video equipment under lock and key, for obvious reasons. I would be very surprised if more than a dozen people had access to the room the tape was found in.
"Those that you hurt become peaceful loving people who now understand that bullying and hurting others is wrong"
No, but they'll leave you alone. So long as society continues to condone their actions (and don't pretend for a second that it doesn't), they'll always find somebody to bully. Best you can do is make sure you're not one of them.
"They most certainly do not crave revenge upon you"
Bullying is the exact opposite of seeking vengeance, it's about seeking a weaker target than yourself rather than going up against what is really bothering you. As soon as a bully sees you as a "threat," you cease being a "target" and any frustration they may now have with you personally will be shifted to some other, more passive target.
"Gandi had something to say regarding this."
His tactics rely on the empathy of third parties, ones who could make the bully stop. In your typical high school environoment, the only third parties available are those cheering the bully on.
"(I, too, am overweight; unlike this kid, I can handle it.)"
Not very well, it seems. If you feel the need to deride others in a similar situation as you, then obviously you feel the same way about yourself, and you're using "It's all his own fault" to justify your own self-loathing (since everything bad that happens to you is your fault).
(Or do you feel that you copping to your own failures somehow makes them better?)
Of course, just because you may have the same build as him doesn't mean there are pictures of you dancing around making the rounds on the web, so you aren't in the same situation as he is.
"The right thing to do would have been (had I had parents who would stand up for me) to go to the adminstration, and then the school board."
You mean the ones that allowed the situation to perpetuate to begin with? If you're relying on the administration, you're essentially gambling that they're so incompetent as not to notice what is going on around them, rather than silently condoning it.
"I'd have published it, too."
You call for personal responsibility, but you don't think that the publishers should also have some responsibility for their own actions? The tape didn't "just happen" to get digitized and uploaded. If you actually believe in what you say, if you yourself would have published it, then you would have fessed up to it and taken your lumps.
"That kid gained so much geek cred that it's literally astounding."
Why would he want that?
"(I dropped out of school at 15 and took the CHSPE, the California High School Proficiency Exam, because I couldn't handle going there any more.)"
Just because you didn't stand up to your assailants doesn't mean nobody else should. Heaven forbid anybody rock the boat, hm?
"overly-litigious nature of our society"
Dude, Quebec! Not only are they Canadian, they're French Canadian! There are far fewer things you're allowed to sue for up there.
"If it was not criminal, why is the law involved?"
Civil suit, common law/Napoleonic code. Just because there's no statute against something doesn't mean it's fair game.
"With a little creativity and some willingness to be mocked (they say that one of the signs of intelligence is self-deprecating humor...)"
Self-deprecation means being mocked on your own terms. Or does it go back to your own self loathing, "The other kids make fun of me because I allow myself to be fat?" Does "Stockholm Syndrome" ring any bells?
"If there should be consequences, they should be limited to suspension from school at the most."
So the kid should have "sucked it up" like an adult but the publishers shouldn't be subject to adult penalties for their own actions? Seems like you're picking and choosing who has to show personal responsibility and who does not.
"Still, the film was made in a public place with public equipment."
How many of those films made with the same equipment in the same place wound up on the internet?
"at which point, he has no valid complaint."
Was the internet publication sanctioned by the school? Did he sign any disclaimers allowing the use of his image in such a public venue, or even mentioned in the student handbook? I can practice armchair law just as well as you.
"Are you suggesting that he's not in control of his own actions, and ridicule could lead him to go postal?"
No, I'm suggesting that Columbine is the logical outcome of the fanatical devotion to "Suck it up and deal with it!" the poster (and apparently you) adhere to. Putting a bullet or two into somebody obviously solves problems, and the most that you could say while still adhering to "Suck it up!" is that you disagree with the shooter on where the problem was (but even then, the Columbine shooters shot themselves as well, eventually solving all problems in a nice, neat package).
And even the families of the murder victims can't complain, as everybody knows that life sucks, and they should just deal with the loss and stop crying about it.
Or do you only cry "Deal with it!" when somebody is taking a course of action you don't agree with?
"no, that is contrary to what i said. (...) this kid left something he obviously did not want others to see in a public place."
Unless the shelf the tape was left on had a sign on it that said "For uploading to the internet," the best you can say is that he gave his implied permission (rather than, say, an express, written statement).
Similarly, you wrote:
"life sucks then you die. deal with it like everyone else or fast forward to the end"
It can be argued that you are giving your implied consent for somebody to kill you, as you do not appear to be satisfied with your life and the only escape you seem to see is through death.
If "Life sucks and then you die," any and all murders can be justified as euthanasia.
"he should not "take others with him", and that is not my message."
If everybody is miserable, someone following the Columbine example is doing a mercy to as many people as he can take down with him.
"You can't blame someone else because of your personal problems."
"Personal problems?" You seem to misunderstand the meaning of the word "personal." At over a million downloads, it became a very public problem.
"He could have appeared on television, done interviews, made lots of money, etc. if only he was proud of being Star Wars kid instead of ashamed."
Simply because some people seek fame and fortune at any expense doesn't mean everybody shares the same desires. It should never be assumed that everybody wants to be famous, lest we lose any amount of privacy we may have left ("Why would you want privacy when you could be famous?").
"uses some of the same exemptions for junk faxes that currently exist for the Do Not Call list."
This was called for by the Junk Fax "Prevention" Act of 2005. It cleared the Senate unanimously and by voice vote in the House. Be sure to thank your members of Congress for this one.
Slashdot Mirror
"As far as I am aware, we know a lot less about the surface of Venus than we do about the surface of Mars or say, Mercury, or even Pluto."
Since the Magellan probe (which someone else already pointed you to), we've known more about the surface of Venus than we have about the Earth (oceans get in the way). Mars has been similarly mapped within the past decade or so, thanks to various orbiters. Mercury is something of the bastard child of the inner solar system; there's a probe on the way now, but the best we have is from a Mariner 10 fly-by that photographed most of one side of the planet before most of us were born.
Pluto... we're not even all that sure there is a "surface," at least for half of its orbit.
"To get Venus straightened out for human habitation, you would have flat out get rid of something like 89 parts out of 90 in the Venutian atmosphere,"
Or live above the clouds. Air is a lifting gas in the current Venusian atmosphere.
"Take Cuba for example. It's been over 45 years and our policy towards Cuba hasn't changed on iota, even after all the different administrations we've been through."
You've never been to south Florida, have you?
"As surveillance expands, people become free from danger, free to walk alone at night, free to work in a safe place, and free to buy any legal product or service without the threat of fraud."
Note that "free to dissent" doesn't appear in that list.
Now I can say that I've finished downloading all the intrawebs!
"Why does everyone blame SONY for disagreeing on formats?"
... the Compact Audio Disc."
I can't speak for the poster, but personaly I think it'd be nice if Sony picked one format internally, at least. I can buy a Sony-made memory card and have it not fit into a Sony-made memory card reader.
"Oh BTW, MiniDisc is a great recording format."
It's magnetic media and it can't do digital-to-digital. In my opinion, the parent was correct to call it a "tape," as all it really did was act as a minicassette with a new form factor. It's more "tape"-ish than DAT in that respect.
"Sony's previous market introduction was too successfull
First off, it's "compact disc," no "audio" in the name. Second, it was developed by Philips, which isn't even from the same continent as Sony.
"people these days are engaging in what Linus Torvalds calls little more than a public wanking session trying to post comments more insightful than the rest."
Moderation: +1 Mentions Linus
"A couple of well placed nukes would finish the 7th fleet."
Including the submarines? A single Ohio class carries 24 SLBMs, and any nuclear attack by China would result in a nuclear response from the United States, which China would assuredly loose (China's nuclear arsenal is nowhere near parity with the United States).
China's nuclear arsenal is about as much a meaningful threat to the US as space-based weapons are a meaningful threat to China. Again, it would make more sense for China to get back down to earth and modernize and expand the PLA Navy.
"Further, for every job outsourced from the U.S., nine new jobs are actually created in the U.S."
As someone else pointed out the last time this came up as a topic, if demand for new compsci people was really so high, wages would go up. Otherwise, it looks more like an attempt to get more suckers to accept less pay, no overtime, etc.
"USA fears Chinese millitary so it tries to develop weapons that Chinese army cannot shoot down or destroy"
Personally, if I were China, I'd spend less time worrying about Buck Rogers and more time worrying about the Seventh Fleet. You know, something far more terrestrial, closer to home, and something the Chinese military really can't do much about. But that's just me.
It didn't always. It used to be a humorous typosquatter (something along the lines of "ZOMG, Slashdot has been hacked! That, or you typed in the wrong URL...").
"like hotels, for example - unless entry is restricted."
Even if the school in quesiton isn't one of the many with security guards and metal detectors posted at the entrances, they still aren't exactly open to the general public. Try seeing how long you can wander around the high school nearest you unhindered.
But even if the school is as "public" as you insist, I don't know of any school that doesn't keep any and all audio/video equipment under lock and key, for obvious reasons. I would be very surprised if more than a dozen people had access to the room the tape was found in.
"Those that you hurt become peaceful loving people who now understand that bullying and hurting others is wrong"
No, but they'll leave you alone. So long as society continues to condone their actions (and don't pretend for a second that it doesn't), they'll always find somebody to bully. Best you can do is make sure you're not one of them.
"They most certainly do not crave revenge upon you"
Bullying is the exact opposite of seeking vengeance, it's about seeking a weaker target than yourself rather than going up against what is really bothering you. As soon as a bully sees you as a "threat," you cease being a "target" and any frustration they may now have with you personally will be shifted to some other, more passive target.
"Gandi had something to say regarding this."
His tactics rely on the empathy of third parties, ones who could make the bully stop. In your typical high school environoment, the only third parties available are those cheering the bully on.
"(I, too, am overweight; unlike this kid, I can handle it.)"
Not very well, it seems. If you feel the need to deride others in a similar situation as you, then obviously you feel the same way about yourself, and you're using "It's all his own fault" to justify your own self-loathing (since everything bad that happens to you is your fault).
(Or do you feel that you copping to your own failures somehow makes them better?)
Of course, just because you may have the same build as him doesn't mean there are pictures of you dancing around making the rounds on the web, so you aren't in the same situation as he is.
"The right thing to do would have been (had I had parents who would stand up for me) to go to the adminstration, and then the school board."
You mean the ones that allowed the situation to perpetuate to begin with? If you're relying on the administration, you're essentially gambling that they're so incompetent as not to notice what is going on around them, rather than silently condoning it.
"I'd have published it, too."
You call for personal responsibility, but you don't think that the publishers should also have some responsibility for their own actions? The tape didn't "just happen" to get digitized and uploaded. If you actually believe in what you say, if you yourself would have published it, then you would have fessed up to it and taken your lumps.
"That kid gained so much geek cred that it's literally astounding."
Why would he want that?
"(I dropped out of school at 15 and took the CHSPE, the California High School Proficiency Exam, because I couldn't handle going there any more.)"
Just because you didn't stand up to your assailants doesn't mean nobody else should. Heaven forbid anybody rock the boat, hm?
"overly-litigious nature of our society"
Dude, Quebec! Not only are they Canadian, they're French Canadian! There are far fewer things you're allowed to sue for up there.
"If it was not criminal, why is the law involved?"
Civil suit, common law/Napoleonic code. Just because there's no statute against something doesn't mean it's fair game.
"With a little creativity and some willingness to be mocked (they say that one of the signs of intelligence is self-deprecating humor...)"
Self-deprecation means being mocked on your own terms. Or does it go back to your own self loathing, "The other kids make fun of me because I allow myself to be fat?" Does "Stockholm Syndrome" ring any bells?
"If there should be consequences, they should be limited to suspension from school at the most."
So the kid should have "sucked it up" like an adult but the publishers shouldn't be subject to adult penalties for their own actions? Seems like you're picking and choosing who has to show personal responsibility and who does not.
"Still, the film was made in a public place with public equipment."
How many of those films made with the same equipment in the same place wound up on the internet?
"at which point, he has no valid complaint."
Was the internet publication sanctioned by the school? Did he sign any disclaimers allowing the use of his image in such a public venue, or even mentioned in the student handbook? I can practice armchair law just as well as you.
Personally, I miss the Lum pic at salshdot.org.
"Are you suggesting that he's not in control of his own actions, and ridicule could lead him to go postal?"
No, I'm suggesting that Columbine is the logical outcome of the fanatical devotion to "Suck it up and deal with it!" the poster (and apparently you) adhere to. Putting a bullet or two into somebody obviously solves problems, and the most that you could say while still adhering to "Suck it up!" is that you disagree with the shooter on where the problem was (but even then, the Columbine shooters shot themselves as well, eventually solving all problems in a nice, neat package).
And even the families of the murder victims can't complain, as everybody knows that life sucks, and they should just deal with the loss and stop crying about it.
Or do you only cry "Deal with it!" when somebody is taking a course of action you don't agree with?
"no, that is contrary to what i said. (...) this kid left something he obviously did not want others to see in a public place."
Unless the shelf the tape was left on had a sign on it that said "For uploading to the internet," the best you can say is that he gave his implied permission (rather than, say, an express, written statement).
Similarly, you wrote:
"life sucks then you die. deal with it like everyone else or fast forward to the end"
It can be argued that you are giving your implied consent for somebody to kill you, as you do not appear to be satisfied with your life and the only escape you seem to see is through death.
If "Life sucks and then you die," any and all murders can be justified as euthanasia.
"he should not "take others with him", and that is not my message."
If everybody is miserable, someone following the Columbine example is doing a mercy to as many people as he can take down with him.
"You can't blame someone else because of your personal problems."
"Personal problems?" You seem to misunderstand the meaning of the word "personal." At over a million downloads, it became a very public problem.
"He could have appeared on television, done interviews, made lots of money, etc. if only he was proud of being Star Wars kid instead of ashamed."
Simply because some people seek fame and fortune at any expense doesn't mean everybody shares the same desires. It should never be assumed that everybody wants to be famous, lest we lose any amount of privacy we may have left ("Why would you want privacy when you could be famous?").
"at the risk of sounding un-sensitive, life sucks then you die. deal with it like everyone else or fast forward to the end"
And if he decides to fast-forward a few other peoples' lives as well, ala Columbine? You're fine with that, right?
"Kids teased him at school? Him? A fat Star Wars nerd? I don't believe it."
So that excuses it?
"Oh the horror! People... on the... STREET! He might have to talk to them, or worse yet IGNORE THEM!"
Would you mind posting your telephone number? I know a few telemar^Wpeople that might want to talk to you.
"every hot chick in school would be all over him like the geek that he is!"
So... he'd be beaten to a bloody pulp?
Tell them to get what instead, Linksys?
"uses some of the same exemptions for junk faxes that currently exist for the Do Not Call list."
This was called for by the Junk Fax "Prevention" Act of 2005. It cleared the Senate unanimously and by voice vote in the House. Be sure to thank your members of Congress for this one.
"The average user simply sees the pop-up, unaware of how many networks it traversed beforehand."
If Yahoo gave out their own pop-up blocker, they'd help stop this from happening.