well who the fuck keeps the original styrofoam packings around for more than a week after you get the computer??
But yeah, I too have some friends who worked for UPS and also have stories about kicking around fragile packages. That's what you get when you hire part time college students for manual labor....
You're confusing scientific achievement with solving socialogical problems. Science researches information in search of FACTS, some truth that can be utilized to do certain activities or accurately predict other things. Hunger, poverty, etc etc., are not scientific problems that can be solved thru logic or sheer computation. Even if a theoretical solution to one of these problems was found, you'd still have to overcome politics of the leaders in charge of the world as well as get the irrational masses to accept it. Both of which are an art, not a science.
So to say that "science" is not truly progressing because we still have world hunger is nonsense. By that reasoning science will never progress as long as there are problems in the world. And if there were no problems whatsoever, what need would there be for research into solutions for these non-existant problems?? There will ALWAYS be problems, and pure/abstract science research should always be promoted, because a useful application for its results can more easily be found after you've already got it.
Right now, 300 of you are probably starting to write replies, all in the vein of..
Free speech doesn't end where you disagree with what the other person has to say. You can't muzzle people just because they're evil or stupid. Information wants to be free, even if it'll be misused. etc.
To all of those people - will you please not talk about things you don't understand? It's very easy to talk about freedom of speech whilst being very far away from the real issues, posting comfortably over your DSL link.
You assume they don't know what they're talking about because their opinions are different than yours. Therefore, they should not be speaking such opinions. THIS is the kind of behavior that frightens those of us concerned about free speech.
Right here, right now, teenagers are being seduced into neo-fascist ideological groups every day. In France alone, there are local governments which have started banning books and newspapers that oppose them; Germany saw hundreds of attacks on blacks and non-Germans, with many of them dying in the attacks.
"Seduced"?? Unfortunately, most people who oppose such groups don't understand a fundamental issue: The desire to band together with other people who look/act/talk/smell/whatever like yourself and oppose those who are different from you is INHERENT in human psychology; it is NOT learned from radical outsider groups. The willingness to be tolerant of people dissimilar to yourself IS taught, and has to be learned. By banning internet postings about xenophobic ideas, you are essentially eliminating any discussion about them. You are NOT, however, eliminating the ideas themselves!
By eliminating the discussion, you remove the possibility for people to see both sides of an argument and make a decision based on those arguments. You are left with only the "official" policy on the issue, and if you are at all curious or doubtful of its veracity, you have no place to turn but to the radical underground, whose willingness and ability to discuss things in a rational matter will be limited. There will be no middle ground for discussion and research and progress, you either accept the official policy or you join the extremist underground. You end up in a situation where anyone questioning the "state policy" is a rebel and a troublemaker and must be dealt with in the most severe way... a situation which we roundly denounce in third-world countries as being without freedom and anti-democracy.
People were burned to death in their sleep.
You think that this sort of thing will STOP if the extremists have no media outlet to express their views? On the contrary, I think they will only increase in frequency because with no reasonable means to express their message, they must resort to major acts of vandalism or murder convey it. Consider their thought process: "Let's see I can:
a) put my ideas on a web site, which a few people MIGHT see before I get caught, and go to jail for many years, OR
b) I can burn down an apartment building, killing many of the people I dislike and WILL get national or world media attention about my message, and go to jail for many years."
So either way, you will go to jail for many years, which avenue do you think will be used more often?
What's that have to do with freedom of speech? Someone once said that in order to stop the hate, you'd have to kill all the grandmothers. (paraphrasing badly, basically in order to stop having hate passed on through generation)
Absolutely not true. As I said before, that tendency is entrenched in primordial human behavior, and would only be reborn as soon as the next generation of children reached their adolescent stage, in which they are supposed to question everything they have learned from authority in the beginning years of their life. They are supposed to question it all, push the limits, test the boundaries, and then reinforce those boundaries that pass the tests and overturn those that do not. The validity of rules can be reinforced by either being the most logically valid, or by having the strictest enforcement, by which the need for valid logic is overruled. But this doesn't usually work in the long run, and very strict enforcement of a rule (ie. no posting or discussion about racist or separatist thoughts, ever) tends to appear to the adolescent mind as though it lacks logical merit, whether it does or not, and therefore should probably be opposed. And besides, killing off all the grandmothers as a whole because their beliefs were unacceptable and they are therefore 'different' is the epitome of what you're supposedly trying to remove from society. The proposed solution is to create one more instance of the problem! (I know that you weren't seriously suggesting it.)
Hitler's autobiography Mein Kampf (My Struggle) remains banned in Germany. Even though public education in Germany is far better than in the US, with history being one of the most thoroughly-taught subjects, and the Nazi regime being thoroughly exposed as the evil that it was, a small minority will still flock to neo-fascist ideals.
... It's important to note that banning hate speech is an approach that crosses party lines in Europe: in Germany, both the ruling Socialist/Green coalition and the right- and left-wing opposition are strongly in favour of dealing harshly with neo-Nazis.
Well OF COURSE Mein Kampf and any Nazi propaganda will be banned from Germany. THEY LOST THE WAR. Anything resembling the people or ideals of the administration of a losing country would have to be rejected by the new leaders, or else there would be a casus belli by those who defeated it, in this case (nearly) the entire world!
...a small minority will still flock to neo-fascist ideals. They will use everything they can as propaganda material. They will find followers - probably not many, but enough. People are being killed by those 'few' followers. Hate is being spread. A lot of harm has been done to Europe through politics of hate, wars have been started, millions and millions have been killed.
The problem here, essentially with the whole debate, is that what is considered "unacceptable speech" changes over time. The current leaders are pushing for the restrictions of speech against what is considered 'unacceptable' NOW, but once these restrictions are in place and slowly expanded, they help to shape what is considered 'unacceptable' later. (The government bans hate speech and child pornography which we consider bad. Therefore anything else the government bans that we don't really know a lot about and don't understand must also be bad.) These same views that you consider as truths, that "all men are created equal", that the "slaves should be free", that 'jews should not be killed just because they were jews', were all radical behavior at the time they were first conceived. If the governments of the time had succeeded in squashing the non-official views back then, you wouldn't be arguing FOR them today. The "norm" would be to repress people who are different, and all those civil rights activists are troublemakers and are expressing hate against the current society, and must therefore be censored. And those that don't allow themselves to be censored must be punished severely!
Maybe you want to think about that next time you make fun of France banning Yahoo! nazi auctions. A lot of the stuff auctioned off could conceivably be worn by people burning down houses simply because they didn't like the skin colour of the people living in them.
So you're saying that if they were not allowed to buy the armbands or whatever, and so couldn't wear them, then they wouldn't have burned down the houses in the first place?? Come on! There's no nazi virus that infects anyone who touches it. That the fact that someone holds something that was made in Germany under the Nazi regime somehow means that they are now obligated to kill people and burn buildings?? What kind of sense does that make?
The internet is difficult to regulate. Neo-nazis use it to co-ordinate their activities unchecked, and to spread as much hate-filled material through the net as possible. You can't make accessing it impossible, but you can make accessing it illegal. You can make it illegal to spread false propaganda that's only intended to harm people and cause harm. You have to try.
You and I know full well that these ideas and activities were around and being spread easily, well before the internet was ever conceived. Allowing the censorship of speech on the internet will NOT stop people who are specifically trying to break the law. It will only encroach on the rights of normal, non-violent people who merely want to express their views. The question is not "are hate crimes bad?", but "are we in favor of restricting our own behavior in the future because someone else says something we don't like now?". All bad repressions of freedom in a democratic society do not happen all at once, they slowly encroach over time. No bill that says "we want to ban any speech that criticizes that government, or the rich, or big corporations, or anyone else that we decide on at any time" would pass public scrutiny. They all start by getting acceptance as a restriction against something that most people would dislike (ie. your hate groups). Then slowly over time, they add more small rules to the existing (and already accepted) restrictions. In this way, there is no big political battle to be fought, no specific point in time in which the government clearly stepped over the line...
Use of kitties for special operations is far more widespread than many people realize. Here are some kitty rules as part of a widespread project to decrease the productivity of American citizens:
Kitty Rules
Bathrooms:
Always accompany guests to the bathroom. It is not necessary to do anything. Just sit and stare.
Doors:
Do not allow any closed doors in any room. To get door open, stand on your hind legs and hammer with forepaws. Once door is opened, it is not necessary to use it. Especially after you have ordered an "outside" door opened, stand halfway in and out and think about several things. This is particularly important during very cold weather, rain, snow, or mosquito season.
Chairs and Rugs:
If you have to throw up, get to a chair quickly. If you cannot manage in time, get to an Oriental rug. If there is no Oriental rug, shag is good. When throwing up on the carpet, make sure you back up so the mess is as long as a human's bare foot.
Hampering:
If one of your humans is engaged in some activity and the other is idle, stay with the busy one. This is called "helping" otherwise known as "hampering". Here are the rules for hampering:
1) when supervising cooking, sit just behind the left heel of the cook. You cannot be seen and thereby stand a better chance of being stepped on and then picked up and comforted.
2) for book reading, get in close under the chin, between eyes and book, unless you can lie across the book itself.
3) for paperwork, lie on the work in the most appropriate manner so as to obscure as much of the work as possible and pretend to doze, but every so often reach out and slap the pencil or pen.
4) for people paying bills or working on income taxes or Christmas cards, keep in mind the aim; to hamper! First sit on the paper being worked on. When dislodged, watch sadly from the side of the table. When activity proceeds nicely, roll around on the papers, scattering them to the best of your ability. After being removed for the second time, push pens, pencils and erasers off the table, one at a time.
5) when a human is holding the newspaper in front of them, be sure to jump at the back of the paper, preferably with a running start. Humans love surprises.
6) when a human is working at computer, jump on the desk, walk across keyboard, bat at the mouse pointer on screen, then lay on the human's lap across arms, hampering typing.
Walking:
As often as possible, dart quickly and as close as possible in front of the human, especially on stairs, when they have something in their arms, in the dark, and when they first get up in the morning. This will help your human with their coordination skills.
Bedtime:
Always sleep on the human at night so he/she cannot move around.
Litter Box:
When using the litter box, be sure to kick as much litter out of the box as possible. Humans love the feel of kitty litter between their toes.
Hiding:
Every now and then, hide in a place where the humans cannot find you. Do not come out for three to four hours under any circumstances. This will cause the humans to panic (which they love) thinking that you have run away or are lost. Once you do come out, the humans will cover you with love and kisses and you will probably get a treat.
One last thought:
Whenever possible, get close to a human, especially their face, turn around and present your butt to them. Humans love this, so do it
often and, don't forget guests.
The problem is there are a lot more Muslims and Arabs than there are Americans (billions!). And if we go over and piss them all off by killing lots of 'innocent' people in Afganistan, we've suddenly got several million more people willing to be suicide bombers. Even if we manage to destroy every boat train and airplane in that whole region, we've lost almost all our fuel and petroleum products (military jets need gas too), and they could easily flood several million people carrying small bombs into Europe. Try to target your cruise missiles on something like that...
You may not care about Europeans, but I do. And don't forget there are also several million of them (towelheads) living in our country too. Imagine what kind of chaos could ensue if every taxi cab driver and convenience store manager (in NYC at least) decided to kill two people or set off a bomb killing fifty to avenge the deaths of his brothers back home...
Is that really viable at this point? Most cell phone batteries don't last for too many days, even while not in use. They'd last even less time if the owners were trying to use them to call for help like some of them did. Unfortunately most probably didn't get through because of the phone network jam that happened right afterwards...
"People who cry that it's limiting their freedoms... I don't think they have a leg to stand on. Children under 18 aren't allowed to go to R-rated movies, so why would we allow them to go into a school or a library and see X-rated material?"
This suggests that 18 and overs should be able to disable filters which is and never will be the case. Most people I see in the library are over 18 anyways.
It's also nothing like restricting children from seeing 'R'-rated (or NC17) movies. Movies are reviewed by a group of people on an individual basis, and a rating is given to each movie. The internet filtering software bans sites based on the pages matching a certain list of words, completely out of context, and it cannot tell the difference between a minor and an adult user. That would be like disallowing anyone to see "Saving Private Ryan" in the theater, because 'the title contains the word "private" and pornography is not suitable for children'.
Now obviously the movie mentioned is not made for children either, but the point is that everyone would be prevented from seeing it because of the so-called child-safety legislation. And how many otherwise acceptable movies be trapped under a similar word-net, considering all the different euphemisms for body parts and sexual acts?
Only if you could launch the rocket from the target area (the trailing wire from the launch site is the path that the lightning travels down). And if can make your way to the target area with a rocket like that, you might as well go there with a bomb instead.
If you wanted a rocket that you could launch from a significant distance and drop the wire over your target and hold it there until lightning hits it, you'd need much more complex and expensive equipment to do so. Not to mention figuring out a way to keep it from getting hit before it's touching the target. But again, if you're going to launch rockets that accurately at your target, you might as well have them explode and do a lot more damage than a lightning bolt could.
The only advantage I can think of might be to make your strike look like a natural occurance instead of man-made destruction. However, once word leaked out that a certain power had the ability to direct lightning bolts, every lightning bolt that caused somebody damage somewhere could lead to an instant accusation. A giant political mess!
It's an interesting thought though. If the technology to guide such missiles were made cheap enough, it could be used by small renegade armies that can't afford the highly destructive but enormously expensive conventional missiles. A small band of guerillas in the forest launching hordes of Estes rockets at an army camp during a storm sounds hilarious but might not be so far fetched...
The article says that "test has been going on for four to six months" and that one of these CDs has sold "close to 100,000 copies". It is useless to test out this new copy protection scheme on CDs that have already been widely released in an unprotected form. So it would make sense that they are doing this test only with NEW RELEASES.
For a NEW release to only sell 100,000 copies in six months, it obviously means that the affected CD's are going to be ones that most people have never heard of...
Let's just hope that when PASSPORT becomes the central underlying identification service of the whole world that they can remember to renew their domain name registration...:)
-----
Hell, n. - The state of being the richest man in the world and knowing something exists that you can't buy.
put some creative effort into your attacks...
on
2600 v. Ford Motors
·
· Score: 1
Why not try creating something meaningful and demonstrating how/why a particular company sucks, rather than just pointing it to other people's sites?? (example: www.flamingtowncars.com)
By just throwing visitors to the domain towards a different corporation, you are involving a third party in something offensive without their knowledge or consent. The last thing that the recipients of such suprise redirects will be is polite...
"I wonder, if you had asked the framers of the Constitution to predict how long it would be until the government they were instituting would be toppled by revolution from within, what would they have said?"
Maybe something like this:
"I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical."
Thomas Jefferson
I also remember him saying something about 20 years, but I can't find that quote again...
Slashdot Mirror
well who the fuck keeps the original styrofoam packings around for more than a week after you get the computer??
But yeah, I too have some friends who worked for UPS and also have stories about kicking around fragile packages. That's what you get when you hire part time college students for manual labor....
You're confusing scientific achievement with solving socialogical problems. Science researches information in search of FACTS, some truth that can be utilized to do certain activities or accurately predict other things. Hunger, poverty, etc etc., are not scientific problems that can be solved thru logic or sheer computation. Even if a theoretical solution to one of these problems was found, you'd still have to overcome politics of the leaders in charge of the world as well as get the irrational masses to accept it. Both of which are an art, not a science.
So to say that "science" is not truly progressing because we still have world hunger is nonsense. By that reasoning science will never progress as long as there are problems in the world. And if there were no problems whatsoever, what need would there be for research into solutions for these non-existant problems?? There will ALWAYS be problems, and pure/abstract science research should always be promoted, because a useful application for its results can more easily be found after you've already got it.
Right now, 300 of you are probably starting to write replies, all in the vein of..
To all of those people - will you please not talk about things you don't understand? It's very easy to talk about freedom of speech whilst being very far away from the real issues, posting comfortably over your DSL link.
You assume they don't know what they're talking about because their opinions are different than yours. Therefore, they should not be speaking such opinions. THIS is the kind of behavior that frightens those of us concerned about free speech.
Right here, right now, teenagers are being seduced into neo-fascist ideological groups every day. In France alone, there are local governments which have started banning books and newspapers that oppose them; Germany saw hundreds of attacks on blacks and non-Germans, with many of them dying in the attacks.
"Seduced"?? Unfortunately, most people who oppose such groups don't understand a fundamental issue: The desire to band together with other people who look/act/talk/smell/whatever like yourself and oppose those who are different from you is INHERENT in human psychology; it is NOT learned from radical outsider groups. The willingness to be tolerant of people dissimilar to yourself IS taught, and has to be learned. By banning internet postings about xenophobic ideas, you are essentially eliminating any discussion about them. You are NOT, however, eliminating the ideas themselves!
By eliminating the discussion, you remove the possibility for people to see both sides of an argument and make a decision based on those arguments. You are left with only the "official" policy on the issue, and if you are at all curious or doubtful of its veracity, you have no place to turn but to the radical underground, whose willingness and ability to discuss things in a rational matter will be limited. There will be no middle ground for discussion and research and progress, you either accept the official policy or you join the extremist underground. You end up in a situation where anyone questioning the "state policy" is a rebel and a troublemaker and must be dealt with in the most severe way... a situation which we roundly denounce in third-world countries as being without freedom and anti-democracy.
People were burned to death in their sleep.
You think that this sort of thing will STOP if the extremists have no media outlet to express their views? On the contrary, I think they will only increase in frequency because with no reasonable means to express their message, they must resort to major acts of vandalism or murder convey it. Consider their thought process:
"Let's see I can:
a) put my ideas on a web site, which a few people MIGHT see before I get caught, and go to jail for many years, OR
b) I can burn down an apartment building, killing many of the people I dislike and WILL get national or world media attention about my message, and go to jail for many years."
So either way, you will go to jail for many years, which avenue do you think will be used more often?
What's that have to do with freedom of speech? Someone once said that in order to stop the hate, you'd have to kill all the grandmothers. (paraphrasing badly, basically in order to stop having hate passed on through generation)
Absolutely not true. As I said before, that tendency is entrenched in primordial human behavior, and would only be reborn as soon as the next generation of children reached their adolescent stage, in which they are supposed to question everything they have learned from authority in the beginning years of their life. They are supposed to question it all, push the limits, test the boundaries, and then reinforce those boundaries that pass the tests and overturn those that do not. The validity of rules can be reinforced by either being the most logically valid, or by having the strictest enforcement, by which the need for valid logic is overruled. But this doesn't usually work in the long run, and very strict enforcement of a rule (ie. no posting or discussion about racist or separatist thoughts, ever) tends to appear to the adolescent mind as though it lacks logical merit, whether it does or not, and therefore should probably be opposed. And besides, killing off all the grandmothers as a whole because their beliefs were unacceptable and they are therefore 'different' is the epitome of what you're supposedly trying to remove from society. The proposed solution is to create one more instance of the problem! (I know that you weren't seriously suggesting it.)
Hitler's autobiography Mein Kampf (My Struggle) remains banned in Germany. Even though public education in Germany is far better than in the US, with history being one of the most thoroughly-taught subjects, and the Nazi regime being thoroughly exposed as the evil that it was, a small minority will still flock to neo-fascist ideals.
Well OF COURSE Mein Kampf and any Nazi propaganda will be banned from Germany. THEY LOST THE WAR. Anything resembling the people or ideals of the administration of a losing country would have to be rejected by the new leaders, or else there would be a casus belli by those who defeated it, in this case (nearly) the entire world!
The problem here, essentially with the whole debate, is that what is considered "unacceptable speech" changes over time. The current leaders are pushing for the restrictions of speech against what is considered 'unacceptable' NOW, but once these restrictions are in place and slowly expanded, they help to shape what is considered 'unacceptable' later. (The government bans hate speech and child pornography which we consider bad. Therefore anything else the government bans that we don't really know a lot about and don't understand must also be bad.) These same views that you consider as truths, that "all men are created equal", that the "slaves should be free", that 'jews should not be killed just because they were jews', were all radical behavior at the time they were first conceived. If the governments of the time had succeeded in squashing the non-official views back then, you wouldn't be arguing FOR them today. The "norm" would be to repress people who are different, and all those civil rights activists are troublemakers and are expressing hate against the current society, and must therefore be censored. And those that don't allow themselves to be censored must be punished severely!
Maybe you want to think about that next time you make fun of France banning Yahoo! nazi auctions. A lot of the stuff auctioned off could conceivably be worn by people burning down houses simply because they didn't like the skin colour of the people living in them.
So you're saying that if they were not allowed to buy the armbands or whatever, and so couldn't wear them, then they wouldn't have burned down the houses in the first place?? Come on! There's no nazi virus that infects anyone who touches it. That the fact that someone holds something that was made in Germany under the Nazi regime somehow means that they are now obligated to kill people and burn buildings?? What kind of sense does that make?
The internet is difficult to regulate. Neo-nazis use it to co-ordinate their activities unchecked, and to spread as much hate-filled material through the net as possible. You can't make accessing it impossible, but you can make accessing it illegal. You can make it illegal to spread false propaganda that's only intended to harm people and cause harm. You have to try.
You and I know full well that these ideas and activities were around and being spread easily, well before the internet was ever conceived. Allowing the censorship of speech on the internet will NOT stop people who are specifically trying to break the law. It will only encroach on the rights of normal, non-violent people who merely want to express their views. The question is not "are hate crimes bad?", but "are we in favor of restricting our own behavior in the future because someone else says something we don't like now?". All bad repressions of freedom in a democratic society do not happen all at once, they slowly encroach over time. No bill that says "we want to ban any speech that criticizes that government, or the rich, or big corporations, or anyone else that we decide on at any time" would pass public scrutiny. They all start by getting acceptance as a restriction against something that most people would dislike (ie. your hate groups). Then slowly over time, they add more small rules to the existing (and already accepted) restrictions. In this way, there is no big political battle to be fought, no specific point in time in which the government clearly stepped over the line...
Use of kitties for special operations is far more widespread than many people realize. Here are some kitty rules as part of a widespread project to decrease the productivity of American citizens:
Kitty Rules
Bathrooms:
Always accompany guests to the bathroom. It is not necessary to do anything. Just sit and stare.
Doors:
Do not allow any closed doors in any room. To get door open, stand on your hind legs and hammer with forepaws. Once door is opened, it is not necessary to use it. Especially after you have ordered an "outside" door opened, stand halfway in and out and think about several things. This is particularly important during very cold weather, rain, snow, or mosquito season.
Chairs and Rugs:
If you have to throw up, get to a chair quickly. If you cannot manage in time, get to an Oriental rug. If there is no Oriental rug, shag is good. When throwing up on the carpet, make sure you back up so the mess is as long as a human's bare foot.
Hampering:
If one of your humans is engaged in some activity and the other is idle, stay with the busy one. This is called "helping" otherwise known as "hampering". Here are the rules for hampering:
1) when supervising cooking, sit just behind the left heel of the cook. You cannot be seen and thereby stand a better chance of being stepped on and then picked up and comforted.
2) for book reading, get in close under the chin, between eyes and book, unless you can lie across the book itself.
3) for paperwork, lie on the work in the most appropriate manner so as to obscure as much of the work as possible and pretend to doze, but every so often reach out and slap the pencil or pen.
4) for people paying bills or working on income taxes or Christmas cards, keep in mind the aim; to hamper! First sit on the paper being worked on. When dislodged, watch sadly from the side of the table. When activity proceeds nicely, roll around on the papers, scattering them to the best of your ability. After being removed for the second time, push pens, pencils and erasers off the table, one at a time.
5) when a human is holding the newspaper in front of them, be sure to jump at the back of the paper, preferably with a running start. Humans love surprises.
6) when a human is working at computer, jump on the desk, walk across keyboard, bat at the mouse pointer on screen, then lay on the human's lap across arms, hampering typing.
Walking:
As often as possible, dart quickly and as close as possible in front of the human, especially on stairs, when they have something in their arms, in the dark, and when they first get up in the morning. This will help your human with their coordination skills.
Bedtime:
Always sleep on the human at night so he/she cannot move around.
Litter Box:
When using the litter box, be sure to kick as much litter out of the box as possible. Humans love the feel of kitty litter between their toes.
Hiding:
Every now and then, hide in a place where the humans cannot find you. Do not come out for three to four hours under any circumstances. This will cause the humans to panic (which they love) thinking that you have run away or are lost. Once you do come out, the humans will cover you with love and kisses and you will probably get a treat.
One last thought:
Whenever possible, get close to a human, especially their face, turn around and present your butt to them. Humans love this, so do it
often and, don't forget guests.
The problem is there are a lot more Muslims and Arabs than there are Americans (billions!). And if we go over and piss them all off by killing lots of 'innocent' people in Afganistan, we've suddenly got several million more people willing to be suicide bombers. Even if we manage to destroy every boat train and airplane in that whole region, we've lost almost all our fuel and petroleum products (military jets need gas too), and they could easily flood several million people carrying small bombs into Europe. Try to target your cruise missiles on something like that...
You may not care about Europeans, but I do. And don't forget there are also several million of them (towelheads) living in our country too. Imagine what kind of chaos could ensue if every taxi cab driver and convenience store manager (in NYC at least) decided to kill two people or set off a bomb killing fifty to avenge the deaths of his brothers back home...
Is that really viable at this point? Most cell phone batteries don't last for too many days, even while not in use. They'd last even less time if the owners were trying to use them to call for help like some of them did. Unfortunately most probably didn't get through because of the phone network jam that happened right afterwards...
"People who cry that it's limiting their freedoms ... I don't think they have a leg to stand on. Children under 18 aren't allowed to go to R-rated movies, so why would we allow them to go into a school or a library and see X-rated material?"
This suggests that 18 and overs should be able to disable filters which is and never will be the case. Most people I see in the library are over 18 anyways.
It's also nothing like restricting children from seeing 'R'-rated (or NC17) movies. Movies are reviewed by a group of people on an individual basis, and a rating is given to each movie. The internet filtering software bans sites based on the pages matching a certain list of words, completely out of context, and it cannot tell the difference between a minor and an adult user. That would be like disallowing anyone to see "Saving Private Ryan" in the theater, because 'the title contains the word "private" and pornography is not suitable for children'.
Now obviously the movie mentioned is not made for children either, but the point is that everyone would be prevented from seeing it because of the so-called child-safety legislation. And how many otherwise acceptable movies be trapped under a similar word-net, considering all the different euphemisms for body parts and sexual acts?
Only if you could launch the rocket from the target area (the trailing wire from the launch site is the path that the lightning travels down). And if can make your way to the target area with a rocket like that, you might as well go there with a bomb instead.
If you wanted a rocket that you could launch from a significant distance and drop the wire over your target and hold it there until lightning hits it, you'd need much more complex and expensive equipment to do so. Not to mention figuring out a way to keep it from getting hit before it's touching the target. But again, if you're going to launch rockets that accurately at your target, you might as well have them explode and do a lot more damage than a lightning bolt could.
The only advantage I can think of might be to make your strike look like a natural occurance instead of man-made destruction. However, once word leaked out that a certain power had the ability to direct lightning bolts, every lightning bolt that caused somebody damage somewhere could lead to an instant accusation. A giant political mess!
It's an interesting thought though. If the technology to guide such missiles were made cheap enough, it could be used by small renegade armies that can't afford the highly destructive but enormously expensive conventional missiles. A small band of guerillas in the forest launching hordes of Estes rockets at an army camp during a storm sounds hilarious but might not be so far fetched...
The article says that "test has been going on for four to six months" and that one of these CDs has sold "close to 100,000 copies". It is useless to test out this new copy protection scheme on CDs that have already been widely released in an unprotected form. So it would make sense that they are doing this test only with NEW RELEASES.
For a NEW release to only sell 100,000 copies in six months, it obviously means that the affected CD's are going to be ones that most people have never heard of...
-----
Hell, n. - The state of being the richest man in the world and knowing something exists that you can't buy.
Why not try creating something meaningful and demonstrating how/why a particular company sucks, rather than just pointing it to other people's sites?? (example: www.flamingtowncars.com)
By just throwing visitors to the domain towards a different corporation, you are involving a third party in something offensive without their knowledge or consent. The last thing that the recipients of such suprise redirects will be is polite...
"I wonder, if you had asked the framers of the Constitution to predict how long it would be until the government they were instituting would be toppled by revolution from within, what would they have said?"
Maybe something like this:
"I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical."
Thomas Jefferson
I also remember him saying something about 20 years, but I can't find that quote again...