Exactly. What people can't get one way, they'll get another, be that deranged or normal pursuits. In which case, making virtual kiddie porn is actually a noble calling, since it reduces the demand for the real thing.
The other day someone posted a link to a nifty gov't chart on crime, which shows a strong correlation between reduced violent crime and the debuts of various violent games. While I was there, I also noticed that there are two distinct and permanent drops in incidences of rape and sexual assault:
The first happened in the late 1980s, when BBSs first made porn available to anyone with a modem, and anonymously enough for most folk (no more brown-wrapped magazines in your mailbox!) A limited subset of the population, yes, but still enough to notice the drop, if you realised that porn BBSs were at their height from 1988 or so thru 1995.
The second happened in 1996, when the internet suddenly took off -- and made porn available to almost everyone without restriction, and with at least some available anonymously.
Now, there's no good way to PROVE that the drop in rape stats is due to people being able to access all the porn they want without anyone chiding them for it, but I found the correlation too close to ignore.
And some that cause the most drastic legislation are the most negligible as realworld risks. Frex, banning specific dog breeds, even tho your chance of death by dog attack is nearly nil. You are somewhat more likely to be run over and killed by your nextdoor neighbour, yet we don't ban cars...
[laughing] Sounds like me, in my fearsome persona as "the beta-tester who can break anything". It's why in a dev-group of 5 pro coders and 26 testers, I found 75% of the reported bugs -- I just can't help doing the unexpected, even if I do so by accident! Tho most often it's really extrapolation: Action X works while the program is doing THIS, so why shouldn't it work while you're doing THAT?
Also, this situation has reasonably good "social-level security" since even busy repair shops usually know most of their customers by sight, or at least will remember that this here car belongs to that there person. It's essentially a two-keys situation, where both the car and the person need to match the counter person's memory of who belongs to what.
Which is why I said above (having thought of the "send everyone home, instant dispersal" method before encountering this thread) -- if you'd normally ride the bus, walk with a friend to their home instead. This also applies to students who normally drive to school -- leave the car, pick a friend and walk to their home.
No potential for parking lot bottleneck (nor OMG I'M TRAPPED panic) if everyone leaves on foot.
A simple way to instantly randomize the evacuation would be to tell everyone "Go home the way you normally do, or if you would ordinarily take the bus, go with a friend who walks home" which would quickly scatter the targets to the four winds.
Sometimes it's obvious that the person's intent was to illicitly piggyback someone else's connection. Parking out front of a building and having at it makes it kinda obvious.
But sometimes it's not so cut and dried: One night at the PC user grope meeting, we were trying to find a signal from one of the free municipal wireless points, but since most of the signals in range had no names attached, we had no idea whether we were touching the city transit bus (the one we were looking for), the nearby public library, some small business' leaky access point, or some random homeowner's signal.
Fair enough, but what I think that tells you is that your price point in Asia is probably too high, whereas the commercial pirates there are in the sweet spot. It may be a lot more worthwhile to market language-specific versions at different price points (obviously your average American kid isn't going to want a game that comes up in Cantonese) and make the language module hard to hack, rather than worrying about DRM that the commercial pirates may well strip, or redirect to their own authenticating server if they're really clever.
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws." -- Tacitus, Roman senator and historian (A.D. c.56-c.115)
"The more prohibitions there are, the poorer the people will be. The more laws are promulgated, the more thieves and bandits there will be." -- Lao-tzu, The Tao Te Ching (believed written in China, 6th century BC).
Nothing changes, eh?:(
Our local library has copies of some of the early California Codebooks. The Code from around 1890 is a single volume of about 500 pages, just over an inch thick. The current CA Code takes about 6 FEET of shelf space! We're probably only marginally better off (from a legal standpoint) than we were under the 1890s Code, yet we're vastly more criminalized.
The risk of "If I want to write you up, I can and WILL find *some* violation, no matter how trivial" is why if the police or ANY gov't official comes to the door, you should never, ever let them in if they don't have a warrant.
"The difference between graphic bdsm pictures and pr0n involving children is that the former are fictitious creations made by consenting adults, and the latter actually happened to children unable to defend themselves."
Except that as I recall, in some jurisdictions even FICTIONAL IMAGES (eg. comics) that depict kiddie porn are legally considered to be the very same thing as actual photos of real live child porn.
Yep -- even if no actual children are involved, it can still be illegal. Think of the defenseless pixels!!
Well, you're just full of cheerful thoughts... and here's another: Say the FBI spams all of America with their honeypot link email. Anyone who happens to be under investigation for something else, and who innocently failed to delete the FBI's spam, could conceivably find themselves holding "evidence of intent to download" simply because they didn't delete the email in question.
Good example of why there should be absolutely NO laws against thoughtcrime, or intentcrime -- only against real, actively-committed crime. Anyone here who hasn't had at least one majorly illegal thought at some point?? Into the jailhouse, suckers!
I had similar thoughts after R'ing TFA and noting the "criminalize theft of wireless" story... I foresee that the FBI's *next* sting will be to leave a wireless access point open to the world, then arrest anyone who takes advantage of it, however innocently.
As to clicking a hyperlink being intent to download -- aside from the thoughtcrime aspect of such laws, I know plenty of inexperienced computer users who haven't yet learned not to click random links, and who would be easily ensnared by the FBI's scam, even tho these people have absolutely no interest in porn (kiddie or otherwise).
I have the same problem with "black lights" -- fuzzes the hell out of everything (and are painfully BRIGHT to my eyes -- apparently I see further into UV than normal).
As to blue LEDs, in my experience blue lights tend to drag your attention AWAY from the road, as the eyes/brain never quite get used to them.
My truck's high-beam indicator was the very first blue light I ever saw inside a vehicle, and I had to stop and tape over the damned thing the very first time I drove it at night... had been going a couple hours but it never stopped bothering my eyes, not to mention the negative impact on my night vision (which is normally VERY good).
At any rate... yeah, maybe more blue light in your vehicle will keep you awake better, but the tradeoff is reduced attention on the road and reduced night vision. Explain to me how this is progress??
Better would be a return to lifestyles that allow us a good 8-9 hours of sleep every night! with the side-benefit that you'd no longer have to squeeze your morning toilet into your drive time.
Yeah, it's a risky game all right. But Hormel seems to do okay with SPAM vs spam:)
Unfortunately trying to maintain a lost brand trademark by being the best in the field doesn't work, since most people buy cheapest regardless of quality.:(
Segway, that's it... the moment I wanted the word it just plumb flew outta my head. Only place I've seen 'em used are for the security cops at the Burbank airport, but yeah, man, I WANT one... mondo cool! And don't they remind you of the skim-the-ground-almost-flying dreams you probably had as a kid?!
Areas like Los Angeles where the *average* commute is about 50 miles (last I heard... may be longer now) one way... not practical, nope, unless you're lucky enough to have a train that can carry your mini-vehicle too, and that goes somewhere near your home AND near your work AND at hours that match your schedule, which chances are you have no control over. Otherwise, as you note, they need more range and more speed to be practical.
But in more constrained environments, I can see a small hybrid becoming popular, much as bicycles used to be.
Actually, they have to be SEEN to discourage its use, lest they lose the trademark.
But you can bet Adobe is secretly pleased that almost every time someone mentions a manipulated image, their brand-awareness gets a small but definite boost. I know people who think that ONLY Photoshop can be used for such manipulation, in part thanks to this verbification.
I didn't go that far. I looked at the length of the road visible beyond the foreground area, concluded that it had already been cleared of loose cannonballs (since there are none on the rest of its visible length), and that therefore the cannonballs lying on the road had to have been placed there FOR the 2nd photo.
Also, the area appears to have been slightly muddy, and the cannonballs on the road show no sinkage, while those elsewhere do. Ergo, those on the road have been there less time than those in the ditch.
When I read this in TFA... ======= "f------ brilliant." The FCC said the "F-word" in any context "inherently has a sexual connotation" and can trigger enforcement. =======...I couldn't help but wonder if the FCC thinks fire comes out of your ass when you fuck?!
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Exactly. What people can't get one way, they'll get another, be that deranged or normal pursuits. In which case, making virtual kiddie porn is actually a noble calling, since it reduces the demand for the real thing.
The other day someone posted a link to a nifty gov't chart on crime, which shows a strong correlation between reduced violent crime and the debuts of various violent games. While I was there, I also noticed that there are two distinct and permanent drops in incidences of rape and sexual assault:
The first happened in the late 1980s, when BBSs first made porn available to anyone with a modem, and anonymously enough for most folk (no more brown-wrapped magazines in your mailbox!) A limited subset of the population, yes, but still enough to notice the drop, if you realised that porn BBSs were at their height from 1988 or so thru 1995.
The second happened in 1996, when the internet suddenly took off -- and made porn available to almost everyone without restriction, and with at least some available anonymously.
Now, there's no good way to PROVE that the drop in rape stats is due to people being able to access all the porn they want without anyone chiding them for it, but I found the correlation too close to ignore.
[grin] So is the glass half-full or half-empty?? MY question is, why does the glass leak??
And some that cause the most drastic legislation are the most negligible as realworld risks. Frex, banning specific dog breeds, even tho your chance of death by dog attack is nearly nil. You are somewhat more likely to be run over and killed by your nextdoor neighbour, yet we don't ban cars...
[laughing] Sounds like me, in my fearsome persona as "the beta-tester who can break anything". It's why in a dev-group of 5 pro coders and 26 testers, I found 75% of the reported bugs -- I just can't help doing the unexpected, even if I do so by accident! Tho most often it's really extrapolation: Action X works while the program is doing THIS, so why shouldn't it work while you're doing THAT?
Also, this situation has reasonably good "social-level security" since even busy repair shops usually know most of their customers by sight, or at least will remember that this here car belongs to that there person. It's essentially a two-keys situation, where both the car and the person need to match the counter person's memory of who belongs to what.
Which is why I said above (having thought of the "send everyone home, instant dispersal" method before encountering this thread) -- if you'd normally ride the bus, walk with a friend to their home instead. This also applies to students who normally drive to school -- leave the car, pick a friend and walk to their home.
No potential for parking lot bottleneck (nor OMG I'M TRAPPED panic) if everyone leaves on foot.
A simple way to instantly randomize the evacuation would be to tell everyone "Go home the way you normally do, or if you would ordinarily take the bus, go with a friend who walks home" which would quickly scatter the targets to the four winds.
Sometimes it's obvious that the person's intent was to illicitly piggyback someone else's connection. Parking out front of a building and having at it makes it kinda obvious.
But sometimes it's not so cut and dried: One night at the PC user grope meeting, we were trying to find a signal from one of the free municipal wireless points, but since most of the signals in range had no names attached, we had no idea whether we were touching the city transit bus (the one we were looking for), the nearby public library, some small business' leaky access point, or some random homeowner's signal.
And such an exemption encourages corruption; just look at the thriving business some cop shops do in confiscated drugs.
Fair enough, but what I think that tells you is that your price point in Asia is probably too high, whereas the commercial pirates there are in the sweet spot. It may be a lot more worthwhile to market language-specific versions at different price points (obviously your average American kid isn't going to want a game that comes up in Cantonese) and make the language module hard to hack, rather than worrying about DRM that the commercial pirates may well strip, or redirect to their own authenticating server if they're really clever.
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws." -- Tacitus, Roman senator and historian (A.D. c.56-c.115)
:(
"The more prohibitions there are, the poorer the people will be. The more laws are promulgated, the more thieves and bandits there will be." -- Lao-tzu, The Tao Te Ching (believed written in China, 6th century BC).
Nothing changes, eh?
Our local library has copies of some of the early California Codebooks. The Code from around 1890 is a single volume of about 500 pages, just over an inch thick. The current CA Code takes about 6 FEET of shelf space! We're probably only marginally better off (from a legal standpoint) than we were under the 1890s Code, yet we're vastly more criminalized.
The risk of "If I want to write you up, I can and WILL find *some* violation, no matter how trivial" is why if the police or ANY gov't official comes to the door, you should never, ever let them in if they don't have a warrant.
"The difference between graphic bdsm pictures and pr0n involving children is that the former are fictitious creations made by consenting adults, and the latter actually happened to children unable to defend themselves."
Except that as I recall, in some jurisdictions even FICTIONAL IMAGES (eg. comics) that depict kiddie porn are legally considered to be the very same thing as actual photos of real live child porn.
Yep -- even if no actual children are involved, it can still be illegal. Think of the defenseless pixels!!
"The "pandering" provision of the PROTECT Act makes it illegal to claim you have child pornography, even if you don't."
Um... isn't this exactly what the FBI is doing??
Well, you're just full of cheerful thoughts... and here's another: Say the FBI spams all of America with their honeypot link email. Anyone who happens to be under investigation for something else, and who innocently failed to delete the FBI's spam, could conceivably find themselves holding "evidence of intent to download" simply because they didn't delete the email in question.
Good example of why there should be absolutely NO laws against thoughtcrime, or intentcrime -- only against real, actively-committed crime. Anyone here who hasn't had at least one majorly illegal thought at some point?? Into the jailhouse, suckers!
I had similar thoughts after R'ing TFA and noting the "criminalize theft of wireless" story... I foresee that the FBI's *next* sting will be to leave a wireless access point open to the world, then arrest anyone who takes advantage of it, however innocently.
As to clicking a hyperlink being intent to download -- aside from the thoughtcrime aspect of such laws, I know plenty of inexperienced computer users who haven't yet learned not to click random links, and who would be easily ensnared by the FBI's scam, even tho these people have absolutely no interest in porn (kiddie or otherwise).
Same reason my truck has a chunk of duct tape stuck to the instrument panel... the highbeam indicator is blue, bright, annoying, and had to GO!!
Consider too that at night the percentage of trucks on the road is higher, since long-haul truckers do a lot more night-driving than average folks.
I have the same problem with "black lights" -- fuzzes the hell out of everything (and are painfully BRIGHT to my eyes -- apparently I see further into UV than normal).
... had been going a couple hours but it never stopped bothering my eyes, not to mention the negative impact on my night vision (which is normally VERY good).
As to blue LEDs, in my experience blue lights tend to drag your attention AWAY from the road, as the eyes/brain never quite get used to them.
My truck's high-beam indicator was the very first blue light I ever saw inside a vehicle, and I had to stop and tape over the damned thing the very first time I drove it at night
At any rate... yeah, maybe more blue light in your vehicle will keep you awake better, but the tradeoff is reduced attention on the road and reduced night vision. Explain to me how this is progress??
Better would be a return to lifestyles that allow us a good 8-9 hours of sleep every night! with the side-benefit that you'd no longer have to squeeze your morning toilet into your drive time.
Yeah, it's a risky game all right. But Hormel seems to do okay with SPAM vs spam :)
:(
Unfortunately trying to maintain a lost brand trademark by being the best in the field doesn't work, since most people buy cheapest regardless of quality.
Segway, that's it... the moment I wanted the word it just plumb flew outta my head. Only place I've seen 'em used are for the security cops at the Burbank airport, but yeah, man, I WANT one... mondo cool! And don't they remind you of the skim-the-ground-almost-flying dreams you probably had as a kid?!
... may be longer now) one way... not practical, nope, unless you're lucky enough to have a train that can carry your mini-vehicle too, and that goes somewhere near your home AND near your work AND at hours that match your schedule, which chances are you have no control over. Otherwise, as you note, they need more range and more speed to be practical.
Areas like Los Angeles where the *average* commute is about 50 miles (last I heard
But in more constrained environments, I can see a small hybrid becoming popular, much as bicycles used to be.
Actually, they have to be SEEN to discourage its use, lest they lose the trademark.
But you can bet Adobe is secretly pleased that almost every time someone mentions a manipulated image, their brand-awareness gets a small but definite boost. I know people who think that ONLY Photoshop can be used for such manipulation, in part thanks to this verbification.
Explains some of the lame images we see on the net ... ;)
I didn't go that far. I looked at the length of the road visible beyond the foreground area, concluded that it had already been cleared of loose cannonballs (since there are none on the rest of its visible length), and that therefore the cannonballs lying on the road had to have been placed there FOR the 2nd photo.
Also, the area appears to have been slightly muddy, and the cannonballs on the road show no sinkage, while those elsewhere do. Ergo, those on the road have been there less time than those in the ditch.
...and for diagnosing damaged JPGs (I used it extensively when reconstructing mangled JPGs from someone's disk crash):
JPEGsnoop, by Calvin Hass
In very active development; suggestions and bug reports welcome. Free download from http://www.impulseadventure.com/photo/jpeg-snoop.html
When I read this in TFA... ...I couldn't help but wonder if the FCC thinks fire comes out of your ass when you fuck?!
=======
"f------ brilliant." The FCC said the "F-word" in any context "inherently has a sexual connotation" and can trigger enforcement.
=======