here's some magic words for you: "proportionality", "scale", "context"
these are ideas you are apparently not familiar with. i'm very proud of my freedom. that someone radioactive might be pulled over, including myself, does not in any way impinge upon it, as being RADIOACTIVE is not exactly a common problem, nor a problem that should not be investigated, for whatever reason, not just security theatre. health and safety, for example.
here's another word for you to learn: "hysteric". because that's what you are. pulling over people because they are radioactive is not the end of all that we hold dear and true. really. try to wrap your mind about such a far out wacky idea
if i were transporting a nuke, i'd line it with lead. meaning that detectable levels outside the lead box would be very low. meaning the detection threshold should indeed be very low to warrant being pulled over
folks, we're talking about radioactivity. pretty rare and outside the norm here. you should expect to be pulled over a few times if there is anything radioactive in your person or your vehicle or anything you are transporting. that actually sounds prudent to me. am i hysterical? no. am i propagandized with a siege mentality? no. we're talking about something radioactive moving around the roads we live and work on. you're not interested in knowing what is going on with that? you're so eager to make a point about security theatre you're comfortable with radioactivity moving about your neighborhood? really? i don't want a lecture about low levels of radiation. what is it? where is it going? you honestly don't care?
there will of course be false alarms. so what. if you're transporting something radioactive, expect to be inconvenienced with pull overs and searches. sounds perfectly reasonable to me. i'd rather have a lot of false positives than just one false negative, wouldn't you?
i don't believe that you cross a line in the sand and human nature magically changes. what works ideologically in one place works just as well, or just as badly, anywhere else. you don't have to believe that a free exchange of ideas works for all people, but that idea you have, in and of itself, when it shapes a country or a society, it weakens that society
and then the society that does allow the free exchange of information beats the censorial one. whether through cultural dominance, because the children grow up and want to live some place else, or an all out war, or whatever
a land where better ideas are naturally allowed to evolve and bubble to the top naturally and inevitably beats a land where they lock everything down and try to control the flow of information
the world IS a contest of ideas. and it either plays out freely, or, by locking down the exchange of ideas, you weaken your society, and therefore doom it to failure, and to be replaced by a society where free exchange does happen
in the last decade, they started to find a lot more plutos. so the question is do we have 10, 16, 54 planets? or do we say "look, pluto doesn't really fit the idea of something large that controls its orbit, so it's not a planet" and so we only have 8 planets
you're not speaking frankly about human sexual desire. shame comes with that, utterly regardless of societal norms or orientation. sexual desire is also extremely powerful. in the most accepting society possible towards people with pedophile feelings, there is still shame and still acting on urges in spite of willpower and acceptance
and it is really quite odd that you believe society can, or should, or has the resources, or would even be allowed to, chaperone a pedophile for the rest of their lives
you're pitting your idealized fantasy (no pun intended) about how things might work, versus the cold hard reality of how these situations really play out. imprisonment is the only realistic option
your stance assumes we know the pedophile urges about this person. that the person has volunteered this information about himself
obviously, this information is not going to be freely offered. you can imagine why. so we leave children alone with this person, because we don't know, and then we find out the hard way the person likes children sexually
or, we find them when we see they have a large stash of child porn on their computers. and we act before the inevitable. you can't chaperone the guy for the rest of his life. you lock him up, because base human sexual desire is always there, and human will power is often weak. during that moment of weakness, alone, around a child, the inevitable happens. we owe it to our children to ensure that this moment never happens to a child, by removing the person with these predilections from society, permanently
i'll tell you what, your neighbor has fantasies and curiosities about raising crocodiles in his yard, or experimenting with ricin and plutonium
how do you feel about raising your children next to your neighbor now? do you think you have a right to know about these fantasies and curiosities? do they have no effect on you?
your attraction for women is something that is not a transgressive abuse no matter how you stage it. a woman can consent, it is not logically possible for a child to (informed) consent
you have never carried around a basic sexual urge that is a transgressive abuse no matter what that shall never know a valid outlet
countless times there are religious men who daily rant about the evil of homosexuality... and yet are found acting on their own homosexual urges. homosexual urges are perfectly fine, of course, because they involve consenting adults. but the example of these deeply closeted religious folks shows you the truth strength of impulse control when pitted against basic sexual desire
you still have faith in a pedophile never acting on his urges? you have some mighty great faith in the human will, and/ or some mighty little regard for the strength of sexual compulsion
well more importantly, a guy wacking off to a child porn image is a guy who is someone who is sexually aroused by children. you are comfortable with such a person being free in your community?
pedophilia is like a curse. because it renders you incompatible with free and open society. the imperative to protect our children is a biological imperative stronger than any theoretical argument you can make. nobody is going to let a person who has shown the predilection for prepubescent children roam free in their community, and they are right
if you demonstrate pedophile urges, you need to be permanently kept away from society. you only represent potential damage on young lives. your sexual urges means you have no right to freedom
and of course, that sarcastic comment is exactly right. people trade and love free music, and are therefore very much involved in fostering its creation
a guy will spend more effort creating a song that puts a smile on a woman's face, as his only payment, than he will in a year's worth of labor at a job that pays him cold hard cash
demand != $$$
demand --> supply
going after demand is a fair target in the fight against child porn
you have to go to alt.binaries.pictures.erotica...
they spam everything there
you're innocently looking for your pictures of lactating heavily pierced transvestite dwarves and... GAH
actually, i shouldn't joke, it's not funny
so thank god for this ruling, because living in the state of new york, and the ruling directly applies to me: i've gotten child porn images on my computer without any intention of doing so, and this is how: newsgroups
1. it's a black box, so joe blow doesn't trust it. he trusts paper and pencil. but a machine his vote goes into and out comes electoral sausage is not confidence building. you can feel and touch and trust paper. it is a known quantity. i'm talking about tactile, emotional trust here
the greatest strength democracy has is that it manufacture legitimacy: the government you have is the will of the people. anything that puts in doubt that the will of the people is being adequately expressed, creates illegitimacy and instability, thereby defeating democracy's greatest strength
2. it has more attack vectors. with paper ballots you can lose them, fake them, burn them, etc. but with electronic voting, you can do orders of magnitude more kinds of attacks. plus, with paper ballots you need an army of crooks to make a dent moving trucks full of papers around. good luck keeping that secret. with electronic voting, one well-placed hacker with 3.7 seconds can do untraceable damage on a much larger scale
of course all those paper ballots eventually get OCRed into a database, but at least you have that backup. yeah, electronic voting machines that print out a paper copy of the ballot on paper do the same, but now you are spending a shitload of money reinventing the wheel in a needlessly complicated rube goldberg way
the richest of societies and poorest of societies should all vote the same way: paper, pencil, box. is a marriage ceremony made better with electronic doodads? no. same with voting: it's sacred social compact, just like marriage, and the more simple it is, the better
technophiliacs like us here on slashdot sometimes turn to technology too much to solve problems. some problems just aren't solved better by throwing more complicated tech at them. some problems are about trust, vital trust, that should not be messed with, and should stay simple
don't mess with the vote: paper, pencil, box. anything more complicated is worse
it's an interesting story, but the guy who starts off stealing bread to feed his family and graduates to home invasion to steal jewelry for financial gain and winds up murdering a home owner... there are no gray areas here. you've passed from understandable to prosecuteable
my problem is with people who say "well, there are gray areas in life, so we can't rightfully talk about black and white"
certainly, people who only see black and white are wrong too, but those who hesitate to condemn anyone at all, or worse, empathize with criminals, is disgusting to me. i'm not making these people up. someone commits a heinous crime, and you'll find someone talking about how the perp is a victim of society. ridiculous
you're right. it's not the good intentions that is the problem. it's the good intentions combined with naivete and failure to understand how malicious people really can be in this world
nice people very often wind up being manipulated by truly vile individuals by appealing directly to their good intentions and lack of sophistication
good intentions are just a good start. wisdom and reckoning and perception count more when actually trying to do good in the world
no one is going to say a guy shoplifting bread to feed his family is like a guy home invading to steal jewelry in order to feed his coke habit
so i don't really understand what the point of your comment is. because people sometimes break the law for good reasons then therefore we can think of everyone who breaks the law the same way? that seems to be your point. then your point sucks
i love the show breaking bad. you do understand the guy is manufacturing poison, right? have you lost perspective? you vaguely empathize with his cancer diagnosis and economic plight in life so you understand and condone his metamorphosis into an evil bastard? what?
we punish criminality. all the sob stories in the world do not and should not change that
some people i think just have a surfeit of empathy and a deficit of reason
when you start empathizing with criminals you've kind of lost all perspective. how about you empathize with victims of crime
ever hear the phrase "those with the best intentions can do the most damage?"
i don't know about this very common meme about the usa having such a large prison population: i think if you go to some poor country rife with petty corruption, you'd find most poor people in favor of increasing the prison population
the greatest perpetrator of poverty is criminality. behavior, not socioeconomics. so you stop poverty most effectively by cracking down on criminal behavior. this can occur independently and at the same time as other poverty mitigating measures you mention. it's not an either/ or
i really believe this: the usa's outsized criminal population, except for the drug offenses (marijuana should be legal), is a model for the world, not an exception. other countries should crack down on their criminals more
but don't ask some bleeding heart rich suburban asshole's opinion about what i just said, ask a poor person actually living in the slum of a poor country, dealing with constant criminality. i'd wager they'd agree with me, and ask for more prisons
Slashdot Mirror
here's some magic words for you: "proportionality", "scale", "context"
these are ideas you are apparently not familiar with. i'm very proud of my freedom. that someone radioactive might be pulled over, including myself, does not in any way impinge upon it, as being RADIOACTIVE is not exactly a common problem, nor a problem that should not be investigated, for whatever reason, not just security theatre. health and safety, for example.
here's another word for you to learn: "hysteric". because that's what you are. pulling over people because they are radioactive is not the end of all that we hold dear and true. really. try to wrap your mind about such a far out wacky idea
people still use briefcases?
if i were transporting a nuke, i'd line it with lead. meaning that detectable levels outside the lead box would be very low. meaning the detection threshold should indeed be very low to warrant being pulled over
folks, we're talking about radioactivity. pretty rare and outside the norm here. you should expect to be pulled over a few times if there is anything radioactive in your person or your vehicle or anything you are transporting. that actually sounds prudent to me. am i hysterical? no. am i propagandized with a siege mentality? no. we're talking about something radioactive moving around the roads we live and work on. you're not interested in knowing what is going on with that? you're so eager to make a point about security theatre you're comfortable with radioactivity moving about your neighborhood? really? i don't want a lecture about low levels of radiation. what is it? where is it going? you honestly don't care?
there will of course be false alarms. so what. if you're transporting something radioactive, expect to be inconvenienced with pull overs and searches. sounds perfectly reasonable to me. i'd rather have a lot of false positives than just one false negative, wouldn't you?
i don't believe that you cross a line in the sand and human nature magically changes. what works ideologically in one place works just as well, or just as badly, anywhere else. you don't have to believe that a free exchange of ideas works for all people, but that idea you have, in and of itself, when it shapes a country or a society, it weakens that society
and then the society that does allow the free exchange of information beats the censorial one. whether through cultural dominance, because the children grow up and want to live some place else, or an all out war, or whatever
a land where better ideas are naturally allowed to evolve and bubble to the top naturally and inevitably beats a land where they lock everything down and try to control the flow of information
the world IS a contest of ideas. and it either plays out freely, or, by locking down the exchange of ideas, you weaken your society, and therefore doom it to failure, and to be replaced by a society where free exchange does happen
it's a cynical quote, because it's not really true: principles actually define winners and losers
but it certainly applies to planet formation
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/91/EightTNOs.png
in the last decade, they started to find a lot more plutos. so the question is do we have 10, 16, 54 planets? or do we say "look, pluto doesn't really fit the idea of something large that controls its orbit, so it's not a planet" and so we only have 8 planets
it's a perfectly good decision
you're not speaking frankly about human sexual desire. shame comes with that, utterly regardless of societal norms or orientation. sexual desire is also extremely powerful. in the most accepting society possible towards people with pedophile feelings, there is still shame and still acting on urges in spite of willpower and acceptance
and it is really quite odd that you believe society can, or should, or has the resources, or would even be allowed to, chaperone a pedophile for the rest of their lives
you're pitting your idealized fantasy (no pun intended) about how things might work, versus the cold hard reality of how these situations really play out. imprisonment is the only realistic option
your stance assumes we know the pedophile urges about this person. that the person has volunteered this information about himself
obviously, this information is not going to be freely offered. you can imagine why. so we leave children alone with this person, because we don't know, and then we find out the hard way the person likes children sexually
or, we find them when we see they have a large stash of child porn on their computers. and we act before the inevitable. you can't chaperone the guy for the rest of his life. you lock him up, because base human sexual desire is always there, and human will power is often weak. during that moment of weakness, alone, around a child, the inevitable happens. we owe it to our children to ensure that this moment never happens to a child, by removing the person with these predilections from society, permanently
i'll tell you what, your neighbor has fantasies and curiosities about raising crocodiles in his yard, or experimenting with ricin and plutonium
how do you feel about raising your children next to your neighbor now? do you think you have a right to know about these fantasies and curiosities? do they have no effect on you?
your attraction for women is something that is not a transgressive abuse no matter how you stage it. a woman can consent, it is not logically possible for a child to (informed) consent
you have never carried around a basic sexual urge that is a transgressive abuse no matter what that shall never know a valid outlet
countless times there are religious men who daily rant about the evil of homosexuality... and yet are found acting on their own homosexual urges. homosexual urges are perfectly fine, of course, because they involve consenting adults. but the example of these deeply closeted religious folks shows you the truth strength of impulse control when pitted against basic sexual desire
you still have faith in a pedophile never acting on his urges? you have some mighty great faith in the human will, and/ or some mighty little regard for the strength of sexual compulsion
you great faith in the power of the human will over the power of human sexual urges
we also arrest people for intent. consuming child pornography is a pretty clear statement of intent
you great faith in the power of the human will over the power of human sexual urges
well more importantly, a guy wacking off to a child porn image is a guy who is someone who is sexually aroused by children. you are comfortable with such a person being free in your community?
pedophilia is like a curse. because it renders you incompatible with free and open society. the imperative to protect our children is a biological imperative stronger than any theoretical argument you can make. nobody is going to let a person who has shown the predilection for prepubescent children roam free in their community, and they are right
if you demonstrate pedophile urges, you need to be permanently kept away from society. you only represent potential damage on young lives. your sexual urges means you have no right to freedom
LOL
and of course, that sarcastic comment is exactly right. people trade and love free music, and are therefore very much involved in fostering its creation
a guy will spend more effort creating a song that puts a smile on a woman's face, as his only payment, than he will in a year's worth of labor at a job that pays him cold hard cash
demand != $$$
demand --> supply
going after demand is a fair target in the fight against child porn
just because you can't put a dollar sign on it doesn't mean that the rules of demand and supply don't apply
those who consume these images create a market for it and are therefore culpable for its creation and should be punished
you have to go to alt.binaries.pictures.erotica...
they spam everything there
you're innocently looking for your pictures of lactating heavily pierced transvestite dwarves and... GAH
actually, i shouldn't joke, it's not funny
so thank god for this ruling, because living in the state of new york, and the ruling directly applies to me: i've gotten child porn images on my computer without any intention of doing so, and this is how: newsgroups
now will someone please go after the child porn spammers on the newsgroups?
yes, i know, difficult, but it's ridiculous
you're right. i am wrong to dismiss slashdot as a bunch of technophiles
we do indeed understand very much about the pitfalls here
1. it's a black box, so joe blow doesn't trust it. he trusts paper and pencil. but a machine his vote goes into and out comes electoral sausage is not confidence building. you can feel and touch and trust paper. it is a known quantity. i'm talking about tactile, emotional trust here
the greatest strength democracy has is that it manufacture legitimacy: the government you have is the will of the people. anything that puts in doubt that the will of the people is being adequately expressed, creates illegitimacy and instability, thereby defeating democracy's greatest strength
2. it has more attack vectors. with paper ballots you can lose them, fake them, burn them, etc. but with electronic voting, you can do orders of magnitude more kinds of attacks. plus, with paper ballots you need an army of crooks to make a dent moving trucks full of papers around. good luck keeping that secret. with electronic voting, one well-placed hacker with 3.7 seconds can do untraceable damage on a much larger scale
of course all those paper ballots eventually get OCRed into a database, but at least you have that backup. yeah, electronic voting machines that print out a paper copy of the ballot on paper do the same, but now you are spending a shitload of money reinventing the wheel in a needlessly complicated rube goldberg way
the richest of societies and poorest of societies should all vote the same way: paper, pencil, box. is a marriage ceremony made better with electronic doodads? no. same with voting: it's sacred social compact, just like marriage, and the more simple it is, the better
technophiliacs like us here on slashdot sometimes turn to technology too much to solve problems. some problems just aren't solved better by throwing more complicated tech at them. some problems are about trust, vital trust, that should not be messed with, and should stay simple
don't mess with the vote: paper, pencil, box. anything more complicated is worse
it's an interesting story, but the guy who starts off stealing bread to feed his family and graduates to home invasion to steal jewelry for financial gain and winds up murdering a home owner... there are no gray areas here. you've passed from understandable to prosecuteable
my problem is with people who say "well, there are gray areas in life, so we can't rightfully talk about black and white"
certainly, people who only see black and white are wrong too, but those who hesitate to condemn anyone at all, or worse, empathize with criminals, is disgusting to me. i'm not making these people up. someone commits a heinous crime, and you'll find someone talking about how the perp is a victim of society. ridiculous
you're right. it's not the good intentions that is the problem. it's the good intentions combined with naivete and failure to understand how malicious people really can be in this world
nice people very often wind up being manipulated by truly vile individuals by appealing directly to their good intentions and lack of sophistication
good intentions are just a good start. wisdom and reckoning and perception count more when actually trying to do good in the world
I suggest we send Finnish astronauts. They actually like this sort of place.
"Cosmonaut Hämeenniemi! Have you reached the planet, what is it like!"
(long delay)
"Shhh... I'm relaxing"
no one is going to say a guy shoplifting bread to feed his family is like a guy home invading to steal jewelry in order to feed his coke habit
so i don't really understand what the point of your comment is. because people sometimes break the law for good reasons then therefore we can think of everyone who breaks the law the same way? that seems to be your point. then your point sucks
i love the show breaking bad. you do understand the guy is manufacturing poison, right? have you lost perspective? you vaguely empathize with his cancer diagnosis and economic plight in life so you understand and condone his metamorphosis into an evil bastard? what?
we punish criminality. all the sob stories in the world do not and should not change that
some people i think just have a surfeit of empathy and a deficit of reason
when you start empathizing with criminals you've kind of lost all perspective. how about you empathize with victims of crime
thank you
ever hear the phrase "those with the best intentions can do the most damage?"
i don't know about this very common meme about the usa having such a large prison population: i think if you go to some poor country rife with petty corruption, you'd find most poor people in favor of increasing the prison population
the greatest perpetrator of poverty is criminality. behavior, not socioeconomics. so you stop poverty most effectively by cracking down on criminal behavior. this can occur independently and at the same time as other poverty mitigating measures you mention. it's not an either/ or
i really believe this: the usa's outsized criminal population, except for the drug offenses (marijuana should be legal), is a model for the world, not an exception. other countries should crack down on their criminals more
but don't ask some bleeding heart rich suburban asshole's opinion about what i just said, ask a poor person actually living in the slum of a poor country, dealing with constant criminality. i'd wager they'd agree with me, and ask for more prisons