the government only means well when trying to create legislation to effectively deal with internet attacks. its mundane in language not because its a sneaky conspiracy to slip all-encompassing power to an ideological monopoly, but because its simply mundane in purpose as well
but of course, the legislation is fucking retarded: there are much better ways to deal with cyberattacks like ddos than to pass pointless wasteful backfiring laws
but instead of simply pointing this out, we have a million screaming fear-addled nitwits who believe this is some sort fascist march. the stupidity of the government's proposal is only matched by the fear-addled stupidity of the responses to it like you see in the comments here
no, dimwits, this is not overturning the constitution and all the blood and sacrifice of the american revolution. no morons, this is not 1984 or the rise of nazism or agent smith or emperor palpatine or whatever else goes on in your paranoid schizophrenic fantasy life
your government means well, its just stupid. period, end of story. that really is the truth. but you who react to it like its fascist armageddon are fear-addled hysterical twits that are certainly no better than your government's stupidity
yes, you with your adrenal glands firing on all cylinders and your cold sweats and your demagoguery-stoking images and the battle hymn of the republic going off on full alarm in your head: calm the fuck down you low iq high adrenaline twit. a raccoon in the throes of fight-or-flight spasms after you turn the porch light on in the middle of the night has a leveler head than some of you
why don't some of you go buy automatic weapons and some tins of tuna fish and move to the high sierras and leave the job of corralling the well meaning but idiotic public servants back towards common sense to MUCH leveler heads than yours
the only people who seem to have a problem with me not using capital letters generally consist of those with brittle minds whom i detest to begin with
my lack of capital letters repulses certain minds, they have difficulty reading what i say, and so they go away. but anyone with what i consider to be a standard flexibility of mind has no problem with the lack of capitals, never even mentioning it
so its win/win: brittle minds are repulsed by me, and i don't have to deal with their lack of mental wattage
if lack of capital letters creates that much static in your mind when reading these words, there's something wrong with you, i really believe that. a certain inability to deal with or handle novelty... and perhaps novel thought
i don't think this mental inflexibility extends to ideology, as there's plenty of really stupid liberals i really don't want to talk to, and there's plenty of intelligent conservatives i strongly to desire honest debate with. neither conservatism or liberalism has a monopoly on stupidity, so in the end lack of capitalization is really nothing more than an iq filter for me, not an ideology filter
and iranians, and russians, and chinese, etc., ad nauseum
it does no use pointing out ethnocentrism exists in the country of someone criticizing another, since ethnocentrism exists everywhere, forever
the only truly useful criticism, despite what you wrote and what some idiot modded as insightful, is criticism devised from PRINCIPLES. if what i say, as an american, about something going on in japan, or venuela, or iran, or hell even the usa, if it is based simply on PRINCIPLES, it does not matter that i an american am saying it. because if it involves only principles, ANYONE from ANY country could say the SAME thing and there is NO ALTERATION IN MEANING
based on logical and coherent PRINCIPLES, it is wrong for chavez to ban violent videogames, as violent videogames are never a source of violence in any society. what, historical rome was a picture of peace and love because they had no videogames? as more people are playing indoors on videogames, less are outside killing each other. violence has gone down over the last couple of decades videogame playing has gone up. violence is a function of simple human nature, no "the devil made me do it" bullshit blame game on media need apply
and now, try to color or flavor those essentially principled, concept oriented words of mine as something america-related, or venezuela-related, or related to an y country, and you fail. as my words have to do with universal human concepts only. ethnicity and nationality are red herrings
human beings are human beings, whether in caracas or chicago. only principles matter. talking about national differences is a losers game
there is a difference between literacy, period, and literacy in a specific historical vernacular
how people talked and wrote in 1980 is not how they talked and wrote in 1940 and not how they talked and wrote in 1900, ad nauseum
the guy who grew up expecting 1940 vernacular to be equivalent to the concept of "literacy" would lament this slangy derivative vernacular of 1980, when in fact, how people talk and write in 1980 is no better or worse than 1940. the problem is in how certain brittle and shortsighted minds define what "literacy" means
the internet and cell phone technologies will dramatically impact how english is written and spoken, most definitely. but as long as people are communicating coherently, who fucking cares?
at one time, such fragile minds bemoaned the loss of the latin language in scholastic curricula, that it would result in a nation of idiots and simpletons. so apparently all of you who don't know how to conjugate verbs in latin are illiterate simpletons. really? that's a valid criteria?
so then why can't some of you see that some of the criteria some of you use to draw the line between literate and illiterate is equally random and meaningless. real literacy is about effective and coherent communucation. full stop
perhaps, what people use to signify what "literacy" means in their minds are using signs and customs that are random and pointless, just so much useless and pointless flotsam and jetsam of the mind, more signifying of the lack of flexibility of the mind's of those crying "illiteracy" than any real illiteracy going on in the real world. random cultural detritus, linguistic mannerisms of a particular time period or geographical location have zero value in a drawing up a definition of the concept of literacy
for example, this entire post used no capital letters. what exactly is the fucking purpose of capital letters anyway? a whole second alphabet for the sake of the redundant communication of what punctuation marks take care of already?
so when SMS TXT speak "infects" the english language, the english language is not suffering. literacy rates are not falling. its simple inevitable linguistic evolution, and it consists of getting rid of pointless redundant cruft no one needs to communicate effectively anyways, but certain brittle minds latch onto as a fall in "literacy". fucking bullshit. develop some mental flexibility please
i could feel my iq drop as i read your post. it's very well constructed, it feels genuine, as it is a pretty good exploration of the dim thoughts of lots of cretinous hysterics out there
i give this troll a 5 out of 5, very nicely done, you should be proud of yourself
but in this specific case, i would rather these assholes using steroids and destroying the sport of baseball be exposed and embarrassed
the rule of law is important
the rule of moral behavior is more important (especially since law and morality are often in conflict, unfortunately)
outing steroid abusers who are destroying a national pasttime by making it more about artificial enhancement rather than natural skill, and convincing impressionable boys to inject themselves with drugs which put their health in jeopardy for the sake of a pursuit which most likely will not be their career in their adult lives, serves a greater cause then adhering to the otherwise legal and moral idea that database search warrants should be strictly constrained
but that would be be, in a way, admitting defeat. i'm obviously defeated, but am too hurt by how difficult the whole thing has been to admit that. instead, i'll live with occasional comment barbs like yours to egg me on to get the f***ing thing done already
we're actually watching the planet in the process of being consumed
which would be highly unlikely, to get that timing right, as there's a window of only a couple thousand years in which we could see that happen, but maybe that's what we're really seeing
in which case, rather than revise orbital dynamics, this planet could contribute to our understanding of astrophysics/ michael bay style thermodynamics by allowing us to watch a jupiter sized planet ripped to smithereens in real time
the usual comment on this typical sort of slashdot story is something about how the "won't someone think of the children!" hysteria is so wrong
but the usual comment also consists of a heavy dollop of hysteria itself, as if these kinds of laws actually threaten you, as if they represent some sort of unstoppable slide into all-encompassing fascism
these laws are silly. your reaction to them is equally silly. its all circus, and you're an enthusiastic participant
in the real world, none of these laws amount to squat. its a tempest in a teapot
but please, don't let me stop you from getting your panties in a twist about the coming autocratic theocracy, or whatever your hysterical fear is
"There are multiple sides to every story and I'm fairly certain that in this day and age there would be a lot of outrage to see extraterrestrials being treated this way."
yes, exactly. people are outraged that aliens would be treated this way
but people are NOT outraged that other people are treated this way
the story is nothing but a parable about apartheid, or, more broadly, any large slum near a big city in the world: perhaps a billion people worldwide, treated like shit, and largely ignored by everyone else, right under our noses. and its just a fact of life... why is such an ugly fact of life accepted? that's the whole point of this movie. it's about the real-life district 6 (in cape town historically, not johannesburg). recall in the movie the hatred everyone feels for those living in district 9, right? and so it had to be emptied to an out of the way concentration camp, right? well, that's not a script writers fantasy life, that's simple historical fact for district 6
After World War II, during the earlier part of the apartheid era, District Six was relatively cosmopolitan. Situated within sight of the docks, it was largely made up of coloured residents which included a substantial number of coloured Muslims, called Cape Malays. There were also smaller numbers of Africans, whites, and Indians.
Government officials gave four primary reasons for the removals. In accordance with apartheid philosophy, it stated that interracial interaction bred conflict, necessitating the separation of the races. They deemed District Six a slum, fit only for clearance, not rehabilitation. They also portrayed the area as crime-ridden and dangerous; they claimed that the district was a vice den, full of immoral activities like gambling, drinking, and prostitution. Though these were the official reasons, most residents believed that the government sought the land because of its proximity to the city center, Table Mountain, and the harbor.
On 11 February 1966, the government declared District Six a whites-only area under the Group Areas Act, with removals starting in 1968. By 1982, more than 60,000 people had been relocated to the sandy, bleak Cape Flats township complex some 25 kilometers away. The old houses were bulldozed. The only buildings left standing were places of worship. International and local pressure made redevelopment difficult for the government, however. The Cape Technikon (now Cape Peninsula University of Technology) was built on a portion of District Six which the government renamed Zonnebloem. Apart from this and some police housing units, the area was left undeveloped.
the whole point of district 9 is to present this apparent lack of humanism as an analogy: aren't you outraged at how the aliens are treated? good. now would you please happen to notice the movie is 100% real?: just substitute your fellow human beings for aliens living in slums, and... suddenly we don't care
furthermore, the thinly veiled social criticism is not pointed only at whites, but also at blacks: remember the nigerian gangsters eager to eat alien body parts to gain alien powers? again, not a strange practice randomly thought up by a script writer: this is actual fact in modern day africa. people are murdered, their body parts traded as food and talismans, for the sake of voodoo beliefs liek getting rich
most horribly victimized are albinos. albinos are actually stalked, murdered, and butchered in africa and their body parts sold for cannibalism and talismans. disgusting, and 100% real:
Once, albinos used to seek shelter from the sun. Now they have gone into hiding simply to survive, after a series of killings linked to witchcraft. In Tanzania, 25 albinos have been killed in the past year. T
"Just because it has a scifi orientated plot doesn't make it something to hold up and worship,"
generally no. here, yes
"there are plenty of decent scifi films out there."
are they directed by james fucking cameron? terminator? aliens?
i didn't really understand the whole slashdot hullabaloo over firefly, i thought firefly was just meh. but i'm not going to go and doubt the basis for the obsession with firefly here. i understand that fanboys will be fanboys, their passion is ignited by something, and so you run with it. there's no value for you or anyone else in doubting someone's passion. passion is irrational as it is, there's no valid avenue for rationally deconstructing it. if someone is passionate about something, your job is to simply accept that at face value
standing there and sourly doubting and poopooing their passion gets you nowhere except a big fat announcement of your own irrelevancy
currently, there is a lot of passion and excitement and anticipation over avatar. not least because its by james fucking cameron, and not least because the subject matter is such a scifi topical sweetspot given a lavish financial investment
is the passion over avatar valid? is it invalid? neither. the question is pointless. the passion is real, it just exists for whatever reason. accept it and go with the flow. questioning it gets you nowhere except self-declared irrelevancy
titanic was way over budget and plenty in hollywood were sharpening the knives and whispering about cameron's "heaven's gate"... in 1997
it didn't turn out that way. so many teenage girls around the world seeing that movie 10 times in a row. the guy hit one out of the ballpark
but there's another guy who took a dubious premise and knocked one out of the ballpark... and then went even more ambitious and wound up with a career killing flop
i am (ironically, since avatar is, as so many have noted, just dances with wolves in space) talking about kevin costner and his way over budget little personal project called dances with wolves that so many had rejected throughout the 1980s and he staked so much on career-wise
Originally written as a spec script by Michael Blake, it went unsold in the mid-1980s. It was Kevin Costner who, in early 1986 (when he was relatively unknown), encouraged Blake to turn the screenplay into a novel, to improve its chances of being adapted into a film. The novel manuscript of Dances with Wolves was rejected by numerous publishers but finally published in paperback in 1988. As a novel, the rights were purchased by Costner, with an eye to his directing it.[4] Actual filming lasted from July 18 to November 23, 1989....
Because of budget overruns and production delays, and after the fiasco of Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate, then considered one of the most mismanaged Westerns in film history, Costner's project was satirically dubbed "Kevin's Gate" by Hollywood critics and skeptics during the months prior to its release.[4]
then what happened after gaining so much legitimacy in the face of so much doubt? kevin costner followed up with waterworld
gulp
his career was never the same after that flop (even though, personally, i never thought it was a bad movie, it was enjoyable, just somewhat flawed, but not repulsively so)
Problems encountered during filming led to massive budget overrun, and it held the dubious distinction of being the most expensive film ever made at the time. Some critics dubbed it "Fishtar" and "Kevin's Gate" (references to the notorious flops Ishtar and Heaven's Gate).
With a budget of $175 million, the film grossed a mere $88 million at the U.S. box office, which seemed to make it the all time box office bomb.[6] Adjusted for inflation and expressed in 2006 dollars (USD), the budget for the movie was $231.6 million, and grossed $116.8 million at the U.S. box office.
no man is immune to hubris. avatar may very well be cameron's undoing. but then again, avoid the counsel of anyone who is certain avatar will kill cameron's career. no one knows yet, and anyone who "knows" certainly suffers from the same deadly hubris
your legal understanding of the fine mechanics here is beyond my ability to refute
but don't you think there is a larger concept in play here that needs to be zealously protected?
your analogy to a website aping a film of mine as a snuff film is incomplete
snuff films are obviously illegal regardless, so if the films in question were instead satirical of my creations, this is in fact protected by law. plenty of politicians would lambast and sue political cartoonists that accuse them of all sorts of character flaws and malfeasance were it not for the legal protection of satire
likewise, to call someone a skank or a ho is simply the same sort of empty personal attacks as a political cartoon that anyone with the slightest sense of social sense should be able to weather without comment. its baseless. of course, if you have some sort of insecurity, you can proceed on legal grounds and find woefully out of bounds legal professionals sympathetic to your wounded pride, and wind up with a ruling that puts a huge dent in people's expectations of anonymity to speak their minds
this hurts society. it puts a huge damper on the free exchange of ideas. for the sake of what? a model's wounded pride and ego?
now if instead of flinging baseless accusations at this model, the anonymous blogger had directly attacked her means of financial support, such as accusing her of not showing up for modelling work, of being unprofessional and unprepared for gigs, this is grounds to proceed against her, according to the analogy you outline. absolutely i agree with this
but just calling someone names? what is that? is that really slander or libel? does it impact ability to get work? is there any substantiation? or is it just empty anger everyone should be able to ignore if they have any common sense? should our laws really empower empty insecurities at the cost of everyone's ability to have a certain comfort level for fully expressing their opinions on all sorts of controversial topics?
the internet is completely new, legally and socially speaking, and its implications are still being worked out. there are tradeoffs, as you well know on delicate issues. you can err too far on the side of protecting abusive trolls. but you can also err too far on the side of protecting insecure people with ego problems, at the cost of everyone's fair expectation of anonymity, and therefore the cost of the richness of exchange of ideas on the entire internet. don't you think, as i think, that the cost of allowing a few horrendously abusive trolls who perhaps don't deserve any protection is worth it?: a richer, freer, exchange of ideas?
all i am asking you to do is to consider that some conventions of internet communication, such as blogging, deserves an expectation of anonymity perhaps greater than you (and the judge who ruled of outing the blogger) would initially give. if only because the internet is a new medium, and has a new convention of maximum societal value, which the judge's decision hurts
hurts far more than any baseless accusations flung around by nominally empty and pointless blogs hurt insecure people
that battling skanks are protected as a side effect is a valid tradeoff for a legal understanding serving the greater good
common laypeople who question or accuse powerful entities like the government or large corporations deserve legally sanctified anonymity. in cases where power is asymmetrical between accusers, whistleblowers can be abused mightily if they were not anonymous
if only the full implications of the internet on the first amendment were so cut and dry
there are plenty of legal precedents where a whistleblower was not properly protected from the wrath of powerful interests that were crossed, and those who disabled the whistleblowers protection were found culpable
the government is not the only entity out there that can abridge your anonymity, especially in the case of an entity as powerful as google, in a day and age where i can post something on botswana and it can be read the next minute in iceland
so you are legally correct, according to a venal, narrow, blind reading of law, rather than an attempt to apply the spirit of the first amendment to the internet age, and find that the government should not be the sole entity in question here, when it comes to protections to be rightfully expected by the layperson
of course, i speak from morality, but i don't speak from a corporate legal warchest, so expect the spirit of first amendment protections to recede in the internet age, unfortunately, until the full corrosive effects on society of not extending first amendment protections to powerful internet entities begin to manifest
Slashdot Mirror
the government only means well when trying to create legislation to effectively deal with internet attacks. its mundane in language not because its a sneaky conspiracy to slip all-encompassing power to an ideological monopoly, but because its simply mundane in purpose as well
but of course, the legislation is fucking retarded: there are much better ways to deal with cyberattacks like ddos than to pass pointless wasteful backfiring laws
but instead of simply pointing this out, we have a million screaming fear-addled nitwits who believe this is some sort fascist march. the stupidity of the government's proposal is only matched by the fear-addled stupidity of the responses to it like you see in the comments here
no, dimwits, this is not overturning the constitution and all the blood and sacrifice of the american revolution. no morons, this is not 1984 or the rise of nazism or agent smith or emperor palpatine or whatever else goes on in your paranoid schizophrenic fantasy life
your government means well, its just stupid. period, end of story. that really is the truth. but you who react to it like its fascist armageddon are fear-addled hysterical twits that are certainly no better than your government's stupidity
yes, you with your adrenal glands firing on all cylinders and your cold sweats and your demagoguery-stoking images and the battle hymn of the republic going off on full alarm in your head: calm the fuck down you low iq high adrenaline twit. a raccoon in the throes of fight-or-flight spasms after you turn the porch light on in the middle of the night has a leveler head than some of you
why don't some of you go buy automatic weapons and some tins of tuna fish and move to the high sierras and leave the job of corralling the well meaning but idiotic public servants back towards common sense to MUCH leveler heads than yours
k, thanks!
the only people who seem to have a problem with me not using capital letters generally consist of those with brittle minds whom i detest to begin with
my lack of capital letters repulses certain minds, they have difficulty reading what i say, and so they go away. but anyone with what i consider to be a standard flexibility of mind has no problem with the lack of capitals, never even mentioning it
so its win/win: brittle minds are repulsed by me, and i don't have to deal with their lack of mental wattage
if lack of capital letters creates that much static in your mind when reading these words, there's something wrong with you, i really believe that. a certain inability to deal with or handle novelty... and perhaps novel thought
i don't think this mental inflexibility extends to ideology, as there's plenty of really stupid liberals i really don't want to talk to, and there's plenty of intelligent conservatives i strongly to desire honest debate with. neither conservatism or liberalism has a monopoly on stupidity, so in the end lack of capitalization is really nothing more than an iq filter for me, not an ideology filter
and venezuelans are being ethnocentric
and iranians, and russians, and chinese, etc., ad nauseum
it does no use pointing out ethnocentrism exists in the country of someone criticizing another, since ethnocentrism exists everywhere, forever
the only truly useful criticism, despite what you wrote and what some idiot modded as insightful, is criticism devised from PRINCIPLES. if what i say, as an american, about something going on in japan, or venuela, or iran, or hell even the usa, if it is based simply on PRINCIPLES, it does not matter that i an american am saying it. because if it involves only principles, ANYONE from ANY country could say the SAME thing and there is NO ALTERATION IN MEANING
based on logical and coherent PRINCIPLES, it is wrong for chavez to ban violent videogames, as violent videogames are never a source of violence in any society. what, historical rome was a picture of peace and love because they had no videogames? as more people are playing indoors on videogames, less are outside killing each other. violence has gone down over the last couple of decades videogame playing has gone up. violence is a function of simple human nature, no "the devil made me do it" bullshit blame game on media need apply
and now, try to color or flavor those essentially principled, concept oriented words of mine as something america-related, or venezuela-related, or related to an y country, and you fail. as my words have to do with universal human concepts only. ethnicity and nationality are red herrings
human beings are human beings, whether in caracas or chicago. only principles matter. talking about national differences is a losers game
there is a difference between literacy, period, and literacy in a specific historical vernacular
how people talked and wrote in 1980 is not how they talked and wrote in 1940 and not how they talked and wrote in 1900, ad nauseum
the guy who grew up expecting 1940 vernacular to be equivalent to the concept of "literacy" would lament this slangy derivative vernacular of 1980, when in fact, how people talk and write in 1980 is no better or worse than 1940. the problem is in how certain brittle and shortsighted minds define what "literacy" means
the internet and cell phone technologies will dramatically impact how english is written and spoken, most definitely. but as long as people are communicating coherently, who fucking cares?
at one time, such fragile minds bemoaned the loss of the latin language in scholastic curricula, that it would result in a nation of idiots and simpletons. so apparently all of you who don't know how to conjugate verbs in latin are illiterate simpletons. really? that's a valid criteria?
so then why can't some of you see that some of the criteria some of you use to draw the line between literate and illiterate is equally random and meaningless. real literacy is about effective and coherent communucation. full stop
perhaps, what people use to signify what "literacy" means in their minds are using signs and customs that are random and pointless, just so much useless and pointless flotsam and jetsam of the mind, more signifying of the lack of flexibility of the mind's of those crying "illiteracy" than any real illiteracy going on in the real world. random cultural detritus, linguistic mannerisms of a particular time period or geographical location have zero value in a drawing up a definition of the concept of literacy
for example, this entire post used no capital letters. what exactly is the fucking purpose of capital letters anyway? a whole second alphabet for the sake of the redundant communication of what punctuation marks take care of already?
so when SMS TXT speak "infects" the english language, the english language is not suffering. literacy rates are not falling. its simple inevitable linguistic evolution, and it consists of getting rid of pointless redundant cruft no one needs to communicate effectively anyways, but certain brittle minds latch onto as a fall in "literacy". fucking bullshit. develop some mental flexibility please
to pull off that joke
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_courage
i could feel my iq drop as i read your post. it's very well constructed, it feels genuine, as it is a pretty good exploration of the dim thoughts of lots of cretinous hysterics out there
i give this troll a 5 out of 5, very nicely done, you should be proud of yourself
they have their positives and negatives ;-)
but in this specific case, i would rather these assholes using steroids and destroying the sport of baseball be exposed and embarrassed
the rule of law is important
the rule of moral behavior is more important (especially since law and morality are often in conflict, unfortunately)
outing steroid abusers who are destroying a national pasttime by making it more about artificial enhancement rather than natural skill, and convincing impressionable boys to inject themselves with drugs which put their health in jeopardy for the sake of a pursuit which most likely will not be their career in their adult lives, serves a greater cause then adhering to the otherwise legal and moral idea that database search warrants should be strictly constrained
but that would be be, in a way, admitting defeat. i'm obviously defeated, but am too hurt by how difficult the whole thing has been to admit that. instead, i'll live with occasional comment barbs like yours to egg me on to get the f***ing thing done already
we're actually watching the planet in the process of being consumed
which would be highly unlikely, to get that timing right, as there's a window of only a couple thousand years in which we could see that happen, but maybe that's what we're really seeing
in which case, rather than revise orbital dynamics, this planet could contribute to our understanding of astrophysics/ michael bay style thermodynamics by allowing us to watch a jupiter sized planet ripped to smithereens in real time
fantasize about this in a mad max/ road warrior movie type setting?
talk about steampunk
although i'd be REALLY impressed if someone invents a steam powered aircraft/ helicopter
heliboiler? steamplane?
its just a tribute to michael jackson
Atheism is a religion to the same extent that not collecting stamps is a hobby. ...
Atheism is a religion to the same extent you have a burning need to comment on other people's stamp collecting.
the usual comment on this typical sort of slashdot story is something about how the "won't someone think of the children!" hysteria is so wrong
but the usual comment also consists of a heavy dollop of hysteria itself, as if these kinds of laws actually threaten you, as if they represent some sort of unstoppable slide into all-encompassing fascism
these laws are silly. your reaction to them is equally silly. its all circus, and you're an enthusiastic participant
in the real world, none of these laws amount to squat. its a tempest in a teapot
but please, don't let me stop you from getting your panties in a twist about the coming autocratic theocracy, or whatever your hysterical fear is
zzz
"There are multiple sides to every story and I'm fairly certain that in this day and age there would be a lot of outrage to see extraterrestrials being treated this way."
yes, exactly. people are outraged that aliens would be treated this way
but people are NOT outraged that other people are treated this way
the story is nothing but a parable about apartheid, or, more broadly, any large slum near a big city in the world: perhaps a billion people worldwide, treated like shit, and largely ignored by everyone else, right under our noses. and its just a fact of life... why is such an ugly fact of life accepted? that's the whole point of this movie. it's about the real-life district 6 (in cape town historically, not johannesburg). recall in the movie the hatred everyone feels for those living in district 9, right? and so it had to be emptied to an out of the way concentration camp, right? well, that's not a script writers fantasy life, that's simple historical fact for district 6
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_Six,_Cape_Town
the whole point of district 9 is to present this apparent lack of humanism as an analogy: aren't you outraged at how the aliens are treated? good. now would you please happen to notice the movie is 100% real?: just substitute your fellow human beings for aliens living in slums, and... suddenly we don't care
furthermore, the thinly veiled social criticism is not pointed only at whites, but also at blacks: remember the nigerian gangsters eager to eat alien body parts to gain alien powers? again, not a strange practice randomly thought up by a script writer: this is actual fact in modern day africa. people are murdered, their body parts traded as food and talismans, for the sake of voodoo beliefs liek getting rich
most horribly victimized are albinos. albinos are actually stalked, murdered, and butchered in africa and their body parts sold for cannibalism and talismans. disgusting, and 100% real:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7518049.stm
the issue in question is the government
1. compelling google to reveal someone's identity
2. or not
option #2 is this radical difficult to grasp concept called "the government not doing anything"
please explain, in your vast intellectual superiority, how that equates to "the government expending resources"
durrr
i am taking a position that no one should be forced out of anonymity... and i'm the one who is "forcing" my morality onto you?
your description of my point of view is logically incoherent
i hearby force you not to reveal yourself to me!
i hearby force you to have more freedom than you desire!
huh?
"Just because it has a scifi orientated plot doesn't make it something to hold up and worship,"
generally no. here, yes
"there are plenty of decent scifi films out there."
are they directed by james fucking cameron? terminator? aliens?
i didn't really understand the whole slashdot hullabaloo over firefly, i thought firefly was just meh. but i'm not going to go and doubt the basis for the obsession with firefly here. i understand that fanboys will be fanboys, their passion is ignited by something, and so you run with it. there's no value for you or anyone else in doubting someone's passion. passion is irrational as it is, there's no valid avenue for rationally deconstructing it. if someone is passionate about something, your job is to simply accept that at face value
standing there and sourly doubting and poopooing their passion gets you nowhere except a big fat announcement of your own irrelevancy
currently, there is a lot of passion and excitement and anticipation over avatar. not least because its by james fucking cameron, and not least because the subject matter is such a scifi topical sweetspot given a lavish financial investment
is the passion over avatar valid? is it invalid? neither. the question is pointless. the passion is real, it just exists for whatever reason. accept it and go with the flow. questioning it gets you nowhere except self-declared irrelevancy
http://www.avclub.com/articles/inventory-eight-surefire-fiascoes-that-unexpectedl,1532/
titanic was way over budget and plenty in hollywood were sharpening the knives and whispering about cameron's "heaven's gate"... in 1997
it didn't turn out that way. so many teenage girls around the world seeing that movie 10 times in a row. the guy hit one out of the ballpark
but there's another guy who took a dubious premise and knocked one out of the ballpark... and then went even more ambitious and wound up with a career killing flop
i am (ironically, since avatar is, as so many have noted, just dances with wolves in space) talking about kevin costner and his way over budget little personal project called dances with wolves that so many had rejected throughout the 1980s and he staked so much on career-wise
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dances_with_wolves#Production
then what happened after gaining so much legitimacy in the face of so much doubt? kevin costner followed up with waterworld
gulp
his career was never the same after that flop (even though, personally, i never thought it was a bad movie, it was enjoyable, just somewhat flawed, but not repulsively so)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterworld#Box_office_and_reception
so, to conclude
titanic : cameron = dances with wolves : costner
? avatar : cameron = waterworld : costner ?
no man is immune to hubris. avatar may very well be cameron's undoing. but then again, avoid the counsel of anyone who is certain avatar will kill cameron's career. no one knows yet, and anyone who "knows" certainly suffers from the same deadly hubris
your legal understanding of the fine mechanics here is beyond my ability to refute
but don't you think there is a larger concept in play here that needs to be zealously protected?
your analogy to a website aping a film of mine as a snuff film is incomplete
snuff films are obviously illegal regardless, so if the films in question were instead satirical of my creations, this is in fact protected by law. plenty of politicians would lambast and sue political cartoonists that accuse them of all sorts of character flaws and malfeasance were it not for the legal protection of satire
likewise, to call someone a skank or a ho is simply the same sort of empty personal attacks as a political cartoon that anyone with the slightest sense of social sense should be able to weather without comment. its baseless. of course, if you have some sort of insecurity, you can proceed on legal grounds and find woefully out of bounds legal professionals sympathetic to your wounded pride, and wind up with a ruling that puts a huge dent in people's expectations of anonymity to speak their minds
this hurts society. it puts a huge damper on the free exchange of ideas. for the sake of what? a model's wounded pride and ego?
now if instead of flinging baseless accusations at this model, the anonymous blogger had directly attacked her means of financial support, such as accusing her of not showing up for modelling work, of being unprofessional and unprepared for gigs, this is grounds to proceed against her, according to the analogy you outline. absolutely i agree with this
but just calling someone names? what is that? is that really slander or libel? does it impact ability to get work? is there any substantiation? or is it just empty anger everyone should be able to ignore if they have any common sense? should our laws really empower empty insecurities at the cost of everyone's ability to have a certain comfort level for fully expressing their opinions on all sorts of controversial topics?
the internet is completely new, legally and socially speaking, and its implications are still being worked out. there are tradeoffs, as you well know on delicate issues. you can err too far on the side of protecting abusive trolls. but you can also err too far on the side of protecting insecure people with ego problems, at the cost of everyone's fair expectation of anonymity, and therefore the cost of the richness of exchange of ideas on the entire internet. don't you think, as i think, that the cost of allowing a few horrendously abusive trolls who perhaps don't deserve any protection is worth it?: a richer, freer, exchange of ideas?
all i am asking you to do is to consider that some conventions of internet communication, such as blogging, deserves an expectation of anonymity perhaps greater than you (and the judge who ruled of outing the blogger) would initially give. if only because the internet is a new medium, and has a new convention of maximum societal value, which the judge's decision hurts
hurts far more than any baseless accusations flung around by nominally empty and pointless blogs hurt insecure people
that battling skanks are protected as a side effect is a valid tradeoff for a legal understanding serving the greater good
common laypeople who question or accuse powerful entities like the government or large corporations deserve legally sanctified anonymity. in cases where power is asymmetrical between accusers, whistleblowers can be abused mightily if they were not anonymous
beware her sister, Staphie Habib, skank of unsanitary hummus factories ;-)
implies poor hygiene and flakiness, untrustworthiness
also has class overtones
skank was (is) a generalized slang term for filth
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Skank
if only the full implications of the internet on the first amendment were so cut and dry
there are plenty of legal precedents where a whistleblower was not properly protected from the wrath of powerful interests that were crossed, and those who disabled the whistleblowers protection were found culpable
the government is not the only entity out there that can abridge your anonymity, especially in the case of an entity as powerful as google, in a day and age where i can post something on botswana and it can be read the next minute in iceland
so you are legally correct, according to a venal, narrow, blind reading of law, rather than an attempt to apply the spirit of the first amendment to the internet age, and find that the government should not be the sole entity in question here, when it comes to protections to be rightfully expected by the layperson
of course, i speak from morality, but i don't speak from a corporate legal warchest, so expect the spirit of first amendment protections to recede in the internet age, unfortunately, until the full corrosive effects on society of not extending first amendment protections to powerful internet entities begin to manifest
a compliment from someone whose slashdot relationship with me is currently marked as "freak" is rare indeed... you skank! ;-)