Let's see, I've been using Photoshop since version 2.somethingoranother on the Mac. back then I was just fooling around with it in the college computer lab. Today I use it professionally. If you must know, I use it to create boxcover art for my line of pro-am commercial adult videos, and for some non-adult Web graphics work I do.
I'm a lot closer to 30 than to 14, and I actually use Photoshop in a professional capacity. That qualifies me to speak about it a lot more than an AC who sounds himself like a 14 year old with a chip on his shoulder.
But I never denigrated Photoshop at all. If you reread my post, you'll see that I said either the patent has to be on something Photoshop has been doing for many many years now, or on something minor. To an experienced digital artist, yes, the changes made to Photoshop in the last 3 years since Macromedia filed their patent are pretty minor. And I'd know because I've been using Photoshop a lot since 1995. The biggest changes were made between 95 and 98, rather than between 98 and 01.
As for UI tweaks, they fall into the category of minor changes--I doubt Macromedia is suing Adobe over a UI change. But I wouldn't put it past them. And BTW, the UI tweaks tend to be a distraction for *real* users who've been with the software for a long time, not usually an improvement. The only reason I bother to keep upgrading every once in a while is better performance--one of the drawbacks of closed source software is not being able to recompile it when you get to be a couple of processor generations ahead of what your software was compiled for. But I digress.
All I can say is that this is yet more proof that software patents are just a bad idea. Let's see; Photoshop has been around since the Dawn of Time by computer standards, and somehow it violates a Macromedia patent filed just 3 years ago. I'm using Photoshop 6 now, and as far as I can see, it does the same thing every other version has done, only with a few more mostly-useless bells and whistles. I bet the patent is either about some tiny little insignificant nitpicking function I'd never even notice, or is about something big and obvious that's been in editing utils since the Amiga or C64 days and should have never been awarded a patent.
Either way, every software patent I've ever seen covers something silly and obvious that shouldn't be patentable based on the fact that it's so obvious and isn't a real advancement at all. The real-world equivalent to most such patents would be like trying to patent a new Lego brick because you made it two rows longer. Uh-huh. Ingenious.
Take the infamous 1-click patent for example. All it is is a fairly obvious way to make shopping on line just like shopping in real life at a store where you have an account or tab. Hand the clerk at the store your stuff with your ID or account number, order is rung up, store already has billing information, customer leaves with product. Amazon's 1-click patent does the same thing, only on-line. Patentable my ass. Anything simple and obvious shouldn't be patentable.
I bet whatever this new Adobe/Macromedia fight is about, it's over something that should never have been patentable in the first place.
Not to get needlessly complex, but...
on
MSN Forces Outlook POP
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· Score: 3, Interesting
If you're forced to use Outlook to get your e-mail, there are ways to make it as "pleasant" and "secure" as possible.
Want to use Linux, but need to use Outlook to get your mail? Fine, it's called a Virtual Machine. Run VMWare, load it with Win9x/NT/2k/XP, and either Outlook or the OE that comes with the OS. Put a shortcut to Outlook in the StartUp folder so that launches with Windows, and all you have to deal with is the extra overhead of the Virtual Machine's booting of Windows. Inconvenient but workable and not too difficult to set up.
Maybe WINE supports Outlook/Express? I don't know because I don't follow WINE, but I'm sure someone can tell us. In any event, VMWare with Windows installed would handle it for sure, andf pretty easily. And there's no security threat to your *real* OS, just the one in the VM. And turning off all of Outlook's bells and whistles would even eliminate that security problem. Like I said, inconvenient, but workable.
Even if you're running Windows and don't want the bloat of Outlook/Express cluttering up your OS all the time even when not in use, running a VMWare VM with a light version of Windows installed and Outlook running in that VM would be an option. You can pare down Windows using 98lite from http://www.98lite.net, BTW, making a fully functional install take up as little as 50MB--perfect if you want to run it from a VM for a limited purpose of interoperability. And if your system is that of a hardware enthusiast--hey, this is/. afterall--it shouldn't be too painfull.
Complicated? Yep. It would be much better just to be able to use any POP client. But if you can't, you can still run Outlook through Linux, one way or another, or even keep Outlook off your primary Windows install if that's the OS you use.
BTW, if you run Windows and are "upgrading" to WinXP, I'd wait for 98lite.net to finish work on their WinXP installer. It will allow you to *really* keep all the little bits of OE, MSN, etc., that usually get installed, from ever touching your PC. I currently use their version for Win98SE and am very happy with it--without all the extra junk installed, it's surprisingly stable and fast. Perfect for gaming and all else...
In 1785, a resolution authorized the secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs to open and inspect any mail that related to the safety and interests of the United States. The ensuing 'inspections' caused prominent men, like George Washington, to complain of mail tampering. According to various historians, it led James Madison, Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe to write to each other in code - that is, they encrypted their letters in order to preserve the privacy of their political discussion.
Government has shown time and again that it cannot be trusted not to eavesdrop without warrant and cause, whenever it thinks it can get away with it. The infamous FBI bugging of Martin Luther King and just about everyone else with political clout comes to mind. It was little more than thirty years ago, too, so don't complain my example is outdated. Or how about the recent study which found over 2,000 illegal, unwarranted wiretaps were performed last year? And that's just the ones we found out about after the fact.
The dissemination of information and ideas is one thing. Not leaving people alone long enough to gether information and form ideas, without fear of the Secret Police wondering why we're looking at that particular information and forming those particular ideas that it may not like, is a potential downfall of civilization.
Civilization is only advanced where ideas, even new and very jarring ones, are permitted to flourish. Today Socrates is considered to be the bedrock of all Western philosophy, since his pupil Plato wrote all the founding philosophical explorations. But recall that in his own time his ideas, nearly universal in the West today, were considered dangerous and he was executed for expressing them by the then-most-free society in existence, the birthplace of Democracy, Athens.
Encryption is the only way to express ideas without fear of reprisal by regimes which are not on the cutting edge of human rights, much as the U.S. is not. It is the sole way to protect one's privacy with any certainty from arbitrary invasions. Therefore we would do well to promote encryption, as a way to ensure that our rights are protected and respected. I trust myself to protect my rights with encryption, more than I trust the FBI, ATF, DOJ, etc., to do so with empty platitudes. And on this point I am in the company of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe--I'll take them to John Ashcroft, Janet Reno, the FBI and ATF agents who murdered innocent people at Ruby Ridge, and their ilk, any day.
What I find amazing is that most people labor under the foolish misconception that if only American encryption products (like PGP) were either backdoored, effectively export controlled, or discontinued altogether, that foreign criminals and terrorists would suddenly have nothing to hide their data with. Let's explore why only stupid people would think so:
1) Source code to most versions of PGP is available and published internationally on many sites. If a terrorist wants PGP, and PGP has been discontinued, he can just download a binary from one of these foreign servers, or get someone computer literate to compile this source code for him. It's already in the wild on the net, and spread to servers in nearly every free or partially free nation; it will never disappear now.
2) Since the source code is available for even some very recent versions, overseas programmers will pick it up and improve it and release newer builds for newer OSes if it is discontinued or shown to have backdoors.
3) GPG is arguably just as good, plus it's truly Free and GPLed. It's not as shiny, but makes a good drop-in replacement for most people, terrorists included. And again, GPG is "in the wild" and not going to disappear from the Net even if the U.S. and half the world outlaw strong encryption, and since the source code is there people will hack on it and improve it, even if only overseas people.
4) Contrary to the beliefs of the ignorant, the U.S. is not so much more advanced than other countries that no other people from overseas can write strong encryption products as good as ours. Encryption is universal math, not American voodoo. In fact, the best symmetric encryption product currently comes from the U.K., Scramdisk. If America and the U.K. were to ban encryption, any country with competent mathematicians and programmers could take the lead.
5) Encryption is based on well-documented and easily available math, and many proven algorithms are already published and cryptanalyzed and shown to be secure enough. Even if by some extraordinary miracle all traces of encryption products and source code were wiped from the Net by the unprecedented cooperation of every nation on Earth--something truly impossible--people like Osama could hire any competent mathematician and programmer to write a decent encryption product using a proven cipher and simple calls. As long as it's kept simple and uses proven ciphers, it would likely be as secure as PGP or GPG or Scramdisk.
So, it doesn't really matter what the download page says, or if it bothers to ask, or even if the U.S. were to enact the most Draconian encryption legislation tomorrow. PGP is nothing special. Its key functionality has already been duplicated in GPG and can be duplicated again and again by any number of competent non-U.S. residents. Therefore it doesn't matter who can download it, since they can get their hands on encryption technology that's just as strong.
In case you didn't know, just as with MPEG and MPEG-2, you can set a *maximum* and *minimum* bitrate in MPEG-4 encoding.
Therefore, setting the max and min bitrate to whatever the sat phone can handle, would prevent any problems. Not all MPEG-4 recording has to be done in 2-pass VBR, which some don't seem to realize. It still provides better compression than H.263 even with single-pass CBR at any given bitrate, except maybe for extraordinarily small ones, much smaller than I'm sure they're getting on those sat phone uplinks.
Not everyone realizes this though, since the most common MPEG-4 implementation is Microsoft's hack of it into an AVI codec, and in "official" versions of their MPEG-4 codec this functionality is usually hidden. In fact, in most of their MPEG-4 releases, the ability to record in that format at all is disabled.
If the default program is part of the standard Windows install or part of the Windows Media Player install, then yes, the file extension will revert properly back to this default.
In addition, the newer versions of the MS installer engine are smart enough to store information on what to change registry and other settings back to when the application is uninstalled. MS hasn't made a whole lot of progress in most areas, but their installer framework has gotten much cleaner and more accurate.
Of course, that's just my opinion, and my experience. YMMV.
Good for you. Now, when you do some research, you'll discover that I was talking about how file typing in Windows has not changed--it is still done the same way, which is different from the Mac's file/creator typing. Adding a scond way of accessing the underpinnings doesn't change any of that.
So go crawl back under your rock. Stupid trolls are the worst kind.
MPEG-4 is processor-instensive, yes. But it's actually fairly simple mathematically, just slow on general-purpose processors. That's why a video phone device should have it in a hardware encoder. Surely the budget of CNN and FoxNews can afford the fundage to get it done.
"Registered file types" are there because Windows was designed for non-techie users. It's not part of The Grand Conspiracy, since file typing is still done in Windows XP the same way it was done in Windows 95, and the way to change registered file types is still the same too. I'f they'd made it harder, I coyuld go for the argument. But they didn't--they kept it the same.
Registered file types were just a typical Microsoft hack designed to get the system to do essentially what Macs did, but without all the coding overhead and file/creator nonsense. Personally, I'm glad they cheaped out instead of doing file/creator typing, because I like to be able to change a file extension merely by clicking on the filename and changing 3 letters (after setting the newer versions of Windows to show the file extensions, of course--hiding them was another hack to be more like Mac, but a stupid one).
And the average user will never have to change what kind of program opens a certain type of file, manually. See, when you install new software on a Windows box, the new software almost always asks the user whether he wants documents with such and such extensions to open in this new application. Yes is the default and that's almost always what the user selects. No manual changes necessary. It's only computer literate people who should be tinkering around with registered file extensions anyway--because illiterate yahoos can "accidentally" make it so that double-clicking things does nothing, or opens a file in the wrong application. That's why Microsoft put the feature where it did instead of into a separate control panel, where "average" users would no doubt fsck themselves up.
Is MS evil and a predatory monopoly? Yes. Is their handling of registered file types part of their bid to rule the world? No. It's set up just like it should be--literate users know where it is, and average yokels can't ruin their systems by messing with something they shouldn't touch, and installing new apps to handle that file type will give the user the chance to change to opeining files of those types with that program. Or should we put a big shiny button in the control panel that performs a full fdisk just because that functionality is hard to find for the average bloke? No? Didn't think so. The writer of the Salon article is just blowing smoke up our collective arses at best, and at worst is a blundering moron. Nothing personal, of course...;-)
Hmm. Go ahead and ignore the part about there being a GAY PART OF TOWN, why don't you. In the GAY PART OF TOWN, there are few Xtian moralizing snots to tell on you if you are gay and kiss a guy or hold his hand in public. *Now* do you understand? Put a bunch of cameras there, and then the heterosexual world suddenly has an open and watching eye 24/7 onto the gay quarter. And do you recall the AOL monitor who turned in a guy to the military for being gay? Same principle applies, my friend.
But if you ignore the bandwidth restriction, then you're left with a feed that uses too much bandwidth for those satellite phone feeds. I'm fairly certain that *at the same bandwidth limit*, MPEG-4 will almost always produce better image quality/framerate than 263.
The guy who mentioned DivX and MPEG-4 above wasn't far off at all. The problem here is definitely the compression technique. The one they're using is utterly ANCIENT by today's standards, which can produce better framerates and image quality with lower bandwidth. Anyone remember the similar i.263 codec that used to be used in AVI videos traded over the Net? No? Now you know why nobody uses it anymore.
I too have been seeing those video phones in use, on the Fox News Network. But I had no idea ancient software was to blame, I just thought it was all the bandwith's fault. But they're not using that bandwidth to its full potential. They need to use an MPEG-4 based codec instead. Make their own, or use Microsoft's little AVI-based implementation, or anything--just use a modern compression technique.
I'd also imagine they could improve quality substantially by interpolating any lost frames, back up to the NTSC standard or a flat 30FPS. Surely a big news conglomerate can afford the hardware and software to do that relatively simple, though horsepower-intensive-in-realtime, chore.
> You need to also work out at what point "public display of affection" becomes
> "causing an obstruction" (or worst, e.g. if the PDA's are causing such an
> obstruction that pedestrians are placed at risk of being run over to avoid them.)
??? "Causing an obstruction"? Like, causes you to get constipated? A bowel obstruction of some sort?
I think you mean "causes a distraction" or "causes a disruption" or some such. In any event, no, I don't need to work that out, because that's not what we're debating here. We're debating the efficacy and propriety of placing cameras everywhere, not "how far is too far" when it comes to public displays of affection.
And how would pedestrians be "placed at risk of being run over to avoid" PDA? If someone chooses to walk in the middle of the road rather than walk within a few feet of a couple who happens to be kissing, then that person surely deserves to have his stodgy Puritan bum run over. One less extremist Xtian moralizer in the world doesn't sound like a bad thing.;-)
But people do tend to exercise common sense whenever they stop in public places. Much like a person will usually sit off to the curb or on a bench or otherwise off to the side, rather than sitting down in the middle of the sidewalk, so anyone kissing in a public place will probably have the sense to move off to the side rather than stop in the middle of the sidewalk and stand there with lips locked. A good general rule is, if it's an appropriate place to sit or to stand out of the main flow of foot traffic, and it isn't someplace dreadfully inappropriate like a schoolyard or such, then it's an appropriate place to express a bit of modest affection. Kissing, hugging, no fondling. Save the fondling for private places, or at least public places which are unoccupied and will be for a while...
I have a great story about getting caught going a bit too far in a public place we *thought* was secluded, but if I told it the mods would have a field day with that Off-Topic pulldown.;-)
The most important part of my post, however, was the long paragraph at the end about cameras interfering with our Constitutional right to peaceably assemble to petition the government for redress of grievances. It's an explicit right under the Constitution, and with biometrics-fueled cameras scanning the crowd and matching protesters with IDs, it would have a chilling effect on this right. The FBI has historically harassed people who have done nothing illegal, but piss them off for being political dissidents or holding unpopuklar or progressive views and values. Local police departments vary from very trustworthy to absolutely criminal. So we can't let ourselves be constantly watched when the watchmen are known abusers.
I live near a big city with a "gay quarter". Basically, there's a small part of the city where a lot of gay men and lesbians have been moving to, and where when you walk down the street or to the area's public aquare you're more likely to see gay people holding hands and kissing than you are to see straight people doing so.
This is fine with everyone except the ultra-right Xtian moralizers who want to decide morality for everyone else, because it is a small area, and because everyone knows about it. It also happens to be a very, very nice part of town, with great restaurants and shops, but I digress...
The point is, being gay is not something everyone can be open and honest about in this and most other countries. Gays deserve to be able to express themselves by holding hands or kissing in public just as heterosexuals do, and in this certain part of the city they can do so without offending anyone else, without worrying who may find out, etc. But with CCTV on every corner, their ability to have this part of town where they are in fact the majority and the "normal" ones goes away. With a camera on every street, they'd have to worry about who may be watching, who might see their license plate, who might see them holding hands and turn them in to a boss, their family, etc.
This is just one example of losing important freedoms to this. What's more vital than the right to free association? The right to express oneself, and in an appropriate area full of like-minded people no less? A few cameras would cause a very tangible chilling effect on the ability of these people to have their little slice of town where they're all normal and accepted and don't need to fear being outed or blackmailed for expressing themselves in ways no different from the ones we heterosexuals enjoy.
And what of that, too? Would everyone be so content to enjoy a nice kiss on a street or in a park or town square, if there were cameras around manned by leering strangers who amuse themselves by watching? Britons may not be so big on public displays of affection--though in the linked article there were a few teenagers making out and prostitutes getting rogered on windowsills--and some more conservative Americans aren't either, but a vast majority of us find nothing wrong with a bit of kissing and affection in certain public areas. But we don't want and don't deserve a leering audience of voyeurs recording it if we give our dates a kiss and whatnot. Cameras like that may impose a certain un-American stodginess and reversion further into Puritan sexual mores.
In fact, some of my fondest memories from high school involve "making out" with my gorgeous 16 year old girlfriend just about everywhere we went, and it never hurt anyone--in fact, once, we were kissing a bit fervently while waiting for the L, and a big Texan standing near us turned to his girl and said, "Honey, I think they've got the right idea," and that couple started kissing a bit, and before the train came every couple in the place seemed to be kissing and holding one another. It sounds corny, but such a nice feeling of love and affection pervaded the place as you've never experienced before.
Romantic moments like that are actively discouraged when you know there are cameras everywhere and leering pervs behind them. And Americans like romantic moments like that.
Even more importantly, there's a broader ramification. Americans have a specific constitutional right to assemble to petition the government for redress of grievances--i.e., we have a right to protest. A camera on every corner would discourage many from exercising this Constitutional right--the FBI has been known to abuse its powers and put people on "lists" for peacefully protesting, or doing anything contrary to the current establishment. Giving them face recognition technology with which to match peaceful protesters who are merely exercising their fundamental rights with databases--there's talk of just using all drivers license databases--is a gross violation. We have explicit Constitutional rights in this country which we'd be discouraged from exercising based on likely abuses of this system--the FBI has been known to abuse every power they have, from surveilling unlawfully against political dissidents like Martin Luther King, to shooting innocent women and children at Ruby Ridge. So, we certainly can't trust them with this.
There are no side-effects of the electronic age except one: that the government finds it easier and easier to invade our rights as new technologies are developed, since people keep "interpreting" how our Constitutional rights should apply in a new medium instead of just doing what the Framers intended--reading our rights as literally as possible and applying them everywhere, without regard to medium, without regard to the changing temper of the times.
"The mushrooming of surveillance has been explained by the sense of panic
and crisis felt throughout the government during this period of extremely
vocal dissent, large demonstrations, political and campus violence, and
what at the time seemed the inauguration of a period of wide- spread
anarchy. While officials... suggested that these crises justified the
surveillance, they failed to recognize that the rights guaranteed by the
constitution are constant and unbending to the temper of the times..."
--Senate Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights, 1973
Terrorist attacks do not justify concurrent attacks by government on our freedoms--not even if the "tyranny of the majority," the large part of the populace that's most easily mislead by Ashcroft's smooth-talk and the like instead of thinking for themselves and reflecting on the future impact decisions we make now will have on us and our children and our childrens' children, is willing to go along out of Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt, and Ignorance.
If we have no freedoms, there's nothing to fight the terrorists for.
"Implicit in the term 'national defense' is the notion of defending those
values and ideals which set this Nation apart... It would indeed be
ironic if, in the name of national defense, we would sanction the
subversion of one of those liberties... which makes the defense of the
Nation worthwhile."
--Chief Justice Earl Warren, U.S. Supreme Court, US v Robel
"Man did not enter into society to become worse than he was before, nor
to have fewer rights than he had before, but to have those rights better
secured."
--Thomas Paine, 1791
"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty
when the government's purposes are beneficient... the greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding."
--Justice Louis Brandeis, U.S. Supreme Court
"An elective despotism was not the government we fought for."
-- Thomas Jefferson
"Contemplate the mangled bodies of your countrymen, and then say, What should be the reward of such sacrifices?... If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquillity of servitude than the animating contest of freedom--go from us in peace. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you."
--Samuel Adams
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the
argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
--William Pitt to the House of Commons, November 18, 1783
Anyone who has an historical awareness realizes that we have lost, rather than gained, rights over the last two centuries. We give rights to more people, such as women and blacks, and that's great. But we give fewer rights than our ancestors had. When Ben Franklin was postmaster-general, he wasn't going to let anyone touch your mail without a warrant. Many decades later the Court ruled that you don't have to have a warrant to get the data on the outside of the envelope--reasonable. E-mail and Web traffic is substantially the same thing and should be protected as much as regular mail--yet it isn't. There is no legislation to give your e-mail and packets the same legal protection your snail mail has. Even worse, Sept. 11 is being used as an excuse to pass legislation that would consider ALL fields in packets except for the actual data being shuffled, as ftree for the government to examine without warrant. Disastrous because where e-mail and Web traffic diverges from snail mail is that the FBI can't scan all envelopes and record who's sending what to whom, but they CAN do so with e-mail and Web traffic if only thay can get backbones or local ISPs to install a little equipment. Is that what the Founders would have wanted to happen to mail? For all the information on the envelope to recorded for posterity so that they can know exactly whom you're corresponding with, and monitor you if they don't like who you write to? No? Then we shouldn't allow it.
It's as simple as that.
I can go down a whole list of such rights that our forefathers instituted that we have lost. Most of them are rights people don't even realize used to exist, because they weren't codified into the Bill of Rights so clearly. In fact, the principal objection that many of the Founders, including Jefferson, had to creating the Bill of Rights is that it may create the misconception that those are the only absolute rights--which is what it's done. That's why a clause was inserted to reinforce the fact that the listing of rights does not disparage or deny all other rights held by the people, and that it is not a complete list of our inalienable rights. In fact, at the time, our rights were more defined by the Common Law than by the Constitution. Yet today's legal system treats the Common Law and all the rights it gives us as a doormat. The most famous example is probably the elimination, without any legislation to support the move, of the right of juries to nullify the application of a law in given circumstances, so that all common sense and fairness are lost at trial today.
Wake up yourself. Our rights are a tiny shadow of what Jefferson and Washington and Madison and Franklin and the Adams' and all the citizens of their age had. I'm beginning to think that Jefferson was right, and that each generation should have a revolution against the last, to ensure its rights. One thing's for sure: none of the principal Founders would like the government we live under today. Thay'd recognize it as oppressing us and denying our natural rights and our rights under Common Law.
What makes people question whether the Freedom Network's shutdown is collateral damage from Sept. 11 is not just the uncanny timing, but the exceedingly short notice and the fact that just recently ZKS was promising the rollout of more servers.
The exceedingly short notice is perhaps the most troubling. I'm sorry, but no matter how much you protest that it's unrelated to Sept. 11, most people are not going to believe you. You couldn't reasonably admit folding the network due to Sept. 11, because that would garner a huge backlash from the sort of customers you want to buy your future "privacy" products. That creates a very real motive for denying that the network's shutdown has something to do with Sept. 11.
As it is, you cannibalized your own market by offering the cheap Freedom product without nyms and access to the Freedom Network, anyway. You started trying to target a more mainstream audience--an audience which doesn't know the difference between Freedom the run-of-the-mill "privacy" utility and Freedom with access to the anonymizing network. You should not have given them a choice in the matter, and doing so naturally cannibalized the market for the Premium product--which was the only unique thing your company offered in the first place. There are so many other packages that do the same thing, some by big-name vendors like Norton and McAfee, that you can't reasonably survive very long selling a virtually identical product with the same features but without the name recognition and without the added distribution these products get through inclusion in general-purpose utility syuites such as those offered by both Symantec and McAfee.
I know I'll likely get flamed and modded down for second-guessing this and playing armchair CEO, but the fact is you never should have offered people a cheaper product which the mainstream audience couldn't be expected to reasonably distinguish from your network anonymity enabled product. Your webpages didn't even give a good explanation that "normal" people would understand about why they should buy your more expensive product. Your less expensive option was more appealing to people merely because of the cost difference and the lack of knowledge of the "average" guy.
When it became apparent that you couldn't keep doing things the way you were doing them, what you should have done is drop the cheap option and support only those people also willing to support the Freedom Network-enabled version of the software. To do otherwise is removing the only thing which made you unique, the only thing which distinguished you from Symantec and McAffee and countless smaller companies and freeware offerings. You cannot and will not survive in such an environment with so many competitors, not to mention the people who are pissed at you for dropping the Freedom network to concentrate on Just Another Cookie Management/Firewall/Etc. Suite and who consequently would never buy your "Freedom 3.0" product even though they used to be supporters. I know I don't need Just Another Firewall/Cookie Suite--too many to choose from already, and if Freedom 3.0 is anything like your current "lite" suite lacking the Freedom Network, it's just too "heavy" and resource-intensive an app. I could tolerate that when I got to access the snonymity of the Freedom Network, but without it I'd rather just run ZoneAlarm's free firewall and get my cookie management free with Mozilla.
Good luck. You're going to need it. And I still don't believe this timing has nothing to do with Sept. 11--and if it doesn't, you had a responsibility to give your users more notice, and shame shame shame on you for not doing so.
I said so in my posting. If you don't want to take it from me, read the text yourself. It is so vague and overbroad that it could apply to this very webpage for my liberal use of profanity:
They would not have written it so broadly if there intentions were merely to apply it to hardcore porn sites, my friend. And I'd bet you dollars to donuts that the Supreme Court will uphold the lower Court's decision based on the very argument that the legislation is vageue and overbroad.
You seem to dwell on porn too much. Is that a personal problem we should know about?;-)
That does bring up a good point, trolling aside. Exactly how far would we go in declaring things to be verboten "virtual child porn"? If I doodle a little stick figure sucking off a big stick figure, is that illegal under the new law, if upheld?
It may sound like a silly example, but where is the line drawn? How about if I draw a risque sketch of a partially unclad high school cheerleader type? I recall seeing a rather silly adult comic strip of a high school cheerleader like, totally getting molestered by some bizarro alien thingy. Illegal? How about those old cartoons they ran in Hustler back in the 70s and early 80s, called "Chester the Molester"? It wasn't for the purposes of porn, but rather to be funny, and in a sick schadenfreude sort of way they were often hilarious.
How about the computer game *Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation*? In it, Lara Croft was supposed to be 16 years old, and they showed the outlines of her patch through her shorts, and you were able to make her bend over in ways that would be provacative if she were real and not CG. Child porn?
How about the kicker: almost all Japanese anime. Sure the import companies go out of their way to say that all the girls are supposed to be 18 or older, but anyone who knows about anime/manga and Japanese culure knows that that's not true. Most of the time, if you know Japanese, you can tell that the characters say they're 13, 14, 15, 16, or in high school or junior high. Often they're in "adult situations" at one time or another. Child porn?
The fact is, when you outlaw anything that's "virtual" and doesn't involve real people, you're outlawing ideas and expression and art, not actions. You should outlaw actions, not ideas, in a "free" society.
You're making the same illogical argument that the whole anti-child-porn industry is founded on.
Sex with a minor is rightfully illegal because under our current legal system we assign ages at which it is presumed that a majority of people of such an age can make a good decision regarding something difficult. In my state, for example, you can't drive until you're 16, since most 16 year olds can handle a car after driving school, but at younger ages they cannot. You can't smoke until you're 18, because that causes physical harm and psychological addiction which people under 18 may not be able to make good decisions about. You must also be 18 to consent to sex in my state under the theory that the decision to have sex is a very important one with physical and psychological consequences and people are probably not able to make that decision well and freely until most of them are 18. And the decision to drink isn't legally available until 21 because there are both physical and emotional consequences, there is the possibility of death or disability thanks to overdose, there are chances of addiction, the poor decision to drink and drive can lead to a violation of public safety, etc.
Well, child pornography falls within the same rubric. The theory behind making it illegal to make pornography involving minors is that the decision to have sex that is being recorded and documented and possibly seen by others is a serious one with life-altering consequences, and so people cannot give consent to have sex starring in moving or still images or audio until they reach the age of 18. That at least is the legal theory upon which the federal law against child pornography is founded. Taking the images is and should rightfully be illegal, since it harms the minor victim. Distributing the images is and should rightfully be illegal since that propagates the images which were illegally taken and causes further harm to the minors involved, since it exposes their exploitation to a wider audience. The legal theory underpinning this framework is that it causes harm to the minors in the child ponrography, *NOT* that it may induce other adults to go out and have sex with other minors. Indeed, that could not legally be the underpinning of the law, because it would be a restriction on the content of speech. Child porn is illegal not because it says something objectionable or incites viewers to take a harmful action, it is illegal because it harms the minor being portrayed. I can say, "Hey, go fuck a 12 year old, they're so tight and cute and they just love to suck on a grown-up's cock" all I want; it's objectionable, but not illegal. I cannot, however, send you a picture of someone fucking a 12 year old--under the legal theory that doing so harms the 12 yeatr old in the picture by exposing her abuse.
But the real trap you fall into is the notion that seeing pictures of child pornography causes people to imitate what's depicted. It doesn't. Either you think sex with young people is wrong, or you don't--an image isn't goin g to change your moral bearing. The easy explanation, and the true one, for why "a much larger majority of those who indulge themselves in child porn actually will act out the things they indulge themselves in" as you said, is that the kind of peoplw who collect child pornography are the kind of people who are attracted to children in the first place and who don't think having sex with them is wrong--or else they wouldn't be keeping pictures of it, would they?
To say that child porn causes people to molest children is like saying that gay porn causes people to be gay or straight porn causes one to be straight. It just doesn't work that way, because you're mistaking cause for effect. If you find lots of gay porn in a guy's PC, the odds are he's gay--he wasn't converted to gayness by the gay porn, either, rather he got the gay porn because he was already gay. Likewise with child ponr--if you find a bunch of child ponr on a guy's PC, he's probably a pedophile. The porn didn't make him a pedophile, rather, he collected the porn because he was already a pedophile.
"This argument can be extended to regular porn, which can cause a person to be so overwhelmed by sex that they could turn to rape (although this doesn't really apply to the many casual porn viewers, only porn-"zealots"). And this can definetly be extended to extremely hardcore porn and things such as snuff films."
Well, in that above paragraph you make it clear that you're either trolling, or an anti-porn thumper type. "Adult" porn has never made anyone rape anybody; that whole theory came about when notorious serial killer Ted Bundy claimed that "my addiction to porn made me rape and kill all those girls". He said so not because it was true, but because he thought it would get him a lighter sentence if he was a "victim" too. Not coincidentally, he made this claim at the height of the social debate that was occurring back during the years when porn was first going "mainstream" and being sold fairly openly instead of in illicit back-alley shops. The Moral Majority types of course took it as Gospel that porn causes rape--ironic that they'd believe a convicted serial killer and obvious psychopath (no we call them "sociopaths" instead) over all the repected scientists who've refuted the claim.
The fact is, porn is a release valve for our sexual frustrations. That's why porn is as old as civilization--the explicit paintings in almost every Rioman villa, the pictogram porn of the Egyptians, the explicit sculptures and paintings of ancient Greece. We see it, we get excited as if by a real partner, we jerk off, and our tensions are gone.
That's precisely why I hope "virtual" child porn becomes acceptable. Wouldn't it be great if pedophiles could freely download CGI child porn, pound their puppies, and not have to dabble in ral child porn? And have that release valve, so they don't explode their sexual frustrations and touch a real child? I think so.
You're right about the credit card problem. Why should anyone have to give someone the ability to access his credit or bank account just to view "adult" material? And why should the government be arbiter of what's suitable only for adults? And should parents be able to overrule the government's choices for their own kids, or are we going to make it illegal for parents to let their kids access the grown-ups' Internet?
Many people forget that this isn't just about "pay" adult sites with porn, or even about sites with porn at all. The COPA was extraordinarily broad, and would have completely stifled free speech on the Net--it didn't apply only to porn pictures, it applied to everything deemed "adult," including words. So if I use lots of fucking profanity on my goddamned motherfucking website, should I have to go through an age verification service before people can access my pages? What about/.--the cunts here use so fucking much profanity sometimes that it's unfuckingbelievable. So should/. only be accessible by adults willing to go through an age verification system involving their credit card number?
And what of anonymity? Speech can only truly be free when accessing it can be anonymous, or else suddenly Big Brother becomes a real entity which can trace every electronic thing you've ever read or accessed. Hell, do you think most porn would exist at all, if everyone who bought something from a porn shop had to leave his identifying info behind? That's what it would be like in cyberspace if this law were upheld. But it wouldn't just be porn. It would be politically controversial websites, such as the Independent Media Center. Would people be so willing to go there if they had to provide personal info and knew that maybe next time there's a protest, the FBI might get hold of the list of visitors and start harassing people? They tried to subpoena IP addresses directly from the IMC before, but were shot down. But imagine how much easier it would be for them if third parties, like age verification services, also had access lists, complete with names and credit card or other personal info? Then maybe they could get partial lists just by asking these third parties, who have no real interest in the matter, instead of having to subpoena the IPs from the actual organization that runs the site. Very bad.
And what would be covered as "adult"? Would the IMC and other indie media outlets be blacklisted as "adult" because they're subversive? Or because they have open forums like/.'s, where people somwetimes say naughty "adult" words (despite the fact that we know all kids know those words, too, and many use them)? And if I have a kid who wants to read something "adult" like IMC, or/., or whatever pretty mild linguistically-based stuff is also covered once the COPA censors get to work, and give him my age verification password to do so, he has access to all the other stuff--the porn, the sexually based sites, etc.--anyway. And if I don't give it to him, he can't read a lot of good sites that I may want him to be reading. But if I do give my own child my access password to an age verification system, might that be a crime, like contributing to the delinquency of a minor? Even if the Federal government passes no such law, there are doubtless state governments which would. That effectively would prevent me from letting my children read anything useful on their own on the Internet. It would also limit access of the young to websites which are useful for helping them learn responsibly about sex--an example of such a site is http://www.allaboutsex.org , a web site which I would probably want a young son to read at the right time.
And what if I let my underage son or daughter have access to my adult verification password to access sites like that, and he or she makes the mistake of sharing it with friends at school despite my warnings? Should I then be responsible for something like contributing to the delinquency of a minor, if the parents of one of these other kids gets offended by a website accessed with my unwittingly and unwillingly leaked password?
It opens up a huge can of worms that's best left untouched. The fact is, COPA and similar legislation would do nothing but make free speech nonexistent on the Internet, make it difficult or impossible for parents to have real decision-making on the sites thweir kids visit, and muck things up real good for everyone except the ultra-right-wing Xtian moralizing Jerry Fallwells of the world who bought this unconstitutional legislation.
Your ISP based solution is unworkable because then they'd lose their common-carrier status and suddenly become legally liable for everything their users access on the Internet. What if a porn site got through to Little Johnny and Little Johnny's mommy got really upset because she ordered the "clean" internet? Lawsuit. What if Bob posts some child porn of Alice using that service? Lawsuit. ISPs cannot exist without common carrier status.
What that leaves us with is Internet filtering on the client-side, like AOL's Parental Controls, like Surfwatch and Cyberpatrol, etc.--which is what all parents are free to install right now.
That's why COPA and such are bad and not just that, but unnecessary--parents should just get filtering software if they don't want their kids alone on the big bad Net. I'd be perfectly happy with Federal legislation to buy every parent in the country a free copy of the Net filtering software of their choice--that would be the equitable solution. But of course the lawmakers who drafted COPA aren't really interested in just helping parents keep their kids away from adult content--they want to expurgate all adult content and turn the Net into a Xtian Coalition-approved "family" establishment. And that's not constitutional, it's anti-free-speech, and it's wrong. And we shoyuld all fight it and chastise every member of Congress who voted for this drivel, and who will vote for the next round of drivel when the Supremes put COPA to rest for good. If we don't actively fight for our liberties, we deserve to have them Bowdlerized.
It was a better premiere episode than I expected. I mean, there's only *so much* you can do when you assemble a bunch of actors in an ensemble show like the ST series' and make them act before they fit with each other and their characters. No ST series has ever had a real all-encompassing central character--you have the captain as the "hub" but all the other characters are just as important to the feel of the series. That's something that always set ST apart from most other TV shows--that it's a true ensemble production.
The same is true of the writers. The writers have to know the characters and know how the actors fit into their characters' shoes (or bodysuits, in the case of 7 and the Vulcan chick...hehe...). This means by definition that both the writing and the acting in the first season of a ST series are not going to be up to par. It takes time for the actors, the characters, and the writers to all "mesh" well.
That's why I was pleasantly surprised by the passable story and acting. It's better than the first few episodes of any other ST series. It's promising.
I especially like hearkening back to the old TOS rough-and-tumble attitudes. That's something a lot of people forget--that Roddenberry set out to write a "Wagon Train to the Stars," a sort of Western set in deep space. In that respect shows like Babylon 5 and even Andromeda (yuck--sorry, but--yuck) and of course Farscape have been far closer to the concept of TOS than any of the newer ST series have been. So despite the bitching thus far, I think Roddenberry would have been very happy with this episode and with the potential of this series.
Not that there's anything wrong with the world of TNG and DS9 and even Voyager (80% of the episodes were "good enough" in the last 2 seasons, so wuite yer bitching)--as a geek I love the technobabble and the idea of having such an advanced technological framework. I love the wormholes and tachyon beams and especialy the episodes involving quantum mechanics. But there's also nothing wrong with returning to ST's shoot-from-the-hip roots. Especially since it got to a point where many average folks couldn't watch ST--my grandmother for instance was a smart woman, but she never understood half of the technical stuff they were saying and so after loyally watching TOS and then TNG for 30 years she gave up. This is a chance to recapture those people.
That said, I agree with what so many have said--the opening music has to go. What the FUCK were they thinking? I didn't know whether to laugh or scream. What they should have done and what they can still do is have Scott Bakula read off the a variation of the old standard, "Space, the final frontier..." They could reasonably inster a few anachronisms, like calling it the "spaceship Enterprise" instead of the "starship Enterprise" and such. Because, that opening music alone is enough to alienate most or the current ST fanbase, who'll view it as a sign that the show is catering to a certain uneducated demographic alone.
And finally, as for the tits--why complain? As long as the stories are good, the tits are just a bonus. How can any man woman or child with a pulse complain? I mean, did you SEE those things in the rubdown scene? Those nipples were like two stiff warp nacelles, boldly jutting out where every man would love to go...;-)
Now excuse me while I go jerk off to the thought of a borgalicious lesbian encounter between 7 of 9 and that Vulcan chick. Mmmm, now *where* did she just put that tricorder???
Such games are no more difficult to emulate than any other games. In fact, Pong was one of the first games emulated by MAME. It's in older versions of MAME, in improved versions of recent builds of MAME called FixMAME, and it's been emulated accurately in its many different forms, both arcade and home, by several other emulators.
The reason that Pong was dropped and support for other discrete-circuitry games was dropped isn't technical, it's legal. The MAME devs decided that emulating a whole discrete-circuitry game--meaning that MAME would play that game without needing to download any external ROMs at all-- would keep MAME open to easier legal attack. So they removed Pong and drew an arbitrary distinction between all-circuitry games and games that have ROMs. They arbitrarily call all-circuitry games "simulated" games rather than emulated--a very stupid distinction since, to run the ROMs on the emulated machines in MAME, MAME simulated a whole lot of discrete circuitry.
What they really should have done is create a plug-in framework for discrete-circuitry games, so that the emulated/simulated circuitry could be packaged in a zip file and downloaded just like ROMs are. That way they could avoid the legal pitfall while still preserving the oldest games, those with discrete circuitry, which are also those most in need of preservation. I find it hypocritical that the MAME devs claim that MAME is made for the purpose of preserving our arcade heritage before the machines are too far gone, and yet they spend their time emulating Golden Tee games that you can still find in any sports bar today (they're in the source code, but disabled since they're still being sold), and yet refuse to emulate the 70s classics that used discrete circuits and are disappearing all the time. Sure, developers can spend their time working on whatever they want and blah blah blah, but it's still hypocritical to emulate games that are still being sold and refuse to emulate games that are disappearing, and claim you're doing it all to preserve our arcade heritage. What a crock of shit. They emulate what they want to play, with no regard for the games that are really in danger--the oldest arcade games, almost all of which have discete circuits and no ROMs. So instead of finding a way around the legal issues, like a plug-in system, they draw an arbitrary line in the sand and claim that they shouldn't emulate the hardware of these games because it would be a "simulation"--as if the emulated hardware that ROMs run on is real, not simulated?
Forgive me if I get a little pissed, but I'm annoyed that a project which claims to be for arcade preservation is letting the foundation of the arcade business disappear, mostly because they enjoy playing Golden Tee and such more than really preserving the 70s classics. The discrete circuitry games are largely difficult to find, except for a few of the most popular like pong and Breakout. And even so, how many people under 25 have ever seen and played the real, original Breakout, the game that started a whole genre and was worked on by some big-name people like Woz?
MAME should stop cutting our arcade gaming heritage into arbitrary slices and saying, if it has a ROM we'll emulate it but if it doesn't we won't; if it has a Laserdisc we won't emulate it (a driver was submitted that works with the DVD version of Dragon's Lair, but will not be included in MAME); etc.
On a better note, the discrete circuitry classic Monaco GP has been quite well emulated recently by a stand-alone emulator, and there's even a version of MAME available that has it hacked in (FixMAME). It's a much more complicated game than Pong--in fact, about as complicated as you can get with discrete circuits alone. So it's a great accomplishment, and I hope more people will follow with similar projects, despite lack of encouragement by MAME.
It may *feel* better than a DualShock controller, but it's still the same design and layout, only "tweaked" and improved. You can tell just by looking at the thing. By holding the thing you can tell that it feels better, but it doesn't feel as good as the N64 controller. Not at all. And as for the Z button--anything that has to add a "nub" to let you know it's there in the first place is a mistake. Buttons should feel like buttons, not nubs. That was another nice thing about the N64 controller--it just felt very ergonomic, and the buttons felt like buttons, and the Z-button was a nice trigger-like button that you KNEW was there when you touched it--no tacky "nub" necessary.
That said, the N64 controller isn't for everyone. People with extraordinarily large hands find the N64 controller uncomfortable. But Most of the guys I know, with average hands, love it. It's also comfortable enough for my 6 year old niece, who obviously has very small hands. People with huge hands will always like the DualShock style controllers better. But most of the rest of us are extremely happy with the N64 controller.
I'm just disappointed that they've all apparently adopted the DualShock style now. It isn't for everyone.
But while we're on the subject of controllers, what's with the weird placement of cords at the bottom on some machines like Dreamcast? I've used a DC and I can't stand it. Am I alone there? Why would they put the cord at the bottom, except just to look different?
All that said, nothing feels better than good old fashioned arcade controls. That's another advantage of the PC--more flexibility. HotRod sells a nice pre-made control panel that's USB compatible and can be mapped to any keystrokes. Better yet you can build your own arcade controls, and put them and a game PC into an arcade cab if you want. Lots of people have been trying this, including Taco. I'm currently building one that will be able to play the ~3000 arcade games, hundreds of NES and SNES and Genesis games, and hundreds of old "abandonware" PC and Mac games that I've downloaded, as well as the dozens of recent PC games I've bought retail. No console can ever match that.
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Let's see, I've been using Photoshop since version 2.somethingoranother on the Mac. back then I was just fooling around with it in the college computer lab. Today I use it professionally. If you must know, I use it to create boxcover art for my line of pro-am commercial adult videos, and for some non-adult Web graphics work I do.
I'm a lot closer to 30 than to 14, and I actually use Photoshop in a professional capacity. That qualifies me to speak about it a lot more than an AC who sounds himself like a 14 year old with a chip on his shoulder.
But I never denigrated Photoshop at all. If you reread my post, you'll see that I said either the patent has to be on something Photoshop has been doing for many many years now, or on something minor. To an experienced digital artist, yes, the changes made to Photoshop in the last 3 years since Macromedia filed their patent are pretty minor. And I'd know because I've been using Photoshop a lot since 1995. The biggest changes were made between 95 and 98, rather than between 98 and 01.
As for UI tweaks, they fall into the category of minor changes--I doubt Macromedia is suing Adobe over a UI change. But I wouldn't put it past them. And BTW, the UI tweaks tend to be a distraction for *real* users who've been with the software for a long time, not usually an improvement. The only reason I bother to keep upgrading every once in a while is better performance--one of the drawbacks of closed source software is not being able to recompile it when you get to be a couple of processor generations ahead of what your software was compiled for. But I digress.
Now get back under your rock, trollboy.
All I can say is that this is yet more proof that software patents are just a bad idea. Let's see; Photoshop has been around since the Dawn of Time by computer standards, and somehow it violates a Macromedia patent filed just 3 years ago. I'm using Photoshop 6 now, and as far as I can see, it does the same thing every other version has done, only with a few more mostly-useless bells and whistles. I bet the patent is either about some tiny little insignificant nitpicking function I'd never even notice, or is about something big and obvious that's been in editing utils since the Amiga or C64 days and should have never been awarded a patent.
Either way, every software patent I've ever seen covers something silly and obvious that shouldn't be patentable based on the fact that it's so obvious and isn't a real advancement at all. The real-world equivalent to most such patents would be like trying to patent a new Lego brick because you made it two rows longer. Uh-huh. Ingenious.
Take the infamous 1-click patent for example. All it is is a fairly obvious way to make shopping on line just like shopping in real life at a store where you have an account or tab. Hand the clerk at the store your stuff with your ID or account number, order is rung up, store already has billing information, customer leaves with product. Amazon's 1-click patent does the same thing, only on-line. Patentable my ass. Anything simple and obvious shouldn't be patentable.
I bet whatever this new Adobe/Macromedia fight is about, it's over something that should never have been patentable in the first place.
A demonstration of my point, from the VMWare site itself:
x 5. jpg
http://www.vmware.com/products/desktop/img/linu
If you're forced to use Outlook to get your e-mail, there are ways to make it as "pleasant" and "secure" as possible.
/. afterall--it shouldn't be too painfull.
Want to use Linux, but need to use Outlook to get your mail? Fine, it's called a Virtual Machine. Run VMWare, load it with Win9x/NT/2k/XP, and either Outlook or the OE that comes with the OS. Put a shortcut to Outlook in the StartUp folder so that launches with Windows, and all you have to deal with is the extra overhead of the Virtual Machine's booting of Windows. Inconvenient but workable and not too difficult to set up.
Maybe WINE supports Outlook/Express? I don't know because I don't follow WINE, but I'm sure someone can tell us. In any event, VMWare with Windows installed would handle it for sure, andf pretty easily. And there's no security threat to your *real* OS, just the one in the VM. And turning off all of Outlook's bells and whistles would even eliminate that security problem. Like I said, inconvenient, but workable.
Even if you're running Windows and don't want the bloat of Outlook/Express cluttering up your OS all the time even when not in use, running a VMWare VM with a light version of Windows installed and Outlook running in that VM would be an option. You can pare down Windows using 98lite from http://www.98lite.net, BTW, making a fully functional install take up as little as 50MB--perfect if you want to run it from a VM for a limited purpose of interoperability. And if your system is that of a hardware enthusiast--hey, this is
Complicated? Yep. It would be much better just to be able to use any POP client. But if you can't, you can still run Outlook through Linux, one way or another, or even keep Outlook off your primary Windows install if that's the OS you use.
BTW, if you run Windows and are "upgrading" to WinXP, I'd wait for 98lite.net to finish work on their WinXP installer. It will allow you to *really* keep all the little bits of OE, MSN, etc., that usually get installed, from ever touching your PC. I currently use their version for Win98SE and am very happy with it--without all the extra junk installed, it's surprisingly stable and fast. Perfect for gaming and all else...
In 1785, a resolution authorized the secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs to open and inspect any mail that related to the safety and interests of the United States. The ensuing 'inspections' caused prominent men, like George Washington, to complain of mail tampering. According to various historians, it led James Madison, Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe to write to each other in code - that is, they encrypted their letters in order to preserve the privacy of their political discussion.
Government has shown time and again that it cannot be trusted not to eavesdrop without warrant and cause, whenever it thinks it can get away with it. The infamous FBI bugging of Martin Luther King and just about everyone else with political clout comes to mind. It was little more than thirty years ago, too, so don't complain my example is outdated. Or how about the recent study which found over 2,000 illegal, unwarranted wiretaps were performed last year? And that's just the ones we found out about after the fact.
The dissemination of information and ideas is one thing. Not leaving people alone long enough to gether information and form ideas, without fear of the Secret Police wondering why we're looking at that particular information and forming those particular ideas that it may not like, is a potential downfall of civilization.
Civilization is only advanced where ideas, even new and very jarring ones, are permitted to flourish. Today Socrates is considered to be the bedrock of all Western philosophy, since his pupil Plato wrote all the founding philosophical explorations. But recall that in his own time his ideas, nearly universal in the West today, were considered dangerous and he was executed for expressing them by the then-most-free society in existence, the birthplace of Democracy, Athens.
Encryption is the only way to express ideas without fear of reprisal by regimes which are not on the cutting edge of human rights, much as the U.S. is not. It is the sole way to protect one's privacy with any certainty from arbitrary invasions. Therefore we would do well to promote encryption, as a way to ensure that our rights are protected and respected. I trust myself to protect my rights with encryption, more than I trust the FBI, ATF, DOJ, etc., to do so with empty platitudes. And on this point I am in the company of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe--I'll take them to John Ashcroft, Janet Reno, the FBI and ATF agents who murdered innocent people at Ruby Ridge, and their ilk, any day.
What I find amazing is that most people labor under the foolish misconception that if only American encryption products (like PGP) were either backdoored, effectively export controlled, or discontinued altogether, that foreign criminals and terrorists would suddenly have nothing to hide their data with. Let's explore why only stupid people would think so:
1) Source code to most versions of PGP is available and published internationally on many sites. If a terrorist wants PGP, and PGP has been discontinued, he can just download a binary from one of these foreign servers, or get someone computer literate to compile this source code for him. It's already in the wild on the net, and spread to servers in nearly every free or partially free nation; it will never disappear now.
2) Since the source code is available for even some very recent versions, overseas programmers will pick it up and improve it and release newer builds for newer OSes if it is discontinued or shown to have backdoors.
3) GPG is arguably just as good, plus it's truly Free and GPLed. It's not as shiny, but makes a good drop-in replacement for most people, terrorists included. And again, GPG is "in the wild" and not going to disappear from the Net even if the U.S. and half the world outlaw strong encryption, and since the source code is there people will hack on it and improve it, even if only overseas people.
4) Contrary to the beliefs of the ignorant, the U.S. is not so much more advanced than other countries that no other people from overseas can write strong encryption products as good as ours. Encryption is universal math, not American voodoo. In fact, the best symmetric encryption product currently comes from the U.K., Scramdisk. If America and the U.K. were to ban encryption, any country with competent mathematicians and programmers could take the lead.
5) Encryption is based on well-documented and easily available math, and many proven algorithms are already published and cryptanalyzed and shown to be secure enough. Even if by some extraordinary miracle all traces of encryption products and source code were wiped from the Net by the unprecedented cooperation of every nation on Earth--something truly impossible--people like Osama could hire any competent mathematician and programmer to write a decent encryption product using a proven cipher and simple calls. As long as it's kept simple and uses proven ciphers, it would likely be as secure as PGP or GPG or Scramdisk.
So, it doesn't really matter what the download page says, or if it bothers to ask, or even if the U.S. were to enact the most Draconian encryption legislation tomorrow. PGP is nothing special. Its key functionality has already been duplicated in GPG and can be duplicated again and again by any number of competent non-U.S. residents. Therefore it doesn't matter who can download it, since they can get their hands on encryption technology that's just as strong.
In case you didn't know, just as with MPEG and MPEG-2, you can set a *maximum* and *minimum* bitrate in MPEG-4 encoding.
Therefore, setting the max and min bitrate to whatever the sat phone can handle, would prevent any problems. Not all MPEG-4 recording has to be done in 2-pass VBR, which some don't seem to realize. It still provides better compression than H.263 even with single-pass CBR at any given bitrate, except maybe for extraordinarily small ones, much smaller than I'm sure they're getting on those sat phone uplinks.
Not everyone realizes this though, since the most common MPEG-4 implementation is Microsoft's hack of it into an AVI codec, and in "official" versions of their MPEG-4 codec this functionality is usually hidden. In fact, in most of their MPEG-4 releases, the ability to record in that format at all is disabled.
If the default program is part of the standard Windows install or part of the Windows Media Player install, then yes, the file extension will revert properly back to this default.
In addition, the newer versions of the MS installer engine are smart enough to store information on what to change registry and other settings back to when the application is uninstalled. MS hasn't made a whole lot of progress in most areas, but their installer framework has gotten much cleaner and more accurate.
Of course, that's just my opinion, and my experience. YMMV.
Good for you. Now, when you do some research, you'll discover that I was talking about how file typing in Windows has not changed--it is still done the same way, which is different from the Mac's file/creator typing. Adding a scond way of accessing the underpinnings doesn't change any of that.
So go crawl back under your rock. Stupid trolls are the worst kind.
MPEG-4 is processor-instensive, yes. But it's actually fairly simple mathematically, just slow on general-purpose processors. That's why a video phone device should have it in a hardware encoder. Surely the budget of CNN and FoxNews can afford the fundage to get it done.
"Registered file types" are there because Windows was designed for non-techie users. It's not part of The Grand Conspiracy, since file typing is still done in Windows XP the same way it was done in Windows 95, and the way to change registered file types is still the same too. I'f they'd made it harder, I coyuld go for the argument. But they didn't--they kept it the same.
;-)
Registered file types were just a typical Microsoft hack designed to get the system to do essentially what Macs did, but without all the coding overhead and file/creator nonsense. Personally, I'm glad they cheaped out instead of doing file/creator typing, because I like to be able to change a file extension merely by clicking on the filename and changing 3 letters (after setting the newer versions of Windows to show the file extensions, of course--hiding them was another hack to be more like Mac, but a stupid one).
And the average user will never have to change what kind of program opens a certain type of file, manually. See, when you install new software on a Windows box, the new software almost always asks the user whether he wants documents with such and such extensions to open in this new application. Yes is the default and that's almost always what the user selects. No manual changes necessary. It's only computer literate people who should be tinkering around with registered file extensions anyway--because illiterate yahoos can "accidentally" make it so that double-clicking things does nothing, or opens a file in the wrong application. That's why Microsoft put the feature where it did instead of into a separate control panel, where "average" users would no doubt fsck themselves up.
Is MS evil and a predatory monopoly? Yes. Is their handling of registered file types part of their bid to rule the world? No. It's set up just like it should be--literate users know where it is, and average yokels can't ruin their systems by messing with something they shouldn't touch, and installing new apps to handle that file type will give the user the chance to change to opeining files of those types with that program. Or should we put a big shiny button in the control panel that performs a full fdisk just because that functionality is hard to find for the average bloke? No? Didn't think so. The writer of the Salon article is just blowing smoke up our collective arses at best, and at worst is a blundering moron. Nothing personal, of course...
Hmm. Go ahead and ignore the part about there being a GAY PART OF TOWN, why don't you. In the GAY PART OF TOWN, there are few Xtian moralizing snots to tell on you if you are gay and kiss a guy or hold his hand in public. *Now* do you understand? Put a bunch of cameras there, and then the heterosexual world suddenly has an open and watching eye 24/7 onto the gay quarter. And do you recall the AOL monitor who turned in a guy to the military for being gay? Same principle applies, my friend.
But if you ignore the bandwidth restriction, then you're left with a feed that uses too much bandwidth for those satellite phone feeds. I'm fairly certain that *at the same bandwidth limit*, MPEG-4 will almost always produce better image quality/framerate than 263.
The guy who mentioned DivX and MPEG-4 above wasn't far off at all. The problem here is definitely the compression technique. The one they're using is utterly ANCIENT by today's standards, which can produce better framerates and image quality with lower bandwidth. Anyone remember the similar i.263 codec that used to be used in AVI videos traded over the Net? No? Now you know why nobody uses it anymore.
;-)
I too have been seeing those video phones in use, on the Fox News Network. But I had no idea ancient software was to blame, I just thought it was all the bandwith's fault. But they're not using that bandwidth to its full potential. They need to use an MPEG-4 based codec instead. Make their own, or use Microsoft's little AVI-based implementation, or anything--just use a modern compression technique.
I'd also imagine they could improve quality substantially by interpolating any lost frames, back up to the NTSC standard or a flat 30FPS. Surely a big news conglomerate can afford the hardware and software to do that relatively simple, though horsepower-intensive-in-realtime, chore.
Cheap bastards.
> You need to also work out at what point "public display of affection" becomes
;-)
;-)
> "causing an obstruction" (or worst, e.g. if the PDA's are causing such an
> obstruction that pedestrians are placed at risk of being run over to avoid them.)
??? "Causing an obstruction"? Like, causes you to get constipated? A bowel obstruction of some sort?
I think you mean "causes a distraction" or "causes a disruption" or some such. In any event, no, I don't need to work that out, because that's not what we're debating here. We're debating the efficacy and propriety of placing cameras everywhere, not "how far is too far" when it comes to public displays of affection.
And how would pedestrians be "placed at risk of being run over to avoid" PDA? If someone chooses to walk in the middle of the road rather than walk within a few feet of a couple who happens to be kissing, then that person surely deserves to have his stodgy Puritan bum run over. One less extremist Xtian moralizer in the world doesn't sound like a bad thing.
But people do tend to exercise common sense whenever they stop in public places. Much like a person will usually sit off to the curb or on a bench or otherwise off to the side, rather than sitting down in the middle of the sidewalk, so anyone kissing in a public place will probably have the sense to move off to the side rather than stop in the middle of the sidewalk and stand there with lips locked. A good general rule is, if it's an appropriate place to sit or to stand out of the main flow of foot traffic, and it isn't someplace dreadfully inappropriate like a schoolyard or such, then it's an appropriate place to express a bit of modest affection. Kissing, hugging, no fondling. Save the fondling for private places, or at least public places which are unoccupied and will be for a while...
I have a great story about getting caught going a bit too far in a public place we *thought* was secluded, but if I told it the mods would have a field day with that Off-Topic pulldown.
The most important part of my post, however, was the long paragraph at the end about cameras interfering with our Constitutional right to peaceably assemble to petition the government for redress of grievances. It's an explicit right under the Constitution, and with biometrics-fueled cameras scanning the crowd and matching protesters with IDs, it would have a chilling effect on this right. The FBI has historically harassed people who have done nothing illegal, but piss them off for being political dissidents or holding unpopuklar or progressive views and values. Local police departments vary from very trustworthy to absolutely criminal. So we can't let ourselves be constantly watched when the watchmen are known abusers.
I live near a big city with a "gay quarter". Basically, there's a small part of the city where a lot of gay men and lesbians have been moving to, and where when you walk down the street or to the area's public aquare you're more likely to see gay people holding hands and kissing than you are to see straight people doing so.
This is fine with everyone except the ultra-right Xtian moralizers who want to decide morality for everyone else, because it is a small area, and because everyone knows about it. It also happens to be a very, very nice part of town, with great restaurants and shops, but I digress...
The point is, being gay is not something everyone can be open and honest about in this and most other countries. Gays deserve to be able to express themselves by holding hands or kissing in public just as heterosexuals do, and in this certain part of the city they can do so without offending anyone else, without worrying who may find out, etc. But with CCTV on every corner, their ability to have this part of town where they are in fact the majority and the "normal" ones goes away. With a camera on every street, they'd have to worry about who may be watching, who might see their license plate, who might see them holding hands and turn them in to a boss, their family, etc.
This is just one example of losing important freedoms to this. What's more vital than the right to free association? The right to express oneself, and in an appropriate area full of like-minded people no less? A few cameras would cause a very tangible chilling effect on the ability of these people to have their little slice of town where they're all normal and accepted and don't need to fear being outed or blackmailed for expressing themselves in ways no different from the ones we heterosexuals enjoy.
And what of that, too? Would everyone be so content to enjoy a nice kiss on a street or in a park or town square, if there were cameras around manned by leering strangers who amuse themselves by watching? Britons may not be so big on public displays of affection--though in the linked article there were a few teenagers making out and prostitutes getting rogered on windowsills--and some more conservative Americans aren't either, but a vast majority of us find nothing wrong with a bit of kissing and affection in certain public areas. But we don't want and don't deserve a leering audience of voyeurs recording it if we give our dates a kiss and whatnot. Cameras like that may impose a certain un-American stodginess and reversion further into Puritan sexual mores.
In fact, some of my fondest memories from high school involve "making out" with my gorgeous 16 year old girlfriend just about everywhere we went, and it never hurt anyone--in fact, once, we were kissing a bit fervently while waiting for the L, and a big Texan standing near us turned to his girl and said, "Honey, I think they've got the right idea," and that couple started kissing a bit, and before the train came every couple in the place seemed to be kissing and holding one another. It sounds corny, but such a nice feeling of love and affection pervaded the place as you've never experienced before.
Romantic moments like that are actively discouraged when you know there are cameras everywhere and leering pervs behind them. And Americans like romantic moments like that.
Even more importantly, there's a broader ramification. Americans have a specific constitutional right to assemble to petition the government for redress of grievances--i.e., we have a right to protest. A camera on every corner would discourage many from exercising this Constitutional right--the FBI has been known to abuse its powers and put people on "lists" for peacefully protesting, or doing anything contrary to the current establishment. Giving them face recognition technology with which to match peaceful protesters who are merely exercising their fundamental rights with databases--there's talk of just using all drivers license databases--is a gross violation. We have explicit Constitutional rights in this country which we'd be discouraged from exercising based on likely abuses of this system--the FBI has been known to abuse every power they have, from surveilling unlawfully against political dissidents like Martin Luther King, to shooting innocent women and children at Ruby Ridge. So, we certainly can't trust them with this.
There are no side-effects of the electronic age except one: that the government finds it easier and easier to invade our rights as new technologies are developed, since people keep "interpreting" how our Constitutional rights should apply in a new medium instead of just doing what the Framers intended--reading our rights as literally as possible and applying them everywhere, without regard to medium, without regard to the changing temper of the times.
... If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquillity of servitude than the animating contest of freedom--go from us in peace. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you."
"The mushrooming of surveillance has been explained by the sense of panic
and crisis felt throughout the government during this period of extremely
vocal dissent, large demonstrations, political and campus violence, and
what at the time seemed the inauguration of a period of wide- spread
anarchy. While officials... suggested that these crises justified the
surveillance, they failed to recognize that the rights guaranteed by the
constitution are constant and unbending to the temper of the times..."
--Senate Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights, 1973
Terrorist attacks do not justify concurrent attacks by government on our freedoms--not even if the "tyranny of the majority," the large part of the populace that's most easily mislead by Ashcroft's smooth-talk and the like instead of thinking for themselves and reflecting on the future impact decisions we make now will have on us and our children and our childrens' children, is willing to go along out of Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt, and Ignorance.
If we have no freedoms, there's nothing to fight the terrorists for.
"Implicit in the term 'national defense' is the notion of defending those
values and ideals which set this Nation apart... It would indeed be
ironic if, in the name of national defense, we would sanction the
subversion of one of those liberties... which makes the defense of the
Nation worthwhile."
--Chief Justice Earl Warren, U.S. Supreme Court, US v Robel
"Man did not enter into society to become worse than he was before, nor
to have fewer rights than he had before, but to have those rights better
secured."
--Thomas Paine, 1791
"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty
when the government's purposes are beneficient... the greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding."
--Justice Louis Brandeis, U.S. Supreme Court
"An elective despotism was not the government we fought for."
-- Thomas Jefferson
"Contemplate the mangled bodies of your countrymen, and then say, What should be the reward of such sacrifices?
--Samuel Adams
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the
argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
--William Pitt to the House of Commons, November 18, 1783
Anyone who has an historical awareness realizes that we have lost, rather than gained, rights over the last two centuries. We give rights to more people, such as women and blacks, and that's great. But we give fewer rights than our ancestors had. When Ben Franklin was postmaster-general, he wasn't going to let anyone touch your mail without a warrant. Many decades later the Court ruled that you don't have to have a warrant to get the data on the outside of the envelope--reasonable. E-mail and Web traffic is substantially the same thing and should be protected as much as regular mail--yet it isn't. There is no legislation to give your e-mail and packets the same legal protection your snail mail has. Even worse, Sept. 11 is being used as an excuse to pass legislation that would consider ALL fields in packets except for the actual data being shuffled, as ftree for the government to examine without warrant. Disastrous because where e-mail and Web traffic diverges from snail mail is that the FBI can't scan all envelopes and record who's sending what to whom, but they CAN do so with e-mail and Web traffic if only thay can get backbones or local ISPs to install a little equipment. Is that what the Founders would have wanted to happen to mail? For all the information on the envelope to recorded for posterity so that they can know exactly whom you're corresponding with, and monitor you if they don't like who you write to? No? Then we shouldn't allow it.
It's as simple as that.
I can go down a whole list of such rights that our forefathers instituted that we have lost. Most of them are rights people don't even realize used to exist, because they weren't codified into the Bill of Rights so clearly. In fact, the principal objection that many of the Founders, including Jefferson, had to creating the Bill of Rights is that it may create the misconception that those are the only absolute rights--which is what it's done. That's why a clause was inserted to reinforce the fact that the listing of rights does not disparage or deny all other rights held by the people, and that it is not a complete list of our inalienable rights. In fact, at the time, our rights were more defined by the Common Law than by the Constitution. Yet today's legal system treats the Common Law and all the rights it gives us as a doormat. The most famous example is probably the elimination, without any legislation to support the move, of the right of juries to nullify the application of a law in given circumstances, so that all common sense and fairness are lost at trial today.
Wake up yourself. Our rights are a tiny shadow of what Jefferson and Washington and Madison and Franklin and the Adams' and all the citizens of their age had. I'm beginning to think that Jefferson was right, and that each generation should have a revolution against the last, to ensure its rights. One thing's for sure: none of the principal Founders would like the government we live under today. Thay'd recognize it as oppressing us and denying our natural rights and our rights under Common Law.
What makes people question whether the Freedom Network's shutdown is collateral damage from Sept. 11 is not just the uncanny timing, but the exceedingly short notice and the fact that just recently ZKS was promising the rollout of more servers.
The exceedingly short notice is perhaps the most troubling. I'm sorry, but no matter how much you protest that it's unrelated to Sept. 11, most people are not going to believe you. You couldn't reasonably admit folding the network due to Sept. 11, because that would garner a huge backlash from the sort of customers you want to buy your future "privacy" products. That creates a very real motive for denying that the network's shutdown has something to do with Sept. 11.
As it is, you cannibalized your own market by offering the cheap Freedom product without nyms and access to the Freedom Network, anyway. You started trying to target a more mainstream audience--an audience which doesn't know the difference between Freedom the run-of-the-mill "privacy" utility and Freedom with access to the anonymizing network. You should not have given them a choice in the matter, and doing so naturally cannibalized the market for the Premium product--which was the only unique thing your company offered in the first place. There are so many other packages that do the same thing, some by big-name vendors like Norton and McAfee, that you can't reasonably survive very long selling a virtually identical product with the same features but without the name recognition and without the added distribution these products get through inclusion in general-purpose utility syuites such as those offered by both Symantec and McAfee.
I know I'll likely get flamed and modded down for second-guessing this and playing armchair CEO, but the fact is you never should have offered people a cheaper product which the mainstream audience couldn't be expected to reasonably distinguish from your network anonymity enabled product. Your webpages didn't even give a good explanation that "normal" people would understand about why they should buy your more expensive product. Your less expensive option was more appealing to people merely because of the cost difference and the lack of knowledge of the "average" guy.
When it became apparent that you couldn't keep doing things the way you were doing them, what you should have done is drop the cheap option and support only those people also willing to support the Freedom Network-enabled version of the software. To do otherwise is removing the only thing which made you unique, the only thing which distinguished you from Symantec and McAffee and countless smaller companies and freeware offerings. You cannot and will not survive in such an environment with so many competitors, not to mention the people who are pissed at you for dropping the Freedom network to concentrate on Just Another Cookie Management/Firewall/Etc. Suite and who consequently would never buy your "Freedom 3.0" product even though they used to be supporters. I know I don't need Just Another Firewall/Cookie Suite--too many to choose from already, and if Freedom 3.0 is anything like your current "lite" suite lacking the Freedom Network, it's just too "heavy" and resource-intensive an app. I could tolerate that when I got to access the snonymity of the Freedom Network, but without it I'd rather just run ZoneAlarm's free firewall and get my cookie management free with Mozilla.
Good luck. You're going to need it. And I still don't believe this timing has nothing to do with Sept. 11--and if it doesn't, you had a responsibility to give your users more notice, and shame shame shame on you for not doing so.
I said so in my posting. If you don't want to take it from me, read the text yourself. It is so vague and overbroad that it could apply to this very webpage for my liberal use of profanity:
;-)
fuck cocksucker motherfucker shitface cuntlicker motherfucker goddamn
They would not have written it so broadly if there intentions were merely to apply it to hardcore porn sites, my friend. And I'd bet you dollars to donuts that the Supreme Court will uphold the lower Court's decision based on the very argument that the legislation is vageue and overbroad.
You seem to dwell on porn too much. Is that a personal problem we should know about?
That does bring up a good point, trolling aside. Exactly how far would we go in declaring things to be verboten "virtual child porn"? If I doodle a little stick figure sucking off a big stick figure, is that illegal under the new law, if upheld?
It may sound like a silly example, but where is the line drawn? How about if I draw a risque sketch of a partially unclad high school cheerleader type? I recall seeing a rather silly adult comic strip of a high school cheerleader like, totally getting molestered by some bizarro alien thingy. Illegal? How about those old cartoons they ran in Hustler back in the 70s and early 80s, called "Chester the Molester"? It wasn't for the purposes of porn, but rather to be funny, and in a sick schadenfreude sort of way they were often hilarious.
How about the computer game *Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation*? In it, Lara Croft was supposed to be 16 years old, and they showed the outlines of her patch through her shorts, and you were able to make her bend over in ways that would be provacative if she were real and not CG. Child porn?
How about the kicker: almost all Japanese anime. Sure the import companies go out of their way to say that all the girls are supposed to be 18 or older, but anyone who knows about anime/manga and Japanese culure knows that that's not true. Most of the time, if you know Japanese, you can tell that the characters say they're 13, 14, 15, 16, or in high school or junior high. Often they're in "adult situations" at one time or another. Child porn?
The fact is, when you outlaw anything that's "virtual" and doesn't involve real people, you're outlawing ideas and expression and art, not actions. You should outlaw actions, not ideas, in a "free" society.
You're making the same illogical argument that the whole anti-child-porn industry is founded on.
Sex with a minor is rightfully illegal because under our current legal system we assign ages at which it is presumed that a majority of people of such an age can make a good decision regarding something difficult. In my state, for example, you can't drive until you're 16, since most 16 year olds can handle a car after driving school, but at younger ages they cannot. You can't smoke until you're 18, because that causes physical harm and psychological addiction which people under 18 may not be able to make good decisions about. You must also be 18 to consent to sex in my state under the theory that the decision to have sex is a very important one with physical and psychological consequences and people are probably not able to make that decision well and freely until most of them are 18. And the decision to drink isn't legally available until 21 because there are both physical and emotional consequences, there is the possibility of death or disability thanks to overdose, there are chances of addiction, the poor decision to drink and drive can lead to a violation of public safety, etc.
Well, child pornography falls within the same rubric. The theory behind making it illegal to make pornography involving minors is that the decision to have sex that is being recorded and documented and possibly seen by others is a serious one with life-altering consequences, and so people cannot give consent to have sex starring in moving or still images or audio until they reach the age of 18. That at least is the legal theory upon which the federal law against child pornography is founded. Taking the images is and should rightfully be illegal, since it harms the minor victim. Distributing the images is and should rightfully be illegal since that propagates the images which were illegally taken and causes further harm to the minors involved, since it exposes their exploitation to a wider audience. The legal theory underpinning this framework is that it causes harm to the minors in the child ponrography, *NOT* that it may induce other adults to go out and have sex with other minors. Indeed, that could not legally be the underpinning of the law, because it would be a restriction on the content of speech. Child porn is illegal not because it says something objectionable or incites viewers to take a harmful action, it is illegal because it harms the minor being portrayed. I can say, "Hey, go fuck a 12 year old, they're so tight and cute and they just love to suck on a grown-up's cock" all I want; it's objectionable, but not illegal. I cannot, however, send you a picture of someone fucking a 12 year old--under the legal theory that doing so harms the 12 yeatr old in the picture by exposing her abuse.
But the real trap you fall into is the notion that seeing pictures of child pornography causes people to imitate what's depicted. It doesn't. Either you think sex with young people is wrong, or you don't--an image isn't goin g to change your moral bearing. The easy explanation, and the true one, for why "a much larger majority of those who indulge themselves in child porn actually will act out the things they indulge themselves in" as you said, is that the kind of peoplw who collect child pornography are the kind of people who are attracted to children in the first place and who don't think having sex with them is wrong--or else they wouldn't be keeping pictures of it, would they?
To say that child porn causes people to molest children is like saying that gay porn causes people to be gay or straight porn causes one to be straight. It just doesn't work that way, because you're mistaking cause for effect. If you find lots of gay porn in a guy's PC, the odds are he's gay--he wasn't converted to gayness by the gay porn, either, rather he got the gay porn because he was already gay. Likewise with child ponr--if you find a bunch of child ponr on a guy's PC, he's probably a pedophile. The porn didn't make him a pedophile, rather, he collected the porn because he was already a pedophile.
"This argument can be extended to regular porn, which can cause a person to be so overwhelmed by sex that they could turn to rape (although this doesn't really apply to the many casual porn viewers, only porn-"zealots"). And this can definetly be extended to extremely hardcore porn and things such as snuff films."
Well, in that above paragraph you make it clear that you're either trolling, or an anti-porn thumper type. "Adult" porn has never made anyone rape anybody; that whole theory came about when notorious serial killer Ted Bundy claimed that "my addiction to porn made me rape and kill all those girls". He said so not because it was true, but because he thought it would get him a lighter sentence if he was a "victim" too. Not coincidentally, he made this claim at the height of the social debate that was occurring back during the years when porn was first going "mainstream" and being sold fairly openly instead of in illicit back-alley shops. The Moral Majority types of course took it as Gospel that porn causes rape--ironic that they'd believe a convicted serial killer and obvious psychopath (no we call them "sociopaths" instead) over all the repected scientists who've refuted the claim.
The fact is, porn is a release valve for our sexual frustrations. That's why porn is as old as civilization--the explicit paintings in almost every Rioman villa, the pictogram porn of the Egyptians, the explicit sculptures and paintings of ancient Greece. We see it, we get excited as if by a real partner, we jerk off, and our tensions are gone.
That's precisely why I hope "virtual" child porn becomes acceptable. Wouldn't it be great if pedophiles could freely download CGI child porn, pound their puppies, and not have to dabble in ral child porn? And have that release valve, so they don't explode their sexual frustrations and touch a real child? I think so.
You're right about the credit card problem. Why should anyone have to give someone the ability to access his credit or bank account just to view "adult" material? And why should the government be arbiter of what's suitable only for adults? And should parents be able to overrule the government's choices for their own kids, or are we going to make it illegal for parents to let their kids access the grown-ups' Internet?
/.--the cunts here use so fucking much profanity sometimes that it's unfuckingbelievable. So should /. only be accessible by adults willing to go through an age verification system involving their credit card number?
/.'s, where people somwetimes say naughty "adult" words (despite the fact that we know all kids know those words, too, and many use them)? And if I have a kid who wants to read something "adult" like IMC, or /., or whatever pretty mild linguistically-based stuff is also covered once the COPA censors get to work, and give him my age verification password to do so, he has access to all the other stuff--the porn, the sexually based sites, etc.--anyway. And if I don't give it to him, he can't read a lot of good sites that I may want him to be reading. But if I do give my own child my access password to an age verification system, might that be a crime, like contributing to the delinquency of a minor? Even if the Federal government passes no such law, there are doubtless state governments which would. That effectively would prevent me from letting my children read anything useful on their own on the Internet. It would also limit access of the young to websites which are useful for helping them learn responsibly about sex--an example of such a site is http://www.allaboutsex.org , a web site which I would probably want a young son to read at the right time.
Many people forget that this isn't just about "pay" adult sites with porn, or even about sites with porn at all. The COPA was extraordinarily broad, and would have completely stifled free speech on the Net--it didn't apply only to porn pictures, it applied to everything deemed "adult," including words. So if I use lots of fucking profanity on my goddamned motherfucking website, should I have to go through an age verification service before people can access my pages? What about
And what of anonymity? Speech can only truly be free when accessing it can be anonymous, or else suddenly Big Brother becomes a real entity which can trace every electronic thing you've ever read or accessed. Hell, do you think most porn would exist at all, if everyone who bought something from a porn shop had to leave his identifying info behind? That's what it would be like in cyberspace if this law were upheld. But it wouldn't just be porn. It would be politically controversial websites, such as the Independent Media Center. Would people be so willing to go there if they had to provide personal info and knew that maybe next time there's a protest, the FBI might get hold of the list of visitors and start harassing people? They tried to subpoena IP addresses directly from the IMC before, but were shot down. But imagine how much easier it would be for them if third parties, like age verification services, also had access lists, complete with names and credit card or other personal info? Then maybe they could get partial lists just by asking these third parties, who have no real interest in the matter, instead of having to subpoena the IPs from the actual organization that runs the site. Very bad.
And what would be covered as "adult"? Would the IMC and other indie media outlets be blacklisted as "adult" because they're subversive? Or because they have open forums like
And what if I let my underage son or daughter have access to my adult verification password to access sites like that, and he or she makes the mistake of sharing it with friends at school despite my warnings? Should I then be responsible for something like contributing to the delinquency of a minor, if the parents of one of these other kids gets offended by a website accessed with my unwittingly and unwillingly leaked password?
It opens up a huge can of worms that's best left untouched. The fact is, COPA and similar legislation would do nothing but make free speech nonexistent on the Internet, make it difficult or impossible for parents to have real decision-making on the sites thweir kids visit, and muck things up real good for everyone except the ultra-right-wing Xtian moralizing Jerry Fallwells of the world who bought this unconstitutional legislation.
Your ISP based solution is unworkable because then they'd lose their common-carrier status and suddenly become legally liable for everything their users access on the Internet. What if a porn site got through to Little Johnny and Little Johnny's mommy got really upset because she ordered the "clean" internet? Lawsuit. What if Bob posts some child porn of Alice using that service? Lawsuit. ISPs cannot exist without common carrier status.
What that leaves us with is Internet filtering on the client-side, like AOL's Parental Controls, like Surfwatch and Cyberpatrol, etc.--which is what all parents are free to install right now.
That's why COPA and such are bad and not just that, but unnecessary--parents should just get filtering software if they don't want their kids alone on the big bad Net. I'd be perfectly happy with Federal legislation to buy every parent in the country a free copy of the Net filtering software of their choice--that would be the equitable solution. But of course the lawmakers who drafted COPA aren't really interested in just helping parents keep their kids away from adult content--they want to expurgate all adult content and turn the Net into a Xtian Coalition-approved "family" establishment. And that's not constitutional, it's anti-free-speech, and it's wrong. And we shoyuld all fight it and chastise every member of Congress who voted for this drivel, and who will vote for the next round of drivel when the Supremes put COPA to rest for good. If we don't actively fight for our liberties, we deserve to have them Bowdlerized.
It was a better premiere episode than I expected. I mean, there's only *so much* you can do when you assemble a bunch of actors in an ensemble show like the ST series' and make them act before they fit with each other and their characters. No ST series has ever had a real all-encompassing central character--you have the captain as the "hub" but all the other characters are just as important to the feel of the series. That's something that always set ST apart from most other TV shows--that it's a true ensemble production.
;-)
The same is true of the writers. The writers have to know the characters and know how the actors fit into their characters' shoes (or bodysuits, in the case of 7 and the Vulcan chick...hehe...). This means by definition that both the writing and the acting in the first season of a ST series are not going to be up to par. It takes time for the actors, the characters, and the writers to all "mesh" well.
That's why I was pleasantly surprised by the passable story and acting. It's better than the first few episodes of any other ST series. It's promising.
I especially like hearkening back to the old TOS rough-and-tumble attitudes. That's something a lot of people forget--that Roddenberry set out to write a "Wagon Train to the Stars," a sort of Western set in deep space. In that respect shows like Babylon 5 and even Andromeda (yuck--sorry, but--yuck) and of course Farscape have been far closer to the concept of TOS than any of the newer ST series have been. So despite the bitching thus far, I think Roddenberry would have been very happy with this episode and with the potential of this series.
Not that there's anything wrong with the world of TNG and DS9 and even Voyager (80% of the episodes were "good enough" in the last 2 seasons, so wuite yer bitching)--as a geek I love the technobabble and the idea of having such an advanced technological framework. I love the wormholes and tachyon beams and especialy the episodes involving quantum mechanics. But there's also nothing wrong with returning to ST's shoot-from-the-hip roots. Especially since it got to a point where many average folks couldn't watch ST--my grandmother for instance was a smart woman, but she never understood half of the technical stuff they were saying and so after loyally watching TOS and then TNG for 30 years she gave up. This is a chance to recapture those people.
That said, I agree with what so many have said--the opening music has to go. What the FUCK were they thinking? I didn't know whether to laugh or scream. What they should have done and what they can still do is have Scott Bakula read off the a variation of the old standard, "Space, the final frontier..." They could reasonably inster a few anachronisms, like calling it the "spaceship Enterprise" instead of the "starship Enterprise" and such. Because, that opening music alone is enough to alienate most or the current ST fanbase, who'll view it as a sign that the show is catering to a certain uneducated demographic alone.
And finally, as for the tits--why complain? As long as the stories are good, the tits are just a bonus. How can any man woman or child with a pulse complain? I mean, did you SEE those things in the rubdown scene? Those nipples were like two stiff warp nacelles, boldly jutting out where every man would love to go...
Now excuse me while I go jerk off to the thought of a borgalicious lesbian encounter between 7 of 9 and that Vulcan chick. Mmmm, now *where* did she just put that tricorder???
Such games are no more difficult to emulate than any other games. In fact, Pong was one of the first games emulated by MAME. It's in older versions of MAME, in improved versions of recent builds of MAME called FixMAME, and it's been emulated accurately in its many different forms, both arcade and home, by several other emulators.
The reason that Pong was dropped and support for other discrete-circuitry games was dropped isn't technical, it's legal. The MAME devs decided that emulating a whole discrete-circuitry game--meaning that MAME would play that game without needing to download any external ROMs at all-- would keep MAME open to easier legal attack. So they removed Pong and drew an arbitrary distinction between all-circuitry games and games that have ROMs. They arbitrarily call all-circuitry games "simulated" games rather than emulated--a very stupid distinction since, to run the ROMs on the emulated machines in MAME, MAME simulated a whole lot of discrete circuitry.
What they really should have done is create a plug-in framework for discrete-circuitry games, so that the emulated/simulated circuitry could be packaged in a zip file and downloaded just like ROMs are. That way they could avoid the legal pitfall while still preserving the oldest games, those with discrete circuitry, which are also those most in need of preservation. I find it hypocritical that the MAME devs claim that MAME is made for the purpose of preserving our arcade heritage before the machines are too far gone, and yet they spend their time emulating Golden Tee games that you can still find in any sports bar today (they're in the source code, but disabled since they're still being sold), and yet refuse to emulate the 70s classics that used discrete circuits and are disappearing all the time. Sure, developers can spend their time working on whatever they want and blah blah blah, but it's still hypocritical to emulate games that are still being sold and refuse to emulate games that are disappearing, and claim you're doing it all to preserve our arcade heritage. What a crock of shit. They emulate what they want to play, with no regard for the games that are really in danger--the oldest arcade games, almost all of which have discete circuits and no ROMs. So instead of finding a way around the legal issues, like a plug-in system, they draw an arbitrary line in the sand and claim that they shouldn't emulate the hardware of these games because it would be a "simulation"--as if the emulated hardware that ROMs run on is real, not simulated?
Forgive me if I get a little pissed, but I'm annoyed that a project which claims to be for arcade preservation is letting the foundation of the arcade business disappear, mostly because they enjoy playing Golden Tee and such more than really preserving the 70s classics. The discrete circuitry games are largely difficult to find, except for a few of the most popular like pong and Breakout. And even so, how many people under 25 have ever seen and played the real, original Breakout, the game that started a whole genre and was worked on by some big-name people like Woz?
MAME should stop cutting our arcade gaming heritage into arbitrary slices and saying, if it has a ROM we'll emulate it but if it doesn't we won't; if it has a Laserdisc we won't emulate it (a driver was submitted that works with the DVD version of Dragon's Lair, but will not be included in MAME); etc.
On a better note, the discrete circuitry classic Monaco GP has been quite well emulated recently by a stand-alone emulator, and there's even a version of MAME available that has it hacked in (FixMAME). It's a much more complicated game than Pong--in fact, about as complicated as you can get with discrete circuits alone. So it's a great accomplishment, and I hope more people will follow with similar projects, despite lack of encouragement by MAME.
It may *feel* better than a DualShock controller, but it's still the same design and layout, only "tweaked" and improved. You can tell just by looking at the thing. By holding the thing you can tell that it feels better, but it doesn't feel as good as the N64 controller. Not at all. And as for the Z button--anything that has to add a "nub" to let you know it's there in the first place is a mistake. Buttons should feel like buttons, not nubs. That was another nice thing about the N64 controller--it just felt very ergonomic, and the buttons felt like buttons, and the Z-button was a nice trigger-like button that you KNEW was there when you touched it--no tacky "nub" necessary.
That said, the N64 controller isn't for everyone. People with extraordinarily large hands find the N64 controller uncomfortable. But Most of the guys I know, with average hands, love it. It's also comfortable enough for my 6 year old niece, who obviously has very small hands. People with huge hands will always like the DualShock style controllers better. But most of the rest of us are extremely happy with the N64 controller.
I'm just disappointed that they've all apparently adopted the DualShock style now. It isn't for everyone.
But while we're on the subject of controllers, what's with the weird placement of cords at the bottom on some machines like Dreamcast? I've used a DC and I can't stand it. Am I alone there? Why would they put the cord at the bottom, except just to look different?
All that said, nothing feels better than good old fashioned arcade controls. That's another advantage of the PC--more flexibility. HotRod sells a nice pre-made control panel that's USB compatible and can be mapped to any keystrokes. Better yet you can build your own arcade controls, and put them and a game PC into an arcade cab if you want. Lots of people have been trying this, including Taco. I'm currently building one that will be able to play the ~3000 arcade games, hundreds of NES and SNES and Genesis games, and hundreds of old "abandonware" PC and Mac games that I've downloaded, as well as the dozens of recent PC games I've bought retail. No console can ever match that.