Brian_Ellenberger writes:
"I looked at body-n-mind.com for about a split second and closed it immediately when I saw naked children in France. Honestly, I didn't look at it long enough to know whether it was porn or not. Obviously there are times when child nudity is porn, and times it is not (baby pictures)."
Two of the three books from that site (complete with the exact same pictures you flinched at) are available at your local Barnes & Noble (and there is no indication that they won't carry the third, it just looks like they don't).
You're claiming it is "obvious" when a thing is pornography or isn't. Ok, then. Should these images be banned, yes or no? Answer plainly. According to you it isn't a complex question.
Brian_Ellenberger continues:
"Briefly pulled up fetbot.com. It is a collection of bondage and fetish gear links. Pictures of people in bondage and stories would probably be pornographic. Simple discussions would not. For example, if you having a discussion on religion and BSDM it would not be porn because it would not be intended to arouse."
Probably, Brian? "Probably"?? You wrote:
"Come on, its not that hard for a normal human being to look at a picture or a site and tell whether the site is intended for sexual arousal or another purpose (ex. medical)."
Apparently it's hard enough for you to get no closer than "probably". Tell me; how do you plan on probably filtering a picture?
Brian_Ellenberger continues: If the pics weren't intended to arouse then it wasn't porn.
This is wonderful! Tell me, Brian, what part of the picture tells you the photographers intent?
I dismissed the distinction between obscene and political speech as irrelevant to the argument, Brian_Ellenberger replied:
Why, because it refutes most of your argument? You have the freedom to view as much porn as you like it America. The Chinese are not free to read political dissent. Your comparison of US vs. Chinese is flawed because of this.
No, this response knocks down an argument that I never had (strawman attack). I'm not concerned with the distinction because both are encroachments on access to knowledge whose boundaries are determined by someone who feels they know better. Which, as much as I am enjoying your "everyone knows what porn is but I don't know if that was porn" contortions, is the real issue.
"So you expect libraries to carry every book in existence?"
I expect to have access to the ones they purchased with my tax money. I also expect to be able to use the internet tools that my tax money bought. This is getting silly and your sincerity toward this argument is coming into doubt.
Lets be specific and stop dancing around this...
Some libraries have the internet available and paid for with tax money. You are the "moving party." You're requesting a restriction. The onus is upon you to provide a reason to restrict, not for me to provide are reason to not restrict. If you question this, my obvious reply is going to be that everything in the public sector does not start off as being restricted and people have to sue for access (well, maybe ICANN, but that's another rant). So...
On what basis do you wish to restrict certain content?
Who or what body decides what qualifies as being within the restriction bracket?
Will your tool filter ONLY restricted material and if so, how do you plan on accomplishing this?
Why should the responsibility be shifted to the library?
Brain, meet the brass tacks. Tacks, Brian.
As a side note -- and I say this with no intention whatsoever of painting you as a closet porn aficianado (child or otherwise) -- but I have serious concerns about people who think that there is something so offensive that *I* shouldn't be able to see it. Who has the problem here? I can, and have, looked through some Sturges books. The pictures are beautiful. I think that "offensive" has nothing to do with the intent of the creator but everything to do with the response of the viewer.
And yes, even in a library. One problem with your "you can still view it in your home" argument is that you think that everyone in America has a computer and an internet connection. For a very large subset of people you are blocking their only access point.
I will suggest that you're placing a major burden on an already-stressed resource to attach a very imperfect, technical solution to correct a non-problem whose boundaries are set by political whim. Very bad idea.
Brian_Ellenberger writes: "It would only be hypocricy if we were trying to allow porn into China while trying to block it here."
Porn and political speech are obviously not identical, and I am not trying to say they are, but I don't see them as being distinct enough to warrant encouraging one and censoring the other. Either you let people express an opinion or you do not. When you begin to draw distinctions based on something as vague and morpheous as "morality" then I itch. And I call this hypocricy.
Brian_Ellenberger continues: "From Merriam-Webster: "the depiction of erotic behavior (as in pictures or writing) intended to cause sexual excitement""
Whoa.
I wrote an email to my girlfriend this morning telling her that the second she walked in the door I was going to kiss her. It was "writing" that was "intended to cause sexual excitement." Gee, I'd better not post that email to the internet. God help any 10 year-old who stumbles across it in the school library! We really do need to shield our kids from this crap, I agree.
And you're taking the position that the hinge upon which something is either pornographic or not is INTENT?? Then I guess goatse.cx doesn't qualify, does it? I doubt the person taking the picture said, "I'm gonna take this picture because it's gonna turn a lot of people on!"
Is it still pornographic if I take a picture of a tree with the intent of turning someone on? How do you suggest we filter that one out?
"Intent." Jumping Jesus on a greased up pogo stick. Ever hear of the phrase "mind police?"
Brian_Ellenberger continues: "So breast reconstructive surgery does not fall under this definition but playboy.com does. It really is not that hard. Really, there are only a very small number of cases that will fall into the gray area."...and yet you did not attempt to classify the two websites (1, 2) that I asked about. Please tell me if these qualify as "pornographic" in your book.
Brian_Ellenberger continues: "And no, pornography does not "shift with the political tide". Like I said, we have had regulation on this sort of stuff for many years. New York by Gaslight [amazon.com] has some interesting stuff of police in the mid to late 1800's dealing with busting up strip clubs trying to pose as art."
Yes, and they've also busted moms for taking pics of their babies, nude, in the tub. In other words, pornography is in the eye of the beholder. Beholders get elected. Beholders get unelected. To say that guidelines for what qualifies as pornographic does not change with the political tide because it is enshrined in law is stupid and naive because it pretends that laws are not interpreted. Gun ownership by individuals was a non-issue under the same laws that it is now being reconsidered under because of [*gasp] political climate.
And I called your idea stupid, not you, so don't cry "ad hominem."
Brian_Ellenberger continues: "You can right now view porn in the comfort of your own home. The Chinese cannot read political dissent in the comfort of their own home. That is the difference."
It's a distinction. An irrelevant one, but yes, it's a distinction.
Brian_Ellenberger continues: "Noone is seriously trying to ban porn from the Internet. However, a library is a public taxpayer funded place and hence operates under a different set of rules because we all own it. Hence democratic government dictates how the people want to run what is their property. You want a library with free porn? Its a free country, start your own."
I'm a taxpayer. I already have.
When I fund an institution that provides access to information, I have a reasonable expectation that the information be there. I don't believe -- nor have you provided an argument for outside of simply asserting one -- that people have a reasonable expectation to not have information at an informational institution. After all, if they don't want the info, they can just not seek it out. This proves quite clearly that the goal is not protecting anyone (oh, and by the way, when the "for the children" excuse is trotted out, get real suspicious.). I don't need to be protected. And if I feel my daughter needs it, I can be a parent. Oh, perish the thought!
Brian_Ellenberger continues: "Anyway, my point was instead of worrying so much about the right to read porn in a public place, why not worry more about your right to exercise political speech. That is far more imporant than arguing over porn."
No, it's not. You cannot give up some bit of freedom as irrelevant. It is a toehold for those who wish to oppress. Do you REALLY think I have an itch to surf upskirts.com at my local branch? You, unwittingly, are giving this one up under the assumption that there are bigger fish to fry. There aren't. This is as fundamental as it gets. What qualifies as pornography, regardless of what abstract, nonsensical definition you pull out of a dictionary, is a matter of opinion. And again, an issue you utterly ignored, is that the Chinese consider your idea of freedom as way, way past obscene so your notion of free speech being accessable by all as 'good' and porn being accessable by all as 'bad' is 100% cultural in addition to relative and subjective.
Oh, I swore I wasn't gonna say it, but what the hell...
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin
Do not zip over that sentence. Read it. Then read it again. If you allow "Decency Laws" to exist, then someone who seeks to keep a free people away from information simply needs to find a way to label it as "obscene." You've just made life a whole lot easier for them, haven't you? That's why I like the ACLU -- they don't give a !@#$ whose freedom is being trampled. They understand this core concept, that you cannot give an inch, else you've lost it all.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In what amounts to a new twist on an old and venerable tradition, Senator Trent Lott (R) accidentally kissed a hand and shook a baby during a fundraiser in his home state of Mississippi today. The technical glitch was quickly discovered to be caused by an aide plugging the new TouchMeFeelMe internet tactile simulator backwards, but the parent of the jostled child was even less pleased than the baby according to witnesses. More...
Brian_Ellenberger writes: "What's the big deal? Since this country has been founded we have both regulated porn and encouraged free speech, especially political free speech. You are seeking to make things like political speech=porn, which the Supreme Court already rejected years ago."
I'm...trying to...equate political speech with porn? What??
"Also we are not "preventing our own citizens" from viewing porn (as if we are banning it altogether) but saying that you cannot view porn in a taxpayer funded library. You want to get off on porn, do it in your own house. But you have no right to demand it on everyone's dollar."
And I wouldn't be doing my argument justice if I didn't bring up the thorny but oh-so-necessary "who decides?" question. I guess the most pragmatic answer is 'the politicians' but is obscenity constant -- is a thing offensive by its very nature -- or does it shift with the political tide? Do we want what we can and cannot see be dictated by those who want to get re-elected? Are you prepared to have Fallwell make this decision for you? You can bet your ass that the aformentioned mastesctomy website qualifies in his book.
Finally, why is it that only your idea of offensive is truly offensive? To the Chinese, our entire view on individual freedom easily qualifies as offensive and probably more harmful to society than even the most strident Republican we have in office views Mr Goatsex.
The issue here is not mere pornography. The issue is the tacit assumption and enforcement of the notion that people should be entitled to say what they want BUT other people should not necessarily be able to hear it. The only way for you to get around this is by taking the position that photography does not qualify as speech. Good luck.
"If your truely [sic] worried about speech, why not worry about something truly substantial like the Unconstitutional Campaign Finance Reform that harms political speech. "
Ah, the you-must-not-really-be-genuine-in-your-concern-els e-you'd-be-doing-<insert-thing-here>-instead argument.
A absolutely love the fact that we, as a country can, with a straight face, seek to prevent our own citizens from seeing certain things and at the same time subsidize methods to defeat such techniques in other countries...all while maintaining a straight face.
But then, I guess if we can subsidize murder in other countries when it suits us and then have the chutzpah to call the same done to us as "terrorism," this shouldn't actually come as a shock, should it?
One of these days, I'm going to wake up, select Slashdot from my bookmarks, and find that the top story is about some 7 year-old who managed to get his bicycle -- complete with training wheels and little brother onboard -- into lower earth orbit using some recently GPL'd Mathematica clone, an overclocked Furby, 50ft of CAT5 scavenged from the local LUGs trash bin and Jack Valenti's ego tinsnipped into tiles for the re-entry shielding.
I think that what appears to be overly complex and, if you'd like to call it this, "subtle," is really nothing more than the illusion of complexity. Let me explain...
Take a game of Go (aka, Baduk). You have a 19x19 grid. One player gets white stones, the other gets black. The players alternate playing stones on the intersections of the board (not in the boxes). This very, VERY simple setup leads to amazingly complex results such that no existing Go program can even come close to challenging a mid-level player much less a master.
The point I'm trying to make is that extremely simple beginnings can lead to extremely complex behavior. Just because we seem complex does not mean that we are more than just a lot of very simple bits working together, in other words. I'm with Kurzweil in the sense that the brain is nothing more than matter operating under physical constraints. Mimic the parts and understand the constraints and you have, for all intent and purpose, a brain. And by extension a thinking thing.
The question then becomes "have we captured the bits that matter?" ie, is there a soul?
I'm an atheist. I'm not the guy you want to answer this question. And I'll refrain from touching on Wolfram's A New Kind of Science at this point... =)
From the article: "I trust and hope that these offensive activities are not the authorized acts of your organization's employees and agents," Mr. Fernandez [Assistant counsel of the Transportation Department] wrote..."
Does Mr. Fernandez perhaps believe that Microsoft employees paid for thousands of 20" Microsoft butterflies with Microsoft advertising out of their own pockets?
I'm wondering what stops someone from doing this exact same thing for 1/5th of the price from a country that does not respect the United States intellectual properties laws.
My gut instinct was to say "nonsense, still way too expensive," but I think this is a step in the right direction (but still nonsense).
The problem is...true, this will allow users to eliminate filler content but -- and here is the problem -- it still won't encourage musical exploration. In other words, I can dive right into all the genres I want via [insert your favorite p2p program here] and dig a bit deeper for those I decide I like. A buck per song doesn't even come close to the impulse buying pricepoint that is the pivot for a lot of people.
Give me a mechanism to download all the music I want for free and make tracks I keep longer than 48 hours cost 20-40 cents and I'd probably never touch Kazaa again.
By and large this is pure gravy for the artists and labels since it is very, very likely that even without any p2p client available to me, I'd never have purchased that album. No packaging, no distribution, less marketing. Pure profit.
So...again, too little too late, but who knows. Maybe, just MAYBE they're getting a clue.
For anyone interested, this months Linux Journal has an article on OpenACS (page 12) which reads, in part:
"It's easy to say that OpenACS is a toolkit for creating on-line communities. But what does that mean? For starters, it means that OpenACS comes with working versions of most of the applications you're likely to want on a community web site. It handles user registration and administration, forums, FAQs, group (including a rich permission scheme), news updates, file storage and distribution, personal home pages, surveys and a we-based calendar. As you might expect from a modern system, administration of the application is done almost completely through the Web, with only a few configuration files."
WHAT is OpenACS? OpenACS (Open Architecture Community System) is an advanced toolkit for building scalable, community-oriented web applications. If you're thinking of building an enterprise-level web application, OpenACS is a solid, proven foundation that will give you a 3-6 month headstart.
Ok, ok. I get your point. Just curious, though, how are you sure this is all that this pen device requires? Admittedly, this does make sense, kinda, but it still seems odd that people would shut out such a huge geek market and not even so much provide a footnote of, "oh, not really, you can also do this."
tshak writes:
"What logitec is saying is that a newer version of IE contains a DLL or two that they need. This is not taking over Opera, etc. because it has nothing to do with browsing the Internet nor does it have anything to do with your default browser."
I'll concede that you are correct if:
You show that it is as simple as a DLL and;
A reason can be provided why the DLL could not be obtained without installing Explorer.
In other words, I think you've got a problem no matter which way you go. If the needed component(s) is modular, then Explorer needn't be installed. If it isn't modular, then you'd have to find a reason why they couldn't be and if not, then Microsoft, by association, has done what I originally said; made themselves necessary.
From the FAQ: I use Netscape exclusively as my web browser; do I still need to install Internet Explorer? Yes, but only if your system has an older version of Internet Explorer installed. Since Internet Explorer is a core component of Windows, many features of the Logitech io Software are dependent on the program. However, installing Internet Explorer does not mean you must use it as your browser; you can still use Netscape as your default Internet browser.
Remember when Microsoft, during their DOJ trial, claimed that Explorer was intractable from Windows? That it was such a core component that could not be removed without crippling the whole OS? Not only were they wrong but they were caught fabricating evidence in the form of a VHS tape with telltale impossible graphics and they were busted, wholesale.
Well this is just an example of how that fabrication -- and by extension Microsoft's influence -- affects a fair market negatively. Netscape, Opera, Mozilla, Konqueror...all out in the cold because Microsoft created their own necessity.
Danse writes: "The only commodity being sold is the time that it takes someone to gather the plat to sell on ebay. Since the vast majority of us sell our time (and expertise or muscle as well in most cases) to make a living, this doesn't seem very different."
You are 100% correct...but this qualifies for oil too. Or electricity. Or or orange juice or porkbellies. These are commodities. And they're regulated because if you do not, it is possible to manipulate the environment which will result in profit with no risk for the manipulators and assured loss for those not "in on the deal." Hence 'insider trading.'
Whether the item in question is lawfully obtained by the sweat of your brow has nothing to do with the problem. Everquest isn't regulated. An admin could, conceivably, give themselves or others plat. Yes, there might be internal safeguards in place, but are they adequate? Can someone code a script to do that work automagically? Or even worse, can the system be hacked outright?
The result of "printing script" (ie, money) is that it devalues the legitimate money and this leads to inflation and relative devaluation. In other words, if there exists 1,000 units of money in an environment and we both have half, if you can print yourself 5,000 units, we now have 6,000u of money in circulation and my lot is significantly devalued.
Granted, this is an extreme example, but it is only provided to illustrate the point.
thefinite writes: "Granted, if you are selling EverQuest items on Ebay, then you are subject to U.S. economic laws, but why would any government care about the economic activities in a virtual world, except in areas that affect their own economies? There may be an answer to this I don't see. If so, what is it?"
If you think about the selling of "plat" (platinum) obtained from Everquest on eBay, you're basically talking about a commodities market and the people running the game are essentially printing money.
sweet reason writes: "there is an important difference between software cheats and guns. you can't download an illegal gun, you have to steal it, so banning them reduces the supply."
You don't actually make a conclusion from your distinction. I'm guessing you're making the tacit suggestion that a reduction of supply equals a reduction in availability.
In order to come to this conclusion you must also make the assumption that a secondary market cannot or will not step in where a legal business cannot. Clearly this is not so. Viz; cocaine, alcohol and yes, even firearms.
So long as there is a desire for ownership and a pricetag that is commensurate with the risk involved, there will be a black market.
I can point to empircal evidence, too. Contrast the homicide per capita rates of, say, New Hampshire or Texas (states with rather liberal firearm carry laws) vs. the homicide rates of states where firearms are more or less verboten -- DC and California come to mind.
However this thread is going astray. My original post was to point out that making cheating "illegal" won't do anything to stop those who thumb their noses at rules in the first place. The solution is to either (a) make it impossible (read; server-side) to cheat, (b) provide a policing mechanism. Banning users based on their MAC addresses is several steps below what I would consider an even modestly plausible solution. This'll be cracked instantly and known by every single person who violated the rules originally.
FurryFeet writes: "So, following your witty analogy, what we need is to provide cheats to all gamers who don't usually cheat. You know, if you outlaw cheating, only outlaws will cheat (or something)."
The analogy is provided to point out that if you present cheaters with a stop-mechanism that can be cheated, they'll cheat it. Ie, the notion, on it's face, doesn't work. The same is true with guns. Making guns illegal doesn't exactly do much to people who don't obey the laws which are, afaik, the ones you're worried about. See the problem here?
FurryFeet continues: "Me, I'd rather see something done about problems, instead of listening to the "it won't work, let's not even try" crew."
I agree. The solution is a server-side fix. America's Army has been very successful with this method. I'm not aware of any way to, for example, get sniper rating without actually qualifying. There are ways to do this in single-player mode, but not multi-player. This is because the information is not authenticated client-side.
I realize that cheaters and TK'ers really ruin the game, but perhaps they could take a lead from America's Army. They have an 'honor system' whereby TK'ing makes you lose points and doing well (ie, your team winning, not just you) earns you points. When this was introduced (last week), team-killing went WAY down. I've been shot once on purpose in the last week. Before, I'd have been lucky to go a full hour.
And as far as cheating goes, there is an in-game IRC capability. You just hit a channel, tell the admin someone is cheating (I've honestly never seen someone cheating myself) and they go in, witness the cheat, then boot/ban the nick. I know this works because the idle-kick feature is broken and I've gone in and had an admin boot someone who was AFK about three times thus far.
This is coupled with the fact that you can honor-restrict servers, so it's not possible to simply sign up for a new name when you get banned. Your new nick won't have the honor to get into the servers!
Basically, the problem here is the client side-ness of the fix. This will only stop the very lazy cheaters. The fanatical ones -- and you have to figure if they're bothering to cheat, they know where to find cheats -- are going to be unscathed. Client-side security is an analogue to a "law." Server side security is an analogue to gravity. Not so easy to break.
isa-kuruption writes: "Overall, the admins figure they will cut out 99% of the hacking attempts as people would just go elsewhere, or once they did cheat, just wouldn't know how to change their MAC."
I say this with all due respect, but I don't think you play online games much. People chat in-game and this will be very commonly known and quite accessable instantly. In fact, when a MAC spoofer is released it will be HARD for a person to not know about the existence of just such an animal.
This is just as silly as gun control because it makes the assumption that you can pass "laws" that will stop people that, by their very definition, do not obey laws!
Here, they're saying "we're going to introduce a software "lock" that will prevent you from cheating." Great. So the people who want to cheat in the game are going to (say it with me now)...cheat the protection.
Are the people who wrote this bit of client-side [*cough*] security really under the impression that MAC addresses are immutable? Perhaps they know damned well it isn't but was kinda hoping that nobody would tell their client? This has the earmark of an initiative by some dip in a suit who never bothered to consult a single knowledgable, technical person.
Whatever. It might take two days before a patch/spoofer is readily available for the habitual cheaters. All it has to do is spit out a fake MAC address when queried.
Slashdot Mirror
"I looked at body-n-mind.com for about a split second and closed it immediately when I saw naked children in France. Honestly, I didn't look at it long enough to know whether it was porn or not. Obviously there are times when child nudity is porn, and times it is not (baby pictures)."
Two of the three books from that site (complete with the exact same pictures you flinched at) are available at your local Barnes & Noble (and there is no indication that they won't carry the third, it just looks like they don't).
Radiant Identities
The Last Day of Summer
You're claiming it is "obvious" when a thing is pornography or isn't. Ok, then. Should these images be banned, yes or no? Answer plainly. According to you it isn't a complex question.
Brian_Ellenberger continues:
"Briefly pulled up fetbot.com. It is a collection of bondage and fetish gear links. Pictures of people in bondage and stories would probably be pornographic. Simple discussions would not. For example, if you having a discussion on religion and BSDM it would not be porn because it would not be intended to arouse."
Probably, Brian? "Probably"?? You wrote:
"Come on, its not that hard for a normal human being to look at a picture or a site and tell whether the site is intended for sexual arousal or another purpose (ex. medical)."
Apparently it's hard enough for you to get no closer than "probably". Tell me; how do you plan on probably filtering a picture?
Brian_Ellenberger continues:
If the pics weren't intended to arouse then it wasn't porn.
This is wonderful! Tell me, Brian, what part of the picture tells you the photographers intent?
I dismissed the distinction between obscene and political speech as irrelevant to the argument, Brian_Ellenberger replied:
Why, because it refutes most of your argument? You have the freedom to view as much porn as you like it America. The Chinese are not free to read political dissent. Your comparison of US vs. Chinese is flawed because of this.
No, this response knocks down an argument that I never had (strawman attack). I'm not concerned with the distinction because both are encroachments on access to knowledge whose boundaries are determined by someone who feels they know better. Which, as much as I am enjoying your "everyone knows what porn is but I don't know if that was porn" contortions, is the real issue.
"So you expect libraries to carry every book in existence?"
I expect to have access to the ones they purchased with my tax money. I also expect to be able to use the internet tools that my tax money bought. This is getting silly and your sincerity toward this argument is coming into doubt.
Lets be specific and stop dancing around this...
Some libraries have the internet available and paid for with tax money. You are the "moving party." You're requesting a restriction. The onus is upon you to provide a reason to restrict, not for me to provide are reason to not restrict. If you question this, my obvious reply is going to be that everything in the public sector does not start off as being restricted and people have to sue for access (well, maybe ICANN, but that's another rant). So...
- On what basis do you wish to restrict certain content?
- Who or what body decides what qualifies as being within the restriction bracket?
- Will your tool filter ONLY restricted material and if so, how do you plan on accomplishing this?
- Why should the responsibility be shifted to the library?
Brain, meet the brass tacks. Tacks, Brian.As a side note -- and I say this with no intention whatsoever of painting you as a closet porn aficianado (child or otherwise) -- but I have serious concerns about people who think that there is something so offensive that *I* shouldn't be able to see it. Who has the problem here? I can, and have, looked through some Sturges books. The pictures are beautiful. I think that "offensive" has nothing to do with the intent of the creator but everything to do with the response of the viewer.
And yes, even in a library. One problem with your "you can still view it in your home" argument is that you think that everyone in America has a computer and an internet connection. For a very large subset of people you are blocking their only access point.
I will suggest that you're placing a major burden on an already-stressed resource to attach a very imperfect, technical solution to correct a non-problem whose boundaries are set by political whim. Very bad idea.
Brian_Ellenberger writes:
...and yet you did not attempt to classify the two websites (1, 2) that I asked about. Please tell me if these qualify as "pornographic" in your book.
"It would only be hypocricy if we were trying to allow porn into China while trying to block it here."
Porn and political speech are obviously not identical, and I am not trying to say they are, but I don't see them as being distinct enough to warrant encouraging one and censoring the other. Either you let people express an opinion or you do not. When you begin to draw distinctions based on something as vague and morpheous as "morality" then I itch. And I call this hypocricy.
Brian_Ellenberger continues:
"From Merriam-Webster: "the depiction of erotic behavior (as in pictures or writing) intended to cause sexual excitement""
Whoa.
I wrote an email to my girlfriend this morning telling her that the second she walked in the door I was going to kiss her. It was "writing" that was "intended to cause sexual excitement." Gee, I'd better not post that email to the internet. God help any 10 year-old who stumbles across it in the school library! We really do need to shield our kids from this crap, I agree.
And you're taking the position that the hinge upon which something is either pornographic or not is INTENT?? Then I guess goatse.cx doesn't qualify, does it? I doubt the person taking the picture said, "I'm gonna take this picture because it's gonna turn a lot of people on!"
Is it still pornographic if I take a picture of a tree with the intent of turning someone on? How do you suggest we filter that one out?
"Intent." Jumping Jesus on a greased up pogo stick. Ever hear of the phrase "mind police?"
Brian_Ellenberger continues:
"So breast reconstructive surgery does not fall under this definition but playboy.com does. It really is not that hard. Really, there are only a very small number of cases that will fall into the gray area."
Brian_Ellenberger continues:
"And no, pornography does not "shift with the political tide". Like I said, we have had regulation on this sort of stuff for many years. New York by Gaslight [amazon.com] has some interesting stuff of police in the mid to late 1800's dealing with busting up strip clubs trying to pose as art."
Yes, and they've also busted moms for taking pics of their babies, nude, in the tub. In other words, pornography is in the eye of the beholder. Beholders get elected. Beholders get unelected. To say that guidelines for what qualifies as pornographic does not change with the political tide because it is enshrined in law is stupid and naive because it pretends that laws are not interpreted. Gun ownership by individuals was a non-issue under the same laws that it is now being reconsidered under because of [*gasp] political climate.
And I called your idea stupid, not you, so don't cry "ad hominem."
Brian_Ellenberger continues:
"You can right now view porn in the comfort of your own home. The Chinese cannot read political dissent in the comfort of their own home. That is the difference."
It's a distinction. An irrelevant one, but yes, it's a distinction.
Brian_Ellenberger continues:
"Noone is seriously trying to ban porn from the Internet. However, a library is a public taxpayer funded place and hence operates under a different set of rules because we all own it. Hence democratic government dictates how the people want to run what is their property. You want a library with free porn? Its a free country, start your own."
I'm a taxpayer. I already have.
When I fund an institution that provides access to information, I have a reasonable expectation that the information be there. I don't believe -- nor have you provided an argument for outside of simply asserting one -- that people have a reasonable expectation to not have information at an informational institution. After all, if they don't want the info, they can just not seek it out. This proves quite clearly that the goal is not protecting anyone (oh, and by the way, when the "for the children" excuse is trotted out, get real suspicious.). I don't need to be protected. And if I feel my daughter needs it, I can be a parent. Oh, perish the thought!
Brian_Ellenberger continues:
"Anyway, my point was instead of worrying so much about the right to read porn in a public place, why not worry more about your right to exercise political speech. That is far more imporant than arguing over porn."
No, it's not. You cannot give up some bit of freedom as irrelevant. It is a toehold for those who wish to oppress. Do you REALLY think I have an itch to surf upskirts.com at my local branch? You, unwittingly, are giving this one up under the assumption that there are bigger fish to fry. There aren't. This is as fundamental as it gets. What qualifies as pornography, regardless of what abstract, nonsensical definition you pull out of a dictionary, is a matter of opinion. And again, an issue you utterly ignored, is that the Chinese consider your idea of freedom as way, way past obscene so your notion of free speech being accessable by all as 'good' and porn being accessable by all as 'bad' is 100% cultural in addition to relative and subjective.
Oh, I swore I wasn't gonna say it, but what the hell...
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin
Do not zip over that sentence. Read it. Then read it again. If you allow "Decency Laws" to exist, then someone who seeks to keep a free people away from information simply needs to find a way to label it as "obscene." You've just made life a whole lot easier for them, haven't you? That's why I like the ACLU -- they don't give a !@#$ whose freedom is being trampled. They understand this core concept, that you cannot give an inch, else you've lost it all.
Blunder of the Ages
By Reporter AC
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In what amounts to a new twist on an old and venerable tradition, Senator Trent Lott (R) accidentally kissed a hand and shook a baby during a fundraiser in his home state of Mississippi today. The technical glitch was quickly discovered to be caused by an aide plugging the new TouchMeFeelMe internet tactile simulator backwards, but the parent of the jostled child was even less pleased than the baby according to witnesses. More...
Brian_Ellenberger writes:
...trying to ...equate political speech with porn? What??
s e-you'd-be-doing-<insert-thing-here>-instead argument.
"What's the big deal? Since this country has been founded we have both regulated porn and encouraged free speech, especially political free speech. You are seeking to make things like political speech=porn, which the Supreme Court already rejected years ago."
I'm
"Also we are not "preventing our own citizens" from viewing porn (as if we are banning it altogether) but saying that you cannot view porn in a taxpayer funded library. You want to get off on porn, do it in your own house. But you have no right to demand it on everyone's dollar."
The hell I don't.
What qualifies as porn? How about Jock Sturges? Does his work qualify? Does this page make the cut? How about a website on breast reconstructive surgery for post-mastectomy patients?
And I wouldn't be doing my argument justice if I didn't bring up the thorny but oh-so-necessary "who decides?" question. I guess the most pragmatic answer is 'the politicians' but is obscenity constant -- is a thing offensive by its very nature -- or does it shift with the political tide? Do we want what we can and cannot see be dictated by those who want to get re-elected? Are you prepared to have Fallwell make this decision for you? You can bet your ass that the aformentioned mastesctomy website qualifies in his book.
Finally, why is it that only your idea of offensive is truly offensive? To the Chinese, our entire view on individual freedom easily qualifies as offensive and probably more harmful to society than even the most strident Republican we have in office views Mr Goatsex.
The issue here is not mere pornography. The issue is the tacit assumption and enforcement of the notion that people should be entitled to say what they want BUT other people should not necessarily be able to hear it. The only way for you to get around this is by taking the position that photography does not qualify as speech. Good luck.
"If your truely [sic] worried about speech, why not worry about something truly substantial like the Unconstitutional Campaign Finance Reform that harms political speech. "
Ah, the you-must-not-really-be-genuine-in-your-concern-el
A absolutely love the fact that we, as a country can, with a straight face, seek to prevent our own citizens from seeing certain things and at the same time subsidize methods to defeat such techniques in other countries ...all while maintaining a straight face.
But then, I guess if we can subsidize murder in other countries when it suits us and then have the chutzpah to call the same done to us as "terrorism," this shouldn't actually come as a shock, should it?
One of these days, I'm going to wake up, select Slashdot from my bookmarks, and find that the top story is about some 7 year-old who managed to get his bicycle -- complete with training wheels and little brother onboard -- into lower earth orbit using some recently GPL'd Mathematica clone, an overclocked Furby, 50ft of CAT5 scavenged from the local LUGs trash bin and Jack Valenti's ego tinsnipped into tiles for the re-entry shielding.
Yes, but did he get any business propositions from Nigeria.
That's what I want to know.
I think that what appears to be overly complex and, if you'd like to call it this, "subtle," is really nothing more than the illusion of complexity. Let me explain...
Take a game of Go (aka, Baduk). You have a 19x19 grid. One player gets white stones, the other gets black. The players alternate playing stones on the intersections of the board (not in the boxes). This very, VERY simple setup leads to amazingly complex results such that no existing Go program can even come close to challenging a mid-level player much less a master.
The point I'm trying to make is that extremely simple beginnings can lead to extremely complex behavior. Just because we seem complex does not mean that we are more than just a lot of very simple bits working together, in other words. I'm with Kurzweil in the sense that the brain is nothing more than matter operating under physical constraints. Mimic the parts and understand the constraints and you have, for all intent and purpose, a brain. And by extension a thinking thing.
The question then becomes "have we captured the bits that matter?" ie, is there a soul?
I'm an atheist. I'm not the guy you want to answer this question. And I'll refrain from touching on Wolfram's A New Kind of Science at this point... =)
Hey! Imagine a cluster of these!
Oh, wait. That's called a "drink."
*sigh
Darth RadaR writes:
"OTOH, I wonder if MS is going to find a sneaky way to make the promotion company take the fall."
Oh, perish the thought!! =P
From the article:
"I trust and hope that these offensive activities are not the authorized acts of your organization's employees and agents," Mr. Fernandez [Assistant counsel of the Transportation Department] wrote..."
Does Mr. Fernandez perhaps believe that Microsoft employees paid for thousands of 20" Microsoft butterflies with Microsoft advertising out of their own pockets?
OF COURSE IT WAS AN AUTHORIZED ACT YOU TWIT!
I'm wondering what stops someone from doing this exact same thing for 1/5th of the price from a country that does not respect the United States intellectual properties laws.
My gut instinct was to say "nonsense, still way too expensive," but I think this is a step in the right direction (but still nonsense).
...true, this will allow users to eliminate filler content but -- and here is the problem -- it still won't encourage musical exploration. In other words, I can dive right into all the genres I want via [insert your favorite p2p program here] and dig a bit deeper for those I decide I like. A buck per song doesn't even come close to the impulse buying pricepoint that is the pivot for a lot of people.
...again, too little too late, but who knows. Maybe, just MAYBE they're getting a clue.
The problem is
Give me a mechanism to download all the music I want for free and make tracks I keep longer than 48 hours cost 20-40 cents and I'd probably never touch Kazaa again.
By and large this is pure gravy for the artists and labels since it is very, very likely that even without any p2p client available to me, I'd never have purchased that album. No packaging, no distribution, less marketing. Pure profit.
So
For anyone interested, this months Linux Journal has an article on OpenACS (page 12) which reads, in part:
"It's easy to say that OpenACS is a toolkit for creating on-line communities. But what does that mean? For starters, it means that OpenACS comes with working versions of most of the applications you're likely to want on a community web site. It handles user registration and administration, forums, FAQs, group (including a rich permission scheme), news updates, file storage and distribution, personal home pages, surveys and a we-based calendar. As you might expect from a modern system, administration of the application is done almost completely through the Web, with only a few configuration files."
From OpenACS' frontpage:
WHAT is OpenACS?
OpenACS (Open Architecture Community System) is an advanced toolkit for building scalable, community-oriented web applications. If you're thinking of building an enterprise-level web application, OpenACS is a solid, proven foundation that will give you a 3-6 month headstart.
An AC writes:
"1) MSHTML.DLL look for it on your machine"
Hmmm. Lemmie check...
jason@oliver:~$ find / 2>&1 | grep MSHTML.DLL | grep -v "Permission"
jason@oliver:~$
Nope. Not there. =)
Ok, ok. I get your point. Just curious, though, how are you sure this is all that this pen device requires? Admittedly, this does make sense, kinda, but it still seems odd that people would shut out such a huge geek market and not even so much provide a footnote of, "oh, not really, you can also do this."
"What logitec is saying is that a newer version of IE contains a DLL or two that they need. This is not taking over Opera, etc. because it has nothing to do with browsing the Internet nor does it have anything to do with your default browser."
I'll concede that you are correct if:
- You show that it is as simple as a DLL and;
- A reason can be provided why the DLL could not be obtained without installing Explorer.
In other words, I think you've got a problem no matter which way you go. If the needed component(s) is modular, then Explorer needn't be installed. If it isn't modular, then you'd have to find a reason why they couldn't be and if not, then Microsoft, by association, has done what I originally said; made themselves necessary.From the FAQ: .NET framework? .NET framework is necessary for some of the functions of the Logitech io Software.
Why do I have to install the
The
Oh isn't that special...
From the FAQ:
...all out in the cold because Microsoft created their own necessity.
I use Netscape exclusively as my web browser; do I still need to install Internet Explorer?
Yes, but only if your system has an older version of Internet Explorer installed. Since Internet Explorer is a core component of Windows, many features of the Logitech io Software are dependent on the program. However, installing Internet Explorer does not mean you must use it as your browser; you can still use Netscape as your default Internet browser.
Remember when Microsoft, during their DOJ trial, claimed that Explorer was intractable from Windows? That it was such a core component that could not be removed without crippling the whole OS? Not only were they wrong but they were caught fabricating evidence in the form of a VHS tape with telltale impossible graphics and they were busted, wholesale.
Well this is just an example of how that fabrication -- and by extension Microsoft's influence -- affects a fair market negatively. Netscape, Opera, Mozilla, Konqueror
"Core component" my ass.
Danse writes:
...but this qualifies for oil too. Or electricity. Or or orange juice or porkbellies. These are commodities. And they're regulated because if you do not, it is possible to manipulate the environment which will result in profit with no risk for the manipulators and assured loss for those not "in on the deal." Hence 'insider trading.'
"The only commodity being sold is the time that it takes someone to gather the plat to sell on ebay. Since the vast majority of us sell our time (and expertise or muscle as well in most cases) to make a living, this doesn't seem very different."
You are 100% correct
Whether the item in question is lawfully obtained by the sweat of your brow has nothing to do with the problem. Everquest isn't regulated. An admin could, conceivably, give themselves or others plat. Yes, there might be internal safeguards in place, but are they adequate? Can someone code a script to do that work automagically? Or even worse, can the system be hacked outright?
The result of "printing script" (ie, money) is that it devalues the legitimate money and this leads to inflation and relative devaluation. In other words, if there exists 1,000 units of money in an environment and we both have half, if you can print yourself 5,000 units, we now have 6,000u of money in circulation and my lot is significantly devalued.
Granted, this is an extreme example, but it is only provided to illustrate the point.
thefinite writes:
"Granted, if you are selling EverQuest items on Ebay, then you are subject to U.S. economic laws, but why would any government care about the economic activities in a virtual world, except in areas that affect their own economies? There may be an answer to this I don't see. If so, what is it?"
If you think about the selling of "plat" (platinum) obtained from Everquest on eBay, you're basically talking about a commodities market and the people running the game are essentially printing money.
sweet reason writes:
"there is an important difference between software cheats and guns. you can't download an illegal gun, you have to steal it, so banning them reduces the supply."
You don't actually make a conclusion from your distinction. I'm guessing you're making the tacit suggestion that a reduction of supply equals a reduction in availability.
In order to come to this conclusion you must also make the assumption that a secondary market cannot or will not step in where a legal business cannot. Clearly this is not so. Viz; cocaine, alcohol and yes, even firearms.
So long as there is a desire for ownership and a pricetag that is commensurate with the risk involved, there will be a black market.
I can point to empircal evidence, too. Contrast the homicide per capita rates of, say, New Hampshire or Texas (states with rather liberal firearm carry laws) vs. the homicide rates of states where firearms are more or less verboten -- DC and California come to mind.
However this thread is going astray. My original post was to point out that making cheating "illegal" won't do anything to stop those who thumb their noses at rules in the first place. The solution is to either (a) make it impossible (read; server-side) to cheat, (b) provide a policing mechanism. Banning users based on their MAC addresses is several steps below what I would consider an even modestly plausible solution. This'll be cracked instantly and known by every single person who violated the rules originally.
FurryFeet writes:
"So, following your witty analogy, what we need is to provide cheats to all gamers who don't usually cheat. You know, if you outlaw cheating, only outlaws will cheat (or something)."
The analogy is provided to point out that if you present cheaters with a stop-mechanism that can be cheated, they'll cheat it. Ie, the notion, on it's face, doesn't work. The same is true with guns. Making guns illegal doesn't exactly do much to people who don't obey the laws which are, afaik, the ones you're worried about. See the problem here?
FurryFeet continues:
"Me, I'd rather see something done about problems, instead of listening to the "it won't work, let's not even try" crew."
I agree. The solution is a server-side fix. America's Army has been very successful with this method. I'm not aware of any way to, for example, get sniper rating without actually qualifying. There are ways to do this in single-player mode, but not multi-player. This is because the information is not authenticated client-side.
I realize that cheaters and TK'ers really ruin the game, but perhaps they could take a lead from America's Army. They have an 'honor system' whereby TK'ing makes you lose points and doing well (ie, your team winning, not just you) earns you points. When this was introduced (last week), team-killing went WAY down. I've been shot once on purpose in the last week. Before, I'd have been lucky to go a full hour.
And as far as cheating goes, there is an in-game IRC capability. You just hit a channel, tell the admin someone is cheating (I've honestly never seen someone cheating myself) and they go in, witness the cheat, then boot/ban the nick. I know this works because the idle-kick feature is broken and I've gone in and had an admin boot someone who was AFK about three times thus far.
This is coupled with the fact that you can honor-restrict servers, so it's not possible to simply sign up for a new name when you get banned. Your new nick won't have the honor to get into the servers!
Basically, the problem here is the client side-ness of the fix. This will only stop the very lazy cheaters. The fanatical ones -- and you have to figure if they're bothering to cheat, they know where to find cheats -- are going to be unscathed. Client-side security is an analogue to a "law." Server side security is an analogue to gravity. Not so easy to break.
isa-kuruption writes:
"Overall, the admins figure they will cut out 99% of the hacking attempts as people would just go elsewhere, or once they did cheat, just wouldn't know how to change their MAC."
I say this with all due respect, but I don't think you play online games much. People chat in-game and this will be very commonly known and quite accessable instantly. In fact, when a MAC spoofer is released it will be HARD for a person to not know about the existence of just such an animal.
This is just as silly as gun control because it makes the assumption that you can pass "laws" that will stop people that, by their very definition, do not obey laws!
...cheat the protection.
Here, they're saying "we're going to introduce a software "lock" that will prevent you from cheating." Great. So the people who want to cheat in the game are going to (say it with me now)
Are the people who wrote this bit of client-side [*cough*] security really under the impression that MAC addresses are immutable? Perhaps they know damned well it isn't but was kinda hoping that nobody would tell their client? This has the earmark of an initiative by some dip in a suit who never bothered to consult a single knowledgable, technical person.
Whatever. It might take two days before a patch/spoofer is readily available for the habitual cheaters. All it has to do is spit out a fake MAC address when queried.