One could even go as far as to argue that if it's the "degredation" meme that causes pornography to be harmful, then it's those (such as yourself) who perpetuate that meme who are responsible for the relevant harm.
That's an interesting perspective. The analogy that immediately leaps to mind is masturbation: The old myths about how you would go blind, become emaciated and effeminate, etc. In truth, the only negative effect (barring truly inappropriate choices in lubricant) is the psychic damage from being told what you're doing is evil.
OTOH, with pr0n it's not quite so simple. There is often violence and coercion that accompany the production of pornography, much like they accompany prostitution. It becomes very difficult to defend pr0n as something a girl ``chooses'' to do when she has been lured into Germany from Ukraine (for example, with the offer of a job as a nanny), had her passport taken away by a thug with a gun, and told that she does this video or they dump her in the Oder.
On the grasping hand, not all pr0n does involve violence or coercion. I can think of projects involving women who consider doing erotica liberatory feminist work.
People are too often unwilling, however, to see shades of grey, and simplistically condemn anything that seems erotic as exploitive, regardless of the circumstances of its production. The very fact that pr0n is condemned, and a woman's getting involved in it is seen as ``falling,'' contributes to the elements of violence and coercion. By making pr0n seem shameful, society makes it more difficult for women who are being exploited to get out, and makes it problematic for women who are not in dire straits to enter the industry. Were there no stigma attached to sex work (prostitution, videos, whatever), it would in large degree lose its exploitive character. You don't hear a lot about women being smuggled into the EU and forced to work as bookkeepers, do you?
OK, it's not good form to reply to one's own post, but some moderator modded the parent Funny. I am loathe to criticize +ve moderation, but Funny? How about +1 Sad but True?
1)...There's also no reason that entire submenus need to be created off of the start menu. Applications should simply load a single shortcut to themselves instead of putting readme's, uninstallers and other crap in the start menu.
You do realize you're describing modern Linux here, right? This is exactly how Debian's menus work, and I assume RedHat, Mandrake, SuSE, et al. do something similar.
2) Use the desktop for something other than the aforementioned annoyance.
In X, any program can write to the root window (the `desktop'); if you write a program like this it would integrate quite seamlessly with most Linux GUIs.
3) User data management - give the users ONE FREAKING PLACE to put data.
Done. It's called $HOME, and a normal user can't write files elsewhere even if he wants to (mostly). If it's really a problem, you could write a cron job to put crap left in/tmp in the owner's $HOME/tmp_crap directory or something.
4) Program installation - Joe Users don't need to see the intricate details of the files on a program installation (either hard or soft media). Program installations should be ONE file.
apt-get install foo. It really doesn't get easier than that. You need to know absolutely nothing about the internals of the package.
Gnome 2.4 hit Debian on 14 October. The timestamps on the 2.4.0 sources at ftp.gnome.org are 10 September. I wouldn't call that particularly pokey, particularly for ten or so architectures. Hell, if I were rolling my own on my old desktop I'd still be waiting for it to compile...;)
Seriously, when you do it that way, you'll understand your system a whole hell of a lot more than you ever thought you could. For real work, though, let Debian's security people keep on top of the patches...
Also that is why I'm glad-glad-glad-glad-glad-glad-glad (I wonder if he is glad!) that Novell picked ud the pride and joy of european Linux (SuSE AG) - and not IBM.
I'm not so sure... Remember what happened to WordPerfect on Novell's watch?
Well, given that they were taking about eight days to deliver (or bounce) e-mail last month, RFC1149 just might have been more efficient. As it was, I resorted to something like IP-over-Honda...
Is that some sort of across the pond thing? Because I can tell you what it means on this side of the Atlantic...
It is indeed a Britishism (or more generally Commonwealth perhaps? -- I don't recall if Aussies say it...). I'm curious, though, since I'm on the same side of the pond you seem to be on: WTF does it mean where you live? Around here it means fuck-all if not the British meaning...
I assure you if I said ``there was a real cock-up at school'' no one would think I was discussing male arousal...
I'm willing to believe he mispronounces it on purpose to identify with anti-intellectuals
I think you've just hit on the head why it's so offensive. Right or wrong (I'll never meet the guy to know for myself...), many people perceive the yuk-yuk stuff to be a political act, and are highly offended that it works.
Big as Russia is, it doesn't have regional accents*, yet a little country like the UK has huge differences. Weird, no.
*In Moscow they have longer 'a's. Apparently.
There actually are regional accents. A Volga accent pronounces unstressed Os as/o/, where the `standard' is to pronounce them as schwas. They're not nearly as pronounced as UK differences, though, for sure.
However, they do have Belorussian and Ukrainian. The two main `regional accents' that are most distinctive are actually considered separate languages today. There are Russians who don't even acknowledge Ukrainian as a separate language -- they just say it's `bad' Russian, or Russian with a stupid hick accent, or something like that.
We've seen this done on the VZ wireless commercials. The guy has been trying to do this same US "mapping" thing for months, the poor little man!
Unfortunately, the guy never came by my place. VZ here is more like Can you hear me now? Shit! Can you hear me now? Shit! Can you hear me now? Hello? Hello?
[SMTP is on port 25. No wonder you can't send email:-)]
I plead typing while not under the influence (of coffee).
If you use Cox, then you have other problems.
Well, where I live our choices are Cox (incompetent) or Qwest (recently convicted of consumer fraud).
Cable modems are a very serious spam soup. Blocking port 25 is almost required by law.
I just discovered that our local coffeehouse wireless provider doesn't block port 25... Given that I can buy an hour of time with cash (i.e., my name is never associated with the IP they give me), that seems like a much more logical place to do spamming than my home, where the IP virtually never changes and they can find out who's got it quite easily. Maybe I overestimate the criminal mind, though.
It's perfectly acceptable to tell dialup users to relay their email through their ISP's systems.
Unless you're Cox, whose mailservers will regularly sit on a message for eight days and then bounce it back to you... If you're going to block my port 23 your own SMTP better bloody well work.
Selective Instances are fun!... What is the murder rate in Switzerland?
Um, I didn't pick the examples to use, the poster to which I was replying did. I was simply showing that the examples he picked showed something other than what he was alleging.
You are quite right that, if I hand-pick examples, I can make them show just about anything.
Bzzt. Wrong. Here are Interpol 2001 crime statistics (rate per 100,000): 4161 - US 7736 - Germany 6941 - France 9927 - England and Wales And here's the 1995 ones: 5278 - US 8179 - Germany 6316 - France 7206 - England & Wales
Um, the discussion was about murder. So let's look at murder numbers, not total crime. (BTW, Interpol doesn't have anything for England/Wales in 1995 -- they start in 1996 -- so I'm not sure where you got your figures from).
OK... using 1996 and 2001 murders per 100k population (the widest span on which they have data for all these states) -- U.S.: 7.41 to 5.61; Germany: 4.32 to 3.21; France: 4.11 to 3.91; England/Wales: 2.60 to 1.63.
Wow! That's interesting. Every one of these has a decline from 1996 to 2001 -- including England and Wales. In fact, England and Wales, where that handgun ban supposedly made murder rampant, looks like its murder rate is about 30% of the U.S.'s. Fascinating...
Thank $deity we have all those guns here in the States keeping us safe...
Slashdot Mirror
scripsit g14ss:
Gee, the U.S. ain't Western now? Aw, shucks.
All your IP are belong to us.
export FRIENDS=$FRIENDS:nathanh
Very nice post; I wish I had mod points.
scripist InadequateCamel:
Would that make it a SIG Schauer?
*ducks*
scripsit g14ss:
Um, how 'bout ``In Nigeria, the government scams the Nigerians.''
Wait, that's not funny -- it's true.
scripsit cduffy:
That's an interesting perspective. The analogy that immediately leaps to mind is masturbation: The old myths about how you would go blind, become emaciated and effeminate, etc. In truth, the only negative effect (barring truly inappropriate choices in lubricant) is the psychic damage from being told what you're doing is evil.
OTOH, with pr0n it's not quite so simple. There is often violence and coercion that accompany the production of pornography, much like they accompany prostitution. It becomes very difficult to defend pr0n as something a girl ``chooses'' to do when she has been lured into Germany from Ukraine (for example, with the offer of a job as a nanny), had her passport taken away by a thug with a gun, and told that she does this video or they dump her in the Oder.
On the grasping hand, not all pr0n does involve violence or coercion. I can think of projects involving women who consider doing erotica liberatory feminist work. People are too often unwilling, however, to see shades of grey, and simplistically condemn anything that seems erotic as exploitive, regardless of the circumstances of its production. The very fact that pr0n is condemned, and a woman's getting involved in it is seen as ``falling,'' contributes to the elements of violence and coercion. By making pr0n seem shameful, society makes it more difficult for women who are being exploited to get out, and makes it problematic for women who are not in dire straits to enter the industry. Were there no stigma attached to sex work (prostitution, videos, whatever), it would in large degree lose its exploitive character. You don't hear a lot about women being smuggled into the EU and forced to work as bookkeepers, do you?
scripsit Control-Z:
Possibly because some of the more horrific stuff he got up to was in the 1980s, when he was still a ``friend'' of the U.S.
OK, it's not good form to reply to one's own post, but some moderator modded the parent Funny. I am loathe to criticize +ve moderation, but Funny? How about +1 Sad but True?
scripsit AnyNoMouse:
Ah, there's the problem: Nothing will ever again enter the public domain in the United States. Nothing. Ever. Disney et al. will see to that.
scripsit swordboy:
You do realize you're describing modern Linux here, right? This is exactly how Debian's menus work, and I assume RedHat, Mandrake, SuSE, et al. do something similar.
In X, any program can write to the root window (the `desktop'); if you write a program like this it would integrate quite seamlessly with most Linux GUIs.
Done. It's called $HOME, and a normal user can't write files elsewhere even if he wants to (mostly). If it's really a problem, you could write a cron job to put crap left in /tmp in the owner's $HOME/tmp_crap directory or something.
apt-get install foo. It really doesn't get easier than that. You need to know absolutely nothing about the internals of the package.
So why aren't you running Linux now, again?
scripsit iggymanz:
Gnome 2.4 hit Debian on 14 October. The timestamps on the 2.4.0 sources at ftp.gnome.org are 10 September. I wouldn't call that particularly pokey, particularly for ten or so architectures. Hell, if I were rolling my own on my old desktop I'd still be waiting for it to compile... ;)
scripsit Unregistered:
If you don't mind really having to learn Linux, try Linux from Scratch. Then switch to Debian ;)
Seriously, when you do it that way, you'll understand your system a whole hell of a lot more than you ever thought you could. For real work, though, let Debian's security people keep on top of the patches...
scripsit Zeinfeld:
So they banned those Intel `makes the Internet go faster' ads, too, right?
scripsit Speare:
You mean I wasn't the only one to think of that? Damn...
scripist Flywheel:
I'm not so sure... Remember what happened to WordPerfect on Novell's watch?
scripist riffer:
Well, given that they were taking about eight days to deliver (or bounce) e-mail last month, RFC1149 just might have been more efficient. As it was, I resorted to something like IP-over-Honda...
scripsit dboyles:
It is indeed a Britishism (or more generally Commonwealth perhaps? -- I don't recall if Aussies say it...). I'm curious, though, since I'm on the same side of the pond you seem to be on: WTF does it mean where you live? Around here it means fuck-all if not the British meaning...
I assure you if I said ``there was a real cock-up at school'' no one would think I was discussing male arousal...
scripsit JimmytheGeek:
I think you've just hit on the head why it's so offensive. Right or wrong (I'll never meet the guy to know for myself...), many people perceive the yuk-yuk stuff to be a political act, and are highly offended that it works.
scripsit caluml:
There actually are regional accents. A Volga accent pronounces unstressed Os as /o/, where the `standard' is to pronounce them as schwas. They're not nearly as pronounced as UK differences, though, for sure.
However, they do have Belorussian and Ukrainian. The two main `regional accents' that are most distinctive are actually considered separate languages today. There are Russians who don't even acknowledge Ukrainian as a separate language -- they just say it's `bad' Russian, or Russian with a stupid hick accent, or something like that.
scripsit gid-goo:
Um, 21. It was already 19 in many places...
scripsit fractaltiger:
Unfortunately, the guy never came by my place. VZ here is more like Can you hear me now? Shit! Can you hear me now? Shit! Can you hear me now? Hello? Hello?
scripsit Cramer:
I plead typing while not under the influence (of coffee).
Well, where I live our choices are Cox (incompetent) or Qwest (recently convicted of consumer fraud).
I just discovered that our local coffeehouse wireless provider doesn't block port 25... Given that I can buy an hour of time with cash (i.e., my name is never associated with the IP they give me), that seems like a much more logical place to do spamming than my home, where the IP virtually never changes and they can find out who's got it quite easily. Maybe I overestimate the criminal mind, though.
scripsit Cramer:
Unless you're Cox, whose mailservers will regularly sit on a message for eight days and then bounce it back to you... If you're going to block my port 23 your own SMTP better bloody well work.
scripsit Llywelyn:
Um, I didn't pick the examples to use, the poster to which I was replying did. I was simply showing that the examples he picked showed something other than what he was alleging.
You are quite right that, if I hand-pick examples, I can make them show just about anything.
scripsit an AC:
That's odd. I thought I remembered something about a few million murders... Or were you not counting crimes against humanity as crime?
scripsit eericson:
Um, the discussion was about murder. So let's look at murder numbers, not total crime. (BTW, Interpol doesn't have anything for England/Wales in 1995 -- they start in 1996 -- so I'm not sure where you got your figures from).
OK... using 1996 and 2001 murders per 100k population (the widest span on which they have data for all these states) -- U.S.: 7.41 to 5.61; Germany: 4.32 to 3.21; France: 4.11 to 3.91; England/Wales: 2.60 to 1.63.
Wow! That's interesting. Every one of these has a decline from 1996 to 2001 -- including England and Wales. In fact, England and Wales, where that handgun ban supposedly made murder rampant, looks like its murder rate is about 30% of the U.S.'s. Fascinating...
Thank $deity we have all those guns here in the States keeping us safe...