The law in most jurisdictions makes no distinction between photos of postpubescent minors and photos of prepubescent minors. Yes, there's a big difference between ephebophilia and true pedophilia (both from a psychological perspective and in terms of what kind of threat the person might pose), but that doesn't mean the law recognizes any difference. Under US law, "child pornography" includes images of 5-year-olds, 12-year-olds, and 17-year-olds.
Godspeed is the maximum speed at which God and other heavenly bodies can travel. Scientists estimate that it is approximately 3.14159265 times lightspeed (the fastest speed at which ordinary objects can travel).
The bit about no padlocks reminds me of a head-thumping bit from an episode of ST:TNG (one written during the previous writers strike, in defense of the show's regular writers). The Enterprise has picked up a 20th century business executive, who in the middle of a tense military confrontation with the Romlulans is able to nag Picard using the ship's intercomm, because the Federation assumes that everyone on board will use the comm system responsibly, so it has no authentication or usage restrictions.
It's not prejudice, it's what I see every time I look at a magazine or web site or news article about video games. It's what I hear almost every time I listen to coworkers or friends talk about the games they play. It's nearly all about adolescent power fantasies.
For the recored, I didn't miss out on Zork, because that was back when the game industry was still new, and hadn't bored the hell out of me with adverts for 200 shoot-em-up titles, and before it descending into its current explosion-rendering fetish. Oh, and you missed Myst in your standard list of exceptions to the rule. But those exceptions aren't going to make me a "gamer" any more than "Stranger Than Fiction" is going to make me a Will Ferrel fan.
By the way, that's a rather narrow definition of "all demographics" you're using there. The fact that gamers are of biologically different ages doesn't change the fact that most of the titles being produced and sold are written for the psychological equivalent of a 13-year-old boy. Apparently lots of 40-year-old men are still in touch with their inner teen; good for them. As for "a lot of women too"... that's nothing more than wishful thinking. The gaming market is male-dominated, and trying to claim otherwise just undermines your case.
Accusing me of being "lazy" because I don't want to work to find entertainment is bizarre. You sound like the Comic Book Guy types who sneer at someone for not investing the time and energy to follow byzantine X-Men continuity, or who expect a woman to wade through the racks of "racks" to find the 2% of superhero books in which women are characters instead of caricatures. Game producers clearly are not reaching out to me; that's not my fault.
Back in 1996 or 1997 I got some funny looks from security after the wire connecting the main AA cells in my Psion Series 3a PDA broke, in the International terminal at Boston Logan. The button cell that served as backup power for the memory wouldn't last the duration of the flight to London (where I might have gotten it fixed professionally), and I had data in it that I'd need after I got there. So I bought a travel sewing kit* at the newsstand (the safety pin made a good fine tool), got out my tweezers and Swiss Army knife* to help disassemble the PDA and to strip the wire a little, and spent the half hour before my flight in the waiting area at the gate, hunched over the "device" and performing emergency field surgery to make a solid connection between the AAs and the electronics. I snapped it all back together just as they called for boarding.
And the in-flight movie? Executive Decision, in which the Bad Guy uses a Psion Series 3a as the remote control for a bomb on the plane.
*Did I mention that this was way before Sept. 2001?
On the other hand, I think that lying to her about his birthday would be enough reason to dump him right there. Not because it's dishonest or because it's secretive... but because he's being a contemptuous prick.
The reason I'm not a gamer is because I have no interest in shooting people, hitting people, or doing stuff with a ball. So pretending to do any of these things doesn't interest me. Yeah, I'm sure there are other kinds of games out there, but not enough to make it worth my while wading through all the 13-year-old-boy-ware to find them.
Our company is looking for someone to be a Unix/Linux sysadmin in the Sacramento area. We pay well. We can't find anyone.
I'll give you the advice I've been getting when I tell people about my job hunt: "Have you tried moving?"
I'm relieved to report that my 5-month job hunt is finally over. The job I was just offered had 120 applicants. Granted, many of them were probably unqualified, but I've asked each of the dozens of businesspeople I've talked to in recent months what kind of applicant pool they're seeing, and none of them has seen any kind of "shortage".
"Represntative [sic] Couch says enforcing this bill if it became law would be a challenge."
Couch went on to acknowledge that Space is big, that there are quite a few people in China, that antidisestablishmentarianism is a long word, and that John McCain is not very young.
When I was in middle school I devised a rule set for determining the most "random"* number between 0 and 100. The guiding principle was that it had to be a number with no obvious significance. Any number with a strong popular "meaning" was out, so no 13, 52, 69. It couldn't be particularly large or small, so anything less than 10 or greater than 90 was out. Multiples of 10 were out, as were their immediate neighbors. So were numbers halfway between multiples of 10. Or numbers in the 50s or 60s (too close to the overall midpoint). Even numbers (and digits) were insufficiently odd, and composite numbers in general seemed a little too derivative. This left only two qualifying numbers, and 73 was too close to 3/4 for my tastes. So I concluded that 37 is the most "random" number.
And no, it's not part of my ATM PIN.:)
*Note: I said "random" not random. I know there's a difference.
I'll grant you "more convenient", but wireless phone service is only "cheaper" if you jabber incessantly, especially with friends in other area codes. For moderate local calling, standard wireless plans that start at $40-50/month are easily more expensive than my landline.
Conditioning certainly has to be a big part of it. People put up with crappy wireless phone service because that they don't remember (or are too young to know) what an old-fashioned fully-wired telephone conversation sounds like. After a couple decades of cordless and wireless phones, the level of service has gone from "you can hear a pin drop" to "can you hear me now?"
Just saying it's "totally different" doesn't make it so. How is a software implementation of an idea different from a hardware implementation of it?
OTOH, copyrights are very different from patents. The scale of their duration is vastly greater, the rules for what constitutes infringement are different, they specifically do not protect the ideas being expressed. Saying that copyrights adequately protect and promote the development of new useful software a) ignores the fundamental differences between the two legal concepts, and b) tortures copyright law into doing something it was never intended for.
Completely incorrect. You do not need to apply for a new patent when you make changes to your implementation of it, as long as the fundamental "innovation" that was patented remains intact. Do you imagine that Eli Whitney had to reapply for a new patent every time he built a slightly different or improved cotton gin? Of course not, because his patent was on what the machine did, not what the machine was. The patent is on the verb, not the noun. If you're going to criticize the patent system (and there's plenty there to criticize) you really should try to understand it better.
As for your television analogy, it misses the point because TV shows aren't useful (in the legal sense), which is what the patent system was created to promote. But try applying it to a hypothetical holodeck (the ultimate example of the interchangeability of hardware and software): If you reprogram a holodeck to separate the cotton seeds from cotton in a new and better way... why shoudln't that count as a patentable invention?
It also doesn't matter whether he's 17 or 18 (or 28, really) in terms of what the end result will be. Blind or not, he'll emerge from our "correctional" system as either a ruthless criminal, or as a worthless cripple.
And in other news, 1 in 100 U.S. adults are now in prison....
Making a distinction between hardware and software is both arbitrary and meaningless. For every piece of software you can write, you can create a piece of hardware which performs the same function. It's just more efficient to do it in software. Similarly, you can take a set of standard off-the-shelf gears and levers and build a machine which does something in a way that no one else has done before.
Slashdot Mirror
The law in most jurisdictions makes no distinction between photos of postpubescent minors and photos of prepubescent minors. Yes, there's a big difference between ephebophilia and true pedophilia (both from a psychological perspective and in terms of what kind of threat the person might pose), but that doesn't mean the law recognizes any difference. Under US law, "child pornography" includes images of 5-year-olds, 12-year-olds, and 17-year-olds.
Godspeed is the maximum speed at which God and other heavenly bodies can travel. Scientists estimate that it is approximately 3.14159265 times lightspeed (the fastest speed at which ordinary objects can travel).
The bit about no padlocks reminds me of a head-thumping bit from an episode of ST:TNG (one written during the previous writers strike, in defense of the show's regular writers). The Enterprise has picked up a 20th century business executive, who in the middle of a tense military confrontation with the Romlulans is able to nag Picard using the ship's intercomm, because the Federation assumes that everyone on board will use the comm system responsibly, so it has no authentication or usage restrictions.
It's not prejudice, it's what I see every time I look at a magazine or web site or news article about video games. It's what I hear almost every time I listen to coworkers or friends talk about the games they play. It's nearly all about adolescent power fantasies.
For the recored, I didn't miss out on Zork, because that was back when the game industry was still new, and hadn't bored the hell out of me with adverts for 200 shoot-em-up titles, and before it descending into its current explosion-rendering fetish. Oh, and you missed Myst in your standard list of exceptions to the rule. But those exceptions aren't going to make me a "gamer" any more than "Stranger Than Fiction" is going to make me a Will Ferrel fan.
By the way, that's a rather narrow definition of "all demographics" you're using there. The fact that gamers are of biologically different ages doesn't change the fact that most of the titles being produced and sold are written for the psychological equivalent of a 13-year-old boy. Apparently lots of 40-year-old men are still in touch with their inner teen; good for them. As for "a lot of women too"... that's nothing more than wishful thinking. The gaming market is male-dominated, and trying to claim otherwise just undermines your case.
Accusing me of being "lazy" because I don't want to work to find entertainment is bizarre. You sound like the Comic Book Guy types who sneer at someone for not investing the time and energy to follow byzantine X-Men continuity, or who expect a woman to wade through the racks of "racks" to find the 2% of superhero books in which women are characters instead of caricatures. Game producers clearly are not reaching out to me; that's not my fault.
Back in 1996 or 1997 I got some funny looks from security after the wire connecting the main AA cells in my Psion Series 3a PDA broke, in the International terminal at Boston Logan. The button cell that served as backup power for the memory wouldn't last the duration of the flight to London (where I might have gotten it fixed professionally), and I had data in it that I'd need after I got there. So I bought a travel sewing kit* at the newsstand (the safety pin made a good fine tool), got out my tweezers and Swiss Army knife* to help disassemble the PDA and to strip the wire a little, and spent the half hour before my flight in the waiting area at the gate, hunched over the "device" and performing emergency field surgery to make a solid connection between the AAs and the electronics. I snapped it all back together just as they called for boarding.
And the in-flight movie? Executive Decision, in which the Bad Guy uses a Psion Series 3a as the remote control for a bomb on the plane.
*Did I mention that this was way before Sept. 2001?
On the other hand, I think that lying to her about his birthday would be enough reason to dump him right there. Not because it's dishonest or because it's secretive... but because he's being a contemptuous prick.
The reason I'm not a gamer is because I have no interest in shooting people, hitting people, or doing stuff with a ball. So pretending to do any of these things doesn't interest me. Yeah, I'm sure there are other kinds of games out there, but not enough to make it worth my while wading through all the 13-year-old-boy-ware to find them.
All I can say is that you're not in my part of the Midwest (western Michigan).
I'm relieved to report that my 5-month job hunt is finally over. The job I was just offered had 120 applicants. Granted, many of them were probably unqualified, but I've asked each of the dozens of businesspeople I've talked to in recent months what kind of applicant pool they're seeing, and none of them has seen any kind of "shortage".
"Represntative [sic] Couch says enforcing this bill if it became law would be a challenge."
Couch went on to acknowledge that Space is big, that there are quite a few people in China, that antidisestablishmentarianism is a long word, and that John McCain is not very young.
Clearly this proves that people with heart problems choose not to buy cats.
When I was in middle school I devised a rule set for determining the most "random"* number between 0 and 100. The guiding principle was that it had to be a number with no obvious significance. Any number with a strong popular "meaning" was out, so no 13, 52, 69. It couldn't be particularly large or small, so anything less than 10 or greater than 90 was out. Multiples of 10 were out, as were their immediate neighbors. So were numbers halfway between multiples of 10. Or numbers in the 50s or 60s (too close to the overall midpoint). Even numbers (and digits) were insufficiently odd, and composite numbers in general seemed a little too derivative. This left only two qualifying numbers, and 73 was too close to 3/4 for my tastes. So I concluded that 37 is the most "random" number.
:)
And no, it's not part of my ATM PIN.
*Note: I said "random" not random. I know there's a difference.
The next discovery will be that one of the rocks orbiting Rhea itself has a ring around it.
Now would also be a good time to get the RFCs in motion for establishing a TLD for Mars. The registration of helium.gov.mars is long overdue.
And while we're at it, let's start referring to it as the System Wide Web, so we don't sound so old-fashioned and provincial.
I'll grant you "more convenient", but wireless phone service is only "cheaper" if you jabber incessantly, especially with friends in other area codes. For moderate local calling, standard wireless plans that start at $40-50/month are easily more expensive than my landline.
Waterloo is only about 75 miles more northern than MIT.
Conditioning certainly has to be a big part of it. People put up with crappy wireless phone service because that they don't remember (or are too young to know) what an old-fashioned fully-wired telephone conversation sounds like. After a couple decades of cordless and wireless phones, the level of service has gone from "you can hear a pin drop" to "can you hear me now?"
Only on Slashdot would a Wrath of Khan quote get modded "Informative". {raises eyebrow}
Just saying it's "totally different" doesn't make it so. How is a software implementation of an idea different from a hardware implementation of it?
OTOH, copyrights are very different from patents. The scale of their duration is vastly greater, the rules for what constitutes infringement are different, they specifically do not protect the ideas being expressed. Saying that copyrights adequately protect and promote the development of new useful software a) ignores the fundamental differences between the two legal concepts, and b) tortures copyright law into doing something it was never intended for.
Completely incorrect. You do not need to apply for a new patent when you make changes to your implementation of it, as long as the fundamental "innovation" that was patented remains intact. Do you imagine that Eli Whitney had to reapply for a new patent every time he built a slightly different or improved cotton gin? Of course not, because his patent was on what the machine did, not what the machine was. The patent is on the verb, not the noun. If you're going to criticize the patent system (and there's plenty there to criticize) you really should try to understand it better.
As for your television analogy, it misses the point because TV shows aren't useful (in the legal sense), which is what the patent system was created to promote. But try applying it to a hypothetical holodeck (the ultimate example of the interchangeability of hardware and software): If you reprogram a holodeck to separate the cotton seeds from cotton in a new and better way... why shoudln't that count as a patentable invention?
It also doesn't matter whether he's 17 or 18 (or 28, really) in terms of what the end result will be. Blind or not, he'll emerge from our "correctional" system as either a ruthless criminal, or as a worthless cripple.
And in other news, 1 in 100 U.S. adults are now in prison....
Making a distinction between hardware and software is both arbitrary and meaningless. For every piece of software you can write, you can create a piece of hardware which performs the same function. It's just more efficient to do it in software. Similarly, you can take a set of standard off-the-shelf gears and levers and build a machine which does something in a way that no one else has done before.