There is a precedent in porn midgets in school girl uniforms. On a similar note, an exasperated judge in our metro a couple years ago dismissed a case and read the prosecution the riot act, "No, he does _not_ have to prove that the girls in his porn _were_ adults. YOU have to prove they were _not_."
I trace "thought crime porn" to the late Andrea Dworkin -- of the fat and ugly lesbian manhating branch of feminism. One of our metro cities called her in some years ago to try to pass a law stating that if a person reacts to it as porn, it's porn. In other words, if somebody said he was provoked to become a rapist by the uncontrollable lust the Victoria Secret web site generated in him, then the Victoria Secret web site is porn.
Such people should pick up a book on the philosophy of art. The "intentional fallacy" has been perhaps the most discussed concept in the field for decades. Nobody can be held responsible for the reaction something provokes in someone else and to think the link can be proved demonstrates some "interesting" faith in metaphysics.
Competition is inherently good. Just wake me up when they succeed.
It's all in the street cred. Linux, I use nvidia. When I ran OS/2 it was Matrox. As long as ATI realizes PR is cheap but it's places like/. where results are broadcast.
It reminds me of Chaoseum from some years back. They went really wild with Lovecraftian Miskatonic University memorabilia: mugs, alumni association mugs, T-shirts, polo shirts, various car window stickers not just with the university name but also "school parking lot permits", complete "school kits" with miscellaneous extra items like a school notepad and place mat from the neighboring pizza place -- and degrees. Only an idiot would think their various degrees in Medieval Metaphysics (in Latin) were real, but the way I heard it, Chaoseum was told to tone it down if they didn't want to be charged with running a diploma mill.
[On the other hand, I did have an Oracle instructor looking at my polo shirt lean over and ask, "Does your university _really_ have a department of astrology?"]
Funny and very likely insightful. I bet she can prove that. Should have upped her damages claim.
Many years ago I went to an evangelical Lutheran teachers college for two years. Among their many amusing mores: no smoking for women, no drinking anytime, anywhere no matter how old you were, students of the opposite sex could be in your room every other Sunday from 1 p.m.-4 p.m. with your door open, all overnights were signed out, the RA would unlock your door around midnight to see that you were there Friday and Saturday nights, no dancing during lent and everything, library included, closed every morning M-F for chapel. AND 7 AM classes. But Freshman hazing was OK.
The other two years were at a state college where pretty much anything the dorm floor tribe approved of was OK as long as non-consentual personal injury didn't result. The atmosphere was SO much more normal and SELF-controlled. Believe me, I would MUCH rather trust a child's mental growth to one of them than the evangelicals.
Again, don't give them ideas. In Minneapolis, the main library is now closed an extra day of the week as of last month. They were going to close about 5 branches but I think they are only closing a couple. At least one city councilman is on record saying a city doesn't need a library.
If Homeland Security is listening, you should investigate a document called the Necronomicon which details how unspeakable horrors threatening the very existence of mankind itself can leap out from the seeming nothingness of silent sylvan spaces through the mechination of acts which only the insane themselves would dare to effectuate.
Hey, it's cheaper than actually x-raying shipping containers at our ports, right?
1. The USA is the world's most progressive nation, in the sense that it is the first and best democracy,
From what I remember about rankings last time I looked at various world surveys:
one of the most disliked nations on the planet about 130th in citizen happiness 53rd in literacy 45th in press freedom lower 30s in math and science literacy high teens in longevity About seventh in social mobility Gross Domestic Product: http://www.econbrowser.com/archives/2007/01/the_di stributio.html
The South African constitution explicitly protects gays and they are one of several countries with gay marriage one of the greatest income disparities in the world one of a couple of the 35 industrialized nations that still executes citizens one of a couple of the top 7 industrialized nations without national health care highest per capita imprisonment in the world
Are most new democracies choosing a republican government or a parliamentarian government? And why?
And Switzerland might have a word to say about the "world's first democracy".
Sociology and Political Science grad here. Just saying.
Another non-American in denial apparently. Yes, we _are_ the de facto World Police. That's the thuggish reality of globalization: Europe provides the finance, Asia makes the stuff, the U.S. polices the operations -- Noam Chomsky in lecture I attended circa '96. If you don't like it, talk to _your_ government about why they let the U.S. act that way.
It's no sense talking to Americans. It's half true that we have a rogue government running, if not elected, without controls. Congress passes a law and instead of executing it like the Executive Branch should, Bush adds a signing statement about what the law means to him and what he'll do with it. It's also half true that enough Americans couldn't care less that they aren't going to come together to take any actions against it. What's not to like about Empire? Today. As long as we're putting the oil wars on the credit card, the media conveniently censors the horrors of war so we can maintain a clear conscience, Bush is telling us it is our patriotic duty to go to the shopping mall and nobody's getting drafted because the people who are supposed to be our National Guardsmen are pulling their third tour in Iraq it's great. We're pissing money for war instead of something like national health care but we've never had that so we don't miss it. Of course, the 800 lb gorilla is that the bills will come up for collection on these actions in many ways in the lifetime of most of us.
And, no, we don't fancy an international court. We have our own law circa 1998 making actions like torture capital crimes. See how well that worked too?
From Hitler to Pinochet and beyond, history shows there are certain steps that any would-be dictator must take to destroy constitutional freedoms. And, argues Naomi Wolf, George Bush and his administration seem to be taking them all
Hope is very pleasant and all but once a nation starts down a road it can be hard to reverse course. Things can get _much_ worse. Empire is incompatible with democracy.
"France will always come to the aid of the U.S. when it seeks it from us." Why he's called America's New Poodle.
Something to think about though. You have a country with a female Minister of Defense and an active Communist Party and they won't elect a female? So Hillary's chances rank somewhere below slim and none?
It's a basic Chomskyism: "The freer the society the more well-honed and sophisticated its system of thought control and indoctrination." (Introducing Chomsky, '96, p. 139).
It was interesting to see how apartheid South Africa, with a foot each in the first and third worlds, only got wise to the power of "positive" internal propaganda in the final few years. As a thuggish police state dissidents would just "slip in the prison shower" or clumsily trip out that 5th floor window. But in the final years they ran billboards and the like that implied successful blacks drank this and drove that and by implication said it was your own fault if you weren't a successful black. Brand/lifestyle conformity. The U.S. on the other hand? Home of Madison Avenue. Americans don't stand a chance to be anything but clones who vicariously feel free in TV automobile commercials.
Monopoly, and effective monopoly, issues aside, which corporations _are_ the good guys?
I had a fantastic experience with IBM as a home OS/2 user. I was only a support subscriber for one year but when OS/2 was discontinued, about a year after I let my support lapse, they sent me a multi-CD set of cumulative updates gratis. Tell me the last time Microsoft discontinued an OS and they sent you a cumulative updates CD set as part of their customer satisfaction program.
Now go to the/. home page and scroll down to IBM lays off 100-150,000 U.S. employees. So which are the good corporations and how will I know they will still be "good" in 10 years?
Years ago I used to skim the U.S. Federal Register and our State Register of legislative activity as part of my job. The proposed stuff that didn't get out of committee would send chills through your veins. Considering what actually gets passed these days the stuff in the muck pile of Committee must be amazing.
This is the interesting moral example because it calls into question the ideal that everyone should pay for everything by noting the pragmatic reality that not everyone can afford everything. In effect, the producer won't miss the income he wouldn't have received anyway. The counterargument is that such distribution erodes the socially-agreed ideal of capitalist scarcity.
But are media even scarce products? We are awash in literally a century of stockpiled global media. If every gallon of gasoline ever pumped over the last century magically reappeared in the storage tanks to be pumped again, what would be the cost of gasoline? What challenges do digital media place upon the capitalist concept of "value"? That's the real issue. And whether treating digital product like corporeal product is a bubble that has to burst eventually. Perhaps we should all be charged $15.99/month like basic phone service for the _commodity_ of media.
As I like to say, "I'm old enough to remember when PC Magazine said Quattro Pro was spreadsheet of the year and WordPerfect was word processing program of the year." You _really_ think it's been Microsoft's excellence this last decade and a half?
BUT the glass is starting to fill. The GIMP, OpenOffice.org and PostgreSQL are larger projects I particularly think have gotten it together with comprehensive user manuals and support sites. Others like FlightGear, which can be some versions behind, or MySQL, which I think is a little "chatty" for tech writing, get points for trying to be thorough.
Probably the biggest problem I see in open source documentation is what I call the "Worked? GOOD! Worked? GOOD!" syndrome. They only go through the steps of an installation or configuration as it works perfectly and seldom have a troubleshooting tree of hints for problem steps. Better hope you have a perfect vanilla installation/configuration or it is off to Google/usenet/blog hell.
I am of two minds on this. I'd like to enjoy a longer lifespan than I would otherwise expect and I would want my loved ones (and everyone in the world for that matter) to have it too.
Skip the latter thought. That's why there are vampire novels.
Actually, I'm deadly serious. The reason Frankenstein made it into the diversity of the English literature canon is because it mythologized doubt about the rise of science at the end of the 19th century, right? I suggest it is possible the future canon may teach Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire. Those who can suck enough liquid money unto themselves can already extend their lives decades beyond the poor of the world. We may be on the cusp of a time where the rich will need a morality rationalizing an abnormal lifespan only they can afford to maintain.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, "virtual porn" is the road to madness.
There is a precedent in porn midgets in school girl uniforms. On a similar note, an exasperated judge in our metro a couple years ago dismissed a case and read the prosecution the riot act, "No, he does _not_ have to prove that the girls in his porn _were_ adults. YOU have to prove they were _not_."
I trace "thought crime porn" to the late Andrea Dworkin -- of the fat and ugly lesbian manhating branch of feminism. One of our metro cities called her in some years ago to try to pass a law stating that if a person reacts to it as porn, it's porn. In other words, if somebody said he was provoked to become a rapist by the uncontrollable lust the Victoria Secret web site generated in him, then the Victoria Secret web site is porn.
Such people should pick up a book on the philosophy of art. The "intentional fallacy" has been perhaps the most discussed concept in the field for decades. Nobody can be held responsible for the reaction something provokes in someone else and to think the link can be proved demonstrates some "interesting" faith in metaphysics.
Competition is inherently good. Just wake me up when they succeed.
/. where results are broadcast.
It's all in the street cred. Linux, I use nvidia. When I ran OS/2 it was Matrox. As long as ATI realizes PR is cheap but it's places like
They're trying to lock out the rest of the world and to charge for features that PC gamers have had for free for ages.
Wow, who could have seen that coming?
One got a grad degree to become a counselor. The other two are massage therapists with greater and lesser degrees of new-agedness.
I guess the link is that they are tired of machines and figure dealing with people will be easier.
And they want to charge by the hour.
I mean, wow, people will be able to use up their 5 gig/month quota in no time.
It all dates back to Ronald Reagan and the push to "run universities like businesses". That's when the privatization of university results went wild.
By now, there should be a whole generation who has never thought of universities as anything else.
I'm guessing, "probably". Bureaucracy doesn't handle irony well.
It reminds me of Chaoseum from some years back. They went really wild with Lovecraftian Miskatonic University memorabilia: mugs, alumni association mugs, T-shirts, polo shirts, various car window stickers not just with the university name but also "school parking lot permits", complete "school kits" with miscellaneous extra items like a school notepad and place mat from the neighboring pizza place -- and degrees. Only an idiot would think their various degrees in Medieval Metaphysics (in Latin) were real, but the way I heard it, Chaoseum was told to tone it down if they didn't want to be charged with running a diploma mill.
[On the other hand, I did have an Oracle instructor looking at my polo shirt lean over and ask, "Does your university _really_ have a department of astrology?"]
And if it DOESN'T make a difference in overall box office, THEN what will be their excuse?
Funny and very likely insightful. I bet she can prove that. Should have upped her damages claim.
Many years ago I went to an evangelical Lutheran teachers college for two years. Among their many amusing mores: no smoking for women, no drinking anytime, anywhere no matter how old you were, students of the opposite sex could be in your room every other Sunday from 1 p.m.-4 p.m. with your door open, all overnights were signed out, the RA would unlock your door around midnight to see that you were there Friday and Saturday nights, no dancing during lent and everything, library included, closed every morning M-F for chapel. AND 7 AM classes. But Freshman hazing was OK.
The other two years were at a state college where pretty much anything the dorm floor tribe approved of was OK as long as non-consentual personal injury didn't result. The atmosphere was SO much more normal and SELF-controlled. Believe me, I would MUCH rather trust a child's mental growth to one of them than the evangelicals.
Again, don't give them ideas. In Minneapolis, the main library is now closed an extra day of the week as of last month. They were going to close about 5 branches but I think they are only closing a couple. At least one city councilman is on record saying a city doesn't need a library.
First those Republicans required those Parental Advisory [wikipedia.org] stickers on CDs
If you are going to link to wikipedia, at least get it right:
"Tipper stickers" implies Tipper GORE. You know, the DEMOCRATIC vice-president the people voted for for president in 2000?
Is hard to tell the difference some times though, isn't it?
And to those who care, he is a Democrat.
Doesn't surprise me:
Think oil/war, think Republican.
Think Hollywood/LA, think Democrat.
I called Saint Wellstone on voting for the DMCA. Said it was the right thing to do and he'd do it again.
Ah, now it's starting to get interesting.
If Homeland Security is listening, you should investigate a document called the Necronomicon which details how unspeakable horrors threatening the very existence of mankind itself can leap out from the seeming nothingness of silent sylvan spaces through the mechination of acts which only the insane themselves would dare to effectuate.
Hey, it's cheaper than actually x-raying shipping containers at our ports, right?
1. The USA is the world's most progressive nation, in the sense that it is the first and best democracy,
i stributio.html
From what I remember about rankings last time I looked at various world surveys:
one of the most disliked nations on the planet
about 130th in citizen happiness
53rd in literacy
45th in press freedom
lower 30s in math and science literacy
high teens in longevity
About seventh in social mobility
Gross Domestic Product: http://www.econbrowser.com/archives/2007/01/the_d
The South African constitution explicitly protects gays and they are one of several countries with gay marriage
one of the greatest income disparities in the world
one of a couple of the 35 industrialized nations that still executes citizens
one of a couple of the top 7 industrialized nations without national health care
highest per capita imprisonment in the world
Are most new democracies choosing a republican government or a parliamentarian government? And why?
And Switzerland might have a word to say about the "world's first democracy".
Sociology and Political Science grad here. Just saying.
Another non-American in denial apparently. Yes, we _are_ the de facto World Police. That's the thuggish reality of globalization: Europe provides the finance, Asia makes the stuff, the U.S. polices the operations -- Noam Chomsky in lecture I attended circa '96. If you don't like it, talk to _your_ government about why they let the U.S. act that way.
It's no sense talking to Americans. It's half true that we have a rogue government running, if not elected, without controls. Congress passes a law and instead of executing it like the Executive Branch should, Bush adds a signing statement about what the law means to him and what he'll do with it. It's also half true that enough Americans couldn't care less that they aren't going to come together to take any actions against it. What's not to like about Empire? Today. As long as we're putting the oil wars on the credit card, the media conveniently censors the horrors of war so we can maintain a clear conscience, Bush is telling us it is our patriotic duty to go to the shopping mall and nobody's getting drafted because the people who are supposed to be our National Guardsmen are pulling their third tour in Iraq it's great. We're pissing money for war instead of something like national health care but we've never had that so we don't miss it. Of course, the 800 lb gorilla is that the bills will come up for collection on these actions in many ways in the lifetime of most of us.
And, no, we don't fancy an international court. We have our own law circa 1998 making actions like torture capital crimes. See how well that worked too?
Truth hurts.
. html
Fascist America, in 10 easy steps
From Hitler to Pinochet and beyond, history shows there are certain steps that any would-be dictator must take to destroy constitutional freedoms. And, argues Naomi Wolf, George Bush and his administration seem to be taking them all
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2064157,00
Hope is very pleasant and all but once a nation starts down a road it can be hard to reverse course. Things can get _much_ worse. Empire is incompatible with democracy.
"France will always come to the aid of the U.S. when it seeks it from us." Why he's called America's New Poodle.
Something to think about though. You have a country with a female Minister of Defense and an active Communist Party and they won't elect a female? So Hillary's chances rank somewhere below slim and none?
It's a basic Chomskyism: "The freer the society the more well-honed and sophisticated its system of thought control and indoctrination." (Introducing Chomsky, '96, p. 139).
It was interesting to see how apartheid South Africa, with a foot each in the first and third worlds, only got wise to the power of "positive" internal propaganda in the final few years. As a thuggish police state dissidents would just "slip in the prison shower" or clumsily trip out that 5th floor window. But in the final years they ran billboards and the like that implied successful blacks drank this and drove that and by implication said it was your own fault if you weren't a successful black. Brand/lifestyle conformity. The U.S. on the other hand? Home of Madison Avenue. Americans don't stand a chance to be anything but clones who vicariously feel free in TV automobile commercials.
Monopoly, and effective monopoly, issues aside, which corporations _are_ the good guys?
/. home page and scroll down to IBM lays off 100-150,000 U.S. employees. So which are the good corporations and how will I know they will still be "good" in 10 years?
I had a fantastic experience with IBM as a home OS/2 user. I was only a support subscriber for one year but when OS/2 was discontinued, about a year after I let my support lapse, they sent me a multi-CD set of cumulative updates gratis. Tell me the last time Microsoft discontinued an OS and they sent you a cumulative updates CD set as part of their customer satisfaction program.
Now go to the
You say that like it's a bad thing.
Years ago I used to skim the U.S. Federal Register and our State Register of legislative activity as part of my job. The proposed stuff that didn't get out of committee would send chills through your veins. Considering what actually gets passed these days the stuff in the muck pile of Committee must be amazing.
This is the interesting moral example because it calls into question the ideal that everyone should pay for everything by noting the pragmatic reality that not everyone can afford everything. In effect, the producer won't miss the income he wouldn't have received anyway. The counterargument is that such distribution erodes the socially-agreed ideal of capitalist scarcity.
But are media even scarce products? We are awash in literally a century of stockpiled global media. If every gallon of gasoline ever pumped over the last century magically reappeared in the storage tanks to be pumped again, what would be the cost of gasoline? What challenges do digital media place upon the capitalist concept of "value"? That's the real issue. And whether treating digital product like corporeal product is a bubble that has to burst eventually. Perhaps we should all be charged $15.99/month like basic phone service for the _commodity_ of media.
As I like to say, "I'm old enough to remember when PC Magazine said Quattro Pro was spreadsheet of the year and WordPerfect was word processing program of the year." You _really_ think it's been Microsoft's excellence this last decade and a half?
BUT the glass is starting to fill. The GIMP, OpenOffice.org and PostgreSQL are larger projects I particularly think have gotten it together with comprehensive user manuals and support sites. Others like FlightGear, which can be some versions behind, or MySQL, which I think is a little "chatty" for tech writing, get points for trying to be thorough.
Probably the biggest problem I see in open source documentation is what I call the "Worked? GOOD! Worked? GOOD!" syndrome. They only go through the steps of an installation or configuration as it works perfectly and seldom have a troubleshooting tree of hints for problem steps. Better hope you have a perfect vanilla installation/configuration or it is off to Google/usenet/blog hell.
Nothing I want more than putting my metal cup down on a frayed kink on the basement table with my bare feet. Wearing a pacemaker?
I am of two minds on this. I'd like to enjoy a longer lifespan than I would otherwise expect and I would want my loved ones (and everyone in the world for that matter) to have it too.
Skip the latter thought. That's why there are vampire novels.
Actually, I'm deadly serious. The reason Frankenstein made it into the diversity of the English literature canon is because it mythologized doubt about the rise of science at the end of the 19th century, right? I suggest it is possible the future canon may teach Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire. Those who can suck enough liquid money unto themselves can already extend their lives decades beyond the poor of the world. We may be on the cusp of a time where the rich will need a morality rationalizing an abnormal lifespan only they can afford to maintain.