You shouldn't be able to sit in the park reading the latest x-rated comic labeled, 'Commander Taco and the Three BSD Daemonettes'. The park's public property. Others might not wish to see Commander Taco getting it on with BSD chix0rz.
Then don't look over my shoulder. Duh.
The furthest you could go with that argument is to mandate "plain brown wrappers" on covers of "adult" material.
But then, others might not want to see the cover of your copy of "Great Works of Art: Depictions of the Cruxifiction"...so who gets to draw the line over who gets to display and who goes to jail?
If you don't like it: don't look. Any law that goes further than that, is a true obscenity.
Remeber when the war was going on?(some say it still is but that is debatable)
What's debatable? American soldiers are still getting killed. Iraq still isn't "liberated", and the Bush regime keeps increasing their estimates of how long that will take. (Oh, and Saddam is still around. And we still haven't found those pesky "weapons of mass destruction" that are the Bush regime's excuse for its illegal war.) How is this "over"?
Like CNN showinf dead Iraqi children but never showing someone dying from 9/11.
Since IRAQ HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH 9/11, and since 9/11 is not news, there's no reason for anyone to be showing footage of 9/11
victims. Unless, of course, they're engaing in pure propaganda.
But I would rather be ignorant than uninformed like you.
Priceless! You are obviously squarely in the middle of the Fox News target demographic: ignorant and uninformed.
Well, the millions of liberals making accusations of the president being a Nazi and stealing oil haven't been carted off to jail yet, so I still have faith in free speech being respected.
'Cuse me while I find my clue-by-four...ah, here we go.
WHAP! WHAP! WHAP!
THE VERY FSKING CASE WE'RE TALKING ABOUT INVOLVES A "LIBERAL" BEING CARTED OFF TO JAIL FOR ENGAGING IN ACTS OF SPEECH.
how about I make a website advocating the violent overthrow of you? I'll call for your blood on the website and oh, by the way, I'll link to Mapquest instructions to your house.
As the ruling in "The Nuremberg Files" case (no relation to the actual Nuremberg trials, see the article linked above) states, "Political speech may not be punished just because it makes it more likely that someone will be harmed at some unknown time in the future".
If someone has a gun to my head and you yell "Shoot him! Shoot him now!", that might be be protected speech. But there's plenty of precedent that you can say "Someone ought to blow that guy's head off. Someone should go over to 2119 Arlonne Drive and put a bullet in that longhaired freak's skull," and fall well within First Amendment protection.
I think there's a difference between "criticizing the system" and advocating the violent overthrow of the government and providing instructions on how to create weapons that will help you accomplish that goal.
I don't recall anything in the First Amendment about "except for information about how to make weapons." (In fact, I think I even recall something a little later on in the Bill of Rights about a right to keep and bear arms, and no "except for weapons you make yourself".)
Do you honestly think this guy was locked up for merely saying "I disagree with this administration?"
Do you honestly think he couldn't be? You apparently haven't been paying attention.
As Austin puts it on the site:
Distribution of information related to explosives is not illegal.. What's illegal is the INTENT part. They have to prove you have intent to use the information to cause further crime of violence.. and how do they prove intent? I think Bush made it clear when he said "you're either with me or against me".
I'd like to think that if I were in his shoes, I wouldn't take the plea, but fight. But then, I've yet to be dragged off in shackles for anything I've said.
But remember, kids: when the stormtroopers come for you, aim for the head.
I don't know, what would happen if evert tech worker in the world stopped working for a week?
There might be some financial problems for some companies, but by and large the world would get by with little difficulty.
For comparison, if every garbage collector went on strike, cities would rapidly become unlivable. Or if every plumber walked out...imagine any large city if indoor plumbing stopped working. (You owe today's longer lifespans to plumbers and garbagemen much more than to doctors.)
Tech workers? While it would be annoying, the world can still go back to paper. We're expendable.
Imagine having to find powder ingredentes, mix and test the powder, find spent casings, form the bullet, pack the casing, and finally, insert the bullet. That, to me, would be too much work for a criminal to go out and "gang bang".
Imagine having to find heroin ingredients, mix and test the powder, find syringes, and finally shoot it into your vein. That, to me, would be too much trouble to get high - yet 1 in 11 adults in Baltimore city is a heroin addict. Anyone who wants it can get it.
If you can't keep crack and heroin away from people, what makes you think you can keep ammunition off the black market?
I'm sorry, but a doped up druggie running over a pedestrian with a car does not equate to me copying an mp3 to listen to off of a p2p service.
Do you honestly not understand the difference between making a personl choice to put some chemical (caffeine, alcohol, THC, psilocybin, sucrose, whatever) into your body, and operating dangerous machinery while under the influence of said chemical?
Guess that Drug War propaganda has been pretty effective on you.
Look for the Copy War propaganda to start soon - it will tell you that yes, the artist will be dead because of you're copying, you're preventing them from making a living and so all these musicians are going to starve in the alleyways until they freeze to death some cold winter night.
It's bullshit of course - but so is your image of hordes of chemically-demented druggies running down pedestrians, and they managed to get that into your brain.
(Brought to you by the government that brought you the smashingly successfuly War on Drugs, which after 32 years of increasing the drug abuse problem and smashing civil liberties, we're sure to win any day now.)
Mandatory minimum sentances for copiers. The death penalty for copying "kingpins". Criminaliztion of CD burners as "copying paraphernalia". Zero tolerance laws, where kids who write down pop song lyrics in on their schoolbook covers will get busted.
Oh yes, and more smashing of civil liberties. And more people in jail (in the nation that already has the highest incarceration rate in the world), and more money for the prison-industrial complex.
Coming soon to a nation near you. But you know, Copying is public enemy number one...
If the Green party wants to transform the state of presidential elections in the US to a greater than two party system, they need to accept that unless a splinter party splits off the Republican side that is equal in size to their own,
I think they're called the "Libertarian Party".
And stop blaming Nader for Gore's failings. Gore should have tromped that idiot into the dust; instead he kept saying "I agree with Bush", and won the election by such a narrow margin that the Bush junta was able to pull off its coup.
I'd honestly like to see a real cite (not a rant site)...
I don't see how the writings of a former Army Lieutenant Colonel and West Point instructor, on the subject of military history, quite qualifies as a "rant site". You may disagree; he may or may not be correct (I'm a hacker, not a military historian); but he's hardly "ranting".
I've seen several variations of this quote citing different wars and different percentages
Perhaps because there were different percentages in different wars?
Here's an extended quote with some names of references (I did some quick Googling and added links):
In more modern times, the average firing rate was incredibly low in Civil War battles. Paddy Griffith demonstrates that the killing potential of the average Civil War regiment was anywhere from five hundred to a thousand men per minute. The actual killing rate was only one or two men per minute per regiment (
The Battle Tactics of the American Civil War). At the Battle of Gettysburg, of the 27,000 muskets picked up from the dead and dying after the battle, 90 percent were loaded. This is an anomaly, because it took 95 percent of their time to load muskets and only 5 percent to fire. But even more amazing, of the thousands of loaded muskets, over half had multiple loads in the barrel--one with 23 loads in the barrel. In reality, the average man would load his musket and bring it to his shoulder, but he could not bring himself to kill. He would be brave, he would stand shoulder to shoulder, he would do what he was trained to do; but at the moment of truth, he could not bring himself to pull the trigger. So, he lowered the weapon and loaded it again. Of those who did fire, only a tiny percentage fired to hit. The vast majority fired over the enemy's head.
During World War II, US Army Brig. Gen. S. L. A. Marshall had a team of researchers study what soldiers did in battle. For the first time in history, they asked individual soldiers what they did in battle. They discovered that only 15 to 20 percent of the individual riflemen could bring themselves to fire at an exposed enemy soldier.
the blood flying across the screen had an almost comical effect, with more blood than would possibly come from one living thing. Quake was always amusing, not serious.
Do you realize that post is a very strong data point in favor of the hypothesis that violent video games desensitize people to violence?
Anyone who find depictions of gore, even unrealistic ones, not to be at least a little creepy, has definitely been subject to some heavy psychological conditioning.
(Of course, something can be funny and creepy at the same time. Penn and Teller make me both laugh and shudder...)
And, they'd probably be a helluva lot more dangerous, since they'd actually know how to wield these implements, rather than going through video game experiences.
Video game experiences can actually be wonderful teachers.
The kid who did the shooting in Paducah, Kentucky, had never fired a pistol before. After a few practice shots, he fired eight times, made eight hits to the head and upper torso. Phenomenal marksmanship. Which is not to say that games "made him do it" - only that games may have helped him get skills to to do it.
I myself had never fired a gun, or even handled one, before taking an NRA "Personal Protection" class. At the range, the instructor who was working with me said "Ok, I can see you're familiar with firearms, we'll move on..."
I wouldn't say I was the best in the class, but I was in the top 20%, doing as well as people with significant firearms experience. I can only credit many, many hours of "Mad Dog McCree."
I'd suggest that removing freedom from the majority only to stop a *very* small minority from doing what they may like have done anyway (sure, I'll admit the evidence is out) is a REALLY stupid idea.
Don't be so quick on the trigger. The post to which you're replying made no suggestion of removing freedom.
Exposing immature or incompetent people to portrayals of violence is not a good idea. Exposing older kids to portrayals of violence without placing them in a proper context is not a good idea. But that bit of gatekeeping is the job or parents, teachers, and other caretakers, not of state censors.
Interesting reading from Lt. Col Dave Grossman, a West Point psychology and Military Science professor. (I disagree with his proposed solutions, which involve legislation and litigation, but his data on the problem is pretty solid):
Due to incredible advances in trauma medicine, murder rates are a bad indicator of violence - an act of violence that killed someone 30 years ago may be highly survivable today. Better is the aggravated assault rate - which, in the U.S., which, per capita, increased seven times between 1957 and 1997, and has gone up similarly all over the world in the past few decades.
So will Quake turn you into a monster? By itself, no. If there are other factors pushing you towards violence, it can be a strong influence. And it is conditioning you towards an acceptance of violence; be aware of that, be mindful of what's going on in your brain (always good advice) and be sure to balance it out with counter-influences.
This doesn't apply to material that requires a license. If you have the material, and you don't have a license, you have broken the fucking law.
The bogus concept of software EULAs has confused you.
Copyright has nothing to do with a "licence" to own or use a copy of a work. Copyright involves a licence to copy a work - a right to copy, thus the name.
When there's no copying involved, there is no copyright issue. There's no copying and no licence involved when you purchase a CD from your local record store. (Software EULAs are based on the ridiculous notion that loading a program into memory is "copying". I don't think this has ever been upheld.)
While slavery was an issue it was never the core issue - states' rights were the issue.
Oh, horseshit.
State's rights were more violated by the pro-slavery camp than by abolitionists. Ever hear of the Fugitive Slave Act? The Dred Scott decision?
Did you know that William Lloyd Garrison and other abolitionists called for New England states to secede - "No Union With Slaveholders!"?
The issue of states right had little to do with the war. Confederate apologists (and later, segregationist apologists) using it as a defense has done more damage to the concept than anything else.
When you took an oath on the constitution, you also acknowledge that it provides for the US Supreme Court to interpret it
The Constitution makes no such provision. The Court took the power of deciding what is and is not "Constitutional" onto itself. Marbury v. Madison.
The Supreme Court does not determine what is Constitutional, the document does. If the Supremes okayed a law that made Fundamentalist Zoroastrianism the state religion, it would still be a First Amendment violation.
2 weeks ago they declared a state law on sodomy unconstitutional. This too is an ecroachment on states rights.
Protecting the rights of the people against the laws of the states is a legitimate exercise of federal power. That's the point of the 14th Amendment:
"No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
...the elastic clause. This clause gives the feds the power to do things that are prudent and right for them to do.
Not at all. That's one of the biggest misconceptions about the Constitution.
The clause in question reads:
To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper
for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.
The elastic clause does not grant the feds any powers, simply enables them to make laws to carry out the powers outlined elsewhere in the document.
You used to be able to get an adaptor, because the original keyboard connectors were huge round thinggies - Not the dainty little things they use today.
Both the XT and AT used a DIN-5 (the huge round thingies), but wired differently. I think somewhere I still have an 88-key model with a switch on the bottom for "XT" or "AT". The AT-style, you can stick an adaptor on to connect to a PS/2 socket (and then another adaptor to connect to a USB port, if you're so inclined).
This is being typed on an old "Suntouch" keyboard by SIIG - clicky, but not as clicky as the model M. Swtiches, no membranes. DIN-5 connector (with PS/2 adaptor). No Windows keys. Love it.
No, years of experience have shown me that one application that does my routine email, calendaring, note taking, tasks, public folders, and group discussion threads saves time.
Years of experience have shown me that having the right tool for the job may require an initial investment, but always pays off.
I don't try to maintain my house using my Swiss Army Knife, even though it's a single integrated tool that's easy to learn. I have a whole box (several boxes, actually), of tools - from different manufactuers, with different "interfaces".
imagine how much time it would take to get into the apps, learn different interfaces, reload apps when I get a new system,
Small apps that do one job and do it well load quickly and have simple interfaces.
Exploration and discovery...been absurdly lucrative over the course of history.
Spain went broke trying to exploit the Americas, and England did well only be introducing a new addictive drug, and a new fashion craze (the hairy skins of beavers) to Europe. Exploration isn't all that lucrative - exploitation is what brings the money.
No natives to exploit on Mars, probably no drugs either. Probably some good mineral stuff on the moon and asteroids, but we're far far away from being technologically able to exploit them in any sort of efficent manner.
Slashdot Mirror
Then don't look over my shoulder. Duh.
The furthest you could go with that argument is to mandate "plain brown wrappers" on covers of "adult" material.
But then, others might not want to see the cover of your copy of "Great Works of Art: Depictions of the Cruxifiction"...so who gets to draw the line over who gets to display and who goes to jail?
If you don't like it: don't look. Any law that goes further than that, is a true obscenity.
What's debatable? American soldiers are still getting killed. Iraq still isn't "liberated", and the Bush regime keeps increasing their estimates of how long that will take. (Oh, and Saddam is still around. And we still haven't found those pesky "weapons of mass destruction" that are the Bush regime's excuse for its illegal war.) How is this "over"?
Since IRAQ HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH 9/11 , and since 9/11 is not news, there's no reason for anyone to be showing footage of 9/11 victims. Unless, of course, they're engaing in pure propaganda.
Priceless! You are obviously squarely in the middle of the Fox News target demographic: ignorant and uninformed.
(Free clue: ignorant. See defintion 2.)
Anyway, regarding this case: like the raisethefist.com case discussed yesterday, the plea bargain deal makes any admission questionable.
'Cuse me while I find my clue-by-four...ah, here we go.
WHAP! WHAP! WHAP!
THE VERY FSKING CASE WE'RE TALKING ABOUT INVOLVES A "LIBERAL" BEING CARTED OFF TO JAIL FOR ENGAGING IN ACTS OF SPEECH.
If anti-abortion zealots can do that to doctors, you can do that to me.As the ruling in "The Nuremberg Files" case (no relation to the actual Nuremberg trials, see the article linked above) states, "Political speech may not be punished just because it makes it more likely that someone will be harmed at some unknown time in the future".
If someone has a gun to my head and you yell "Shoot him! Shoot him now!", that might be be protected speech. But there's plenty of precedent that you can say "Someone ought to blow that guy's head off. Someone should go over to 2119 Arlonne Drive and put a bullet in that longhaired freak's skull," and fall well within First Amendment protection.
I don't recall anything in the First Amendment about "except for information about how to make weapons." (In fact, I think I even recall something a little later on in the Bill of Rights about a right to keep and bear arms, and no "except for weapons you make yourself".)
Do you honestly think he couldn't be? You apparently haven't been paying attention.
As Austin puts it on the site:
I'd like to think that if I were in his shoes, I wouldn't take the plea, but fight. But then, I've yet to be dragged off in shackles for anything I've said.
But remember, kids: when the stormtroopers come for you, aim for the head.
There might be some financial problems for some companies, but by and large the world would get by with little difficulty.
For comparison, if every garbage collector went on strike, cities would rapidly become unlivable. Or if every plumber walked out...imagine any large city if indoor plumbing stopped working. (You owe today's longer lifespans to plumbers and garbagemen much more than to doctors.)
Tech workers? While it would be annoying, the world can still go back to paper. We're expendable.
It refers to "well regulated". It's not a phrase used now, but at the time of writing it meant effective, properly disciplined, ordered.
Imagine having to find heroin ingredients, mix and test the powder, find syringes, and finally shoot it into your vein. That, to me, would be too much trouble to get high - yet 1 in 11 adults in Baltimore city is a heroin addict. Anyone who wants it can get it.
If you can't keep crack and heroin away from people, what makes you think you can keep ammunition off the black market?
Guess that Drug War propaganda has been pretty effective on you.
Look for the Copy War propaganda to start soon - it will tell you that yes, the artist will be dead because of you're copying, you're preventing them from making a living and so all these musicians are going to starve in the alleyways until they freeze to death some cold winter night.
It's bullshit of course - but so is your image of hordes of chemically-demented druggies running down pedestrians, and they managed to get that into your brain.
Welcome to the War on Copying!
(Brought to you by the government that brought you the smashingly successfuly War on Drugs, which after 32 years of increasing the drug abuse problem and smashing civil liberties, we're sure to win any day now.)
Mandatory minimum sentances for copiers. The death penalty for copying "kingpins". Criminaliztion of CD burners as "copying paraphernalia". Zero tolerance laws, where kids who write down pop song lyrics in on their schoolbook covers will get busted.
Oh yes, and more smashing of civil liberties. And more people in jail (in the nation that already has the highest incarceration rate in the world), and more money for the prison-industrial complex.
Coming soon to a nation near you. But you know, Copying is public enemy number one...
I think they're called the "Libertarian Party".
And stop blaming Nader for Gore's failings. Gore should have tromped that idiot into the dust; instead he kept saying "I agree with Bush", and won the election by such a narrow margin that the Bush junta was able to pull off its coup.
I don't see how the writings of a former Army Lieutenant Colonel and West Point instructor, on the subject of military history, quite qualifies as a "rant site". You may disagree; he may or may not be correct (I'm a hacker, not a military historian); but he's hardly "ranting".
Perhaps because there were different percentages in different wars?
Here's an extended quote with some names of references (I did some quick Googling and added links):
Do you realize that post is a very strong data point in favor of the hypothesis that violent video games desensitize people to violence?
Anyone who find depictions of gore, even unrealistic ones, not to be at least a little creepy, has definitely been subject to some heavy psychological conditioning.
(Of course, something can be funny and creepy at the same time. Penn and Teller make me both laugh and shudder...)
Video game experiences can actually be wonderful teachers.
The kid who did the shooting in Paducah, Kentucky, had never fired a pistol before. After a few practice shots, he fired eight times, made eight hits to the head and upper torso. Phenomenal marksmanship. Which is not to say that games "made him do it" - only that games may have helped him get skills to to do it.
I myself had never fired a gun, or even handled one, before taking an NRA "Personal Protection" class. At the range, the instructor who was working with me said "Ok, I can see you're familiar with firearms, we'll move on..."
I wouldn't say I was the best in the class, but I was in the top 20%, doing as well as people with significant firearms experience. I can only credit many, many hours of "Mad Dog McCree."
Don't be so quick on the trigger. The post to which you're replying made no suggestion of removing freedom.
Exposing immature or incompetent people to portrayals of violence is not a good idea. Exposing older kids to portrayals of violence without placing them in a proper context is not a good idea. But that bit of gatekeeping is the job or parents, teachers, and other caretakers, not of state censors.
Interesting reading from Lt. Col Dave Grossman, a West Point psychology and Military Science professor. (I disagree with his proposed solutions, which involve legislation and litigation, but his data on the problem is pretty solid):
So will Quake turn you into a monster? By itself, no. If there are other factors pushing you towards violence, it can be a strong influence. And it is conditioning you towards an acceptance of violence; be aware of that, be mindful of what's going on in your brain (always good advice) and be sure to balance it out with counter-influences.
The bogus concept of software EULAs has confused you.
Copyright has nothing to do with a "licence" to own or use a copy of a work. Copyright involves a licence to copy a work - a right to copy, thus the name.
When there's no copying involved, there is no copyright issue. There's no copying and no licence involved when you purchase a CD from your local record store. (Software EULAs are based on the ridiculous notion that loading a program into memory is "copying". I don't think this has ever been upheld.)
Oh, horseshit.
State's rights were more violated by the pro-slavery camp than by abolitionists. Ever hear of the Fugitive Slave Act? The Dred Scott decision?
Did you know that William Lloyd Garrison and other abolitionists called for New England states to secede - "No Union With Slaveholders!"?
The issue of states right had little to do with the war. Confederate apologists (and later, segregationist apologists) using it as a defense has done more damage to the concept than anything else.
The Constitution makes no such provision. The Court took the power of deciding what is and is not "Constitutional" onto itself. Marbury v. Madison.
The Supreme Court does not determine what is Constitutional, the document does. If the Supremes okayed a law that made Fundamentalist Zoroastrianism the state religion, it would still be a First Amendment violation.
Protecting the rights of the people against the laws of the states is a legitimate exercise of federal power. That's the point of the 14th Amendment:
Not at all. That's one of the biggest misconceptions about the Constitution.
The clause in question reads:
The elastic clause does not grant the feds any powers, simply enables them to make laws to carry out the powers outlined elsewhere in the document.
Both the XT and AT used a DIN-5 (the huge round thingies), but wired differently. I think somewhere I still have an 88-key model with a switch on the bottom for "XT" or "AT". The AT-style, you can stick an adaptor on to connect to a PS/2 socket (and then another adaptor to connect to a USB port, if you're so inclined).
This is being typed on an old "Suntouch" keyboard by SIIG - clicky, but not as clicky as the model M. Swtiches, no membranes. DIN-5 connector (with PS/2 adaptor). No Windows keys. Love it.
Another vote for that! UPS managed to damage three packages I sent or received in the course of one year.
I've never had a problem with FedEx or with USPS Priority Mail.
Years of experience have shown me that having the right tool for the job may require an initial investment, but always pays off.
I don't try to maintain my house using my Swiss Army Knife, even though it's a single integrated tool that's easy to learn. I have a whole box (several boxes, actually), of tools - from different manufactuers, with different "interfaces".
Small apps that do one job and do it well load quickly and have simple interfaces.
You have been misled into believing that one desktop application should do all these things.
I don't expect, or want, my microwave to do stir-frys or chop vegetables. Different jobs, different tools. Same with software.
In which case, you should be using open standards, not MS's proprietary crap.
Exchange replacement? It's called SMTP, POP3, IMAP. E-mail software should do e-mail, not be some bloated "groupware solution".
No. Copyright is a narrowly defined legal term. Trademark is a narrowly defined legal term. Patent is a narrowly defined legal term.
These are the words we should be using.
Spain went broke trying to exploit the Americas, and England did well only be introducing a new addictive drug, and a new fashion craze (the hairy skins of beavers) to Europe. Exploration isn't all that lucrative - exploitation is what brings the money.
No natives to exploit on Mars, probably no drugs either. Probably some good mineral stuff on the moon and asteroids, but we're far far away from being technologically able to exploit them in any sort of efficent manner.