This defence is intended to reassure people such as police officers, staff of the Internet Watch Foundation, and staff in ISPs and systems management who have a role in identifying and securing such data for evidential and investigative purposes, that they can do so without fear of prosecution.
Who cares what it is intended to do? What matters is the exact wording of the law. It's enforcement is always open to interpretation.
So basically the exemption for viewing images of "children" under 18 is allowed only for law enforcement officers specifically assigned to such cases. Anyone else is breaking the law and risking prison time by trying to catch criminals (any unauthorized person viewing such images).
The part about ISP employees is certainly interesting since almost anyone can start an "ISP". Would a one person dialup ISP be allowed to view all the kiddie porn they want?
The people making these anonymous tips to the IWF are most certainly breaking the law and should be punished to the maximum extent if caught. If the very act of looking at certain images is illegal, then it should be illegal for everyone. That is only fair. There shouldn't be a certain privileged minority that is allowed to view it just because they assure everyone that they get no enjoyment from it, and are in fact disgusted by it.
No of course not. "Children" hate porn of any kind. And if they did download porn, surely they would find porn with girls their own age to be downright repulsive.
This whole topic makes me yawn. I've never heard of even one convincing report of a child porn web site. This is not too surprising since "discovering" the site would in itself be both illegal and very stupid.
This will just end up blocking porn web sites portraying 40 year olds in pig tails, which of course is not a bad thing. But the whole thing is a moronic waste of time and effort on the part of BT.
The PC is suited to different kinds of games than a console, most notably RTSes and FPSes.
And don't forget serious non-Japanese RPGs. Good luck trying to play a game like Planescape: Torment or even Baldur's Gate 2 on a console. Any sufficiently complex game would have difficulty on current consoles.
Of course this could change if consoles become sufficiently complex. The problem is that console makers tend to target the kiddies and the console software developers follow along. Except for graphics, console games don't seem to have changed much since the Atari 2600.
But who is forcing you to play at the newest games at a high resolution? Many games will even allow you to play them at 320x200 which should give you a nice console feel.
I don't see how this upgrade argument has anything to do with consoles. The only difference is that with a console you don't have to feel like you are missing out by not upgrading because high resolution graphics are just not possible.
It would be the same on a PC if you connected it to your TV. Not much point in upgrading to the newest 6800 Ultra SLI configuration when you can barely make 640x480 resolution even on an HDTV.
I'm glad your link emphasizes that there is basically no evidence for such a theory. It doesn't sound very plausible to me. You could make a similar argument for ugly, handicapped, or deformed human beings. Obviously we all prefer to interect with creatures that represent some kind of particular ideal often physically represented by models. Why this should have any particular relevance to robotics is beyond me.
I think it's just an excuse for certain researchers to not even bother trying to achieve the difficult task of realistically modeling a human. Why bother to try when the goal itself is misguided or just impossible.
To a silent pc purist, water pumps are BAD. I am more interested in a geo-thermal (ground-based) system, or truly passive, convective water cooling, or maybe some kind of passive water cooling that plugs directly into cold water pipes so that it works as a kind of pre-heater so that the water heater in the house doesn't need to do as much work.
This is a cool idea though, if you can manage do find or build a quiet enough pump.
I beleive it is possible to find some other chemical agent which will have higher heat capacity
That would be a neat trick. I've never heard of anything that would qualify. Can you also find me something that is less dense as a solid than as a liquid? H20 is actually pretty cool.
A cure for cancer doesn't mean that cancer goes away, just that people don't die from it.
I think most people would usually refer to that as a "treatment" not a cure.
A cure would clearly be financial suicide. It wouldn't put them out of business though. There are plenty of other diseases to be treated. It would just be stupid and irresponsible to shareholders to work on developing one.
A cure tends to be harder to find than just a treatment. Of course in some cases, the opposite may be true but the pharmaceutical companies would never know it. An expensive treatment to keep you alive (until you stop the taking the meds) is always more profitable.
This is not some kind of secret conspiracy. The drug companies themselves will openly admit it. They are not ashamed of being in business to make money as opposed to "helping humanity" or whatever.
AIDS(HIV) is one of the more profitable (1st world) diseases. People have to pay to play (in terms of remaining alive). If a cure or even a vaccine is ever developed, the pharma corps with the largest patent portfolios of anti-HIV drugs will not be happy.
Wow. If only I had some mod points... My thoughts exactly. Morrowind sure is perty though. Maybe Bethesda would have been happier making a Myst sequel.
If you are looking for an action RPG like Deus Ex, I am afraid you will be disappointed. That's really not Bethesda's cup of tea. Play Elder Scrolls: Arena, Daggerfall, and Morrowind, then get back to us. Thanks.
What is it with you 2d vs 3d fanatics? A good game is a good game regardless of the perspective. And please describe the "fallout feeling". Fallout was good because it was a Black Isle game and because the designers were superb. The only problem with true 3D is the art is just not there yet. The 3D creatures just don't look as realistic or interesting. Still if anyone could pull it off it would be Bethesda.
And you can bet that it will be 3D and that it won't be a Doom clone or fps because of it. I just hope Bethesda doesn't forget about having a story as they have done all to often.
Thank you so much Bethesda for giving me a reason to remain alive. I was fresh out of reasons, but now I can't die until after I have played Bethesda's version of Black Isle's Fallout 3. Now if someone would just (finally) come out with an Ultima Underworld III and Planescape: Torment II.
When the figure skater extends her arms she slows down again. I wonder if this would slow the rotation of the earth. Maybe a day would be.0000000000000000000000001 seconds longer. Harnessing the energy from the earth's rotation may be the closest we are going to get to "free" energy.
A balloon as a counterweight? Am I missing something here? Correct me if I'm wrong but a balloon only has buoyancy when it's in a fluid. After a certain height the atmosphere is too thin to produce any more upward force, no matter how large your balloon. OTOH, maybe you are joking.
Yeah, there is a global Javascript disable in the gui of every browser I know of. Did you think I was unaware of it? If you followed my link you would even notice that I am aware of Javascript that can allow for Javascript whitelisting in Mozilla.
I would love to be able to always leave Javascript disabled, but I can't. I usually need it enabled on ecommerce sites in order to buy anything. I find it ironic that Firebird has whitelists for pretty much everything except Javascript already. One reason that I find its omission suspicious.
Thanks for pointing out the JScript thing. These days I guess you have to figure most abbreviations have already been trademarked.
It's only because employees like you are willing to put up with that kind of managerial bs, that they can get away with it. Just ignore those ratbastard managers and do what you think is reasonable. Or tell him that he doesn't pay you enough for that (well, unless he does). If he fires you, you were better off working somewhere else anyway.
There are nice managers out there. You just have to find them. Some managers think they are God because they are paying you $6/hr. I would laugh at this but it is not at all funny.
Businesses like BestBuy take returns in the first place as a courtesy to customers, because it's something people expect from large stores.
Well, close. It's because of competition. If a competitor has a better return policy that's a good reason to buy from them instead. Their prices are so often the same that a different return policy could make a significant difference espeicially with higher priced items.
If they illiminated their return policy without lowering their prices their days would be numbered. In order to avoid losing business all the retailers would have to do it at the same time. Of course, some brick and mortar stores are now instituting 15% restocking fees for all non-defective returns just like many online retailers.
I do like Firefox a lot. It is a wonderful browser, and it is improving at a rapid pace. But I will not use it until the devs get their heads out of their arses. It is not as secure as IE for one simple reaon: no javascript whitelisting. IE has it in the form of security zones.
If firefox ever adds jscript whitelisting to the main app or someone develops an extension for it (that is kept up to date with current releases) I will switch in an instant. Unfortunately I am getting the impression that the devs are very pro-jscript and have no interest in making it easy for users to browse with it off completely. Instead they want to only allow disabling it's most annoying and obvious features. This is a woefully inadequate solution.
With IE I can browse with javascript completely off while still being able to shop at sites like newegg or amazon with jscript (and activex if necessary) automatically enabled. There are many sites nowadays (created by incompetent web designers)that won't even load without javascript. I will either ignore such sites or take the chance on giving them temporary trusted or partially restricted status.
People talk about how insecure and dangerous ActiveX is and they're right, but javascript is almost as bad. IMO, anyone who surfs the internet with javascript on is asking for trouble and shouldn't be surprised when they find it. And, no,I am not talking about popups. Javascript is a hell of a lot more than just the window popup or resize functions. The recent slammer worm, while an example of an exploit of bad IE security in the form of BHOs is also an example of the dangers of javascript. This worm could not function without it and it did not rely on popups or resizing. It used javascript that would never be blocked by the kind of partial blocking that firefox uses.
Mozilla has also had security zone capability through user pref javascript settings for a long time, but a UI for it has never been included in the official browser. At this point it looks like it never will.
There was some effort expended at actually producing a UI for the zones but nothing seems to have come of it. The devs who were working on it gave up when they saw this which unfortunately is not capable of javascript whitelisting at least in current versions of mozilla or firefox.
There have been some attempts at extensions to add in jscript whitelisting to mozilla, but there is nothing that works with current versions of either mozilla or firefox.
All of this work is at least 1-2 years old. Some of it is as 3-4 years old. Nothing is currently being done with any of it. Obviously the devs don't consider it an important feature. In fact they consider it so unimportant that even when it's already in the code, they can't be bothered to make a UI for it it.
So thank you very much, but I will stick with a much safer browsing experience on IE with pwrtwks to give me two click security zone control and trust setter and IE Zone Editor to give me even more control over IE's wonderful security zone features.
For the one remaining gigantic IE annoyance, those popup "warning" windows you get when browsing with activeX turned off on sites with activeX, there is a way to turn them off. It works.
Well, experiments have been done trying to regrow brain cells in animals using injected NGF (nerve growth factor) to stimulate new growth. The good news was that the cells seemed to almost miraculously rejoin with others. The bad news was that very often the resulting connections would actually make things worse not better.
I don't know much about optic nerves, but based on those brain experiments, the procedure even if "succesful" may not lead to anything remotely like normal vision. In fact those wayward nerve cells could end up causing damage to the brain.
I agree but would take it to the next level. If there was a *THREAT* from space
Maybe we should stage one then. Fooling the average Joe would be easy, but how do we fool NASA. Would another War of the Worlds broadcast and some funny looking remote controlled aircraft and weather balloons do the trick?
Surely with the combined brainpower(tm) of all slashdotters, we should be able to come up with something. The crop circles certainly don't seem to be working. I guess that would have been too easy.
Slashdot Mirror
No! Doom3 supports four different rendering paths
Define "closely comparable". If wireframe looks the same to you as ray tracing, then you should be fine.
[There should be a mod option for -1 uninformative.]
Please don't try to use logic. This is an emotional issue for people. You'll ruin it.
This defence is intended to reassure people such as police officers, staff of the Internet Watch Foundation, and staff in ISPs and systems management who have a role in identifying and securing such data for evidential and investigative purposes, that they can do so without fear of prosecution.
Who cares what it is intended to do? What matters is the exact wording of the law. It's enforcement is always open to interpretation.
So basically the exemption for viewing images of "children" under 18 is allowed only for law enforcement officers specifically assigned to such cases. Anyone else is breaking the law and risking prison time by trying to catch criminals (any unauthorized person viewing such images).
The part about ISP employees is certainly interesting since almost anyone can start an "ISP". Would a one person dialup ISP be allowed to view all the kiddie porn they want?
The people making these anonymous tips to the IWF are most certainly breaking the law and should be punished to the maximum extent if caught. If the very act of looking at certain images is illegal, then it should be illegal for everyone. That is only fair. There shouldn't be a certain privileged minority that is allowed to view it just because they assure everyone that they get no enjoyment from it, and are in fact disgusted by it.
No of course not. "Children" hate porn of any kind. And if they did download porn, surely they would find porn with girls their own age to be downright repulsive.
This whole topic makes me yawn. I've never heard of even one convincing report of a child porn web site. This is not too surprising since "discovering" the site would in itself be both illegal and very stupid.
This will just end up blocking porn web sites portraying 40 year olds in pig tails, which of course is not a bad thing. But the whole thing is a moronic waste of time and effort on the part of BT.
OTOH, some of us are interested in more than arcade games with low-res simplistic graphics.
IMO, what you display a graphical game on (remember we're not talking about Zork here) is of the utmost importance.
The PC is suited to different kinds of games than a console, most notably RTSes and FPSes.
And don't forget serious non-Japanese RPGs. Good luck trying to play a game like Planescape: Torment or even Baldur's Gate 2 on a console. Any sufficiently complex game would have difficulty on current consoles.
Of course this could change if consoles become sufficiently complex. The problem is that console makers tend to target the kiddies and the console software developers follow along. Except for graphics, console games don't seem to have changed much since the Atari 2600.
But who is forcing you to play at the newest games at a high resolution? Many games will even allow you to play them at 320x200 which should give you a nice console feel.
I don't see how this upgrade argument has anything to do with consoles. The only difference is that with a console you don't have to feel like you are missing out by not upgrading because high resolution graphics are just not possible.
It would be the same on a PC if you connected it to your TV. Not much point in upgrading to the newest 6800 Ultra SLI configuration when you can barely make 640x480 resolution even on an HDTV.
I'm glad your link emphasizes that there is basically no evidence for such a theory. It doesn't sound very plausible to me. You could make a similar argument for ugly, handicapped, or deformed human beings. Obviously we all prefer to interect with creatures that represent some kind of particular ideal often physically represented by models. Why this should have any particular relevance to robotics is beyond me.
I think it's just an excuse for certain researchers to not even bother trying to achieve the difficult task of realistically modeling a human. Why bother to try when the goal itself is misguided or just impossible.
here is a recent pic from one of these cameras at the DNC. It seems that anonymity really is important to Bostonians.
To a silent pc purist, water pumps are BAD. I am more interested in a geo-thermal (ground-based) system, or truly passive, convective water cooling, or maybe some kind of passive water cooling that plugs directly into cold water pipes so that it works as a kind of pre-heater so that the water heater in the house doesn't need to do as much work.
This is a cool idea though, if you can manage do find or build a quiet enough pump.
I beleive it is possible to find some other chemical agent which will have higher heat capacity
That would be a neat trick. I've never heard of anything that would qualify. Can you also find me something that is less dense as a solid than as a liquid? H20 is actually pretty cool.
A cure for cancer doesn't mean that cancer goes away, just that people don't die from it.
I think most people would usually refer to that as a "treatment" not a cure.
A cure would clearly be financial suicide. It wouldn't put them out of business though. There are plenty of other diseases to be treated. It would just be stupid and irresponsible to shareholders to work on developing one.
A cure tends to be harder to find than just a treatment. Of course in some cases, the opposite may be true but the pharmaceutical companies would never know it. An expensive treatment to keep you alive (until you stop the taking the meds) is always more profitable.
This is not some kind of secret conspiracy. The drug companies themselves will openly admit it. They are not ashamed of being in business to make money as opposed to "helping humanity" or whatever.
AIDS(HIV) is one of the more profitable (1st world) diseases. People have to pay to play (in terms of remaining alive). If a cure or even a vaccine is ever developed, the pharma corps with the largest patent portfolios of anti-HIV drugs will not be happy.
The idea that anyone has actually performed said experiment is a little scary.
Wow. If only I had some mod points... My thoughts exactly. Morrowind sure is perty though. Maybe Bethesda would have been happier making a Myst sequel.
If you are looking for an action RPG like Deus Ex, I am afraid you will be disappointed. That's really not Bethesda's cup of tea. Play Elder Scrolls: Arena, Daggerfall, and Morrowind, then get back to us. Thanks.
What is it with you 2d vs 3d fanatics? A good game is a good game regardless of the perspective. And please describe the "fallout feeling". Fallout was good because it was a Black Isle game and because the designers were superb. The only problem with true 3D is the art is just not there yet. The 3D creatures just don't look as realistic or interesting. Still if anyone could pull it off it would be Bethesda.
And you can bet that it will be 3D and that it won't be a Doom clone or fps because of it. I just hope Bethesda doesn't forget about having a story as they have done all to often.
Thank you so much Bethesda for giving me a reason to remain alive. I was fresh out of reasons, but now I can't die until after I have played Bethesda's version of Black Isle's Fallout 3. Now if someone would just (finally) come out with an Ultima Underworld III and Planescape: Torment II.
When the figure skater extends her arms she slows down again. I wonder if this would slow the rotation of the earth. Maybe a day would be .0000000000000000000000001 seconds longer. Harnessing the energy from the earth's rotation may be the closest we are going to get to "free" energy.
A balloon as a counterweight? Am I missing something here? Correct me if I'm wrong but a balloon only has buoyancy when it's in a fluid. After a certain height the atmosphere is too thin to produce any more upward force, no matter how large your balloon. OTOH, maybe you are joking.
Yeah, there is a global Javascript disable in the gui of every browser I know of. Did you think I was unaware of it? If you followed my link you would even notice that I am aware of Javascript that can allow for Javascript whitelisting in Mozilla.
I would love to be able to always leave Javascript disabled, but I can't. I usually need it enabled on ecommerce sites in order to buy anything. I find it ironic that Firebird has whitelists for pretty much everything except Javascript already. One reason that I find its omission suspicious.
Thanks for pointing out the JScript thing. These days I guess you have to figure most abbreviations have already been trademarked.
It's only because employees like you are willing to put up with that kind of managerial bs, that they can get away with it. Just ignore those ratbastard managers and do what you think is reasonable. Or tell him that he doesn't pay you enough for that (well, unless he does). If he fires you, you were better off working somewhere else anyway.
There are nice managers out there. You just have to find them. Some managers think they are God because they are paying you $6/hr. I would laugh at this but it is not at all funny.
Businesses like BestBuy take returns in the first place as a courtesy to customers, because it's something people expect from large stores.
Well, close. It's because of competition. If a competitor has a better return policy that's a good reason to buy from them instead. Their prices are so often the same that a different return policy could make a significant difference espeicially with higher priced items.
If they illiminated their return policy without lowering their prices their days would be numbered. In order to avoid losing business all the retailers would have to do it at the same time. Of course, some brick and mortar stores are now instituting 15% restocking fees for all non-defective returns just like many online retailers.
I do like Firefox a lot. It is a wonderful browser, and it is improving at a rapid pace. But I will not use it until the devs get their heads out of their arses. It is not as secure as IE for one simple reaon: no javascript whitelisting. IE has it in the form of security zones.
If firefox ever adds jscript whitelisting to the main app or someone develops an extension for it (that is kept up to date with current releases) I will switch in an instant. Unfortunately I am getting the impression that the devs are very pro-jscript and have no interest in making it easy for users to browse with it off completely. Instead they want to only allow disabling it's most annoying and obvious features. This is a woefully inadequate solution.
With IE I can browse with javascript completely off while still being able to shop at sites like newegg or amazon with jscript (and activex if necessary) automatically enabled. There are many sites nowadays (created by incompetent web designers)that won't even load without javascript. I will either ignore such sites or take the chance on giving them temporary trusted or partially restricted status.
People talk about how insecure and dangerous ActiveX is and they're right, but javascript is almost as bad. IMO, anyone who surfs the internet with javascript on is asking for trouble and shouldn't be surprised when they find it. And, no,I am not talking about popups. Javascript is a hell of a lot more than just the window popup or resize functions. The recent slammer worm, while an example of an exploit of bad IE security in the form of BHOs is also an example of the dangers of javascript. This worm could not function without it and it did not rely on popups or resizing. It used javascript that would never be blocked by the kind of partial blocking that firefox uses.
Mozilla has also had security zone capability through user pref javascript settings for a long time, but a UI for it has never been included in the official browser. At this point it looks like it never will.
There was some effort expended at actually producing a UI for the zones but nothing seems to have come of it. The devs who were working on it gave up when they saw this which unfortunately is not capable of javascript whitelisting at least in current versions of mozilla or firefox.
There have been some attempts at extensions to add in jscript whitelisting to mozilla, but there is nothing that works with current versions of either mozilla or firefox.
All of this work is at least 1-2 years old. Some of it is as 3-4 years old. Nothing is currently being done with any of it. Obviously the devs don't consider it an important feature. In fact they consider it so unimportant that even when it's already in the code, they can't be bothered to make a UI for it it.
So thank you very much, but I will stick with a much safer browsing experience on IE with pwrtwks to give me two click security zone control and trust setter and IE Zone Editor to give me even more control over IE's wonderful security zone features.
For the one remaining gigantic IE annoyance, those popup "warning" windows you get when browsing with activeX turned off on sites with activeX, there is a way to turn them off. It works.
Well, experiments have been done trying to regrow brain cells in animals using injected NGF (nerve growth factor) to stimulate new growth. The good news was that the cells seemed to almost miraculously rejoin with others. The bad news was that very often the resulting connections would actually make things worse not better.
I don't know much about optic nerves, but based on those brain experiments, the procedure even if "succesful" may not lead to anything remotely like normal vision. In fact those wayward nerve cells could end up causing damage to the brain.
I agree but would take it to the next level. If there was a *THREAT* from space
Maybe we should stage one then. Fooling the average Joe would be easy, but how do we fool NASA. Would another War of the Worlds broadcast and some funny looking remote controlled aircraft and weather balloons do the trick?
Surely with the combined brainpower(tm) of all slashdotters, we should be able to come up with something. The crop circles certainly don't seem to be working. I guess that would have been too easy.