Using it to move a mouse or select symbols is a bit more realistic than having the computer snag entire images and sounds out of your head, though. (And remember, when the sound is in your head, it doesn't have the tones of your voice attached to it yet; those come when it's actually articulated.)
I think you could could do the same thing to grab speech without speeking that you could do to grab arm movments without moving your arm.. just watch little abortive movements of the vocal cords. Example: It feals like I can "speek" without blowing over the vocal cords, i.e. the vocal cords move but no sound comes out. This would probable make is easyer to the information from your voice then from your arms because you would not need to train the person in these "almost movements" which do not really move anything.. You could just train then to not exhale when they spoke to the machine.
You might not care about spech that much though once you got the arm/finger movements working since a 2D symbole buffer is a much better means of communication (and your langauge can adapt to it the same way it adapts to writing instead of speeking).
Actually, your face and mouth might be the best way to get info to the computer. There are LOTS of seperatly controlled mussles which you could be trained to move individually.
Also, realize the potential problems of doing this. If there's an implant recording your thoughts and sending the data stream to an Internet-connected computer... you think you've got Big Brother looking over you now? Just wait.
Connecting close to the mussle level solves all these problems since you can always choose notto talk.. unless yuou talk to yourself a lot..:) Seriously, I doubt that we really understand the advantage of connecting to the brain at the level of thoughs. Examples: It would be nice to have a machine which would automatically answer the easy parts of a problem I am working on, but this will still require formulating a problems statment, so I think needing to speek the statment to the computer is a minor thing. Example: I supposet there might be way to stimulate a section of knowledge to make you recolection of it better, but we could do something like this by having a series of "note cards" which recap the importent theorems or something. It just sems that we don't know that much about our though processes execpt for the parts that work via langauge.
I suppose, that someone might figure out exactly where the "phonological loop" of short-term memory is (that's the part you're using when you hear your own voice in your head), decode the representations of all known phonemes, and start injecting thoughts in via electrodes.
How much do they really know about the phonological loop? How diffrent is the voice in the back of my head from the voice that is about to come out?
I don't really think that adding other sences would be that importent as compaired to just have a really ergonomic computer interface at the other ends of the ones we have now. I am a first year graduate student in mathematics and the most useful thing I can think of is having the ability to quickly write symboles to my field of vision and move them about without having to say stuff or move my arms. If the process of thinking about moving an arm or saing something really dose triger activity like the actual movement then maybe we could interact with a computer via these abortive movements. This would be the killer app. for brain implants since people could use images and audio in everyday communication.
There are also problems in math which would be easyer to solve if you could develope an intuition about higher dimentional spaces. Idea: the phase space of the ``possitions of the human body'' is MCUH larger then 3 dimentional. It might be possible to take a mussle group and program a computer to respond to the movements of those mussles as if they were moving an object in a higher dimentional space, then the user might gain some intuition about things which they could apply to solving some open problem. It's kinda funny to think we may have applications of biology to mathematics someday..:)
From our point of view this is just unprofessionalism in a very high degree that's not explainable
They hit the hail on the head andthis problem should be easy to fix, but there are more programmer orented problems that are not so 3easy to fix:
These script langauges which deposite form variables in the global namespace (like PHP and VBScript) there is a god chance of programmer created problems which are not so easy to track of fix. Example: programmer keeps copy of web site PHP code at home.. Programmer gets fired.. Programmer paws through code and finds a weakness since the code was in PHP and allowed form submits to mess wit the global name space.
Also, VBScript has the problem that most people using it do not know how to protect the strings that are going into an SQL query.
I know these problems seem milder because the exploits may need to be diffrent for diffrent web sites, but I would expect to see tools (maybe even AIs) which manage to automate some of the process of exploiting these holes. Government funded hackers (like in China) may have access to profesors and people who could do the research to find statisticaly probable weaknesses in custom software.
I'm not really tring to slam PHP and VBScript, but I do see a lot more potential for PHP and VBScript programmers making the same mistake over and over then with other langauges.
Interestingly, the UK government has laws going through, as I'm sure everybody knows, that would allow law enforcement to demand encryption keys from anyone without the need for judicial oversight or reasonable grounds, and also to then require you not to tell anyone. I'm sure the promulgation of stories like this one is supported by the agencies that stand to benefit.
Wow! That is just plain evil. This means someone should start a campaign to get Linux boxes in the UK to use StegFS. StegFS (Steganographic File System) is an encrypted ext2 file system which allows for plausable deniability, i.e. you can give them the password to a lower encryption level and they will have no way to prove higher encryption levels exist, thus there is nothing they can do to make you give up you encrypted data (it also wipes unused blocks so none of this taking the disk to find shit you deleted).
Now, the requiring you not to tell anyone is a seperate issue. I donno what to do about this. I suppose you could just tell people anyway.. maybe someone could run a web page which publishes lists of incedents where they have used this power? Is anyone tring to fight this?
I'm not an astronomer; anyone know what the ramifications this has on the Big Bang theory? My guess is that it doesn't disprove it. But it sure takes a big chunk out of it...
I doubt it has much influence on the big bang theory, but it is worth mentioning that there are a few reputable scientists which have doubts about the big bang.
The conspiracy theorists love to point out how the Vatican commishioned a priest who knew some physics to reinvolve the church in the discussions of the origin of the universe, then this guy descided that the idea that pushing something like the big bang on the scientific community would be the best way to do that. This guy ran arround to various scientists tring to push the idea and got noware untill people noticed the universe was expanding, then people started beliving him. (Note: You should not take this story as an argument against the big bang, but as a warning about how religious people follow there biases)
It is a good test of your understanding of the scientific method to think about exactly why the expansion of the universe provides evidence for the big bang. Example: if we lived in a cluster of galixies which had an eliptical orbit arround soemthing really big then it might appear that al the galaxies were moving appart. It's fun to think about what exactly is wrong with this alternative explination.
Courts generally are not amused when people try to execute end-runs around their directives
This is was I suspected, but there still seemed to be some protections. You could also go with an oversees company which "would not allow you to take down your own site" after it had been set up, i.e. you pay them up front for a few years of hosting and they keep backups of you site. If they get any complaints about you removing your own site then they put it back up and lock you out. You would go to this service when you recieved a sease and edesist letter, then by the time the jugde ourdered you to stop it would be too late. I suppose the judege could aways site you with more damages and NSI could take away your domain name if it is a US one, but if you do not have anything away and you do not mind moving to.ru or something, it's a good plan.
Realistically, it cheaper to just post it to slashdot and let the world mirror it for you (if there were some way to protect the domain)..:)
Wht dose everyone know about off shore hosting? i.e. I expect to be sued so I'm puting this in another country. It would be interesting if there were hjosting services which were in the US but had a deal with a hosting service in Russia to handle any sites which drew legal fire. If this was not too much more expencive it would be a good idea for some people (contraversal artists like Mike Z.). Dose anyone know anything about the legality of moving your site to another country when you have been issued a restraning order?
I agree with you that ALL speech must be protected (I'm a member of the ACLU), but most of the country dose not see it this way. My limited understanding of the law is that the courts do not protect porn under freedom of speech, but that they do protect art no matter how much it looks like porn.
Lucky for those of us who are concerened about any censorship the religious right has no interest in fighting porn.. or they would have crafted the CDA so that our concervative supream court would not have struck it down as quickly. What the right wing really wants to censor is women's rights and gay rights. This is why all the censorware programs censor these types of sites too.
We have a political advantage now because the religious right and censorware sellers are a bunch of liars. We should press this opertunity as an object lesson to show people that censorship really is fundamentally evil.
Now, regarding wether we should point to porn sites when we talk about censored sites: If you are actually tring to undo the damage they caused with censorship then yes you need to list the porn sites too, but if you are fighting the memethetic war over wether people think censorship is evil then you do not list porn sites, i.e. a mom may not want her daughter to see porn at school, but when faced with a choice between the small risk of porn and her daughter being told not to studdy women's rights, the mom will join us.
The polotics of the situation are: common people oppose censorship becuase something they like might get censored (just look at all the/. posters who support censorware in school). We need to show them censorship is evil. This means we need to show people that views they agree with are being censored (then they will eventually begin to realize that there is no such thing as only censoringthe bad stuff).
Jeff
BTW> Atually, the religious right has this agenda (censoring gays and women) because it is basicaly a buisness which makes money by getting old ladies to give it their social security checks. This means it needs to have a cause to get attention and it needs to prevent ideas about freedom which premote tolerance.
First, I urge everyone here to consider this shit as a personal reason to join and contribute to the EFF (and maybe the ACLU too). I know I'm going over to join the EFF (I'm already a member of the ACLU). These cyber/civil liberties activists will not back down, so joining them is one of the more effective things you can do.
Second, the MPAA seems determined to attack our ability to watch DVDs under Linux as piracy. I would suggest that the warez people out there take it as a personal mission to make movies as easy for people to pirate as possible.. just to fuck the MPAA. We need to make a pirating-made-easy tarball of the packages to rip the DVD and reencode it as a VCD (which are small enough to pirate if you have DSL). They can sue all they want, but we can adopt a scorched marketplace policy and make it so that every computer literate collage kid knows how to download a movie for free or give a free copy to a friend! Remember, writable DVDs are expencive, but VCDs cheep are not once you get them encoded and a small enough to pirate over IRC.
The problem, of course, is that the list of banned sites won't be centrally published
There is no reason that it could not be centrally published. All the satalite banned site lists could feed off of peacefire.org or something via XML. Actually, peacefire.org has a banned site of the day. They could just set up XML perl and php clients that everyone could instakk in there own pages to put peacefire's banned site of the day on there own page, i.e. the default slashdot config would have a slashbot which showed the blocked site of the day, and other people would do simillar things. It would be like the proteast where everyone turnned their pages black execpt that it would be permenent and keep drawing attention to the problem.
I think it would be a good idea to exclude porn (but not art) from the blocked site of the day. Example: blocking software already seems to block a very high precentage of feminist sites.. and feminists will natrually get much more pissed off about this then the porn. People need to understand why we do not like censorship.. and the best way to do that is to show them that views they agree with are being censored.
Hey, what dose everyone think about solving the censorship problem by creating a means for people to find out what was censored and connect to it?
It would be like a banned book lists.. people would specifically go out and visit the censored sites. Now, I know there are encrypted proxies and things, but it seems to me that these sites might themselves become blocked. Plus, we want active notification of cool banned sites, i.e. people see new banneed sites everday as part of the news. Perhaps we could set up a banned site list mirror network. It would be a news service like slashdot or memepool, but would push banned sites. Anyone could DL the html and perl, put up a mirror, and get updates via the network. The only real technical problem is getting people to switch to new mirrors when the old ones are banned. There could also be a windows client which used an encrypted connection to obtain the IP address of a new miror for people who live in really repressive places. People would install the windows program out of curiosity and a banned site list would become there homepage.
I suspect people could run a pretty good memepool style site list by removing the porn from the lists of banned sites.
Can a computer program ever possibly be self aware?
I do not know how to do it, but I suspect it will happen, but it more fun to think about self aware memes or thoughs within a computer/human..:)
Can a computer program, if it is aware, believe something that's not true?
I do not see why not since most humans bvelieve in a god (or reinterpret this as most humans do not believe in your god if you are religious), but it is much more fun to think about designing computers (or humans through genetic and psycological engenring) to figure out specific problems (like open math problems). If you think technologies moves fast now, you should see how fast it moves when you can build people to solve specific problems.
Actually, I am of the opinion that building people to answer specific problems in the "ultimate in open source" (sorry for the wording, but this is the most efficent wast to communicate ythe idea to a slashdot audience) because when Joe creates Bob to solve a problem no one should own the solution, i.e. Joe's ownership == slavery and Bob's ownership == Joe had no reason to make Bob.
Is there such a thing as Free Will?
I can not answer your question because it involves inherently vague terms (free will), but I can say we are very complex mechines (this can be interpreted to mean yes or no depending on what youwant to call free will). Regardless, the connction of us with machines is the importent philosophical point.
What if our entire universe is actually a subatomic particle in another universe?
It dose not matter if it can not effect you in any way (note: things like the big bang and the end of the universe do effect you). There are much cooler questions which are more down to earth.. like stuff from quantum mechanics.
This is because diffrent people like to do things diffrently and we generally consider a reasonable ammount of this to be a good thing (like GNOME vs. KDE) as it keeps development from stagnating (for both psychological (compotition) and technological (one project might write it's self into a corner) reasons).
Why isn't this same sort of vigor and energy being put into applications that could shift the general user base over to linux?
Well some of those applications you are talking about have a fundamentally bad design (microshit bloatware), i.e. they really should be collections of tools and not applications. The problem is figuring out how to get all the same features in a more forward thinking package.. which really is more work.
The applicatins which are not fundamentally bloatware (CAD, Databases, Graphic Arts, ERP, etc.) are actually hard to write (example: you need to know some engenering to write the CAD package features). The best way to get these sorts of packages open sourced is to get a VC (venture capitalist) who is willing gamble on the idea that OSS will eventually kill the compitition. There is a very promissing CAD package which is currently on this road. I would expect to see an ERP package with some serious VC backing in the near future (the VCs will like the idea of giving away the source if they know that people will need to come pay the company to change it, like with ERP or CAD). I don't know if something like Director requires enough custimization to be a viable comersial OSS effort.
Lots of people have been posting about how wonderful this would be for Linux and the GPL, but I would like to point out that any sort of erroding of our freedoms here could be a real problem with things like music and movies. Imagine, you start using ad blocking software only to have a cop show up at your door because a virus in the content of a movie you wantched detected it. What is good for Linux and the GPL is the scare software consumers with this legislation. Example: Tell your local CAD users about this shit.. and then point him to OpenCAD/CASE (name?). Result, the legislation fails and the CAD users have learned something about Linux and OpenCAD. Example: Push the common people to learn about OSS wordprocessors because they might someday need to use it to finnish a letter before they can renue there Word rental.
This legislation creates fear in the hearts of closed source consumers once they understand it.. we should use that to evangalize.
Actually, researchers generally do a really good job of making things humane. There are a few that do not, but I think most researches would try and keep their animals from going to the places which are nasty. The point being if those protestors could just go to the researchers nicely and get commitments that the animals will only be sent to places with good conditions when theywere done with them, i.e. a black list of bad orginisations would be far more effective then those protesting loons could ever dream of being.
The protests are especially silly when you realize that the beef industry is probable far more crule then any primate researcher. Who knows maybe all those protestors are vegans.
Do humans have a responsible enough nature to handle the implications of cloning effectively
I don't know why people always talk about the moral implications of cloning all the time. It dosn't seem to me like there are any: if you can not just cut off a persons arm because you need another one, so you will not be able to clone a whole person and cut off his/her arm because you need another one.. our existing morality deals with it just fine. If you can clone a persons arm (or a body without a brain) then there are no problems with taking bits and pieces.
Now, there are some scientific ramifications like dose having 10 copies of a bunch of people runnng arround fuck up the gene pool, but that will be handled by scientifically motivated legislation.
There may infact be some issues with genetically adjusting people's traits before birth, but I'm not too worried.
It seems to me that while Technilogy advances at an exponential rate, morality advances at a linear rate, or worse, doesnt advance at all.
There have been points in the past where our morals did not advance fast enough (industrial revolution), but I think that generally this phenomonon is restricted to technologies which (a) directly involve the stupid people (industrial revolution and windows) and (b) no one dose a good job of predicting. I do not feal that genetic engenering of humans will fall into these categories even when we begin to do minor experements on unborn children to see how they turn out (science is generally very careful about what it dose to people).
Now, genetic patents and genetic engenering of products (like terminator genes) is going to have this problem. We should expect there to be starvation in thrid world countries which get hooked on geneticaly engenered corn which dies out (notice this satisfies both (a) and (b) above).. and we should prosecute the company execs which cause it.
Generally, I feal that our moras to restrict the use of technology in bad was dose evolve fast enough.. or at least as fast as could be hoped (there is not much you can do about (a) and (b) execpt fix the problem when it happens).
The much bigger problem is that we reject some applications of technology our of fear and stupidity.. witness encryption, evolution, etc. Example: Neural growth hormone can be used to cure all sorts of neurological diseases (paralisis, alshimerz), but we are not allowed to use it because it is only found in human fetuses, i.e. you need an abortion to get any. This is just moronic as many lives could have been improved with this stuff.. and there are plenty of people getting abortions. I assume the religious right is affraid that abortions would become free or soemthing if this stuff was obtained though them.
So, in theory, you can have a little club of people that have some modification of the Linux kernel that no one else can see. But all it takes is one person to give it away to anyone to destroy that. The club cannot (under GPL) restrict anyone from doing so.
Correct..
Legally the way it would work is: If someone starts selling NSA/Linux then they will be required to give away the source, but the NSA could try and stop them from selling NSA/Linux.. and it would be a big fight. Unfortunatly, OSS would probable loose to the NSA in a legal battle over the GPL.. national security and all that crap. On the other hand the NSA knows what kind of contract they are getting into now.
The real question is further restricted distribution, i.e. the NSA giving the NSA/Linux source to a contractor grants the contractor distribution rights. National security can will probable trump this in hind sight, but we might be able to force the NSA not to give it to contractors without distribution rights in the first place.. via the GPL.
Interpretation: Do not try and use the GPL to trck the NSA into giving away stuff, but do use it to push them into giving it away in the first place.
I think slashdot should do something to incurage the use of the scince section.. maybe let more articles like this one through.. so people might actually check it out more oftin.
I believe in the ACLU, not necessarily in everything it does, but in its general idea. And is it extreme? Yup. But no more extreme than the people it is fighting.
This is what I once believe so I joined the ACLU and the Libertarian party.. figuring the bad parts would cancel out, but then I realized the ACLU is no where near as extreme as I though they were and the Libertarians didn't really get anything done, so now I'm just in the ACLU.
I feal like I have said this a dozen times, but check out the list of what the ACLU has done this year. The stuff is really not that extreem: Gay parter rights, protecting some nut who dosn't want his picture taken for dtrivers license for religious reasons, putting an end to driving while black stops, keeping the gov. from posting the 10 commandments in schools, getting some guy out of jail who the gov. has held for 3 years on "seret evidence."
The turth is you probable agree with them more then you know.. you just never paid attention to the issues.. and you heard on our two things (like arremative action if your a libertarian; or defending the free speech of the KKK if you are a democrat) which you were uncomfertable with. It nice knowing that the ACLU is really watching out for us.
They are far from anti-religious they just don't like people using the government to push religion on other people. Look at the actual cases and not the religious rights propoganda. The cases that they are known for which make them seem anti-religious are the prayer in schools things.
Example: This year a bunch of religious right fucks descided to pass a law requiring all schools to post the 10 commandments of the classroom wall. Oh yeah, the ACLU is really interfering in someones freedom by challenging this one on behalf of students of other religions.
Exmaple: This year a student walked out of the prayer durring his/her graduation in protest (a perfectly legal protest) and was then denied reentry by the police and was refused his/her deploma. Oh yeah, the ACLU is really a bad guy for interfering with the rights of those other students to see this student denied a deploma because of a legitimat protest.
Example: This year a school desided to deny graduation honors to two students because they were pregnant outside of marige. Oh yeah, that violates someones right to not see anyone who is "moraly unfit" by some loons standards recieve any honors.
Actually, if you look at the early days of the ACLU you will see that the ACLU's defence of minority religions is one of the reason many of the religions get allong so well today.. and I'm not talking little things here.. I'm talking protistants making it a crime to be catholic in their town (yes that was common less then 80 years ago). Whats that you say.. that violates the 1st amendment.. well yes that exactly what the ACLU said and that's what they are still saing today.. and it pisses lots of ignorent people off.
The times when the ACLU "opens mount and inserts foot" are when they defend the rights of some REALLY unpopular group (like the KKK) to freedom of speech.
I just hate it when people who don't know anyhting about the ACLU act like it's some busy body org. that just runs arround messing with people. The truth is that the ACLU is the one keeping the gov. from interfering with our rights period. Hell, the whole way the orginisation works prevents them from doing what you are accusing them of doing, i.e. they need to present a person who is actually being hurt to even have a case.
I suggest you take a look at the real history of the ACLU instead of the boggy man stories. You would not have the freedom to say you are an atheist or islam today in this country without the ACLU's past efforts period. That's real defence of freedom of religion.
Jeff
BTW> The only time when you could say that the ACLU was pushing belief or being anti-religious was the "Monkey Trial," but even their defence of Scopes for teaching evolution was based on the fact that evolution was a scientific docterin and not a religious one.. Hmm.. Actualy, I'm not even shure the ACLU was on that case, but i think they may have been since the teecher was being persicuted.
The religious right has gone to great lengths to damage the ACLU's credibility, but the turth is that many many of our freedoms would not exists today if it was not for the ACLU. Example: It was the ACLU that really put an end to the religious persicution of minority Christian sects by majority ones. Actually, just this year they defended a Christian priest who interprets the no graven image thing the way the moslems do so that he could get a drivers lissence without needing his picture taken. They are also defending people held in prison by INS on secret evidence. The people of the ACLU are not scarry.. they are heros.. look at the real history of the ACLU.
"I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" Voltaire
The best kept secret about the ACLU is that most americans would agree with more of what the ACLU dose then with what there own political parties do. You should not accuse them of being evil or scarry just because they happen to defend one or two things that you do not like (or becuase they neglect one or two things that you do.. like gun ownership). Look at what they really do.
First, is the reform party really any diffrent from the other 2? I sorta assumed it was diffrent when I heard about Jesse Ventura, but then the reform party tried to kick him out when he said something about organized religion being a problem and Pat Buchanen joined it. I assume that means the party was never really as interested in the kind of fundamnetal reforms you are talking about.
Second, I like both the Green party and the Libertarian party. I do not really agree with them, but I feal that they have a lot to contribute.. a lot more then the republicans or democrats. It seems to me that what we really need is not a reform through ellection but a reform through media. Example: the WTO protests probable did a LOT to advance the general public understanding of the problems with globilization.. and to take free trade off the holy words list. this is what will bring about real reforms.
It is also worth mentioning that the ACLU has been more effective then ANY political party in supporting generally good stuff. Check out the list of all the great stuff they did this year. While Katz was bitching about the Hellmouth they were suing the pants off of those schools.. and winning. If you are at all interested in the future of civil liberties you really should check out the ACLU.. you will probable find they do mcuh more stuff which you like then dislike. Everyone seems to pink the one thing which the ACLU dose which they dislike to grip about, but the plain truth is american freedom began 80 years ago when the ACLU started to enforce the bill of rights.
Sexual education is presently a part of school programs (depending on the area) at various grade levels. I myself had my 6th grade class touch on it. At ALL times parents had the option to preview material and choose NOT to have their child participate. Some parents exercised that option, most did not.
This is compleatly different from a kid happening accrost something on the internet because the school is *activly* presenting the information. You do not have the right to regulate the rest of the world just to keep your kid from finding something out about sex before you are ready to tell them, but you do have the right to prevent a government institution from *activly* presenting the information. It is worth mentioning that public libraries are already prohibited from banning books on sexual development.. the internet is no diffrent.
This has nothing at all to do with telling my kid it's not OK to be gay.
ESPECIALLY when it comes to questionable material such as what would be filtered by stock filter software.
Actually, censorship of gay rights, free speech advocates, etc. is exactly what the censorware people want.. and the censorware programs seem to be giving it to them. The religious right is VERY interested in stoping the progress of the gay rights movement (ammong other things) and they regularly use "protecting the children from porn and child molesters" as an excuse. Example: the CDA was designed to stop "indecent material" (read gay rights) and not just pornography. Actually, strictly anti-porn bill are not usually struck down by the courts, but anti-porn was not good enough for the religious right.. they want to stop the use of the internet for a variety of civil liberties causes.
The truth is the public schools have the most efffective anti-porn measure available: place the computers out in the open and have a librarian occasionally look at what the kids are doing. No one would object if congress passes a resolution requiring schools and libraries to make a reasonable effort to have librarians peek at what the kids are doing, but as I said before the religious right is not interested in an effective messure at preventing porn.. just one that also provents discussion of issues they don't agree with.
If you paid any attention to the debate you would know that the religious right is NOT pushing censorware to protect your children from pron! They really only care about preventing people from having access to information sources like/., the ACLU, gay rights, evolution, free speech, etc. If you look at the history of censorware it ALWAYS blocks lots of non-porn sites like anti-censorware sites, ACLU, gay rights sites, etc. Do not believe these people when they say they are out to protect the kids.. just look at the censored sites lists.
It is also worth mentioning that this is why the CDA was the comminications *decensy* act instead of a computer *porn* act.. they don't care about the porn.. they care about forcing their religion on all of us.
All you people posting about how you want your kids to be prevented from accessing porn need to get with it and look up the real history of the debate. Unfortunatly, there is currently no porn blocking software which dose not activly assist the religious right in blocking informtation that they do not want people to have.. and this is a real problem for parents who really do wnt to protect there children from porn at home. It appears that the best technological solution is to use a squid proxy to log the sites your child visits and occasionally look at the logs.
Do you think you know how to parent my child better than I? Does the government?
If you are telling your gay 17 year old it is not ok to be gay then yes. If you are telling your 12 year old that it is not ok to learn about sex then yes. Kids do have a *right* to learn about these things regardless of what the parent says period. Most of the censorware debate rests on the fact that the ability to censor has always been missused. Example: these censorware programs do block discussion of gay issues and sexual health and development discussion (and anti-censorware sites.. and sites that oppose the political belifs of the persedent of the company). I'm sorry but the censorware folks have abused their power a lot.. and we are not going to put up with it.
The existing laws are already sufficent to deal with the possiblility of a porn site targeted at kids, the librarys will probable choose search engins which avoid porn, and parents can use whatever censorware they deem fit at home.. or just talk to the kids.. that will be enough.
If you are concerned about your kids then I suggest you take the suggestion of another slashdoter and just read the logs (proxy).
Actually, I think there should be ways to sue censorware sites which missrepresent sites as porn sites or censor things without explicit concent. Example: Scientologists sneek an anti-anti-scientology censorship program onto cult members computers (I would assume it censors other religions too).
I've always felt that when grade schools try to introduce students to the news paper in grade four or so they should also teach them the power of critical thinking.
This is one of the most importent changes we could make to our culture. They do make some attempts to teach critical thinking now, but it is gernerally too little too late.. it would be especially great if you could teach critical thinking to children in that preschool ultragulable phase where they believe anyhting there parents say.. and learn religion.
The big question is "how do you teach critical thinking?" I don't know much about the real research on this, but Caral Sagan says that the solution should be for science to be taught as a history of mistakes and correections instead of a collection of facts. It wouldn't hurt to teach people quantum mechanics at a younger age since quantum really pushes you to accept the experemental method (at least it did for me). Unfortunatly, I don't know that any of the above are useful for teaching kids since they require a lot of additional information, but I still think that it should be possible to develope a program to teach the scientific method to preschoolers.
It is worth mentioning that you can teach preschool kids a hell of a lot (improve memory, increase creativity, etc.), but you must maintain the teaching as they grow up of the benifits are lost. Head start for example brings inner city kids up to the preformance level of subberban kids, but if the other inner city schools do not continue to foster the program then they slip back. This means that we need a critical thinking program installed at all levels of education.
Slashdot Mirror
Using it to move a mouse or select symbols is a bit more realistic than having the computer snag entire images and sounds out of your head, though. (And remember, when the sound is in your head, it doesn't have the tones of your voice attached to it yet; those come when it's actually articulated.)
:) Seriously, I doubt that we really understand the advantage of connecting to the brain at the level of thoughs. Examples: It would be nice to have a machine which would automatically answer the easy parts of a problem I am working on, but this will still require formulating a problems statment, so I think needing to speek the statment to the computer is a minor thing. Example: I supposet there might be way to stimulate a section of knowledge to make you recolection of it better, but we could do something like this by having a series of "note cards" which recap the importent theorems or something. It just sems that we don't know that much about our though processes execpt for the parts that work via langauge.
I think you could could do the same thing to grab speech without speeking that you could do to grab arm movments without moving your arm.. just watch little abortive movements of the vocal cords. Example: It feals like I can "speek" without blowing over the vocal cords, i.e. the vocal cords move but no sound comes out. This would probable make is easyer to the information from your voice then from your arms because you would not need to train the person in these "almost movements" which do not really move anything.. You could just train then to not exhale when they spoke to the machine.
You might not care about spech that much though once you got the arm/finger movements working since a 2D symbole buffer is a much better means of communication (and your langauge can adapt to it the same way it adapts to writing instead of speeking).
Actually, your face and mouth might be the best way to get info to the computer. There are LOTS of seperatly controlled mussles which you could be trained to move individually.
Also, realize the potential problems of doing this. If there's an implant recording your thoughts and sending the data stream to an Internet-connected computer... you think you've got Big Brother looking over you now? Just wait.
Connecting close to the mussle level solves all these problems since you can always choose notto talk.. unless yuou talk to yourself a lot..
Jeff
I suppose, that someone might figure out exactly where the "phonological loop" of short-term memory is (that's the part you're using when you hear your own voice in your head), decode the representations of all known phonemes, and start injecting thoughts in via electrodes.
:)
How much do they really know about the phonological loop? How diffrent is the voice in the back of my head from the voice that is about to come out?
I don't really think that adding other sences would be that importent as compaired to just have a really ergonomic computer interface at the other ends of the ones we have now. I am a first year graduate student in mathematics and the most useful thing I can think of is having the ability to quickly write symboles to my field of vision and move them about without having to say stuff or move my arms. If the process of thinking about moving an arm or saing something really dose triger activity like the actual movement then maybe we could interact with a computer via these abortive movements. This would be the killer app. for brain implants since people could use images and audio in everyday communication.
There are also problems in math which would be easyer to solve if you could develope an intuition about higher dimentional spaces. Idea: the phase space of the ``possitions of the human body'' is MCUH larger then 3 dimentional. It might be possible to take a mussle group and program a computer to respond to the movements of those mussles as if they were moving an object in a higher dimentional space, then the user might gain some intuition about things which they could apply to solving some open problem. It's kinda funny to think we may have applications of biology to mathematics someday..
Jeff
From our point of view this is just unprofessionalism in a very high degree that's not explainable
They hit the hail on the head andthis problem should be easy to fix, but there are more programmer orented problems that are not so 3easy to fix:
These script langauges which deposite form variables in the global namespace (like PHP and VBScript) there is a god chance of programmer created problems which are not so easy to track of fix. Example: programmer keeps copy of web site PHP code at home.. Programmer gets fired.. Programmer paws through code and finds a weakness since the code was in PHP and allowed form submits to mess wit the global name space.
Also, VBScript has the problem that most people using it do not know how to protect the strings that are going into an SQL query.
I know these problems seem milder because the exploits may need to be diffrent for diffrent web sites, but I would expect to see tools (maybe even AIs) which manage to automate some of the process of exploiting these holes. Government funded hackers (like in China) may have access to profesors and people who could do the research to find statisticaly probable weaknesses in custom software.
I'm not really tring to slam PHP and VBScript, but I do see a lot more potential for PHP and VBScript programmers making the same mistake over and over then with other langauges.
Jeff
Interestingly, the UK government has laws going through, as I'm sure everybody knows, that would allow law enforcement to demand encryption keys from anyone without the need for judicial oversight or reasonable grounds, and also to then require you not to tell anyone. I'm sure the promulgation of stories like this one is supported by the agencies that stand to benefit.
Wow! That is just plain evil. This means someone should start a campaign to get Linux boxes in the UK to use StegFS. StegFS (Steganographic File System) is an encrypted ext2 file system which allows for plausable deniability, i.e. you can give them the password to a lower encryption level and they will have no way to prove higher encryption levels exist, thus there is nothing they can do to make you give up you encrypted data (it also wipes unused blocks so none of this taking the disk to find shit you deleted).
Now, the requiring you not to tell anyone is a seperate issue. I donno what to do about this. I suppose you could just tell people anyway.. maybe someone could run a web page which publishes lists of incedents where they have used this power? Is anyone tring to fight this?
Jeff
I'm not an astronomer; anyone know what the ramifications this has on the Big Bang theory? My guess is that it doesn't disprove it. But it sure takes a big chunk out of it...
I doubt it has much influence on the big bang theory, but it is worth mentioning that there are a few reputable scientists which have doubts about the big bang.
The conspiracy theorists love to point out how the Vatican commishioned a priest who knew some physics to reinvolve the church in the discussions of the origin of the universe, then this guy descided that the idea that pushing something like the big bang on the scientific community would be the best way to do that. This guy ran arround to various scientists tring to push the idea and got noware untill people noticed the universe was expanding, then people started beliving him. (Note: You should not take this story as an argument against the big bang, but as a warning about how religious people follow there biases)
It is a good test of your understanding of the scientific method to think about exactly why the expansion of the universe provides evidence for the big bang. Example: if we lived in a cluster of galixies which had an eliptical orbit arround soemthing really big then it might appear that al the galaxies were moving appart. It's fun to think about what exactly is wrong with this alternative explination.
Jeff
Courts generally are not amused when people try to execute end-runs around their directives
.ru or something, it's a good plan.
:)
This is was I suspected, but there still seemed to be some protections. You could also go with an oversees company which "would not allow you to take down your own site" after it had been set up, i.e. you pay them up front for a few years of hosting and they keep backups of you site. If they get any complaints about you removing your own site then they put it back up and lock you out. You would go to this service when you recieved a sease and edesist letter, then by the time the jugde ourdered you to stop it would be too late. I suppose the judege could aways site you with more damages and NSI could take away your domain name if it is a US one, but if you do not have anything away and you do not mind moving to
Realistically, it cheaper to just post it to slashdot and let the world mirror it for you (if there were some way to protect the domain)..
Jeff
Wht dose everyone know about off shore hosting? i.e. I expect to be sued so I'm puting this in another country. It would be interesting if there were hjosting services which were in the US but had a deal with a hosting service in Russia to handle any sites which drew legal fire. If this was not too much more expencive it would be a good idea for some people (contraversal artists like Mike Z.). Dose anyone know anything about the legality of moving your site to another country when you have been issued a restraning order?
Jeff
I agree with you that ALL speech must be protected (I'm a member of the ACLU), but most of the country dose not see it this way. My limited understanding of the law is that the courts do not protect porn under freedom of speech, but that they do protect art no matter how much it looks like porn.
/. posters who support censorware in school). We need to show them censorship is evil. This means we need to show people that views they agree with are being censored (then they will eventually begin to realize that there is no such thing as only censoringthe bad stuff).
Lucky for those of us who are concerened about any censorship the religious right has no interest in fighting porn.. or they would have crafted the CDA so that our concervative supream court would not have struck it down as quickly. What the right wing really wants to censor is women's rights and gay rights. This is why all the censorware programs censor these types of sites too.
We have a political advantage now because the religious right and censorware sellers are a bunch of liars. We should press this opertunity as an object lesson to show people that censorship really is fundamentally evil.
Now, regarding wether we should point to porn sites when we talk about censored sites: If you are actually tring to undo the damage they caused with censorship then yes you need to list the porn sites too, but if you are fighting the memethetic war over wether people think censorship is evil then you do not list porn sites, i.e. a mom may not want her daughter to see porn at school, but when faced with a choice between the small risk of porn and her daughter being told not to studdy women's rights, the mom will join us.
The polotics of the situation are: common people oppose censorship becuase something they like might get censored (just look at all the
Jeff
BTW> Atually, the religious right has this agenda (censoring gays and women) because it is basicaly a buisness which makes money by getting old ladies to give it their social security checks. This means it needs to have a cause to get attention and it needs to prevent ideas about freedom which premote tolerance.
First, I urge everyone here to consider this shit as a personal reason to join and contribute to the EFF (and maybe the ACLU too). I know I'm going over to join the EFF (I'm already a member of the ACLU). These cyber/civil liberties activists will not back down, so joining them is one of the more effective things you can do.
Second, the MPAA seems determined to attack our ability to watch DVDs under Linux as piracy. I would suggest that the warez people out there take it as a personal mission to make movies as easy for people to pirate as possible.. just to fuck the MPAA. We need to make a pirating-made-easy tarball of the packages to rip the DVD and reencode it as a VCD (which are small enough to pirate if you have DSL). They can sue all they want, but we can adopt a scorched marketplace policy and make it so that every computer literate collage kid knows how to download a movie for free or give a free copy to a friend! Remember, writable DVDs are expencive, but VCDs cheep are not once you get them encoded and a small enough to pirate over IRC.
Jeff
The problem, of course, is that the list of banned sites won't be centrally published
There is no reason that it could not be centrally published. All the satalite banned site lists could feed off of peacefire.org or something via XML. Actually, peacefire.org has a banned site of the day. They could just set up XML perl and php clients that everyone could instakk in there own pages to put peacefire's banned site of the day on there own page, i.e. the default slashdot config would have a slashbot which showed the blocked site of the day, and other people would do simillar things. It would be like the proteast where everyone turnned their pages black execpt that it would be permenent and keep drawing attention to the problem.
I think it would be a good idea to exclude porn (but not art) from the blocked site of the day. Example: blocking software already seems to block a very high precentage of feminist sites.. and feminists will natrually get much more pissed off about this then the porn. People need to understand why we do not like censorship.. and the best way to do that is to show them that views they agree with are being censored.
Jeff
Hey, what dose everyone think about solving the censorship problem by creating a means for people to find out what was censored and connect to it?
It would be like a banned book lists.. people would specifically go out and visit the censored sites. Now, I know there are encrypted proxies and things, but it seems to me that these sites might themselves become blocked. Plus, we want active notification of cool banned sites, i.e. people see new banneed sites everday as part of the news. Perhaps we could set up a banned site list mirror network. It would be a news service like slashdot or memepool, but would push banned sites. Anyone could DL the html and perl, put up a mirror, and get updates via the network. The only real technical problem is getting people to switch to new mirrors when the old ones are banned. There could also be a windows client which used an encrypted connection to obtain the IP address of a new miror for people who live in really repressive places. People would install the windows program out of curiosity and a banned site list would become there homepage.
I suspect people could run a pretty good memepool style site list by removing the porn from the lists of banned sites.
Jeff
Can a computer program ever possibly be self aware?
:)
I do not know how to do it, but I suspect it will happen, but it more fun to think about self aware memes or thoughs within a computer/human..
Can a computer program, if it is aware, believe something that's not true?
I do not see why not since most humans bvelieve in a god (or reinterpret this as most humans do not believe in your god if you are religious), but it is much more fun to think about designing computers (or humans through genetic and psycological engenring) to figure out specific problems (like open math problems). If you think technologies moves fast now, you should see how fast it moves when you can build people to solve specific problems.
Actually, I am of the opinion that building people to answer specific problems in the "ultimate in open source" (sorry for the wording, but this is the most efficent wast to communicate ythe idea to a slashdot audience) because when Joe creates Bob to solve a problem no one should own the solution, i.e. Joe's ownership == slavery and Bob's ownership == Joe had no reason to make Bob.
Is there such a thing as Free Will?
I can not answer your question because it involves inherently vague terms (free will), but I can say we are very complex mechines (this can be interpreted to mean yes or no depending on what youwant to call free will). Regardless, the connction of us with machines is the importent philosophical point.
What if our entire universe is actually a subatomic particle in another universe?
It dose not matter if it can not effect you in any way (note: things like the big bang and the end of the universe do effect you). There are much cooler questions which are more down to earth.. like stuff from quantum mechanics.
Jeff
why so much emphasis on the various 'nix flavors?
This is because diffrent people like to do things diffrently and we generally consider a reasonable ammount of this to be a good thing (like GNOME vs. KDE) as it keeps development from stagnating (for both psychological (compotition) and technological (one project might write it's self into a corner) reasons).
Why isn't this same sort of vigor and energy being put into applications that could shift the general user base over to linux?
Well some of those applications you are talking about have a fundamentally bad design (microshit bloatware), i.e. they really should be collections of tools and not applications. The problem is figuring out how to get all the same features in a more forward thinking package.. which really is more work.
The applicatins which are not fundamentally bloatware (CAD, Databases, Graphic Arts, ERP, etc.) are actually hard to write (example: you need to know some engenering to write the CAD package features). The best way to get these sorts of packages open sourced is to get a VC (venture capitalist) who is willing gamble on the idea that OSS will eventually kill the compitition. There is a very promissing CAD package which is currently on this road. I would expect to see an ERP package with some serious VC backing in the near future (the VCs will like the idea of giving away the source if they know that people will need to come pay the company to change it, like with ERP or CAD). I don't know if something like Director requires enough custimization to be a viable comersial OSS effort.
Lots of people have been posting about how wonderful this would be for Linux and the GPL, but I would like to point out that any sort of erroding of our freedoms here could be a real problem with things like music and movies. Imagine, you start using ad blocking software only to have a cop show up at your door because a virus in the content of a movie you wantched detected it. What is good for Linux and the GPL is the scare software consumers with this legislation. Example: Tell your local CAD users about this shit.. and then point him to OpenCAD/CASE (name?). Result, the legislation fails and the CAD users have learned something about Linux and OpenCAD. Example: Push the common people to learn about OSS wordprocessors because they might someday need to use it to finnish a letter before they can renue there Word rental.
This legislation creates fear in the hearts of closed source consumers once they understand it.. we should use that to evangalize.
Jeff
Actually, researchers generally do a really good job of making things humane. There are a few that do not, but I think most researches would try and keep their animals from going to the places which are nasty. The point being if those protestors could just go to the researchers nicely and get commitments that the animals will only be sent to places with good conditions when theywere done with them, i.e. a black list of bad orginisations would be far more effective then those protesting loons could ever dream of being.
The protests are especially silly when you realize that the beef industry is probable far more crule then any primate researcher. Who knows maybe all those protestors are vegans.
Jeff
Do humans have a responsible enough nature to handle the implications of cloning effectively
I don't know why people always talk about the moral implications of cloning all the time. It dosn't seem to me like there are any: if you can not just cut off a persons arm because you need another one, so you will not be able to clone a whole person and cut off his/her arm because you need another one.. our existing morality deals with it just fine. If you can clone a persons arm (or a body without a brain) then there are no problems with taking bits and pieces.
Now, there are some scientific ramifications like dose having 10 copies of a bunch of people runnng arround fuck up the gene pool, but that will be handled by scientifically motivated legislation.
There may infact be some issues with genetically adjusting people's traits before birth, but I'm not too worried.
It seems to me that while Technilogy advances at an exponential rate, morality advances at a linear rate, or worse, doesnt advance at all.
There have been points in the past where our morals did not advance fast enough (industrial revolution), but I think that generally this phenomonon is restricted to technologies which (a) directly involve the stupid people (industrial revolution and windows) and (b) no one dose a good job of predicting. I do not feal that genetic engenering of humans will fall into these categories even when we begin to do minor experements on unborn children to see how they turn out (science is generally very careful about what it dose to people).
Now, genetic patents and genetic engenering of products (like terminator genes) is going to have this problem. We should expect there to be starvation in thrid world countries which get hooked on geneticaly engenered corn which dies out (notice this satisfies both (a) and (b) above).. and we should prosecute the company execs which cause it.
Generally, I feal that our moras to restrict the use of technology in bad was dose evolve fast enough.. or at least as fast as could be hoped (there is not much you can do about (a) and (b) execpt fix the problem when it happens).
The much bigger problem is that we reject some applications of technology our of fear and stupidity.. witness encryption, evolution, etc. Example: Neural growth hormone can be used to cure all sorts of neurological diseases (paralisis, alshimerz), but we are not allowed to use it because it is only found in human fetuses, i.e. you need an abortion to get any. This is just moronic as many lives could have been improved with this stuff.. and there are plenty of people getting abortions. I assume the religious right is affraid that abortions would become free or soemthing if this stuff was obtained though them.
Jeff
So, in theory, you can have a little club of people that have some modification of the Linux kernel that no one else can see. But all it takes is one person to give it away to anyone to destroy that. The club cannot (under GPL) restrict anyone from doing so.
Correct..
Legally the way it would work is: If someone starts selling NSA/Linux then they will be required to give away the source, but the NSA could try and stop them from selling NSA/Linux.. and it would be a big fight. Unfortunatly, OSS would probable loose to the NSA in a legal battle over the GPL.. national security and all that crap. On the other hand the NSA knows what kind of contract they are getting into now.
The real question is further restricted distribution, i.e. the NSA giving the NSA/Linux source to a contractor grants the contractor distribution rights. National security can will probable trump this in hind sight, but we might be able to force the NSA not to give it to contractors without distribution rights in the first place.. via the GPL.
Interpretation: Do not try and use the GPL to trck the NSA into giving away stuff, but do use it to push them into giving it away in the first place.
Jeff
I think slashdot should do something to incurage the use of the scince section.. maybe let more articles like this one through.. so people might actually check it out more oftin.
Jeff
I believe in the ACLU, not necessarily in everything it does, but in its general idea. And is it extreme? Yup. But no more extreme than the people it is fighting.
This is what I once believe so I joined the ACLU and the Libertarian party.. figuring the bad parts would cancel out, but then I realized the ACLU is no where near as extreme as I though they were and the Libertarians didn't really get anything done, so now I'm just in the ACLU.
I feal like I have said this a dozen times, but check out the list of what the ACLU has done this year. The stuff is really not that extreem: Gay parter rights, protecting some nut who dosn't want his picture taken for dtrivers license for religious reasons, putting an end to driving while black stops, keeping the gov. from posting the 10 commandments in schools, getting some guy out of jail who the gov. has held for 3 years on "seret evidence."
The turth is you probable agree with them more then you know.. you just never paid attention to the issues.. and you heard on our two things (like arremative action if your a libertarian; or defending the free speech of the KKK if you are a democrat) which you were uncomfertable with. It nice knowing that the ACLU is really watching out for us.
Jeff
They are far from anti-religious they just don't like people using the government to push religion on other people. Look at the actual cases and not the religious rights propoganda. The cases that they are known for which make them seem anti-religious are the prayer in schools things.
Example: This year a bunch of religious right fucks descided to pass a law requiring all schools to post the 10 commandments of the classroom wall. Oh yeah, the ACLU is really interfering in someones freedom by challenging this one on behalf of students of other religions.
Exmaple: This year a student walked out of the prayer durring his/her graduation in protest (a perfectly legal protest) and was then denied reentry by the police and was refused his/her deploma. Oh yeah, the ACLU is really a bad guy for interfering with the rights of those other students to see this student denied a deploma because of a legitimat protest.
Example: This year a school desided to deny graduation honors to two students because they were pregnant outside of marige. Oh yeah, that violates someones right to not see anyone who is "moraly unfit" by some loons standards recieve any honors.
Actually, if you look at the early days of the ACLU you will see that the ACLU's defence of minority religions is one of the reason many of the religions get allong so well today.. and I'm not talking little things here.. I'm talking protistants making it a crime to be catholic in their town (yes that was common less then 80 years ago). Whats that you say.. that violates the 1st amendment.. well yes that exactly what the ACLU said and that's what they are still saing today.. and it pisses lots of ignorent people off.
The times when the ACLU "opens mount and inserts foot" are when they defend the rights of some REALLY unpopular group (like the KKK) to freedom of speech.
I just hate it when people who don't know anyhting about the ACLU act like it's some busy body org. that just runs arround messing with people. The truth is that the ACLU is the one keeping the gov. from interfering with our rights period. Hell, the whole way the orginisation works prevents them from doing what you are accusing them of doing, i.e. they need to present a person who is actually being hurt to even have a case.
I suggest you take a look at the real history of the ACLU instead of the boggy man stories. You would not have the freedom to say you are an atheist or islam today in this country without the ACLU's past efforts period. That's real defence of freedom of religion.
Jeff
BTW> The only time when you could say that the ACLU was pushing belief or being anti-religious was the "Monkey Trial," but even their defence of Scopes for teaching evolution was based on the fact that evolution was a scientific docterin and not a religious one.. Hmm.. Actualy, I'm not even shure the ACLU was on that case, but i think they may have been since the teecher was being persicuted.
the ACLU scares me a bit
The religious right has gone to great lengths to damage the ACLU's credibility, but the turth is that many many of our freedoms would not exists today if it was not for the ACLU. Example: It was the ACLU that really put an end to the religious persicution of minority Christian sects by majority ones. Actually, just this year they defended a Christian priest who interprets the no graven image thing the way the moslems do so that he could get a drivers lissence without needing his picture taken. They are also defending people held in prison by INS on secret evidence. The people of the ACLU are not scarry.. they are heros.. look at the real history of the ACLU.
"I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" Voltaire
This is the essence of the ACLU. I suggest you look at what the ACLU has done this year and read What's a Nice Republican Girl Like Me Doing in the ACLU? by Shelia Suess Kennedy.
The best kept secret about the ACLU is that most americans would agree with more of what the ACLU dose then with what there own political parties do. You should not accuse them of being evil or scarry just because they happen to defend one or two things that you do not like (or becuase they neglect one or two things that you do.. like gun ownership). Look at what they really do.
Jeff
First, is the reform party really any diffrent from the other 2? I sorta assumed it was diffrent when I heard about Jesse Ventura, but then the reform party tried to kick him out when he said something about organized religion being a problem and Pat Buchanen joined it. I assume that means the party was never really as interested in the kind of fundamnetal reforms you are talking about.
Second, I like both the Green party and the Libertarian party. I do not really agree with them, but I feal that they have a lot to contribute.. a lot more then the republicans or democrats. It seems to me that what we really need is not a reform through ellection but a reform through media. Example: the WTO protests probable did a LOT to advance the general public understanding of the problems with globilization.. and to take free trade off the holy words list. this is what will bring about real reforms.
It is also worth mentioning that the ACLU has been more effective then ANY political party in supporting generally good stuff. Check out the list of all the great stuff they did this year. While Katz was bitching about the Hellmouth they were suing the pants off of those schools.. and winning. If you are at all interested in the future of civil liberties you really should check out the ACLU.. you will probable find they do mcuh more stuff which you like then dislike. Everyone seems to pink the one thing which the ACLU dose which they dislike to grip about, but the plain truth is american freedom began 80 years ago when the ACLU started to enforce the bill of rights.
Jeff
Sexual education is presently a part of school programs (depending on the area) at various grade levels. I myself had my 6th grade class touch on it. At ALL times parents had the option to preview material and choose NOT to have their child participate. Some parents exercised that option, most did not.
This is compleatly different from a kid happening accrost something on the internet because the school is *activly* presenting the information. You do not have the right to regulate the rest of the world just to keep your kid from finding something out about sex before you are ready to tell them, but you do have the right to prevent a government institution from *activly* presenting the information. It is worth mentioning that public libraries are already prohibited from banning books on sexual development.. the internet is no diffrent.
This has nothing at all to do with telling my kid it's not OK to be gay.
ESPECIALLY when it comes to questionable material such as what would be filtered by stock filter software.
Actually, censorship of gay rights, free speech advocates, etc. is exactly what the censorware people want.. and the censorware programs seem to be giving it to them. The religious right is VERY interested in stoping the progress of the gay rights movement (ammong other things) and they regularly use "protecting the children from porn and child molesters" as an excuse. Example: the CDA was designed to stop "indecent material" (read gay rights) and not just pornography. Actually, strictly anti-porn bill are not usually struck down by the courts, but anti-porn was not good enough for the religious right.. they want to stop the use of the internet for a variety of civil liberties causes.
The truth is the public schools have the most efffective anti-porn measure available: place the computers out in the open and have a librarian occasionally look at what the kids are doing. No one would object if congress passes a resolution requiring schools and libraries to make a reasonable effort to have librarians peek at what the kids are doing, but as I said before the religious right is not interested in an effective messure at preventing porn.. just one that also provents discussion of issues they don't agree with.
Jeff
If you paid any attention to the debate you would know that the religious right is NOT pushing censorware to protect your children from pron! They really only care about preventing people from having access to information sources like /., the ACLU, gay rights, evolution, free speech, etc. If you look at the history of censorware it ALWAYS blocks lots of non-porn sites like anti-censorware sites, ACLU, gay rights sites, etc. Do not believe these people when they say they are out to protect the kids.. just look at the censored sites lists.
It is also worth mentioning that this is why the CDA was the comminications *decensy* act instead of a computer *porn* act.. they don't care about the porn.. they care about forcing their religion on all of us.
All you people posting about how you want your kids to be prevented from accessing porn need to get with it and look up the real history of the debate. Unfortunatly, there is currently no porn blocking software which dose not activly assist the religious right in blocking informtation that they do not want people to have.. and this is a real problem for parents who really do wnt to protect there children from porn at home. It appears that the best technological solution is to use a squid proxy to log the sites your child visits and occasionally look at the logs.
Jeff
Do you think you know how to parent my child better than I? Does the government?
If you are telling your gay 17 year old it is not ok to be gay then yes. If you are telling your 12 year old that it is not ok to learn about sex then yes. Kids do have a *right* to learn about these things regardless of what the parent says period. Most of the censorware debate rests on the fact that the ability to censor has always been missused. Example: these censorware programs do block discussion of gay issues and sexual health and development discussion (and anti-censorware sites.. and sites that oppose the political belifs of the persedent of the company). I'm sorry but the censorware folks have abused their power a lot.. and we are not going to put up with it.
The existing laws are already sufficent to deal with the possiblility of a porn site targeted at kids, the librarys will probable choose search engins which avoid porn, and parents can use whatever censorware they deem fit at home.. or just talk to the kids.. that will be enough.
If you are concerned about your kids then I suggest you take the suggestion of another slashdoter and just read the logs (proxy).
Actually, I think there should be ways to sue censorware sites which missrepresent sites as porn sites or censor things without explicit concent. Example: Scientologists sneek an anti-anti-scientology censorship program onto cult members computers (I would assume it censors other religions too).
Jeff
I've always felt that when grade schools try to introduce students to the news paper in grade four or so they should also teach them the power of critical thinking.
This is one of the most importent changes we could make to our culture. They do make some attempts to teach critical thinking now, but it is gernerally too little too late.. it would be especially great if you could teach critical thinking to children in that preschool ultragulable phase where they believe anyhting there parents say.. and learn religion.
The big question is "how do you teach critical thinking?" I don't know much about the real research on this, but Caral Sagan says that the solution should be for science to be taught as a history of mistakes and correections instead of a collection of facts. It wouldn't hurt to teach people quantum mechanics at a younger age since quantum really pushes you to accept the experemental method (at least it did for me). Unfortunatly, I don't know that any of the above are useful for teaching kids since they require a lot of additional information, but I still think that it should be possible to develope a program to teach the scientific method to preschoolers.
It is worth mentioning that you can teach preschool kids a hell of a lot (improve memory, increase creativity, etc.), but you must maintain the teaching as they grow up of the benifits are lost. Head start for example brings inner city kids up to the preformance level of subberban kids, but if the other inner city schools do not continue to foster the program then they slip back. This means that we need a critical thinking program installed at all levels of education.
Jeff