Animations freezing up when you hold down the right mouse button does not crash the Amiga
Some software may have done this when the user accessed the menus, I'm not sure it was a fundamental OS restriction.
Snort. Heard this argument applied to Windows 3.x/95, Mac and even Vista. Crap applications, drivers, faulty hardware is cause for crashes, but some crashes are also caused by the OS.
As I said, AmigaOS lacked memory protection, so a crap application could bring down the OS. Today we'd say that's a flaw in the OS, but back then, it was true of most OSs, including TOS. I could make TOS crash as many times as I wanted by running a dodgy application that I wrote 5 minutes ago - by your logic, is it fair to conclude that therefore, TOS is very unstable?
Was AmigaOS itself bug free? Maybe not, but I don't think you can claim that for any other OS. I'm not really sure what your point is - if you want to say an OS was more unstable, let's have evidence. Otherwise it's just random speculation, no different to people claiming that one OS today such as Linux, OS X or XP is more stable than another, based on some anecdote that they once saw an XP machine crash, but this hasn't happened on their Linux box yet. (Although I'd argue that your speculation is worse - at least today, we can attribute all crashes as being the fault of the OS, as they are all supposed to be memory protected - with your AmigaOS vs TOS claim, we have no idea if it's the OS, or the applications that you used.)
Why do you assume it's Windows the one he hasn't tried? (Modern Windows wouldn't have run on a P90, just as OS X isn't classic MacOS.) I've rarely had freezes on Windows since switching to the 2000/XP line, in fact, I can't remember the last time.
Yes, I loved Datatypes. I find it mad that even today, I have to ship a 3rd party library with any applications I write if I want to be able to load any images in a format more complex than BMP (thus having to worry about licencing issues, and increasing filesize). It's sad to see tutorials for OpenGL and DirectX having to go "And now here's how to load a BMP file".
It was like an early form of codecs in a way - except it was better, as datatypes could work with any type of file, not just video. AIUI it's possible to get DirectX to load video using installed codecs (DirectShow?), but is there a way to get it to load an image? Given that Windows clearly has the ability to load a variety of images (e.g., for thumbnails), it seems odd not to allow applications access to this.
It was also great from a user point of view - as long as an application supported datatypes, it could handle any format you had a datatype, even one that didn't exist at the time the application was written.
There was also an amusing case with the problem about GIFs being patented - ISTR that the Personal Paint developers didn't want to pay royalties, so they didn't support GIFs. But it did support Datatypes. So all you had to do was download a GIF datatype (which strictly speaking presumably would've been illegal due to not paying royalties either - but it's a lot harder to shut down a small freely available file, compared with a commercial product), and you had support for GIFs.
Just to clarify - only earlier emulators needed a physical chip, later ones such as Shapeshifter and Fusion only needed a ROM image that could be loaded from disk.
I liked: YAM (email client - I preferred this over any Windows software I could find when I switched back in 1999); various decent and relatively inexpensive (compared to other platforms) 3D raytracers (such as Imagine, Cinema 4D, Lightwave), many of which are still around today on multiple platforms now; OctaMED (and later Sound Studio) - music software even today on Windows either seems to be poor, or very expensive (anyone have recommendations? MadTracker is the best I've found...); ARexx (I know modern OSs have scripting languages that can be used to control some applications, but because there's no standard with the OS, every application uses a different one).
I also loved programming on the Amiga, firstly in AMOS (there was Blitz if you preferred an OS friendly BASIC), and later C/C++. Whilst the AmigaOS's GUI toolkit was okay, I particularly loved MUI - it made creating resizable OSs easy, years before other toolkits were doing it (and it seems that Windows still hasn't caught on, with Visual Studio expecting us to point and click, thus fixing everything to x/y coordinates, which probably explains why so many Windows applications have windows that aren't resizeable, even when they should be). Creating the GUI could be done inlined in the code with easy to use macros, which meant you didn't have to faff with external editors or files, and swapping two GUI elements could be done just by swapping two lines of code (similarly with inserting or removing elements). It also made it easy to create dynamic GUIs. I'm still waiting for a cross-platform port.
What was your preferred OS of the time, btw? Please do share what so so "special" about it?
None of the Amiga games/demos used the OS for anything. They either ignored it or dumped it to gain some extra RAM.
False. At the time when this was common, this was true of most other platforms too, and made sense (even today, the same is true for consoles - Windows is only different because you need an OS to cope with the range of hardware on modern PCs; and even then, they usually don't use the OS for things like GUIs).
Indeed - and I think a big problem was also the amount of memory it took. We joke about Vista's usage, but at least it's affordable now. Back then, even 16MB was expensive. It meant that even though a 486 should have run rings around an Amiga 1200's 68020, for most purposes, I found the Amiga faster and more responsive, probably because Windows was thrashing all the time in disk space. Windows 98 took even more memory. It wasn't until 128MB and above became affordable that things improved.
XP was what was promised in 1995.
Windows 2000 got there too, I think. I eagerly switched from Windows 98 as soon as I could, and conceded that finally Microsoft had released a fairly decent OS. They just didn't market it as their consumer OS.
Since the AmigaOS lacked memory protection, a dodgy program could bring down the system, yes.
But few mainstream OSs of the time had memory protection - including Atari's TOS.
So tales of how the Amiga could crash doesn't really tell us much, because all OSs of the time were pretty flaky - if you're going to claim that TOS was more robust than AmigaOS, I'd expect to see evidence rather than anecdotes.
If playing music or an animation caused crashes, then either the software you were using happened to be crap, or there was a hardware problem. Products such as ProTracker or OctaMED had no trouble playing music.
Indeed - but it's interesting how such a simple thing like including MIDI ports mattered, especially when you consider that PCs today don't have MIDI as standard, but are obviously used a lot in music (before anyone points out - I know that PCs can connect to MIDI via the gameport, or USB, but the point is that these adapter cables cost at least as much as what a parallel port MIDI interface for the Amiga used to cost).
I must have missed the scientific consensus that global warming was a myth? I think you're the one following a "religion" here.
Air quality. Water quality. Maintaining features that control or lessen flooding. Managing animal populations to control the spread of disease. Managing agricultural run off. Not pie in the sky power schemes.
Which are all part of environmentalism too. So I guess your point is, you have a disagreement with some kind of environmentalists - but that's completely off-topic for this article, and in no way is the article "pandering" to them. If you think it is, feel free to point out scientific inaccuracies in the article.
He posted a comment on Slashdot, which is about as much as most people ever do about an issue.
Well sure, it's about as much as I do too:) - but the point is that the environmentalists he slags off are doing more, so criticising them merely on the grounds of "there are other things to worry about too" is rather petty when he's not doing anything on any issue, beyond posting on Slashdot.
I'm not sure that anything involving regulation of the market such as ratings can be said in any meaningful sense to be a "free market". The point is that ratings are not merely a guideline, they are enforced with restrictions (obviously, who can see them, but there may also be issues with who may stock them - e.g., for games I believe it's the case in the US that may retailers don't want to stock an adult rated game at all, even if they're able to restrict the sale to adults). There may be other restrictions (e.g., advertising?)
Yes, it's true that there'll be less demand for a product that has Government imposed restrictions, and further restrictions added by retailers, but that's pointing out the bleeding obvious. This is not in any sense a "free market" where people are choosing what type of films they want to see.
and then create an R rated super hero movie
As pointed out, it doesn't help when all the copyrights of comic books seem to be owned perpetually by one big movie company now.
I actually believe that people should have a right to make money from their work - even if this is often not the majority view on slashdot.
I suspect that most people on Slashdot have no problem with copyright laws in principle. The problem is the way they are done, such as excessive terms (especially extending it retroactively and perpetually), and issues such as the one you point out about the radio.
Wind and solar! Wind and solar! Well, what about nuke and hydro. You know, sources that can actually provide a base load and are something viable now?
Where in TFA does it suggest we should move to wind and solar? Nuclear power and hydro are alternative possibilites too - I'm not sure how this is an argument against the idea that we should be careful of wasteful energy use (whether it's from a CO2 point of view, or from a running-out-of-oil point of view - even if you have your head in the sand about global warming, the issue of energy supply is still an important one)?
Indeed, I'm sure I recall plenty of people who argue for using renewable energy sources who argue against wind power, as it has its own problems, and there are perhaps better alternatives. But let's not let facts get in the way of a nice anti-environment straw man bashing.
How many do you hear going on about all the birth control hormones building up in our water?
So you're complaining that there aren't enough people talking about your cause? I'm sure there are plenty of people who talk about this issue too. People are free to talk about what they want. Nobody thinks "Well there's already X number of people talking about this, but Duradin on Slashdot thinks we need more people talking about that as well, so I'll have to talk about that instead". What have you done to promote that issue?
Europe is so ass backwards with its, socialism, communism, capitalism, dictatorships... FFS pick one!
Pick a straw man, you mean?
At least we have a Federal Reserve and a single currency. Are you using Lira or Euros? Pounds or Euros? Duetchmarks or Euros? Franks or Euros?
The continent of North America has a single federal reserve, and US Dollars are the standard currency throughout? I don't think so.
However, suggesting that Europe is LESS screwed up is pretty offensive to the descendants of, and the people, that sacrificed their lives to rescue Europe from the Germans, Russians, and Japanese.
And what about Wolfenstein RPG? It's a new game rather than just a port, but it's still 3D, and runs on any bog standard Java phone (which means that the Iphone presumably isn't good enough to run it).
I would have been interested to hear some of these things, but unfortunately it seems that Iphonedot, er I mean, Slashdot only covers the Iphone. And I guess a story solely for the Iphone is inevitable, if even "Website now viewable on Iphone" is newsworthy (as was the story we got a few weeks ago). And so we'll have more people mistakenly believing that this is yet another "Apple first".
And since Wikileaks has no system of age verification in place (AFAIK) there is atleast some kind of reason.
They don't host images.
Even if they did - is it illegal in Germany to have any kind of adult site that doesn't have age verification? (This isn't the case in many other western countries such as the US or UK - hell, here you can walk into a newsagent and pick up newspapers and magazines on the shelf showing such stuff...)
But moreover, are you suggesting that merely linking to any kind of adult site is illegal? That would catch a lot of people!
Plus, child pornography is illegal as well.
Thank you, Captain Obvious, but they aren't guilty of that.
I think one big problem is that somewhere along the line, a "search warrant" turned into a "search and confiscate anything they like" warrant. AIUI (at least in the UK), you can expect to lose all electronic equipment for many months or more, with no chance to make backups. No compensation offered for lost use, and tough luck if it's damaged or data is lost when you finally get it back.
People running businesses may go under as a result of lost equipment and (more importantly data). Even for private individuals, you lose your means of communication (Internet access, phone) which are increasingly becoming a necessity in modern life (not everyone can pay to replace stolen[*], er, confiscated items). You lose access to all sorts of personal items, from email to photos - not to mention the privacy implications of having strangers look over private and perhaps intimate items (theoretically a search warrant has always had this risk, but firstly they'd be less likely to look in say your photo album or love letter collection unless it was relevant, and secondly they'd have to look there and then with you watching - they couldn't take it away to look it over at their leisure, with god knows who looking at it).
But people support this, because we still think of it simply as a _search_ warrant.
[*] Of course, not stolen. You'd actually be better off if they were stolen - you could claim on the insurance, and there'd perhaps be more chance of getting it back...
Well that's the point isn't it - all sorts of things are justified in the name of "think of the children", such as censorship or worse, even when there is no harm done to children.
But when we actually have a case that involves a child being stripped against her will by strangers, and thinking of the children is actually a valid argument for once, that's suddenly okay.
I guess the madness of war on drugs trumps the "think of the children" hysteria.
(Though to be honest, I've long suspected double standards like this - consider the sort of person who supports censorship and witchhunts on anyone who does things he doesn't like, claiming "think of the children", but in another breath supports bringing back caning in schools "because they need a good hiding"...)
Okay, so write the "short and simple" question on a note and pass it to your co-worker instead. Or send an email and ask it. Phrase it in terms of a yes or no question if you prefer.
What's the difference? Why does the employer doing it make it acceptable, when it would rightly be unacceptable sexual harrassment if any employee did it?
Not sure why you were modded down - this response is entirely correct. People tend to notice the ones that annoy them, and the ones who don't do this don't get noticed. It's true just as much of religious people, as it is for atheists.
But hey, I guess at least one religious mod would rather try to hide any fair criticism, than engage in reasoned debate. The very fact that we dare question makes as angry atheists who are "attacking" people.
Sexual harassment? That's a pretty light definition considering this is a simple true/false test.
Here's a test: go to one of your co-workers (someone you're not on personal terms without outside of work) and strike up a conversation about their sex life, and start asking about their sexuality, whether they're attracted to members of the same sex.
Slashdot Mirror
Animations freezing up when you hold down the right mouse button does not crash the Amiga
Some software may have done this when the user accessed the menus, I'm not sure it was a fundamental OS restriction.
Snort. Heard this argument applied to Windows 3.x/95, Mac and even Vista. Crap applications, drivers, faulty hardware is cause for crashes, but some crashes are also caused by the OS.
As I said, AmigaOS lacked memory protection, so a crap application could bring down the OS. Today we'd say that's a flaw in the OS, but back then, it was true of most OSs, including TOS. I could make TOS crash as many times as I wanted by running a dodgy application that I wrote 5 minutes ago - by your logic, is it fair to conclude that therefore, TOS is very unstable?
Was AmigaOS itself bug free? Maybe not, but I don't think you can claim that for any other OS. I'm not really sure what your point is - if you want to say an OS was more unstable, let's have evidence. Otherwise it's just random speculation, no different to people claiming that one OS today such as Linux, OS X or XP is more stable than another, based on some anecdote that they once saw an XP machine crash, but this hasn't happened on their Linux box yet. (Although I'd argue that your speculation is worse - at least today, we can attribute all crashes as being the fault of the OS, as they are all supposed to be memory protected - with your AmigaOS vs TOS claim, we have no idea if it's the OS, or the applications that you used.)
Why do you assume it's Windows the one he hasn't tried? (Modern Windows wouldn't have run on a P90, just as OS X isn't classic MacOS.) I've rarely had freezes on Windows since switching to the 2000/XP line, in fact, I can't remember the last time.
Yes, I loved Datatypes. I find it mad that even today, I have to ship a 3rd party library with any applications I write if I want to be able to load any images in a format more complex than BMP (thus having to worry about licencing issues, and increasing filesize). It's sad to see tutorials for OpenGL and DirectX having to go "And now here's how to load a BMP file".
It was like an early form of codecs in a way - except it was better, as datatypes could work with any type of file, not just video. AIUI it's possible to get DirectX to load video using installed codecs (DirectShow?), but is there a way to get it to load an image? Given that Windows clearly has the ability to load a variety of images (e.g., for thumbnails), it seems odd not to allow applications access to this.
It was also great from a user point of view - as long as an application supported datatypes, it could handle any format you had a datatype, even one that didn't exist at the time the application was written.
There was also an amusing case with the problem about GIFs being patented - ISTR that the Personal Paint developers didn't want to pay royalties, so they didn't support GIFs. But it did support Datatypes. So all you had to do was download a GIF datatype (which strictly speaking presumably would've been illegal due to not paying royalties either - but it's a lot harder to shut down a small freely available file, compared with a commercial product), and you had support for GIFs.
as well as Mac memory chips to run Mac OS.
Just to clarify - only earlier emulators needed a physical chip, later ones such as Shapeshifter and Fusion only needed a ROM image that could be loaded from disk.
I liked: YAM (email client - I preferred this over any Windows software I could find when I switched back in 1999); various decent and relatively inexpensive (compared to other platforms) 3D raytracers (such as Imagine, Cinema 4D, Lightwave), many of which are still around today on multiple platforms now; OctaMED (and later Sound Studio) - music software even today on Windows either seems to be poor, or very expensive (anyone have recommendations? MadTracker is the best I've found...); ARexx (I know modern OSs have scripting languages that can be used to control some applications, but because there's no standard with the OS, every application uses a different one).
I also loved programming on the Amiga, firstly in AMOS (there was Blitz if you preferred an OS friendly BASIC), and later C/C++. Whilst the AmigaOS's GUI toolkit was okay, I particularly loved MUI - it made creating resizable OSs easy, years before other toolkits were doing it (and it seems that Windows still hasn't caught on, with Visual Studio expecting us to point and click, thus fixing everything to x/y coordinates, which probably explains why so many Windows applications have windows that aren't resizeable, even when they should be). Creating the GUI could be done inlined in the code with easy to use macros, which meant you didn't have to faff with external editors or files, and swapping two GUI elements could be done just by swapping two lines of code (similarly with inserting or removing elements). It also made it easy to create dynamic GUIs. I'm still waiting for a cross-platform port.
What was your preferred OS of the time, btw? Please do share what so so "special" about it?
None of the Amiga games/demos used the OS for anything. They either ignored it or dumped it to gain some extra RAM.
False. At the time when this was common, this was true of most other platforms too, and made sense (even today, the same is true for consoles - Windows is only different because you need an OS to cope with the range of hardware on modern PCs; and even then, they usually don't use the OS for things like GUIs).
But later on, many Amiga games used the OS.
Indeed - and I think a big problem was also the amount of memory it took. We joke about Vista's usage, but at least it's affordable now. Back then, even 16MB was expensive. It meant that even though a 486 should have run rings around an Amiga 1200's 68020, for most purposes, I found the Amiga faster and more responsive, probably because Windows was thrashing all the time in disk space. Windows 98 took even more memory. It wasn't until 128MB and above became affordable that things improved.
XP was what was promised in 1995.
Windows 2000 got there too, I think. I eagerly switched from Windows 98 as soon as I could, and conceded that finally Microsoft had released a fairly decent OS. They just didn't market it as their consumer OS.
Since the AmigaOS lacked memory protection, a dodgy program could bring down the system, yes.
But few mainstream OSs of the time had memory protection - including Atari's TOS.
So tales of how the Amiga could crash doesn't really tell us much, because all OSs of the time were pretty flaky - if you're going to claim that TOS was more robust than AmigaOS, I'd expect to see evidence rather than anecdotes.
If playing music or an animation caused crashes, then either the software you were using happened to be crap, or there was a hardware problem. Products such as ProTracker or OctaMED had no trouble playing music.
Indeed - but it's interesting how such a simple thing like including MIDI ports mattered, especially when you consider that PCs today don't have MIDI as standard, but are obviously used a lot in music (before anyone points out - I know that PCs can connect to MIDI via the gameport, or USB, but the point is that these adapter cables cost at least as much as what a parallel port MIDI interface for the Amiga used to cost).
I must have missed the scientific consensus that global warming was a myth? I think you're the one following a "religion" here.
Air quality. Water quality. Maintaining features that control or lessen flooding. Managing animal populations to control the spread of disease. Managing agricultural run off. Not pie in the sky power schemes.
Which are all part of environmentalism too. So I guess your point is, you have a disagreement with some kind of environmentalists - but that's completely off-topic for this article, and in no way is the article "pandering" to them. If you think it is, feel free to point out scientific inaccuracies in the article.
He posted a comment on Slashdot, which is about as much as most people ever do about an issue.
Well sure, it's about as much as I do too :) - but the point is that the environmentalists he slags off are doing more, so criticising them merely on the grounds of "there are other things to worry about too" is rather petty when he's not doing anything on any issue, beyond posting on Slashdot.
I'm not sure that anything involving regulation of the market such as ratings can be said in any meaningful sense to be a "free market". The point is that ratings are not merely a guideline, they are enforced with restrictions (obviously, who can see them, but there may also be issues with who may stock them - e.g., for games I believe it's the case in the US that may retailers don't want to stock an adult rated game at all, even if they're able to restrict the sale to adults). There may be other restrictions (e.g., advertising?)
Yes, it's true that there'll be less demand for a product that has Government imposed restrictions, and further restrictions added by retailers, but that's pointing out the bleeding obvious. This is not in any sense a "free market" where people are choosing what type of films they want to see.
and then create an R rated super hero movie
As pointed out, it doesn't help when all the copyrights of comic books seem to be owned perpetually by one big movie company now.
I actually believe that people should have a right to make money from their work - even if this is often not the majority view on slashdot.
I suspect that most people on Slashdot have no problem with copyright laws in principle. The problem is the way they are done, such as excessive terms (especially extending it retroactively and perpetually), and issues such as the one you point out about the radio.
If too much money is going into wasteful resources, you're telling me they'll cut the profit rather than try to cut costs elsewhere?
My there's a lot of straw men in this thread.
Wind and solar! Wind and solar! Well, what about nuke and hydro. You know, sources that can actually provide a base load and are something viable now?
Where in TFA does it suggest we should move to wind and solar? Nuclear power and hydro are alternative possibilites too - I'm not sure how this is an argument against the idea that we should be careful of wasteful energy use (whether it's from a CO2 point of view, or from a running-out-of-oil point of view - even if you have your head in the sand about global warming, the issue of energy supply is still an important one)?
Indeed, I'm sure I recall plenty of people who argue for using renewable energy sources who argue against wind power, as it has its own problems, and there are perhaps better alternatives. But let's not let facts get in the way of a nice anti-environment straw man bashing.
How many do you hear going on about all the birth control hormones building up in our water?
So you're complaining that there aren't enough people talking about your cause? I'm sure there are plenty of people who talk about this issue too. People are free to talk about what they want. Nobody thinks "Well there's already X number of people talking about this, but Duradin on Slashdot thinks we need more people talking about that as well, so I'll have to talk about that instead". What have you done to promote that issue?
Europe is so ass backwards with its, socialism, communism, capitalism, dictatorships... FFS pick one!
Pick a straw man, you mean?
At least we have a Federal Reserve and a single currency. Are you using Lira or Euros? Pounds or Euros? Duetchmarks or Euros? Franks or Euros?
The continent of North America has a single federal reserve, and US Dollars are the standard currency throughout? I don't think so.
However, suggesting that Europe is LESS screwed up is pretty offensive to the descendants of, and the people, that sacrificed their lives to rescue Europe from the Germans, Russians, and Japanese.
You lose the thread.
Indeed, 3D on mobile devices is nothing new. E.g., a quick Google finds http://www.foshopro.com/download_Wolfenstein_3D_for_Windows_Mobile_PocketPC_Smartphone_cheap.html , http://symbianv3.com/wolfenstein-3d-for-your-mobile/ , http://dibosmobile.blogspot.com/2007/11/wolfenstein-3d-pocket-pc-game.html .
And what about Wolfenstein RPG? It's a new game rather than just a port, but it's still 3D, and runs on any bog standard Java phone (which means that the Iphone presumably isn't good enough to run it).
I would have been interested to hear some of these things, but unfortunately it seems that Iphonedot, er I mean, Slashdot only covers the Iphone. And I guess a story solely for the Iphone is inevitable, if even "Website now viewable on Iphone" is newsworthy (as was the story we got a few weeks ago). And so we'll have more people mistakenly believing that this is yet another "Apple first".
Oh, I know :( It's a mad law. And for anyone not following, next on this list is sexual cartoons with any character that looks like they're under-18.
And since Wikileaks has no system of age verification in place (AFAIK) there is atleast some kind of reason.
They don't host images.
Even if they did - is it illegal in Germany to have any kind of adult site that doesn't have age verification? (This isn't the case in many other western countries such as the US or UK - hell, here you can walk into a newsagent and pick up newspapers and magazines on the shelf showing such stuff...)
But moreover, are you suggesting that merely linking to any kind of adult site is illegal? That would catch a lot of people!
Plus, child pornography is illegal as well.
Thank you, Captain Obvious, but they aren't guilty of that.
often even countries where child pornography and the like are not illegal.
Citation needed.
(And what do you mean by "the like" - are you suggesting other kinds of images need to be illegal to possess too?)
And his laptop and an external HD were taken.
I think one big problem is that somewhere along the line, a "search warrant" turned into a "search and confiscate anything they like" warrant. AIUI (at least in the UK), you can expect to lose all electronic equipment for many months or more, with no chance to make backups. No compensation offered for lost use, and tough luck if it's damaged or data is lost when you finally get it back.
People running businesses may go under as a result of lost equipment and (more importantly data). Even for private individuals, you lose your means of communication (Internet access, phone) which are increasingly becoming a necessity in modern life (not everyone can pay to replace stolen[*], er, confiscated items). You lose access to all sorts of personal items, from email to photos - not to mention the privacy implications of having strangers look over private and perhaps intimate items (theoretically a search warrant has always had this risk, but firstly they'd be less likely to look in say your photo album or love letter collection unless it was relevant, and secondly they'd have to look there and then with you watching - they couldn't take it away to look it over at their leisure, with god knows who looking at it).
But people support this, because we still think of it simply as a _search_ warrant.
[*] Of course, not stolen. You'd actually be better off if they were stolen - you could claim on the insurance, and there'd perhaps be more chance of getting it back...
Right, but apart from education, social security, roads and the Internet, what have the Government ever done for us?
Well that's the point isn't it - all sorts of things are justified in the name of "think of the children", such as censorship or worse, even when there is no harm done to children.
But when we actually have a case that involves a child being stripped against her will by strangers, and thinking of the children is actually a valid argument for once, that's suddenly okay.
I guess the madness of war on drugs trumps the "think of the children" hysteria.
(Though to be honest, I've long suspected double standards like this - consider the sort of person who supports censorship and witchhunts on anyone who does things he doesn't like, claiming "think of the children", but in another breath supports bringing back caning in schools "because they need a good hiding"...)
Okay, so write the "short and simple" question on a note and pass it to your co-worker instead. Or send an email and ask it. Phrase it in terms of a yes or no question if you prefer.
What's the difference? Why does the employer doing it make it acceptable, when it would rightly be unacceptable sexual harrassment if any employee did it?
Not sure why you were modded down - this response is entirely correct. People tend to notice the ones that annoy them, and the ones who don't do this don't get noticed. It's true just as much of religious people, as it is for atheists.
But hey, I guess at least one religious mod would rather try to hide any fair criticism, than engage in reasoned debate. The very fact that we dare question makes as angry atheists who are "attacking" people.
Sexual harassment? That's a pretty light definition considering this is a simple true/false test.
Here's a test: go to one of your co-workers (someone you're not on personal terms without outside of work) and strike up a conversation about their sex life, and start asking about their sexuality, whether they're attracted to members of the same sex.
Let us know how you get on.