Depends on the kind of blog. A personal feelings blog, akin to most Live Journals/My Space/etc? I agree.
What's a "personal feelings" blog? Do you simply mean "personal" blog? I'm not sure how you can sum up all personal blogs/journals/etc.
I actually find the stand-alone political and technical blogs, where people think they are posting insightful material to the world, but actually hardly anyone ever reads them, to be the sign of immaturity. Indeed it's ironic that the so-called "personal" blogs often get a far greater response from readers from political/technical posts than many political or technical blogs.
Personal blogs at least do when they are intended to do - whether that's keeping a diary, or communicating with friends. I find it odd that it's the personal journals on community sites like LJ and MySpace which get all the criticism on Slashdot, even though the criticisms (e.g., "person thinking that the whole world is interested in him") apply only to the stand-alone blogs.
Not having a TV licence in the UK is very serious - you will be hounded incessantly and even get visits by the BBC licence people late at night
And just to add to this - anyone without a TV licence gets this treatment, even if they don't have a TV.
And if you're unlucky like me one time, they cock up and give you this treatment even if you have a licence.
I don't mind the TV licence, but the way they enforce it is unacceptable - if any private company tried their tactics, they'd be done for harrassment, making false claims and threatening behaviour.
Well, I'm a licence payer, and I'd like the content I pay for to be in an open non-DRMed format. I couldn't really be bothered if someone abroad downloads it for free.
Given that it's paid for by the citizens, the argument that they might be slightly less able to sell to other networks doesn't really hold - the whole _point_ of having a company funded by mandatory payments is to avoid all these sorts of negative decisions that the free market might cause a company to make. If they want to switch to being a company producing DRM content so it can sell to other companies, then I want my money back, because I sure don't want to be funding it for them.
"freeing us from the tedium" implies that we are now at liberty to use our minds for big and better (or at least different) things - but what are these things, for the average person?
Well the article says:
"The research reveals that the average citizen has to remember five passwords, five pin numbers, two number plates, three security ID numbers and three bank account numbers just to get through day to day life."
As the article mentions, "the less you use of your memory, the poorer it becomes".
The thing is, it's speculation to say that people's memories are poorer. The only evidence cited is that people cannot remember numbers and birthdays, but this is likely because people use phones, computers or even old fashioned diaries to do the job instead. Whether it's right or wrong to rely on such devices is a matter of opinion, but the point is that the evidence does not support the conclusion that people's memories are poorer.
What's most bizarre is that the article even acknowledges that people are now remembering passwords, PINs and so on, yet still seems to cling to this belief that people's memories are therefore worse! To suggest that remembering these extra things causes people to forget other things is pure speculation. By their own logic, having to remember all these numbers should increase memory.
Umm..... I don't understand how it can be this hard. Rip to an image, burn to a disc. You shouldn't have video/audio sync issues at all. Whatever you're doing, you're doing it wrong.
Most DVDs don't fit on a single layer DVD. And dual layer DVDs are still generally too expensive for it to be cost effective (at least, last time I looked).
It wouldn't surprise me if this is a major factor - when dual layer DVDs are as cheap as single layers are now, perhaps we'll see a lot more copying...
My point was variable costs. The fact that I had to pay £80 for my first DVD writer is negligible - I've still been far better off using DVDs, compared to buying a flash drive every time. That I might use less than 17 discs is laughable.
(And yes, we are assuming we wait for the inevitable price drops, just like we're waiting for the price drop on the flash drive.)
Obviously if you only ever intend to burn a few discs, there's no point getting one. (Yes, 500GB may seem a lot to us now, but in years to come it won't be - it's like 15 years ago, someone saying "CD writers will never be cost effective, you'll need to burn a whole 17 discs before they start paying off"...)
Well, we're pulling figures out of nowhere. Obviously discs are expensive, but we're a long way from the stage where a flash drive is cheaper than the equivalent size disc, and it's not clear that this will change in future.
Well, he said unpredictable, not non-deterministic. Unpredictability is to do with that a small change in the initial starting conditions eventually leads to significant changes in the resultant sequence, making it no longer possible to predict the outcome.
not really, it's more like the cleaning staff at your office flipping through papers left out on a desk.
And made a copy. I don't think anyone's bothered about people looking at files (also, looking through papers inside a drawer would be more appropriate, since it's unlikely that repair people need to manually look at the contents of every folder).
Also, it's unfair to compare the office to someone's own PC, given how much personal data people now keep on computers. I think this is a big problem, but that's the way it is.
So another modification: a cleaning person at my home, rummaging through my photo album and taking copies. And yeah, I think that would be something to be annoyed about!
I hope I never meet you in real life and invite you round my house then. No offence, but if I understand you right, you'll help yourself to anything that isn't locked up, nailed down or encrypted.
And just to clarify - copying public media files is no worse than downloading, and is only a crime against the copyright holder not the person they copied from. But things like copying private material is an issue - this could be anything from leaks of private source code, to a case where someone's private naughty pictures of their girlfriend end up getting passed around the Internet.
(OTOH, I might rather that than them reporting me to the police because my private photos are too "naughty"...)
Sure - on Slashdot we either use encryption, and/or keep away from computer repair places in the first place. This is one reason I like having a desktop as my main machine, so I can fix it without having to hand it into a repair shop. But not everyone is a geek.
Well presumably the point is the car might be unlocked for the mechanic to do his work.
Comparing it to the back seat, and merely looking, is absurd - that'd be comparable to someone having a picture on their desktop, and it being looked at. No one's complaining about that.
No - what we're talking about is going through a briefcase (not breaking any locks, but still searching for things not in the open), and then *keeping a copy for themselves* (perhaps using a nearby photocopier, if we want to avoid conflating stealing with copying).
I'm pretty amazed that it continues to enjoy the widespread acceptance among otherwise rational people.
I don't think it does - see my post above, CI doesn't treat the mind as special, you're thinking of another interpretation which as I understand it isn't widely accepted at all.
The Copenhagen interpretation abolishes physical reality and brings in the idealist concept of a conscious observer collapsing the wavefunction.
Whilst you are correct that CI involves a collapse whilst MWI doesn't, my impression was that CI doesn't put any special property on the mind - rather, that's a different interpretation, which few physicists seem to accept these days. There are more than just two interpretations (e.g., see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretation_of_qua ntum_mechanics ).
Yes, says me, since I'm the one who posted the comment. I think I'm allowed to make a claim such as "No one has produced any evidence of adult snuff porn".
Whether it's an important issue or not is up to you, but evidence of child porn has bugger all to do with the debate on criminalising adult porn.
There certainly exists porn involving non-consenting childern (and indeed, they can't legally consent). It wouldn't surprise me if child snuff porn exists, too.
However, the real issue is whether there exists porn feature non-consenting _adults_ - either snuff films, or other material. The reason this is important is because child porn is illegal anyway, and few people are going to argue in favour of it - the issue here is adult porn, and the idea of passing a law based on the claim that adult snuff porn exists.
The rest of the Wikipedia article takes about deaths caught on camera, but not cases where people were killed for the purposes of producing a snuff film.
So, evidence for adult snuff films, please? We know that non-consensual child porn exists.
To drag it back on topic, though: IIRC what got the brits with their panties in a knot about extreme porn, was a case where one deranged guy watched a bunch of snuff movies, then went and strangled a woman to death.
Necrobabes is not a snuff site. It's a stage where women - and men - pretend to play dead, for the purposes of making erotic imges. Some people may view it because they fantasise about killing people, but I doubt that's the only reason. Weird it may be, but it seems a bad joke that the Government wants to criminalise it.
I've nothing against criminalising genuine snuff movies if they actually exist - but the law covers images of staged and consensual acts, and would include things like plenty of BDSM.
You are correct, though the R v Brown justification is the only bit which seems to be valid - as you say, I disagree with it, and I think it's worrying that the Government seeks to base new laws on such a ruling. But in terms of a justification for going against the Human Rights Act, it is plausible, as the EU courts already ruled that the UK were allowed to make it illegal.
However at best that would only apply to criminalising images of actual acts (and even then, it's not clear that an image of a crime should automatically be a crime). It's the other arguments that seem extremely woolly: needing to protect people who consent to acting in staged activities because they are "degrading" (though it's interesting that 804 curiously avoids mentioning the issue of consent - it's unclear whether they think consent doesn't matter, or they think that the participants are forced into making it), the claim that it harms those who view it (the Government admits it has no evidence for this), that it decides such behaviour is "unacceptable" and wants to send a "message", and rounded off with a "OMG Please Won't Somebody Think Of The Children" (and vulnerable adults - I guess that means those poor police officers...?)
If these justifications are allowed, then the Government could criminalise possession of anything that it thinks "may harm", "is degrading", "is unacceptable", or is not suitable for children (e.g., 18 or even 12/15 rated films).
Well certainly, there exist films/images showing actual deaths - but are there any where the person was killed for the purposes of appearing in pornography?
On a similar note, another aspect is the way that the BDSM community is good in my experience at emphasising "safe, sane and consensual". If it's driven underground, then young people growing up with these fantasisies won't ever encounter such groups or learn that there are people out there wanting to enjoy it sensibly and consensually, and there's a greater risk they'll end up screwed up.
- Well I fantasized about knocking your mother unconscious during sex, then jerked off on the balcony.
- You too ?"
But note that it would be a taboo to say "I fantasised about having sex with your mother" too. It's the family bit that's the problem, not violence or sex.
Personally I happily discuss S&M and fetishes with my friends. Not with my relatives, but then I don't discuss any sex issues with them! It's sad that some people have to remain in the closet, but I'm lucky to have friends where we can discuss things without being prejudiced about it.
I keep rereading that bit of the bill, convinced there must be mistake.
Note, the intent is that of the producer, not the one who possesses it - okay, in the case of taking a screenshot, the person who possesses the screenshot is probably the person who produced the screenshot. But if you're looking at a naughty image online or that you downloaded - you get criminalised for possession, based on the intent of whoever originally produced the image. So it's not just mind-reading technology they need, they have to tackle the fact that they may not know who even produced it in the first place!
It's all up to the police and jury to guess, I suppose. Nice way to decide whether someone goes to prison or not.
Slashdot Mirror
Blog: Idiot-proof WYSIWYG toolset for those incapable of usng HTML, FTP and other standard web technologies.
ie: Morons invaded the web approximately 10 years ago.
So you're a moron if you use existing tools rather than reinventing the wheel yourself?
Even those of us who can FTP and build our own webpage still find it immensely easier to use existing blog software.
I do hope you're reading Slashdot through telnet (preferably a telnet application you wrote yourself in machine code...)
Depends on the kind of blog. A personal feelings blog, akin to most Live Journals/My Space/etc? I agree.
What's a "personal feelings" blog? Do you simply mean "personal" blog? I'm not sure how you can sum up all personal blogs/journals/etc.
I actually find the stand-alone political and technical blogs, where people think they are posting insightful material to the world, but actually hardly anyone ever reads them, to be the sign of immaturity. Indeed it's ironic that the so-called "personal" blogs often get a far greater response from readers from political/technical posts than many political or technical blogs.
Personal blogs at least do when they are intended to do - whether that's keeping a diary, or communicating with friends. I find it odd that it's the personal journals on community sites like LJ and MySpace which get all the criticism on Slashdot, even though the criticisms (e.g., "person thinking that the whole world is interested in him") apply only to the stand-alone blogs.
"Other Fetishists"? Furries are not a type of fetishist.
Not having a TV licence in the UK is very serious - you will be hounded incessantly and even get visits by the BBC licence people late at night
And just to add to this - anyone without a TV licence gets this treatment, even if they don't have a TV.
And if you're unlucky like me one time, they cock up and give you this treatment even if you have a licence.
I don't mind the TV licence, but the way they enforce it is unacceptable - if any private company tried their tactics, they'd be done for harrassment, making false claims and threatening behaviour.
Well, I'm a licence payer, and I'd like the content I pay for to be in an open non-DRMed format. I couldn't really be bothered if someone abroad downloads it for free.
Given that it's paid for by the citizens, the argument that they might be slightly less able to sell to other networks doesn't really hold - the whole _point_ of having a company funded by mandatory payments is to avoid all these sorts of negative decisions that the free market might cause a company to make. If they want to switch to being a company producing DRM content so it can sell to other companies, then I want my money back, because I sure don't want to be funding it for them.
"freeing us from the tedium" implies that we are now at liberty to use our minds for big and better (or at least different) things - but what are these things, for the average person?
Well the article says:
"The research reveals that the average citizen has to remember five passwords, five pin numbers, two number plates, three security ID numbers and three bank account numbers just to get through day to day life."
As the article mentions, "the less you use of your memory, the poorer it becomes".
The thing is, it's speculation to say that people's memories are poorer. The only evidence cited is that people cannot remember numbers and birthdays, but this is likely because people use phones, computers or even old fashioned diaries to do the job instead. Whether it's right or wrong to rely on such devices is a matter of opinion, but the point is that the evidence does not support the conclusion that people's memories are poorer.
What's most bizarre is that the article even acknowledges that people are now remembering passwords, PINs and so on, yet still seems to cling to this belief that people's memories are therefore worse! To suggest that remembering these extra things causes people to forget other things is pure speculation. By their own logic, having to remember all these numbers should increase memory.
Umm..... I don't understand how it can be this hard.
Rip to an image, burn to a disc.
You shouldn't have video/audio sync issues at all. Whatever you're doing, you're doing it wrong.
Most DVDs don't fit on a single layer DVD. And dual layer DVDs are still generally too expensive for it to be cost effective (at least, last time I looked).
It wouldn't surprise me if this is a major factor - when dual layer DVDs are as cheap as single layers are now, perhaps we'll see a lot more copying...
My point was variable costs. The fact that I had to pay £80 for my first DVD writer is negligible - I've still been far better off using DVDs, compared to buying a flash drive every time. That I might use less than 17 discs is laughable.
(And yes, we are assuming we wait for the inevitable price drops, just like we're waiting for the price drop on the flash drive.)
Obviously if you only ever intend to burn a few discs, there's no point getting one. (Yes, 500GB may seem a lot to us now, but in years to come it won't be - it's like 15 years ago, someone saying "CD writers will never be cost effective, you'll need to burn a whole 17 discs before they start paying off"...)
Well, we're pulling figures out of nowhere. Obviously discs are expensive, but we're a long way from the stage where a flash drive is cheaper than the equivalent size disc, and it's not clear that this will change in future.
Well, he said unpredictable, not non-deterministic. Unpredictability is to do with that a small change in the initial starting conditions eventually leads to significant changes in the resultant sequence, making it no longer possible to predict the outcome.
I'll be able to buy 500G USB thumb drives that are 100 times faster than today's thumb drives, and cost about $10.
I think I'll still take the 500GB disc I'll get for under $1.
not really, it's more like the cleaning staff at your office flipping through papers left out on a desk.
And made a copy. I don't think anyone's bothered about people looking at files (also, looking through papers inside a drawer would be more appropriate, since it's unlikely that repair people need to manually look at the contents of every folder).
Also, it's unfair to compare the office to someone's own PC, given how much personal data people now keep on computers. I think this is a big problem, but that's the way it is.
So another modification: a cleaning person at my home, rummaging through my photo album and taking copies. And yeah, I think that would be something to be annoyed about!
I hope I never meet you in real life and invite you round my house then. No offence, but if I understand you right, you'll help yourself to anything that isn't locked up, nailed down or encrypted.
And just to clarify - copying public media files is no worse than downloading, and is only a crime against the copyright holder not the person they copied from. But things like copying private material is an issue - this could be anything from leaks of private source code, to a case where someone's private naughty pictures of their girlfriend end up getting passed around the Internet.
(OTOH, I might rather that than them reporting me to the police because my private photos are too "naughty"...)
Sure - on Slashdot we either use encryption, and/or keep away from computer repair places in the first place. This is one reason I like having a desktop as my main machine, so I can fix it without having to hand it into a repair shop. But not everyone is a geek.
Well presumably the point is the car might be unlocked for the mechanic to do his work.
Comparing it to the back seat, and merely looking, is absurd - that'd be comparable to someone having a picture on their desktop, and it being looked at. No one's complaining about that.
No - what we're talking about is going through a briefcase (not breaking any locks, but still searching for things not in the open), and then *keeping a copy for themselves* (perhaps using a nearby photocopier, if we want to avoid conflating stealing with copying).
I'm pretty amazed that it continues to enjoy the widespread acceptance among otherwise rational people.
I don't think it does - see my post above, CI doesn't treat the mind as special, you're thinking of another interpretation which as I understand it isn't widely accepted at all.
The Copenhagen interpretation abolishes physical reality and brings in the idealist concept of a conscious observer collapsing the wavefunction.
a ntum_mechanics ).
Whilst you are correct that CI involves a collapse whilst MWI doesn't, my impression was that CI doesn't put any special property on the mind - rather, that's a different interpretation, which few physicists seem to accept these days. There are more than just two interpretations (e.g., see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretation_of_qu
Yes, says me, since I'm the one who posted the comment. I think I'm allowed to make a claim such as "No one has produced any evidence of adult snuff porn".
Whether it's an important issue or not is up to you, but evidence of child porn has bugger all to do with the debate on criminalising adult porn.
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,37 5883,00.html
_ murders
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snuff_films#Recorded
There certainly exists porn involving non-consenting childern (and indeed, they can't legally consent). It wouldn't surprise me if child snuff porn exists, too.
However, the real issue is whether there exists porn feature non-consenting _adults_ - either snuff films, or other material. The reason this is important is because child porn is illegal anyway, and few people are going to argue in favour of it - the issue here is adult porn, and the idea of passing a law based on the claim that adult snuff porn exists.
The rest of the Wikipedia article takes about deaths caught on camera, but not cases where people were killed for the purposes of producing a snuff film.
So, evidence for adult snuff films, please? We know that non-consensual child porn exists.
To drag it back on topic, though: IIRC what got the brits with their panties in a knot about extreme porn, was a case where one deranged guy watched a bunch of snuff movies, then went and strangled a woman to death.
Nope, it was sites like Necrobabes. See the sites referred to by the Government Early Day Motion.
Necrobabes is not a snuff site. It's a stage where women - and men - pretend to play dead, for the purposes of making erotic imges. Some people may view it because they fantasise about killing people, but I doubt that's the only reason. Weird it may be, but it seems a bad joke that the Government wants to criminalise it.
I've nothing against criminalising genuine snuff movies if they actually exist - but the law covers images of staged and consensual acts, and would include things like plenty of BDSM.
You are correct, though the R v Brown justification is the only bit which seems to be valid - as you say, I disagree with it, and I think it's worrying that the Government seeks to base new laws on such a ruling. But in terms of a justification for going against the Human Rights Act, it is plausible, as the EU courts already ruled that the UK were allowed to make it illegal.
However at best that would only apply to criminalising images of actual acts (and even then, it's not clear that an image of a crime should automatically be a crime). It's the other arguments that seem extremely woolly: needing to protect people who consent to acting in staged activities because they are "degrading" (though it's interesting that 804 curiously avoids mentioning the issue of consent - it's unclear whether they think consent doesn't matter, or they think that the participants are forced into making it), the claim that it harms those who view it (the Government admits it has no evidence for this), that it decides such behaviour is "unacceptable" and wants to send a "message", and rounded off with a "OMG Please Won't Somebody Think Of The Children" (and vulnerable adults - I guess that means those poor police officers...?)
If these justifications are allowed, then the Government could criminalise possession of anything that it thinks "may harm", "is degrading", "is unacceptable", or is not suitable for children (e.g., 18 or even 12/15 rated films).
Well certainly, there exist films/images showing actual deaths - but are there any where the person was killed for the purposes of appearing in pornography?
On a similar note, another aspect is the way that the BDSM community is good in my experience at emphasising "safe, sane and consensual". If it's driven underground, then young people growing up with these fantasisies won't ever encounter such groups or learn that there are people out there wanting to enjoy it sensibly and consensually, and there's a greater risk they'll end up screwed up.
"-So, dad, what did you do today ?
- Well I fantasized about knocking your mother unconscious during sex, then jerked off on the balcony.
- You too ?"
But note that it would be a taboo to say "I fantasised about having sex with your mother" too. It's the family bit that's the problem, not violence or sex.
Personally I happily discuss S&M and fetishes with my friends. Not with my relatives, but then I don't discuss any sex issues with them! It's sad that some people have to remain in the closet, but I'm lucky to have friends where we can discuss things without being prejudiced about it.
ok thats fine but keep it in YOUR bedroom, not on the internet,
Okay, I'll keep it in my bedroom.
Oops - I'm still a criminal, because this law criminalises possession.
Thanks for the sex life advice by the way, but I think I'll continuing enjoying things as they are rather than taking advice off Slashdot.
Why do you assume it's only men roleplaying raping women, and not say the other way round?
I keep rereading that bit of the bill, convinced there must be mistake.
Note, the intent is that of the producer, not the one who possesses it - okay, in the case of taking a screenshot, the person who possesses the screenshot is probably the person who produced the screenshot. But if you're looking at a naughty image online or that you downloaded - you get criminalised for possession, based on the intent of whoever originally produced the image. So it's not just mind-reading technology they need, they have to tackle the fact that they may not know who even produced it in the first place!
It's all up to the police and jury to guess, I suppose. Nice way to decide whether someone goes to prison or not.