Indeed, this is confusing to me. On my existing Windows XP box, even though I already have Opera and Firefox installed, I'm being pestered by this update for me to choose a new browser.
Yet I've recently also installed Windows 7 onto a new machine. Do I get a choice on which browser to use? Certainly not. I guess the update might appear after I've already installed some new browsers...
Indeed - basically all NeHe is lacking is a Linux version of http://nehe.gamedev.net/lesson.asp?index=01 , instead of just Windows, Solaris and OS X. The rest of NeHe works fine.
I think a bigger point to watch out for is that some of NeHe's tutorials are quite old, and not that relevant for modern rendering techniques (e.g., immediate mode, display lists).
If it is an old machine, the IT company should write it off for tax purposes anyway.
I presume that's what TFS is referring to by "Old computer equipment often ends up in landfill, or in toxic illegal re-cycling centers in developing countries, because users think it is not cost-effective to repair it."
Same applies for personal use too - I can see it being wasteful to ditch a whole working computer when it's only one component that needs failing, but most people don't have the knowledge or time to figure it out, and repair costs often seem extortionate.
But I think we also need to sort out the invasive and dubious practices that go on at many PC repair shops. There's no way I'd let my hard disk anywhere near a PC repair shop.
How do you know that the number of murders didn't significantly increase, or that the number of murders won't increase due to the effects of this game on young minds once they grow up?
And how do we know that this homeopathic remedy didn't cure something that he would have otherwise got, anyway, and how do we know that God didn't bury dinosaur bones to make it look like things had evolved?
The burden of proof is on those wanting to ban the material. If they are making a claim that there is a causative link, then they need to show the evidence. If there isn't even the evidence of a correlation, let alone causation, then their claim looks pretty dubious.
It's bad enough claiming that a magic rock keeps tigers away, because there aren't any tigers around. But this is like claiming a magic rock keeps the rain away, even though it rains - by pleading that it would have rained more if you didn't have the magic rock, honest.
You're lack of scientific evidence is worse than that on the other side of the argument, with the difference that they actually have done studies (however flawed) and you have not, your pulling conclusions from your anus.
What studies have you personally done, or are you just pulling conclusions too?
Flawed studies are not better than no studies - arguably they're worse, due to being misleading.
Both "sides" have done studies. But furthermore, why should it matter who's done the studies? Indeed, if only people with a pro-censorship bias have done these studies, that makes me all the more suspicious of them. I'd rather studies be conducted in a blind fashion, preferably by people without a bias on one side or the other.
Indeed. I thought this was an interesting article on the BBC, about censorship laws following from a moral panic over an urban myth, in 1954: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/8574484.stm
At first I thought, it's sad that the same madness is still going on. But then I thought, it's actually worse today - for all the madness of the 1950s law, at least it was restricted to the issue of selling to minors. But these days, bans on selling to minors is a given - it's not even debated by politicans anymore - and the new laws in various countries are about banning things even for adults.
But surely they should be glad of violent video game pirates (and more generally, anyone who pirates banned material)? I mean, surely, by stealing all that material, they're causing the producers of such evil material to lose billions of dollars, and go out of business. If people pirate these things, no one will ever have any incentive to produce it!
(But no, sadly the piracy arguments don't seem to apply to censorship. In the UK, the new "extreme" pr0n law has already been used to go after people selling pirated DVDs.)
Profile pics must contain no smiling, and you're not allowed to wear anything covering your hair (unless you're religious, in which case it's okay, as religious people never kill anyone).
So it's better to use more expensive methods, just to keep people employed?
In that case, I've got some broken windows that need fixing...
We could build a thousand schools with the money that goes into one battleship," Like hell -- if they canceled the battleship, they'd find something else to piss the money away on -- not one damned school would get built out of it.
So it's okay to piss money away, because they'd piss money away anyway? That's a rather poor argument.
I'm all for something that cuts costs, though I wonder if this means I'll no longer have to pay the additional few pounds in processing fees when renewing a passport?
But more to the point, it's this Government that's been forcing through compulsory ID cards, and passports will be combined with this system - meaning getting a passport means you have to supply all the biometric details that will be recorded for the ID card national database.
So with this new system, they'll somehow be able to take all the fingerprints and so on online? And this means I won't have to pay the extra £30 in processing fees (on top of the whopping £93 that it'll cost in the first place, for the combined passport/ID card)?
Well, if I wipe away the spit from my face that's foaming from your mouth, I may take a chance to answer. In the UK, downloading was already illegal. Why the need to call it something it's not? And for Canada, if you want accessing to be illegal, why not pass a law against it?
Cut their fucking heads off with a dull spoon and shove it up their fucking arse.
Who's the pervert here? You sound like a danger to society with thoughts like those.
and it does seem incredible that we put the technology into small mobile phones without ever thinking of the consequences
I'd look at it the other way - I don't think there is anything unethical in terms of consequences of people taking photos of themselves. What's incredible is that people support laws, without realising of the consequences in a world where cameras are so commonly available and used these days, including among teenagers. The problem is the laws, not the technology.
I suspect there is a digital divide. For older people, the whole idea of filming or photographic yourself sexually just seems bizarre. Digital cameras are relatively recent, and many people would have been sexually active during a time when video cameras weren't available (or affordable). When criticising the UK's "extreme" porn law, which criminalises images of consenting adults, one of the attitudes I came across from supporters of the law, when I raised the issue of people taking private photos of their own acts, was "Why would you want to do that?"
Yet now we don't just have digital cameras, we have mobile phones which make cameras ubiquitous - it's one thing to say let's get the camera, but a phone camera is just there. Of course teenagers are going to be using them sexually, and that's going to stay as they become older - who knows, perhaps in a few decades' time, we might at least get more sensible views of censorship and laws that criminalise possession?
Except it's not an e-reader - it doesn't have the e-ink display, or the long battery life (i.e., only using power to change the display).
If you're okay reading books on it, then any tablet, phone or netbook will count as an e-reader. And they're already available, and costing far less than an Islate or whatever the rumourmongers are calling it this week.
Apple with their sometimes annoying closed systems, are breaking MSFT out of their bad habits. It took 3-4 years but MSFT fianlly realized that putting a desktop Interface on their phones was a bad idea that limited usability.
It's absurd to claim they realised that because of Apple, when there are much larger phone OS platforms (e.g., Symbian).
And what are Apple now doing - putting a phone OS onto a tablet? Like that's any better.
And I love that not supporting basic features is now "taking a stand". I should have thought of that when arguing for the Amiga a few years ago: "What's that, it doesn't support Java or Flash? Well that's good, the Amiga is taking a stand".
Typing this on my laptop with Intel Core Duo processor *ding dong ding dong* running Windows XP, with my 5800 nearby. I will say I won't get Duke Nukem Forever, because I'm not interested in vaporware.
Bog standard phones did that years before the first Iphone - which probably explains why Apple have a few per cent market share, and most people are still buying phones from all the other companies.
All we know at the moment is that it's sold more in 1 day
It's finally been released? Since the Ipad got more free advertising hype every day, than the Nexus One ever got, it would be hard not to. Let's see how well they do without the free marketing - i.e., their sales when they can no longer rely on all the rabid Apple fans who queued up to get one on the first day.
Do you send such pictures to potential employers or customers when you are looking for a new job?
How is this relevant? Can you point me to where teenagers are doing this?
As for what they're actually doing - yes, I have exchanged sexual photos with people I've been involved with. Doesn't surprise me to see teenagers doing this too.
Problem is that most issues of this nature just beg to escalate.... Based on firsthand knowledge I can say that it is very likely that someone stumbling across a few CP photos on a computer could easily lead to that computer being found to contain evidence of the owner producing CP.
You have evidence for these claims, right? Please feel free to post/link it.
Indeed, the cartoon porn law is mad - and it's particularly mad that it also uses 18 as an age limit (in fact, it even criminalises images of adults, if the predominant impression conveyed is of someone under-18). The definition even includes cases where the drawn 17 year old is fully clothed, but shown in the background of a scene where two adults are having sex. And there are plenty of cases in mainstream material that would come under the law - e.g., Southpark's Proper Condom Use shows Cartman masturbating a dog, an act which is explicitly covered by the law.
The sad thing is that they can't even justify the 18 age limit by saying they were only copying the child porn law, as they weren't. As well as differing definitions, there's the point that child porn law has an exemption if you're married to the person, or live together in a relationship. So it's legal to have sex with a 17 year old, and if you're married it is legal to own a sexual photo of them. But draw a picture of that same act, and you're a criminal, three years in prison!
Another example might be adults role-playing as children (the most obvious example being the cliche of schoolgirls) - I believe that photos of such acts are still legal, and the point is that adults role-playing as children still look like adults in a photograph. But make a drawing - and even if they aren't drawn as particularly young, there is the risk that the fictional "age" of the characters would instead be inferred from the behaviour, what they are wearing, and so on.
There is also the point that this law would criminalise child abuse victims who make a drawing of their own experiences, which AIUI is sometimes used as a means of recovery.
Slashdot Mirror
Indeed, this is confusing to me. On my existing Windows XP box, even though I already have Opera and Firefox installed, I'm being pestered by this update for me to choose a new browser.
Yet I've recently also installed Windows 7 onto a new machine. Do I get a choice on which browser to use? Certainly not. I guess the update might appear after I've already installed some new browsers...
Indeed - basically all NeHe is lacking is a Linux version of http://nehe.gamedev.net/lesson.asp?index=01 , instead of just Windows, Solaris and OS X. The rest of NeHe works fine.
I think a bigger point to watch out for is that some of NeHe's tutorials are quite old, and not that relevant for modern rendering techniques (e.g., immediate mode, display lists).
If it is an old machine, the IT company should write it off for tax purposes anyway.
I presume that's what TFS is referring to by "Old computer equipment often ends up in landfill, or in toxic illegal re-cycling centers in developing countries, because users think it is not cost-effective to repair it."
Same applies for personal use too - I can see it being wasteful to ditch a whole working computer when it's only one component that needs failing, but most people don't have the knowledge or time to figure it out, and repair costs often seem extortionate.
But I think we also need to sort out the invasive and dubious practices that go on at many PC repair shops. There's no way I'd let my hard disk anywhere near a PC repair shop.
That's because Windows is what people use.
You don't see any botnets on Amigas, but, as much as I loved the Amiga, I'm not about to start claiming therefore business should switch to them.
How do you know that the number of murders didn't significantly increase, or that the number of murders won't increase due to the effects of this game on young minds once they grow up?
And how do we know that this homeopathic remedy didn't cure something that he would have otherwise got, anyway, and how do we know that God didn't bury dinosaur bones to make it look like things had evolved?
The burden of proof is on those wanting to ban the material. If they are making a claim that there is a causative link, then they need to show the evidence. If there isn't even the evidence of a correlation, let alone causation, then their claim looks pretty dubious.
It's bad enough claiming that a magic rock keeps tigers away, because there aren't any tigers around. But this is like claiming a magic rock keeps the rain away, even though it rains - by pleading that it would have rained more if you didn't have the magic rock, honest.
You're lack of scientific evidence is worse than that on the other side of the argument, with the difference that they actually have done studies (however flawed) and you have not, your pulling conclusions from your anus.
What studies have you personally done, or are you just pulling conclusions too?
Flawed studies are not better than no studies - arguably they're worse, due to being misleading.
Both "sides" have done studies. But furthermore, why should it matter who's done the studies? Indeed, if only people with a pro-censorship bias have done these studies, that makes me all the more suspicious of them. I'd rather studies be conducted in a blind fashion, preferably by people without a bias on one side or the other.
Nobody has ever claimed every person who plays a violent video game will go out and kill somebody.
So what do they claim then? And where is the evidence to support this specific claim?
Indeed. I thought this was an interesting article on the BBC, about censorship laws following from a moral panic over an urban myth, in 1954: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/8574484.stm
At first I thought, it's sad that the same madness is still going on. But then I thought, it's actually worse today - for all the madness of the 1950s law, at least it was restricted to the issue of selling to minors. But these days, bans on selling to minors is a given - it's not even debated by politicans anymore - and the new laws in various countries are about banning things even for adults.
But surely they should be glad of violent video game pirates (and more generally, anyone who pirates banned material)? I mean, surely, by stealing all that material, they're causing the producers of such evil material to lose billions of dollars, and go out of business. If people pirate these things, no one will ever have any incentive to produce it!
(But no, sadly the piracy arguments don't seem to apply to censorship. In the UK, the new "extreme" pr0n law has already been used to go after people selling pirated DVDs.)
Profile pics must contain no smiling, and you're not allowed to wear anything covering your hair (unless you're religious, in which case it's okay, as religious people never kill anyone).
Big red panic button for other people to press, saying "This person is a pedophile, arrest him now".
Privacy options allow things to be visible to Everyone, Friends only and your Government network, or only your Government network.
Adverts will be provided by the Metropolitan police. And you'll have to pay for your account too, anyway.
Because that was the title of TFA. Slashdot didn't name anything.
Banning things is liberal now? If you say so.
So it's better to use more expensive methods, just to keep people employed?
In that case, I've got some broken windows that need fixing...
We could build a thousand schools with the money that goes into one battleship," Like hell -- if they canceled the battleship, they'd find something else to piss the money away on -- not one damned school would get built out of it.
So it's okay to piss money away, because they'd piss money away anyway? That's a rather poor argument.
Yeah, and we shouldn't replace all those menial manufacturing jobs with machines, some people are incapable of doing anything else.
- Ned Ludd.
I'm all for something that cuts costs, though I wonder if this means I'll no longer have to pay the additional few pounds in processing fees when renewing a passport?
But more to the point, it's this Government that's been forcing through compulsory ID cards, and passports will be combined with this system - meaning getting a passport means you have to supply all the biometric details that will be recorded for the ID card national database.
So with this new system, they'll somehow be able to take all the fingerprints and so on online? And this means I won't have to pay the extra £30 in processing fees (on top of the whopping £93 that it'll cost in the first place, for the combined passport/ID card)?
I'm sick of fucktards.
Well, if I wipe away the spit from my face that's foaming from your mouth, I may take a chance to answer. In the UK, downloading was already illegal. Why the need to call it something it's not? And for Canada, if you want accessing to be illegal, why not pass a law against it?
Cut their fucking heads off with a dull spoon and shove it up their fucking arse.
Who's the pervert here? You sound like a danger to society with thoughts like those.
and it does seem incredible that we put the technology into small mobile phones without ever thinking of the consequences
I'd look at it the other way - I don't think there is anything unethical in terms of consequences of people taking photos of themselves. What's incredible is that people support laws, without realising of the consequences in a world where cameras are so commonly available and used these days, including among teenagers. The problem is the laws, not the technology.
I suspect there is a digital divide. For older people, the whole idea of filming or photographic yourself sexually just seems bizarre. Digital cameras are relatively recent, and many people would have been sexually active during a time when video cameras weren't available (or affordable). When criticising the UK's "extreme" porn law, which criminalises images of consenting adults, one of the attitudes I came across from supporters of the law, when I raised the issue of people taking private photos of their own acts, was "Why would you want to do that?"
Yet now we don't just have digital cameras, we have mobile phones which make cameras ubiquitous - it's one thing to say let's get the camera, but a phone camera is just there. Of course teenagers are going to be using them sexually, and that's going to stay as they become older - who knows, perhaps in a few decades' time, we might at least get more sensible views of censorship and laws that criminalise possession?
Except it's not an e-reader - it doesn't have the e-ink display, or the long battery life (i.e., only using power to change the display).
If you're okay reading books on it, then any tablet, phone or netbook will count as an e-reader. And they're already available, and costing far less than an Islate or whatever the rumourmongers are calling it this week.
Apple with their sometimes annoying closed systems, are breaking MSFT out of their bad habits. It took 3-4 years but MSFT fianlly realized that putting a desktop Interface on their phones was a bad idea that limited usability.
It's absurd to claim they realised that because of Apple, when there are much larger phone OS platforms (e.g., Symbian).
And what are Apple now doing - putting a phone OS onto a tablet? Like that's any better.
And I love that not supporting basic features is now "taking a stand". I should have thought of that when arguing for the Amiga a few years ago: "What's that, it doesn't support Java or Flash? Well that's good, the Amiga is taking a stand".
Typing this on my laptop with Intel Core Duo processor *ding dong ding dong* running Windows XP, with my 5800 nearby. I will say I won't get Duke Nukem Forever, because I'm not interested in vaporware.
By that logic, the Ipad doesn't run a tablet OS, it's running a phone OS instead.
Bog standard phones did that years before the first Iphone - which probably explains why Apple have a few per cent market share, and most people are still buying phones from all the other companies.
All we know at the moment is that it's sold more in 1 day
It's finally been released? Since the Ipad got more free advertising hype every day, than the Nexus One ever got, it would be hard not to. Let's see how well they do without the free marketing - i.e., their sales when they can no longer rely on all the rabid Apple fans who queued up to get one on the first day.
So they should seize the images then. What's that got to do with the computer? Dealing in and purchasing computers isn't illegal.
Yeah, cause child pornographers have a budget the size of Avatar's to make photorealistic CGI.
If the idea is ludicrous, why have Governments (such as the UK) changed the law to criminalise such images also? Shouldn't they keep them legal?
Do you send such pictures to potential employers or customers when you are looking for a new job?
How is this relevant? Can you point me to where teenagers are doing this?
As for what they're actually doing - yes, I have exchanged sexual photos with people I've been involved with. Doesn't surprise me to see teenagers doing this too.
Problem is that most issues of this nature just beg to escalate. ... Based on firsthand knowledge I can say that it is very likely that someone stumbling across a few CP photos on a computer could easily lead to that computer being found to contain evidence of the owner producing CP.
You have evidence for these claims, right? Please feel free to post/link it.
Indeed, the cartoon porn law is mad - and it's particularly mad that it also uses 18 as an age limit (in fact, it even criminalises images of adults, if the predominant impression conveyed is of someone under-18). The definition even includes cases where the drawn 17 year old is fully clothed, but shown in the background of a scene where two adults are having sex. And there are plenty of cases in mainstream material that would come under the law - e.g., Southpark's Proper Condom Use shows Cartman masturbating a dog, an act which is explicitly covered by the law.
The sad thing is that they can't even justify the 18 age limit by saying they were only copying the child porn law, as they weren't. As well as differing definitions, there's the point that child porn law has an exemption if you're married to the person, or live together in a relationship. So it's legal to have sex with a 17 year old, and if you're married it is legal to own a sexual photo of them. But draw a picture of that same act, and you're a criminal, three years in prison!
Another example might be adults role-playing as children (the most obvious example being the cliche of schoolgirls) - I believe that photos of such acts are still legal, and the point is that adults role-playing as children still look like adults in a photograph. But make a drawing - and even if they aren't drawn as particularly young, there is the risk that the fictional "age" of the characters would instead be inferred from the behaviour, what they are wearing, and so on.
There is also the point that this law would criminalise child abuse victims who make a drawing of their own experiences, which AIUI is sometimes used as a means of recovery.
(N.B. - the law hasn't been enacted yet, but comes into force on April 6 - http://www.melonfarmers.co.uk/gca10a.htm#Dangerous_Cartoons_4308 - just a few days left to encrypt your hentai!)