Is the question of whether or not it is okay to kill anything other than a moral question?
All laws are based on morality, and there are even many laws that enforce someone's view of "moral activity" despite having no bearing on anyone outside of the perpetrators (whereas something like murder clearly affects more than just those involved). For example, prostitution laws. Or how about laws against consensual oral and/or anal sex that exist in some States? Or, to delve into an issue of contemporary civil law, how about the law preventing people from marrying members of the same sex?
If Ms. Drew is legally responsible for this girl's death, then should rappers be responsible for someone doing drive-bys because they heard it in the lyrics, or, to use an old reference, should Beavis and Butthead be responsible for some kids burning down a trailer park because the cartoon characters were pyros?
The primary difference between this case and the examples you provided is that her actions were specifically directed at the victim with the intention of harming said victim. And she succeeded in doing just that.
For the love of all that is, people need to learn to take some fucking responsibility for the their own actions!
Every time I hear/read someone talking about people taking responsibility for their actions, they're always letting someone else get off scott free on their actions.
The girl killed herself. She has already paid for her actions. Now it's time for the woman to take responsibility for what she did.
Did she kill the girl? No. Did she contribute to the girl's decision to kill herself? Yes.
Why do you insist that certain people (the girl who killed herself) have to be responsible for their actions, while other people (the woman who helped drive the girl to do it) do not?
And drop the "I was bullied and didn't kill myself so no one else can use that as an excuse" bullshit. People are different. People's circumstances are different. If you got through your own torment and came out okay, then good for you. That has absolutely nothing to do with anyone else's circumstances, ever.
The important distinction is that you know who stages a photo, but you don't know who doctors a photo. If the photo was staged to put the general in front of a flag, you know that both the photographer and the general were involved and consented to the photo being staged as such. But with a photo that has been doctored, you don't know who did it, or whether anyone actually involved with the photo had any say in its doctoring. Therefore, you can't be sure that it's a valid representation of the individual.
If the army wants to distribute a picture of the general in front of a flag, why don't they just take a picture of the general in front of a flag? I'm pretty sure they have one or two of those around somewhere.
Any news source that wants to be treated as credible should expect all portraits to be staged, all other images to be non-staged, and all images, whether portrait or otherwise, to be non-doctored.
What is the difference between setting up a stage with a flag on it and getting her to sit there for a photograph, and getting her to sit in her office for a photo and adding the flag later?
The main difference is the assumption of consent from the subject.
If the person was photographed in front of the flag, then anyone receiving a copy of the photo can assume that the subject consented to being photographed in front of the flag. If the flag was digitally added after the fact, the recipient of the photo cannot make that assumption.
In this particular case, it's unlikely that the subject would have objected to being photographed in front of a flag, but that's not really the point. The point is that if this image is allowed, what other retouched images could be allowed? Here's a portrait shot of the general in front of a flag. Here she is holding a copy of the Koran. Here she is shaking Osama Bin Laden's hand. Oh sure, we retouched it a little, but it's okay. We just wanted to show her in a particular setting. There's nothing wrong with that, as it's just a portrait, not a description of events.
If the subject would not have consented to the photograph being physically staged as such, then it's not necessarily an accurate representation of that person. So, even though this particular case is pretty minor (at least, most of us think it is, but there may be others who disagree), and even though my last example was somewhat exaggerated to make the point, the best way to eliminate this kind of subjective judgement of each photograph is to simply ban any and all modified images.
There's one problem with allowing exceptions in portraits: it has the potential to hurt AP's credibility.
I, like many others here, spotted the fact that this portrait was photoshopped (poorly) at a glance. If I saw the photo being used in a news article, I would become aware that the AP is using Photoshopped images in their news articles. Being unaware of the official policy that allows exemptions specifically for portraits, I would begin to wonder where else photoshopping is occurring in AP news images. My level of trust in the AP would drop significantly.
So, how does the AP address that issue and ensure that people trust them? They say "don't touch up your photos, period".
A "tesseradecade" is a group of fourteen. Not only that, it can be pluralized by adding an "s", which happens to also be on the left side of the keyboard, and which brings the letter count to... fourteen. Therefore, "tesseradecades" is a tesseradecade of letters on the left side of the standard Qwerty keyboard.
Admittedly, it may be unreasonable of me(in a legal sense) to think that customers should be able to choose between services in a useful way, regardless of whether or not the CRTC is onboard with network neutrality. I find it unfair to be effectively locked-in to one way of connecting to the internet.
But the CRTC has no say over how many ways you can connect to the Internet. It can only decide if the multiple providers of that one means of connecting are competing on an even playing field. It decided (correctly, I believe) that they are.
It may not be such a bad thing to have sane copyright laws, reasonable first sale doctrines, and appropriate penalties for consumer violations.
It wouldn't be such a bad thing to have sane copyright laws. In fact, it wasn't when we did.
The disapproval of copyright law has arisen as a result of the changes (bastardizations?) that have occurred in recent decades. No one complained about copyright when it first came into existence. If we put copyright back to the way it once was, most of the complaining will go away.
The RIAA holds copyrights on recordings. The copyright on songs like Happy Birthday is held by songwriters' associations like BMI/ASCAP.
BMI and ASCAP are Performing Rights Organizations, and as such don't hold copyrights. They administer the payments of performance royalties to copyright holders.
The "Happy Birthday to You" copyright is held by Time Warner.
Okay, so Bell has an unfettered connection to the rest of the internet. Its competitors have a shaped-traffic connection to the internet. The latter is inferior to the former. Bell abusing their customers shouldn't be relevant.
What you're missing is that this isn't over yet.
That's the point I was making. There are two parts to this issue, and only the first part has been addressed so far.
Basically, to go with your analogy...
Obviously, all cars would be black, and all cars would remain as horrible as the Model T. Customers would be abused in a very fair and egalitarian way.
...this decision was only interested in whether or not customers are being treated in a fair and egalitarian way. As you stated, and the decision agreed, they are. The next decision deals with whether or not that fair and egalitarian treatment is, in fact, abuse. You think it is. I agree. In July we'll see what the CRTC thinks.
What follows is not a comment on the story, but a meta-comment. Feel free to mod as you wish.
This is classic Slashdot. The story is tagged "suddenoutbreakofcommonsense". If the exact same study had come to the opposite conclusion (ie. online gaming and social networking is bad for kids), it would be tagged "correlationisnotcausation", and everyone would be trashing the methodology.
Slashdot is funny. This is part of why I keep coming back here.
If Bell didn't have the ability to interfere with 3rd-party connections, would this issue exist, and would the other ISP's gain customers. If the issue wouldn't exist, or the other ISP's would gain customers, then Bell is abusing their control of the lines and monopoly therein.
Bell doesn't have "the ability to interfere with 3rd-party connections". Bell offers a service to resellers, and that service is whatever they decide it is. The issue is, given that Bell has monopoly power, and effectively competes with its own customers, are they abusing that power by offering their reseller customers different service than their direct customers.
Therefore, there are actually two separate questions being asked: First, is Bell abusing their monopoly by offering inferior service to resellers to favour their own service? Second, should Bell have the ability to "traffic shape" at all?
The first question is the only one the CRTC was dealing with in this hearing, and the answer they came to was "no", which is the correct answer. Bell is providing resellers with the same service they're providing their own direct customers, therefore the resellers have the ability to compete fairly with them.
The ruling here was simply that Bell Canada isn't doing anything different for their resellers' customers than what they're doing for their own customers. Basically, the question before the CRTC was, is Bell hindering their resellers' customers in an unfair way? And the answer was, no, they treat their own customers the same way.
As to whether "traffic shaping" should be occurring at all, whether with respect to their own customers or their reseller's customers, that is still to be discussed in a separate hearing that starts next July.
To summarize: this really has nothing to do with "traffic shaping". That hearing is yet to come.
It's curious that nerds, who are generally very precise in matters of technology, are such painfully sloppy writers.
Depends what kind of nerd you're talking about.
The thing is, to me, "nerd" is too general a term. It's like "consultant". It's relatively meaningless without an adjective.
Nerds are people of above average intelligence with an intense fascination, possibly to the point of obsession, with something. The "something" can vary. There are computer nerds, science nerds, Star Wars nerds, literary nerds, history nerds, even sports nerds. And, of course, most nerds are a combination of a number of these.
We computer nerds often think of ourselves as "thee" nerds, which is why we have websites like Slashdot, which bills itself as "News for Nerds", with no explanation of what type of nerd.
Regarding your comment I quoted above, you will find literary nerds are the ones who point out the spelling and grammatical errors made by other nerds who happen to not be literary nerds.
You really cannot cheat an honest man. Not until you become greedy do these tricks work.
Tricks that exploit greed are among the easiest to pull off, but that doesn't mean there aren't tricks that exploit characteristics other than greed, even positive ones. Wikipedia puts it quite well: "Confidence tricks exploit human weaknesses like greed, dishonesty, vanity, but also virtues like honesty, compassion, or a naive expectation of good faith on the part of the con artist.".
A classic con that doesn't rely on greed at all: Peter Popoff. He simply exploited people who wanted to donate money to a "true Christian" doing "The Lord's Work(tm)".
5) "We're not splitting the money. That's stealing, and if you try it with the other guy I'm calling the cops. Now, let's find a phone book and call the owner."
The con generally involves a wallet that has no ID in it so that it's impossible to call the owner. The con works in part because option #5 has been removed.
Which is the problem with Vista: It works just enough different than XP in many parts to piss people off.
But not as different from XP as switching to Linux -- which means more than just a new operating system, but all (or at least mostly) new applications as well.
That could just come right back to bite them on the ass, because it might just piss off Microsoft, and the thing is, Microsoft holds all the cards.
HP needs Microsoft because, Slashdot horde notwithstanding, HP's customers are generally not in the market for a Linux computer, they're in the market for a Windows computer. Offering a Linux option is all well and good, but most customers simply aren't interested.
Most Linux users are happy to install it themselves, and most people who want a pre-built computer complete with OS and software want one that works just like their old one, and just like the one they have at work, and just like every other computer they've ever seen -- which means it runs Windows.
While there is nothing preventing a woman from pursing a CS degree, why do so many people fail to see the obvious.. Women are generally not interested in CS and/or engineering.
Have women become less interested in CS and/or engineering in the last 7 years? Or is there another reason for the decline? If it's so obvious, tell me what has changed in women in recent years to account for this decline.
Rather than forcing women into CS, I say let them choose what they want to do.
No one's talking about forcing women into CS. What's at issue here is precisely a matter of choice. Are there additional factors preventing women who might otherwise be interested in CS from entering into it, and if so, what can be done to change that.
By the way, contrary to what far too many people think, feminism does not think that "equal" means "same". To quote another poster who put it quite succinctly:
Mainstream feminism thinks that you ought not to assume X or Y based on gender, but should treat people as individuals.
Here's the problem with some of the regulations. They don't result in proper insurance, licenses and/or roadworthy vehicles if they aren't enforced. And they probably aren't to any significant degree.
But that's precisely what this story is about -- the regulations are being enforced. And you're complaining about it.
Why should there be special additional restrictions on transporting the public as long as the driver has the appropriate license for the vehicle that he would be driving anyway?
And how do you even know that the driver has the appropriate license for the vehicle he's driving? That's actually one of the reasons for the regulations.
Some of the reasoning for the regulation is explained in the decision. Here's part of what it says:
Are the drivers properly insured to provide the service? One is reminded of the tragic incident at Prescott in 2000 when several passengers lost their lives when an unlicensed and uninsured vehicle in which they were riding crashed. Neither the passengers nor their relatives received relief of any kind.
Due to the non-disclosure of a declaration of risk to the insurance company and providing the ride sharing, might the insurance company deny all claims from the driver?
Unlike the licensed carrier, there is no assurance that the vehicles are in a safe condition and are road-worthy.
Since the introduction of the amended legislation in 1996, the Board has been faced with a large number of applications under Sections 10 and 11 of the PVA. Of particular concern are the illegal operators between Toronto and Montreal. These operators are in business strictly for commercial purposes and are not intended for ride sharing. In some instances these operators are repeat offenders before this Board and have now resorted to operate through websites such as Craig's List, and possibly PickupPal, to hide their identities. These are not ride sharing but illegal commercial ventures that have resulted in the tragedy at Prescott and may lead to other tragedies.
Slashdot Mirror
...we do not legislate morality...
Is the question of whether or not it is okay to kill anything other than a moral question?
All laws are based on morality, and there are even many laws that enforce someone's view of "moral activity" despite having no bearing on anyone outside of the perpetrators (whereas something like murder clearly affects more than just those involved). For example, prostitution laws. Or how about laws against consensual oral and/or anal sex that exist in some States? Or, to delve into an issue of contemporary civil law, how about the law preventing people from marrying members of the same sex?
If Ms. Drew is legally responsible for this girl's death, then should rappers be responsible for someone doing drive-bys because they heard it in the lyrics, or, to use an old reference, should Beavis and Butthead be responsible for some kids burning down a trailer park because the cartoon characters were pyros?
The primary difference between this case and the examples you provided is that her actions were specifically directed at the victim with the intention of harming said victim. And she succeeded in doing just that.
For the love of all that is, people need to learn to take some fucking responsibility for the their own actions!
Every time I hear/read someone talking about people taking responsibility for their actions, they're always letting someone else get off scott free on their actions.
The girl killed herself. She has already paid for her actions. Now it's time for the woman to take responsibility for what she did.
Did she kill the girl? No. Did she contribute to the girl's decision to kill herself? Yes.
Why do you insist that certain people (the girl who killed herself) have to be responsible for their actions, while other people (the woman who helped drive the girl to do it) do not?
And drop the "I was bullied and didn't kill myself so no one else can use that as an excuse" bullshit. People are different. People's circumstances are different. If you got through your own torment and came out okay, then good for you. That has absolutely nothing to do with anyone else's circumstances, ever.
But portraits are inherently doctored!
No, portraits are inherently staged.
The important distinction is that you know who stages a photo, but you don't know who doctors a photo. If the photo was staged to put the general in front of a flag, you know that both the photographer and the general were involved and consented to the photo being staged as such. But with a photo that has been doctored, you don't know who did it, or whether anyone actually involved with the photo had any say in its doctoring. Therefore, you can't be sure that it's a valid representation of the individual.
If the army wants to distribute a picture of the general in front of a flag, why don't they just take a picture of the general in front of a flag? I'm pretty sure they have one or two of those around somewhere.
Any news source that wants to be treated as credible should expect all portraits to be staged, all other images to be non-staged, and all images, whether portrait or otherwise, to be non-doctored.
What is the difference between setting up a stage with a flag on it and getting her to sit there for a photograph, and getting her to sit in her office for a photo and adding the flag later?
The main difference is the assumption of consent from the subject.
If the person was photographed in front of the flag, then anyone receiving a copy of the photo can assume that the subject consented to being photographed in front of the flag. If the flag was digitally added after the fact, the recipient of the photo cannot make that assumption.
In this particular case, it's unlikely that the subject would have objected to being photographed in front of a flag, but that's not really the point. The point is that if this image is allowed, what other retouched images could be allowed? Here's a portrait shot of the general in front of a flag. Here she is holding a copy of the Koran. Here she is shaking Osama Bin Laden's hand. Oh sure, we retouched it a little, but it's okay. We just wanted to show her in a particular setting. There's nothing wrong with that, as it's just a portrait, not a description of events.
If the subject would not have consented to the photograph being physically staged as such, then it's not necessarily an accurate representation of that person. So, even though this particular case is pretty minor (at least, most of us think it is, but there may be others who disagree), and even though my last example was somewhat exaggerated to make the point, the best way to eliminate this kind of subjective judgement of each photograph is to simply ban any and all modified images.
There's one problem with allowing exceptions in portraits: it has the potential to hurt AP's credibility.
I, like many others here, spotted the fact that this portrait was photoshopped (poorly) at a glance. If I saw the photo being used in a news article, I would become aware that the AP is using Photoshopped images in their news articles. Being unaware of the official policy that allows exemptions specifically for portraits, I would begin to wonder where else photoshopping is occurring in AP news images. My level of trust in the AP would drop significantly.
So, how does the AP address that issue and ensure that people trust them? They say "don't touch up your photos, period".
A "tesseradecade" is a group of fourteen. Not only that, it can be pluralized by adding an "s", which happens to also be on the left side of the keyboard, and which brings the letter count to... fourteen. Therefore, "tesseradecades" is a tesseradecade of letters on the left side of the standard Qwerty keyboard.
Admittedly, it may be unreasonable of me(in a legal sense) to think that customers should be able to choose between services in a useful way, regardless of whether or not the CRTC is onboard with network neutrality. I find it unfair to be effectively locked-in to one way of connecting to the internet.
But the CRTC has no say over how many ways you can connect to the Internet. It can only decide if the multiple providers of that one means of connecting are competing on an even playing field. It decided (correctly, I believe) that they are.
The next step is to change that playing field.
It may not be such a bad thing to have sane copyright laws, reasonable first sale doctrines, and appropriate penalties for consumer violations.
It wouldn't be such a bad thing to have sane copyright laws. In fact, it wasn't when we did.
The disapproval of copyright law has arisen as a result of the changes (bastardizations?) that have occurred in recent decades. No one complained about copyright when it first came into existence. If we put copyright back to the way it once was, most of the complaining will go away.
The RIAA holds copyrights on recordings. The copyright on songs like Happy Birthday is held by songwriters' associations like BMI/ASCAP.
BMI and ASCAP are Performing Rights Organizations, and as such don't hold copyrights. They administer the payments of performance royalties to copyright holders.
The "Happy Birthday to You" copyright is held by Time Warner.
Okay, so Bell has an unfettered connection to the rest of the internet. Its competitors have a shaped-traffic connection to the internet. The latter is inferior to the former. Bell abusing their customers shouldn't be relevant.
What you're missing is that this isn't over yet.
That's the point I was making. There are two parts to this issue, and only the first part has been addressed so far.
Basically, to go with your analogy...
Obviously, all cars would be black, and all cars would remain as horrible as the Model T. Customers would be abused in a very fair and egalitarian way.
...this decision was only interested in whether or not customers are being treated in a fair and egalitarian way. As you stated, and the decision agreed, they are. The next decision deals with whether or not that fair and egalitarian treatment is, in fact, abuse. You think it is. I agree. In July we'll see what the CRTC thinks.
What follows is not a comment on the story, but a meta-comment. Feel free to mod as you wish.
This is classic Slashdot. The story is tagged "suddenoutbreakofcommonsense". If the exact same study had come to the opposite conclusion (ie. online gaming and social networking is bad for kids), it would be tagged "correlationisnotcausation", and everyone would be trashing the methodology.
Slashdot is funny. This is part of why I keep coming back here.
If Bell didn't have the ability to interfere with 3rd-party connections, would this issue exist, and would the other ISP's gain customers. If the issue wouldn't exist, or the other ISP's would gain customers, then Bell is abusing their control of the lines and monopoly therein.
Bell doesn't have "the ability to interfere with 3rd-party connections". Bell offers a service to resellers, and that service is whatever they decide it is. The issue is, given that Bell has monopoly power, and effectively competes with its own customers, are they abusing that power by offering their reseller customers different service than their direct customers.
Therefore, there are actually two separate questions being asked: First, is Bell abusing their monopoly by offering inferior service to resellers to favour their own service? Second, should Bell have the ability to "traffic shape" at all?
The first question is the only one the CRTC was dealing with in this hearing, and the answer they came to was "no", which is the correct answer. Bell is providing resellers with the same service they're providing their own direct customers, therefore the resellers have the ability to compete fairly with them.
The second question has yet to be answered.
What they should be asking for is Bell to cease this practice altogether.
And there is a separate hearing scheduled for next July to discuss precisely that.
The ruling here was simply that Bell Canada isn't doing anything different for their resellers' customers than what they're doing for their own customers. Basically, the question before the CRTC was, is Bell hindering their resellers' customers in an unfair way? And the answer was, no, they treat their own customers the same way.
As to whether "traffic shaping" should be occurring at all, whether with respect to their own customers or their reseller's customers, that is still to be discussed in a separate hearing that starts next July.
To summarize: this really has nothing to do with "traffic shaping". That hearing is yet to come.
It's curious that nerds, who are generally very precise in matters of technology, are such painfully sloppy writers.
Depends what kind of nerd you're talking about.
The thing is, to me, "nerd" is too general a term. It's like "consultant". It's relatively meaningless without an adjective.
Nerds are people of above average intelligence with an intense fascination, possibly to the point of obsession, with something. The "something" can vary. There are computer nerds, science nerds, Star Wars nerds, literary nerds, history nerds, even sports nerds. And, of course, most nerds are a combination of a number of these.
We computer nerds often think of ourselves as "thee" nerds, which is why we have websites like Slashdot, which bills itself as "News for Nerds", with no explanation of what type of nerd.
Regarding your comment I quoted above, you will find literary nerds are the ones who point out the spelling and grammatical errors made by other nerds who happen to not be literary nerds.
You really cannot cheat an honest man. Not until you become greedy do these tricks work.
Tricks that exploit greed are among the easiest to pull off, but that doesn't mean there aren't tricks that exploit characteristics other than greed, even positive ones. Wikipedia puts it quite well: "Confidence tricks exploit human weaknesses like greed, dishonesty, vanity, but also virtues like honesty, compassion, or a naive expectation of good faith on the part of the con artist.".
A classic con that doesn't rely on greed at all: Peter Popoff. He simply exploited people who wanted to donate money to a "true Christian" doing "The Lord's Work(tm)".
5) "We're not splitting the money. That's stealing, and if you try it with the other guy I'm calling the cops. Now, let's find a phone book and call the owner."
The con generally involves a wallet that has no ID in it so that it's impossible to call the owner. The con works in part because option #5 has been removed.
Which is the problem with Vista: It works just enough different than XP in many parts to piss people off.
But not as different from XP as switching to Linux -- which means more than just a new operating system, but all (or at least mostly) new applications as well.
That could just come right back to bite them on the ass, because it might just piss off Microsoft, and the thing is, Microsoft holds all the cards.
HP needs Microsoft because, Slashdot horde notwithstanding, HP's customers are generally not in the market for a Linux computer, they're in the market for a Windows computer. Offering a Linux option is all well and good, but most customers simply aren't interested.
Most Linux users are happy to install it themselves, and most people who want a pre-built computer complete with OS and software want one that works just like their old one, and just like the one they have at work, and just like every other computer they've ever seen -- which means it runs Windows.
While there is nothing preventing a woman from pursing a CS degree, why do so many people fail to see the obvious.. Women are generally not interested in CS and/or engineering.
Have women become less interested in CS and/or engineering in the last 7 years? Or is there another reason for the decline? If it's so obvious, tell me what has changed in women in recent years to account for this decline.
Rather than forcing women into CS, I say let them choose what they want to do.
No one's talking about forcing women into CS. What's at issue here is precisely a matter of choice. Are there additional factors preventing women who might otherwise be interested in CS from entering into it, and if so, what can be done to change that.
By the way, contrary to what far too many people think, feminism does not think that "equal" means "same". To quote another poster who put it quite succinctly:
Mainstream feminism thinks that you ought not to assume X or Y based on gender, but should treat people as individuals.
McDonald's uses a similar process to create their hamburger patties.
It's true.
Didn't you mean Führer?
He's a Grammar Nazi, not a Spelling Nazi. Cut him some slack.
Seeing an end to war is less likely than seeing an end to sex.
Interestingly enough, the latter would lead to the former.
Here's the problem with some of the regulations. They don't result in proper insurance, licenses and/or roadworthy vehicles if they aren't enforced. And they probably aren't to any significant degree.
But that's precisely what this story is about -- the regulations are being enforced. And you're complaining about it.
.
Why should there be special additional restrictions on transporting the public as long as the driver has the appropriate license for the vehicle that he would be driving anyway?
And how do you even know that the driver has the appropriate license for the vehicle he's driving? That's actually one of the reasons for the regulations.
Some of the reasoning for the regulation is explained in the decision. Here's part of what it says: