"I am Mordac, the Preventer of Information Systems! Your request for a non-standard computer is DENIED!" -- misquoted from Dilbert
Use this as cost justification to get yourself a windows box and learn to use, admin, and defend it, and how to integrate it cleanly with your Macs.
If that doesn't sound like interesting, lucrative work to you, you might consider switching careers.
OS zealotry is for the weak and cowardly. Learn the strengths and weaknesses of all of them and use them all to their best advantages. If you are talented, your salary will come to reflect this decision in a very positive way.
C'mon, relax. You can handle this. Be strong and stop standing in the users' way.
1) Intellectual property law. Copyright has been ridiculously extended and should be "reset" back to the original limitation. Patents on methods and algorithms should not be permitted. The right of individuals to duplicate their own property should not be infringed by RIAA incompetence and avarice.
2) Software liability issues. Programmers who release software sources with few or no restrictions (public domain or BSD license) should not be in the same legal position as those who create more restricted software (such as GPL) or vendors of proprietary software. Vendors of closed-source, copyrighted software should be held legally responsible for egregious flaws in their products, like any other manufacturer is.
3) Spam. Spammers should be internationally traced and prosecuted. If we can kidnap and try the leader of a sovereign nation (remember Noriega?) we can certainly crack down on spammers.
Visa issues don't matter to me. I am willing to compete for employment in a global market based on my knowledge and abilities.
There was an electrician named Joe at the place I used to work who was counting the days to retirement. He never did a lick of work he didn't absolutely have to, and he never cared if his work would last 24 hours after his retirement.
The NEC (National Electrical Code) was the first casualty of his attitude. But not the last!
I discovered that he carried a heavy-duty plug in his pocket with the two hot leads wired directly together. He called it his "pigtail".
When Joe needed to find what circuit breaker controlled an outlet, he jammed in the pigtail (with an audible *snap* of electric arc) and then calmly walked down to the nearest breaker box to see what had tripped.
You could tell he was working in a building because you'd see scientists running down the hallways tearing their hair and screaming "My research!!! My research!! Ten years of research ruined!!" as the voltage spikes destroyed their equipment...
Etherhose (10b5 thick coax) is a useable networking technology. It has very good resistance to RFI/EMF. Lots of hospitals still run it, on links where 10 Mb/sec is sufficient.
Etherhose is no longer a good investment because it is labor-intensive to work with (vampire taps, and thick, heavy cabling) and because nobody is developing the technology any more.
Today, fiber optics might seem a better choice for noise isolation, since the cost has come down to a reasonable level.
However, glass has the same potential for future obsolescence as etherhose - I have a half-dozen mutually incompatible fiber links here. And termination, splicing, and interconnection of fiber is at least as difficult as working with etherhose... having done both, I'd say drilling for a vampire tap is easier.
In short, don't replace a working piece of infrastructure needlessly (wait until you project a need for additional bandwidth) and for noise isolation cat 5e in a grounded metal conduit is probably your best bet. Large diameter, professional quality conduit runs through electrically noisy areas are costly but also a very safe investment.
I wouldn't knock that old etherhose - it does its job quite well, far better than the 10b2 thin coax that replaced it ever did. And it's far more physically sturdy than anything else outside of conduit.
you only need a full time system administrator if you run a server farm full of Win2k (or other MS-Win??) - a good Linux admin (or other *nx) needs only a shell script to download updates for their favorite distribution and deploy them after testing them out on a 'guinea pig'-server.
Oy veh. I am struck speechless. Or typeless, or something.
If a garbage man knows how to drive a truck, that doesn't make him the equivalent of a professional chauffeur. He may be able to do that job, IF he is exceptionally talented, but that doesn't make it the same task.
Get a part-time job as network admin for your local non-profit group. They might be able to advise you on how to get a tax break for your labors, if they can't outright pay you.
Battered spouse shelters, HfH locals, unaffiliated museums, etc. can always use help with technical matters. Find one that is looking to create a network presence.
I was taking cover in the Jacksonism myself. While I don't have much respect for the man, personally, I have to admit that the Saturday Night Live episode he hosted (that's where the quote comes from) was funny as hell.
I think censorship, while justified in certain situations (many parents have a lock on their bedroom door, for example, and most don't allow their children to watch snuff films) will always carry with it the "imbalance" that you've pointed out. The Disney channel portrays a world of impossible sweetness and light. I like the Disney channel, and I also like the fact that I get to choose whether to use it or not.
Consider the following scenario: a site on kids.us wants to make videos of presidential addresses available. Does the site need to censor these addresses? President Bush has even labeled countries as evil and said that we will "hunt the terrorists [read Al Quaeda] down". I think it will be a shame if kids.us is that restrictive.
I don't let my kids listen to Bush's speeches, but I admit it's mostly because of his crimes against the english language and not the content. I tell my kids that proper speech is vitally important to their future, so letting them watch the most powerful man in the world murder his own native tongue undermines my lesson!
However, Quakers are not prohibited from reading about violence, are they? They could still use the site. The standard of "it will offend someone" is impossible to adhere to.
Yup, that's the root of the problem. I'm sure Disney offends somebody! Come to think of it, Disney's subversion of the US legal system in order to "protect" Mickey Mouse offends me... but that's another sidetrack we probably don't want to go down here. Their content, not their activities, is what I was referring to earlier.
Sure, Quakers can read about violence, but they probably don't want their kids to be subjected to pro-violence propaganda; I think that to them, advocatingany war (against terror, or drugs, or Iraq, or any other flavor of the week) would be pro-violence propaganda.
However, I just had a thought: the standard shouldn't be whether it's appropriate for kids, but whether it's safe for kids. Let me clarify with an example: an organic chemistry text-book is not appropriate for kids, but if someone wants to post it - let them. That way, if a school computer is set to only allow access to kids.us, and a teacher wants to look up some information, they probably still can get it.
Unfortunately, that standard is only slightly less contentious than "appropriateness". I have no problem with putting Org Chem text-books on the web, but some parents would be offended by this because the information will let a bright 12-year old figure out how to make fuel-air explosions and diesel/fertilizer bombs.
I think kids.us should not advocate anything that isn't unequivocally considered "good" by all the major religions and philosopies. You could cut the last 12 words off that sentence and it would probably have the same meaning.
The Temple of the Screaming Electron has (among their vast collection of insane rants and wacked-out diatribes) most of the statements of Usama bin Laden that are available in English, as well as stuff attributed to him by others. Very interesting reading, and far less boring than the Unabomber Manifesto (the cliched Islamic "blessed be his name, etc." stuff gets old fast, though).
RAWA is the best place for Afghan information. They have a political axe to grind, sure, but they don't try to hide it. And the Taliban is still around, incidentally, just waiting for Hekmatyar or one of the other warlords to finish off Karzai.
Concerning the Israel/PLO situation: I question which side would dominate the sites if allowed, but that question is moot.
As Jesse Jackson said, "The point is moot, that means I don't have to answer.":^)
More important is the concept of requiring a "balance" that you admit could not "really be achieved." This is an impossibly strict standard. If Encyclopedia Britannica publishes something on the kids.us domain, must they lie and put "terra incognita"? Because any border line will be decried as "unbalanced."
In the case of the Israel/PLO topic this is true. A search function on a kids.us site should tell kids who search on these terms to ask their parents about it (the equivalent of "terra incognita" for the domain). But in kid-appropriate things, like the definition of the words "up" and "down", we can easily come up with something acceptable to real parents. Parents that aren't completely insane, anyway (as rare as that might be).
Somewhat off-topic, but I feel like a rant: I am tired of claims of hate speech choking legitimate debate.
I don't have to answer offtopics either:). But for what it's worth, I agree with you. Only children need to be protected from hate speech, anyone over the age of puberty needs to learn to deal with it.
Concerning what would constitute hate speech against Al Quaeda: would advocating destroying the organization in defense of the nation constitute "advocat[ing] hate towards them"?
Yes. Inappropriate for kids.us; after all, Islamic parents will want to approach this subject carefully. Reporting on it dispassionatly after the fact is another matter entirely, though.
What about the liberation of Afghanistan from the Taliban?
OK, now I'll go off-topic: If we ever do liberate Afghanistan, we can figure this one out. Since all we did was hand over control to people like the Northern Alliance and (gak!) Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, and girls are still being beaten for attending school, I don't think "liberation" describes what we have done. So far, anyway. Taking Kabul and a couple of other cities from the Taliban and installing the latest western-friendly nominal leader can be described in a dispassionate historical context, though.
Was promoting war in Afghanistan "hate speech"?
Kids.us should not promote war with anyone, ever. That's pretty simple. There are plenty of other venues to promote wars. Quakers have computers too, you know, and it'd be nice if they could visit kids.us. I like Quakers, they are the toughest people on earth.
I hate neither Al Qaida nor Iraq, but discussion of whether they pose a sufficient threat to be eliminated by force is reasonable.
Agreed! But not on kids.us. Maybe on teens.us but even there it'd be something I'd hate to have to moderate.
I disagree that terms like "political correctness" and "multiculturalism" should probably be banned. Why?!? No kid is going to be scarred by those two fluff words. Let's not start banning our own pet peeves.:)
Yeah, you're right. I have never seen those terms used in any context that I find appropriate to children, but it's not the words themselves that are to blame.
Sidenote: is your six-year old really Protestant? (WASP - White AngloSaxon Protestant).
Yes, he says he's Unitarian, which is one of the protestant sects (though not an explicitly christian one any more). Of course, he's six, so he may change his mind.
Wow - surfing at two?
The biggest problem is the mice. Two-year olds are pretty much restricted to point-n-click... (mine knew all their letters, and could spell their names, but they couldn't really read yet)... there are lots of sites that are so lavishly supplied with audio (like the lego and pbskids sites for example) that all you need is the mouse and good language comprehension. But the mice are too big for their little hands... my daughter still can't use a three-button mouse without a great deal of frustration.
The first time my son surfed my spouse walked out of the room for a couple of minutes, leaving him on a flash game, and when she came back he was on some other site entirely with a full shopping cart. He was stuck at the payment screen and very upset.
Are you seriously saying that in your mind, his actions are illegal, and you have absolutely no further opinion on the issue, as if his technical illegality is morally the same as someone who plays the crack and never bought the game in the first place?
No.
We are talking about spam. I wasn't the one who brought up CDs originally, but I'm pretty sure both of us are sorry we mentioned it:^(.
Sorry I took so long to answer; been a bit busy. You asked:
And "All of whom" is how many businesses? 10? 15? 25?
Well over a hundred before I gave up. I even had an auto-responder set up briefly that replied to all the RFC-822 compliant strings I could find in each email, that asked where they got my address and to please take me off their lists.
What I discovered was that most of the spam contained fraudulent and misleading information; the addresses were either invalid to start with, or belonged to ISPs that don't allow spamming and thus are quickly shut down. Furthermore, I discovered that spammers will never (in my rather large sample) tell you where they got your address... I think it's because they usually don't know, they are just blind-merging new lists with their existing lists.
Furthermore, I discovered that replying to spammers greatly increased the amount of spam I received. Admittedly this may be coincidence.
I have a job other than corresponding with spammers, some of whom get very ugly very quick. I shouldn't mention Frank Kern here, since Frank Kern is the soul of sweetness and light and never ever threatens to destroy people who complain about spam with his name on it. Frank Kern clearly is not a spammer and I never ever said he was a spammer. OK, Frank? I think you are just wonderful.
I now have several thousand addresses blocked in access.db, and more every single day. I wasted time for a solid two years trying to deal with this on the assumption that at least some spammers might play fair - to no avail. Although a few (certainly all the "legit" spamhauses) did stop spamming me, I wasn't able to prevent my InterNIC address from continually attracting more and more spammers.
Jesus, just becuase I've bought a used car lemon in the past, doesn't mean that ALL car dealers are pinheads.
True, but the professions aren't really comparable, unless you have car dealers coming to your house every day and blocking your driveway until you tell them to go away.
Hey now, no name calling.:P Remember, SPAM is a BUSINESS, not just an annoyance. There are economic factors involved.
Spam is a business, yes, but so is pushing heroin. Libertarians will sometimes tell you that heroin pushers will not do anything to hurt their clientele, because that cuts into profits. Clearly these people never met a heroin pusher. If spammers (or pushers, for that matter) were actually *good* at business they'd find a more socially acceptable one. Competent businesspeople do not need to resort to spamming for a living.
Thanks for the coherent reply, incidentally; I've gotten to where I don't expect that on Slashdot anymore.
Awesome if it pans out.
on
Helpful Handicap
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· Score: 5, Interesting
When I studied the archeology of the period, we were told that the distances achieved by Greek (standing) long jumpers could not be achieved by (presumably better nourished, better trained) athletes today.
Everybody assumed it was because of the halteres, but nobody could manage to figure out the technique by trial and error (at least when I was in school, shortly before the extinction of the dinosaurs).
If this works, we should definitely re-introduce it to the games. Obviously it requires athletic skill, but it doesn't require expensive accoutrements like luges, luge tracks, skis, carbon-fiber poles, etc. etc. etc... just a couple of rocks. Let's have a contest that doesn't favor the rich nations quite so much. That way we can be prouder of winning it:^).
The problem with your idea, the reason it wouldn't work, is the word MANDATORY.
Make it PROFITABLE and DESIREABLE, not mandatory, for the porn sites to be clearly and appropriately labeled, and the system will work without massive subsidies or millions of pork-barrel government employees.
Free the domain space. Open the TLDs. We have the technology to have nearly unlimited naming, it's just the entrenched powers like ICANN and Verisign preventing it. Let the "invisible guiding hand of capitalism", so beloved by Republicans in theory and abhorred by them in practice, do the job of categorization - it'll shake out in less time than we've already spent arguing about it.
What's more important, is exactly what counts as "hate speech"? Who decides what is "hate speech"?
The oft-consulted and mythical reasonable man so beloved by lawyers.
If a child's web site is dedicated to history, would commentary on the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor be considered "Hate Speech" since it might offend Japanese kids?
Not unless the commentary was structured to incite hatred of the Japanese or some other currently existing group.
Or what about a current events story on the conflict between Isreal and the PLO? Would the other side denounce any opinion given as "hate speech"?
Given the current situation, yes, both sides undoubtably would. In fact I think we can assume that tens of thousands of complaints would be engendered by any statement that portrayed either side as less than saintly. Content providers would probably be wise to avoid the issue - and honestly, I don't think any "reasonable person" wants his or her kids to learn about the Middle East situation from a "kid" site. Such sites would be quickly dominated by the better-funded Zionist movement in any case; no balance could really be achieved.
Or more recent - there are some that consider it "hate speech" to talk ill of Al Qaeda (despite the fact that their goal is the destruction of the US).
I doubt our "reasonable person" would consider it "hate speech" to "talk ill" of an admittedly terrorist group, unless one advocated hate towards them, or a group that resembles them. It's obviously hate speech when Billy Graham's demented larva pronounces that "Islam is Evil" and proposes "new crusades", and it's hate speech when the President says we should single out Arab communities for opression, but it's not hate speech to describe terrorism accurately
But again, we come back to the issue of appropriateness for children - any truthful discussion of Al Quaeda is going to be sufficiently disturbing that it is not appropriate for unsupervised children.
Sounds like this may be just another example of political correctness gone too far. Why shield kids from any speech, even if it is vile, racist garbage?
I suspect that you have no kids! Why not just give three-year-olds loaded submachine guns, they have to learn sometime what death is like, right? FUD phrases like "political correctness" and "multiculturalism" should probably be banned from kids.us, incidentally.
Wouldn't it be better to point out to the kids that racist organizations exist, but are wrong because they don't believe that All Men (and women) are created Equal?
Yes, far better, once the kids are old enough to handle the concepts. I didn't explain to my African-American three-year-old what "kill all nigger-lovers" meant when she saw it spray-painted on the sidewalk behind the house. I explained it very carefully to my WASP six-year-old, and I certainly would NOT want him to have had it explained by a web content provider while I was out of the room for a moment.
Your concern is understandable, given the slanted education given most kids by government controlled institutions (Sex is bad! The Government never lies!) entertainment concerns (Sex has no consequences! Violence is fun!) and religions (God hates people of other faiths! Sex is evil!). But I think the idea of an opt-in system where parents and providers can choose to impose censorship over what a parent's children can see is a good one, and far better than any of the current alternatives.
My children wanted to surf the web at two years old. It would have been very nice to have something equivalent to the Disney channel, where I could safely leave the room for a second or two and leave the box turned on. They will have time for hatred and violence later, right now I want them to learn things like language skills, music and arts.
I know a few people who think heavier objects 'fall faster' than lighter objects...
Probably because they typically do; in everyday situations the lighter object usually will have aerodynamic properties that the heavier object does not. Weight to surface area (as well as shape) comes into play here.
Intelligent people observe their surroundings, and one might well notice that a stapler falling off a desk hit the floor before the sheet of paper did.
Intelligent people also test hypotheses; but most of us do not have easy access to a large vacuum chamber.
Not everyone has the advantage of a proper education, so your comment that "you can't take knowledge for granted" is right on the money.
As for your illegal use of CDs, that's your lookout - you have chosen to put your family at legal risk just to save a couple of bucks on CDs. Or maybe you are taking a moral stand, but you are still choosing to take a risk. Mayhap that's an OK risk for you, but it's still there, don't pretend you aren't breaking a law for your own convenience.
As for the spammers, I have NEVER EVER EVER given "opt-in" permission on my tech contact Email to any business. It was stolen from the Internic "whois" database over ten years ago, and now receives thousands of spams (ironically, I maintain that address as a spam trap now to help me keep a strong access.db) from hundreds of spammers, all of whom make exactly the same claims as Betterly.
It should be obvious that with individuals rapidly and constantly trading lists of as many as 60 million addresses, it is effectively impossible to get "opted out" permanently once one is on such a list. It is equally obvious that there is tremendous financial incentive to create lists without any regard for the wishes of those on the lists, and to represent those lists as "opt-in" when trading with other spammers.
At least you are consistent; you, an admitted scofflaw, are defending other scofflaws. Kudos to you for that, I respect a consistent code of ethics.
Referring to the views of muddle-headed urban PETA greens as though they represented the mainstream of environmentalism is like referring to the views of the KKK as being representative of christianity.
It's like pretending the views of fundamentalist Islamists (Dubya's "friends" the Saudis, for example) are representative of mainstream Islam.
The virtually indestructible keyboard is super thin, can be mounted with thumbtacks, is water- and cookie-batter-proof (unless you place your thumbtacks poorly) and almost, as the name explys, indestructible.
I just spilled wonton soup on mine and it's still typing fine!
My kids played tug-o-war with it the first day I had it... still works, though admittedly the kids are all under 50 pounds US.
And, your wife can use it to open those tough pickle jar lids, too. No, I'm not kidding.
Henry George and the single-taxers did the analysis more than 100 years ago, and concluded that only in Delaware would it be possible. Sadly, it proved impossible here as well, with George's supporters taking only 3% of the vote on election day.
Although George did not successfully take over Delaware, and many of his soldiers were arrested, three communities devoted to his principles survive today, and retain a unique flavor as well as an unusual legal climate created primarily by elaborate deed restrictions on properties.
Arden, Ardentown, and Ardencroft are all thriving communities today. And the Georgists have a web site.
Slashdot Mirror
...the Louisville Slugger!
...since it's mostly produced from byproducts of oil refining.
Unless you're talking about the body-panels on your Trabant, which also include agricultural waste.
Bravo for pure research!
Here in the US, many gas stations sell a so-called "alternative fuel".
It's known as PROPANE, or LP GAS.
And of course the VW uses DIESEL, which is also commonly available.
"A man sees what he wants to see and disregards the rest."
"I am Mordac, the Preventer of Information Systems! Your request for a non-standard computer is DENIED!" -- misquoted from Dilbert
Use this as cost justification to get yourself a windows box and learn to use, admin, and defend it, and how to integrate it cleanly with your Macs.
If that doesn't sound like interesting, lucrative work to you, you might consider switching careers.
OS zealotry is for the weak and cowardly. Learn the strengths and weaknesses of all of them and use them all to their best advantages. If you are talented, your salary will come to reflect this decision in a very positive way.
C'mon, relax. You can handle this. Be strong and stop standing in the users' way.
1) Intellectual property law. Copyright has been ridiculously extended and should be "reset" back to the original limitation. Patents on methods and algorithms should not be permitted. The right of individuals to duplicate their own property should not be infringed by RIAA incompetence and avarice.
2) Software liability issues. Programmers who release software sources with few or no restrictions (public domain or BSD license) should not be in the same legal position as those who create more restricted software (such as GPL) or vendors of proprietary software. Vendors of closed-source, copyrighted software should be held legally responsible for egregious flaws in their products, like any other manufacturer is.
3) Spam. Spammers should be internationally traced and prosecuted. If we can kidnap and try the leader of a sovereign nation (remember Noriega?) we can certainly crack down on spammers.
Visa issues don't matter to me. I am willing to compete for employment in a global market based on my knowledge and abilities.
There was an electrician named Joe at the place I used to work who was counting the days to retirement. He never did a lick of work he didn't absolutely have to, and he never cared if his work would last 24 hours after his retirement.
The NEC (National Electrical Code) was the first casualty of his attitude. But not the last!
I discovered that he carried a heavy-duty plug in his pocket with the two hot leads wired directly together. He called it his "pigtail".
When Joe needed to find what circuit breaker controlled an outlet, he jammed in the pigtail (with an audible *snap* of electric arc) and then calmly walked down to the nearest breaker box to see what had tripped.
You could tell he was working in a building because you'd see scientists running down the hallways tearing their hair and screaming "My research!!! My research!! Ten years of research ruined!!" as the voltage spikes destroyed their equipment...
Etherhose (10b5 thick coax) is a useable networking technology. It has very good resistance to RFI/EMF. Lots of hospitals still run it, on links where 10 Mb/sec is sufficient.
Etherhose is no longer a good investment because it is labor-intensive to work with (vampire taps, and thick, heavy cabling) and because nobody is developing the technology any more.
Today, fiber optics might seem a better choice for noise isolation, since the cost has come down to a reasonable level.
However, glass has the same potential for future obsolescence as etherhose - I have a half-dozen mutually incompatible fiber links here. And termination, splicing, and interconnection of fiber is at least as difficult as working with etherhose... having done both, I'd say drilling for a vampire tap is easier.
In short, don't replace a working piece of infrastructure needlessly (wait until you project a need for additional bandwidth) and for noise isolation cat 5e in a grounded metal conduit is probably your best bet. Large diameter, professional quality conduit runs through electrically noisy areas are costly but also a very safe investment.
I wouldn't knock that old etherhose - it does its job quite well, far better than the 10b2 thin coax that replaced it ever did. And it's far more physically sturdy than anything else outside of conduit.
If a garbage man knows how to drive a truck, that doesn't make him the equivalent of a professional chauffeur. He may be able to do that job, IF he is exceptionally talented, but that doesn't make it the same task.
Get a part-time job as network admin for your local non-profit group. They might be able to advise you on how to get a tax break for your labors, if they can't outright pay you.
Battered spouse shelters, HfH locals, unaffiliated museums, etc. can always use help with technical matters. Find one that is looking to create a network presence.
I think censorship, while justified in certain situations (many parents have a lock on their bedroom door, for example, and most don't allow their children to watch snuff films) will always carry with it the "imbalance" that you've pointed out. The Disney channel portrays a world of impossible sweetness and light. I like the Disney channel, and I also like the fact that I get to choose whether to use it or not.
I don't let my kids listen to Bush's speeches, but I admit it's mostly because of his crimes against the english language and not the content. I tell my kids that proper speech is vitally important to their future, so letting them watch the most powerful man in the world murder his own native tongue undermines my lesson!
Yup, that's the root of the problem. I'm sure Disney offends somebody! Come to think of it, Disney's subversion of the US legal system in order to "protect" Mickey Mouse offends me... but that's another sidetrack we probably don't want to go down here. Their content, not their activities, is what I was referring to earlier.
Sure, Quakers can read about violence, but they probably don't want their kids to be subjected to pro-violence propaganda; I think that to them, advocating any war (against terror, or drugs, or Iraq, or any other flavor of the week) would be pro-violence propaganda.
Unfortunately, that standard is only slightly less contentious than "appropriateness". I have no problem with putting Org Chem text-books on the web, but some parents would be offended by this because the information will let a bright 12-year old figure out how to make fuel-air explosions and diesel/fertilizer bombs.
I think kids.us should not advocate anything that isn't unequivocally considered "good" by all the major religions and philosopies. You could cut the last 12 words off that sentence and it would probably have the same meaning.
The Temple of the Screaming Electron has (among their vast collection of insane rants and wacked-out diatribes) most of the statements of Usama bin Laden that are available in English, as well as stuff attributed to him by others. Very interesting reading, and far less boring than the Unabomber Manifesto (the cliched Islamic "blessed be his name, etc." stuff gets old fast, though).
RAWA is the best place for Afghan information. They have a political axe to grind, sure, but they don't try to hide it. And the Taliban is still around, incidentally, just waiting for Hekmatyar or one of the other warlords to finish off Karzai.
In the case of the Israel/PLO topic this is true. A search function on a kids.us site should tell kids who search on these terms to ask their parents about it (the equivalent of "terra incognita" for the domain). But in kid-appropriate things, like the definition of the words "up" and "down", we can easily come up with something acceptable to real parents. Parents that aren't completely insane, anyway (as rare as that might be). I don't have to answer offtopics either
Yes. Inappropriate for kids.us; after all, Islamic parents will want to approach this subject carefully. Reporting on it dispassionatly after the fact is another matter entirely, though. OK, now I'll go off-topic: If we ever do liberate Afghanistan, we can figure this one out. Since all we did was hand over control to people like the Northern Alliance and (gak!) Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, and girls are still being beaten for attending school, I don't think "liberation" describes what we have done. So far, anyway. Taking Kabul and a couple of other cities from the Taliban and installing the latest western-friendly nominal leader can be described in a dispassionate historical context, though. Kids.us should not promote war with anyone, ever. That's pretty simple. There are plenty of other venues to promote wars. Quakers have computers too, you know, and it'd be nice if they could visit kids.us. I like Quakers, they are the toughest people on earth.
Agreed! But not on kids.us. Maybe on teens.us but even there it'd be something I'd hate to have to moderate.
Yeah, you're right. I have never seen those terms used in any context that I find appropriate to children, but it's not the words themselves that are to blame. Yes, he says he's Unitarian, which is one of the protestant sects (though not an explicitly christian one any more). Of course, he's six, so he may change his mind. The biggest problem is the mice. Two-year olds are pretty much restricted to point-n-click... (mine knew all their letters, and could spell their names, but they couldn't really read yet)
The first time my son surfed my spouse walked out of the room for a couple of minutes, leaving him on a flash game, and when she came back he was on some other site entirely with a full shopping cart. He was stuck at the payment screen and very upset.
We are talking about spam. I wasn't the one who brought up CDs originally, but I'm pretty sure both of us are sorry we mentioned it
I didn't think it was insightful myself. "BGO" as you put it.
Anyway, you are right, I made the assumption that the poster was in the US of A, which may not be correct.
In countries with no equivalent to the DCMA no-CD cracks may be perfectly legal, yadda yadda yadda.
What I discovered was that most of the spam contained fraudulent and misleading information; the addresses were either invalid to start with, or belonged to ISPs that don't allow spamming and thus are quickly shut down. Furthermore, I discovered that spammers will never (in my rather large sample) tell you where they got your address... I think it's because they usually don't know, they are just blind-merging new lists with their existing lists.
Furthermore, I discovered that replying to spammers greatly increased the amount of spam I received. Admittedly this may be coincidence.
I have a job other than corresponding with spammers, some of whom get very ugly very quick. I shouldn't mention Frank Kern here, since Frank Kern is the soul of sweetness and light and never ever threatens to destroy people who complain about spam with his name on it. Frank Kern clearly is not a spammer and I never ever said he was a spammer. OK, Frank? I think you are just wonderful.
I now have several thousand addresses blocked in access.db, and more every single day. I wasted time for a solid two years trying to deal with this on the assumption that at least some spammers might play fair - to no avail. Although a few (certainly all the "legit" spamhauses) did stop spamming me, I wasn't able to prevent my InterNIC address from continually attracting more and more spammers.
True, but the professions aren't really comparable, unless you have car dealers coming to your house every day and blocking your driveway until you tell them to go away.
Spam is a business, yes, but so is pushing heroin. Libertarians will sometimes tell you that heroin pushers will not do anything to hurt their clientele, because that cuts into profits. Clearly these people never met a heroin pusher. If spammers (or pushers, for that matter) were actually *good* at business they'd find a more socially acceptable one. Competent businesspeople do not need to resort to spamming for a living.
Thanks for the coherent reply, incidentally; I've gotten to where I don't expect that on Slashdot anymore.
When I studied the archeology of the period, we were told that the distances achieved by Greek (standing) long jumpers could not be achieved by (presumably better nourished, better trained) athletes today.
:^).
Everybody assumed it was because of the halteres, but nobody could manage to figure out the technique by trial and error (at least when I was in school, shortly before the extinction of the dinosaurs).
If this works, we should definitely re-introduce it to the games. Obviously it requires athletic skill, but it doesn't require expensive accoutrements like luges, luge tracks, skis, carbon-fiber poles, etc. etc. etc... just a couple of rocks. Let's have a contest that doesn't favor the rich nations quite so much. That way we can be prouder of winning it
The problem with your idea, the reason it wouldn't work, is the word MANDATORY.
Make it PROFITABLE and DESIREABLE, not mandatory, for the porn sites to be clearly and appropriately labeled, and the system will work without massive subsidies or millions of pork-barrel government employees.
Free the domain space. Open the TLDs. We have the technology to have nearly unlimited naming, it's just the entrenched powers like ICANN and Verisign preventing it. Let the "invisible guiding hand of capitalism", so beloved by Republicans in theory and abhorred by them in practice, do the job of categorization - it'll shake out in less time than we've already spent arguing about it.
FREE THE DNS!
Not unless the commentary was structured to incite hatred of the Japanese or some other currently existing group.
Given the current situation, yes, both sides undoubtably would. In fact I think we can assume that tens of thousands of complaints would be engendered by any statement that portrayed either side as less than saintly. Content providers would probably be wise to avoid the issue - and honestly, I don't think any "reasonable person" wants his or her kids to learn about the Middle East situation from a "kid" site. Such sites would be quickly dominated by the better-funded Zionist movement in any case; no balance could really be achieved.
I doubt our "reasonable person" would consider it "hate speech" to "talk ill" of an admittedly terrorist group, unless one advocated hate towards them, or a group that resembles them. It's obviously hate speech when Billy Graham's demented larva pronounces that "Islam is Evil" and proposes "new crusades", and it's hate speech when the President says we should single out Arab communities for opression, but it's not hate speech to describe terrorism accurately
But again, we come back to the issue of appropriateness for children - any truthful discussion of Al Quaeda is going to be sufficiently disturbing that it is not appropriate for unsupervised children.
I suspect that you have no kids! Why not just give three-year-olds loaded submachine guns, they have to learn sometime what death is like, right? FUD phrases like "political correctness" and "multiculturalism" should probably be banned from kids.us, incidentally.
Yes, far better, once the kids are old enough to handle the concepts. I didn't explain to my African-American three-year-old what "kill all nigger-lovers" meant when she saw it spray-painted on the sidewalk behind the house. I explained it very carefully to my WASP six-year-old, and I certainly would NOT want him to have had it explained by a web content provider while I was out of the room for a moment.
Your concern is understandable, given the slanted education given most kids by government controlled institutions (Sex is bad! The Government never lies!) entertainment concerns (Sex has no consequences! Violence is fun!) and religions (God hates people of other faiths! Sex is evil!). But I think the idea of an opt-in system where parents and providers can choose to impose censorship over what a parent's children can see is a good one, and far better than any of the current alternatives.
My children wanted to surf the web at two years old. It would have been very nice to have something equivalent to the Disney channel, where I could safely leave the room for a second or two and leave the box turned on. They will have time for hatred and violence later, right now I want them to learn things like language skills, music and arts.
Intelligent people observe their surroundings, and one might well notice that a stapler falling off a desk hit the floor before the sheet of paper did.
Intelligent people also test hypotheses; but most of us do not have easy access to a large vacuum chamber.
Not everyone has the advantage of a proper education, so your comment that "you can't take knowledge for granted" is right on the money.
I think homo-sap-sap ate homo-neanderthal.
As for your illegal use of CDs, that's your lookout - you have chosen to put your family at legal risk just to save a couple of bucks on CDs. Or maybe you are taking a moral stand, but you are still choosing to take a risk. Mayhap that's an OK risk for you, but it's still there, don't pretend you aren't breaking a law for your own convenience.
As for the spammers, I have NEVER EVER EVER given "opt-in" permission on my tech contact Email to any business. It was stolen from the Internic "whois" database over ten years ago, and now receives thousands of spams (ironically, I maintain that address as a spam trap now to help me keep a strong access.db) from hundreds of spammers, all of whom make exactly the same claims as Betterly.
It should be obvious that with individuals rapidly and constantly trading lists of as many as 60 million addresses, it is effectively impossible to get "opted out" permanently once one is on such a list. It is equally obvious that there is tremendous financial incentive to create lists without any regard for the wishes of those on the lists, and to represent those lists as "opt-in" when trading with other spammers.
At least you are consistent; you, an admitted scofflaw, are defending other scofflaws. Kudos to you for that, I respect a consistent code of ethics.
It's like pretending the views of fundamentalist Islamists (Dubya's "friends" the Saudis, for example) are representative of mainstream Islam.
I'm sure we can come up with more of these...
...that we have now loosed on Iraq's feeble Internet connection.
The virtually indestructible keyboard is super thin, can be mounted with thumbtacks, is water- and cookie-batter-proof (unless you place your thumbtacks poorly) and almost, as the name explys, indestructible.
I just spilled wonton soup on mine and it's still typing fine!
My kids played tug-o-war with it the first day I had it... still works, though admittedly the kids are all under 50 pounds US.
And, your wife can use it to open those tough pickle jar lids, too. No, I'm not kidding.
Henry George and the single-taxers did the analysis more than 100 years ago, and concluded that only in Delaware would it be possible. Sadly, it proved impossible here as well, with George's supporters taking only 3% of the vote on election day.
Although George did not successfully take over Delaware, and many of his soldiers were arrested, three communities devoted to his principles survive today, and retain a unique flavor as well as an unusual legal climate created primarily by elaborate deed restrictions on properties.
Arden, Ardentown, and Ardencroft are all thriving communities today. And the Georgists have a web site.