I wonder how much time he spent looking up his own name?
If he said such a statement it only proves that even genius can make categoric statements that prove them either fools or prey to taking mental shortcuts and not really thinking things through.
I'd amend or rewrite the above to say never memorize that which you will spend less time looking up, that it would take you to memorize it.
Having to look up my login password everytime I logged in, could be a problem if I couldn't find out where I hid the location.
400 passwds on random sites -- those get written down as memorization cost way exceeds the utility. But a login pasword's memorization probably exceeds the multiple times you will have to find the pw (not to mention if you put something like that in an obvious location, it wouldn't really be very secure)....
Having the ISP's censor service based on 'content' of what you are downloading.
Imaging if you were talking to uncle joe, and he was hearing a baseball game -- that was not available in your area. Are you downloading it? What if you record it? Can you imaging the phone companies agreeing to cut off your phone service for such?
How about getting some DVD's in the mail from *whereever*...that are 'rips', can you imagine the post office stopping your mail service?
It seems this totally violates the safe harbor clause that protects ISPs from copyright suits -- of course the fact that they are less likely to be sued for helping.... But the whole point of the safe harbor clause was to keep ISP's non-liable for infringement -- by taking enforcement action, aren't they creating liability (either for not disconnecting, someone who is, or disconnecting someone who isn't)....?
Somehow this doesn't seem legal...it would seem to violate due process, among other things...
"Context is within a single discussion." This thread is about restricting rights of minors. It's not like I posted under a law about farm implements being sold to farmers, or anything that applied to adults. The thread is very specific -- about what we can restrict for minors.
The court acknowledged it's right to censor, things *arbitrarily*, in their words
"The most basic principleâ"that government lacks the power to restrict expression because of its message, ideas,subject matter, or content, Ashcroft v. American Civil Liberties Union, 535 U. S. 564, 573â"is subject to a few limited exceptions for historically unprotected speech, such as obscenity, incitement, and fighting words."
included in those are "incitement" to 'illegal acts' like the violent video games that bonus for killing people and cops, or raping women at will, would all fall under that category. Yet because they are on the new medium 'video games' they are 'ok'...
Why not make a game out of you playing the character and showing oral genital penetration, girl-on-guy-on-guy-girl-girl... or any combo? We'll see how fast video games are protected.
They dig themselves in further when they make the comment:
Because the Act imposes a restriction on the content of protected speech, it is invalid unless California can demonstrate that it passes strict scrutiny, i.e., it is justified by a compelling government interest and is narrowly drawn to serve that interest. R. A. V. v. St. Paul, 505 U. S. 377, 395. California cannot meet that standard. Psychological studies purporting to show a connection between exposure to violent video games and harmful effects on children do not prove that such exposure causes minors to act aggressively.
The above last sentence -- the exact same is true about most blocked porn and subsequent behavior -- in fact the opposite is true as seen in other countries where pornography isn't censored,-- violet crime against women drops significantly.
Clearly this is a matter about how the US allows our children to be programmed. They are not to be programmed for sexual relations, love, sex. They are not desensitized to the site of an unsexual naked female or people performing 'natural, *legal* acts in view of public (sex in public)... There's no reason, inherently, why going to the park and seeing a couple engaged in intercourse, should be differently than seeing them having a lunch together in the park. It's social 'control'.
But this isn't even about public view (which would be a further level than what is talked about here) -- this is about private use. They are obviously *lying* when they claim cite there being "no ill effects on children in viewing the respective "acts", later in life -- when you compare the exact same effects of seeing porn as a child and adult behavior. Their case against 'porn' is doubly damned, as not only are there no studies showing later harmful effects of exposure, BUT there are studies that show later attitudes about sex and women that are more mature -- being able to differentiate between 'sex' and 'love'...not a distinction made by most anti-port crusaders. The point being is that viewing acts as being 'incitement' to illegal acts is NOT true of most porno films (a segment, of them, that include illegal acts would be an exception to this statement).
Something as tame as playboy -- without any couple-scenes in action -- and no explicit body-part shots, is still forbidden for-sale to minors. The fact that the US military uses violent video games to train soldiers bespeaks volumes about their affectiveness in programming later behavior.
But the effect of non-violent porn has been shown to lower aggression against women.
So clearly they support violence and aggression training as well are against training that might lower violence against women.
I don't have the ability to go into all the resources showing beneficial effects of 'non-violent porn' in a society, vs. the 'benefits' of using violent video games to *TRAIN* for violent action... but they are very well documented.
Um....ok, so it someone gets paid in bitcoins -- can someone explain how one uses that money to buy something on amazon, or food down at the grocery store?
It's a form of currency but you can't change it into 'legal tender'....so how does it go from being a currency good only for 'illegal things', vs. being something one can use to pay rent, buy a car...etc...?
I noticed that most are.com, but I did notice 5 in.net, 2 in.org and 1 in.cc.
Does the US own.org and.cc like the own.com/.net? (one may argue finer points of ownership, but if they can do with them as they will, the point is moot).
If they the.org TLD, why would pirate-bay.org be up?
Is it a matter of what registrar they are registered with and it just so happens that.com is almost (or is entirely?) owned by US registrars, while.net/.org/.cc have multi-national registrars?
This is reasoning for why things like legalized cannabis-coffee shops work in the Netherlands, or legal prostitution works, but not in the US.
In addition to the large number of law abiding citizens, there are a huge number who wouldn't know how to download something. There is also laziness.
I suspect the ratios of those various groups are different in other countries. Now whether or not those differing ratios would prevent the start of such a service is anyone's guess.
Another factor -- The US has draconian penalties for almost every crime, imprisons more people than any other country in the world. Once you have a prison record, you become part of an underclass -- one which encourages further criminal behavior. I don't know how many people think about these things or consider their chances of getting caught or prosecuted, but it could be considered more of a threat than in other countries.
So, it's hard to compare the success or fail of different rules & policies in different countries given all the different factors -- unfortunately.
They can now claim they've gone beyond being fanboys...they are now Acolytes of the new religion. Of course those with moderate experience are Adepts... At the higher levels, Adepts. And of course, Apple Angels -- they can lay hands on a bricked iphone, purge it of unauthorized software and restore it to life.
It only had about a 256 touch-point resolution (16x16), but IR sensors were standard on most Plato terminals back at the U. of Ill. It had a few terminals scattered off campus, as far away as Hawaii, so would have qualified as one of the first nationwide 'network' systems.
Behind the touch grid was a 512x512 plasma display (monochrome) (didn't require refresh!).
The base system supported interactive chat (multi-person as well as two people), email, multi-user forums, per-user 'cookies', program-loadable fonts (designable by users or 'authors'.
All software was in 'Tutor', an English oriented language with power to do complex math as well as 2-D graphics. The terminals generally ran at serial-line speeds with most running in the 1200-2400 baud range. The CPU (most were CDC (Control Data) based mainframes that used a 60-bit word size.
They used them for instruction on the campus in CAI courses that taught everything from physics, to language, math, chemistry, and computer languages as well as some ultra cool cross-continent chat, forums, and 100+user games. A space-battle game (Empire) was probably the most popular with some DND type games following it. Had 3-D line-drawn mazes, multi-user parties....all running on a main frame! Would timeshare maybe 200-400 users depending on the mainframe (most running low-cpu interactive learning progs, which, of course, got highest priority over the games which ran in background.
They measured cpu time in "TIPS" Thousands of instructions/Second!
Nice that they've finally reinvented a 40 yr/old touch system! Hope they don't try for a patent!;-)
At least they upped the resolution...
Eventually microcomputer based computers replaced the orange plasma displays, having the advantage of being able to run locally loaded 'script' ('u'Tutor) programs downloaded from the main 'web', er, mainframe which allowed fancier animation, among other things...(as well as the ability to write aids for some of the star-battle games).
Unlike slashdot, it could actually display a micro (u) sign without difficulty.
Why is slashdot so backward in not supporting UTF-8 or even archaic HTML entities? 40 year old plasma diplays could display the entire Greek alphabet, but slashdot? Bear skins and stone knives!
If I want to receive the broadcast as they send it out, I have to pay about $105/month. That's with no 'premium' content'. I would hardly call anything but a 'paid' option.
Comcast, in my area, charges a basic $49 for a downgraded analog version of all digital stations for those who don't want to pony up an extra $50 to receive stations in the digital form that they are broadcast in.
Actually, that's not entirely true, I'm told, since in order to make more space for more channels and compete with satellite and fiber offerings, they further compress their digital signals fit 50% more stations into the same space (fitting 6 into the space normally taken up by 4).
Scifi has sucked heavily for some time with the BSG remake being their last partial success. Really, things have gone downhill since they ended the original Stargate series, with Atlantis being not quite as good, and SG-U really sucking.
Caprica? Was that scifi? Looked like a poorly done soap with special effects with glacial pacing that lost me within the first few weeks.
When they added things like ghost-hunting and Tim-Edwards 'guesses' -- a series that might have impressed audiences back in the 1800's when they first did such shams it was obvious they were looking for anything stupid to catch audiences.
Then they started censoring japanese anime (like a 'butt' shot of 'Ghost in the Machine' among others -- "butt cracks were considered too adult!) -- but when they dumped their night of anime completely and replaced it with WWF wrestling, that was the final straw.
I use 1G ethernet @ home and have it 'topped' out as far as speed usage.
I get up to 125MBps writes and 119MBps reads over CIFS using Win7-64 and a Linux-based Samba server, and it's no where near fast enough to keep up with many apps.
I'd *like* to go 'diskless' on my Win7 box so all my files would be backed up on my server, but have to make do with only storing my home dir (docs, basically).
Even with that, a roaming profile can take about 5-10minutes/Gig to save when you logoff or logon (logon is faster if you have the files already cached locally, but it still takes about 1-2 minutes/gig to check that the file are up-to-date).
Most of the problem is due to network latency -- much of it in Windows, which may not be be helped by a faster network, with a faster network, it might make more sense for hardware manufacturers to build hard-disk interfaces that handle the low-level network I/O in hardware. Larger packet sizes will almost certainly be necessary (am already using 9K 'Jumbo packets' -- largest supported by my off-the-shelf consumer equipment (Intel network cards and netgear switches). If disk-like interfaces become prevalent with the low-level network I/O in hardware, then Windows latencies won't be as much of a problem. But right now, how applications ask for data make a big difference. My fastests reads/write occur with 16MB I/O sizes or larger.
Some apps think they are running 'fast' by using memory mapped I/O -- which on windows gives you a 32KB read size. That reduces the throughput by 66% off the bat. A horrible offender: Mozilla Thunderbird doing IMAPS with I/O chunks averaging about 1.5-2K. A 23Meg file sent from Mozilla TBird takes almost 3 minutes to save to the 'Sent' folder using about 1-2% of the network bandwidth.
So it's pretty certain that hardware assistance will be needed to offload the low-level I/O for desktop PC's to get benefit from faster networks for most applications.
But given that, one could finally setup 1 home PC-server, and then get full desktop speeds off of thin-clients in the house.
same thing happened several years back when a high-end company sought to market a DVD-jukebox for home use. It recorded the DVD the first time you played it onto a hard disk and afterwards, allowed you play it back without the DVD. The units were very expensive -- so not much chance of them proliferating and being used to mass-pirate media. Nevertheless, the MPAA sued them and won -- saying that the device circumvented the copy-protection on a DVD (which was bull, but the judge ruling on the case was either too stupid to realize this or was bought (or both)).
It's like companies, now, that offer software that allows you to copy or install a DVD, Blu-Ray, or Game Disc to your hard-disk so you can later play the content without playing disc-shuffle.
You still own the disc, but this is still considered illegal in the US due to corrupt courts and a corrupt legal system (purchased by the Corps). As long as you own the disc, you aren't doing anything ethically wrong, but the corrupt US legal system doesn't care about right/wrong anymore (hasn't for some time -- whoever has the gold makes the rules!). But the Corps would rather you pay again and again for each device. The entire ipod/iphony ilk are predicated on people being too stupid/too lazy to rip their own music to their pods because the software isn't convenient enough due to corrupt-US-law interference.
If that law wasn't in place, people could have their music one place -- likely on a home music system, quite possibly PC based for most people, that would have multiple attachments to distribute it to all the devices in their home.
I imagine the day I'll be able to buy a CD and rip it to my computer and have it automatically be copied to my car player and my phone -- automatically, so I can have my latest tunes anywhere. But right now, such a convenience would be a hard-hacked kludge. Thank-you, corrupt US-legal system!
I'm sure other countries will innovate such conveniences, but they won't allowed for sale in the US market -- but for better or worse, with the US's economy going down the tubes and most of its people having their total wealth measure in the bottom 10-20% of the market, the US market won't be considered that important.
Reading the original article, it's obvious that the researchers didn't control for brain-sex differences.
While what they are saying may be true -- about specific loci in the brain controlling specific functions, for men, it's less true in women, where similar functions tend to be less localized and dispersed over multiple areas -- often including areas on the other side of the brain!
This has been tied to men showing faster results in arriving at decisions, with women showing a consideration of more factors.
Considering more 'factors' could easily be considered 'distractability' in the eye of a overly-focused researcher!
This reminds me of the SCO lawsuit -- where they can't tell you what they are suing your for because the patented methods are 'secret'...um, then how would they be patented? You can't patent something without filing a detailed enough description to verify whether or not something infringes -- so if MS says an NDA is needed to tell you about the "patents", then it's an admission that they are not filed.
Did the US move to 'first to patent'? If not, and we are still using 'first to invent', I suppose MS could be claiming they have stuff that they 'could patent' -- but haven't yet...but that would be a pretty dubious claim.
Companies don't care about losing unsatisfied customers when they are a monopoly -- the fact that they are monopoly guarantees them replacement customers. This is one reason why cable companies are fighting against broadband neutrality, since it would be possible for customers to get all their needed programs "ala carte" (something the cable company has been claiming is 'impossible' for decades) by paying only for what they want to watch (assuming it wasn't 'free' with ads included). Such an option would provide true competition -- but without that, voting with your feet is an illusion to make you feel good.
So you do your 'massive multi-threading' window manager in a VM, and step through complicated functions ensuring they only run single threaded...or am I missing something?
Sorry, but devices in kernel space generate interrupts asynchronously. They come in 'whenever'. In window managers, there are no such things because all the asynchronous events are filtered by the kernel and only are passed through to the window manager WHEN the WM has programmed them to.
Sorry, but a WM doesn't have the real-time inputs from HW devices.
Depending on the WM, it may not be multi-threaded at all but done in one huge dispatch loop.
Performance tests show that a dispatch loop often beats performance of an interrupt driven system -- but in a kernel you don't have that luxury.
So if an WM is "massive multi-threaded" and complicated, it's because it was designed to be massively complicated -- not as a requirement of its function. In other words, some might call it 'bad design' if it is unnecessarily complex.
Awesome -- we are moving toward understanding/agreement!
Do you also see why I am down on the 'violence' content while 'sexuality' is banned: not for a 'tit-for-tat', or 'fair-play', but because the current setup is a manipulation by the the government and the media supporting a 3rd-world-similar theocracy!
Of **ALL** modern countries, the US has policies most similar to 'NONE', but instead, has policies similar to Islamic theocracies!
A study was done in % people who believe in evolution. Of 34 countries, the only country who had a lower percentage of people believing in evolution was Turkey! (graphic) That's the company we keep.
The US political and religious right have more in common with the Islamic fundamentalists (and terrorists), than any modern western nation. The screwed up views on sexuality and violence are two major symptoms of this. A side effect -- in countries where sexuality isn't repressed -- women have significantly more pay-parity with men. Also, in countries where sexuality is open and uncensored, violent crime is significantly lower than in countries where it is repressed.
While, I admit, I'm not a huge fan of violent content (***realistic violent content, that is***, I can handle shoot-em-up sci-fi and fantasy till the cows come home!), I'd be much more willing tolerate it if I didn't feel it was a symptom of religious-warmongering control.
You asked: "And do you believe that that is enough reason to ban/censor something (even just for children),"
Hey, myself - *IF* this society *didn't* ban 'sexual' content for those under '18' and wasn't so **successful**, in ghettoizing such content, I'd say NO. But the fact of the matter is that for whatever the reasons, such a bias against sexual content is considered acceptable enough by enough people that it's considered 'normal' and restricting access to it is fairly successful (up to a point, obviously).
I'm suggesting no more than parity between the two areas. If 'non censorship' was really so important sexuality messages became as prevalent as violence messages, then I'd have no recourse but to accept that non-censorship was the will of the majority.
However, as long as there is a disparity in the actual amounts of censorship between sexuality and violence, I maintain that cries of 'anti-censorship' are hollow and that such cries only are serving interests of those who control the media.
Historically, anti-sexuality and pro-violence messages are most prevalent among theocracies who use pro-violence messages to prepare their future warriors for 'war', and use anti-sexuality messages to both subjugate women and increase control over the men. Control over sexuality is one way in which 'cults' control their members.
Thus I see our "pro-violence", "anti-sexuality", **reality** (defacto), in the media as being a way to manipulate, mostly men, toward becoming better and more willing soldiers.
I would prefer congruence of the messages allowed in video games, and TV programming to be congruent with what is legal in society. I.e. -- learning to kill people in a video game, or watching multiple ways to dismember people in a movie when such actions are illegal yet restrict sexuality messages in video games and the media even though such actions are legal is the height of hypocrisy -- making it NOT a 'censorship issue', but one of stripping bare, the subtle and harmful programming being fed to US citizens of all ages.
Those who support 'anti-censorship' in the violence arena, IMO, are pawns, being used by the ruling 'elite'.
While censorship is always a slippery slope, I don't see the argument really being about censorship, but about rejecting government and media manipulation through what is really censored (not by government fiat), but by actions of media monopolies that exist through the grace of the government (who do government bidding, like censoring sexuality over violent content).
What got the FCC kicked 'back into action' and started the huge amount of extra censorship in the 200x's -- Janet Jackson's nipple. The media didn't do their job, so they were attacked by the FCC. Despite Fox and other stations finally winning against the FCC in court battles, regarding 'swearing', the new levels of censorship regarding sexuality have not been reduced last I saw. The more extremely bogus examples of this: showing women's 'butt cracks' (i.e. showing their behind in a thong bikini'). Other areas include **animated** pictures as those found in Japanese anime, ex: Ghost in the Shell, where the protagonist walks out of the water and she's shown from the rear as she walks out of the water. Before Janet Jackson -- uncensored. After: censored.
The media does the government's bidding even though it may not be legally required to and in turn, the government gives the media many perks for enforcing or doing things that the government could never get away with. Another example: AT&T (SBC) giving a free access point to the CIA for all traffic routed through the US -- no court order required. All done voluntarily... AT&T is rewarded by be able to re-combine itself as a monopoly and continue to expand its business by buying up more parts of the telecom industry (latest being T-Mobile).
Given the benefit to the government in allowing violence programming (in VG and vids (TV&movies), I can't help but strongly feel it's deadly wrong for th
"And it is indeed circumstantial. Especially since it happens twenty years after the rise of violent video games, not just a few."
That was my point -- it takes time before enough people (mostly males) who were exposed to such games to reach voting age and become a political force. Of course you wouldn't see results in a few years, as it would only affect the population as children 18 years of age and became voters. So you are looking at a minimum ~ 4-5 years lag time. Combine that with the fact that voting isn't as prevalent in those among younger voters (percentage wise), you wouldn't expect to see such influence in the population at large until about 15-25 years later.
As for torture -- it used to be that it *didn't matter* if they thought we would benefit or not -- we didn't cross that line (at least if they did, it was done in secret, not as published presidential policy). I would say that a lack of empathy would in a larger number of adults would strongly feed into that policy being permitted as 'acceptable'.
"And we're also talking about the fact that the number of kids who do anything 'bad' because of this is small. "
No -- you are talking about that. I'm talking about the less noticeable problem of of US adults who have lower compassion -- Not just those who commit violent crimes. The study was about how violent video games lower empathy. Again -- you think I or the study is focusing on subsequent 'violence' perpetrated by these children. That's not what the study was about. It was about *empathy*, which is far more difficult to get a direct measure of in the population at large. One has to use more indirect measures to see these effects -- and I was attempting to show evidence that there is, indeed, less empathy in the US adult population, at large.
It may not be cause and effect, BUT, it is certainly worth noting that *IF* it were true, that such games caused a lowering of empathy, then it could be a **partial** explanation for the general lowering of empathy that behavior, in the past decade, would indicate has been rising in the US adult population.
Slashdot Mirror
I wonder how much time he spent looking up his own name?
If he said such a statement it only proves that even genius can make categoric statements that prove them either fools or prey to taking mental shortcuts and not really thinking things through.
I'd amend or rewrite the above to say never memorize that which you will spend less time looking up, that it would take you to memorize it.
Having to look up my login password everytime I logged in, could be a problem if I couldn't find out where I hid the location.
400 passwds on random sites -- those get written down as memorization cost way exceeds the utility. But a login pasword's memorization probably exceeds the multiple times you will have to find the pw (not to mention if you put something like that in an obvious location, it wouldn't really be very secure)....
Having the ISP's censor service based on 'content' of what you are downloading.
Imaging if you were talking to uncle joe, and he was hearing a baseball game -- that was not available in your area. Are you downloading it? What if you record it? Can you imaging the phone companies agreeing to cut off your phone service for such?
How about getting some DVD's in the mail from *whereever*...that are 'rips', can you imagine the post office stopping your mail service?
It seems this totally violates the safe harbor clause that protects ISPs from copyright suits -- of course the fact that they are less likely to be sued for helping .... But the whole point of the safe harbor clause was to keep ISP's non-liable for infringement -- by taking enforcement action, aren't they creating liability (either for not disconnecting, someone who is, or disconnecting someone who isn't)....?
Somehow this doesn't seem legal...it would seem to violate due process, among other things...
If you are still confused, there's an entire article about this... Supreme Double Standard: If Violent Video Games Are Free Speech, Why Aren't Sexual Images?
It seems I'm not the only one who well understands the problem, just someone who apparently isn't as good as explaining it...
"Context is within a single discussion." This thread is about restricting rights of minors. It's not like I posted under a law about farm implements being sold to farmers, or anything that applied to adults. The thread is very specific -- about what we can restrict for minors.
The court acknowledged it's right to censor, things *arbitrarily*, in their words
included in those are "incitement" to 'illegal acts' like the violent video games that bonus for killing people and cops, or raping women at will, would all fall under that category. Yet because they are on the new medium 'video games' they are 'ok'...
Why not make a game out of you playing the character and showing oral genital penetration, girl-on-guy-on-guy-girl-girl... or any combo? We'll see how fast video games are protected.
They dig themselves in further when they make the comment:
The above last sentence -- the exact same is true about most blocked porn and subsequent behavior -- in fact the opposite is true as seen in other countries where pornography isn't censored,-- violet crime against women drops significantly.
Clearly this is a matter about how the US allows our children to be programmed. They are not to be programmed for sexual relations, love, sex. They are not desensitized to the site of an unsexual naked female or people performing 'natural, *legal* acts in view of public (sex in public)... There's no reason, inherently, why going to the park and seeing a couple
engaged in intercourse, should be differently than seeing them having
a lunch together in the park. It's social 'control'.
But this isn't even about public view (which would be a further level than what is talked about here) -- this is about private use. They are obviously *lying* when they claim cite there being "no ill effects on children in viewing the respective "acts", later in life -- when you compare the exact same effects of seeing porn as a child and adult behavior. Their case against 'porn' is doubly damned, as not only are there no studies showing later harmful effects of exposure, BUT there are studies that show later attitudes about sex and women that are more mature -- being able to differentiate between 'sex' and 'love'...not a distinction made by most anti-port crusaders.
The point being is that viewing acts as being 'incitement' to illegal acts is NOT true of most porno films (a segment, of them, that include illegal acts would be an exception to this statement).
Something as tame as playboy -- without any couple-scenes in action -- and no explicit body-part shots, is still forbidden for-sale to minors. The fact that the US military uses violent video games to train soldiers bespeaks volumes about their affectiveness in programming later behavior.
But the effect of non-violent porn has been shown to lower aggression against women.
So clearly they support violence and aggression training as well are against training that might lower violence against women.
I don't have the ability to go into all the resources showing beneficial effects of 'non-violent porn' in a society, vs. the 'benefits' of using violent video games to *TRAIN* for violent action... but they are very well documented.
That's the hypocrisy.
Duh...
We are talking about a law that controlled sale of something
to minors!
Context!
Explain why 'R' and 'X' rated movies are not available for rent or sale in almost every state (I don't know of any that allow it)....
Explain to me the difference...
'anyone one of the exchanges'...
Um...where does one find these?
Um....ok, so it someone gets paid in bitcoins -- can someone explain how one uses that money to buy something on amazon, or food down at the grocery store?
It's a form of currency but you can't change it into 'legal tender'....so how does it go from being a currency good only for 'illegal things', vs. being something one can use to pay rent, buy a car...etc...?
I noticed that most are .com, but I did notice 5 in .net, 2 in .org and 1 in .cc.
Does the US own .org and .cc like the own .com/.net? (one may argue finer points of ownership, but if they can do with them as they will, the point is moot).
If they the .org TLD, why would pirate-bay.org be up?
Is it a matter of what registrar they are registered with and it just so happens .com is almost (or is entirely?) owned by US registrars, while .net/.org/.cc have multi-national registrars?
that
Americans are trained differently.
This is reasoning for why things like legalized cannabis-coffee shops work in the Netherlands, or legal prostitution works, but not in the US.
In addition to the large number of law abiding citizens, there are a huge number who wouldn't know how to download something. There is also laziness.
I suspect the ratios of those various groups are different in other countries.
Now whether or not those differing ratios would prevent the start of such a service is anyone's guess.
Another factor -- The US has draconian penalties for almost every crime, imprisons more people than any other country in the world. Once you have a prison record, you become part of an underclass -- one which encourages further criminal behavior. I don't know how many people think about these things or consider their chances of getting caught or prosecuted, but it could be considered more of a threat than in other countries.
So, it's hard to compare the success or fail of different rules & policies in different countries given all the different factors -- unfortunately.
So no one at your place of business owns a smartphone that they bring to work?
Right... I believe that...
And in the tooth fairy as well!
They can now claim they've gone beyond being fanboys...they are now Acolytes of the new religion. Of course those with moderate experience are Adepts... At the higher levels, Adepts. And of course, Apple Angels -- they can lay hands on a bricked iphone, purge it of unauthorized software and restore it to life.
It only had about a 256 touch-point resolution (16x16), but IR sensors were
standard on most Plato terminals back at the U. of Ill. It had a few terminals scattered off campus, as far away as Hawaii, so would have qualified as one of the first nationwide 'network' systems.
Behind the touch grid was a 512x512 plasma display (monochrome) (didn't require refresh!).
The base system supported interactive chat (multi-person as well as two people), email, multi-user forums, per-user 'cookies', program-loadable fonts (designable by users or 'authors'.
All software was in 'Tutor', an English oriented language with power to do complex math as well as 2-D graphics. The terminals generally ran at serial-line speeds with most running in the 1200-2400 baud range. The CPU (most were CDC (Control Data) based mainframes that used a 60-bit word size.
They used them for instruction on the campus in CAI courses that taught everything from physics, to language, math, chemistry, and computer languages as well as some ultra cool cross-continent chat, forums, and 100+user games. A space-battle game (Empire) was probably the most popular with some DND type games following it. Had 3-D line-drawn mazes, multi-user parties....all running on a main frame! Would timeshare maybe 200-400 users depending on the mainframe (most running low-cpu interactive learning progs, which, of course, got highest priority over the games which ran in background.
They measured cpu time in "TIPS" Thousands of instructions/Second!
Nice that they've finally reinvented a 40 yr/old touch system! Hope they don't try for a patent! ;-)
At least they upped the resolution...
Eventually microcomputer based computers replaced the orange plasma displays, having the advantage of being able to run locally loaded 'script' ('u'Tutor) programs downloaded from the main 'web', er, mainframe which allowed fancier animation, among other things...(as well as the ability to write aids for some of the star-battle games).
Unlike slashdot, it could actually display a micro (u) sign without difficulty.
Why is slashdot so backward in not supporting UTF-8 or even archaic HTML entities? 40 year old plasma diplays could display the entire Greek alphabet, but slashdot? Bear skins and stone knives!
It's not free, over the air.
If I want to receive the broadcast as they send it out, I have to pay about $105/month. That's with no 'premium' content'. I would hardly call anything but a 'paid' option.
Comcast, in my area, charges a basic $49 for a downgraded analog version of all digital stations for those who don't want to pony up an extra $50 to receive stations in the digital form that they are broadcast in.
Actually, that's not entirely true, I'm told, since in order to make more space for more channels and compete with satellite and fiber offerings, they further compress their digital signals fit 50% more stations into the same space (fitting 6 into the space normally taken up by 4).
Scifi has sucked heavily for some time with the BSG remake being their last partial success. Really, things have gone downhill since they ended the original Stargate series, with Atlantis being not quite as good, and SG-U really sucking.
Caprica? Was that scifi? Looked like a poorly done soap with special effects with glacial pacing that lost me within the first few weeks.
When they added things like ghost-hunting and Tim-Edwards 'guesses' -- a series that might have impressed audiences back in the 1800's when they first did such shams it was obvious they were looking for anything stupid to catch audiences.
Then they started censoring japanese anime (like a 'butt' shot of 'Ghost in the Machine' among others -- "butt cracks were considered too adult!) -- but when they dumped their night of anime completely and replaced it with WWF wrestling, that was the final straw.
What a load of garbage!
I use 1G ethernet @ home and have it 'topped' out as far as speed usage.
I get up to 125MBps writes and 119MBps reads over CIFS using Win7-64 and a Linux-based Samba server, and it's no where near fast enough to keep up with many apps.
I'd *like* to go 'diskless' on my Win7 box so all my files would be backed up on my server, but have to make do with only storing my home dir (docs, basically).
Even with that, a roaming profile can take about 5-10minutes/Gig to save when you logoff or logon (logon is faster if you have the files already cached locally, but it still takes about 1-2 minutes/gig to check that the file are up-to-date).
Most of the problem is due to network latency -- much of it in Windows, which may not be be helped by a faster network, with a faster network, it might make more sense for hardware manufacturers to build hard-disk interfaces that handle the low-level network I/O in hardware. Larger packet sizes will almost certainly be necessary (am already using 9K 'Jumbo packets' -- largest supported by my off-the-shelf consumer equipment (Intel network cards and netgear switches).
If disk-like interfaces become prevalent with the low-level network I/O in hardware, then Windows latencies won't be as much of a problem. But right now, how applications ask for data make a big difference. My fastests reads/write occur with 16MB I/O sizes or larger.
Some apps think they are running 'fast' by using memory mapped I/O -- which on windows gives you a 32KB read size. That reduces the throughput by 66% off the bat. A horrible offender: Mozilla Thunderbird doing IMAPS with I/O chunks averaging about 1.5-2K. A 23Meg file sent from Mozilla TBird takes almost 3 minutes to save to the 'Sent' folder using about 1-2% of the network bandwidth.
So it's pretty certain that hardware assistance will be needed to offload the low-level I/O for desktop PC's to get benefit from faster networks for most applications.
But given that, one could finally setup 1 home PC-server, and then get full desktop speeds off of thin-clients in the house.
Would be nice....
same thing happened several years back when a high-end company sought to market a DVD-jukebox for home use. It recorded the DVD the first time you played it onto a hard disk and afterwards, allowed you play it back without the DVD. The units were very expensive -- so not much chance of them proliferating and being used to mass-pirate media. Nevertheless, the MPAA sued them and won -- saying that the device circumvented the copy-protection on a DVD (which was bull, but the judge ruling on the case was either too stupid to realize this or was bought (or both)).
It's like companies, now, that offer software that allows you to copy or install a DVD, Blu-Ray, or Game Disc to your hard-disk so you can later play the content without playing disc-shuffle.
You still own the disc, but this is still considered illegal in the US due to corrupt courts and a corrupt legal system (purchased by the Corps). As long as you own the disc, you aren't doing anything ethically wrong, but the corrupt US legal system doesn't care about right/wrong anymore (hasn't for some time -- whoever has the gold makes the rules!). But the Corps would rather you pay again and again for each device. The entire ipod/iphony ilk are predicated on people being too stupid/too lazy to rip their own music to their pods because the software isn't convenient enough due to corrupt-US-law interference.
If that law wasn't in place, people could have their music one place -- likely on a home music system, quite possibly PC based for most people, that would have multiple attachments to distribute it to all the devices in their home.
I imagine the day I'll be able to buy a CD and rip it to my computer and have it automatically be copied to my car player and my phone -- automatically, so I can have my latest tunes anywhere. But right now, such a convenience would be a hard-hacked kludge. Thank-you, corrupt US-legal system!
I'm sure other countries will innovate such conveniences, but they won't allowed for sale in the US market -- but for better or worse, with the US's economy going down the tubes and most of its people having their total wealth measure in the bottom 10-20% of the market, the US market won't be considered that important.
Reading the original article, it's obvious that the researchers didn't control for brain-sex differences.
While what they are saying may be true -- about specific loci in the brain controlling specific functions, for men, it's less true in women, where similar functions tend to be less localized and dispersed over multiple areas -- often including areas on the other side of the brain!
This has been tied to men showing faster results in arriving at decisions, with women showing a consideration of more factors.
Considering more 'factors' could easily be considered 'distractability' in the eye of a overly-focused researcher!
What is the purpose of a patent?
To encourage *innovation* -- not lawsuits.
This reminds me of the SCO lawsuit -- where they can't tell you what they are suing your for because the patented methods are 'secret'...um, then how would they be patented? You can't patent something without filing a detailed enough description to verify whether or not something infringes -- so if MS says an NDA is needed to tell you about the "patents", then it's an admission that they are not filed.
Did the US move to 'first to patent'? If not, and we are still using 'first to invent', I suppose MS could be claiming they have stuff that they 'could patent' -- but haven't yet...but that would be a pretty dubious claim.
That's a myth.
Companies don't care about losing unsatisfied customers when they are a monopoly -- the fact that they are monopoly guarantees them replacement customers. This is one reason why cable companies are fighting against broadband neutrality, since it would be possible for customers to get all their needed programs "ala carte" (something the cable company has been claiming is 'impossible' for decades) by paying only for what they want to watch (assuming it wasn't 'free' with ads included). Such an option would provide true competition -- but without that, voting with your feet is an illusion to make you feel good.
So you do your 'massive multi-threading' window manager in a VM, and step through complicated functions ensuring they only run single threaded...or am I missing something?
Sorry, but devices in kernel space generate interrupts asynchronously. They come in 'whenever'. In window managers, there are no such things because all the asynchronous events are filtered by the kernel and only are passed through to the window manager WHEN the WM has programmed them to.
Sorry, but a WM doesn't have the real-time inputs from HW devices.
Depending on the WM, it may not be multi-threaded at all but done in one huge dispatch loop.
Performance tests show that a dispatch loop often beats performance of an interrupt driven system -- but in a kernel you don't have that luxury.
So if an WM is "massive multi-threaded" and complicated, it's because it was designed to be massively complicated -- not as a requirement of its function. In other words, some might call it 'bad design' if it is unnecessarily complex.
Yeah...because we know that you have to pay shipping for products you buy at brick and mortar....
Awesome -- we are moving toward understanding/agreement!
Do you also see why I am down on the 'violence' content while 'sexuality' is banned: not for a 'tit-for-tat', or 'fair-play', but because the current setup is a manipulation by the the government and the media supporting a 3rd-world-similar theocracy!
Of **ALL** modern countries, the US has policies most similar to 'NONE', but instead, has policies similar to Islamic theocracies!
A study was done in % people who believe in evolution.
Of 34 countries, the only country who had a lower percentage of people believing in evolution was Turkey! (graphic) That's the company we keep.
The US political and religious right have more in common with the Islamic fundamentalists (and terrorists), than any modern western nation. The screwed up views on sexuality and violence are two major symptoms of this. A side effect -- in countries where sexuality isn't repressed -- women have significantly more pay-parity with men. Also, in countries where sexuality is open and uncensored, violent crime is significantly lower than in countries where it is repressed.
While, I admit, I'm not a huge fan of violent content (***realistic violent content, that is***, I can handle shoot-em-up sci-fi and fantasy till the cows come home!), I'd be much more willing tolerate it if I didn't feel it was a symptom of religious-warmongering control.
You asked: "And do you believe that that is enough reason to ban/censor something (even just for children),"
Hey, myself - *IF* this society *didn't* ban 'sexual' content for those under '18' and wasn't so **successful**, in ghettoizing such content, I'd say NO. But the fact of the matter is that for whatever the reasons, such a bias against sexual content is considered acceptable enough by enough people that it's considered 'normal' and restricting access to it is fairly successful (up to a point, obviously).
I'm suggesting no more than parity between the two areas. If 'non censorship' was really so important sexuality messages became as prevalent as violence messages, then I'd have no recourse but to accept that non-censorship was the will of the majority.
However, as long as there is a disparity in the actual amounts of censorship between sexuality and violence, I maintain that cries of 'anti-censorship' are hollow and that such cries only are serving interests of those who control the media.
Historically, anti-sexuality and pro-violence messages are most prevalent among theocracies who use pro-violence messages to prepare their future warriors for 'war', and use anti-sexuality messages to both subjugate women and increase control over the men. Control over sexuality is one way in which 'cults' control their members.
Thus I see our "pro-violence", "anti-sexuality", **reality** (defacto), in the media as being a way to manipulate, mostly men, toward becoming better and more willing soldiers.
I would prefer congruence of the messages allowed in video games, and TV programming to be congruent with what is legal in society. I.e. -- learning to kill people in a video game, or watching multiple ways to dismember people in a movie when such actions are illegal yet restrict sexuality messages in video games and the media even though such actions are legal is the height of hypocrisy -- making it NOT a 'censorship issue', but one of stripping bare, the subtle and harmful programming being fed to US citizens of all ages.
Those who support 'anti-censorship' in the violence arena, IMO, are pawns, being used by the ruling 'elite'.
While censorship is always a slippery slope, I don't see the argument really being about censorship, but about rejecting government and media manipulation through what is really censored (not by government fiat), but by actions of media monopolies that exist through the grace of the government (who do government bidding, like censoring sexuality over violent content).
What got the FCC kicked 'back into action' and started the huge amount of extra censorship in the 200x's -- Janet Jackson's nipple. The media didn't do their job, so they were attacked by the FCC. Despite Fox and other stations finally winning against the FCC in court battles, regarding 'swearing', the new levels of censorship regarding sexuality have not been reduced last I saw. The more extremely bogus examples of this: showing women's 'butt cracks' (i.e. showing their behind in a thong bikini'). Other areas include **animated** pictures as those found in Japanese anime, ex: Ghost in the Shell, where the protagonist walks out of the water and she's shown from the rear as she walks out of the water. Before Janet Jackson -- uncensored. After: censored.
The media does the government's bidding even though it may not be legally required to and in turn, the government gives the media many perks for enforcing or doing things that the government could never get away with. Another example: AT&T (SBC) giving a free access point to the CIA for all traffic routed through the US -- no court order required. All done voluntarily... AT&T is rewarded by be able to re-combine itself as a monopoly and continue to expand its business by buying up more parts of the telecom industry (latest being T-Mobile).
Given the benefit to the government in allowing violence programming (in VG and vids (TV&movies), I can't help but strongly feel it's deadly wrong for th
"And it is indeed circumstantial. Especially since it happens twenty years after the rise of violent video games, not just a few."
That was my point -- it takes time before enough people (mostly males) who were exposed to such games to reach voting age and become a political force. Of course you wouldn't see results in a few years, as it would only affect the population as children 18 years of age and became voters. So you are looking at a minimum ~ 4-5 years lag time. Combine that with the fact that voting isn't as prevalent in those among younger voters (percentage wise), you wouldn't expect to see such influence in the population at large until about 15-25 years later.
As for torture -- it used to be that it *didn't matter* if they thought we would benefit or not -- we didn't cross that line (at least if they did, it was done in secret, not as published presidential policy). I would say that a lack of empathy would in a larger number of adults would strongly feed into that policy being permitted as 'acceptable'.
"And we're also talking about the fact that the number of kids who do anything 'bad' because of this is small. "
No -- you are talking about that. I'm talking about the less noticeable problem of of US adults who have lower compassion -- Not just those who commit violent crimes. The study was about how violent video games lower empathy. Again -- you think I or the study is focusing on subsequent 'violence' perpetrated by these children. That's not what the study was about. It was about *empathy*, which is far more difficult to get a direct measure of in the population at large. One has to use more indirect measures to see these effects -- and I was attempting to show evidence that there is, indeed, less empathy in the US adult population, at large.
It may not be cause and effect, BUT, it is certainly worth noting that *IF* it were true, that such games caused a lowering of empathy, then it could be a **partial** explanation for the general lowering of empathy that behavior, in the past decade, would indicate has been rising in the US adult population.