"for some reason we're living longer even with all this terrible pollution."
We' not talking about lifespan, but quality of life.
Driving around in a car and working in a factory is not what has allowed the lifespan to creep up to near 80. It is, first and foremost, antibiotics and immunizations. Secondly, it is *regulation* -- in the form of clean municipal water that doesn't have cholera in it, fire codes that prevent people dying in exitless factories and fires that run rampant across cities, people falling into milling machines, that keep us out of squalor and living into our 80s.
If it were up to corporations, we would all be slaves or indentured servants. It really isn't profitable to be concerned for people's health in the long term. Through democratic government and union organizing, average joes have gotten concessions from industry they never could have gotten otherwise. Law and regulation has created the middle class.
I'm not saying the situation is perfect, but I'd rather be a union employee than a slave or slowly going into debt to the company store while working an 80 hour work-week.
"I'm getting tired of the science community saying 'MY WAY OR THE HIGHWAY!' constantly."
Then hit the highway. If you don't like that group of people, don't bother hanging out with them. No one is forcing you to do so. You don't have to embrace the scientific method. If they're such jerks, why would you *want* to be part of their group anyway?
"Creationism is a completely valid viewpoint, and so is evolution. They're both *possible*."
Okay, I'll grant you that. They are both valid viewpoints, and they are both possible. However, only one is *scientific* -- supported by evidence, falsifiable, etc. And it's not creationism.
"Ive always thought the internet was a place where you could get away from people being judgemental, conservative or liberal, believer in global warming or not."
Where-ever did you get that idea from? The internet has been a place of extremist views, flamewars, and trolling since practically the beginning. Yes, you are likely to find others who agree with you. However, I would bet you are more likely to find people who disagree with you vehemently, and aren't going to be shy about it.
So the internet is not a happy love-fest. I don't have to accept your opinion, just like you don't have to accept mine. If I disagree with you, I feel free to say so on the internet.
"It isn't fair for people like me who are christians to be told that they're outright wrong."
Welcome to the real world, buddy.
It isn't fair for people to try to convince me that I am evil or that I will be eternally damned for not believing in God or accepting Jesus Christ as my personal savior. Cuts both ways.
I thought the language of the article was a bit hyperbolic, but I thought that they might have a valid point -- that google's successful, functional software are written and directed from the ground up by *programmers*, not handed down from marketing and management. So a stem-cell (or a programmer's idea) has a chance to grow and blossom into something useful under the programmer's care, instead of management ordering programmers to develop a watered-down, group-think and market-speak developed product.
You are right. With enlightened self-interest, both parties are capable of positioning themselves to benefit. With kindness, it can be taken away at a moments' notice.
I don't know anything about electronics, but couldn't you 'beam' the clock signal into the chip to keep the whole chip synchronized? I've heard about high-frequency chips causing radio interference at their frequency. How about doing the reverse, beaming a radio frequency into the chip, instead of transmitting a signal across the chip, to keep eveything in sync?
I am not old enough to remember warnings about global cooling.
I know from reading and documentaries that Ehrlich's reasoning was widely hailed, and he was a frequent guest on the Johnny Carson show. The link provided claims that there was only concern about an impeding ice age in the popular media -- not scientific journals.
In other words, why should I trust your memory? I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, but from the documented evidence, it seems to contradict your memory. Could you possibly be confusing two memories? Can you give the name of the scientist who scared the bejeesus out of you with the global-cooling-mass-starvation scenario? Was [s]he on the radio or TV? Is is possible that it was a show host or some non-scientist who was making these claims?
Are you talking about Paul R. Ehrlich's prediction of global starvation on the Johnny Carson show and other popular shows?
Ehrlich wrote The Population Bomb in 1968, in which he claimed that overpopulation would lead to mass starvation.
So your memory is decent, but your reasoning is faulty. Your memory of one scientist in the 70s talking about global starvation due to overpopulation has nothing to do a few scientists talking about global cooling back in the 70s.
I agree with you that human beings are natural, just like rocks and birds. We could become extinct, like thousands of other species before us. However, if we are smart enough to become aware of it and decide we don't want that to happen, I think it's perfectly natural that we can a plan and attempt to execute it.
So it's natural that humans use their intelligence to plan and execute plants to improve their daily life, whether it's invent and build cars, or stave off impending doom.
"
The original poster made a connection between creating a system on which it is possible to distribute child pornography and actively aiding the distribution of child pornography. "
You know what? I re-read the original posts and nowhere does the original poster "ma[k]e a connection between creating a system on which it is possible to distribute child pornography and actively aiding the distribution of child pornography". You are misrepresenting the convesation.
The post that stared the thread from Heinous Jay simply says that "Now I can propogate my terrorism plans more efficiently, all while finding exciting new sources of kiddy porn."
In reply, bcromwell made this post. Nowhere in either of these posts do the posters mention Ian Clarke as the creator or developer of the freenet. The first and only reference to Ian Clarke is this:
"Let's all be totally clear on this: Clarke has an absolute belief in free speech, including child pornography. Not only does he believe that government shouldn't be able to regulate any kind of speech, including child pornography, but he is actively helping people to distribute child pornography, and so are you if you run a Freenet node, whether you know it or not."
Also, contrary this post of yours, nowhere is the connection made "between creating a system on which it is possible to distribute child pornography and actively aiding the distribution of child pornography." It simply doesn't appear anywhere in this thread.
So all we hear from bcromwell about Ian Clarke is that
Clarke has an absolute belief in free speech, including child pornography.
he believes that government shouldn't be able to regulate any kind of speech, including child pornography,
"he is actively helping people to distribute child pornography"
Bcromwell does not say anywhere, in any post in this thread that Ian Clarke is creating a network. Neither does the root post. Bcromwell doesn't make any connection between creating a system which can be used to distribute illegal material and actively supporting it. All that bcromwell says about Ian Clarke is that Ian believes child porn is protected speech and "he is actively helping people to distribute child pornography".
So nobody who is new to this conversation leans this is about networks or Ian Clarke as the developer of a network protocol. All they hear from bcromwell is that "he is actively helping people to distribute child pornography", and nothing else. No connection between network development and content distribution.
If I didn't know already that Ian Clarke is the developer of the freenet, all I know about Ian Clarke from bcromwell is that "he is actively helping people to distribute child pornography".
Bcromwell simply makes Ian out to be a a free speech extremist and a trafficker of chlid pornography.
"The original poster made a connection between creating a system on which it is possible to distribute child pornography and actively aiding the distribution of child pornography. "
Okay, I will grant you that that's what the original poster said. Let me show you why it's ridiculous:
If creating a system on which it is possible to distribute child pornography is the same as actively aiding the distribution of child pornography, then the creators of usenet, AOL, and MySpace -- heck, even the rest of the internet and the post office -- are actively aiding the distribution of child pornography. After all, it is possible in all of the systems I listed above to distribute child pornography. And we said ealier that if you create such as system, doing so is the same as actively aiding the distribution of child pornography.
If you read the wikipedia article carefully, you will read that:
"
According to the American and English Encyclopedia of Law, a libel is a malicious defamation expressed either by writing or printing or by signs, pictures, effigies or the like; tending to blacken the memory of one who is dead, or to impeach the honesty, integrity, virtue or reputation, or to publish the natural or alleged defects of one who is alive, thereby exposing him to public hatred, contempt, ridicule or obloquy; or to cause him to be avoided or shunned or to injure him in his office, business or occupation. [Emphasis mine]
Notice that the above definition does not say anything about truthfulness or knowledge of truthfulness. The article goes on to say:
"In many, though not all, legal systems, statements presented as fact must be false to be defamatory."
So you are wrong. Libel need not be presented as fact.
Leaving the above point aside, let's look at what the original poster said:
"[Ian Clarke] is actively helping people to distribute child pornography"
This is a statement of fact. A statement of opinion is "Ian Clarke is a dork" or "I hate Ian Clarke". Saying that Ian Clarke is actually doing something is a statement of fact.
Parent said that Ian Clarke was helping people distribute child porn; this was presented as fact. He didn't say "In my opinion..." or "It seems to me that..." or even "I think". He simply said "He is actively helping people to distribute child pornography". This is a statement of fact.
"Interesting logic: I must support Ian Clarke and his ideals of absolute freedom of speech, otherwise he might sue me for saying bad things about him?"
No, what I'm saying is if you are going to say that someone is trafficking in child pornography, which is what you said , you damn well better have proof. Otherwise, quit cavalierly claiming that someone is doing such. It just tells people that you don't take child porn seriously, if you are willing to willy-nilly claim that someone is traficking it.
Quit trying to ruin this man's life and reputation.
These are pretty serious charges you are leveling against Clarke. Can you provide quotes with links that indicate Clark does indeed believe what you claim he believes?
"... He is actively helping people to distribute child pornography"
You can be sued, and unless you can prove that you know that he was helping to distribute child porn, you will lose. Otherwise, if you know this for a fact, I hope you have reported this to the authorities.*
Do you know for a fact that he is specifically helping to distribute child pornography, rather than simply building a general purpose network? *Any* communications network can be used to distribute child pornogrphy. Remember that usenet, AOL, and most recently Myspace was used to distribute child pornography. Are you making the same claims that the creators and owners of usenet, AOL, and MySpace are "actively helping people to distribute child pornography", like you said of Ian Clarke?
I turned off the freenet myself because I thought it could be used for child porn, and I didn't want any part of it. I do not support child pronography. But, I cannot support you making such claims about a person without evidence. Put up or shut up.
*I have the feeling you do not know this specifically about Ian Clarke. If you do, you should report it to the authorities, and if you had reported it, you wouldn't be blabbing libelously on the internet. You have correctly understood that the freenet, like any network, can be used to distribute child porn, but I don't think you know this about Clark. If you do, for God's sake, don't ruin the investigation by blabbing all over the internet.
"Which is ironic because if we were created, we were created with logical, thinking minds which drive us to discover cause and effect rather than pursue blind faith."
It seems that, if we were created, we were created with logical minds and blind faith "minds". I think there has been more blind faith winning out arguments over logic for most of human history. So, if God build us however he damn well pleased, he gave us a logic part to solve everyday puzzles, like how to open a door, but a faith part to worship him. We might be entirely mistaken to think that logic is the only valid faculty for understanding and interacting in the world.
"The truth is that it is not compatible. Image that tomorrow you go to to work and instead of a handshake you boss want to 'f' you"
You know what? That's the world we live in right now. People fantasize about having sex with people they see everyday. That doesn't mean they do it.
Now, what you're doing is confounding a lot of issues. Originally you claimed that, contrary the the view that was presented in the class, that there was such a phenomena as sexual addiction, and it was abnormal. All I am saying is that is is normal for an adult human being to think about sex frequently, and to engage in masturbation and use pronography.
Now you are asking me to imagine what society would be like if people were having sex all the time. That's not what I'm talking about. All I said what that 'sexual addiction' is not an addiction like cocaine addiction, but probably a normal human mind at work, thinking about sex most of the time.
You are right that the way our society is currently set up has problems with sexually normal human beings. In the case of marriage, you can already see that -- we have a 50 percent divorce rate. I don't think that's because people are less faithful these days, it's just that divorce is more acceptable. I would say that life-long monogamy has almost *never* happened between two people in a normal human life span. (However, if a dispute between neighbors could be solved with blowjobs, I do think that would be an improvement.)
I'm not saying we need to go into all-out 24/7 orgy. But if a guy looks at a dirty picture at work, that doesn't mean that he is an uncontrolable, addicted pervert. He's just a normal guy.
The question you have to ask is how much 'sexual media' is normal for an average person to digest? It wasn't so long ago that workplaces were rife with sexual harrassment. Just work in any male-only environment and tell me about sexual harassment.
Is this normal? I would say so. I content that human beings are very sexual creatures, like bonobos, with human males slightly more sexual than women. Everywhere, all over the world, from jungles to boardrooms, people are into sex -- thinking about it, talking about it, doing it, and also *watching* it.
Asking full time employees to live and act like celibate monks is like asking them to fast from eating for the time they are at work. It's simply unnatural. It's the asexual person who is abnormal.
Using drugs to short circuit the brains pleasure center are addictions because they destroy the body and humans haven't adapted to recently-developed powerful drugs. However, humans have been flirting, masturbating, having sex and orgies for hundreds of thousands of years now. The pleasure centers are specfically adapated to sex, masturbation, and observing sex.
...so I'm all for making distinctions when we can."
this response is partially to parent and partially to grandparent.
First off, language is digital, but not necessarily binary. Yes, "this is a fish" or "this is not a fish", but also "This is a cod fish" or "this is a blue fish", and "this is kind of a fish" and "this is a strange fish" and "this is fish-like". So the moral is that people use modifiers (in my examples, adjectives) on thier categories.
As far as making distinctions, some are useful, some aren't. I think if we made all the distinctions we could, we'd be lost in a morass of useless and irrelevant data -- i.e. what letter does this virus' name begin with? I always ask myself, what do we need to know this for? In the case of viruses, what does it matter if they are 'alive' or 'not alive'? We can study them and learn a lot about them and what they do without wondering whether or not they are alive. In fact, off hand, I can't think of a reason why we would need to know that.
I think the point of the article is simply that there is an age group of people who are playing video games now that weren't before. In 1990, a 25-year-old playing video games would have seemed strange, whereas now it's the norm.
I have no problem with the guy in what he does with his life, so long as he isn't committing crime. He works and pays taxes. What do you think he should be doing instead? Raising a family? Reading great literature? Going to night classes?
"Ahh. I had to look it up to be sure. I don't think "Hunter-garther women try to limit the number of children they have to care for."
It's fine that you think that, but can you provide some evidence to me so I can change my mind if I'm wrong?
In _How the Mind Works_, Stephen Pinker describes various *conscious* birth control methods used by modern hunnter-gatherer women to limit thier offspring. They know that caring for children takes a lot of effort, and that more children means less likelihood that any individual child does well. So they practice pregnancy prevention through abstinence and non-intercourse sex, and pratice abortion and infanticide.
BTW, lactation is not an effective pregnancy protection. It does reduce the probability, but does not make it impossible. This article says "It is appropriate to suggest other contraceptive methods to women who want to delay subsequent pregnancy because lactation alone is unreliable in preventing conception after the 9th week postpartum." So if you are a hunter-gatherer woman having sex 9 weeks after giving birth, you stand a chance of having to maintain a pregnancy and breastfeed an infant at the same time.
So along with long lactation, conscious birth control methods makes birth rates relatively low for hunter gatherers.
You can't make beer out of a dead woodchuck , but you stand a good chance of finding some wicked mushrooms on a hunting trip;)
"Do you really think they reproduce more, or that their children have a better survival rate?"
It's not so much what I believe, but what I read while getting my BA in anthropology.
According to the archaeological record, farmers have more children. Hunter-garther women try to limit the number of children they have to care for, while farming women try to have as many as possible. Hunter gatherers have about 5 max, often less, while farmers have 6-12. When you're farming a staple crop, it's easy to wean children on some rice or wheat mash. Hunter/gatherers breastfeed longer, because they don't have anything that readily makes 'baby food'. Staple crops also provide bettter nutrition and allow people to reach puberty eariler, which means more babies.
I don't recall what the relative survival rates are.
So agriculture spread because farmers were too stupid to realize that they could get by perfectly well being hunter-gatherers and with less effort? I don't think so."
I never said they were stupid. I implied they were educated differently. Hunting and gathering takes little time, but you have to have the know-how. In order to successfully hunt and gather, you need to know how to:
Manufacture accurate and deadly hunting weapons from stone, bone, wood, and plant fibers.
Track, stalk and kill wild animals without getting bitten, trampled, or hunted and eatenyourself.
Find edible plants and avoid poisonous ones.
Farming also takes immense amount of knowledge -- raising crops and animal husbandry. You also need livestock and seed. But once you have one knowledge base, you can't just pick up another. If a hunter-gatherer exhuasts his resources, he moves somewhere else and hunts and gathers. If a farmers fails in some way, he moves somewhere else and farms. Here's the key: no farmer goes back to hunting and gathering. Combine that with the larger number of children who go off and farm, and you have hunter-gatherers outnumbered.
If you have a crop failure due to drought, you take your goat, some seed, and go somewhere else and farm. You can't just pick up a bow and arrow and start hunting. If you have an unsucessful hunt, you can't just go start milking a goat. People stuck with farming because that's all they knew. Besides, "hunting is what those other people do -- yuck. We are proud farmers."
All I'm saying is that hunter-gatherers do not just 'become' farmers. What the archaeological reord shows is migrations of farmers who absorb hunter-gatherer populations, because they have more children.
Slashdot Mirror
Me fail criticizing grammar?
That's unpossible!
"for some reason we're living longer even with all this terrible pollution."
We' not talking about lifespan, but quality of life. Driving around in a car and working in a factory is not what has allowed the lifespan to creep up to near 80. It is, first and foremost, antibiotics and immunizations. Secondly, it is *regulation* -- in the form of clean municipal water that doesn't have cholera in it, fire codes that prevent people dying in exitless factories and fires that run rampant across cities, people falling into milling machines, that keep us out of squalor and living into our 80s.
If it were up to corporations, we would all be slaves or indentured servants. It really isn't profitable to be concerned for people's health in the long term. Through democratic government and union organizing, average joes have gotten concessions from industry they never could have gotten otherwise. Law and regulation has created the middle class.
I'm not saying the situation is perfect, but I'd rather be a union employee than a slave or slowly going into debt to the company store while working an 80 hour work-week.
That story ran on CBS news, not 60 minutes.
Besides, CBS fired Dan Rather, a 20+ year veteran news anchor. How has the Bush administration been held accountable for its lies?
"I'm getting tired of the science community saying 'MY WAY OR THE HIGHWAY!' constantly."
Then hit the highway. If you don't like that group of people, don't bother hanging out with them. No one is forcing you to do so. You don't have to embrace the scientific method. If they're such jerks, why would you *want* to be part of their group anyway?
"Creationism is a completely valid viewpoint, and so is evolution. They're both *possible*."
Okay, I'll grant you that. They are both valid viewpoints, and they are both possible. However, only one is *scientific* -- supported by evidence, falsifiable, etc. And it's not creationism.
"Ive always thought the internet was a place where you could get away from people being judgemental, conservative or liberal, believer in global warming or not."
Where-ever did you get that idea from? The internet has been a place of extremist views, flamewars, and trolling since practically the beginning. Yes, you are likely to find others who agree with you. However, I would bet you are more likely to find people who disagree with you vehemently, and aren't going to be shy about it.
So the internet is not a happy love-fest. I don't have to accept your opinion, just like you don't have to accept mine. If I disagree with you, I feel free to say so on the internet.
"It isn't fair for people like me who are christians to be told that they're outright wrong."
Welcome to the real world, buddy.
It isn't fair for people to try to convince me that I am evil or that I will be eternally damned for not believing in God or accepting Jesus Christ as my personal savior. Cuts both ways.
I thought the language of the article was a bit hyperbolic, but I thought that they might have a valid point -- that google's successful, functional software are written and directed from the ground up by *programmers*, not handed down from marketing and management. So a stem-cell (or a programmer's idea) has a chance to grow and blossom into something useful under the programmer's care, instead of management ordering programmers to develop a watered-down, group-think and market-speak developed product.
You are right. With enlightened self-interest, both parties are capable of positioning themselves to benefit. With kindness, it can be taken away at a moments' notice.
I don't know anything about electronics, but couldn't you 'beam' the clock signal into the chip to keep the whole chip synchronized? I've heard about high-frequency chips causing radio interference at their frequency. How about doing the reverse, beaming a radio frequency into the chip, instead of transmitting a signal across the chip, to keep eveything in sync?
I am not old enough to remember warnings about global cooling.
I know from reading and documentaries that Ehrlich's reasoning was widely hailed, and he was a frequent guest on the Johnny Carson show. The link provided claims that there was only concern about an impeding ice age in the popular media -- not scientific journals.
In other words, why should I trust your memory? I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, but from the documented evidence, it seems to contradict your memory. Could you possibly be confusing two memories? Can you give the name of the scientist who scared the bejeesus out of you with the global-cooling-mass-starvation scenario? Was [s]he on the radio or TV? Is is possible that it was a show host or some non-scientist who was making these claims?
Are you talking about Paul R. Ehrlich's prediction of global starvation on the Johnny Carson show and other popular shows?
Ehrlich wrote The Population Bomb in 1968, in which he claimed that overpopulation would lead to mass starvation.
So your memory is decent, but your reasoning is faulty. Your memory of one scientist in the 70s talking about global starvation due to overpopulation has nothing to do a few scientists talking about global cooling back in the 70s.
I agree with you that human beings are natural, just like rocks and birds. We could become extinct, like thousands of other species before us. However, if we are smart enough to become aware of it and decide we don't want that to happen, I think it's perfectly natural that we can a plan and attempt to execute it.
So it's natural that humans use their intelligence to plan and execute plants to improve their daily life, whether it's invent and build cars, or stave off impending doom.
You know what? I re-read the original posts and nowhere does the original poster "ma[k]e a connection between creating a system on which it is possible to distribute child pornography and actively aiding the distribution of child pornography". You are misrepresenting the convesation.
The post that stared the thread from Heinous Jay simply says that "Now I can propogate my terrorism plans more efficiently, all while finding exciting new sources of kiddy porn."
In reply, bcromwell made this post. Nowhere in either of these posts do the posters mention Ian Clarke as the creator or developer of the freenet. The first and only reference to Ian Clarke is this:
"Let's all be totally clear on this: Clarke has an absolute belief in free speech, including child pornography. Not only does he believe that government shouldn't be able to regulate any kind of speech, including child pornography, but he is actively helping people to distribute child pornography, and so are you if you run a Freenet node, whether you know it or not."
Also, contrary this post of yours, nowhere is the connection made "between creating a system on which it is possible to distribute child pornography and actively aiding the distribution of child pornography." It simply doesn't appear anywhere in this thread.
So all we hear from bcromwell about Ian Clarke is that
- Clarke has an absolute belief in free speech, including child pornography.
- he believes that government shouldn't be able to regulate any kind of speech, including child pornography,
- "he is actively helping people to distribute child pornography"
Bcromwell does not say anywhere, in any post in this thread that Ian Clarke is creating a network. Neither does the root post. Bcromwell doesn't make any connection between creating a system which can be used to distribute illegal material and actively supporting it. All that bcromwell says about Ian Clarke is that Ian believes child porn is protected speech and "he is actively helping people to distribute child pornography".So nobody who is new to this conversation leans this is about networks or Ian Clarke as the developer of a network protocol. All they hear from bcromwell is that "he is actively helping people to distribute child pornography", and nothing else. No connection between network development and content distribution. If I didn't know already that Ian Clarke is the developer of the freenet, all I know about Ian Clarke from bcromwell is that "he is actively helping people to distribute child pornography".
Bcromwell simply makes Ian out to be a a free speech extremist and a trafficker of chlid pornography.
"The original poster made a connection between creating a system on which it is possible to distribute child pornography and actively aiding the distribution of child pornography. "
Okay, I will grant you that that's what the original poster said. Let me show you why it's ridiculous:
If creating a system on which it is possible to distribute child pornography is the same as actively aiding the distribution of child pornography, then the creators of usenet, AOL, and MySpace -- heck, even the rest of the internet and the post office -- are actively aiding the distribution of child pornography. After all, it is possible in all of the systems I listed above to distribute child pornography. And we said ealier that if you create such as system, doing so is the same as actively aiding the distribution of child pornography.
If you read the wikipedia article carefully, you will read that:
" According to the American and English Encyclopedia of Law, a libel is a malicious defamation expressed either by writing or printing or by signs, pictures, effigies or the like; tending to blacken the memory of one who is dead, or to impeach the honesty, integrity, virtue or reputation, or to publish the natural or alleged defects of one who is alive, thereby exposing him to public hatred, contempt, ridicule or obloquy; or to cause him to be avoided or shunned or to injure him in his office, business or occupation. [Emphasis mine]
Notice that the above definition does not say anything about truthfulness or knowledge of truthfulness. The article goes on to say:
"In many, though not all, legal systems, statements presented as fact must be false to be defamatory."
So you are wrong. Libel need not be presented as fact.
Leaving the above point aside, let's look at what the original poster said:
"[Ian Clarke] is actively helping people to distribute child pornography"
This is a statement of fact. A statement of opinion is "Ian Clarke is a dork" or "I hate Ian Clarke". Saying that Ian Clarke is actually doing something is a statement of fact.
Parent said that Ian Clarke was helping people distribute child porn; this was presented as fact. He didn't say "In my opinion..." or "It seems to me that..." or even "I think". He simply said "He is actively helping people to distribute child pornography". This is a statement of fact.
"Interesting logic: I must support Ian Clarke and his ideals of absolute freedom of speech, otherwise he might sue me for saying bad things about him?"
No, what I'm saying is if you are going to say that someone is trafficking in child pornography, which is what you said , you damn well better have proof. Otherwise, quit cavalierly claiming that someone is doing such. It just tells people that you don't take child porn seriously, if you are willing to willy-nilly claim that someone is traficking it.
Quit trying to ruin this man's life and reputation.
"Freenet seeks to implement a level of anonymity that resolves people of responsibility."
I think the word you are looking for is absolve.
These are pretty serious charges you are leveling against Clarke. Can you provide quotes with links that indicate Clark does indeed believe what you claim he believes?
"... He is actively helping people to distribute child pornography"
What you have posted is frankly libelous.
You can be sued, and unless you can prove that you know that he was helping to distribute child porn, you will lose. Otherwise, if you know this for a fact, I hope you have reported this to the authorities.*
Do you know for a fact that he is specifically helping to distribute child pornography, rather than simply building a general purpose network? *Any* communications network can be used to distribute child pornogrphy. Remember that usenet, AOL, and most recently Myspace was used to distribute child pornography. Are you making the same claims that the creators and owners of usenet, AOL, and MySpace are "actively helping people to distribute child pornography", like you said of Ian Clarke?
I turned off the freenet myself because I thought it could be used for child porn, and I didn't want any part of it. I do not support child pronography. But, I cannot support you making such claims about a person without evidence. Put up or shut up.
*I have the feeling you do not know this specifically about Ian Clarke. If you do, you should report it to the authorities, and if you had reported it, you wouldn't be blabbing libelously on the internet. You have correctly understood that the freenet, like any network, can be used to distribute child porn, but I don't think you know this about Clark. If you do, for God's sake, don't ruin the investigation by blabbing all over the internet.
"Which is ironic because if we were created, we were created with logical, thinking minds which drive us to discover cause and effect rather than pursue blind faith."
It seems that, if we were created, we were created with logical minds and blind faith "minds". I think there has been more blind faith winning out arguments over logic for most of human history. So, if God build us however he damn well pleased, he gave us a logic part to solve everyday puzzles, like how to open a door, but a faith part to worship him. We might be entirely mistaken to think that logic is the only valid faculty for understanding and interacting in the world.
"The truth is that it is not compatible. Image that tomorrow you go to to work and instead of a handshake you boss want to 'f' you"
You know what? That's the world we live in right now. People fantasize about having sex with people they see everyday. That doesn't mean they do it.
Now, what you're doing is confounding a lot of issues. Originally you claimed that, contrary the the view that was presented in the class, that there was such a phenomena as sexual addiction, and it was abnormal. All I am saying is that is is normal for an adult human being to think about sex frequently, and to engage in masturbation and use pronography.
Now you are asking me to imagine what society would be like if people were having sex all the time. That's not what I'm talking about. All I said what that 'sexual addiction' is not an addiction like cocaine addiction, but probably a normal human mind at work, thinking about sex most of the time.
You are right that the way our society is currently set up has problems with sexually normal human beings. In the case of marriage, you can already see that -- we have a 50 percent divorce rate. I don't think that's because people are less faithful these days, it's just that divorce is more acceptable. I would say that life-long monogamy has almost *never* happened between two people in a normal human life span. (However, if a dispute between neighbors could be solved with blowjobs, I do think that would be an improvement.)
I'm not saying we need to go into all-out 24/7 orgy. But if a guy looks at a dirty picture at work, that doesn't mean that he is an uncontrolable, addicted pervert. He's just a normal guy.
The question you have to ask is how much 'sexual media' is normal for an average person to digest? It wasn't so long ago that workplaces were rife with sexual harrassment. Just work in any male-only environment and tell me about sexual harassment.
Is this normal? I would say so. I content that human beings are very sexual creatures, like bonobos, with human males slightly more sexual than women. Everywhere, all over the world, from jungles to boardrooms, people are into sex -- thinking about it, talking about it, doing it, and also *watching* it.
Asking full time employees to live and act like celibate monks is like asking them to fast from eating for the time they are at work. It's simply unnatural. It's the asexual person who is abnormal.
Using drugs to short circuit the brains pleasure center are addictions because they destroy the body and humans haven't adapted to recently-developed powerful drugs. However, humans have been flirting, masturbating, having sex and orgies for hundreds of thousands of years now. The pleasure centers are specfically adapated to sex, masturbation, and observing sex.
"Avoid AA-type pseudoreligious programs. They have been proven not to work (no flames, please, go google the study yourself). "
Can you give me the terms to search for? I searched under "aa study" and got no such study.
...so I'm all for making distinctions when we can."
this response is partially to parent and partially to grandparent.
First off, language is digital, but not necessarily binary. Yes, "this is a fish" or "this is not a fish", but also "This is a cod fish" or "this is a blue fish", and "this is kind of a fish" and "this is a strange fish" and "this is fish-like". So the moral is that people use modifiers (in my examples, adjectives) on thier categories.
As far as making distinctions, some are useful, some aren't. I think if we made all the distinctions we could, we'd be lost in a morass of useless and irrelevant data -- i.e. what letter does this virus' name begin with? I always ask myself, what do we need to know this for? In the case of viruses, what does it matter if they are 'alive' or 'not alive'? We can study them and learn a lot about them and what they do without wondering whether or not they are alive. In fact, off hand, I can't think of a reason why we would need to know that.
I think the point of the article is simply that there is an age group of people who are playing video games now that weren't before. In 1990, a 25-year-old playing video games would have seemed strange, whereas now it's the norm.
I have no problem with the guy in what he does with his life, so long as he isn't committing crime. He works and pays taxes. What do you think he should be doing instead? Raising a family? Reading great literature? Going to night classes?
"Ahh. I had to look it up to be sure. I don't think "Hunter-garther women try to limit the number of children they have to care for."
;)
It's fine that you think that, but can you provide some evidence to me so I can change my mind if I'm wrong?
In _How the Mind Works_, Stephen Pinker describes various *conscious* birth control methods used by modern hunnter-gatherer women to limit thier offspring. They know that caring for children takes a lot of effort, and that more children means less likelihood that any individual child does well. So they practice pregnancy prevention through abstinence and non-intercourse sex, and pratice abortion and infanticide.
BTW, lactation is not an effective pregnancy protection. It does reduce the probability, but does not make it impossible. This article says "It is appropriate to suggest other contraceptive methods to women who want to delay subsequent pregnancy because lactation alone is unreliable in preventing conception after the 9th week postpartum." So if you are a hunter-gatherer woman having sex 9 weeks after giving birth, you stand a chance of having to maintain a pregnancy and breastfeed an infant at the same time.
So along with long lactation, conscious birth control methods makes birth rates relatively low for hunter gatherers.
You can't make beer out of a dead woodchuck , but you stand a good chance of finding some wicked mushrooms on a hunting trip
"Do you really think they reproduce more, or that their children have a better survival rate?"
It's not so much what I believe, but what I read while getting my BA in anthropology.
According to the archaeological record, farmers have more children. Hunter-garther women try to limit the number of children they have to care for, while farming women try to have as many as possible. Hunter gatherers have about 5 max, often less, while farmers have 6-12. When you're farming a staple crop, it's easy to wean children on some rice or wheat mash. Hunter/gatherers breastfeed longer, because they don't have anything that readily makes 'baby food'. Staple crops also provide bettter nutrition and allow people to reach puberty eariler, which means more babies.
I don't recall what the relative survival rates are.
I never said they were stupid. I implied they were educated differently. Hunting and gathering takes little time, but you have to have the know-how. In order to successfully hunt and gather, you need to know how to
Farming also takes immense amount of knowledge -- raising crops and animal husbandry. You also need livestock and seed. But once you have one knowledge base, you can't just pick up another. If a hunter-gatherer exhuasts his resources, he moves somewhere else and hunts and gathers. If a farmers fails in some way, he moves somewhere else and farms. Here's the key: no farmer goes back to hunting and gathering. Combine that with the larger number of children who go off and farm, and you have hunter-gatherers outnumbered.
If you have a crop failure due to drought, you take your goat, some seed, and go somewhere else and farm. You can't just pick up a bow and arrow and start hunting. If you have an unsucessful hunt, you can't just go start milking a goat. People stuck with farming because that's all they knew. Besides, "hunting is what those other people do -- yuck. We are proud farmers."
All I'm saying is that hunter-gatherers do not just 'become' farmers. What the archaeological reord shows is migrations of farmers who absorb hunter-gatherer populations, because they have more children.