Wow, an 11 year-old kid goes out of the way to do some good for his school, including scoring his IT department free-as-in-beer software, and you act like a jackass because you don't like his methods.
This might actually be a new low for you. Ok, so let's look at this objectively. I really don't pay attention to/. politics, so whilst I'm vaguely aware that Mr Twitter doesn't have a favourable following around these parts, I have no idea why and don't really care. What I do care about was his comment that you've insulted so strongly, which reads in its entirety (including the headline):
I'd call him a paytard but he's actually too young to know better. Give him a year or two and he'll have that virus and spam churning mess fixed with free software. Seems pretty innocuous if you ask me. Not really contributing anything, but not really doing any harm -- in fact, actually giving the kid a bit of credit. A jackass in this instance? I don't think so. So I have two questions for you, Mr Coward:
(1) Would you have replied the same to anyone who wrote that comment, or did you reply solely because it was posted by someone you didn't like?
and
(2) Are you at all disturbed that your comment is indirectly supporting Microsoft? Must have been quite the troll's dilemma for you...
Seriously, grow up the lot of you. You're embarrassing yourselves.
I can't wait to get my hands on one of these, and put Linux on it. As I understand it, the next gen Eee (with larger screen and larger touchpad -- see, for example, this article) will come in linux and Windows flavours, but the big difference is that the linux one comes with a larger flash drive (12Gb vs 8Gb) for the same price (since Asus doesn't need to pay Microsoft).
Microsoft is never going to win this one, and I think they know it...
Apple just wants to lock down the platform as much as possible, that's all there is to it. Nah, don't worry -- when they create the sixth iteration of the iPhone OS they'll release a special extension that allows cooperative multitasking.
If you're referring to the x windows highlight-copy and middle-button-click-paste, it's a bad idea in terms of usability. I'm not saying it's horrible, but it goes wrong with everyday users because the act of highlighting blows away what's in the the buffer. I have a hard time believing that users would have loved it. Eh? I have people constantly gushing over middle-mouse paste when I do it at work, and these aren't people who are incredibly computer-literate. And I've lost count of the number of times that I've tried to paste highlighted text with the middle-mouse in windows... I find the process both fast and intuitive.
Anyway, it doesn't really matter -- Apple could have at the very least have made a two-button trackpad, and that wouldn't have confused anyone. Actually, I wonder that they haven't made the trackpad button area-sensitive -- so you could enable two or three buttons if you wanted to, whilst still not frightening off the die-hard mac users...
The cult of the single-button mouse. (turns red). Yeah. But...those who prefer 2 or 3 button mouse could buy one from 3rd parties. Right mouse click does work on a Mac. Multi button mouse just didn't come with Macs. The thing I've never understood is why Apple persisted with a single button on the trackpad once they moved to OSX. It's the one thing that's kept me from buying a Mac laptop, and it drives me insane because those laptops are pretty nice in every other way... (It's pretty hard finding three-button non-apple trackpads, too, but the trick is to find one with those silly two-way or four-way scroll buttons in the middle and remap it)
The funny thing is, Apple could have marketed middle-mouse cut-and-paste, and users would have loved it, and would have praised it as another example of Apple innovation. After all, what function do you do more commonly than cut-and-paste text?
I'm not sure that's the start of it. The first post you link to is from January 18, 2006; the second from June 16 2006. However, in the GP to the first post he writes:
Wish I had known that before I made a not-so-nice comment about Apple which resulted in several mods going well out of their way to mod me down until I couldn't post on Slashdot for a couple of weeks. (From a certain IP, anyway. At least now you understand the origins of my sig.) And there's a bit more information here in the same thread, where he writes:
It's a matter of perspective. In some ways, I deserve some of it. I let out a few harsh words. I am in no way claiming to be 100% innocent, only that I was treated unjustly. I On the other hand, several of my unrelated posts were modded down. I could nost post from a certain IP address for 3 weeks as a result of it. There's no way in my mind I deserved that. (I also recieved numerous positive mods on the topic...) There have been other times over the years where I made a small quip about Apple and was modded down severely for it. For example: Somebody put a PC inside of their iMac case. And I said something like "It's the first time GTA was ever seen on a Mac!" Flamebait. Anyway. I would have thought that the moderation system exists to rate single posts, not to prevent a particular user from ever posting again: it doesn't matter how obnoxious a user has been in the past, every post should be rated on its particular merits. The really sad thing about this story is that the metamoderation system clearly doesn't work -- there appears to have been so much unjust moderation going on with his account that it should have been detected by metamods. (I'm now feeling guilty, since it's been years since I metamodded...)
But the other, scarier, question raised by this episode is: how was this abuse coordinated? The example of 10 posts being modded down in a row that can be seen on the first page of his profile suggests that this was not targeting by just one individual. If his claims of 30 negative mods in a row are also true, then this was a large group effort.
Like Ubentu wouldn't install under paralles, it was a bug in the installer code. But except for admiting it was a bug they pointed me to a workaround site that still didn't work 100%. So, hang on, you're criticising the linux community for (a) telling you that it wasn't your fault as there was a bug in the code, and (b) providing you with a work-around solution until the bug was fixed?? That sounds pretty decent behaviour if you ask me...
I'm not suggesting that there isn't a lot of linux fanboism (is that a word?) going on, but it generally takes the lines of "If it doesn't work the way you want it to, just hack the code and do it yourself". In contrast, the Apple fanbois more often take the line of "If it doesn't work the way you want it to, that's because you're a sub-human life form who has blocked their ears to the Word of Jobs and the One True Way." Neither attitudes are particularly helpful, of course. But the Apple response is often the more defensive one, which cannot admit that people might have an issue with any aspect of the OS.
(Don't get me wrong, btw -- I think OS X has got some extremely nice features, and I love the fact that it's getting main-stream computer users onto a *nix OS rather than the abomination that is Windows. However, it is not perfect (nothing ever is), and I find it a pity that the Mac fan-base can't acknowledge that small failings do exist. After all, it was exactly this delusional attitude that saw Macs stagnate between OS 7 and the introduction of OS X -- nobody was ever prepared to admit that the OS crashed more times that China Airlines, hence the bugs remained.)
I see the large number of modded down posts, but uhhh... there's no post about Apple anywhere near there. What evidence do you have to suggest that the mod-bombing is in any way connected to any apple post that may or may not be in a very large list of posts? Well, he did say in the previous post that the last activity was months after the initial attack -- so you won't be able to see it unless you're a subscriber (which neither of us are).
And looking at that profile page, he's certainly been modded into submission -- ten posts in a row of the last 24 modded down as trolls, when they were in fact nothing of the sort. I'd say he's got a fair point that the/. moderation system was systematically abused in his case, and he'd probably know the reason better than most.
Australia. But the cost-of-living should be about on par with most US cities, from the data I can find online. Mean national income is about $40,000 if that helps...
Anyone have any information about this? I prefer having a linux environment but my work laptop *must* run windows thanks to company software. This seems like it may be a much better solution for me compared to, say, cygwin. I have the same problem, but I get around it on my linux laptop by running XP within VirtualBox (which is free and doesn't need for a license key like VMWare). You can pause the virtual machine when you're not using it, have the desktop resize with the virtual machine window, and there's even stuff like bi-directional clipboard support. Setting up shared directories between the host OS and the virtual OS is also extremely easy. I remember trying to setup VMWare back in 2000, and the distance virtual machines have come since then is just amazing. If you haven't tried it for a while, it's really worth giving them another go.
But the really great thing is that I can still do most of my work under linux, and that stuff doesn't get lost when Windows decides to crash...:)
As for WUBI, btw, it seems like it creates a dual-boot setup for windows, but one that uses a file within the windows disk as the basis for its file system. So it's not like having linux running within Windows, it's just like booting into linux but without having to do a repartition of your drive.
sure, money isn't EVERYTHING, but it's about 90% of it. when your all grown up and have a house and other responsibilites like a family, you'll learn you'd happily shovel shit for a living if it paid the right money. I dunno. I'm currently paid a salary of ~$55,000 pre tax, of which I sacrifice 10K into super, leaving me around $45,000 which then gets taxed. Of the remainder, I pay rent for a place where I live by myself, eat out most nights a week and go out a lot too. Yet I still have plenty left over to donate to charities, and even after that I save at least 5K a year without trying.
I honestly don't know how people manage to spend their large salaries. (Obviously, if you want a family that's going to cost a lot more -- although with my own income combined with a partner's income that shouldn't be too difficult to manage.) But the point is that I don't need a six-figure salary to be happy right now. Hell, I wouldn't know what to do with the extra money if someone gave it to me, except throw that into superannuation as well.
I'm paid more than I can spend, and I get paid to do stuff that I utterly love. That's all I need from a job, and all I want.
Hmmm... I think most people criticise rather than praise the Romans for their love of bloodsports. However, you do have a point -- there is probably something ingrained in the human psyche about it.
Nevertheless, I have several friends who have been raped, and one who was raped when she was 10 years old. If what had happened to her had been filmed or photographed, her pain would be infinitely worse -- and anyone who then gets off on that sort of thing, I really have to say, is sick. Or let me put it another way: if you were raped, and images of that event taken, would you be happy for those images to be freely distributed around the net without any crime taking place?
(There is, of course, a big difference between fantasy and reality -- many people of both sexes have fantasies of rape and/or control, hence the bdsm pr0n market. Yet just because a girl might have a fantasy about rape, it doesn't mean she actually wants to be raped! And the thing about child pr0n is that it crosses the line into reality -- what you're witnessing are real acts on unconsenting minors.)
I don't think you can draw a long bow from child pr0n, where the victim is obviously unconsenting, to things such as alcohol, drugs or suicide, where the victim is complicit in their own fate. Maybe prohibition won't work, but I think that given the severity of the crime it's worth a try.
I also don't think that it's a case of guilt until proven innocent here. Perhaps I'm being naive, but I'd hope that if someone innocently clicked on a disguised honeypot link the court system would save him. I'm, of course, also assuming that anyone convicted by these laws didn't do anything like destroy a HDD and a USB thumb drive when the FBI came around to raid his home (which is what the guy in TFA did), or that he had thumbnails of child pr0n images sitting on his computer (also the guy in TFA).
Actually, having read TFA again, it does appear that the FBI failed to record the referrer sites. However, looking at the case in question, the guy clearly knew exactly what he wanted to download: he tried multiple files in the honeypot list, and when they didn't work the first time (since the video file was apparently just static) he tried to open them again a few minutes later. The links themselves were as explicit as you can get.
You make some good points. But note that the general accepted definition of child pron involves young children: they're not going to look 16, 18 or whatever. We're talking prepubescent here. I'm not a big pr0n user, and haven't surfed for it for several years now, but I can't recall ever seeing links to child pr0n on a regular pr0n site (this may, however, reflect the way the industry has changed in the last four years).
Also, I'm not assuming that anyone who ends up at a generic, poorly labelled link must be a pervert. However, according to the article, the links claimed to be of "illegal videos of minors having sex", which is pretty explicit. Provided these links were clearly marked, and that some basic checks -- such as looking that the referring sites to make sure that the links hadn't made it into the open in a disguised form -- I still don't have a problem with people who click on these links being investigated. Now, if the FBI were using a disguised site which you could stumble upon by accident, that's another issue, and I can see your point there. One hopes that these honeypots are well thought out -- and also, that if they're poorly designed, that the courts will prevent a miscarriage of justice.
I must say, that on further reading of the article, I'm disturbed by the fact that "attempts" to download material is a crime: I'd have hoped that the users snared by the honeypot would then have their computers searched for incriminating material and the crimes based on that instead. But I'm still not sure that these methods aren't warranted -- child pr0n is so badly wrong on so many counts that it really does need to be fought.
Your argument about making c++ programming illegal, though, is a bit silly. I do not believe that curiosity is an issue here. If you're presented with a link that clearly states it's to a illegal video of minors having sex, are you really going to say, "oh, gee, you know -- I've never seen one of those before. Why don't I take a quick peek and have a look?" Even if someone doesn't find the concept in itself disturbing, the fact that they are about to witness something which is causing someone else pain and suffering is surely going to make them pause and think. Not to mention the fact that they'd have to be living under a rock these last few years not to know it was illegal!!
I dunno -- it's an emotive issue, which is always hard to look at objectively. I've tried hard to avoid the "think of the children" arguments, but it's difficult when that's really exactly what it boils down to. (Incidentally, I note with amusement that my original post got modded down... so much for open discussion!)
Yes, pictures may be offensive to many, but they do NOT correlate 100% to abusers.
People who view physically graphic bdsm pictures are not rapists. I thought about modding you down, but since I've seen this attitude in several posts, I think this needs to be replied to instead.
The difference between graphic bdsm pictures and pr0n involving children is that the former are fictitious creations made by consenting adults, and the latter actually happened to children unable to defend themselves. If the bdsm pictures you were viewing were taken from an actual rape incident, by viewing them you would be encouraging more rapes and supporting rapists. And this is exactly what happens with child pr0n -- these kids are not, and obviously can never be, consenting adults.
The other issue you're happily avoiding here is that most people are not just looking (and thus passively supporting) but they're paying money and actively supporting these acts. Even if the sites are free, they are undoubtedly supported by advertising that generates dollars when you visit the site. This, then, goes beyond curiosity, into a realm where the viewers are actively contributing to the continuation of child pr0n.
To make this point completely clear: if nobody viewed child pr0n on the web, there would be no market and the incidence of creation would be greatly reduced. You cannot visit a child pr0n site, and yet somehow remain isolated from the loop that promotes more and more child pr0n.
If the FBI want to take measures to stamp this out, that's completely fine by me. They should be praised, not vilified.
Of course depleted uranium and "regular" uranium have the same effect on the body - they are the SAME thing. It would be like saying that there is this regular Oxygen that is different from the special Oxygen-16 and Oxygen-18. Chemically, they are identical, just like Uranium vs. U-235 vs. U-238. Yeah, but DU has less radioactivity -- which is what causes problems in your body in the first place. I'm saying that either would be safe per se, but DU is safer than enriched U.
Actually he said "on Walmart". He was obviously referring to the small town in South Wales. Actually, he said "on Walmar" (no 't'). http://www.walmar.net/ doesn't seem to sell many PCs, but they do feature a zero-flush waterless urinal which sounds pretty similar to Vista basic if you ask me...
Sure it's simple, but it's not cheap. And besides -- if mobile broadband represents the future of phones, why is nokia including wifi with all their latest top-end phones? Clearly wifi access is a selling point, and it's a selling point because it's free...
Galileo strayed from purely scientific examinations to drawing *religious* conclusions based on the contradiction between scripture and scientific fact. The Vatican had asked him to refrain from drawing religious conclusions (the responsibility of the Church) and stick to scientific fact. Quite so. And Galileo went one step further and directly ridiculed the Pope in his "Dialogue of the two world systems" (which was his rather polemic defence of Copernicus). What was worse, Galileo used a spurious proof to support his arguments in favour of Copernicus (his theory of the tides, which was not only laughably incorrect in basic physics, but also predicted a single tide at 12 noon each day), which really didn't do him any favours.
Furthermore, he directly ignored the contemporary alternative geocentric model of the universe (derived more or less independantly by Tycho, Ursus, the Jesuits and others) which postulated that the earth stood still (or revolved on its axis) and that the sun orbited the earth, with the other planets orbiting the sun. This model was identical to Copernicus, only with a different frame of reference. (The only real reason for believing in a heliocentric universe at the time was provided by Kepler, who suggested that the planets were moved by physical forces emanating from the sun -- but Galileo chose to completely ignore Kepler. Incidentally, Kepler, despite his strident and life-long advocacy of Copernicus, did not front the inquisition or have his books banned.)
And it gets even worse for Galileo, for not only did he use an incorrect proof to support Copernicus, but the existing scientific data supported a geocentric universe, not a heliocentric one. This was because a stellar parallax could not be detected (basically, if the earth moves relative to the stars, the position of the stars relative to one another should appear to shift slightly as the earth circles the sun). The failure to detect a stellar parallax gave weight to the geocentric model. (Kepler argued, correctly, that the lack of a detectable stellar parallax merely implied that the stars were much further away than previously thought; once again, however, Galileo didn't even acknowledge this argument.)
So, in summary, Galileo wrote a scientific document that lacked any physical evidence to support its arguments, whereupon he made up his own fake evidence instead. And we're celebrating this astonishingly example of bad science by raising a statue to the guy!! We might as well erect a statue to Woo-Suk Hwang while we're at it...
If anyone should be celebrated in their advocacy of heliocentricity, its Kepler and Newton, who combined demonstrated the physical reasons why a sun-centred universe is correct.
More disturbing is that it's not *your* proximity. It's *your arm's* proximity. This technology could bring about a whole new and horribly gruesome form of breaking and entering.:| I think you'll find the correct term is "armed robbery"...
Re:My only suggestion for X
on
X Power Tools
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· Score: 1
Yes, that works great if you plug in one display when you install and never change it.
Now go to your nearest Mac, plug in a second display (while it's running), and watch what happens. Then go to your nearest Linux box, plug in a second display (also while it's already running), and watch what happens. Note that the Mac was using both displays about 4 seconds after you plugged it in, and the Linux box was not. This is what's currently being implemented with xrandr 1.2. The drivers are only just starting to support it though.
Slashdot Mirror
This might actually be a new low for you. Ok, so let's look at this objectively. I really don't pay attention to
(1) Would you have replied the same to anyone who wrote that comment, or did you reply solely because it was posted by someone you didn't like?
and
(2) Are you at all disturbed that your comment is indirectly supporting Microsoft? Must have been quite the troll's dilemma for you
Seriously, grow up the lot of you. You're embarrassing yourselves.
Microsoft is never going to win this one, and I think they know it
And they'll call it, "MultiFinder".
Anyway, it doesn't really matter -- Apple could have at the very least have made a two-button trackpad, and that wouldn't have confused anyone. Actually, I wonder that they haven't made the trackpad button area-sensitive -- so you could enable two or three buttons if you wanted to, whilst still not frightening off the die-hard mac users
(turns red). Yeah. But...those who prefer 2 or 3 button mouse could buy one from 3rd parties. Right mouse click does work on a Mac. Multi button mouse just didn't come with Macs. The thing I've never understood is why Apple persisted with a single button on the trackpad once they moved to OSX. It's the one thing that's kept me from buying a Mac laptop, and it drives me insane because those laptops are pretty nice in every other way
The funny thing is, Apple could have marketed middle-mouse cut-and-paste, and users would have loved it, and would have praised it as another example of Apple innovation. After all, what function do you do more commonly than cut-and-paste text?
Mod parent up ... that's the best regexp I've ever seen!
...
'course, it doesn't actually seem to work under Perl 5.8; but I sure as hell ain't trying to debug it
I'm not sure that's the start of it. The first post you link to is from January 18, 2006; the second from June 16 2006. However, in the GP to the first post he writes: Wish I had known that before I made a not-so-nice comment about Apple which resulted in several mods going well out of their way to mod me down until I couldn't post on Slashdot for a couple of weeks. (From a certain IP, anyway. At least now you understand the origins of my sig.) And there's a bit more information here in the same thread, where he writes: It's a matter of perspective. In some ways, I deserve some of it. I let out a few harsh words. I am in no way claiming to be 100% innocent, only that I was treated unjustly. I On the other hand, several of my unrelated posts were modded down. I could nost post from a certain IP address for 3 weeks as a result of it. There's no way in my mind I deserved that. (I also recieved numerous positive mods on the topic...) There have been other times over the years where I made a small quip about Apple and was modded down severely for it. For example: Somebody put a PC inside of their iMac case. And I said something like "It's the first time GTA was ever seen on a Mac!" Flamebait. Anyway. I would have thought that the moderation system exists to rate single posts, not to prevent a particular user from ever posting again: it doesn't matter how obnoxious a user has been in the past, every post should be rated on its particular merits. The really sad thing about this story is that the metamoderation system clearly doesn't work -- there appears to have been so much unjust moderation going on with his account that it should have been detected by metamods. (I'm now feeling guilty, since it's been years since I metamoddedOne
Two
But the other, scarier, question raised by this episode is: how was this abuse coordinated? The example of 10 posts being modded down in a row that can be seen on the first page of his profile suggests that this was not targeting by just one individual. If his claims of 30 negative mods in a row are also true, then this was a large group effort.
I'm not suggesting that there isn't a lot of linux fanboism (is that a word?) going on, but it generally takes the lines of "If it doesn't work the way you want it to, just hack the code and do it yourself". In contrast, the Apple fanbois more often take the line of "If it doesn't work the way you want it to, that's because you're a sub-human life form who has blocked their ears to the Word of Jobs and the One True Way." Neither attitudes are particularly helpful, of course. But the Apple response is often the more defensive one, which cannot admit that people might have an issue with any aspect of the OS.
(Don't get me wrong, btw -- I think OS X has got some extremely nice features, and I love the fact that it's getting main-stream computer users onto a *nix OS rather than the abomination that is Windows. However, it is not perfect (nothing ever is), and I find it a pity that the Mac fan-base can't acknowledge that small failings do exist. After all, it was exactly this delusional attitude that saw Macs stagnate between OS 7 and the introduction of OS X -- nobody was ever prepared to admit that the OS crashed more times that China Airlines, hence the bugs remained.)
And looking at that profile page, he's certainly been modded into submission -- ten posts in a row of the last 24 modded down as trolls, when they were in fact nothing of the sort. I'd say he's got a fair point that the
Australia. But the cost-of-living should be about on par with most US cities, from the data I can find online. Mean national income is about $40,000 if that helps ...
But the really great thing is that I can still do most of my work under linux, and that stuff doesn't get lost when Windows decides to crash
As for WUBI, btw, it seems like it creates a dual-boot setup for windows, but one that uses a file within the windows disk as the basis for its file system. So it's not like having linux running within Windows, it's just like booting into linux but without having to do a repartition of your drive.
I honestly don't know how people manage to spend their large salaries. (Obviously, if you want a family that's going to cost a lot more -- although with my own income combined with a partner's income that shouldn't be too difficult to manage.) But the point is that I don't need a six-figure salary to be happy right now. Hell, I wouldn't know what to do with the extra money if someone gave it to me, except throw that into superannuation as well.
I'm paid more than I can spend, and I get paid to do stuff that I utterly love. That's all I need from a job, and all I want.
Hmmm ... I think most people criticise rather than praise the Romans for their love of bloodsports. However, you do have a point -- there is probably something ingrained in the human psyche about it.
Nevertheless, I have several friends who have been raped, and one who was raped when she was 10 years old. If what had happened to her had been filmed or photographed, her pain would be infinitely worse -- and anyone who then gets off on that sort of thing, I really have to say, is sick. Or let me put it another way: if you were raped, and images of that event taken, would you be happy for those images to be freely distributed around the net without any crime taking place?
(There is, of course, a big difference between fantasy and reality -- many people of both sexes have fantasies of rape and/or control, hence the bdsm pr0n market. Yet just because a girl might have a fantasy about rape, it doesn't mean she actually wants to be raped! And the thing about child pr0n is that it crosses the line into reality -- what you're witnessing are real acts on unconsenting minors.)
I don't think you can draw a long bow from child pr0n, where the victim is obviously unconsenting, to things such as alcohol, drugs or suicide, where the victim is complicit in their own fate. Maybe prohibition won't work, but I think that given the severity of the crime it's worth a try.
I also don't think that it's a case of guilt until proven innocent here. Perhaps I'm being naive, but I'd hope that if someone innocently clicked on a disguised honeypot link the court system would save him. I'm, of course, also assuming that anyone convicted by these laws didn't do anything like destroy a HDD and a USB thumb drive when the FBI came around to raid his home (which is what the guy in TFA did), or that he had thumbnails of child pr0n images sitting on his computer (also the guy in TFA).
Actually, having read TFA again, it does appear that the FBI failed to record the referrer sites. However, looking at the case in question, the guy clearly knew exactly what he wanted to download: he tried multiple files in the honeypot list, and when they didn't work the first time (since the video file was apparently just static) he tried to open them again a few minutes later. The links themselves were as explicit as you can get.
You make some good points. But note that the general accepted definition of child pron involves young children: they're not going to look 16, 18 or whatever. We're talking prepubescent here. I'm not a big pr0n user, and haven't surfed for it for several years now, but I can't recall ever seeing links to child pr0n on a regular pr0n site (this may, however, reflect the way the industry has changed in the last four years).
... so much for open discussion!)
Also, I'm not assuming that anyone who ends up at a generic, poorly labelled link must be a pervert. However, according to the article, the links claimed to be of "illegal videos of minors having sex", which is pretty explicit. Provided these links were clearly marked, and that some basic checks -- such as looking that the referring sites to make sure that the links hadn't made it into the open in a disguised form -- I still don't have a problem with people who click on these links being investigated. Now, if the FBI were using a disguised site which you could stumble upon by accident, that's another issue, and I can see your point there. One hopes that these honeypots are well thought out -- and also, that if they're poorly designed, that the courts will prevent a miscarriage of justice.
I must say, that on further reading of the article, I'm disturbed by the fact that "attempts" to download material is a crime: I'd have hoped that the users snared by the honeypot would then have their computers searched for incriminating material and the crimes based on that instead. But I'm still not sure that these methods aren't warranted -- child pr0n is so badly wrong on so many counts that it really does need to be fought.
Your argument about making c++ programming illegal, though, is a bit silly. I do not believe that curiosity is an issue here. If you're presented with a link that clearly states it's to a illegal video of minors having sex, are you really going to say, "oh, gee, you know -- I've never seen one of those before. Why don't I take a quick peek and have a look?" Even if someone doesn't find the concept in itself disturbing, the fact that they are about to witness something which is causing someone else pain and suffering is surely going to make them pause and think. Not to mention the fact that they'd have to be living under a rock these last few years not to know it was illegal!!
I dunno -- it's an emotive issue, which is always hard to look at objectively. I've tried hard to avoid the "think of the children" arguments, but it's difficult when that's really exactly what it boils down to. (Incidentally, I note with amusement that my original post got modded down
Jesus, I bloody hope it is!!
People who view physically graphic bdsm pictures are not rapists. I thought about modding you down, but since I've seen this attitude in several posts, I think this needs to be replied to instead.
The difference between graphic bdsm pictures and pr0n involving children is that the former are fictitious creations made by consenting adults, and the latter actually happened to children unable to defend themselves. If the bdsm pictures you were viewing were taken from an actual rape incident, by viewing them you would be encouraging more rapes and supporting rapists. And this is exactly what happens with child pr0n -- these kids are not, and obviously can never be, consenting adults.
The other issue you're happily avoiding here is that most people are not just looking (and thus passively supporting) but they're paying money and actively supporting these acts. Even if the sites are free, they are undoubtedly supported by advertising that generates dollars when you visit the site. This, then, goes beyond curiosity, into a realm where the viewers are actively contributing to the continuation of child pr0n.
To make this point completely clear: if nobody viewed child pr0n on the web, there would be no market and the incidence of creation would be greatly reduced. You cannot visit a child pr0n site, and yet somehow remain isolated from the loop that promotes more and more child pr0n.
If the FBI want to take measures to stamp this out, that's completely fine by me. They should be praised, not vilified.
Furthermore, he directly ignored the contemporary alternative geocentric model of the universe (derived more or less independantly by Tycho, Ursus, the Jesuits and others) which postulated that the earth stood still (or revolved on its axis) and that the sun orbited the earth, with the other planets orbiting the sun. This model was identical to Copernicus, only with a different frame of reference. (The only real reason for believing in a heliocentric universe at the time was provided by Kepler, who suggested that the planets were moved by physical forces emanating from the sun -- but Galileo chose to completely ignore Kepler. Incidentally, Kepler, despite his strident and life-long advocacy of Copernicus, did not front the inquisition or have his books banned.)
And it gets even worse for Galileo, for not only did he use an incorrect proof to support Copernicus, but the existing scientific data supported a geocentric universe, not a heliocentric one. This was because a stellar parallax could not be detected (basically, if the earth moves relative to the stars, the position of the stars relative to one another should appear to shift slightly as the earth circles the sun). The failure to detect a stellar parallax gave weight to the geocentric model. (Kepler argued, correctly, that the lack of a detectable stellar parallax merely implied that the stars were much further away than previously thought; once again, however, Galileo didn't even acknowledge this argument.)
So, in summary, Galileo wrote a scientific document that lacked any physical evidence to support its arguments, whereupon he made up his own fake evidence instead. And we're celebrating this astonishingly example of bad science by raising a statue to the guy!! We might as well erect a statue to Woo-Suk Hwang while we're at it
If anyone should be celebrated in their advocacy of heliocentricity, its Kepler and Newton, who combined demonstrated the physical reasons why a sun-centred universe is correct.
Now, a digital positive can be much more interesting
Now go to your nearest Mac, plug in a second display (while it's running), and watch what happens. Then go to your nearest Linux box, plug in a second display (also while it's already running), and watch what happens. Note that the Mac was using both displays about 4 seconds after you plugged it in, and the Linux box was not. This is what's currently being implemented with xrandr 1.2. The drivers are only just starting to support it though.