Banning something hardly ever lowers the market for it...Witness illegal drugs. So there is still exploitive child porn being made, because there are still people who are willing to pay for it.
Putting out a non-exploitive alternative may make the exploitive stuff less profitable, and thus lower the amount of it being made.
It's hard to say, "Yea, people should be able to create animated child porn and collect Nazi memorabilia" because most people feel that that crosses an ethical line. No "decent" person should want that stuff, so who are we hurting when we ban it? Bunch of sickos? Who cares?
But that's a bad precident to set, where the majority arbitrarily decides what is and is not acceptable for society. As long as no one is hurt/exploited/etc, society should be able to tolerate oddball fringes.
The Nazi stuff is a good example. Europe is working hard to remove any hint that Nazism ever existed, but is that good for society? I've got a copy of the Krampf on my bookshelf at home...It's an excellent reminder of how some pointed hate rhetoric tailored for the masses can screw up the whole goddamn world. It's especially nice because there is a lot of that rhetoric still in play in the world, and it's good to be able to put it in it's proper category.
The question is always, "By allowing this stuff to exist are we providing an outlet for an antisocial impulse, or are we feeding an antisocial desire?"
It is rarely so clearcut. When the cops bust a pedophile, and he has a huge collection of child porn, they blame the porn for the pedophilia, but it's a chicken and egg problem.
It's my feeling that people who are prone to committing these types of crimes will do it regardless of the existence of these videos, so the creation of these videos should be allowed in the hopes that they'll fill some of the kiddie porn niche that is currently filled by actual kiddie porn.
You can't fight supply and demand. The regular sick exploitive stuff is already illegal, and yet still being made. Until you can find some way to make people not want this stuff, the existence of an animated substitute that doesn't involve a financial incentive for live action child porn doesn't seem like a bad thing.
Nothing valuable-as-money, that is true, but there are other things than money.
There is intrinsic value in all living things, and while I'm no flaming hippy, who values individual fuzzy things more than people, I think that the careless extermination of an entire species, for no better reason than that the Chinese can't be bothered to not exterminate it, is a bad thing.
Spell checkers do what for grammar again? Anyway to "throw off on" something is an idiom for "to disparage", and idioms are usually not included in grammar checkers.
I know quite a lot about obsolete win2k-dependent applications, as I make my living replacing them with Linux based systems. One thing I know for sure is that if you make no attempt to keep a windows application current, it will quickly become unmanageably obsolete, and for you to not even bother to keep your development, not your production machine, reasonably in sync with the MS driven patch schedule, means that this doesn't bother you in the least.
In my mind this means that either your application is being phased out, or it means that you are a poor developer. And, upgrading to XP is nonsense, unless you're not bothering to run your system on server class software...You should be upgrading to Win2k3.
No offense or anything, but don't throw off on my English when you conveyed your point so poorly. I admit, I gathered that you were talking about a Windows 9x machine...Probably because this entire thread is about Windows 9x machines, and you didn't bother to clarify that, for some reason, you weren't talking about 9x.
So fine, you're using Win2k, which doesn't even play into this discussion because it's still being supported, and will run Firefox 3. So...what was your point again? That you're a rebel for staying with the barely obsolete Win2k, like a third of corporate America? That you can't be bothered to even modernize your development machine?
World of Warcraft Anarchy Online Star Wars Galaxies Planetside
That runs the gamut from firearm-is-the-same-as-sword (AO) to MMOFPS (Planetside). I don't think guns are going to present any special technical challenge.
I think there is a lot more room for a challenge in a real technology system, for example, where your Science/Repair skill actually has some utility beyond a standard crafting system.
I think I'm kinda burned out on the idea of "New innovative MMO's!"...I'd really like to see something cool coming out of this, but it's more likely going to be a generic MMO with whores and drug use.
Wait, you're web browsing on machines that are kept around for no reason other than running legacy apps? Why the hell would you do that, A, and B, why the hell would you do it so much that you're complaining that Firefox 3 isn't going to support your system?
H2 doesn't immediately shoot out into space upon release...It needs some solar impetus to accelerate to it's nominal exit velocity, and that extra heat will often cause it to react with free oxygen.
I don't think that would be a consequence of a hydrogen economy for many centuries.
I played SWG on a free trial, and I went into it with some very specific criteria in mind. I played for a week or so, measuring against those criteria, and at the end of that week decided that the emphasis on grinding was going to be a problem for me (when grinding is such a part of your game that you actually embrace a macro community, thats a huge problem), and that the artificial time sinks were a sign that the developer was more interested in $$$ than in the players.
Free trials may work for some people, like a sample of an addictive drug, but for an educated consumer it's just enough to let you know if it's worth spending time.
It's my experience that this is the case in most places.
My boss, a COO (COO == a CIO who also has machines that get actual grease on them under his authority), worked a big 3 days this week, including one day that was 11-6...I think I worked 9-8 on the same day.
Just because Supply and Demand don't always make sense, doesn't make the relationship any less real. The eBay sales are proof that, based on demand, the price wasn't near high enough, and there is nothing immoral about Sony charging what the market will bear...Not like there isn't cheaper competition.
Now, you may say that people who pay thousands of dollars for a game console are ridiculous, but people have been paying a hell of a lot more than that for gaming computers for years, and if you view the PS3 as a midrange gaming computer, it's dirt cheap.
Heh. I sound like a Sony fanboi...I have zero plans to buy a PS3/360/Wii any time soon, I just think they're taking way the hell too much flak for a price point that is selling out. That should be the goal for any company.
In Arizona you can become a convicted sex offender by being cited for public nudity...So look out if you visit any of their Nude Beaches, or you're going to find some unexpected stuff on your MySpace profile.
Why? I think it just allows parents to feel complacent.
The first and last line of defense is giving a crap about what your kid is doing online. Period. End. Of. Story. There is no magical fairy dust fix that is going to make that any less the case, so why bother?
If they sold out on the first day, then the price wasn't too high...They probably could have sold them at cost on day 1, and still sold out at the same speed.
I think they're gambling that the hardcore, early adoption crowd will keep buying until they've sold enough to be able to lower the price, and there is no guarantee that they're wrong.
RIAA v Streamcast/Grokster was a pretty big win, and it's the precident this case is built on. And Kazaa settled for 110 million or so, so who knows how that one would have come out?
The **AA won against the p2p companies because they successfully argued in court that those companies were enticing people to break the law with their advertising (same as this chick). They didn't win because the p2p software allowed file transfers, because that's not illegal.
YouTube hosts video that has copyright problems, that makes it their issue, same with MySpace. If I put up a webpage, and put copyrighted material on it, I'm breaking the law.
A better example would be, "Can I sue Ford because I got sent to jail after doing a hit and run in one of their cars." Or maybe, "Can I sue the bus station because I got busted after taking my drugs out of one of their lockers?"
Kazaa did install some stupid spyware, but it was really more just adware, and you had to allow it to share your music files; otherwise every 14 year old boy in the world would have been unknowingly sharing out zillions of ambient sound/music/dialog files from his locally installed video games, 'cause mp3 is a common format there too.
Welcome to the land of no accountability. We don't hold anyone accountable for what they do here, not our politicians, not corporate CEOs, and definitely not morons who hurt themselves or break the law.
This is like smokers suing convenience stores because that's where they bought the smokes that gave 'em lung cancer.
I bet these same people all felt like devious little rule breakers when they were doing all that copyright violation, secure in the knowledge that no one could ever catch them.
I can kinda see how the record companies can win a suit against the p2p providers, saying that their software enabled all these people to violate copyright law, but how the hell can all these people expect to win a suit against a company whose software enabled them to break the law? Kazaa's EULA spelled out that the software should only be used for legal purposes, but even if it didn't this will die because there is a huge amount of precident in prohibiting companies from being sued when their products were used in the commission of crimes (hello, gun manufacturers).
Which, in this case, is obviously a flaw in the process. Troops find this useful in detecting bombs, therefore it should be provided. Sure it's not to spec, but this is a quick and dirty fix, with the troops displaying admirable flexibility. That should be rewarded, not denigrated because the can isn't bullet proof, or some other such crap.
This is the biggest reason that conventional armies have trouble working against guerilla tactics...The irregulars use whatever works, so they have an extremely wide range of tactical options. We use the approved gear, which provides some high quality options, but a hell of a lot fewer of them.
Slashdot Mirror
Banning something hardly ever lowers the market for it...Witness illegal drugs. So there is still exploitive child porn being made, because there are still people who are willing to pay for it.
Putting out a non-exploitive alternative may make the exploitive stuff less profitable, and thus lower the amount of it being made.
It's hard to say, "Yea, people should be able to create animated child porn and collect Nazi memorabilia" because most people feel that that crosses an ethical line. No "decent" person should want that stuff, so who are we hurting when we ban it? Bunch of sickos? Who cares?
But that's a bad precident to set, where the majority arbitrarily decides what is and is not acceptable for society. As long as no one is hurt/exploited/etc, society should be able to tolerate oddball fringes.
The Nazi stuff is a good example. Europe is working hard to remove any hint that Nazism ever existed, but is that good for society? I've got a copy of the Krampf on my bookshelf at home...It's an excellent reminder of how some pointed hate rhetoric tailored for the masses can screw up the whole goddamn world. It's especially nice because there is a lot of that rhetoric still in play in the world, and it's good to be able to put it in it's proper category.
What's wrong with cartoons depicting murder?
The question is always, "By allowing this stuff to exist are we providing an outlet for an antisocial impulse, or are we feeding an antisocial desire?"
It is rarely so clearcut. When the cops bust a pedophile, and he has a huge collection of child porn, they blame the porn for the pedophilia, but it's a chicken and egg problem.
It's my feeling that people who are prone to committing these types of crimes will do it regardless of the existence of these videos, so the creation of these videos should be allowed in the hopes that they'll fill some of the kiddie porn niche that is currently filled by actual kiddie porn.
You can't fight supply and demand. The regular sick exploitive stuff is already illegal, and yet still being made. Until you can find some way to make people not want this stuff, the existence of an animated substitute that doesn't involve a financial incentive for live action child porn doesn't seem like a bad thing.
Type conversion error: Can't convert type Person to type Opinion in statement (-11273).
Nothing valuable-as-money, that is true, but there are other things than money.
There is intrinsic value in all living things, and while I'm no flaming hippy, who values individual fuzzy things more than people, I think that the careless extermination of an entire species, for no better reason than that the Chinese can't be bothered to not exterminate it, is a bad thing.
Spell checkers do what for grammar again? Anyway to "throw off on" something is an idiom for "to disparage", and idioms are usually not included in grammar checkers.
I know quite a lot about obsolete win2k-dependent applications, as I make my living replacing them with Linux based systems. One thing I know for sure is that if you make no attempt to keep a windows application current, it will quickly become unmanageably obsolete, and for you to not even bother to keep your development, not your production machine, reasonably in sync with the MS driven patch schedule, means that this doesn't bother you in the least.
In my mind this means that either your application is being phased out, or it means that you are a poor developer. And, upgrading to XP is nonsense, unless you're not bothering to run your system on server class software...You should be upgrading to Win2k3.
No offense or anything, but don't throw off on my English when you conveyed your point so poorly. I admit, I gathered that you were talking about a Windows 9x machine...Probably because this entire thread is about Windows 9x machines, and you didn't bother to clarify that, for some reason, you weren't talking about 9x.
So fine, you're using Win2k, which doesn't even play into this discussion because it's still being supported, and will run Firefox 3. So...what was your point again? That you're a rebel for staying with the barely obsolete Win2k, like a third of corporate America? That you can't be bothered to even modernize your development machine?
Lets see:
World of Warcraft
Anarchy Online
Star Wars Galaxies
Planetside
That runs the gamut from firearm-is-the-same-as-sword (AO) to MMOFPS (Planetside). I don't think guns are going to present any special technical challenge.
I think there is a lot more room for a challenge in a real technology system, for example, where your Science/Repair skill actually has some utility beyond a standard crafting system.
I think I'm kinda burned out on the idea of "New innovative MMO's!"...I'd really like to see something cool coming out of this, but it's more likely going to be a generic MMO with whores and drug use.
Wait, you're web browsing on machines that are kept around for no reason other than running legacy apps? Why the hell would you do that, A, and B, why the hell would you do it so much that you're complaining that Firefox 3 isn't going to support your system?
Sounds like your workplace has issues.
H2 doesn't immediately shoot out into space upon release...It needs some solar impetus to accelerate to it's nominal exit velocity, and that extra heat will often cause it to react with free oxygen.
I don't think that would be a consequence of a hydrogen economy for many centuries.
Meh, I don't know.
I played SWG on a free trial, and I went into it with some very specific criteria in mind. I played for a week or so, measuring against those criteria, and at the end of that week decided that the emphasis on grinding was going to be a problem for me (when grinding is such a part of your game that you actually embrace a macro community, thats a huge problem), and that the artificial time sinks were a sign that the developer was more interested in $$$ than in the players.
Free trials may work for some people, like a sample of an addictive drug, but for an educated consumer it's just enough to let you know if it's worth spending time.
It's my experience that this is the case in most places.
My boss, a COO (COO == a CIO who also has machines that get actual grease on them under his authority), worked a big 3 days this week, including one day that was 11-6...I think I worked 9-8 on the same day.
Just because Supply and Demand don't always make sense, doesn't make the relationship any less real. The eBay sales are proof that, based on demand, the price wasn't near high enough, and there is nothing immoral about Sony charging what the market will bear...Not like there isn't cheaper competition.
Now, you may say that people who pay thousands of dollars for a game console are ridiculous, but people have been paying a hell of a lot more than that for gaming computers for years, and if you view the PS3 as a midrange gaming computer, it's dirt cheap.
Heh. I sound like a Sony fanboi...I have zero plans to buy a PS3/360/Wii any time soon, I just think they're taking way the hell too much flak for a price point that is selling out. That should be the goal for any company.
In Arizona you can become a convicted sex offender by being cited for public nudity...So look out if you visit any of their Nude Beaches, or you're going to find some unexpected stuff on your MySpace profile.
Why? I think it just allows parents to feel complacent.
The first and last line of defense is giving a crap about what your kid is doing online. Period. End. Of. Story. There is no magical fairy dust fix that is going to make that any less the case, so why bother?
Sterilization...Casino Royale style.
If they sold out on the first day, then the price wasn't too high...They probably could have sold them at cost on day 1, and still sold out at the same speed.
I think they're gambling that the hardcore, early adoption crowd will keep buying until they've sold enough to be able to lower the price, and there is no guarantee that they're wrong.
Imprecise speech on my part. I had forgotten that the Kazaa case was an out of court settlement.
RIAA v Streamcast/Grokster was a pretty big win, and it's the precident this case is built on. And Kazaa settled for 110 million or so, so who knows how that one would have come out?
The **AA won against the p2p companies because they successfully argued in court that those companies were enticing people to break the law with their advertising (same as this chick). They didn't win because the p2p software allowed file transfers, because that's not illegal.
YouTube hosts video that has copyright problems, that makes it their issue, same with MySpace. If I put up a webpage, and put copyrighted material on it, I'm breaking the law.
A better example would be, "Can I sue Ford because I got sent to jail after doing a hit and run in one of their cars." Or maybe, "Can I sue the bus station because I got busted after taking my drugs out of one of their lockers?"
Kazaa did install some stupid spyware, but it was really more just adware, and you had to allow it to share your music files; otherwise every 14 year old boy in the world would have been unknowingly sharing out zillions of ambient sound/music/dialog files from his locally installed video games, 'cause mp3 is a common format there too.
Welcome to the land of no accountability. We don't hold anyone accountable for what they do here, not our politicians, not corporate CEOs, and definitely not morons who hurt themselves or break the law.
It's always someone else's fault.
This is like smokers suing convenience stores because that's where they bought the smokes that gave 'em lung cancer.
I bet these same people all felt like devious little rule breakers when they were doing all that copyright violation, secure in the knowledge that no one could ever catch them.
I can kinda see how the record companies can win a suit against the p2p providers, saying that their software enabled all these people to violate copyright law, but how the hell can all these people expect to win a suit against a company whose software enabled them to break the law? Kazaa's EULA spelled out that the software should only be used for legal purposes, but even if it didn't this will die because there is a huge amount of precident in prohibiting companies from being sued when their products were used in the commission of crimes (hello, gun manufacturers).
If only common sense were more common.
Which, in this case, is obviously a flaw in the process. Troops find this useful in detecting bombs, therefore it should be provided. Sure it's not to spec, but this is a quick and dirty fix, with the troops displaying admirable flexibility. That should be rewarded, not denigrated because the can isn't bullet proof, or some other such crap.
This is the biggest reason that conventional armies have trouble working against guerilla tactics...The irregulars use whatever works, so they have an extremely wide range of tactical options. We use the approved gear, which provides some high quality options, but a hell of a lot fewer of them.