What I find so annoying, about this is not that its another "we know what's best for you" kind of law, but that its one based on the assumption that the lives of normal citizens are less valuable than that of the policefolk.
Some states only apply a death penalty to instances where a police officer/state trooper/correctional officer was harmed. As I understand, the logic is generally that these individuals are in high risk positions where it is unacceptable to antagonize the issue any further, as one path to the conclusion. I don't think its much of a stretch to infer that whatever thinking drives this bit of legal-reality is prominent within the thinking behind the Washington legislation.
All we see here is this sort of thing already happens and has spilled over to an issue we have an interest in.
I'll leave it to the other posters to debate the merits of this for now.
Restricting sale of product ____ frequently amuses me. The assumption it seems, in this situation, is that the sole (or maybe "main" would be a better choice in wording) understanding is interactive content depicting violence against law enforcement persons is only acquired by purchase. I'm too lazy to look, atm, however I'm certian mods exist to accomplish just this. I think it highlights public perception reflected by the state legislative branch quite nicely. "Software is a thing which is purchased" - but I skip that road.
One other thought which crossed my mind is just how heavily this will be interprated. Hypothetically a game is released which includes a police officer NPC who is not harmed in the course of regular gampeplay; but of course I can "/spawn NPC_Police_Officer" and shoot him. Does this meet the requirment for restricted sale?
I may not agree with violent games in general but what happend to free speach?
IAMNAL, but, AFAIK, there have been no precedents of any note establishing that games are "speech," and one minor instance I can think of to the contrary (the game, "Mortal Combat," only exists in public record:) ). Until this is changed, there's little stopping regulation of most any sort.
They ussally have 6 "witnesses" from prespective "experts" in their field giving their advice and view points. Unfortunatly, these witnesses are choosen by the senators themselves. The all work for major companies or some type of advice group. People who have interests usally against anything good for the person and better for their own pocket books. I say NO! They should ban these things. They are so against democracy in my mind.
Sounds good, zac, so what are you doing about these "experts?"
Might I suggest you find the main opposition to issues you care about (I say opposition deliberatly, because it seems apathy is a most popular position when congressional action is favorable) and send a message of support and information regarding deconstructing the other side? Regardless of what state you live in?
Good luck - and remember, being fed up is only the first step; use that keyboard!
It isn't time to spam your Congressmonkey yet. They haven't DONE anything, or even proposed to do anything yet. When they actually start doing something, then it will be time to act.
ERROR, while I appreciate that you recognize the need to issue corrospondance, your perception of timing is dead wrong. By the time your congressman has "done something" he will have already picked sides, requiring a much LOUDER voice for any significant sway. Best to be the first heard on _any_ issue you care about.
Now, if I could only figure out ascii conversion on the fly I would probably be the first speaker of binary.. (jeez, now I'm probably gonna start working on that... I need a girlfreind or something..)
I often tell those spambots offering free mail order brides i'm just not ready for that sort of commitment. Maybe pre-packaged boy/girlfriends (no transexual jokes, please) could be a profitable business to enter...
A "mobius stripper"? Why is it always with the nerdy population that we find such blatant sexism and a desire to exploit women? Are you people still wondering why no women want to enter the fields of engineering or computer science? It's a hostile environment, plain and simple, and you assholes are the cause.
A "stripper" is a job title which pertains to no particular sex, and as a male one, I am deeply offended that you associate my profession with one half the population. YOU try wearing a UPS uniform and spinning a cardboard box over your crotch at an Andrea Dworkin fundraiser, THEN you can spit ideas of "hostile environments" at me.
Now I'm just pissed and need to go to the emergency room as my tongue has punctured my cheek.
I think I can safely say I learned more from the Marathon Trilogy than I ever did from the USian Public Manipulation System. The game itself was very much like reading a story. My father went on to challenge me to find all the errors I could prove wrong with science, which kept me amused and edutained for months. More importantly, building my own levels and worlds taught me more nuances of imparting effective fiction than any English teacher and left me with a very slanted knowledge in mathematics; I knew much of geometry whereas my educators constantly referred to their cheat sheets (often for things as simple as the difference between a convex and concave polygon), yet regardless of what anyone told me, to this day, calculating the volume of an irregular object is _still_ useless.
Do your kids a favor and set them up on GTKRadient or something similiar.
The majority of the deranged in this world who would love to launch such a thing are not intelligent enough to piece one together until someone comes along and publishes instructions and guidelines.
I think the majority of people in this world who would love to launch such a thing would consider cost vs. benefit a greatly inhibiting factor. $5k buys a lot of fertillizer you can strap to willing participants as opposed to bulky missiles you need to build, hide, move around, program, and launch (which you could probably buy anyway). Government sanctioned fighters put their bombs on missiles as they have the means to trivialize the effort.
In the US, we elect our officials. I *want* to be monitored by officials that are working to protect us. Monitoring is good, if someone does something bad, I want the government to do something about it. I, for one, don't do bad things and have nothing to hide. I'm sure that millions of other Americans feel the same way.
No, you probably _DO_ have quite a bit to hide, and this idea of "I have nothing to hide" is a huge bulk of my discontent. Ever downloaded an illicit MP3? Maybe you plan on running a home network in a state introducing legislation for ISPs PO'd about the bandwidth you've been contractually allotted. Perhaps you've used the odd seriel number for a legally purchased application in the place of a lost one? Or if you're the Free as in Speech(TM) type, you've watched a DvD on linux (you terrorist, you!). My main point was if we take these anti-privacy measures, legislation and existing law needs to become a whole lot less stupid, and I don't think George W. Bush is the man to pull it off. What sort of legislation and existing law do you think he thinks is stupid?
No, it really isn't our fault for "choosing to elect corrupt officials." Until our election process allows us to vote for candidates who's platforms we like without courting the chances of a candidate we really DON'T like of succeeding, it is the fault of our system. Understand this is not advocacy for green/constitutional/libertarian parties, rather I vastly prefer a two party system over the alternative of a coalition government. Perhaps the significance that little "(D)" or "(R)" plays in front of a public "servant's" name were much smaller, and "primary" elections done away with... well, that's another rant. Regardless, until then, corruption and rule over topics the governing body is apathetic toward is entirely self sufficiant. Only in extraordinary situations do individuals play any significant broad role for change, making the election of a "good" official difficult, but we should still try.
--
...and I apologize profusely, but I can't resist! Was it not George Bush who's general attitude was there was not enough "time" for McCain's election reforms as a result of terrorism?
--
But corrupt officials don't need an ID Card to hurt moral people, there are many ways.
Most law is subject to selective enforcement. How often do you drive five miles over the speed limit? Taking these steps against privacy makes dissent more difficult as we arm those in power with more tools to potentially subvert those who oppose them. No, its not necessary that they have ID Cards to hurt us, but it becomes immeasurably easy when you have the mask of bad legislation to harm us under.
I'm not asking for our police officers to throw their badges off and us to submit to anarchy, but rather that we understand we have an a fourth ammandment for a damn good reason.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
National IDs don't make me feel particularly secure in my person, just more vulnerable to a more dangerous kind of terrorism
Re:This is not news or even decent editorializing.
on
Time to Face the Music
·
· Score: 1
evenprime, you bring up a good point, though I my driving motivation for my previous post was that this writer should NOT be writing anything on a topic for which he possesses no real enlightenment regarding.
And try to be nice for once instead of just flaming. Face it, this guy is just a journalist reguritating stuff he heard, and even then, he said a lot of stuff that most of us can agree with:
(Yes, even is right, any corrospondance readers send really should be as polite as far any respect is due. Flaming doesn't compel your mark to adopt your views.)
Why is national id cards a bad idea? Are people afraid that the government will track them. Who really gives a fuck if it allows the government to track you with it? They could do that anyway if they really cared enough. I simply don't get it.
I deal with this kind of apatahy every day in the states. Let's dissect this:
Who really gives a fuck if it allows the government to track you with it?
I do. Are you willing to make the blanket statement all actions in which your ID card would be entangled can be and should be freely monitored by your country's officials? Its just a facet in the larger issue of privacy, which, depressingly, most people don't seem to understand. We justify revoking pieces of privacy to do away with crime, Bad Things(TM), -or for us USians- "terrorism." Accepting this requires us to accept the that whatever our government says is a Bad Thing really is Bad as an axiomatic truth. To say so is a gross fallacy. I come from a country which prides itself in its citizen's ability to speak their minds, yet can be fined or imprisoned for saying certian words on a public broadcast medium, as just one example.
To do away with privacy, law needs to be perfect, and people content to have the doors on public restroom stalls ripped from their hinges. The former will never happen, and national IDs are a dangerous step in that direction.
This is not news or even decent editorializing...
on
Time to Face the Music
·
· Score: 1
It doesn't matter how great the software is... frankly it's too late for a new entry. Because of network effects, messaging software is only as good as the number of people who already use it.
Sounds to me like a very good reason to use it, if you like it.
I'm not a programmer (BASIC doesn't count, right?:p ), but I have observed the development of a few open source projects and have seen the effects of code being introduced by programmers who have valuable contributions, but interact poorly with the rest of the source (usually novices). So, veterens, could this type of map, applied to the project in question, drive home the point and help mold the newbie into better practices, or are we better off oohing and ahhhing now and moving on to the next article?
Seeking cheap karma...
on
Server In A Fly
·
· Score: 4, Funny
Hands dirty? The poster does realize that this is slashdot, right?
If you live in a dark closet among empty $carbonateddrink cans, discarded snack bags, and mold which threatens to consume your hardware if you weren't diligent keeping it at bay with your soldering iron - like the rest of us - your hands are probably far from clean most of the time.
Hmmm... I bet I could have gotten more karma from a masturbation joke. Oh well.
As a skinny pale all-talk-do-nothing airchair warrior, I am deeply offended! Stereotypes like this are hurtful and counter productive but... hmmm... one more sentance and I might be doing something.
No kidding. Imagine the hell that would be raised if someone came out with a mod pack that lets you run squads of Israeli stormtroopers to squash Palestinian uprisings, conversely if you could play small squads of Palestinians to take out key Israeli civilian targets, or if you could deploy Arab sappers/bombers/engineers to take out key city buildings.
Which is exactly the point. You're only IMAGINING the hell which would be raised. Presently there is no mod pack which presents me with such scenarios. We shouldn't forge opinoins, legislate, etc. regarding notions which are only unlikely IDEAS. Remember what fires up crowds when Andrea Dworkins speaks ("Imagine every man could be a rapist") or Bush's supposed justification for war ("Imagine Al Quaida backed by Iraqi weapons..."). Grant yourself the favor of avoiding the insanity of such logic. When it is on my computer, it is ONLY imagination.
Slashdot Mirror
What I find so annoying, about this is not that its another "we know what's best for you" kind of law, but that its one based on the assumption that the lives of normal citizens are less valuable than that of the policefolk.
Some states only apply a death penalty to instances where a police officer/state trooper/correctional officer was harmed. As I understand, the logic is generally that these individuals are in high risk positions where it is unacceptable to antagonize the issue any further, as one path to the conclusion. I don't think its much of a stretch to infer that whatever thinking drives this bit of legal-reality is prominent within the thinking behind the Washington legislation.
All we see here is this sort of thing already happens and has spilled over to an issue we have an interest in.
I'll leave it to the other posters to debate the merits of this for now.
Restricting sale of product ____ frequently amuses me. The assumption it seems, in this situation, is that the sole (or maybe "main" would be a better choice in wording) understanding is interactive content depicting violence against law enforcement persons is only acquired by purchase. I'm too lazy to look, atm, however I'm certian mods exist to accomplish just this. I think it highlights public perception reflected by the state legislative branch quite nicely. "Software is a thing which is purchased" - but I skip that road.
One other thought which crossed my mind is just how heavily this will be interprated. Hypothetically a game is released which includes a police officer NPC who is not harmed in the course of regular gampeplay; but of course I can "/spawn NPC_Police_Officer" and shoot him. Does this meet the requirment for restricted sale?
I may not agree with violent games in general but what happend to free speach?
IAMNAL, but, AFAIK, there have been no precedents of any note establishing that games are "speech," and one minor instance I can think of to the contrary (the game, "Mortal Combat," only exists in public record :) ). Until this is changed, there's little stopping regulation of most any sort.
Anyone care to cite some precedent?
They ussally have 6 "witnesses" from prespective "experts" in their field giving their advice and view points. Unfortunatly, these witnesses are choosen by the senators themselves. The all work for major companies or some type of advice group. People who have interests usally against anything good for the person and better for their own pocket books. I say NO! They should ban these things. They are so against democracy in my mind.
Sounds good, zac, so what are you doing about these "experts?"
Might I suggest you find the main opposition to issues you care about (I say opposition deliberatly, because it seems apathy is a most popular position when congressional action is favorable) and send a message of support and information regarding deconstructing the other side? Regardless of what state you live in?
Good luck - and remember, being fed up is only the first step; use that keyboard!
It isn't time to spam your Congressmonkey yet. They haven't DONE anything, or even proposed to do anything yet. When they actually start doing something, then it will be time to act.
ERROR, while I appreciate that you recognize the need to issue corrospondance, your perception of timing is dead wrong. By the time your congressman has "done something" he will have already picked sides, requiring a much LOUDER voice for any significant sway. Best to be the first heard on _any_ issue you care about.
Now, if I could only figure out ascii conversion on the fly I would probably be the first speaker of binary.. (jeez, now I'm probably gonna start working on that... I need a girlfreind or something..)
I often tell those spambots offering free mail order brides i'm just not ready for that sort of commitment. Maybe pre-packaged boy/girlfriends (no transexual jokes, please) could be a profitable business to enter...
A "mobius stripper"? Why is it always with the nerdy population that we find such blatant sexism and a desire to exploit women? Are you people still wondering why no women want to enter the fields of engineering or computer science? It's a hostile environment, plain and simple, and you assholes are the cause.
A "stripper" is a job title which pertains to no particular sex, and as a male one, I am deeply offended that you associate my profession with one half the population. YOU try wearing a UPS uniform and spinning a cardboard box over your crotch at an Andrea Dworkin fundraiser, THEN you can spit ideas of "hostile environments" at me.
Now I'm just pissed and need to go to the emergency room as my tongue has punctured my cheek.
Uh..afaik, a polygon can't be either. A surface, on th other hand :)
Well, I guess that would explain why I'm sharing a Trash Co. container with Jason Alexander...
I think I can safely say I learned more from the Marathon Trilogy than I ever did from the USian Public Manipulation System. The game itself was very much like reading a story. My father went on to challenge me to find all the errors I could prove wrong with science, which kept me amused and edutained for months. More importantly, building my own levels and worlds taught me more nuances of imparting effective fiction than any English teacher and left me with a very slanted knowledge in mathematics; I knew much of geometry whereas my educators constantly referred to their cheat sheets (often for things as simple as the difference between a convex and concave polygon), yet regardless of what anyone told me, to this day, calculating the volume of an irregular object is _still_ useless.
Do your kids a favor and set them up on GTKRadient or something similiar.
The majority of the deranged in this world who would love to launch such a thing are not intelligent enough to piece one together until someone comes along and publishes instructions and guidelines.
I think the majority of people in this world who would love to launch such a thing would consider cost vs. benefit a greatly inhibiting factor. $5k buys a lot of fertillizer you can strap to willing participants as opposed to bulky missiles you need to build, hide, move around, program, and launch (which you could probably buy anyway). Government sanctioned fighters put their bombs on missiles as they have the means to trivialize the effort.
But that's just my five second opinion...
I can't wait to see a cell shaded solid snake!
"CowboyNeal wants to write a review of Pokemon Saphire so badly, he might rupture something if we don't let him."
Actually, that might be pretty cool... er... not the review; the rupturing.
"We intend to provide occasional original coverage, but mostly, we want to provide more exposure to the existing gaming sites [...]"
Could this be a hint to a slashdot game reviews feature similiar to the current book reviews?
...I hope so
Pop your keys out and run them through your dishwasher. My old ADB keyboards last forever.
In the US, we elect our officials. I *want* to be monitored by officials that are working to protect us. Monitoring is good, if someone does something bad, I want the government to do something about it. I, for one, don't do bad things and have nothing to hide. I'm sure that millions of other Americans feel the same way.
No, you probably _DO_ have quite a bit to hide, and this idea of "I have nothing to hide" is a huge bulk of my discontent. Ever downloaded an illicit MP3? Maybe you plan on running a home network in a state introducing legislation for ISPs PO'd about the bandwidth you've been contractually allotted. Perhaps you've used the odd seriel number for a legally purchased application in the place of a lost one? Or if you're the Free as in Speech(TM) type, you've watched a DvD on linux (you terrorist, you!). My main point was if we take these anti-privacy measures, legislation and existing law needs to become a whole lot less stupid, and I don't think George W. Bush is the man to pull it off. What sort of legislation and existing law do you think he thinks is stupid?
No, it really isn't our fault for "choosing to elect corrupt officials." Until our election process allows us to vote for candidates who's platforms we like without courting the chances of a candidate we really DON'T like of succeeding, it is the fault of our system. Understand this is not advocacy for green/constitutional/libertarian parties, rather I vastly prefer a two party system over the alternative of a coalition government. Perhaps the significance that little "(D)" or "(R)" plays in front of a public "servant's" name were much smaller, and "primary" elections done away with... well, that's another rant. Regardless, until then, corruption and rule over topics the governing body is apathetic toward is entirely self sufficiant. Only in extraordinary situations do individuals play any significant broad role for change, making the election of a "good" official difficult, but we should still try.
--
--
But corrupt officials don't need an ID Card to hurt moral people, there are many ways.
Most law is subject to selective enforcement. How often do you drive five miles over the speed limit? Taking these steps against privacy makes dissent more difficult as we arm those in power with more tools to potentially subvert those who oppose them. No, its not necessary that they have ID Cards to hurt us, but it becomes immeasurably easy when you have the mask of bad legislation to harm us under.
I'm not asking for our police officers to throw their badges off and us to submit to anarchy, but rather that we understand we have an a fourth ammandment for a damn good reason.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
National IDs don't make me feel particularly secure in my person, just more vulnerable to a more dangerous kind of terrorism
evenprime, you bring up a good point, though I my driving motivation for my previous post was that this writer should NOT be writing anything on a topic for which he possesses no real enlightenment regarding.
And try to be nice for once instead of just flaming. Face it, this guy is just a journalist reguritating stuff he heard, and even then, he said a lot of stuff that most of us can agree with:
(Yes, even is right, any corrospondance readers send really should be as polite as far any respect is due. Flaming doesn't compel your mark to adopt your views.)
Why is national id cards a bad idea? Are people afraid that the government will track them. Who really gives a fuck if it allows the government to track you with it? They could do that anyway if they really cared enough. I simply don't get it.
I deal with this kind of apatahy every day in the states. Let's dissect this:
Who really gives a fuck if it allows the government to track you with it?
I do. Are you willing to make the blanket statement all actions in which your ID card would be entangled can be and should be freely monitored by your country's officials? Its just a facet in the larger issue of privacy, which, depressingly, most people don't seem to understand. We justify revoking pieces of privacy to do away with crime, Bad Things(TM), -or for us USians- "terrorism." Accepting this requires us to accept the that whatever our government says is a Bad Thing really is Bad as an axiomatic truth. To say so is a gross fallacy. I come from a country which prides itself in its citizen's ability to speak their minds, yet can be fined or imprisoned for saying certian words on a public broadcast medium, as just one example.
To do away with privacy, law needs to be perfect, and people content to have the doors on public restroom stalls ripped from their hinges. The former will never happen, and national IDs are a dangerous step in that direction.
...so what are you going to do about it? Here's their contact page: http://www.thestar.ca/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?page name=thestar/Render&cid=972304684203
Tell them what you think about this piece. Every bit of corrospondance keeps journalism a little bit more honest.
It doesn't matter how great the software is... frankly it's too late for a new entry. Because of network effects, messaging software is only as good as the number of people who already use it.
Sounds to me like a very good reason to use it, if you like it.
A very specific niche comment/query...
I'm not a programmer (BASIC doesn't count, right? :p ), but I have observed the development of a few open source projects and have seen the effects of code being introduced by programmers who have valuable contributions, but interact poorly with the rest of the source (usually novices). So, veterens, could this type of map, applied to the project in question, drive home the point and help mold the newbie into better practices, or are we better off oohing and ahhhing now and moving on to the next article?
Imagine a beowulf swarm of those!
This is probably going to become the first time in history that a snail-mail box is going to feel the wrath of the Slashdot Effect.
/me quits writing his xserve in a mailbox mod submission and just sulks.
Hands dirty? The poster does realize that this is slashdot, right?
If you live in a dark closet among empty $carbonateddrink cans, discarded snack bags, and mold which threatens to consume your hardware if you weren't diligent keeping it at bay with your soldering iron - like the rest of us - your hands are probably far from clean most of the time.
Hmmm... I bet I could have gotten more karma from a masturbation joke. Oh well.
As a skinny pale all-talk-do-nothing airchair warrior, I am deeply offended! Stereotypes like this are hurtful and counter productive but... hmmm... one more sentance and I might be doing something.
/me crawls back into his seat
No kidding. Imagine the hell that would be raised if someone came out with a mod pack that lets you run squads of Israeli stormtroopers to squash Palestinian uprisings, conversely if you could play small squads of Palestinians to take out key Israeli civilian targets, or if you could deploy Arab sappers/bombers/engineers to take out key city buildings.
Which is exactly the point. You're only IMAGINING the hell which would be raised. Presently there is no mod pack which presents me with such scenarios. We shouldn't forge opinoins, legislate, etc. regarding notions which are only unlikely IDEAS. Remember what fires up crowds when Andrea Dworkins speaks ("Imagine every man could be a rapist") or Bush's supposed justification for war ("Imagine Al Quaida backed by Iraqi weapons..."). Grant yourself the favor of avoiding the insanity of such logic. When it is on my computer, it is ONLY imagination.