To apply the situation to your analogy, theft does not enter the picture. We are not talking about someone physically removing property. We are talking about someone convincing an element of a computer system to act against the intentions of the designer. A better analogy would be if a person were able to convince a sales clerk to give them something for free. Immoral, certainly; fraudulent, perhaps, but theft it is not. In that situation, as in hacking, there are two at fault; the hacker for being dishonest, and the target computer for acquiescing. It differs from theft because in theft there is ONE person at fault, whereas here there are two. Salespeople certainly want to avoid having things stolen, but they can be manipulated into wanting to give you things for free.
People are always going to shake coke machines; you can try to persecute the exploitative side of human nature until you're blue in the face or you can just make a coke machine that can't be shaken. You can stomp your feet all you want and say "By the laws of this country you may not shake my coke machine!" all you want but if it is insecure it will be exploited. Better to pay the price now and have your systems withstand random bombardment than to shelter them; if vulnerabilities aren't costing companies money, they don't get fixed.
Look at it this way: trying to legislate against hacking attempts is like raising your children in a bubble; without the constant stimulus of daily bacterial attacks, your immune system cannot develop. The latest batch of worms are demonstrating that Windows is a fundamentally insecure operating system, and it's providing Microsoft with a financial incentive to make it more secure. Microsoft is paying its dues for years of insecure releases, and if you don't like paying the price along with them, then make the effort to patch and secure your own systems, or switch to something more secure.
You can take the high ground all you want, but running an unpatched Microsoft system on the web is like driving through Harlem with a confederate flag on your car; it's egregious oppression of your freedoms to be targeted as a result of your beliefs, true, but you should know better.
A businessman owns a machine and hires computer administrators to build that system to do only as he instructs it to do. Through the fault of the administrator and the body of information that has been put into the computer, the computer is susceptible to certain requests. If a user requests certain information in certain ways, the computer will give out information or behave in a way that the administrators that created it did not intend and the businessmen who own it do not want.
Rape is a fundamentally flawed analogy here because there is no agency or consciousness in the device that is resisting as it is being hacked; the hacker "owns" the machine, to use the revealing slang, and it is executing his will instead of the owners'.
You want a real analogy?
A man has a daughter and hires nannys to raise that child to do only as he wishes. Through the fault of the nanny or the culture as a whole, the girl grows up susceptible to certain propositions. If one of her peers phrases a proposition to have sex or do drugs in a certain way, she will consent against the intentions of those who raised her and her parents.
Sensationalist analogies like the parent always try to make hackers look like rapists or murderers or terrorists or something; just like raising children, it's always the bad parents who are looking for someone to demonize or blame.
kiddie porn reference....check. inflammantory, irrelevant reference to microsoft....check. somebody getting nailed for something every slashdotter has done at some point...check.
A typical great slashdot discussion is sure to follow!:)
In the same way that "Encyclopedia Britannica Online" only has entries relating to the internet. There's a million other examples: "Disney Online", "PBS Online", "Discovery Online", etc.
Another diatribe I hear on this matter is, "It's fantasy, kids are capable of distinguishing between fantasy and reality." First, not all kids are capable of making this distinction. Frankly, not all adults are capable of making this distinction. If my kid can't, I don't want him or her having access to this stuff.
I caused millions of virtual deaths, jumped on countless enemy's heads, and manouvered countless falling blocks into lines before the age of 15. I, like many other rational people, refuse to believe that it was mere luck that I didn't become a mass murderer, jump on anyone's head, or spend my life dropping blocks so that they form straight lines...it was because I knew that that was what I did in games, and those rules did not apply to real life. If someone can't make this distinction, they have a serious mental illness. It's a basic component of not being crazy. You will never, ever see a child react to a death in a game as seriously as they do in real life; you will never see your kid running around eating dots and looking out for ghosts. Your tendency to want to be able to blame games for your potential future failures is not at all substantiated or rational.
Freedom of expression comes at a very, very high price in this country. The facilitation of your SUBJECTIVE BELIEFS is not worth losing a form of unregulated speech. If your child can get to and from a mall by him/herself, install a game, play it, and plot a spate of copycat crimes all without your noticing, then the problem here is not that the world hasn't been steamrolled into a moral whiteroom, shaped to perfectly fit your subjective beliefs. It's nice that you have certain principles about how your child ought to be raised, but honestly I think I speak for a great number of people when I say I would prefer it if you stopped trying to parent my children as well.
I'm not telling you how to raise your child, buy your child all the corruption you can if that's the decision you make, just let me have control over what sort of corruption my kid gets.
That's not the issue. You are promoting government regulation of speech. You have control over what sort of corruption your kid has. Ask what he's doing. Be involved, be aware. If you can't control what kind of video games your child plays without the government's help, then your kids are pretty much screwed. Stop trying to throw away MY freedom of expression in exchange for an opportunity to be less responsible for raising your own children.
is that there are those of us who think the old testament of the bible is more offensive and damaging to children than pornography. There's nothing wrong with people having a healthy enjoyment of sex, but having the constant belief that God is this genocidal maniac has produced some pretty fucked up people.
Anyways, the point here is not to trash your personal beliefs (although I would be happy to do so) but rather to point out that from a constitutional standpoint, your "evangelical christian" beliefs are afforded no more protection or endorsement than pornography. This is quite simply because the founding fathers mistrusted government, and they were wary of granting the government the right to make any kind of judgement.
If you're studying to be a lawyer, you would do well to read the constitution a bit more thoroughly. Don't make any statement regarding pornography that you wouldn't be willing to apply to the bible. It's not your place to balance your morality against my personal liberty. Your beliefs are subjective, and I don't share them, so don't make it sound as if your opinion is some kind of absolute good that we all must make sacrifices for.
Unfortunately, you miss the point. True, the law does have the benefit of making it easier for parents who think as you do about the situation to prevent their children from acquiring violent video games. However, it makes it impossible for parents to allow their 16 year old child to purchase whatever video games he or she wants. Your position, while reasonable, is very, very far from being some kind of enshrined truth. While we are all very glad to hear that your viewpoints happen to agree with this paternalistic law, you must agree that your right to raise your children how you see fit overrides the desire of some vocal minority to have their particular interpretation accepted as the norm.
Look at it this way: the US has always only made restrictions where there is some kind of clear universal harm associated with allowing a freedom. If we allow people to buy cocaine at the grocery store, drug abuse is going to go way up, and society suffers because this large block of people are unable to function. With regards to religious belief, on the other hand, although there may people who believe strongly that Christianity has advantages over Satanism, the government makes no restriction at all. The problem with this situation is that parents are FORCED to restrict their 16 year olds from buying violent video games even though there is no clear universal harm associated with it. The government is making a decision on this matter, and there are clearly many parents who would not choose to parent their children in this fashion otherwise.
Regardless, it's always possible for parents to buy whatever games they want for their children, or allow their children, so the practical harms of this legislation are not terribly great. However, it still is very annoying to see the government choosing one answer to a question FOR parents, when it should really be up to them.
In short, you should think about this question not simply in terms of "How does this affect how I parent my kids?" but rather "How does this affect how any reasonable person might choose to parent their kids?" If you think about it in those terms, you'll see that this law is unnecessary.
Man, that was quite clever of you...you crack the joke, and then cash in on it with the +5 insightful for the mod points. Now all you need is some jackass to point it out, in hopes that he can get a +5 insightful out of it too...oh wait...
They have quality and reliability on their side...as the iTunes store has shown, it is possible to compete with free. Piracy is more of a response to price-gouging than an attack on them for charging anything at all.
Even if there is a legal technicality that distinguishes bootlegging from competition, remember that this is not true from the common person's perspective. Everyone hears music so much on the radio and in movies and from their friends, it really comes down to a price vs. hassle question of how to acquire it. I know for a fact that if the price were loweredo for cd sales or online downloads, I might consider paying for it before I just download it from someone.
If enough people do this, the most technologically impressive distro will succeed. As Gandhi said, you must be the change you want to see in the world.
That's my definition of good philosophy, really...something that you can turn to in even the smallest decisions.
Welcome to the argument, let me recap exactly what happened here, since you seem to have missed it.
Aardwolf204 points out that there are services that beat the snot out of all of yahoo's offerings, and most/.'ers don't really care what yahoo does.
Chess_the_cat replies with the rather deranged notion that simply because yahoo does a very large number of things, it's somehow unfair to compare it to google.
I replied that portals are not compelling because there exists a large number of specialized sites that all perform their individual tasks with a greater efficiency and precision than Yahoo could ever hope to.
The argument regarding the usefulness of "portals" is already pretty strongly decided in favor of...well..portals being retarded gimmicks...we're five posts into an already rather obvious argument, and then you come in and point out...GUYS, WE"RE TALKING ABOUT PORTALS LOL OMG.
And I can't say I've ever needed Yahoo to do any of those things. I've checked out a lot of Yahoo stuff, but I've never found any of their offerings to be very compelling or useful.
Slashdot Mirror
Man, what a crackpot idea, dialing a phone using a circular motion....hogwash.
c hines_Culnane4/images/RotaryPhone.jpg
Oh, wait...
http://williamstown.k12.ma.us/weblessons/SimpleMa
To apply the situation to your analogy, theft does not enter the picture. We are not talking about someone physically removing property. We are talking about someone convincing an element of a computer system to act against the intentions of the designer. A better analogy would be if a person were able to convince a sales clerk to give them something for free. Immoral, certainly; fraudulent, perhaps, but theft it is not. In that situation, as in hacking, there are two at fault; the hacker for being dishonest, and the target computer for acquiescing. It differs from theft because in theft there is ONE person at fault, whereas here there are two. Salespeople certainly want to avoid having things stolen, but they can be manipulated into wanting to give you things for free.
People are always going to shake coke machines; you can try to persecute the exploitative side of human nature until you're blue in the face or you can just make a coke machine that can't be shaken. You can stomp your feet all you want and say "By the laws of this country you may not shake my coke machine!" all you want but if it is insecure it will be exploited. Better to pay the price now and have your systems withstand random bombardment than to shelter them; if vulnerabilities aren't costing companies money, they don't get fixed.
Look at it this way: trying to legislate against hacking attempts is like raising your children in a bubble; without the constant stimulus of daily bacterial attacks, your immune system cannot develop. The latest batch of worms are demonstrating that Windows is a fundamentally insecure operating system, and it's providing Microsoft with a financial incentive to make it more secure. Microsoft is paying its dues for years of insecure releases, and if you don't like paying the price along with them, then make the effort to patch and secure your own systems, or switch to something more secure.
You can take the high ground all you want, but running an unpatched Microsoft system on the web is like driving through Harlem with a confederate flag on your car; it's egregious oppression of your freedoms to be targeted as a result of your beliefs, true, but you should know better.
Let's look at what happens:
A businessman owns a machine and hires computer administrators to build that system to do only as he instructs it to do. Through the fault of the administrator and the body of information that has been put into the computer, the computer is susceptible to certain requests. If a user requests certain information in certain ways, the computer will give out information or behave in a way that the administrators that created it did not intend and the businessmen who own it do not want.
Rape is a fundamentally flawed analogy here because there is no agency or consciousness in the device that is resisting as it is being hacked; the hacker "owns" the machine, to use the revealing slang, and it is executing his will instead of the owners'.
You want a real analogy?
A man has a daughter and hires nannys to raise that child to do only as he wishes. Through the fault of the nanny or the culture as a whole, the girl grows up susceptible to certain propositions. If one of her peers phrases a proposition to have sex or do drugs in a certain way, she will consent against the intentions of those who raised her and her parents.
Sensationalist analogies like the parent always try to make hackers look like rapists or murderers or terrorists or something; just like raising children, it's always the bad parents who are looking for someone to demonize or blame.
kiddie porn reference....check.
:)
inflammantory, irrelevant reference to microsoft....check.
somebody getting nailed for something every slashdotter has done at some point...check.
A typical great slashdot discussion is sure to follow!
In the same way that "Encyclopedia Britannica Online" only has entries relating to the internet. There's a million other examples: "Disney Online", "PBS Online", "Discovery Online", etc.
Some Indian Grad student is NOT in the same league as Einstein or Linus Torvalds. There's no reason why anyone should know who he is.
I caused millions of virtual deaths, jumped on countless enemy's heads, and manouvered countless falling blocks into lines before the age of 15. I, like many other rational people, refuse to believe that it was mere luck that I didn't become a mass murderer, jump on anyone's head, or spend my life dropping blocks so that they form straight lines...it was because I knew that that was what I did in games, and those rules did not apply to real life. If someone can't make this distinction, they have a serious mental illness. It's a basic component of not being crazy. You will never, ever see a child react to a death in a game as seriously as they do in real life; you will never see your kid running around eating dots and looking out for ghosts. Your tendency to want to be able to blame games for your potential future failures is not at all substantiated or rational.
Freedom of expression comes at a very, very high price in this country. The facilitation of your SUBJECTIVE BELIEFS is not worth losing a form of unregulated speech. If your child can get to and from a mall by him/herself, install a game, play it, and plot a spate of copycat crimes all without your noticing, then the problem here is not that the world hasn't been steamrolled into a moral whiteroom, shaped to perfectly fit your subjective beliefs. It's nice that you have certain principles about how your child ought to be raised, but honestly I think I speak for a great number of people when I say I would prefer it if you stopped trying to parent my children as well.
That's not the issue. You are promoting government regulation of speech. You have control over what sort of corruption your kid has. Ask what he's doing. Be involved, be aware. If you can't control what kind of video games your child plays without the government's help, then your kids are pretty much screwed. Stop trying to throw away MY freedom of expression in exchange for an opportunity to be less responsible for raising your own children.
...American People weary of Patriot act.
There's absolutely nothing stopping you from shelling out a few dollars a month and running your own forums.
is that there are those of us who think the old testament of the bible is more offensive and damaging to children than pornography. There's nothing wrong with people having a healthy enjoyment of sex, but having the constant belief that God is this genocidal maniac has produced some pretty fucked up people.
Anyways, the point here is not to trash your personal beliefs (although I would be happy to do so) but rather to point out that from a constitutional standpoint, your "evangelical christian" beliefs are afforded no more protection or endorsement than pornography. This is quite simply because the founding fathers mistrusted government, and they were wary of granting the government the right to make any kind of judgement.
If you're studying to be a lawyer, you would do well to read the constitution a bit more thoroughly. Don't make any statement regarding pornography that you wouldn't be willing to apply to the bible. It's not your place to balance your morality against my personal liberty. Your beliefs are subjective, and I don't share them, so don't make it sound as if your opinion is some kind of absolute good that we all must make sacrifices for.
Um...your sig sucks!
Unfortunately, you miss the point. True, the law does have the benefit of making it easier for parents who think as you do about the situation to prevent their children from acquiring violent video games. However, it makes it impossible for parents to allow their 16 year old child to purchase whatever video games he or she wants. Your position, while reasonable, is very, very far from being some kind of enshrined truth. While we are all very glad to hear that your viewpoints happen to agree with this paternalistic law, you must agree that your right to raise your children how you see fit overrides the desire of some vocal minority to have their particular interpretation accepted as the norm.
Look at it this way: the US has always only made restrictions where there is some kind of clear universal harm associated with allowing a freedom. If we allow people to buy cocaine at the grocery store, drug abuse is going to go way up, and society suffers because this large block of people are unable to function. With regards to religious belief, on the other hand, although there may people who believe strongly that Christianity has advantages over Satanism, the government makes no restriction at all. The problem with this situation is that parents are FORCED to restrict their 16 year olds from buying violent video games even though there is no clear universal harm associated with it. The government is making a decision on this matter, and there are clearly many parents who would not choose to parent their children in this fashion otherwise.
Regardless, it's always possible for parents to buy whatever games they want for their children, or allow their children, so the practical harms of this legislation are not terribly great. However, it still is very annoying to see the government choosing one answer to a question FOR parents, when it should really be up to them.
In short, you should think about this question not simply in terms of "How does this affect how I parent my kids?" but rather "How does this affect how any reasonable person might choose to parent their kids?" If you think about it in those terms, you'll see that this law is unnecessary.
Dude....you wrote "grammer nazi's." It's correctly spelled "grammar," and the plural form of "nazi" is "nazis." Wow, talk about asking for it.
I'm coo-coo for cocoks!
Man, that was quite clever of you...you crack the joke, and then cash in on it with the +5 insightful for the mod points. Now all you need is some jackass to point it out, in hopes that he can get a +5 insightful out of it too...oh wait...
This seems like such common knowledge that I'd suspect a troll, but it doesn't sound like it at all.
Anyways, they use the word "holidy" to indicate other religions that have Christmas rip-off holidays, such as Judaism and so forth.
FUCK YOU ASHCROFT! GET THE FUCK OUTTA THERE, YOU NAZI PIG FUCKER!
WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
(lameness filter encountered. post aborted! reason: don't uses so many caps, it's like yelling)
They have quality and reliability on their side...as the iTunes store has shown, it is possible to compete with free. Piracy is more of a response to price-gouging than an attack on them for charging anything at all.
Even if there is a legal technicality that distinguishes bootlegging from competition, remember that this is not true from the common person's perspective. Everyone hears music so much on the radio and in movies and from their friends, it really comes down to a price vs. hassle question of how to acquire it. I know for a fact that if the price were loweredo for cd sales or online downloads, I might consider paying for it before I just download it from someone.
Read the first five words in that sentence again.
If enough people do this, the most technologically impressive distro will succeed. As Gandhi said, you must be the change you want to see in the world.
That's my definition of good philosophy, really...something that you can turn to in even the smallest decisions.
Looks like you've got 8 digits there, paco.
Welcome to the argument, let me recap exactly what happened here, since you seem to have missed it.
/.'ers don't really care what yahoo does.
Aardwolf204 points out that there are services that beat the snot out of all of yahoo's offerings, and most
Chess_the_cat replies with the rather deranged notion that simply because yahoo does a very large number of things, it's somehow unfair to compare it to google.
I replied that portals are not compelling because there exists a large number of specialized sites that all perform their individual tasks with a greater efficiency and precision than Yahoo could ever hope to.
The argument regarding the usefulness of "portals" is already pretty strongly decided in favor of...well..portals being retarded gimmicks...we're five posts into an already rather obvious argument, and then you come in and point out...GUYS, WE"RE TALKING ABOUT PORTALS LOL OMG.
Thank you captain obvious.
And I can't say I've ever needed Yahoo to do any of those things. I've checked out a lot of Yahoo stuff, but I've never found any of their offerings to be very compelling or useful.
l ers/e .com/o rg/kronolith/
...but I'm sure some meathead out there will help me out...
http://gameknot.com/
http://www.apple.com/trai
http://www.suprnova.org/
http://www.froogl
http://www.mozilla.org/
http://www.horde.
And...uh...fantasy football? This is *slashdot*....
..it's not paranoia if they're really out to get you. ;)
Don't you realize how advantageous it is to release this information on the anneversary of the twin towers attack?