Don't be ridiculous. Everyone knows Bill Gates is a robot to begin with. An evil robot designed by Satan, running 666 bit code. So evil that even hell wouldn't keep him. And Furby's are his demons. At night they whisper to you in your sleep..."worship Bill Gates the Anti-Christ." Before you know it you've bought 10 Windows licenses for your 1 PC and traded your immortal soul to Gates for bug riddled version of Media Player. There will be much weeping and gnashing of teeth the day that Bill Gates gets one of these new hydrogen powered batteries.
I know this is true. It's been reported in several new sources. Seen it on a few TV shows. My wife and I were debating this very thing the other night. She said minorities in history should be given more time in school and books. I am adamantly against racist decisions impacting what is taught in school.
My point is this, people already in the books are likely there for a good reason, impact on current society. While some minorities may have been overlooked, and should certainly be added if they have made an overwhelming impact on society, it is not appropriate to devote 50% of history books and science books to minorities merely because they are minorities.
While certainly it is valid to make mention to cultures and societies that have shaped America, and the world, overall, WHITE MEN, have made the most significant contributions to our current society, technology, and political frame work. In fact, if you assume overall that even 30% of american's are minorities, then by that fact alone they'd by odds only make up 30% of influential people to America. But wait, they weren't always so large in proportion. And even more, when this country started out, it was being founded by WHITE MEN, who were predominately the only ones being educated. Someone with no education certainly wasn't inventing the plane. It was the Wright Brothers. A couple of white men. White men have for very plain reasons been the most influencing individuals on our culture and society, from politics to science and technology, and even the arts.
This isn't to say someone who is not a WHITE MAN couldn't do all these things, but in the last 300 years (excepting the last 50) they really didn't have the resources and opportunities that white men did. Because of that it is apparent that they would not have had the same impact on society as individuals as any given White Man. If blacks were rich 200 years ago and in the white house I have no doubt they would have abolished slavery. But it was a White Man as President who did the job because that's who ran the country back then. It was predomiately white men who fought to end slavery in politics because that's who was in politics. And it was predominately White Men that died to end slavery because that was who most soldiers were.
I really hope this doesn't sound racist. I don't mean to say that White Men are better. I am merely pointing out that in the last 300-500 years which have influenced our country the most, White Men had most of the power, money, political influence, education, and land, and probably numbers. That means they were more influential as individuals on our society, laws, scientific breakthroughs, etc. Tomorrow that could be a different story, but we should keep our history books relevant, not PC.
Concerns that US or MS on their own could be bugging software seems fairly reasonable considering that less than a year ago China caught US bugging a plane they had just bought from Boeing. They didn't want to use the plane after that either. Can't see them wanting to use MS after that either.
People talk about a changing medium and the effect on prices. This shouldn't be RIAA's big concern and I don't believe it is.
The RIAA's only real carrot for artists is this: the RIAA can get them exposure and is the only way for artists to go big fast and get large exposure. The real threat of filesharing concepts are that artist can have multi-national exposure in a couple of days with some good word of mouth and some good web advertising, which could come very cheap.
At the point that artists on a large scale are also technology savvy or have friends to assist them, they will realize that the RIAA has very little to offer and at too large a price. And then the RIAA will be faced with the true threat. That instead of losing their customers, they will have lost their artists. And then they have nothing but old music to fight for extending the copywrite on.
That is why the RIAA must squash P2P. And they probably already know this and realize that the legal battles are not enough. Unfortunately they are too stupid to realize they are doing too little too late. They are too arrogant to realize that a lot of people already know their music mostly sucks. The are too haughty to say they were wrong and try to apologize to the public they have offended. They are too blood thirsty to throw in the towel and try to fix things. All their legal fights have shown them is that a hand that's been bitten isn't going to feed them another dollar.
..."I have yet to understand it. Why is $15 a worthwhile investment for a DVD but the same amount for a CD is too much?"...
Because most movies from Hollywood cost millions and millions of dollars to film and produce. Most CD's represent the work of a few people as far as actual performance goes and can be produced for much less.
In other words, a CD is sold for a comparable price, or frequently more, to a DVD. yet a CD uses older technology, the medium is cheaper, a blank DVD should be more expensive than a CD. Also, the content should be far cheaper. Instead of paying 100's of extras, several non-lead actors, and paying millions for A-list celebrities, music companies have the work of a at most a few singers and band members to pay for. Even as far as behind the scenes production costs there are a lot more people responsible for the making of a movie than a CD.
It is completely unrealistic that CD's, an older, less sophisticated medium, with less content and far less content related costs should cost the same, or more, than a DVD.
Does this help you understand why people believe they are being over-charged for CD's? If that still doesn't help you might want to ponder that the US courts have already found that the music companies were gouging US citizens by illegally price fixing the CD's, basically engaging in monopolistic business practices to over-inflate the cost of CD's and push legitimate music stores out of business. I'm still waiting on my check.
I'm not saying $20 is always a fair price for a DVD either. Often times the movie studios come up with marketing that is very deceptive about the movie actually being purchased. But the $20 is by far more justifiable than the same amount for a CD.
To be fair, movie makers have usually already made a profit by the time they put these DVD's into the market. Their movies have in general already been viewed in theatres and if they have not come out ahead, they have at least made their profit. All the same. That $20 seems a lot more reasonable for a 2 hour $20 million dollar movie than a CD from the latest 15 year old.
I love this strategy. I've posted it before. I haven't heard anyone suggest any reason why this would not work. If it's a criminal case, they must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you downloaded music infringing upon copywrite AND that includes proving that you did not have a legal right to the copywrited material, such as owning a hard copy (CD, tape, record).
In a civil case there is not so much of a burden of proof, but it would be easy to go out and buy every copy, in many cases find a used CD or tape. If you can get free or cheap council it would be best to drag this on for as long as possible as the law suit would be costing the RIAA a lot more than it would cost you. Just be careful not to put your face out there too publicly or use your own credit cards. I have doubts if the RIAA could effectively handle a big search either, but I suppose they could technically hire people to get your Visa records, or petition the court for a subpeona for those records to show whether you had bought those items after the violation had occurred.
Heck, I think people would donate CD's to a cause like that.
I've had similar problems but not to this scale. The answer is, figure out what your job is, do it, and tell your boss clearly that other stuff is not your job and to hire a professional so you can get back to work.
Just the other day I was telling my boss about a dead outlet. He asked me to replace it. I told him he should consider hiring an electrician. He said isn't that what a computer guru handles? I told him politely that that is not what I do, not what I was hired for, not what I've been trained for, etc.
I resisted the urge to tell him that not everything that involves electricity is a computer and not even everything involving a computer is my job. I am on the verge of informing my other boss however.
My job is supposed to be training teaching staff to use computers in the classroom.
It is in fact illegal in the USA. Recent court cases in the USA say that possessing pictures that are intended to look like minors are also illegal. It's even more vague than that. The law basically says that even writing about sex with minors, simulated images, etc are illegal. In two recent cases men have been charged for merely WRITING down fantasies about underage girls. One was a teacher charged with child pornography for merely keeping a diary of his fantasies. These were not published in the traditional sense. They were merely written and that was enough for the court to convict if I recall correctly. Feel free to google it yourself or check out billywildhack.
" Difficult, surely? Harvest porn in general, sure (nearby words), but if someone could write a spider with an effective capability for specific stuff like tat, we'd be using it to close down sites already."
No. Someone may get around to using it to track down offending sites. For a long time it would not be anyone from the government. When it would be finally run by policing agencies.... 1)Most of these images would be hosted on foreign soil. There would be little luck busting them, they could continually move. 2)Servers would be set up with non-illegal files would be set up. But with incriminating file names. Investigators would be unable to get even a fair idea of what sites held what material. 3)Authorities would have to prove that files were actually illegal materials. 4)These files would likely be legal in many areas. Good look trying to prove where they are and if they are illegal in any other jurisdiction. 5)insert other arguments here
A program could use some searching to find files named in such a way to make one believe it was child-porn. And if someone wanted to use it he may get 200 images with 10 actual kid-porn images in there. I very much doubt in pictures of females between ages 13 to 22 that even 20% of the population could accurately guess ages or even group images by legal and illegal. So if a government agency used a similar tool to detect child porn it would likely have a 20:1 false positive rate. But even after that someone would have to view the files and determine which were false positives. Now they will have false positives AND false negatives. Then go back to the top of the list and start dealing with other jurisdictions, tracking down alleged offenders, getting support from non-US isp's and law enforcement, deal with issues such as challenges on basis of lack of warrants and such.
In short, even if such a program existed, it would only be of use to someone looking for child-porn, it would not be of MUCH use to someone looking for child porn. And it would be of almost no use to Law Enforcement, in fact it would be a waste of their time.
Lets face it, do a search on Kazaa for some porn, I'd say 80% is mislabeled. Unless of course every disney actress has posed nude, everyone's sister has been stripping on a web cam, unless everyone is having sex with and taking pictures of their best friend's mom AND sister! Spiders searching for porn file names would be a waste of time to anyone.
Save yourselves the trouble and go download the Libby Hoeler video's instead.
They apparently have a US presence and I would imagine you could still have an injuction against their products being sold in the USA. That seems to me it would be a very effective threat.
Maybe rather than fight the way things are panning out, the game companies should be charging cash for things that players wish to buy in the world. If prices were not outrageous I think people would pay. As it is I am paying $25 every 3 months for an EQ account I don't use anymore (lazy me). I bet they would make more money by eliminating monthly use fees and instead charging small amounts for items from some vendors. I believe that they would have far more players if they didn't REQUIRE cash for regular play. Then they could hook players with BONUS equipment they could buy rather than spend 80 hours when players start the game killing puppies for whatever lame experience and small change you get.
"I definitely wouldn't "ask Slashdot" when I've been caught with 40g of cocaine and a 12 year old prostitute in my car."
Sounds like a good ask Slashdot to me. I want the rest of these details. Depending on who you were caught by I'd recommend offering them a line and a turn.
" But companies are typically taxed on earnings rather than on number of employees. Therefore a company would not save on health costs by outsourcing their labour......"
I'll give you an example. Say I make $100,000 per year. Let's say my tax rate is about 25% for income taxes. Well, you think the government is only taxing you $25,000 for earning a living. Actually, the government is charging you $25,000 for earning a living and taxing your company $25,000 for giving you a job. That's not including workmans comp, benefits, etc that a company would be paying. That is only taxes. That's why people who think they could work being selp employed are surprised when they end up getting their 50% tax bill. That's right, an American pays 50% of what they earn in income tax. Half of that is hidden so we don't find out that we are taxed like a socialist state but without all the benefits. So if you get paid $100K and after taxes bring home $75K, you would have actually made $150K without income taxes. (In theory. Your employer would never actually decide to raise your pay even if taxes were cut.)
Consider all the other costs of hiring a US employee and it makes some sense to outsource. Of course, USA should absolutely have tariffs in place to protect our service jobs. This is far more important than physical goods tariffs and is being completely ignored. US economic model has shifted as production jobs have been outsourced despite tariffs. Now we are a service economy. It will be an economic disaster if corporations are allowed to outsource service jobs as well without tariffs.....Wait a minute, did I say "will be and economic disaster". I think it's already well under way.
"Vigilante justice on the Internet is not something that should be encouraged."
Of course it should be encouraged. It's for the most part, a lawless land. Or if not lawless, then those who enforce the law or guidelines are too few to pose any really threat to criminals. Vigilantes are the best way of protected that which we love. More of a militia than vigilantism I'd say.
"What he's talking about is immoral, pure and simple."
What's immoral about it? The guy is merely suggesting rebooting a spammers system. Someone who fraudulently and illegally markets bogus products and services. Basically thieves and other criminals. Even if it is just a system that's been "bot-ed" then the box is already compromised. If someone's stolen a van to deliver drugs would it be "immoral" to let the air out of the tires? These are criminal operations, many of them run by organized crime, cheating, defrauded, extorting money from American citizens.
"I hope one day in ten years' time, when there is an international governing body to regulate things like the Internet that can handle this sort of behaviour, this guy gets strung up by a family whose lives he ruined without a second thought, and sued for every cent he owns."
Who's life are you proposing he has ruined or will ruin? He merely suggested an already well known way of crashing an infected box. If anyone's system is compromised then they will need to deal with the consequences of their property being used to attack others due to their failure to secure their box. If it is a business then that business is responsible for allowing equipment to be used for illegal purposes. And it would be a BUSINESS. Mom and Dad and Sally and Johnny don't have 2 million tied up in a computer that might crash and ruin their lives.
Be realistic. This guy has merely suggested a way to temporarily interfere with the illegal operations of spammers and most likely organized criminals thereby decreasing their profit for those criminal activities. That isn't immoral, it's nearly heroic.
"the ISPs where these boxen reside are criminally negligent in not blocking outbound port 25 traffic to anything other than the ISP's outbound mail server."
Maybe they should start blocking all the ports and only let you surf? That should cut back on hacking. Just leave a couple ports open for websurfing.
I pay for a fucking internet account! I don't pay for a web surfing account. I don't need my ISP telling me which protocols, ports, and information are acceptable to use, send, transfer over their network. And we certainly don't need scaremongers trying to get the use of the internet further crippled by ISP's. They are already doing enough of that already.
Spam sucks, but I'm not one bit interested in having my internet access castrated so that you get less spam.
"You raise a crucial point. I think it's important to remember that kids don't have money. And, although Linux, OO, etc. are all free, the hardware they run on isn't. So long as you have parents buying the hardware, it's gonna come with all the usual MS crap pre-installed."
This was brought up earlier in the comments. And it is about the only real negative point made and maybe the easiest to refute. You point out a comparison to Macs but say that parents are going to buy the systems and get what they have at work. Well, that's fine, because their *86 compatible computer is going to also run Linux. The kid can just pop in a CD for linux without even installing anything.
I agree in the point that this is why Mac vs. PC in schools went nowhere. However, the two are not very comparable because of that difference: that linux will run on dad's Windows box and will run even without a regular OS installation set up.
"When I was in elementary school (K-6), my schools used Apples and Macs. (Remember that Apple did the whole "charity" thing once, too.) I don't think it had much of an impact on the students. It didn't have any affect on me or anyone I knew."
I think this is wrong for a couple reasons.
1) Linux will run on cheap PC's. This is an easy choice for a school that might want to upgrade in the future and still have compatible low cost machines.
2) Students will have machines at home that can run linux, even without installing linux (Knoppix).
3) These students will be in the work force. Their employers who used to say "Linux is free, but our users will be afraid to use and do not know how to use Linux", will now be saying "Hey, job market is now flooded with employees with experience using a totally free OS to do everything we need them to do."
4) In response to above being different to the Apple situation. Schools used Mac's but they were not as adept to business solutions as IBM clones. They were not as cheap, not as compatible, etc. Linux machines can be bought cheap, unlike similar Mac's.
There is the real power of the Linux K-12 incentive. A workforce trained in free software and the economic incentive for a school system to put it into practice. And then of course a marketplace already not intirely happy with MS (probably most unhappy with support/cost) that is ready to do something about it.
This is the most common and most effective question for showing why this law is wrong, un-American, anti-freedom, etc.
1) At the heart of the question is, why can't somebody just ask to please see the materials. Seems easy enough, but true Americans have known and been on record for a long long time holding that unless speech can be anonymous, it is not free. Our founding fathers (that means people that fought and died so that we could live free) knew that freedom could not be possible with open access to information and knowledge. Thus, Free Speech. Those who founded this country knew that free speech wasn't important for pr0n, it was important for knowing what those in power did not necessarily wish for you to hear, read, know, believe. This principal is as true now as it was hundreds of years ago. Just as it was true then, it is still true that the powerful, often with their own agendas, choose what we hear, and the spin we hear with it. Libertarians have also known that unless speech, or more accurately perhaps - listening, can be anonymous, that it is not free. Because if those in power can monitor what you say, what you hear, if you must ask permission to gain access to information, it enables the unethical to use that information innappropriately. It makes it easier for someone to monitor what we hear and what we say, to know when we discuss things that are controversial and not always accepted. Americans know that if Sue goes to the library and has to ask if she wants to look up information about circumsicious, breast cancer, abortion rights, abortion centers, gun rights, adoption services, sites for people with psychological disorders, then Sue WILL NOT ASK about any of that, but just live in silence because she is embarrassed/ashamed/in fear. Remember, that with any law that abridges freedom we must think about where that road COULD lead before we put one foot on it.
That's the main reason why the politicians have betrayed us while they whored out American freedoms in order for PAC money from those who would profit from these filters and in exchange for votes from those who are foolish enough to believe they are doing something to protect kids. Let's not ignore the other two reasons though.
2) These filters DON'T &*%#@$* WORK!!
3) Americans' tax dollars are being thrown away on systems that DON'T &*%#@$* WORK and that compromise basic freedoms.
I spent 20 years of my life buying mostly overhyped crap by these companies. Almost every album I bought was a ripoff with just a couple songs of any quality on them. For 2 or 3 years I didn't buy any music because it was so awful, expensive, etc. Then I found p2p. I can listen to what I want at no expense to me. If I find a group I like that is independant I can buy the CD for a nice quality copy that supports the artists that have earned it.
At $15 to $20 per CD that works out to about 3 hours to 4 hours of work for someone working minimum wage. Who would work 4 hours so they can support Britney Spears' music career? The sooner her career's over the sooner we get to see her in Playboy.
The RIAA/music retailing business in its current form is dead. It's not dead because of P2P being good. It's dead because it has been a piece of crap years but they locked out competition. P2P is the only competition out there for RIAA. Anything hurting their sales helps respectable companies and artists enter the market.
Slashdot Mirror
Enough to transform him into Mr. Fantastic?
Don't be ridiculous. Everyone knows Bill Gates is a robot to begin with. An evil robot designed by Satan, running 666 bit code. So evil that even hell wouldn't keep him. And Furby's are his demons. At night they whisper to you in your sleep..."worship Bill Gates the Anti-Christ." Before you know it you've bought 10 Windows licenses for your 1 PC and traded your immortal soul to Gates for bug riddled version of Media Player. There will be much weeping and gnashing of teeth the day that Bill Gates gets one of these new hydrogen powered batteries.
Just when I thought my rabbit ears were safe due to their aluminum foil reinforcements.
I know this is true. It's been reported in several new sources. Seen it on a few TV shows. My wife and I were debating this very thing the other night. She said minorities in history should be given more time in school and books. I am adamantly against racist decisions impacting what is taught in school.
My point is this, people already in the books are likely there for a good reason, impact on current society. While some minorities may have been overlooked, and should certainly be added if they have made an overwhelming impact on society, it is not appropriate to devote 50% of history books and science books to minorities merely because they are minorities.
While certainly it is valid to make mention to cultures and societies that have shaped America, and the world, overall, WHITE MEN, have made the most significant contributions to our current society, technology, and political frame work. In fact, if you assume overall that even 30% of american's are minorities, then by that fact alone they'd by odds only make up 30% of influential people to America. But wait, they weren't always so large in proportion. And even more, when this country started out, it was being founded by WHITE MEN, who were predominately the only ones being educated. Someone with no education certainly wasn't inventing the plane. It was the Wright Brothers. A couple of white men. White men have for very plain reasons been the most influencing individuals on our culture and society, from politics to science and technology, and even the arts.
This isn't to say someone who is not a WHITE MAN couldn't do all these things, but in the last 300 years (excepting the last 50) they really didn't have the resources and opportunities that white men did. Because of that it is apparent that they would not have had the same impact on society as individuals as any given White Man. If blacks were rich 200 years ago and in the white house I have no doubt they would have abolished slavery. But it was a White Man as President who did the job because that's who ran the country back then. It was predomiately white men who fought to end slavery in politics because that's who was in politics. And it was predominately White Men that died to end slavery because that was who most soldiers were.
I really hope this doesn't sound racist. I don't mean to say that White Men are better. I am merely pointing out that in the last 300-500 years which have influenced our country the most, White Men had most of the power, money, political influence, education, and land, and probably numbers. That means they were more influential as individuals on our society, laws, scientific breakthroughs, etc. Tomorrow that could be a different story, but we should keep our history books relevant, not PC.
Concerns that US or MS on their own could be bugging software seems fairly reasonable considering that less than a year ago China caught US bugging a plane they had just bought from Boeing. They didn't want to use the plane after that either. Can't see them wanting to use MS after that either.
People talk about a changing medium and the effect on prices. This shouldn't be RIAA's big concern and I don't believe it is.
The RIAA's only real carrot for artists is this: the RIAA can get them exposure and is the only way for artists to go big fast and get large exposure. The real threat of filesharing concepts are that artist can have multi-national exposure in a couple of days with some good word of mouth and some good web advertising, which could come very cheap.
At the point that artists on a large scale are also technology savvy or have friends to assist them, they will realize that the RIAA has very little to offer and at too large a price. And then the RIAA will be faced with the true threat. That instead of losing their customers, they will have lost their artists. And then they have nothing but old music to fight for extending the copywrite on.
That is why the RIAA must squash P2P. And they probably already know this and realize that the legal battles are not enough. Unfortunately they are too stupid to realize they are doing too little too late. They are too arrogant to realize that a lot of people already know their music mostly sucks. The are too haughty to say they were wrong and try to apologize to the public they have offended. They are too blood thirsty to throw in the towel and try to fix things. All their legal fights have shown them is that a hand that's been bitten isn't going to feed them another dollar.
..."I have yet to understand it. Why is $15 a worthwhile investment for a DVD but the same amount for a CD is too much?"...
Because most movies from Hollywood cost millions and millions of dollars to film and produce. Most CD's represent the work of a few people as far as actual performance goes and can be produced for much less.
In other words, a CD is sold for a comparable price, or frequently more, to a DVD. yet a CD uses older technology, the medium is cheaper, a blank DVD should be more expensive than a CD. Also, the content should be far cheaper. Instead of paying 100's of extras, several non-lead actors, and paying millions for A-list celebrities, music companies have the work of a at most a few singers and band members to pay for. Even as far as behind the scenes production costs there are a lot more people responsible for the making of a movie than a CD.
It is completely unrealistic that CD's, an older, less sophisticated medium, with less content and far less content related costs should cost the same, or more, than a DVD.
Does this help you understand why people believe they are being over-charged for CD's? If that still doesn't help you might want to ponder that the US courts have already found that the music companies were gouging US citizens by illegally price fixing the CD's, basically engaging in monopolistic business practices to over-inflate the cost of CD's and push legitimate music stores out of business. I'm still waiting on my check.
I'm not saying $20 is always a fair price for a DVD either. Often times the movie studios come up with marketing that is very deceptive about the movie actually being purchased. But the $20 is by far more justifiable than the same amount for a CD.
To be fair, movie makers have usually already made a profit by the time they put these DVD's into the market. Their movies have in general already been viewed in theatres and if they have not come out ahead, they have at least made their profit. All the same. That $20 seems a lot more reasonable for a 2 hour $20 million dollar movie than a CD from the latest 15 year old.
The power grid makes a drain on you.
I love this strategy. I've posted it before. I haven't heard anyone suggest any reason why this would not work. If it's a criminal case, they must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you downloaded music infringing upon copywrite AND that includes proving that you did not have a legal right to the copywrited material, such as owning a hard copy (CD, tape, record).
In a civil case there is not so much of a burden of proof, but it would be easy to go out and buy every copy, in many cases find a used CD or tape. If you can get free or cheap council it would be best to drag this on for as long as possible as the law suit would be costing the RIAA a lot more than it would cost you. Just be careful not to put your face out there too publicly or use your own credit cards. I have doubts if the RIAA could effectively handle a big search either, but I suppose they could technically hire people to get your Visa records, or petition the court for a subpeona for those records to show whether you had bought those items after the violation had occurred.
Heck, I think people would donate CD's to a cause like that.
Any of you guys play Postal 2? A reference to Old Man Murray is on every computer monitor in the game.
I've had similar problems but not to this scale. The answer is, figure out what your job is, do it, and tell your boss clearly that other stuff is not your job and to hire a professional so you can get back to work.
Just the other day I was telling my boss about a dead outlet. He asked me to replace it. I told him he should consider hiring an electrician. He said isn't that what a computer guru handles? I told him politely that that is not what I do, not what I was hired for, not what I've been trained for, etc.
I resisted the urge to tell him that not everything that involves electricity is a computer and not even everything involving a computer is my job. I am on the verge of informing my other boss however.
My job is supposed to be training teaching staff to use computers in the classroom.
It is in fact illegal in the USA. Recent court cases in the USA say that possessing pictures that are intended to look like minors are also illegal. It's even more vague than that. The law basically says that even writing about sex with minors, simulated images, etc are illegal. In two recent cases men have been charged for merely WRITING down fantasies about underage girls. One was a teacher charged with child pornography for merely keeping a diary of his fantasies. These were not published in the traditional sense. They were merely written and that was enough for the court to convict if I recall correctly. Feel free to google it yourself or check out billywildhack.
" Difficult, surely? Harvest porn in general, sure (nearby words), but if someone could write a spider with an effective capability for specific stuff like tat, we'd be using it to close down sites already."
No. Someone may get around to using it to track down offending sites. For a long time it would not be anyone from the government. When it would be finally run by policing agencies....
1)Most of these images would be hosted on foreign soil. There would be little luck busting them, they could continually move.
2)Servers would be set up with non-illegal files would be set up. But with incriminating file names. Investigators would be unable to get even a fair idea of what sites held what material.
3)Authorities would have to prove that files were actually illegal materials.
4)These files would likely be legal in many areas. Good look trying to prove where they are and if they are illegal in any other jurisdiction.
5)insert other arguments here
A program could use some searching to find files named in such a way to make one believe it was child-porn. And if someone wanted to use it he may get 200 images with 10 actual kid-porn images in there. I very much doubt in pictures of females between ages 13 to 22 that even 20% of the population could accurately guess ages or even group images by legal and illegal. So if a government agency used a similar tool to detect child porn it would likely have a 20:1 false positive rate. But even after that someone would have to view the files and determine which were false positives. Now they will have false positives AND false negatives. Then go back to the top of the list and start dealing with other jurisdictions, tracking down alleged offenders, getting support from non-US isp's and law enforcement, deal with issues such as challenges on basis of lack of warrants and such.
In short, even if such a program existed, it would only be of use to someone looking for child-porn, it would not be of MUCH use to someone looking for child porn. And it would be of almost no use to Law Enforcement, in fact it would be a waste of their time.
Lets face it, do a search on Kazaa for some porn, I'd say 80% is mislabeled. Unless of course every disney actress has posed nude, everyone's sister has been stripping on a web cam, unless everyone is having sex with and taking pictures of their best friend's mom AND sister! Spiders searching for porn file names would be a waste of time to anyone.
Save yourselves the trouble and go download the Libby Hoeler video's instead.
They apparently have a US presence and I would imagine you could still have an injuction against their products being sold in the USA. That seems to me it would be a very effective threat.
Maybe rather than fight the way things are panning out, the game companies should be charging cash for things that players wish to buy in the world. If prices were not outrageous I think people would pay. As it is I am paying $25 every 3 months for an EQ account I don't use anymore (lazy me). I bet they would make more money by eliminating monthly use fees and instead charging small amounts for items from some vendors. I believe that they would have far more players if they didn't REQUIRE cash for regular play. Then they could hook players with BONUS equipment they could buy rather than spend 80 hours when players start the game killing puppies for whatever lame experience and small change you get.
"I definitely wouldn't "ask Slashdot" when I've been caught with 40g of cocaine and a 12 year old prostitute in my car."
When or if? Is there something we should know?
"I definitely wouldn't "ask Slashdot" when I've been caught with 40g of cocaine and a 12 year old prostitute in my car."
Sounds like a good ask Slashdot to me. I want the rest of these details. Depending on who you were caught by I'd recommend offering them a line and a turn.
" But companies are typically taxed on earnings rather than on number of employees. Therefore a company would not save on health costs by outsourcing their labour......"
....Wait a minute, did I say "will be and economic disaster". I think it's already well under way.
I'll give you an example. Say I make $100,000 per year. Let's say my tax rate is about 25% for income taxes. Well, you think the government is only taxing you $25,000 for earning a living. Actually, the government is charging you $25,000 for earning a living and taxing your company $25,000 for giving you a job. That's not including workmans comp, benefits, etc that a company would be paying. That is only taxes. That's why people who think they could work being selp employed are surprised when they end up getting their 50% tax bill. That's right, an American pays 50% of what they earn in income tax. Half of that is hidden so we don't find out that we are taxed like a socialist state but without all the benefits. So if you get paid $100K and after taxes bring home $75K, you would have actually made $150K without income taxes. (In theory. Your employer would never actually decide to raise your pay even if taxes were cut.)
Consider all the other costs of hiring a US employee and it makes some sense to outsource. Of course, USA should absolutely have tariffs in place to protect our service jobs. This is far more important than physical goods tariffs and is being completely ignored. US economic model has shifted as production jobs have been outsourced despite tariffs. Now we are a service economy. It will be an economic disaster if corporations are allowed to outsource service jobs as well without tariffs.
"Vigilante justice on the Internet is not something that should be encouraged."
Of course it should be encouraged. It's for the most part, a lawless land. Or if not lawless, then those who enforce the law or guidelines are too few to pose any really threat to criminals. Vigilantes are the best way of protected that which we love. More of a militia than vigilantism I'd say.
"What he's talking about is immoral, pure and simple."
What's immoral about it? The guy is merely suggesting rebooting a spammers system. Someone who fraudulently and illegally markets bogus products and services. Basically thieves and other criminals. Even if it is just a system that's been "bot-ed" then the box is already compromised. If someone's stolen a van to deliver drugs would it be "immoral" to let the air out of the tires? These are criminal operations, many of them run by organized crime, cheating, defrauded, extorting money from American citizens.
"I hope one day in ten years' time, when there is an international governing body to regulate things like the Internet that can handle this sort of behaviour, this guy gets strung up by a family whose lives he ruined without a second thought, and sued for every cent he owns."
Who's life are you proposing he has ruined or will ruin? He merely suggested an already well known way of crashing an infected box. If anyone's system is compromised then they will need to deal with the consequences of their property being used to attack others due to their failure to secure their box. If it is a business then that business is responsible for allowing equipment to be used for illegal purposes. And it would be a BUSINESS. Mom and Dad and Sally and Johnny don't have 2 million tied up in a computer that might crash and ruin their lives.
Be realistic. This guy has merely suggested a way to temporarily interfere with the illegal operations of spammers and most likely organized criminals thereby decreasing their profit for those criminal activities. That isn't immoral, it's nearly heroic.
"the ISPs where these boxen reside are criminally negligent in not blocking outbound port 25 traffic to anything other than the ISP's outbound mail server."
Maybe they should start blocking all the ports and only let you surf? That should cut back on hacking. Just leave a couple ports open for websurfing.
I pay for a fucking internet account! I don't pay for a web surfing account. I don't need my ISP telling me which protocols, ports, and information are acceptable to use, send, transfer over their network. And we certainly don't need scaremongers trying to get the use of the internet further crippled by ISP's. They are already doing enough of that already.
Spam sucks, but I'm not one bit interested in having my internet access castrated so that you get less spam.
"You raise a crucial point. I think it's important to remember that kids don't have money. And, although Linux, OO, etc. are all free, the hardware they run on isn't. So long as you have parents buying the hardware, it's gonna come with all the usual MS crap pre-installed."
This was brought up earlier in the comments. And it is about the only real negative point made and maybe the easiest to refute. You point out a comparison to Macs but say that parents are going to buy the systems and get what they have at work. Well, that's fine, because their *86 compatible computer is going to also run Linux. The kid can just pop in a CD for linux without even installing anything.
I agree in the point that this is why Mac vs. PC in schools went nowhere. However, the two are not very comparable because of that difference: that linux will run on dad's Windows box and will run even without a regular OS installation set up.
"When I was in elementary school (K-6), my schools used Apples and Macs. (Remember that Apple did the whole "charity" thing once, too.) I don't think it had much of an impact on the students. It didn't have any affect on me or anyone I knew."
I think this is wrong for a couple reasons.
1) Linux will run on cheap PC's. This is an easy choice for a school that might want to upgrade in the future and still have compatible low cost machines.
2) Students will have machines at home that can run linux, even without installing linux (Knoppix).
3) These students will be in the work force. Their employers who used to say "Linux is free, but our users will be afraid to use and do not know how to use Linux", will now be saying "Hey, job market is now flooded with employees with experience using a totally free OS to do everything we need them to do."
4) In response to above being different to the Apple situation. Schools used Mac's but they were not as adept to business solutions as IBM clones. They were not as cheap, not as compatible, etc. Linux machines can be bought cheap, unlike similar Mac's.
There is the real power of the Linux K-12 incentive. A workforce trained in free software and the economic incentive for a school system to put it into practice. And then of course a marketplace already not intirely happy with MS (probably most unhappy with support/cost) that is ready to do something about it.
Is it just me, or do you think cell-phone company when you read "Windows Mobile"?
Don't give them ideas please.
This is the most common and most effective question for showing why this law is wrong, un-American, anti-freedom, etc.
1) At the heart of the question is, why can't somebody just ask to please see the materials. Seems easy enough, but true Americans have known and been on record for a long long time holding that unless speech can be anonymous, it is not free.
Our founding fathers (that means people that fought and died so that we could live free) knew that freedom could not be possible with open access to information and knowledge. Thus, Free Speech. Those who founded this country knew that free speech wasn't important for pr0n, it was important for knowing what those in power did not necessarily wish for you to hear, read, know, believe. This principal is as true now as it was hundreds of years ago. Just as it was true then, it is still true that the powerful, often with their own agendas, choose what we hear, and the spin we hear with it.
Libertarians have also known that unless speech, or more accurately perhaps - listening, can be anonymous, that it is not free. Because if those in power can monitor what you say, what you hear, if you must ask permission to gain access to information, it enables the unethical to use that information innappropriately. It makes it easier for someone to monitor what we hear and what we say, to know when we discuss things that are controversial and not always accepted. Americans know that if Sue goes to the library and has to ask if she wants to look up information about circumsicious, breast cancer, abortion rights, abortion centers, gun rights, adoption services, sites for people with psychological disorders, then Sue WILL NOT ASK about any of that, but just live in silence because she is embarrassed/ashamed/in fear. Remember, that with any law that abridges freedom we must think about where that road COULD lead before we put one foot on it.
That's the main reason why the politicians have betrayed us while they whored out American freedoms in order for PAC money from those who would profit from these filters and in exchange for votes from those who are foolish enough to believe they are doing something to protect kids. Let's not ignore the other two reasons though.
2) These filters DON'T &*%#@$* WORK!!
3) Americans' tax dollars are being thrown away on systems that DON'T &*%#@$* WORK and that compromise basic freedoms.
I spent 20 years of my life buying mostly overhyped crap by these companies. Almost every album I bought was a ripoff with just a couple songs of any quality on them. For 2 or 3 years I didn't buy any music because it was so awful, expensive, etc. Then I found p2p. I can listen to what I want at no expense to me. If I find a group I like that is independant I can buy the CD for a nice quality copy that supports the artists that have earned it.
At $15 to $20 per CD that works out to about 3 hours to 4 hours of work for someone working minimum wage. Who would work 4 hours so they can support Britney Spears' music career? The sooner her career's over the sooner we get to see her in Playboy.
The RIAA/music retailing business in its current form is dead. It's not dead because of P2P being good. It's dead because it has been a piece of crap years but they locked out competition. P2P is the only competition out there for RIAA. Anything hurting their sales helps respectable companies and artists enter the market.