TFA lists an email address for feedback. I'm not certain that it's appropriate for end-users, but I didn't let a little thing like that stop me from letting them know what I think about their little 'utility'. Perhaps others should do the same.
Both, actually. The telcos should have to answer for what they did. If the answer is 'here are the documents showing the requests the executive branch made', then they can have a measure of amnesty, and we go after the executive branch, instead.
Of course, this would all be a lot easier if the legislative branch weren't so busy bowing and scrapping before the executive, themselves. With the new laws, the one ally the people had (i.e., an already split judicial branch) will be permanently barred from taking the administration to task for this; all we'll have left is a report from congress...
I think it's going to blow the iPhone out of the water... at least for people that want a useful, hackable mini-computer and not a $3000 status symbol.
While the Greenphone sounds great for hackers, and while I suspect some monkey math going on to come up with your price, it is a (sad?) truth that the market is far more interested in a $3000 status symbol than a device upon which they can compile a custom kernel.
I can think of one major reason: she seems to take on neo-con viewpoints to garner favor. The most recent (and note-worthy for me, as I am not one of her constituents) is the video-games are evil thing, but I think in general she's pretty far from the democratic platform these days. Acting like a new-wave republican is no way to start a run for a democratic presidential nomination.
This is precisely what I was going to suggest as a punishment...if they're in a morally high enough position to justify threatening people & destroying property, they should be dedicated enough to be willing to sacrifice themselves. ALF doesn't like animal testing? No problem, we'll just fill the labs with the rank and file of their organization. Anything less is hypocrisy on the order of MaryBeth Sweetland's.
I agree with you that many sales people are actually decent individuals who either know the products they sell or are willing to admit that they don't (the latter earns more points with me). One who stands out in my memory was the sales rep for HP who served the [Big box office supply store] I used to work at. The guy really did know his stuff, and would freely admit the limitations of the products he was bringing in, as he didn't want to see us sell "grandma" photo printers to amateur photographers, or anything of that sort.
The problem being, of course, that this individual stands out. This should be commonplace, just as programmers who do bounds-checking should be. Reality differs from theory, and it's frustrating, but not surprising.
Since humans have a tendancy to over-emphasize the bad, and tech guys do end up having to deal with clean-up from these guys, sales reps, marketters, and managers get used as punching bags in tech-dominated areas. It's gotten to the point (the comments on this story illustrate this vividly) where picking on these groups has entered the arena of dick and fart jokes in more general circles. You should either chuckle or groan at them, and then move on. If it gets under your skin that badly (which is understandable), slashdot simply may not be the place to get news...dem's da breaks, as they say.
If there weren't porn sites that put these tags in it wouldn't be legislation.
Just like there wouldn't be a call for an anti-flag burning amendment were there not a movement, nay, an epidemic of flag-burning sweeping the nation, to the point of endagering citizens...
Great googly-moogly, arguing with you is like trying to step on a fly...every time someone raises a counterpoint, you fly away and land at a different argument.
The bible proves no more than a Rush Limbaugh novel. It was written over a thousand years ago, by human beings with political agendas. It is, at best, heresay evidence (the scientific community is not big on that, in case you haven't been paying attention)
The fact that Creationism/ID makes no verifiable predictions has already been pointed out, but I'd also like to mention that your argument lacks self-consitency in another regard: you criticize the theories of Evolution and the Big Bang for not being reproducable...but I've never heard tell of a man being created out of dust in a church (or a lab, for that matter), nor of a universe going from non-existant to supporting sentient beings in a week (unless you count MMORPGs). This is another opportunity for you to nab a Nobel Prize, should you be able to do either...hell, you'd probably get one even if you just prayed and it happened!
The reason people went along with these accusations was two-fold:
1. They wanted to believe. Everyone wants an enemy to blame in hard times (and Germany was certainly having them at the time). Even rational people can be drawn into this trap when they're listening to their children moan in their sleep because they can't afford to buy bread.
2. There was no transparency in the government which made these claims. There was little opportunity to verify or discredit the accusations, and if you asked too many questions, you were called (you guessed it) unpatriotic.
The second cause is what we're talking about here, although there is some concern in my mind about the first...mistrust of muslims is still hiding behind the eyes of suburbanites everywhere (I see a hell of a lot here in the midwest). It is also important to remember that these causes bolster each other. Fear leads to opaqueness leads to more fear. Watch the BBC series "The Power of Nightmares" sometimes. I'm sure you won't agree with everything in it, but the section on the rise of Leo Strauss' views, in particular, is interesting and enlightening. (and, yes, I know it was put out by a country that is much more socialist than ours, but I'm sure that you, like everyone else on slashdot, is capable of taking things with a grain of salt;-)
This has already been picked to pieces, but I feel a strong urge to chip in:
I question your seriousness about preserving our country.
"No government can be maintained without the principle of fear as well as duty. Good men will obey the last, but bad ones the former only. If our government ever fails, it will be from this weakness."
--Thomas Jefferson
It is precisely because I wish to preserve this country that I oppose a too-powerful government. The acknowledgement of the government as a necessary evil was, arguably, the most important cornerstone upon which the U.S. was founded. To allow the government to have its say without checks and balances, the most basic and first defense against tyranny, is to surrender in a critical battle against that omnipresent desire for leaders to view their constituents as subjects.
I question your patriotism.
No need to dig out the old quotes on this one, I'm sure you've heard them all if this isn't your first visit to slashdot. Suffice to say that I am, at this point, tempted to dismiss out of hand any argument which attempts to compel people to change their views, or support a plan of action in the name of patriotism. This is, quite simply, because past experience has shown that this line of "reasoning" usually exists to justify a position based not upon reason, but rather lack of it in favor of either fear or blind morality.
and most of all....I question your judgement
You question my judgement because I want my government to be afraid of me, instead of the other way around? Or because I happen to think, like a few other crazy bastards before me, that individual safety is less important than individual freedom? Perhaps you could expound a bit on what, in particular, is wrong with this belief. I would like to point out, before you do, however, that the Enigma code would not have been an issue, nor the related expenditures of time, money, and life, had a certain european government been a bit more scared of its people than they were of it, or perhaps if the governed there had been a little less "patriotic".
I agree with you on points 1 and 3...in light of a quote from TFA, which says the man actually taped some foreign exchange students staying with him, it would seem he did actually cross the line in regards to point 2, but i do agree that an attraction to underage persons should not be grounds to call someone a scumbag. Given the number of "teen sex" sites on the net, and their popularity, we'd have to disdain a very large portion of the population if we decided otherwise.
As for consumption of child porn, I find your signature somewhat ironic, since this is one instance in which the free market should not, IMHO, be allowed to govern itself. We should provide penalties and fines for those who consume child porn, but any jail time, should, i believe, be served as mandatory couseling. The whole point of these laws should be deterance, not punishment. Fact of the matter is, by looking at porn that's already been made, one does not directly harm society. The creators, of course, have a much heavier offense to answer for, and should be jailed appropriately.
As for the third point, this is one of those sticky situations where, even in a republic, the "tyranny of the majority" causes problems. Notification laws and the like would, I imagine, virtually destroy the life of anyone convicted of child molestation or exploitation, even after they've paid their debt to society. OTOH, I can certainly see why parents would want to know this information, and it is, of course, nigh impossible to determine who's actually made progress in ignoring their urges and who hasn't.
All in all, there are no easy answers to this sort of thing, because it involves the blurry line between morality legislation and that which protects society. It's difficult enough to tackle this sort of thing logically without the populace screaming for morality, and statesmen taking up the same cries in the middle of debates. This is just one of those things a democratic republic will have to work through, I'd think, on it's way to becoming the least bad government in the world:-)
I could never get into that game...i actually ran across it the other day, and spent about 3 minutes explaining to friends why i didn't like it. I love the setting (sigil is awesome), but the concept always got on my nerves...perhaps if i'd played further through it...
Legend of Zelda Daggerfall Metal Fatigue Final Fantasy 1-4 & 6 Mechwarrior II: Mercenaries - to hell with microsoft, this was the best mech combat game ever made!
Schools should teach what the majority of people in the district want taught. If one parent does not like what 1000 other parents want in the curriculum, than the 1 parent should educate their child on their own. The rights of the majority are being attacked.
Your belief in something does not change reality. It does not bend to your will (at least, it doesn't to mine). ID is not science, because it cannot be disproven, therefor it should not be taught in a science class. If we had comparative religion & philosophy in secondary education (and I think we should), I would not oppose to ID being taught in philosophy, nor would I object to christianity being taught about in comp. religion. But teaching kids that the scientific method is invalid in a science course simply leads to kids with no critical thinking skills. Tech companies are already saying they don't want to set up shop in Kansas, and many universities are talking about not accepting kansas HS diplomas at face value, because of this mindset against critical thinking.
I know a lot of people want to be able to call their religion science, or fear that science is destroying their religion, but neither of these things are true.
There is no such thing...and even if there were, we'd wind up with a generation of children who had no ability to deal with pain (physical or otherwise). Not to mention the fact that they'd have no interesting stories to tell about their childhood later in life.
Not wanting your kid to get killed is one thing. Being so over-protective that they wind up with ulcers by the age of 16 because being out of their physical and emotional safety zone causes them near-panic levels of stress is quite another.
I don't know about you, but most of the things worth knowing that I learned as a child were gleaned in defiance of my parents' rules, or by their reaction to me breaking them. There is an abundance of parents who are deathly afraid of their children failing, falling, or feeling in anyway unhappy at any time...these children are learning nothing about real life.
As far as I'm aware, it's very common to allocate public web space to each faculty member and student at a university. I'd imagine the web space the prof. shared this on was his own. And, working in the IT deparment of a university, I can tell you with certainty that you don't want a department like mine approving all of the content you decide to post.
That said, however, regular audits of publicly available information would be a good thing. Recursive searches for patterns matching SSNs or other ID#s would be a great idea.
And "property rights" aren't exactly basic rights. They're second-tier rights useful only becasue they perserve certain first tier rights--namely, liberty and the right to a fair share of the profit from your labor.
Any "right" is tied inherently to property and ownership. If you own something, you have complete control over it. Sale of goods transfers those rights.
Property rights do, in fact support liberty and fair wages, in that they are the foundation of those rights. You have a right to fair wages because your work is a product of your body, which you own.
You might do well to listen to a class on the constitution by Michael Badnarik (which you can download here). He's extremely well-read and very informative on this subject in general, and how it fits into constitutional law specifically.
However, the new formats, due to be used in the next version of Office, which is expected to come out late next year, would still include some proprietary elements, and are specifically excluded from the Massachusetts proposal.
that could be interpreted as disallowing DOC altogether...in any case, it would make much more sense to use OO.o and simply create DOC versions of the documents from it. Several people in my department use OO.o exclusively, and have never had any complaints from office users about their word documents.
I believe the GP was using a type of speech known as "hyperbole." It would have been much more comforting if you had said of your child psychologist friends "they work with children frequently," rather than simply informing us that they had, at one time or another, seen one of these mythical small people.
They didn't use any law to shut down the website...they used a threatening letter
Many times, unless a legal organization will do pro bono work for the accused, most of the sites that have been threatened with DMCA or other, equally crazy laws, see the threats as being possibly valid and, knowing they can't pay for a lawyer or for the damages they might owe, they allow themselves to be censored.
This is one of the worst side effects of this kind of crap legislation; the average person, not really having a great legal background, and seeing that similar, just as ludicrous charges being upheld in the courts (or see others relent before court), and hence don't even try to fight.
Will playing videogames cure pathologically abusive people? No. Will they make new ones out of previously good-mannered, upstanding, sane citizens? Nope.
I guess what I'm trying to say is I'm not seeing your point. Is it that video games don't stop enough types of violence?
The difference, and I hope the US court system would recognize this, hinges around intent. As long as that is kept in mind, I don't see a logical falacy in convicting the guy, and Google should be fine, since their service is fully automated and obviously not designed to aid in copyright infringement.
Slashdot Mirror
TFA lists an email address for feedback. I'm not certain that it's appropriate for end-users, but I didn't let a little thing like that stop me from letting them know what I think about their little 'utility'. Perhaps others should do the same.
Both, actually. The telcos should have to answer for what they did. If the answer is 'here are the documents showing the requests the executive branch made', then they can have a measure of amnesty, and we go after the executive branch, instead.
Of course, this would all be a lot easier if the legislative branch weren't so busy bowing and scrapping before the executive, themselves. With the new laws, the one ally the people had (i.e., an already split judicial branch) will be permanently barred from taking the administration to task for this; all we'll have left is a report from congress...
Reportedly, the bill you link to bears little resemblance to what was voted on.
I think it's going to blow the iPhone out of the water... at least for people that want a useful, hackable mini-computer and not a $3000 status symbol.
While the Greenphone sounds great for hackers, and while I suspect some monkey math going on to come up with your price, it is a (sad?) truth that the market is far more interested in a $3000 status symbol than a device upon which they can compile a custom kernel.
I can think of one major reason: she seems to take on neo-con viewpoints to garner favor. The most recent (and note-worthy for me, as I am not one of her constituents) is the video-games are evil thing, but I think in general she's pretty far from the democratic platform these days. Acting like a new-wave republican is no way to start a run for a democratic presidential nomination.
This is precisely what I was going to suggest as a punishment...if they're in a morally high enough position to justify threatening people & destroying property, they should be dedicated enough to be willing to sacrifice themselves. ALF doesn't like animal testing? No problem, we'll just fill the labs with the rank and file of their organization. Anything less is hypocrisy on the order of MaryBeth Sweetland's.
Well, here goes some karma...
I agree with you that many sales people are actually decent individuals who either know the products they sell or are willing to admit that they don't (the latter earns more points with me). One who stands out in my memory was the sales rep for HP who served the [Big box office supply store] I used to work at. The guy really did know his stuff, and would freely admit the limitations of the products he was bringing in, as he didn't want to see us sell "grandma" photo printers to amateur photographers, or anything of that sort.
The problem being, of course, that this individual stands out. This should be commonplace, just as programmers who do bounds-checking should be. Reality differs from theory, and it's frustrating, but not surprising.
Since humans have a tendancy to over-emphasize the bad, and tech guys do end up having to deal with clean-up from these guys, sales reps, marketters, and managers get used as punching bags in tech-dominated areas. It's gotten to the point (the comments on this story illustrate this vividly) where picking on these groups has entered the arena of dick and fart jokes in more general circles. You should either chuckle or groan at them, and then move on. If it gets under your skin that badly (which is understandable), slashdot simply may not be the place to get news...dem's da breaks, as they say.
If there weren't porn sites that put these tags in it wouldn't be legislation.
Just like there wouldn't be a call for an anti-flag burning amendment were there not a movement, nay, an epidemic of flag-burning sweeping the nation, to the point of endagering citizens...
Great googly-moogly, arguing with you is like trying to step on a fly...every time someone raises a counterpoint, you fly away and land at a different argument.
The bible proves no more than a Rush Limbaugh novel. It was written over a thousand years ago, by human beings with political agendas. It is, at best, heresay evidence (the scientific community is not big on that, in case you haven't been paying attention)
The fact that Creationism/ID makes no verifiable predictions has already been pointed out, but I'd also like to mention that your argument lacks self-consitency in another regard: you criticize the theories of Evolution and the Big Bang for not being reproducable...but I've never heard tell of a man being created out of dust in a church (or a lab, for that matter), nor of a universe going from non-existant to supporting sentient beings in a week (unless you count MMORPGs). This is another opportunity for you to nab a Nobel Prize, should you be able to do either...hell, you'd probably get one even if you just prayed and it happened!
The reason people went along with these accusations was two-fold:
;-)
1. They wanted to believe. Everyone wants an enemy to blame in hard times (and Germany was certainly having them at the time). Even rational people can be drawn into this trap when they're listening to their children moan in their sleep because they can't afford to buy bread.
2. There was no transparency in the government which made these claims. There was little opportunity to verify or discredit the accusations, and if you asked too many questions, you were called (you guessed it) unpatriotic.
The second cause is what we're talking about here, although there is some concern in my mind about the first...mistrust of muslims is still hiding behind the eyes of suburbanites everywhere (I see a hell of a lot here in the midwest). It is also important to remember that these causes bolster each other. Fear leads to opaqueness leads to more fear. Watch the BBC series "The Power of Nightmares" sometimes. I'm sure you won't agree with everything in it, but the section on the rise of Leo Strauss' views, in particular, is interesting and enlightening. (and, yes, I know it was put out by a country that is much more socialist than ours, but I'm sure that you, like everyone else on slashdot, is capable of taking things with a grain of salt
This has already been picked to pieces, but I feel a strong urge to chip in:
I question your seriousness about preserving our country.
"No government can be maintained without the principle of fear as well as duty. Good men will obey the last, but bad ones the former only. If our government ever fails, it will be from this weakness."
--Thomas Jefferson
It is precisely because I wish to preserve this country that I oppose a too-powerful government. The acknowledgement of the government as a necessary evil was, arguably, the most important cornerstone upon which the U.S. was founded. To allow the government to have its say without checks and balances, the most basic and first defense against tyranny, is to surrender in a critical battle against that omnipresent desire for leaders to view their constituents as subjects.
I question your patriotism.
No need to dig out the old quotes on this one, I'm sure you've heard them all if this isn't your first visit to slashdot. Suffice to say that I am, at this point, tempted to dismiss out of hand any argument which attempts to compel people to change their views, or support a plan of action in the name of patriotism. This is, quite simply, because past experience has shown that this line of "reasoning" usually exists to justify a position based not upon reason, but rather lack of it in favor of either fear or blind morality.
and most of all....I question your judgement
You question my judgement because I want my government to be afraid of me, instead of the other way around? Or because I happen to think, like a few other crazy bastards before me, that individual safety is less important than individual freedom? Perhaps you could expound a bit on what, in particular, is wrong with this belief. I would like to point out, before you do, however, that the Enigma code would not have been an issue, nor the related expenditures of time, money, and life, had a certain european government been a bit more scared of its people than they were of it, or perhaps if the governed there had been a little less "patriotic".
I agree with you on points 1 and 3...in light of a quote from TFA, which says the man actually taped some foreign exchange students staying with him, it would seem he did actually cross the line in regards to point 2, but i do agree that an attraction to underage persons should not be grounds to call someone a scumbag. Given the number of "teen sex" sites on the net, and their popularity, we'd have to disdain a very large portion of the population if we decided otherwise.
:-)
As for consumption of child porn, I find your signature somewhat ironic, since this is one instance in which the free market should not, IMHO, be allowed to govern itself. We should provide penalties and fines for those who consume child porn, but any jail time, should, i believe, be served as mandatory couseling. The whole point of these laws should be deterance, not punishment. Fact of the matter is, by looking at porn that's already been made, one does not directly harm society. The creators, of course, have a much heavier offense to answer for, and should be jailed appropriately.
As for the third point, this is one of those sticky situations where, even in a republic, the "tyranny of the majority" causes problems. Notification laws and the like would, I imagine, virtually destroy the life of anyone convicted of child molestation or exploitation, even after they've paid their debt to society. OTOH, I can certainly see why parents would want to know this information, and it is, of course, nigh impossible to determine who's actually made progress in ignoring their urges and who hasn't.
All in all, there are no easy answers to this sort of thing, because it involves the blurry line between morality legislation and that which protects society. It's difficult enough to tackle this sort of thing logically without the populace screaming for morality, and statesmen taking up the same cries in the middle of debates. This is just one of those things a democratic republic will have to work through, I'd think, on it's way to becoming the least bad government in the world
...you would not be welcome in my house.
:-P
Yes, but how many slashdot readers would be?
I could never get into that game...i actually ran across it the other day, and spent about 3 minutes explaining to friends why i didn't like it. I love the setting (sigil is awesome), but the concept always got on my nerves...perhaps if i'd played further through it...
Legend of Zelda
Daggerfall
Metal Fatigue
Final Fantasy 1-4 & 6
Mechwarrior II: Mercenaries - to hell with microsoft, this was the best mech combat game ever made!
Schools should teach what the majority of people in the district want taught. If one parent does not like what 1000 other parents want in the curriculum, than the 1 parent should educate their child on their own. The rights of the majority are being attacked.
;-)
Your belief in something does not change reality. It does not bend to your will (at least, it doesn't to mine). ID is not science, because it cannot be disproven, therefor it should not be taught in a science class. If we had comparative religion & philosophy in secondary education (and I think we should), I would not oppose to ID being taught in philosophy, nor would I object to christianity being taught about in comp. religion. But teaching kids that the scientific method is invalid in a science course simply leads to kids with no critical thinking skills. Tech companies are already saying they don't want to set up shop in Kansas, and many universities are talking about not accepting kansas HS diplomas at face value, because of this mindset against critical thinking.
I know a lot of people want to be able to call their religion science, or fear that science is destroying their religion, but neither of these things are true.
Don't like it? Start your own reality
You need 100% assurance that they'll be safe.
There is no such thing...and even if there were, we'd wind up with a generation of children who had no ability to deal with pain (physical or otherwise). Not to mention the fact that they'd have no interesting stories to tell about their childhood later in life.
Not wanting your kid to get killed is one thing. Being so over-protective that they wind up with ulcers by the age of 16 because being out of their physical and emotional safety zone causes them near-panic levels of stress is quite another.
I don't know about you, but most of the things worth knowing that I learned as a child were gleaned in defiance of my parents' rules, or by their reaction to me breaking them. There is an abundance of parents who are deathly afraid of their children failing, falling, or feeling in anyway unhappy at any time...these children are learning nothing about real life.
</rambling rant>
As far as I'm aware, it's very common to allocate public web space to each faculty member and student at a university. I'd imagine the web space the prof. shared this on was his own. And, working in the IT deparment of a university, I can tell you with certainty that you don't want a department like mine approving all of the content you decide to post.
That said, however, regular audits of publicly available information would be a good thing. Recursive searches for patterns matching SSNs or other ID#s would be a great idea.
In fact, I think I have some code to write...
Only one mother? I didn't know my mom was your mom too...
well, according to AiG, there is scientific evidence that we are all descended from the same woman, so...
And "property rights" aren't exactly basic rights. They're second-tier rights useful only becasue they perserve certain first tier rights--namely, liberty and the right to a fair share of the profit from your labor.
Any "right" is tied inherently to property and ownership. If you own something, you have complete control over it. Sale of goods transfers those rights.
Property rights do, in fact support liberty and fair wages, in that they are the foundation of those rights. You have a right to fair wages because your work is a product of your body, which you own.
You might do well to listen to a class on the constitution by Michael Badnarik (which you can download here). He's extremely well-read and very informative on this subject in general, and how it fits into constitutional law specifically.
from the Financial Times article:
However, the new formats, due to be used in the next version of Office, which is expected to come out late next year, would still include some proprietary elements, and are specifically excluded from the Massachusetts proposal.
that could be interpreted as disallowing DOC altogether...in any case, it would make much more sense to use OO.o and simply create DOC versions of the documents from it. Several people in my department use OO.o exclusively, and have never had any complaints from office users about their word documents.
I believe the GP was using a type of speech known as "hyperbole." It would have been much more comforting if you had said of your child psychologist friends "they work with children frequently," rather than simply informing us that they had, at one time or another, seen one of these mythical small people.
They didn't use any law to shut down the website...they used a threatening letter
Many times, unless a legal organization will do pro bono work for the accused, most of the sites that have been threatened with DMCA or other, equally crazy laws, see the threats as being possibly valid and, knowing they can't pay for a lawyer or for the damages they might owe, they allow themselves to be censored.
This is one of the worst side effects of this kind of crap legislation; the average person, not really having a great legal background, and seeing that similar, just as ludicrous charges being upheld in the courts (or see others relent before court), and hence don't even try to fight.
Will playing videogames cure pathologically abusive people? No. Will they make new ones out of previously good-mannered, upstanding, sane citizens? Nope.
I guess what I'm trying to say is I'm not seeing your point. Is it that video games don't stop enough types of violence?
The difference, and I hope the US court system would recognize this, hinges around intent. As long as that is kept in mind, I don't see a logical falacy in convicting the guy, and Google should be fine, since their service is fully automated and obviously not designed to aid in copyright infringement.