Re:would you like some cheese with that w(h)ine?
on
Amazon.Heartbreak
·
· Score: 2
Fair enough. I see, and I understand. I'm just trying to make sure I'm catching all the people who dont see the difference between corperate america, and a system that actually helps humans.
I certainly understand your point, but I can only reply that nothing gets done unless people are disgusted by the present (for which, presumably, nobody should ever be surprised by), even if they understood what they were getting into.
Your point is well received, but I still think he's got the right idea by trying to point out the lunacy in all of it. You might know its that way, but tons and tons of people (though probably not at/.) dont.:)
Re:would you like some cheese with that w(h)ine?
on
Amazon.Heartbreak
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Um. Earth to human. Just the very fact that you think enjoying your job is some unattainable nirvana prooves just how microcosmic your world view is. I didn't say anything about fun and cool. I said enjoyable. Not tolerable... enjoyable.
I can do all the things you mentionned by going to my neighbourhood suppliers. I dont have to do it myself, because there are some companies around here that make a profit without trying to be huge as fuck. Unfortunately, since Americans are subject to the highest production-value brainwashing outfit of all time (called "Corperate Advertising and Why We Rock - Admit It, You Cant Imagine the World Any Other Way"), this concept either mystifies or disgusts people like you.
Companies must turn a profit. Companies do not have to be 'the biggest company' to do so. That is the concept you should nail through your moronic head. The capitalist world existed quite nicely before the "Be The Biggest or Go Home" mentality that old stupid already-rich-but-need-an-excuse-to-be-richer white men that fooled you into believing over the last 20-odd years.
Re:would you like some cheese with that w(h)ine?
on
Amazon.Heartbreak
·
· Score: 2
I'll try and find it online. In the meantime, its referenced (with sources) in this book
Re:would you like some cheese with that w(h)ine?
on
Amazon.Heartbreak
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
> a fundamental problem in his understanding of capitalism.
When Adam Smith wrote about capitalism, he suggested it'd be a good way to get stuff made, to help people, to give people a way to live off what they did well. Large corperations employing Bachelor of Arts grads at callcenters doth not good jobs (or good pay, benifits, security) make. It doesn't sound to me like Adam Smith was saying, "Hey, lets try this out, and we can make a bunch of investors rich using an army of minimum wage earning grads!"
> corporations exist in order to make money and as much money as possible
Thats why you think corperations exist. Can you tell me what the point of 'making as much money as possible' is? Why that, it and of itself, is a good thing if they are making that money by placing poor work conditions on its employees? Sorry, I'm trying to figure out what end is justifying the means here...
You should be aware that 75% of all jobs in the states are service/retail based. Thats the success of that free-market capitalism. Everything is made in the cheap countries, and Americans are enslaved in min wage jobs to sell it to other Americans enslaved in management jobs. Arn't you the least bit worried that one day everyone will wake up and realize not only do they not do anything particularly useful or enjoyable anymore, but the interesting and ultimately neccessary jobs dont even exist in their country?
> The American consumer, Daisey perceptively points out, is a creature of entitlement
I'm assuming he used the word 'perceptively' because Daisey himself is American? Otherwise the words 'repeatedly and often' might have been more appropriate.;)
Just a summy post to collect most of the points above that are good ideas:
- Use 'per record' encryption, where the records are encrypted each with a per-record unique key that is hidden from the outside (user-supplied is good, like a password, or if you need to decrypt without customer interaction, on a seperate box inaccessible from 'outside')
- You should have a method of 're-encrypting' records should a key(s) be compromised, to get the data safe as soon as possible after detecting comprimisation of your key(s).
- Dont ever decrypt - if you can get away with it, dont ever decrypt.. if you need the # for display on pages (like receipts), you only need to display the frist/last 4 digits for confirmation purposes, so only store those (encrypted). This is along the lines of minimizing the 'pot of gold' in a worst case scenario.
- Isolation.. depending on the data's sensitivity (and CC#s are supermega sensitive), you can opt for various levels of hardware isolation of the box that stores the key, via a serial cable or something.
- DONT ENCRYPT USING A KEY ON THE BOX ON WHICH THE DATA WILL BE STORED, or you might as well call your box a honeypot.
- make sure you use 'proofs' to verify the data, post encryption. Store the proofs on a box other than the data hosting box, so you can detect data comprimisation as soon as possible! (You could run a local data intergrity job nightly to detect mofified or currupted records.)
Everyone knows the worst can happen with computers - but if you did your best (and kept interested parties informed as to your efforts), then you wont/shouldn't be blamed if the worst happens. This is analagous to drunk driving... everyone knows car crashes can happen, but being drunk during one is going to void any possible blame that could have been placed on people other than you.
Maybe I can clarify I meant only large, blue chip retail/service companies who know that they are known by name by a large portion of the population. The type of company that takes out media buys on cable and network television. The McDonalds, the Nikes.. the large well known companies that are not super-net saavy.
I believe your story, but I'm interested in knowing, who is this credit reporting agency? I'm guessing they are not really in the general public conciousness, so needn't be as concerned about data mismanagement turning into PR nightmares.
Asides, sounds like they fucked up your data by accident - I was refering to companies using your information in purposeful unscrupulous ways (like selling _correct_ information behind your back.)
Suppose you're in a bitter custody battle for your children and the ex says you're a terrible parent and you're violent. Her lawyer would subpoena the cable company and then hire a psychiatrist to analyze your viewing habits and give expert testimony against you based on information that is totally irrelevant. And you know most judges would believe them.
1. Large, bluechip companies (believe it or not) are terrified of mismanaging your data. When they sell you to third parties, you're likely to complain, maybe file a suit or two if they violated their User Agreement as it pertains to your data. But if they start sharing this data with the feds, they know they'll never have a hope in hell of getting your permission to collect this data. The first time something like your scenario happens, everyone will complain.. a la Double Click fiasco. Have you ever heard of a company providing the feds with contest/survey data? They dont, or if they do, they have absolutely no choice. Thats not to say that companies dont fuck with your data - just pay attention, because the Blue Chips (Coke, Nike, etc) have been watching all the online privacy issues from the sidelines and are very cautious about what and how they deal with your data. A large company deals with exponentially more scrutiny with respect to their consumer data collection and management processes than your mom'n'pop or e-new.com businesses.
Or if you want to go with Big Brother conspiracy theories, then lets assume that the new and improved FBI/CIA is going to make a new Carnivore program that will analyze your viewing habits and flag you as a murderer, rapist, child molester, terrorist, etc..
Do you really think that collecting the viewing habits of users watching legal, mainstream television are going to help tip FBI/CIA off to trouble-makers. Its not like Bomb Making - A Guide to Anarchists is on every Wednesday at 7pm or something.
I really dont think aggregated viewing habits is data that is too sensitive to be collected. The only thing I'd be scared about is the media buys getting too granular, and having that turn advertisers off when their buys suffer from a low ROI (due to viewer burnout.) Then, they turn around and devalue the media, thus fueling the need for more advertising. Sometimes targetted advertising can suffer from tunnel-vision blindness.
There is danger in targetted advertising. New customer aquisition tends to suffer when you target _too_ well (because you're advertising to people who are likely already customers), and then advertisers get soured on the value of advertising. Some of the best and most valuable advertising and marketing is decidedly _non-targeted_ where advertisers surprise themselves by finding high converstion rates and RIOs in market segments they never would have thought of had they been offered uber-granular targeted media buys.
Re:Can We Callanmge the SEC and FAASB?
on
Data Quality Act
·
· Score: 2
Right on. At the end of the day, we're doing this to reduce damage on the planet. So, even if cars are more efficient, if the total ((pollution/per-car)*#_of_cars) is going up, we're still talking an increase in the damage we're doing.
It's really a catch-22 in many ways. As individual componants become less polluting, the population tends to engage in heavier use of those componants (hey, afterall, they dont pollute as much anymore), and you dont neccessarily benifit from a reduction in emmissions. It really just comes down to the bottom line. The purpose of making products and manufacturing processes pollute less is not to make the individual user feel better about the fact that their one thing (car, factory) now pollutes less... its to reduce the total amount of pollution!
Re:Pacino typecast?
on
Review: Insomnia
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
A local reviewer made the good point that its one of the view roles where Pacino could deliver an understated role as opposed to an intense, over the top role. In that respect, this kind of breaks that typecast.
> Technology is supposed to solve problems, not create them.
At the risk of getting flamed, most analysis' of social patterns and technology suggests that any given technology is garaunteed to create problems as well as solve them. Of course, since we're talking about the future, while you might know what you're solving, you can never be 100% sure you know what problems you'll cause.
Yep. He's trying to make the people serve the economy via laws, not the economy serve the people via laws. We've come pretty far, only to have it completely backwards.
I almost think hes wishing (probably fruitlessly, but hey, lots of software started out as sounding like they were going to attack impossible, lofty goals) that this solution would be independant of those details. I think he wants to slap down a data listing/retrieval abstraction layer over his real deal, so presumably something with an extention-like feature that could let you plug your data respository listing/searching software into new platforms/protocols as they develop.
Sounds like an intriguing idea, something I'd almost consider trying to hack around with..
I've been thinking of tackling this problem for awhile too. The best I can do is that you abstract the 'directory' (the list of what you have), for replication, accessibility (with convenience as the priority, especially). Then, when you need to do something with that data, your directory knows where it is and how to get at it. In this case, the convenience of accessibility isn't as crucial, and thus the need to transparently glue all these platforms and protocols, etc together isn't quite as important.
For me, I'd just like a top down, real time view with convenient access of what I have - getting it anywhere and anytime isn't quite as crucial for me.
Maybe you make a little daemon that can monitor your data respositories at several sources and 'merge' the data listings at a central source for publishing to multiple sources again?
AMEN brother. This is why those who want to make the mad cash piss me off so much - many of them spend so much time making money that they rarely have the opportunity or curtousey to learn skills and knowledge that is useful to an individual. They end up knowing things and working hard, I'm not arguing that - but they are working hard to make money, and end up only knowing the game of financial gain.
Money makers at the end of the sales pipeline have a 0% chance of making money if their service is not done, or their product is not produced. Service folks and engineers and producers at the start of the pipeline (and the furthest away from the customers' cheque) etc may not be the best at selling, but at least its conceivable that they could do so since they are the only ones who can create the thing you're selling.
Anyhow, I dont think she wrote the book to make the proverbial phat cash - from what I understand about the publishing industry, she would have had opportunities for dozens of better paying safer bets.
> Also, are we all forgetting that IT IS ILLEGAL FOR ANYONE UNDER THE AGE OF 18 IN MOST STATES TO VIEW PORNOGRAPHY?
It's also illegal for under 16 year olds to drive - and yet, its not illegal for under 16 year olds to hold a key to a car (analoguous to having a search engine capable of finding porn.)
What you are advocating is to remove the responsibilities of the parent and child (yes, lest we forget, children are expected to hold a modicum of decent judgement and proper behaviour without the need for a straight jacket) to monitor their consumption and act responsibility - and placing that responsibility in the hands of a technology. Eventually, people forget how to raise a child themselves (this is what culture and society is about.. it is the 'memory and rulebook' of how a society is expected to live and behave, where ideas and lessons propogate through generations via culture and social interaction), and suddenly, the only thing preventing anyone from even knowing pronography is unsuitable for children is the stability and longevity of your technological solution.
Ironcially, probably the best solution is just to ensure that rows of computers are in well lit, well travelled areas of the library - anyone viewing matieral that offends a suitable amount of people in the library can be dealt with in a personal and likely far more appropriately scoped manner.
Actually, for that matter, I'm assuming any person that whips their thing out and begins masturbating in front of a child in a playground means we should ban children! Clearly, they are causing adults to engage in lewd behaviour. (And video games lead to killing, and cars lead to drinking and driving, and knives obviously lead to people stabbing other people.. )
I thought America was built on the concept that you go after the people who act irresponsibly, not remove the liberties of thousands of people in order to attempt (cause it doesn't even always work) to stymie a few crazies' behaviour? And dont you think the folks who masturbate in libraries are just going to use the next best thing.. say, a Brittany Spears website? Or a few Rueben paintings?
Oh really? So, you've completed your 20 page proof that pron is the direct cause of adults masturbating in public areas? Funny, cause I love porn, and I've never even attempted to have sex, let alone masturbate outside of my own bedroom (although, I dont want to alarm you, but I have had sex in my girlfriends bedroom too.)
Can I use some of the foods you eat as inarguable proof that those foods lead to the desire to censor porn? Is that how your cause and effect skills work?
You're absolutely right. Pron doesn't fuck kids up, mysogynist comments by families and friends are going to re-inforce gender inequality issues way the fuck more than some anonymous porn site.
It's hilarious to think of the droves of fathers that think their kids viewing porn is a bad thing, but then casually refer to the secretary at work as a 'hot chick with a nice ass' to a friend in their child's presence.
Porn isn't bad - thinking the women in porn are good for no more than porn is. I saw pron (as I think most urban children have at some point or another) when I was a child, and I'm one of the least sexist people I know. I'm forever defending porn against the same friends who pick up Stuff or FMV, oogle at the latest starlet, and cackle and the downright mysogynist content. The more we bring bring porn 'up' on the popular culture, the safer and more equal place it will be for its participants. All attempts to squash and censor it will simply allow its participants to operate in an area where public conciousness fears to tread - ensuring that its activites dovetail with the other cultures pushed underground (drugs, sex trade, etc).
Slashdot Mirror
Fair enough. I see, and I understand. I'm just trying to make sure I'm catching all the people who dont see the difference between corperate america, and a system that actually helps humans.
/.) dont. :)
I certainly understand your point, but I can only reply that nothing gets done unless people are disgusted by the present (for which, presumably, nobody should ever be surprised by), even if they understood what they were getting into.
Your point is well received, but I still think he's got the right idea by trying to point out the lunacy in all of it. You might know its that way, but tons and tons of people (though probably not at
Um. Earth to human. Just the very fact that you think enjoying your job is some unattainable nirvana prooves just how microcosmic your world view is. I didn't say anything about fun and cool. I said enjoyable. Not tolerable ... enjoyable.
I can do all the things you mentionned by going to my neighbourhood suppliers. I dont have to do it myself, because there are some companies around here that make a profit without trying to be huge as fuck. Unfortunately, since Americans are subject to the highest production-value brainwashing outfit of all time (called "Corperate Advertising and Why We Rock - Admit It, You Cant Imagine the World Any Other Way"), this concept either mystifies or disgusts people like you.
Companies must turn a profit. Companies do not have to be 'the biggest company' to do so. That is the concept you should nail through your moronic head. The capitalist world existed quite nicely before the "Be The Biggest or Go Home" mentality that old stupid already-rich-but-need-an-excuse-to-be-richer white men that fooled you into believing over the last 20-odd years.
I'll try and find it online. In the meantime, its referenced (with sources) in this book
> a fundamental problem in his understanding of capitalism.
...
When Adam Smith wrote about capitalism, he suggested it'd be a good way to get stuff made, to help people, to give people a way to live off what they did well. Large corperations employing Bachelor of Arts grads at callcenters doth not good jobs (or good pay, benifits, security) make. It doesn't sound to me like Adam Smith was saying, "Hey, lets try this out, and we can make a bunch of investors rich using an army of minimum wage earning grads!"
> corporations exist in order to make money and as much money as possible
Thats why you think corperations exist. Can you tell me what the point of 'making as much money as possible' is? Why that, it and of itself, is a good thing if they are making that money by placing poor work conditions on its employees? Sorry, I'm trying to figure out what end is justifying the means here
You should be aware that 75% of all jobs in the states are service/retail based. Thats the success of that free-market capitalism. Everything is made in the cheap countries, and Americans are enslaved in min wage jobs to sell it to other Americans enslaved in management jobs. Arn't you the least bit worried that one day everyone will wake up and realize not only do they not do anything particularly useful or enjoyable anymore, but the interesting and ultimately neccessary jobs dont even exist in their country?
> The American consumer, Daisey perceptively points out, is a creature of entitlement
;)
I'm assuming he used the word 'perceptively' because Daisey himself is American? Otherwise the words 'repeatedly and often' might have been more appropriate.
SHHHH, you're going to make /. users feel like their not a part of the secret 'hackier-than-thou' illuminati they so desire to be a part of.
Just a summy post to collect most of the points above that are good ideas:
.. if you need the # for display on pages (like receipts), you only need to display the frist/last 4 digits for confirmation purposes, so only store those (encrypted). This is along the lines of minimizing the 'pot of gold' in a worst case scenario.
.. depending on the data's sensitivity (and CC#s are supermega sensitive), you can opt for various levels of hardware isolation of the box that stores the key, via a serial cable or something.
... everyone knows car crashes can happen, but being drunk during one is going to void any possible blame that could have been placed on people other than you.
- Use 'per record' encryption, where the records are encrypted each with a per-record unique key that is hidden from the outside (user-supplied is good, like a password, or if you need to decrypt without customer interaction, on a seperate box inaccessible from 'outside')
- You should have a method of 're-encrypting' records should a key(s) be compromised, to get the data safe as soon as possible after detecting comprimisation of your key(s).
- Dont ever decrypt - if you can get away with it, dont ever decrypt
- Isolation
- DONT ENCRYPT USING A KEY ON THE BOX ON WHICH THE DATA WILL BE STORED, or you might as well call your box a honeypot.
- make sure you use 'proofs' to verify the data, post encryption. Store the proofs on a box other than the data hosting box, so you can detect data comprimisation as soon as possible! (You could run a local data intergrity job nightly to detect mofified or currupted records.)
Everyone knows the worst can happen with computers - but if you did your best (and kept interested parties informed as to your efforts), then you wont/shouldn't be blamed if the worst happens. This is analagous to drunk driving
Can you name the company?
.. the large well known companies that are not super-net saavy.
Maybe I can clarify I meant only large, blue chip retail/service companies who know that they are known by name by a large portion of the population. The type of company that takes out media buys on cable and network television. The McDonalds, the Nikes
I believe your story, but I'm interested in knowing, who is this credit reporting agency? I'm guessing they are not really in the general public conciousness, so needn't be as concerned about data mismanagement turning into PR nightmares.
Asides, sounds like they fucked up your data by accident - I was refering to companies using your information in purposeful unscrupulous ways (like selling _correct_ information behind your back.)
Two points:
.. a la Double Click fiasco. Have you ever heard of a company providing the feds with contest/survey data? They dont, or if they do, they have absolutely no choice. Thats not to say that companies dont fuck with your data - just pay attention, because the Blue Chips (Coke, Nike, etc) have been watching all the online privacy issues from the sidelines and are very cautious about what and how they deal with your data. A large company deals with exponentially more scrutiny with respect to their consumer data collection and management processes than your mom'n'pop or e-new.com businesses.
Suppose you're in a bitter custody battle for your children and the ex says you're a terrible parent and you're violent. Her lawyer would subpoena the cable company and then hire a psychiatrist to analyze your viewing habits and give expert testimony against you based on information that is totally irrelevant. And you know most judges would believe them.
1. Large, bluechip companies (believe it or not) are terrified of mismanaging your data. When they sell you to third parties, you're likely to complain, maybe file a suit or two if they violated their User Agreement as it pertains to your data. But if they start sharing this data with the feds, they know they'll never have a hope in hell of getting your permission to collect this data. The first time something like your scenario happens, everyone will complain
Or if you want to go with Big Brother conspiracy theories, then lets assume that the new and improved FBI/CIA is going to make a new Carnivore program that will analyze your viewing habits and flag you as a murderer, rapist, child molester, terrorist, etc..
Do you really think that collecting the viewing habits of users watching legal, mainstream television are going to help tip FBI/CIA off to trouble-makers. Its not like Bomb Making - A Guide to Anarchists is on every Wednesday at 7pm or something.
I really dont think aggregated viewing habits is data that is too sensitive to be collected. The only thing I'd be scared about is the media buys getting too granular, and having that turn advertisers off when their buys suffer from a low ROI (due to viewer burnout.) Then, they turn around and devalue the media, thus fueling the need for more advertising. Sometimes targetted advertising can suffer from tunnel-vision blindness.
There is danger in targetted advertising. New customer aquisition tends to suffer when you target _too_ well (because you're advertising to people who are likely already customers), and then advertisers get soured on the value of advertising. Some of the best and most valuable advertising and marketing is decidedly _non-targeted_ where advertisers surprise themselves by finding high converstion rates and RIOs in market segments they never would have thought of had they been offered uber-granular targeted media buys.
Right on. At the end of the day, we're doing this to reduce damage on the planet. So, even if cars are more efficient, if the total ((pollution/per-car)*#_of_cars) is going up, we're still talking an increase in the damage we're doing.
... its to reduce the total amount of pollution!
It's really a catch-22 in many ways. As individual componants become less polluting, the population tends to engage in heavier use of those componants (hey, afterall, they dont pollute as much anymore), and you dont neccessarily benifit from a reduction in emmissions. It really just comes down to the bottom line. The purpose of making products and manufacturing processes pollute less is not to make the individual user feel better about the fact that their one thing (car, factory) now pollutes less
A local reviewer made the good point that its one of the view roles where Pacino could deliver an understated role as opposed to an intense, over the top role. In that respect, this kind of breaks that typecast.
> Greed?
Here's a concept that doesn't come easily to a good segmant of the american slashdot crowd - neccessity.
Course, had I read it a second time, I'd have realized I was thinking of Japan instead of China. Whoops. Sorry.
I do take issue with comparing a campfire's emissions to gas guzzling SUVs and other fossil fuel use that is absolutely indulgant and wasteful.
> China is NOT bound by the Kyoto treaty in any way.
'Course, had you read it, you'd have understood that they are planning on signing on to Kyoto soon.
> Technology is supposed to solve problems, not create them.
;)
At the risk of getting flamed, most analysis' of social patterns and technology suggests that any given technology is garaunteed to create problems as well as solve them. Of course, since we're talking about the future, while you might know what you're solving, you can never be 100% sure you know what problems you'll cause.
Please tell me this isn't news.
Yep. He's trying to make the people serve the economy via laws, not the economy serve the people via laws. We've come pretty far, only to have it completely backwards.
> How hard is it for you to transfer your kiddie porn pics from linux to mac to amiga or whatever the hell you use.
Pretty tough when you're confined to doing it all with one hand. With your level of insight, I'd have thought you could have figured that out!
I almost think hes wishing (probably fruitlessly, but hey, lots of software started out as sounding like they were going to attack impossible, lofty goals) that this solution would be independant of those details. I think he wants to slap down a data listing/retrieval abstraction layer over his real deal, so presumably something with an extention-like feature that could let you plug your data respository listing/searching software into new platforms/protocols as they develop.
..
Sounds like an intriguing idea, something I'd almost consider trying to hack around with
I've been thinking of tackling this problem for awhile too. The best I can do is that you abstract the 'directory' (the list of what you have), for replication, accessibility (with convenience as the priority, especially). Then, when you need to do something with that data, your directory knows where it is and how to get at it. In this case, the convenience of accessibility isn't as crucial, and thus the need to transparently glue all these platforms and protocols, etc together isn't quite as important.
For me, I'd just like a top down, real time view with convenient access of what I have - getting it anywhere and anytime isn't quite as crucial for me.
Maybe you make a little daemon that can monitor your data respositories at several sources and 'merge' the data listings at a central source for publishing to multiple sources again?
AMEN brother. This is why those who want to make the mad cash piss me off so much - many of them spend so much time making money that they rarely have the opportunity or curtousey to learn skills and knowledge that is useful to an individual. They end up knowing things and working hard, I'm not arguing that - but they are working hard to make money, and end up only knowing the game of financial gain.
Money makers at the end of the sales pipeline have a 0% chance of making money if their service is not done, or their product is not produced. Service folks and engineers and producers at the start of the pipeline (and the furthest away from the customers' cheque) etc may not be the best at selling, but at least its conceivable that they could do so since they are the only ones who can create the thing you're selling.
Anyhow, I dont think she wrote the book to make the proverbial phat cash - from what I understand about the publishing industry, she would have had opportunities for dozens of better paying safer bets.
> Also, are we all forgetting that IT IS ILLEGAL FOR ANYONE UNDER THE AGE OF 18 IN MOST STATES TO VIEW PORNOGRAPHY?
.. it is the 'memory and rulebook' of how a society is expected to live and behave, where ideas and lessons propogate through generations via culture and social interaction), and suddenly, the only thing preventing anyone from even knowing pronography is unsuitable for children is the stability and longevity of your technological solution.
It's also illegal for under 16 year olds to drive - and yet, its not illegal for under 16 year olds to hold a key to a car (analoguous to having a search engine capable of finding porn.)
What you are advocating is to remove the responsibilities of the parent and child (yes, lest we forget, children are expected to hold a modicum of decent judgement and proper behaviour without the need for a straight jacket) to monitor their consumption and act responsibility - and placing that responsibility in the hands of a technology. Eventually, people forget how to raise a child themselves (this is what culture and society is about
Ironcially, probably the best solution is just to ensure that rows of computers are in well lit, well travelled areas of the library - anyone viewing matieral that offends a suitable amount of people in the library can be dealt with in a personal and likely far more appropriately scoped manner.
Actually, for that matter, I'm assuming any person that whips their thing out and begins masturbating in front of a child in a playground means we should ban children! Clearly, they are causing adults to engage in lewd behaviour. (And video games lead to killing, and cars lead to drinking and driving, and knives obviously lead to people stabbing other people .. )
.. say, a Brittany Spears website? Or a few Rueben paintings?
I thought America was built on the concept that you go after the people who act irresponsibly, not remove the liberties of thousands of people in order to attempt (cause it doesn't even always work) to stymie a few crazies' behaviour? And dont you think the folks who masturbate in libraries are just going to use the next best thing
Oh really? So, you've completed your 20 page proof that pron is the direct cause of adults masturbating in public areas? Funny, cause I love porn, and I've never even attempted to have sex, let alone masturbate outside of my own bedroom (although, I dont want to alarm you, but I have had sex in my girlfriends bedroom too.)
Can I use some of the foods you eat as inarguable proof that those foods lead to the desire to censor porn? Is that how your cause and effect skills work?
You're absolutely right. Pron doesn't fuck kids up, mysogynist comments by families and friends are going to re-inforce gender inequality issues way the fuck more than some anonymous porn site.
It's hilarious to think of the droves of fathers that think their kids viewing porn is a bad thing, but then casually refer to the secretary at work as a 'hot chick with a nice ass' to a friend in their child's presence.
Porn isn't bad - thinking the women in porn are good for no more than porn is. I saw pron (as I think most urban children have at some point or another) when I was a child, and I'm one of the least sexist people I know. I'm forever defending porn against the same friends who pick up Stuff or FMV, oogle at the latest starlet, and cackle and the downright mysogynist content. The more we bring bring porn 'up' on the popular culture, the safer and more equal place it will be for its participants. All attempts to squash and censor it will simply allow its participants to operate in an area where public conciousness fears to tread - ensuring that its activites dovetail with the other cultures pushed underground (drugs, sex trade, etc).