Actually, It's not. Here's a quote from Wikipedia's listing under Child pornography.
Well thank heavens you quoted from such a reputable source. Here's another quote from Wikipedia about the PROTECT Act (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protect_Act), which was passed by Congress in 2003 and is still in effect:
"Prohibits drawings, sculptures, and pictures of such drawings and sculptures depicting minors in actions or situations that meet the Miller test of being obscene, OR are engaged in sex acts that are deemed to meet the same obscene condition....
The prohibitions against illustrations depicting child pornography, including computer-generated illustrations, were previously ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court when they were included in the Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996. However, the provisions of the Protect Act are distinct, since they establish the requirement of showing obscenity as defined by the Miller Test, which was not an element of the 1996 law."
You can draw an "obscene" picture of minors and go to prison for it in the United States.
Christ, why didn't they have such a page front and center when they released 4.0? Did it take that much negative feedback to awaken the KDE developers from their google-release-party induced stupor?
The Pidgin philosophy is to take working features and just remove them for the sake of removing them, even if users scream they want to keep those features.
The KDE philosophy right now is to rewrite from the ground up. During the rewrite process, many original features aren't fully replicated, but there are also tons of new features. And they strive to eventually provide feature parity with the old version, and then some.
So, that doesn't seem like a remotely fair comparison.
However, in the context of the previously linked blog-post, it is a fair comparison because both Pidgin and KDE developer(s) claimed that users don't really matter, and that only the opinion of the developers matter. I will agree that the Pidgin developers were much more blatant and offensive about their distaste for any user feedback.
Especially after that trainwreck of a.0 release. Does anyone know if in Kubuntu:
1) the application shortcuts (khotkeys) are fixed. Last I checked in 4.1 beta, it was still not possible to set a shortcut for konsole. This alone makes the desktop unusable.
2) The expose type feature has been fixed to give it proper sensitivity? I had to continually jab at the top left corner of my screen last I tried it, and I was lucky if it worked 25% of the time.
Another major annoyance for me in konqueror is the fact that I can't right click and select back. Instead, I right click, and am presented with a history list of pages; since there is also no rocker navigation functionality, I am essentially forced to use the traditional back button at the top of the screen. Very inefficient.
"Comcast could decide to block Vonage, because it competes with their VoIP service"
Yes, that would be a good idea. So what? Will you die without Vonage? Is it really worth passing asinine restrictions on internet providers just so that you can have Vonage?
So they blocked your competing music download site. So what? Will you die without your preferred music download site?
So they blocked netflix. So what? Will you die without netflix?
So they made your favorite blogging site slow to a crawl. So what? Will you die without your favorite blogging site?
And on and on.
The problem with making sure ISPs don't censor or filter any traffic/content over their lines is what? Are you going to roll out the telecom industry talking points about how they could provide better services if they were allowed to introduce a tiered internet system?
You get to choose from a regulated selection of providers (analogous to TV channels) who serve up their own content. All nice and regulated. Put up some high cost-barriers to setting up such a channel, and the internet becomes like every other medium - a way for the big companies to push their content to a passive audience.
These are the two most insightful sentences I've seen on/. in months. Sorry I don't have any mod points right now. Maybe freenet (or similar decentralized data store) is the future.
You can bet that if this trend continues they'll be able to cover all the major trunk points and any Tor endpoints that are unchecked at that point will be highly noticeable.
These stories show how bad Slashdot has gotten. The thought of keeping little kids off of porn sickens the average Slashdotter?
Absolutely pathetic excuses for humans.
And the thought of restricting the rights of adults for little or no foreseeable gain doesn't sicken you? That sickens me.
Easy keyboard webpage navigation is one feature that Opera has that Firefox does not (afaik, not even an extension is available). You can hold down the shift key in Opera and using the numberpad easily navigate between links on a page. In Firefox you have to try tabbing around hoping you might eventually reach the link you want.
Except we all already know exactly how both of them are going to vote:
They're not. When asked about it, they'll claim that they were "too busy campaigning" to bother voting on this "minor" issue. Too busy despite the fact that the primaries are over, and the real campaigning won't start until after the respective party conventions in August.
You can look forward to both candidates taking that stand on issues.
At least McCain has been in the senate long enough that he has a real voting record. Obama's a complete unknown, and you can bet he's going to work his hardest to stay that way.
Except just a few months ago, during the campaign, Obama voted against a similar bill that would have given telecoms immunity. Hillary is the one that didn't show up. Sorry to interrupt your preconceived notions.
It's sad really that the general populace is so easily swayed by anything that fights "child porn" as if it's the biggest scourge humanity has faced or something--as if it trumps all other values of the world. Well said. Because of the incessant media and law enforcement hype over the past decade, most people seem to get more upset over possession of child pornography then they do hearing about actual cases of child abuse or neglect. It's a hot button issue that will allow the government to control the internet as they see fit.
Welcome America to what the rest of the world is subject to; we all pay on a usage basis, whether its mobile phone internet or ADSL internet connection. When you make something flat rate - it will be subject to abuse. Argh. Every single time a usage-based price plan from ISPs is mentioned, someone from Australia or NZ pipes in with, "Welcome to what we already have, better get used to it, it's your only option." There are plenty of locales around the world that have flat rates for internet access with fast speeds and good infrastructure as well. Most of Europe and large parts of Asia being two good examples.
What the hell is with this sadistic desire of Australians and New Zealanders to have the rest of the world suffer with the same crappy internet service that they have?!?
Sounds surprisingly reasonable (if correct). The services I've seen tend to charge more like $1 per megabyte for capacity over your limit. Welcome to the planet Earth. Yes, our bandwidth costs are much cheaper than those on planet Expensonet. Enjoy your stay.
The key point here is that they're trying to avoid people processing their existing illegal photographs using software into drawings and/or graphics. Therefore there is a child directly involved. Then there are existing illegal photographs involved. Prosecute them on that basis.
'The government has acknowledged that paedophiles may be circumventing the law by using computer technology to manipulate real photographs or videos of abuse into drawings or cartoons.' May? May?!? They're going to deprive people of their liberty because of something which may hypothetically be happening?
This is as ridiculous as it first appears. Even more so, in fact, given their flimsy justification.
Do not make the mistake of thinking absence of proof is proof of absence, nor should you underestimate the malleability of the young mind, up to a certain extent of course. But surely you agree you should have to show some evidence of this correlation before you starting depriving people of their liberty because they possess distasteful images. Right?
Personally I would make the law that if they are found in conjunction with photographic indecent images then they should be bundled in with Level 1 images (the least severe) and if you find nothing but graphic images they should be ignored but maybe the cops should keep a regular eye on the person who has them. So you support increasing the punishment for someone convicted of child pornography offenses because they possess artistic images which depict no real children. And you want the police to monitor people who possess drawn or computer-generated fake images. You advocate increasing penalties and surveillance based on assumptions of what a persons thinks or desires, even though their direct actions may not have any connection to abuse of children in real life.
I wonder if you'd also support the police keeping an eye on people who read literature which has child-sex themes? Perhaps monitoring those who check out "Lolita" at the library?
I'd say you picked a fitting career for yourself. Congratulations.
The reason they want to ban it is because it's made by converting REAL CHILD PORN into computer generated images. In other words people know they can't distribute real child porn without being very careful, so they convert real child porn to this and get away with it. So demand for this sort of thing drives up demand for child porn and therefore child abuse. That is such a ridiculous justification to pass this law that I'm surprised there are people gullible enough to believe it. Why wouldn't these hypothetical child porn distributors just distribute computer generated CP then? Are you arguing it would just be easier for them to ask for more real children to be abused then to just create some fake images?
Additionally, since you ostensibly are concerned about the abuse of real children, would you require that the prosecution have to prove that the fake images were derived from real photographs? Or would you just support a scorched earth policy, and throw many other people in prison who were only guilty of possessing fake images involving no real children?
Can you CURE sexual attraction to children? The very first step in this debate is to eliminate the mud that is obscuring the real issues. Based on your earlier comment, you seem to believe that sexual attraction to 17 year olds (minors in your state) is perverse. I'm talking about attraction to them, not acting on that attraction.
If you are asking me if we can CURE sexual attraction to 17 year olds, then I would say that the answer is most certainly no. You'd be waging a war on natural impulses, and you would lose.
What do YOU suggest we do with these people? I would suggest we begin to discuss these topics rationally, without immediately resorting to kneejerk comments about "castrating the sick fucks who look at this kind of crap." This isn't a one size fits all kind of debate, especially considering the way the laws are written now. Putting the people who are attracted to post-pubescent minors in the same category as those attracted to pre-pubescent minors confuses the issue tremendously.
This "fight" against child pornography has long lost sight of it's intended target (protecting minors from being sexually abused), and is now used as a means to score political votes, funding increases, and surveillance/control of the internet.
A 17 year old flashing her breasts would mostly likely be considered child porn. I guess from your reply that you wouldn't support castrating someone who looked at that picture?
though I find your defense of such actions (17 is still a minor in my state) a little creepy to say the least. You were obviously never victimized by one of these jerks.. or are you just one of them? Your accusation doesn't surprise me. Whenever anyone questions child pornography laws, they are accused of being a sicko or pedophile themselves. It is absurd, to say the least, that you find the fact that I don't support castrating people who merely look at pictures is "creepy".
For someone to have pictures to look at, someone had to take those pictures. To me, both parties victimized the child and are not equally sick, but very close. I am sorry you are not able to separate the concepts between looking at a picture and taking the picture. They are very different. Do you support the prosecution of minors who take photographs or video of themselves in a sexual situation?
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, It's not. Here's a quote from Wikipedia's listing under Child pornography.
Well thank heavens you quoted from such a reputable source. Here's another quote from Wikipedia about the PROTECT Act (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protect_Act), which was passed by Congress in 2003 and is still in effect:
"Prohibits drawings, sculptures, and pictures of such drawings and sculptures depicting minors in actions or situations that meet the Miller test of being obscene, OR are engaged in sex acts that are deemed to meet the same obscene condition....
The prohibitions against illustrations depicting child pornography, including computer-generated illustrations, were previously ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court when they were included in the Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996. However, the provisions of the Protect Act are distinct, since they establish the requirement of showing obscenity as defined by the Miller Test, which was not an element of the 1996 law."
You can draw an "obscene" picture of minors and go to prison for it in the United States.
Really? One guy?
http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/3535
Christ, why didn't they have such a page front and center when they released 4.0? Did it take that much negative feedback to awaken the KDE developers from their google-release-party induced stupor?
The Pidgin philosophy is to take working features and just remove them for the sake of removing them, even if users scream they want to keep those features. The KDE philosophy right now is to rewrite from the ground up. During the rewrite process, many original features aren't fully replicated, but there are also tons of new features. And they strive to eventually provide feature parity with the old version, and then some. So, that doesn't seem like a remotely fair comparison.
However, in the context of the previously linked blog-post, it is a fair comparison because both Pidgin and KDE developer(s) claimed that users don't really matter, and that only the opinion of the developers matter. I will agree that the Pidgin developers were much more blatant and offensive about their distaste for any user feedback.
Wow. The Pidgin developer philosophy spreads.
Especially after that trainwreck of a .0 release. Does anyone know if in Kubuntu:
1) the application shortcuts (khotkeys) are fixed. Last I checked in 4.1 beta, it was still not possible to set a shortcut for konsole. This alone makes the desktop unusable.
2) The expose type feature has been fixed to give it proper sensitivity? I had to continually jab at the top left corner of my screen last I tried it, and I was lucky if it worked 25% of the time.
Another major annoyance for me in konqueror is the fact that I can't right click and select back. Instead, I right click, and am presented with a history list of pages; since there is also no rocker navigation functionality, I am essentially forced to use the traditional back button at the top of the screen. Very inefficient.
"Comcast could decide to block Vonage, because it competes with their VoIP service" Yes, that would be a good idea. So what? Will you die without Vonage? Is it really worth passing asinine restrictions on internet providers just so that you can have Vonage?
So they blocked your competing music download site. So what? Will you die without your preferred music download site?
So they blocked netflix. So what? Will you die without netflix?
So they made your favorite blogging site slow to a crawl. So what? Will you die without your favorite blogging site?
And on and on.
The problem with making sure ISPs don't censor or filter any traffic/content over their lines is what? Are you going to roll out the telecom industry talking points about how they could provide better services if they were allowed to introduce a tiered internet system?
You get to choose from a regulated selection of providers (analogous to TV channels) who serve up their own content. All nice and regulated. Put up some high cost-barriers to setting up such a channel, and the internet becomes like every other medium - a way for the big companies to push their content to a passive audience.
These are the two most insightful sentences I've seen on /. in months. Sorry I don't have any mod points right now. Maybe freenet (or similar decentralized data store) is the future.
You can bet that if this trend continues they'll be able to cover all the major trunk points and any Tor endpoints that are unchecked at that point will be highly noticeable.
And finally freenet will become worthwhile.
These stories show how bad Slashdot has gotten. The thought of keeping little kids off of porn sickens the average Slashdotter? Absolutely pathetic excuses for humans.
And the thought of restricting the rights of adults for little or no foreseeable gain doesn't sicken you? That sickens me.
Pathetic attempt at trolling.
Easy keyboard webpage navigation is one feature that Opera has that Firefox does not (afaik, not even an extension is available). You can hold down the shift key in Opera and using the numberpad easily navigate between links on a page. In Firefox you have to try tabbing around hoping you might eventually reach the link you want.
What the hell is with this sadistic desire of Australians and New Zealanders to have the rest of the world suffer with the same crappy internet service that they have?!?
This is as ridiculous as it first appears. Even more so, in fact, given their flimsy justification.
I wonder if you'd also support the police keeping an eye on people who read literature which has child-sex themes? Perhaps monitoring those who check out "Lolita" at the library?
I'd say you picked a fitting career for yourself. Congratulations.
Additionally, since you ostensibly are concerned about the abuse of real children, would you require that the prosecution have to prove that the fake images were derived from real photographs? Or would you just support a scorched earth policy, and throw many other people in prison who were only guilty of possessing fake images involving no real children?
My eyes can't roll any higher.
If you are asking me if we can CURE sexual attraction to 17 year olds, then I would say that the answer is most certainly no. You'd be waging a war on natural impulses, and you would lose.
What do YOU suggest we do with these people? I would suggest we begin to discuss these topics rationally, without immediately resorting to kneejerk comments about "castrating the sick fucks who look at this kind of crap." This isn't a one size fits all kind of debate, especially considering the way the laws are written now. Putting the people who are attracted to post-pubescent minors in the same category as those attracted to pre-pubescent minors confuses the issue tremendously.
I would also suggest that law enforcement authorities start truly concentrating on the people who are actually sexually abusing children, rather than spending so much time and money to arrest people that are looking at pictures and videos, including minors who take pictures of themselves:
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/webguide/internetlife/2004-03-29-child-self-porn_x.htm
http://www.news.com/Police-blotter-Teens-prosecuted-for-racy-photos/2100-1030_3-6157857.html
This "fight" against child pornography has long lost sight of it's intended target (protecting minors from being sexually abused), and is now used as a means to score political votes, funding increases, and surveillance/control of the internet.