Faster tab switching in UNIX (this is one of my biggest irritations about opera at the moment - tab switchng under windows is nearly instantaneous, under X there's a perceptible delay)
I experience the same tab-switching slowdown from windows to linux on firefox. Might this be a wider issue with X?
My question: is there ever a case for letting national security issues dictate the limits of an open source project?
If you want to do the government's work for them, sure.
If you are shutting down a project based solely on the fear that your government may shut you down in the future (and not for a valid reason), you are only saving them the trouble, and making it that much worse for the next controversial open-source project that comes along.
No one will like this suggestion, but I think it's a valid one.
I don't like your suggestion. If telecoms begin to charge for the amount of bandwidth used, the way we all use the internet will be fundamentally changed. Many of the popular websites and attractions that have sprung up in the past few years (itunes, webcasts, youtube, etc) rely on heavy bandwidth usage. Personally, I don't want to be thinking about my monthly budget when checking out videos on youtube.
Secondly, I have little doubt that the pricing plan that the telecoms introduce would be outrageous and overpriced, as there is no competition to speak of ($19.95 a month for 3 gigabytes of bandwidth! That's over 600 songs! $10.99 for each additional gig used).
There's really no way to shut up the hard-core "think of the children" crowd. If you offer optional filtering, they'll call for mandatory filtering (but little Johnny might come across a computer with unfiltered internet access!). If you block all pornography, they'll want to block all nudity (medical diagrams and otherwise). If you block all profanity they'll also want to block all sexual-related email, chat, and text.
To me, it always seemed like it would be simpler for a think-of-the-childrener to not have internet access at their home ranther than continue to wage this endless battle against the free-flow of information, but I don't think this crowd is really satisfied until they've ruined someone else's day.
Thank God they have liberal gun laws and a lot of folks are armed, so as to defend their rights - oh, wait, the Austrailian gov't confiscated everyone's guns in a "think of the children" ploy. And the gun owners just gave them up with nary a whimper.
I don't understand this argument. Assuming that Australian citizens were still armed to the teeth "so as to defend their rights", then upon learning that the internet would be filtered for content they should have started shooting politicians?
Oh please. I certainly didn't take his reply as a direct rebuttal to my comment, although I can see how my reply could be misinterpreted (and I admit it was likely superfluous).
But feel free to assume whatever you would like. Simplistic, childish slashdot replies are fun, I'll give you that. Whoosh!
Having fewer laws but broader and vaguer definitions is even worse; it invites selective-enforcement by police. Suddenly, unbeknown to you, burning a back-up copy of your Duran-Duran CD falls under the same "stealing" law, and carries the same penalties, as smashing a window and burglarizing a music store.
Why can't we just have a copyright system that is handle in civil courts? Why does everything have to be a crime now?
"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power government has is the power to crack down on criminals. When there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws." -- Ayn Rand
The ACLU is doing nothing but continuing to drive the US into the hole it's in by protecting criminal and ignoring the law abiding, hard working, common citizen. I am sick and tired of the battles the ACLU picks.
Hardly. The ACLU is in fact protecting the law abiding, hard working, common citizen and their civil liberties. The very same civil liberties that the founding fathers fought so hard to establish. There's no excuse for the government to keep a list of law abiding citizens whereabouts indefinitely.
Totalitarian states often have less crime and are "safer" for those who follow the rules. Perhaps you would be more interested in that sort of government.
It's funny that the people most in favor of civil liberties and freedom from tracking are the people who are probably least likely to commit a crime, like stealing a car.
Actually, while they may not be posting about it on Slashdot, I would venture to guess that most car-thiefs are in favor of protecting our civil liberties and "freedom from tracking".
There's a reason that many crimes in the US elicit such a harsh punishment, and that everything from bouncing a check to picking your nose in public is now a felony (ignoring the corporate-prison industry and other such arguments for the moment); the long prison sentences and exorbitant fines are thought to be a deterrent to other nare-do-wells who would now think twice before committing the same crime and getting the same sentence.
But part of the deterrence theory of punishment is premised on the fact that law enforcement can't catch all the criminals. To make up for the fact that there will always be Joe Robber or Tina Car-Thief who gets away with something, the hope is that they will be deterred from breaking the law in fear of receiving the harsh punishment.
The whole punishment-as-deterrent system will become quite warped however, when cops across the nation can cruise around scanning hundreds of license plates and arrest X number more felons than before. As law enforcement is armed with new technology, do the punishments ever decrease despite law enforcement being more effective in catching the bad guys?
To take this thought to the extreme: if police suddenly developed new drug-detecting technology that could scan people's surrounding air-mass as they walked out in public and determine with certainty whether they were carrying illegal drugs, should we still retain the harsh sentences that many states do for simple drug possession?
I agree with you there. By the way, you should check out an inferior open-source program called Firefox. It's an internet browser, and it has a built-in spell checker. It would have informed you that there is no "e" after the "g" in judgment.
"The one-size-fits-all mentality that characterizes open access regimes for the wireless industry would begin the process of stifling innovation and creativity in our industry," Verizon Wireless general counsel Steven Zipperstein said...
This is the same BS talk that these telecoms use in the net neutrality debate. "Innovation" and "creativity" seem to be the new corporate-speak for "monopolize" and "profit".
Based on many of your previous posts, I have the feeling that borderline child porn to you means anything from a stick-figure drawing of a "naked" child to a family picture of a kid in a snowsuit.
Fine, then as I stated in an earlier post, you should support making the production/possession of these photographs or videos illegal. You shouldn't support selective government censorship of the internet, or the mis-classification of content to make it seem illegal, even though it may not be.
If they had done so in the first place we wouldn't have this mess.
If the swedish police hadn't accused them of hosting child pornography, we wouldn't have this mess. You say your opposed to internet blocklists of all kinds. Then why can't you just ignore the content you feel is objectionable? No one is forcing you to go to the Pirate Bay. If you have your own image hosting site, remove anything you want. If someone else has their own image hosting site, and you don't like their images, don't go there!
No, because they are not allowed to know what it is they are delivering.
They would have a pretty good idea if something was shipped from one of these modeling companies to your doorstep.
The difference is that they are not allowed to deny delivery of content which they may find objectionable, but is otherwise legal. The Pirate Bay can choose to delete any torrents they wish. Is there any other content you find distasteful which you think should be added to government internet censorship blocklists?
Pirate Bay chose to fight that fight, and it's not one they'll be winning or that they will gain any honour from winning should the manage to.
No, the Pirate Bay didn't "choose" to fight for pedophile rights, they chose to facilitate the sharing of any content which is legal. Is the postal service fighting for pedophile rights when they deliver legal but objectionable content? Is your ISP fighting for the rights of pedophiles by allowing access to teen/child modeling sites? If you want the law changed to prevent the "exploitation" you speak of, then fine, but don't support the random enforcement of censorship on the internet based on your personal distaste.
So I can understand why the cops want to do this. I'm not sure they are legally in the clear, but I would like to see those kinds of torrents gone from pirate bay.
Great. Let's allow governments to censor the internet not based on any illegality, but because "you would like to see those kinds of torrents gone from pirate bay."
The original intention of most child pornography laws was to prevent the sexual abuse of children, not to ban pictures that make people feel creepy.
They really have nobody to blame but themselves, because they had ample opportunity to avoid this situation.
First off, is there any evidence that they were shut down because of "teen model pics"?
Secondly, are you suggesting that they deserve what they get because they hosted legal but objectionable content? Is it acceptable censorship to deny access not only to sites that host child pornography but also to sites that may attract pedophiles? What is the legal standard here... the creepiness standard?
A bit off-topic (I actually agree with a lot of what said in your prior post regarding child pornography), but I'm surprised that you are able to get anyone to host your site with it's "pro-pedophilia" viewpoint. This witch-hunt has evolved (devolved) to the point that even discussing the subject of pedophilia or child pornography is frowned upon and any participant in such discussion is often outright vilified.
Kudos for having the balls to discuss the distasteful.
As if criminalizing "virtual" child pornography wasn't absurd enough, now there's this:
The law would also apply to screenshots taken from a legal film, if the screenshot was made for erotic purposes.
Somebody pinch me, because that's some freaking insane thoughtcrime BS. So it's ok if the content is in a film, but if someone makes a screenshot while having prurient thoughts, then the possession of that screenshot is illegal?!? Exactly what mind-reading technology will they be using to determine the possessor's intent?
Slashdot Mirror
Faster tab switching in UNIX (this is one of my biggest irritations about opera at the moment - tab switchng under windows is nearly instantaneous, under X there's a perceptible delay)
I experience the same tab-switching slowdown from windows to linux on firefox. Might this be a wider issue with X?
If you want to do the government's work for them, sure.
If you are shutting down a project based solely on the fear that your government may shut you down in the future (and not for a valid reason), you are only saving them the trouble, and making it that much worse for the next controversial open-source project that comes along.
No one will like this suggestion, but I think it's a valid one.
I don't like your suggestion. If telecoms begin to charge for the amount of bandwidth used, the way we all use the internet will be fundamentally changed. Many of the popular websites and attractions that have sprung up in the past few years (itunes, webcasts, youtube, etc) rely on heavy bandwidth usage. Personally, I don't want to be thinking about my monthly budget when checking out videos on youtube.
Secondly, I have little doubt that the pricing plan that the telecoms introduce would be outrageous and overpriced, as there is no competition to speak of ($19.95 a month for 3 gigabytes of bandwidth! That's over 600 songs! $10.99 for each additional gig used).
There's really no way to shut up the hard-core "think of the children" crowd. If you offer optional filtering, they'll call for mandatory filtering (but little Johnny might come across a computer with unfiltered internet access!). If you block all pornography, they'll want to block all nudity (medical diagrams and otherwise). If you block all profanity they'll also want to block all sexual-related email, chat, and text.
To me, it always seemed like it would be simpler for a think-of-the-childrener to not have internet access at their home ranther than continue to wage this endless battle against the free-flow of information, but I don't think this crowd is really satisfied until they've ruined someone else's day.
I don't understand this argument. Assuming that Australian citizens were still armed to the teeth "so as to defend their rights", then upon learning that the internet would be filtered for content they should have started shooting politicians?
Oh please. I certainly didn't take his reply as a direct rebuttal to my comment, although I can see how my reply could be misinterpreted (and I admit it was likely superfluous).
But feel free to assume whatever you would like. Simplistic, childish slashdot replies are fun, I'll give you that. Whoosh!
Having fewer laws but broader and vaguer definitions is even worse; it invites selective-enforcement by police. Suddenly, unbeknown to you, burning a back-up copy of your Duran-Duran CD falls under the same "stealing" law, and carries the same penalties, as smashing a window and burglarizing a music store.
Write to your representatives if you can.
Also, send them lots of money in the form of campaign contributions. They seem to really like that.
Hardly. The ACLU is in fact protecting the law abiding, hard working, common citizen and their civil liberties. The very same civil liberties that the founding fathers fought so hard to establish. There's no excuse for the government to keep a list of law abiding citizens whereabouts indefinitely.
Totalitarian states often have less crime and are "safer" for those who follow the rules. Perhaps you would be more interested in that sort of government.
There's a reason that many crimes in the US elicit such a harsh punishment, and that everything from bouncing a check to picking your nose in public is now a felony (ignoring the corporate-prison industry and other such arguments for the moment); the long prison sentences and exorbitant fines are thought to be a deterrent to other nare-do-wells who would now think twice before committing the same crime and getting the same sentence.
But part of the deterrence theory of punishment is premised on the fact that law enforcement can't catch all the criminals. To make up for the fact that there will always be Joe Robber or Tina Car-Thief who gets away with something, the hope is that they will be deterred from breaking the law in fear of receiving the harsh punishment.
The whole punishment-as-deterrent system will become quite warped however, when cops across the nation can cruise around scanning hundreds of license plates and arrest X number more felons than before. As law enforcement is armed with new technology, do the punishments ever decrease despite law enforcement being more effective in catching the bad guys?
To take this thought to the extreme: if police suddenly developed new drug-detecting technology that could scan people's surrounding air-mass as they walked out in public and determine with certainty whether they were carrying illegal drugs, should we still retain the harsh sentences that many states do for simple drug possession?
isn't quite there = crappy?
This is the same BS talk that these telecoms use in the net neutrality debate. "Innovation" and "creativity" seem to be the new corporate-speak for "monopolize" and "profit".
Based on many of your previous posts, I have the feeling that borderline child porn to you means anything from a stick-figure drawing of a "naked" child to a family picture of a kid in a snowsuit.
Fine, then as I stated in an earlier post, you should support making the production/possession of these photographs or videos illegal. You shouldn't support selective government censorship of the internet, or the mis-classification of content to make it seem illegal, even though it may not be.
The difference is that they are not allowed to deny delivery of content which they may find objectionable, but is otherwise legal. The Pirate Bay can choose to delete any torrents they wish. Is there any other content you find distasteful which you think should be added to government internet censorship blocklists?
Plus, as an added bonus, governments can censor any content they want and not only will the censorship go unquestioned, it will be applauded!
The original intention of most child pornography laws was to prevent the sexual abuse of children, not to ban pictures that make people feel creepy.
First off, is there any evidence that they were shut down because of "teen model pics"?
Secondly, are you suggesting that they deserve what they get because they hosted legal but objectionable content? Is it acceptable censorship to deny access not only to sites that host child pornography but also to sites that may attract pedophiles? What is the legal standard here... the creepiness standard?
A bit off-topic (I actually agree with a lot of what said in your prior post regarding child pornography), but I'm surprised that you are able to get anyone to host your site with it's "pro-pedophilia" viewpoint. This witch-hunt has evolved (devolved) to the point that even discussing the subject of pedophilia or child pornography is frowned upon and any participant in such discussion is often outright vilified.
Kudos for having the balls to discuss the distasteful.