The bill essentially makes it easier for law enforcement to obtain wiretaps on persons suspected of engaging in or having material constituting or containing child pornography
People don't know their own country's history anymore. I'd bet most people think the cause of the Revolutionary War was those pesky Americans throwing tea overboard.
The first generation schooled by the government is taught a full curriculum.
The second is taught a watered-down curriculum to make things easier for more kids to pass, since by now the graduation is meaningful to employers, and we want everyone to be employable.
The third is taught by the undereducated second, and so begins to think in terms of self-esteem and participation and such, rather than actual knowledge or ability. It's a downward spiral from there.
The best defense against idiocy: home school your children.
I read the article this morning as well, and it was bunk.
Let's say that missiles are inbound to the US. Right now, LEO would be fine, and the US would be toast. So let's say that the US builds a strategic ABM system - mostly if not completely land-based on the interceptor side - which can take out a warhead immediately prior to deorbit. Now let's say that the incoming missiles have countermeasures, so that they are spreading even more junk around. Well, the best possible result is that the ABM system is still capable of taking out the incoming warheads, preventing major US cities from becoming piles of radioactive debris. But LEO is now junked up? So what? It's preferable that we have to figure out how to clean up LEO - or even that we lose the use of LEO - than that we lose even one city. Moreover, that debris is on a path to deorbit quickly, so there is not even a likelihood of cluttering up LEO for a long period of time.
Now let's take the other scenario presented: someone decides to deny LEO by spreading large amounts of gravel or similar in order to take out a space-based weapons platform. Any nation capable of doing that is also somewhat dependent on LEO and would thus be cutting off their noses to spite their faces. On top of that, if the intent is to take out a space-based defense in order to let the missiles through, wouldn't you want to do that in such a way that you didn't prevent the missiles from getting through? (Gravel sufficient to make LEO a "wasteland" is also sufficient to block practical use of ICBMs and probably also IRBMs, MRBMs and SLBMs.)
OK, you're trolling, but I'll bite. Actually, I am a member of the Libertarian Party, and I pay more in taxes than I care to think about. I object less to the money than I do to the relentless quest for more and more of my money, and the intrusive and tyrannical rules that come with it. (For example, why should the government be able to look through my bank account, or keep me from taking large amounts of cash out of the country?) That said, when 50% of the people can vote, but pay no taxes, how can taxation possibly be representative? Something like 1/3 of the taxes are paid by 1/20 of the people. The voting/untaxed mass far exceeds the voting/heavily-taxed mass.
And no, I don't own a gun. I have small children around the house, and no immediate need to kill government officials to secure my natural rights.
that taxation with representation isn't so hot, either.
Actually, it's worse than that. This is another form of taxing the unrepresented, since WISPs are unlikely to get the ear of Congress for a redress of grievances, when compared to the telcos who can spit out large amounts of bribes...er, subsidies...er, direct democracy to the Reps and Senators.
In Texas, virtually everything you would want to do is online. Each service has a service-specific ID which is easily determined by the user, but hard to just guess at. For example, I recently renewed my driver's license online. I had to give my driver's license number, a different number printed by the photo, and an alphanumeric string included in the renewal paperwork that was sent to my home address. A person would need both possession of my license (or a copy of the front) *and* possession of the information contained in the letter to fake it.
There is no reason why the Federal government could not do this as well. It would generate a less-centralized authentication system, but in my opinion that is a Good Thing.
What negative outcome could this possibly have other than domain name disputes (which are easily solved)?
Well, for one thing, the United States Congress could decide that it is in the business of telling people what their domain names can be, unless they are in a county-specific domain. It's not much of a step from there to deciding who can and cannot have which names. This is not a power we want in the hands of one nation.
Also, isn't anyone else bothered that this would require any speech not acceptable to the political/legal decision makers (in particular, to the district attorneys) to be labelled as pornography? And, since pornography is not protected by the Constitution's free-speech provisions, how long would it be before any institution getting any kind of direct or indirect Federal funding would be required to block this entire TLD?
This is good, because it will make it much easier to port 3D-accellerated games from PC to Mac. It will be better when it supports PB (listed as "coming soon"). Perhaps the porting lags and general lack of porting will become less of an issue over time with this available.
Since IBM is the major (only?) producer of SSA drives, such as are used in their ESS product, is the new joint venture going to produce these now, or will IBM retain that part of the drive manufacturing business?
It appears that this is a move by IBM and Hitachi to develop a coherent SAN alternative to EMC - and having used both IBM's and Hitachi's SAN products, this will put EMC in quite a bind.
Child molesters are bad (and people who make child pornography are by definition child molesters)
I'm not convinced that this is true. Certainly, using a child to make pornographic photographs would probably make the photographer as much a molester as any adult in the photograph with the child. On the other hand, pornography is not just pictures. If someone wrote a story involving sex acts with a child, that is not molestation. By this ruling, if it came to the Supreme Court it would likely also be found to be legal to write a story involving sex acts with a child.
I am thinking that creating 'imitation' child pornography is not any better. Somewhat like robbing a store with a fake gun.
What if the store was fake, say, on a movie set, and you were pretending to rob it? That is more equivalent to what this law was trying to ban. The child pornography equivalent would be more along the lines of depicting the rape of a child where the child is present, but is not actually raped. That would be illegal, as would robbing a store with a fake gun.
IBM could score big cool points by running an add that shows dozens of Intel-based servers running Win2K or whatever, talking about how many web servers, ftp servers, domain controllers, and so forth are there, along with a bunch of MCSEs to run them, and then panning over to a single RS/6000 or SP system with one admin, and using a tag line like, "Just because you can buy a machine cheaply, doesn't mean you can do business with it."
It's funny in a way, because last week my (crappy Verizon POS lousy customer service unreliable) DSL connection was down for a day and a half. My wife suggested that I call an alternative provider, and my answer was, "I was going to, but I can't find the number because the 'net connection is down." It was only when she looked at me as if I'd suddenly sprouted a dead weasel on my forehead that I realized that phone books still exist.
1) a few people in a few places know about it - it's useful or fun or whatever 2) more people find out about it - it becomes broadly interesting 3) everyone knows about it, but only a few people can get it - it's cool 4) everyone can get it - it becomes passe
I'm excited about this, and will certainly be watching it develop. There are times when embedding Perl into ObjC would be really helpful (for example, using Perl rather than TCL as an embedded tool language), and if this project works out, it will provide a very useful tool for the MacOS X developer community.
"Pirates seek to profit off the enormous popularity of DVDs by using the latest in technology to illegally manufacture DVD copies of Hollywood films, and again dupe consumers into purchasing a wholly inferior product," MPAA Chief Executive Jack Valenti said in a statement.
I thought that the argument was that digital copies were of the same quality as the original, rather than "wholly inferior." I guess I haven't been keeping up with the MPAA spin machine very well.
It used to be that someone did something useful, then the community, through use choices, adopted it as standard. Then, if there were flaws, these would be ironed out with an updated standard, usually all or mostly backwards-compatible with the original implementation. It's gotten to where new standards are useless, either because companies (like, say, RealNetworks or MS) refuse to submit their protocols/formats for public use/review, or because the standards committees (say, for Java (before it was pulled) or the W3C) argue for years without actually doing anything.
I, for one, am happy to see a useful format publically available.
a programmer should be able to estimate how to finish a project if he knows what's involved up front.
Depends on whether your are producing new code or debugging old code. Testing and debugging are open ended, since, as my friend Dave asks, "How long is a piece of string?"
Slashdot Mirror
I hope they get prosecuted for perjury. I don't even want to think what the proof would be for 'purgery'!
From the article:
The first generation schooled by the government is taught a full curriculum.
The second is taught a watered-down curriculum to make things easier for more kids to pass, since by now the graduation is meaningful to employers, and we want everyone to be employable.
The third is taught by the undereducated second, and so begins to think in terms of self-esteem and participation and such, rather than actual knowledge or ability. It's a downward spiral from there.
The best defense against idiocy: home school your children.
I read the article this morning as well, and it was bunk.
Let's say that missiles are inbound to the US. Right now, LEO would be fine, and the US would be toast. So let's say that the US builds a strategic ABM system - mostly if not completely land-based on the interceptor side - which can take out a warhead immediately prior to deorbit. Now let's say that the incoming missiles have countermeasures, so that they are spreading even more junk around. Well, the best possible result is that the ABM system is still capable of taking out the incoming warheads, preventing major US cities from becoming piles of radioactive debris. But LEO is now junked up? So what? It's preferable that we have to figure out how to clean up LEO - or even that we lose the use of LEO - than that we lose even one city. Moreover, that debris is on a path to deorbit quickly, so there is not even a likelihood of cluttering up LEO for a long period of time.
Now let's take the other scenario presented: someone decides to deny LEO by spreading large amounts of gravel or similar in order to take out a space-based weapons platform. Any nation capable of doing that is also somewhat dependent on LEO and would thus be cutting off their noses to spite their faces. On top of that, if the intent is to take out a space-based defense in order to let the missiles through, wouldn't you want to do that in such a way that you didn't prevent the missiles from getting through? (Gravel sufficient to make LEO a "wasteland" is also sufficient to block practical use of ICBMs and probably also IRBMs, MRBMs and SLBMs.)
Bunk, I tell you. Total bunk.
OK, you're trolling, but I'll bite. Actually, I am a member of the Libertarian Party, and I pay more in taxes than I care to think about. I object less to the money than I do to the relentless quest for more and more of my money, and the intrusive and tyrannical rules that come with it. (For example, why should the government be able to look through my bank account, or keep me from taking large amounts of cash out of the country?) That said, when 50% of the people can vote, but pay no taxes, how can taxation possibly be representative? Something like 1/3 of the taxes are paid by 1/20 of the people. The voting/untaxed mass far exceeds the voting/heavily-taxed mass.
And no, I don't own a gun. I have small children around the house, and no immediate need to kill government officials to secure my natural rights.
that taxation with representation isn't so hot, either.
Actually, it's worse than that. This is another form of taxing the unrepresented, since WISPs are unlikely to get the ear of Congress for a redress of grievances, when compared to the telcos who can spit out large amounts of bribes...er, subsidies...er, direct democracy to the Reps and Senators.
In Texas, virtually everything you would want to do is online. Each service has a service-specific ID which is easily determined by the user, but hard to just guess at. For example, I recently renewed my driver's license online. I had to give my driver's license number, a different number printed by the photo, and an alphanumeric string included in the renewal paperwork that was sent to my home address. A person would need both possession of my license (or a copy of the front) *and* possession of the information contained in the letter to fake it.
There is no reason why the Federal government could not do this as well. It would generate a less-centralized authentication system, but in my opinion that is a Good Thing.
-jeff
Well, for one thing, the United States Congress could decide that it is in the business of telling people what their domain names can be, unless they are in a county-specific domain. It's not much of a step from there to deciding who can and cannot have which names. This is not a power we want in the hands of one nation.
Also, isn't anyone else bothered that this would require any speech not acceptable to the political/legal decision makers (in particular, to the district attorneys) to be labelled as pornography? And, since pornography is not protected by the Constitution's free-speech provisions, how long would it be before any institution getting any kind of direct or indirect Federal funding would be required to block this entire TLD?
This is good, because it will make it much easier to port 3D-accellerated games from PC to Mac. It will be better when it supports PB (listed as "coming soon"). Perhaps the porting lags and general lack of porting will become less of an issue over time with this available.
Since IBM is the major (only?) producer of SSA drives, such as are used in their ESS product, is the new joint venture going to produce these now, or will IBM retain that part of the drive manufacturing business?
It appears that this is a move by IBM and Hitachi to develop a coherent SAN alternative to EMC - and having used both IBM's and Hitachi's SAN products, this will put EMC in quite a bind.
I'm not convinced that this is true. Certainly, using a child to make pornographic photographs would probably make the photographer as much a molester as any adult in the photograph with the child. On the other hand, pornography is not just pictures. If someone wrote a story involving sex acts with a child, that is not molestation. By this ruling, if it came to the Supreme Court it would likely also be found to be legal to write a story involving sex acts with a child.
What if the store was fake, say, on a movie set, and you were pretending to rob it? That is more equivalent to what this law was trying to ban. The child pornography equivalent would be more along the lines of depicting the rape of a child where the child is present, but is not actually raped. That would be illegal, as would robbing a store with a fake gun.
Can you get an umbrella big enough to deal with rain in the form of glaciers?
So are there twice as many trolls as offtopics, 10 times as many trolls as insightful posts, and so on?
You do realize, don't you, that once you resort to ad hominem attacks, you've lost the argument?
You wrote:
ps -A | grep slashdot
27213 pts/2 1:20:05 slashdot
kill -9 27213
When you meant to write:
kill -9 `ps -A | grep slashdot | awk '{print $1}'`
or, slightly more efficient:
shutdown -F now
my @quanta;
@quanta=;
foreach $quanta (@quantum)
{
warn "DAMN! destroyed my data by reading it again!\n";
}
IBM could score big cool points by running an add that shows dozens of Intel-based servers running Win2K or whatever, talking about how many web servers, ftp servers, domain controllers, and so forth are there, along with a bunch of MCSEs to run them, and then panning over to a single RS/6000 or SP system with one admin, and using a tag line like, "Just because you can buy a machine cheaply, doesn't mean you can do business with it."
It's funny in a way, because last week my (crappy Verizon POS lousy customer service unreliable) DSL connection was down for a day and a half. My wife suggested that I call an alternative provider, and my answer was, "I was going to, but I can't find the number because the 'net connection is down." It was only when she looked at me as if I'd suddenly sprouted a dead weasel on my forehead that I realized that phone books still exist.
1) a few people in a few places know about it - it's useful or fun or whatever
2) more people find out about it - it becomes broadly interesting
3) everyone knows about it, but only a few people can get it - it's cool
4) everyone can get it - it becomes passe
We're now entering step 4.
No, not really. :-)
I'm excited about this, and will certainly be watching it develop. There are times when embedding Perl into ObjC would be really helpful (for example, using Perl rather than TCL as an embedded tool language), and if this project works out, it will provide a very useful tool for the MacOS X developer community.
-jeff
Nah, it appears to be hosted in London.
I thought that the argument was that digital copies were of the same quality as the original, rather than "wholly inferior." I guess I haven't been keeping up with the MPAA spin machine very well.
It used to be that someone did something useful, then the community, through use choices, adopted it as standard. Then, if there were flaws, these would be ironed out with an updated standard, usually all or mostly backwards-compatible with the original implementation. It's gotten to where new standards are useless, either because companies (like, say, RealNetworks or MS) refuse to submit their protocols/formats for public use/review, or because the standards committees (say, for Java (before it was pulled) or the W3C) argue for years without actually doing anything.
I, for one, am happy to see a useful format publically available.
Depends on whether your are producing new code or debugging old code. Testing and debugging are open ended, since, as my friend Dave asks, "How long is a piece of string?"