Here is a great versatile censorship tool being created. Imagine that I am a police officer and I don't TV crew filming me beating innocent people. I will just wear a shirt (or a badge) with original copyrighted artwork, or one of my teammates will hold a poster with such artwork. We can even use DeCSS code there for extra protection.:) Now if the TV channel broadcasts the material, we can sue them for theft of our property. Intellectual property, that is. The same can be done by theives. Just hold such poster clearly visible to security camera when breaking into a building and then sue the security company if they want to use this record in court.:)
Yes, the rights of the artist are protected by default, but I don't see them being infriged in this case. This is fair use and hopefully the case will be thrown away from the court.
In some cases, the amount of material copied is so small (or "de minimis") that the court permits it without even conducting a fair use analysis. For example, in the motion picture Seven, several copyrighted photographs appeared in the film, prompting the copyright owner of the photographs to sue the producer of the movie. The court held that the photos "appear fleetingly and are obscured, severely out of focus, and virtually unidentifiable." The court excused the use of the photographs as "de minimis" and a fair use analysis was not required. ( Sandoval v. New Line Cinema Corp., 147 F.3d 215 (2d Cir. 1998).)
See Stanford Copyright & Fair Use site for more details
In this GTA case the graffiti does not form a significant portion of the game and most people will not notice them.
It might be extremely cool, especially with low values for the "throw away" distance. What is a huge annoyance in GTA (characters and vehicles disappear) can become an excellent feature if applied to levels, especially if it can be done in complete 3D (unlimited in a vertical dimension as well). Add to that some crazy style (crazier than American McGee's Alice) and you have a cool and innovative game on your hands. The story could be about the world that fell into chaos and your quest to bring order back. The plot could be purport-oriented and not space-oriented. If you had to find a key, it would not have a preset location in this chaotic world, but you would be able to find it after some time and after doing some things, but regardless of the directions you travel to. There can be some huge geographical features, like giant chasms, magic castles or something, that would provide some orientation, but most of the map would be randomly generated. What do you think?
I think mixing close-quarters combat with open-space combat can help. By creating a balanced map (enough space for driving and enough space for running without worrying too much about being run over), this problem can easily be solved.
Hey, officer, I paid 2000 bucks for this automatic gun and I though this includes a licence to fire at will. What do you mean it wasn't ok to fire at the school bus? Sue the gun store, not me! Where are you taking me?! Heeeeelp!
it lets emergency services find idiots who phone 911 and then fail to give their location
I don't like the idea very much too, but it's not only idiots. A week ago there was a Discovery program about a derailed train. When the conductor called 911, he couldn't give the exact location, because all he knew was that the train derailed, fell into some river and half of it is burning right now (another half is under water already). It didn't look like he was an idiot, just like a person, who didn't know his exact location. And there was more than one bridge where that could happen, so it took emergency services some considerable time to find them.
Another thing is that you theoretically can use high compression on the calls, when it's needed, like when another skyscraper is blown up or another state loses electricity. It's not like people would complain about quality then. And it would also help with benign events, like New Year or something, when people want to make a lot of calls, since you can do with less extra capacity. Lower costs for telecoms, lower prices for customers.
I don't know why, but most mouse manufacturers are too cheap to include a decent long cord. I've seen numerous times in corporate environments a mouse located in an extremely uncomfortable position, simply because the cord is too short. At home I have a 3 meter extension cord, but wireless would be better still. And, more importantly, I will not have to worry about the [too rigid] cord impeding the "up" movements of the mouse on my cluttered desk.
It would be even more important for text input. Make such thimble wireless (kind of obvious) and connect it to Palm handheld to input graffity with it. A ring instead of a thimble would look even better. It should be possible to do it already, expect something like this on the market in a couple years.
Do you know that these Joes and Janes do not know that e-mail addresses are easily spoofable. You can't do it in Outlook, but you can do it in any decent client. I don't know, why no one uses that yet, but I can send your client a message with your return address and call him a fucking asshole. Since most people are not aware that e-mail addresses can be forged, he will assume that you did it. I can also send him a request for some confidential documents with your From address and some other Reply-To field, which hopefully would be hidden.
That's what you get by hiding extra functionality from users in this case.
Since it has been demonstrated time and time again for centuries, yes I do. Could you please back up this assertion with any sources? I was not aware that one can prove that there are no better solutions than current one (market generated) for a given economical problem (maximising common good or call it total wealth). If, on the other hand, you found a proof yourself, publish it and expect a Nobel Prize very soon.
Or may be, you found a way to travel back in time and change the starting conditions, so that you can set historical experiments and test different economic systems under different conditions? Then a Nobel Prize in phisics is in order.
Sorry, but to me the only thing that you prove once again is that you are in fact brainwashed.:)
which is the optimal solution: it offers convenience, privace, speed and cheapness Surely cars are cheaper than public transportation. That's a typical case of scale economy - a giant SUV is surely more efficient than a small bus.:) BTW, you forgot to mention that cars are also environmentally friendly.
who would prefer to live their own lives It's really nice to live in the world where your actions have no negative effect on others whatsoever.
Indeed, brainwashed you are.
Like any socialist, when it gets right down to it, you're no different from Stalin, Mao, the NSDAP &c. I wonder if this can qualify under Goodwin's Law... If yes, then you just lost the argument.:)
And the obvious difference between IT and steel/auto/agriculture/whatever industry is that Indian programmers are not imports, like hi-fi stereos. They are cheap resources for IT companies. I am sure American government will do nothing if Pakistanis decide to move to Michigan or Pennsylvania and replace millions of American steel workers.
No one really gets shafted with IT. I mean, no company does, and we all know how much the government cares about people.
Have anybody seen a comparison of DirectX8 and DirectX9 visual quality? It doesn't have to be Half-Life2 (although that would be preferable), just something to see what value brings DirectX9 for the player.
I have GeForce Ti4200 (DX8) and it looks like it will be possible to get up to 30FPS in 1024x768, no FSAA. Alternatively, I can get a new Radeon 9600 Pro for 150$ and get the same or better performance in the same resolution, but with DX9 eye-candy and FSAA enabled.
Is it worth it? I assume that the cool demos we've seen have been recorded with DX9. How much worse will the game look in DX8? Any ideas?
I am calling you an idiot not because I don't have better arguments, but because you prove that you are incapable of understanding and using logic. In this post you do the same at least five times. I will not write a detailed rebuttal of your "arguments", I will simply point just the main flaws.
1) I didn't mean to prove that you personally are guilty of exploitation - simply to show that with standards that you use almost everyone exploits someone to some extent. I could have given more examples so that at least some are surely true in your case, but that was not the point. 2) By giving "personal satisfaction" to the person who gave me child porn I have an extremely miniscule impact on the overall situation or on the final abused kid. If you think this qualifies as being guilty, then you are guilty of every murder commited by US Army. You pay taxes and you probably voted either for Clinton (Yugoslavia) or for Bush (Afganistan and Iraq). Ergo you directly support child murdurers "in a very real way". 3) Falsy dichotomy regarding the age of consent. There is another option - individuals are free to have consensual sex. If someone suspects that consent could not be given, the police is informed and state may choose to prosecute. In this case courts only need to spend their time on cases that have some merit, i.e. when they would have probably been involved anyway.
In the parent message I called you an idiot, because of the utter stupidity of the last paragraph of your post. May be you should get a decent monitor or buy glasses, because you obvsiously have problems with recognising shades of grey.
Persuading != coercion. Sexual contact (or anything else) can be neither completely voluntary, nor exploitation. And you also ignored the point that I made in the grandgrandparent post about ability of children to choose (this time completely and totally voluntarily) to be in porn.
Please, get your logic facilities back online and hopefully nobody will have to resort to calling you an idiot.
Thanks for an interesting post, I tend to agree with many things.
But not with all.:) Replace "a child porn image" with "an mp3" and you'll have 100,000 people here jumping on your throat to explain you. These are very different industries. You can't really imagine a person downloading a crappy MPEG child porn video, enjoying it and then ordering a DVD, can you?:) First, after he had an orgasm, he is not exactly in the mood to order a DVD. Second, you can't easily order a child porn DVD. And third, the quality is probably not the most important factor - paedophiles are quite different from auidophiles.;) So, honestly, I don't think that downloading the file feed the industry somehow, especially because nobody downloads the files directly from sellers of child porn, no, it's downloaded from the guy, how downloaded it from the guy, who...... who found it on some obscure BBS and nobody knows how it got there.
My point about grey areas was simply to illustrate that the whole problem is not as black and white as many people in this discussion assume. You see, I agree that making child porn generally (on average) is a bad thing, but I disagree that one photo equals one completely maimed, twisted, fucked up innocent kid with incurable psychological problems for the next 1000 years. There are much worse things that are done to kids, like simply raping them without photos, like killing them, like bombing them from the sky, like suicide-bombing them when they have a disco or a wedding, like destroying the school system and fucking up their mentality more than any paedophile ever could. And then you have bullying in school, you have all kinds of crap that kids have to endure every day in every corner of this beautiful blue speck flying through space... And to single out one particular problem and proclaim it the root of all evil is simply untrue and it smells like a witchhunt.
If you remove the negative impact of parents+police+psychiatrist from the child abuse case, I am not sure if the long-term damage is greater than from a very bad teacher at school. Exploring their sexuality is natural for kids, often they do it with other kids of the same age, sometimes with older children, sometimes with teenagers and sometimes with adults. There are many well-known cases when there is no psychological damage to kids whatsoever. Sex doesn't kill.
Yes, if the abuser kidnaps the child, rapes him/her, enslaves and forces to pose for child porn, this is bad. No doubt about it. But the fact that the child is exploited for child porn is irrelevant. It's not the picture that harms him/her, it's the abuse from the adult authority figure who somehow controls the kid. Poor treatment of the child is not a requirement of child porn. It's simply a consequence of the socio-economic situation. If you can buy a same kid for 100$ in that country, you won't treat him/her well. When child porn was legit a few decades ago, it was definitely a much smaller problem (in Europe and the US). Yes, it never was mainstream, because the sexual revolution didn't not penetrate the whole society to a necessary extent, but it was a much lighter topic. If child porn was to be legalised today, models would be treated the same or better as child actors in movies, TV films and fashion industry are treated. There are definitely many kids (defined as younger than 18) who can have sex without going crazy after it. Some of them would probably be happy to earn good money by starring in child porn. Of course, we can't expect legalisation any time soon, although I hoped that virtual child porn would emerge as a substitute for real child porn. Apparently, people/companies are so scared by the government and the media, that they are afraid to touch this in any way.
I hope you see that there is nothing inherently bad about child porn photos/videos. Now the question of is it moral/ethical to download child porn now, when most of it isn't made in noble ways. We
The fact that you are not directly exploiting children by downloading child porn does not change the fact that you are indirectly exploiting them. Ok then. You are indirectly exploiting children too. Your [insert something here] is paid by taxes, including sales taxes on Nike sneakers that are made with slave labour. Have you bought a diamond for your girlfriend? You are indirectly exploiting African kids and adults. And you don't really want to know to what is done to people there. Child rape is nothing compared to that. You also indirectly exploit millions of black slaves that helped build American economy. And you indirectly exploit the kid who brings you newspaper, as well as the kid who cleans the machine shop that repairs the truck that brings the supplies to your favourite diner. Enough? Indirect exploitation is neither a crime nor an immoral thing. If I look at child porn, I do not exploit anyone directly. When you visit Louvre and see an old painting with a cherub - that's a kid exploited at some moment in time. So what? My hands are clean.
which teaches them that sex is an acceptable substitute for actual affection, which cannot be healthy and is likely to leave an indelible mark on a young mind. Affection? What the hell are you talking about?! You don't understand anything. A much greater mark was left on her mind by death of her many brothers and sisters (they starved to death or died without basic medical care) and extremely harsh conditions in which she had to live. Becoming a prostitute was the only way out of the horrific existence she led and the only way to support her family. That was one hell of a mark. Having sex or posing nude for camera adds nothing to that. She is already desensitized to that, it took her only few weeks (or days). If you choose not to abuse her and decide not to sleep with her, she would hate you (or simply don't like you) because the money you would pay, would support her and her family for a week or so.
There is no gray area in the case of children who choose to be in pornography. An adult can make an informed decision. Yep. When a person becomes 18 y.o., in that very instant the brain changes - he/she becomes capable of making informed decisions. To children in Holland this happens 2 years earlier. If there birthday is known incorrectly, the brain adapts and becomes capable of making informed decisions earlier or later, to comply with this arbitrary date. The kid in America can make an informed decision to kill someone and be executed for that, but he/she can't make an informed decision to have some sex or pose for porn.
But not as happy as they would be with their cars (we know this, because the vast majority of people, fully acquainted with the advantages and disadvantages of both, prefer personal transport over public). Nope. Economy is not additive and Pareto-optimal doesn't mean the best solution. Americans are trapped with the cars. There might be millions of options, but they can't be reached without making their position worse temporarily. That's why market can't help.
If it's what people want, by definition it's not crap. 25% or so of all Americans are complete idiots. That's the fact. Please read this. Idiots are idiots. There are things I know better indeed.
Sure--but there are many times more other people than there are Gateses. It balances out. You can't call it fair when one person (Gates) is billions of times more important than another (some poor fellow in Africa). Not by using any sensible definition of "fair".
To sum it up, you believe that market is the best solution by defintion. This is simple brainwashing by the American propaganda machine and there is simply nothing that I can do. I don't have time and resources to explain to you why this is stupid to believe that market is good because it is market and the market is good. You wouldn't listen to me either (long enough for this to have any effect). It looks like you can't even comprehend that market might not be the best and optimal solution. Well, bad for you.
But who is a dealer? If I upload my collection of child porn to the website and share it for free, am I a dealer? How is anyone abused or exploited when I do it? What if someone shares the collection of child porn that was made before it was outlawed? Scans from paper magazines that were openly sold in sex shops in the US and Europe. Does such "dealer" exploit or abuse children? And what about dealers who are loved by the "abused" kids, because he was able to provide them with food, shelter and some (although perverted) love that they long lived without? Are they scum? What about the person who films his meeting with a child prostitute? Is it abuse if she is already a prostitute and was for several years already? Is he responsible for that? How does filming her and selling/sharing the film cause her any more harm?
And what about children who choose to be in porn? Certainly if adults can choose it, so can some of the kids. And even if they don't choose it completely voluntarily, there is a large grey area between being forced under the point of the gun and choosing it out of your free will. Certainly kidnapping and raping is bad, but what about persuading over a long period to start posing and then having seducing to have sex? Is it as bad as rape?
The point about the sister-in-law was that looking at the result of someone's bad action is not bad itself. Otherwise how would you watch the evening news? As for producing child porn or ordering it, I completely and wholeheartedly agree - both things can have negative impact on kids. But getting it for free doesn't. Same, killing someone or paying for the murder is bad - reading about it in the newspaper or watching the dead body on TV is not bad.
Another thing, these kids aren't just posing. Many of them are being held hostage and raped. And many of them are not. Kidnapping and rape are crimes even if no pictures is made. Some child porn was/is made with consent of children and sometimes even parents and doesn't harm children (especially the legit porn from 70s and 80s) or harms them less than the alternative (starving).
If everyone in this country started looking at child porn, you can bet the number of abducted or exploited children would skyrocket! Take it for what it's worth, but I've heard that some time ago paedophiles offered FBI to help with fighting child abuse if existing child porn would be legalised (at least de-facto). Of course, that didn't happen. But really, think of the amount of porn. I would bet there is already enough of it, so everyone could watch the same existing images and the number of abducted children would stay roughly the same.
NO child under the age of 18 can consent to committing sexual acts...period. That's hilarious.:) I know some people who have been able to consent to sex before 18 just fine. I probably would consent myself if anyone offered.:) And whole countries like Holland somehow manage with this "problem".:))))
The so-called "innocents" that you describe are not quite so innocent. They continue to feed an industry Tell me please, how downloading a child porn image from a free anonymous website feeds any industry? I can only see how it starves the industry by wasting precious traffic.:)
Your twisted rationality is that these children are so much better off...but are they? Do you really think that the children are the true beneficiaries of any of that money? Usually not. But you can't ignore things like schoolgirl prostitutes in Japan (although it is controlled by yakudza to some extent) and the fact that sometimes selling yourself is the only way to get something to eat. Great that you don't need to do that. Many people are not so lucky. As I said elsewhere, there are hundreds of children living on under 1$/day. Do you realise that they might have different standards of what is acceptable?
If you were in the U.S. and dirt poor with a couple of kids, would you send out your 13 year-old daughter to give out BJs for $5? I didn't mean the US. It's a fucked up country but hopefully not as fucked up as that. But in other places some kids (and not their parents, simply because they are orphans) don't have other choice. Of course, there is stealing and begging, but these might be more dangerous and less profitable.
Then when they kids get older, what are they worth and how much emotional baggage do they get to carry with them for the rest of their lives? Do you realise that these kids often have more emotional baggage already than you can accumulate over your whole life? The problem of child porn is not that evil pedophile scum kidnaps an American white honour student and forces her to pose for child porn (though RIAA might do that if next 12-year old will not have $2000 to pay ransom). The problem is that there are already some kids for whom child porn is an ok way to get money. You can't fix this problem by through child porn viewers in jail. These kids are fucked up because of the socio-economical situation in their countries. These are more difficult so solve.
Like most trial lawyers, it's the brokers of the porn that make the money by their resale...not the people photographed. Sure. But 1) Kids usually get something and that "something" is often valuable enough (like food, shelter, alcohol and drugs - they are often already addicts, sorry) for them not to worry about potential psychological problems. 2) Once the damage is done, those who distribute it for free do not cause any additional harm to the kids (neither to those filmed, nor to any other kids) and even somewhat harm the child porn industry by providing free substitute. If more people can get free child porn, less people will be willing to pay someone to make new one (although that would mean those kids will starve...).
Fact: People who are aroused by images of children engaging in sexual acts are a very small minority.
Yep. So what? People who are aroused by images of pregnant chicks or by wearing diapers are a minority as well. Does that mean these practices should also be prohibited?
Fact: The vast majority of people are sickened by such images.
False. Reality is that the majority of people have never seen such images. And just like everyone and his dog in the USSR was against Boris Pasternak when party started the famous defamation campaign without even reading any of his poems. There are some sick child porn images, but then there are many normal ones that would probably make a normal person aroused, not sick. As for the sick porn, the sickest I ever saw was some sadistic anime with some pretty girls cut into slices alive.:) Now that was sick. Compared with that any child porn would look mainstream.
Fact: Viewing of such images is very strongly correlated with acting on the fantasies represented there, in other words having sex with children. First, any data is skewed, because as you are well aware, people do not normally reveal the fact that they enjoy child porn. The only ones that we know about are those that were busted by the police. Not a very representative sample. Second, correlation does not equal causation. Obviously, child abusers would be interested in child porn, but that doesn't mean that child porn viewers are likely to become child abusers.
Do straight guys seek out gay porn? Do straight guys seek out lesbian porn? Again, there is some correlation between your tastes in porn and your sexual preferences, but trust me, not every hentai fan wants to be raped by a giant squid.:) And as I said elsewhere, rape porn is legal and it doesn't turn people into rapists. Why should child porn be different. Most people are capable of self-control and know the difference between fantasy and reality.
Coercing children to have sex--raping children--causes profound psychological damage which takes at minimum years for them to get over. 1) You can have sex without coercing anyone. You ignore the fact that some kids might be ok with having sex with adults. Consensual sex with kids is illegal in the US, but there is nothing unethical about it. 2) Raping kids is not much different from raping adults. And nobody is advocating raping humans of any age (of course, I mean real rape, statutory rape is ok in many cases). But there is no proof that child porn viewers will turn to raping kids in reality. 3) There are some indications that psychological damage is caused by joint efforts of police, family and psychologists. Many kids are just fine after having sex with adult, but are royally screwed by people who care more about jailing a paedophile than about the well-being of the child.
some never manage to live normal lives. Fact: Consensual sex with other kids before 18 doesn't not lead to any harm and is perfectly ok in most cases. Please tell me how it is so much different in case of an adult? Physically sexual contact with adult is possible as early as in 5 years or so. Psychologically some kids are ready as early and many are ready around 12 years or so.
I don't believe you are a monster; I just believe you are an ignorant fool.:)
Of course I can't guarantee you that a random paedophile would not try to seduce your kids. But neither can I prove that your random neighbour will not simply kill them or steal your car, or poison your cat, or anything like that. There is no need to single out all paedophiles as some sort of maniacs without self-control.
But what I can guarantee you is that there definitely are some people who look at child porn, but who are normal people, just like you and me. I know some and I would even trust them to look after my kids, just like I would trust another friend of mine who enjoys BDSM roleplay.
I mean, this is just porn. Here at/. we usually laugh at the notion that video-games can turn a normal person into a murderous freak. How then could photos of naked kids having sex change a person into a creep? If you compare these two things, the games are more likely to be dangerous, because there is interactivity, people "train" to become killers. With child porn there is none. Rape porn is legal and it apparently doesn't turn viewers into rapists. Then why do people assume that watching child porn will turn everyone into a paedophile and child abuser?
If I said to you "my sister-in-law regularly goes to the local river and watches and smells the toxic sludge that was dumped there by your relatives. Does that mean she's a creep?" what would be your reaction?
Consumers of child porn are different. There are apparently many innocent consumers, whose only wrongdoing is that they are sexually aroused by scenes of kids in erotic/sexual situations. These people do not pay for child porn (so no money for the producers) and they do not act on their fantasies (if they even have paedophilic fantasies). What is wrong with having on your PC an image of a child having sex? I have much more disgusting images in my browser cache after a visit to rotten.com. How does me having such image cause any harm to anyone else? I don't see that. And furthermore, how does having such an image suddenly change a person from moral and ethical one, who works for a respectable software company, has a social security number, pays his taxes, and helps the landlady carry out her garbage, into a creep? Do you really think such moral absolutism is possible?
So, in summary 1) I don't see how consumers who do not pay for child porn and are sane enough not to harm any children themselves can cause any noticable harm. 2) Watching child porn may not be the most ethical thing to do, but I fail to see how everyone who does that, immediately turns into a creep (unless he is a LEO, in which case he is immune).
In addition to that I want you to realise that for many children that are filmed for child porn this is not a big deal. In many countries you can get a blowjob from a 13-year old girl for 5 bucks. Do you think posing for some pictures would really do her any additional harm? What about hungry and homeless orphans? Sometimes (not always, of course) they even love (like) the person who exploits them for child porn because at least with him they are fed and have a place they can call their home. I am not even saying anything about those hundreds of millions of kids who live on less than 1$/day (guess how long do they live on average). Do you still think the problem of child porn has any relevance whatsoever?
I am not a monster - I am just a rational person, who is able to see through the media-induced bloodlust and who is happy to live in a country where posession of any and all digital materials on your PC are legal and where a thought can no longer be a crime.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't want to sound like a troll, but America is clearly sick if what you are saying is really true.
Here is a great versatile censorship tool being created. Imagine that I am a police officer and I don't TV crew filming me beating innocent people. I will just wear a shirt (or a badge) with original copyrighted artwork, or one of my teammates will hold a poster with such artwork. We can even use DeCSS code there for extra protection. :) Now if the TV channel broadcasts the material, we can sue them for theft of our property. Intellectual property, that is. The same can be done by theives. Just hold such poster clearly visible to security camera when breaking into a building and then sue the security company if they want to use this record in court. :)
Yes, the rights of the artist are protected by default, but I don't see them being infriged in this case. This is fair use and hopefully the case will be thrown away from the court.
In some cases, the amount of material copied is so small (or "de minimis") that the court permits it without even conducting a fair use analysis. For example, in the motion picture Seven, several copyrighted photographs appeared in the film, prompting the copyright owner of the photographs to sue the producer of the movie. The court held that the photos "appear fleetingly and are obscured, severely out of focus, and virtually unidentifiable." The court excused the use of the photographs as "de minimis" and a fair use analysis was not required. ( Sandoval v. New Line Cinema Corp., 147 F.3d 215 (2d Cir. 1998).)
See Stanford Copyright & Fair Use site for more details
In this GTA case the graffiti does not form a significant portion of the game and most people will not notice them.
It might be extremely cool, especially with low values for the "throw away" distance. What is a huge annoyance in GTA (characters and vehicles disappear) can become an excellent feature if applied to levels, especially if it can be done in complete 3D (unlimited in a vertical dimension as well). Add to that some crazy style (crazier than American McGee's Alice) and you have a cool and innovative game on your hands. The story could be about the world that fell into chaos and your quest to bring order back. The plot could be purport-oriented and not space-oriented. If you had to find a key, it would not have a preset location in this chaotic world, but you would be able to find it after some time and after doing some things, but regardless of the directions you travel to. There can be some huge geographical features, like giant chasms, magic castles or something, that would provide some orientation, but most of the map would be randomly generated. What do you think?
I think mixing close-quarters combat with open-space combat can help. By creating a balanced map (enough space for driving and enough space for running without worrying too much about being run over), this problem can easily be solved.
Hey, officer, I paid 2000 bucks for this automatic gun and I though this includes a licence to fire at will. What do you mean it wasn't ok to fire at the school bus? Sue the gun store, not me! Where are you taking me?! Heeeeelp!
it lets emergency services find idiots who phone 911 and then fail to give their location
I don't like the idea very much too, but it's not only idiots. A week ago there was a Discovery program about a derailed train. When the conductor called 911, he couldn't give the exact location, because all he knew was that the train derailed, fell into some river and half of it is burning right now (another half is under water already). It didn't look like he was an idiot, just like a person, who didn't know his exact location. And there was more than one bridge where that could happen, so it took emergency services some considerable time to find them.
They don't need a GPS to trace a criminal. Most criminals are in prisons already. It's the suspects who are walking around.
Another thing is that you theoretically can use high compression on the calls, when it's needed, like when another skyscraper is blown up or another state loses electricity. It's not like people would complain about quality then. And it would also help with benign events, like New Year or something, when people want to make a lot of calls, since you can do with less extra capacity. Lower costs for telecoms, lower prices for customers.
I don't know why, but most mouse manufacturers are too cheap to include a decent long cord. I've seen numerous times in corporate environments a mouse located in an extremely uncomfortable position, simply because the cord is too short. At home I have a 3 meter extension cord, but wireless would be better still. And, more importantly, I will not have to worry about the [too rigid] cord impeding the "up" movements of the mouse on my cluttered desk.
It would be even more important for text input. Make such thimble wireless (kind of obvious) and connect it to Palm handheld to input graffity with it. A ring instead of a thimble would look even better. It should be possible to do it already, expect something like this on the market in a couple years.
Do you know that these Joes and Janes do not know that e-mail addresses are easily spoofable. You can't do it in Outlook, but you can do it in any decent client. I don't know, why no one uses that yet, but I can send your client a message with your return address and call him a fucking asshole. Since most people are not aware that e-mail addresses can be forged, he will assume that you did it. I can also send him a request for some confidential documents with your From address and some other Reply-To field, which hopefully would be hidden.
That's what you get by hiding extra functionality from users in this case.
Since it has been demonstrated time and time again for centuries, yes I do.
:)
:) BTW, you forgot to mention that cars are also environmentally friendly.
:)
Could you please back up this assertion with any sources? I was not aware that one can prove that there are no better solutions than current one (market generated) for a given economical problem (maximising common good or call it total wealth). If, on the other hand, you found a proof yourself, publish it and expect a Nobel Prize very soon.
Or may be, you found a way to travel back in time and change the starting conditions, so that you can set historical experiments and test different economic systems under different conditions? Then a Nobel Prize in phisics is in order.
Sorry, but to me the only thing that you prove once again is that you are in fact brainwashed.
which is the optimal solution: it offers convenience, privace, speed and cheapness
Surely cars are cheaper than public transportation. That's a typical case of scale economy - a giant SUV is surely more efficient than a small bus.
who would prefer to live their own lives
It's really nice to live in the world where your actions have no negative effect on others whatsoever.
Indeed, brainwashed you are.
Like any socialist, when it gets right down to it, you're no different from Stalin, Mao, the NSDAP &c.
I wonder if this can qualify under Goodwin's Law... If yes, then you just lost the argument.
And the obvious difference between IT and steel/auto/agriculture/whatever industry is that Indian programmers are not imports, like hi-fi stereos. They are cheap resources for IT companies. I am sure American government will do nothing if Pakistanis decide to move to Michigan or Pennsylvania and replace millions of American steel workers.
No one really gets shafted with IT. I mean, no company does, and we all know how much the government cares about people.
Have anybody seen a comparison of DirectX8 and DirectX9 visual quality? It doesn't have to be Half-Life2 (although that would be preferable), just something to see what value brings DirectX9 for the player.
I have GeForce Ti4200 (DX8) and it looks like it will be possible to get up to 30FPS in 1024x768, no FSAA. Alternatively, I can get a new Radeon 9600 Pro for 150$ and get the same or better performance in the same resolution, but with DX9 eye-candy and FSAA enabled.
Is it worth it? I assume that the cool demos we've seen have been recorded with DX9. How much worse will the game look in DX8? Any ideas?
I am calling you an idiot not because I don't have better arguments, but because you prove that you are incapable of understanding and using logic. In this post you do the same at least five times. I will not write a detailed rebuttal of your "arguments", I will simply point just the main flaws.
1) I didn't mean to prove that you personally are guilty of exploitation - simply to show that with standards that you use almost everyone exploits someone to some extent. I could have given more examples so that at least some are surely true in your case, but that was not the point.
2) By giving "personal satisfaction" to the person who gave me child porn I have an extremely miniscule impact on the overall situation or on the final abused kid. If you think this qualifies as being guilty, then you are guilty of every murder commited by US Army. You pay taxes and you probably voted either for Clinton (Yugoslavia) or for Bush (Afganistan and Iraq). Ergo you directly support child murdurers "in a very real way".
3) Falsy dichotomy regarding the age of consent. There is another option - individuals are free to have consensual sex. If someone suspects that consent could not be given, the police is informed and state may choose to prosecute. In this case courts only need to spend their time on cases that have some merit, i.e. when they would have probably been involved anyway.
In the parent message I called you an idiot, because of the utter stupidity of the last paragraph of your post. May be you should get a decent monitor or buy glasses, because you obvsiously have problems with recognising shades of grey.
Persuading != coercion. Sexual contact (or anything else) can be neither completely voluntary, nor exploitation. And you also ignored the point that I made in the grandgrandparent post about ability of children to choose (this time completely and totally voluntarily) to be in porn.
Please, get your logic facilities back online and hopefully nobody will have to resort to calling you an idiot.
Thanks for an interesting post, I tend to agree with many things.
:) :) First, after he had an orgasm, he is not exactly in the mood to order a DVD. Second, you can't easily order a child porn DVD. And third, the quality is probably not the most important factor - paedophiles are quite different from auidophiles. ;) So, honestly, I don't think that downloading the file feed the industry somehow, especially because nobody downloads the files directly from sellers of child porn, no, it's downloaded from the guy, how downloaded it from the guy, who ...... who found it on some obscure BBS and nobody knows how it got there.
But not with all.
Replace "a child porn image" with "an mp3" and you'll have 100,000 people here jumping on your throat to explain you.
These are very different industries. You can't really imagine a person downloading a crappy MPEG child porn video, enjoying it and then ordering a DVD, can you?
My point about grey areas was simply to illustrate that the whole problem is not as black and white as many people in this discussion assume. You see, I agree that making child porn generally (on average) is a bad thing, but I disagree that one photo equals one completely maimed, twisted, fucked up innocent kid with incurable psychological problems for the next 1000 years. There are much worse things that are done to kids, like simply raping them without photos, like killing them, like bombing them from the sky, like suicide-bombing them when they have a disco or a wedding, like destroying the school system and fucking up their mentality more than any paedophile ever could. And then you have bullying in school, you have all kinds of crap that kids have to endure every day in every corner of this beautiful blue speck flying through space... And to single out one particular problem and proclaim it the root of all evil is simply untrue and it smells like a witchhunt.
If you remove the negative impact of parents+police+psychiatrist from the child abuse case, I am not sure if the long-term damage is greater than from a very bad teacher at school. Exploring their sexuality is natural for kids, often they do it with other kids of the same age, sometimes with older children, sometimes with teenagers and sometimes with adults. There are many well-known cases when there is no psychological damage to kids whatsoever. Sex doesn't kill.
Yes, if the abuser kidnaps the child, rapes him/her, enslaves and forces to pose for child porn, this is bad. No doubt about it. But the fact that the child is exploited for child porn is irrelevant. It's not the picture that harms him/her, it's the abuse from the adult authority figure who somehow controls the kid. Poor treatment of the child is not a requirement of child porn. It's simply a consequence of the socio-economic situation. If you can buy a same kid for 100$ in that country, you won't treat him/her well. When child porn was legit a few decades ago, it was definitely a much smaller problem (in Europe and the US). Yes, it never was mainstream, because the sexual revolution didn't not penetrate the whole society to a necessary extent, but it was a much lighter topic. If child porn was to be legalised today, models would be treated the same or better as child actors in movies, TV films and fashion industry are treated. There are definitely many kids (defined as younger than 18) who can have sex without going crazy after it. Some of them would probably be happy to earn good money by starring in child porn. Of course, we can't expect legalisation any time soon, although I hoped that virtual child porn would emerge as a substitute for real child porn. Apparently, people/companies are so scared by the government and the media, that they are afraid to touch this in any way.
I hope you see that there is nothing inherently bad about child porn photos/videos. Now the question of is it moral/ethical to download child porn now, when most of it isn't made in noble ways. We
The fact that you are not directly exploiting children by downloading child porn does not change the fact that you are indirectly exploiting them.
Ok then. You are indirectly exploiting children too. Your [insert something here] is paid by taxes, including sales taxes on Nike sneakers that are made with slave labour. Have you bought a diamond for your girlfriend? You are indirectly exploiting African kids and adults. And you don't really want to know to what is done to people there. Child rape is nothing compared to that. You also indirectly exploit millions of black slaves that helped build American economy. And you indirectly exploit the kid who brings you newspaper, as well as the kid who cleans the machine shop that repairs the truck that brings the supplies to your favourite diner. Enough? Indirect exploitation is neither a crime nor an immoral thing. If I look at child porn, I do not exploit anyone directly. When you visit Louvre and see an old painting with a cherub - that's a kid exploited at some moment in time. So what? My hands are clean.
which teaches them that sex is an acceptable substitute for actual affection, which cannot be healthy and is likely to leave an indelible mark on a young mind.
Affection? What the hell are you talking about?! You don't understand anything. A much greater mark was left on her mind by death of her many brothers and sisters (they starved to death or died without basic medical care) and extremely harsh conditions in which she had to live. Becoming a prostitute was the only way out of the horrific existence she led and the only way to support her family. That was one hell of a mark. Having sex or posing nude for camera adds nothing to that. She is already desensitized to that, it took her only few weeks (or days). If you choose not to abuse her and decide not to sleep with her, she would hate you (or simply don't like you) because the money you would pay, would support her and her family for a week or so.
There is no gray area in the case of children who choose to be in pornography. An adult can make an informed decision.
Yep. When a person becomes 18 y.o., in that very instant the brain changes - he/she becomes capable of making informed decisions. To children in Holland this happens 2 years earlier. If there birthday is known incorrectly, the brain adapts and becomes capable of making informed decisions earlier or later, to comply with this arbitrary date. The kid in America can make an informed decision to kill someone and be executed for that, but he/she can't make an informed decision to have some sex or pose for porn.
You, sir, are an idiot.
But not as happy as they would be with their cars (we know this, because the vast majority of people, fully acquainted with the advantages and disadvantages of both, prefer personal transport over public).
Nope. Economy is not additive and Pareto-optimal doesn't mean the best solution. Americans are trapped with the cars. There might be millions of options, but they can't be reached without making their position worse temporarily. That's why market can't help.
If it's what people want, by definition it's not crap.
25% or so of all Americans are complete idiots. That's the fact.
Please read this. Idiots are idiots. There are things I know better indeed.
Sure--but there are many times more other people than there are Gateses. It balances out.
You can't call it fair when one person (Gates) is billions of times more important than another (some poor fellow in Africa). Not by using any sensible definition of "fair".
To sum it up, you believe that market is the best solution by defintion. This is simple brainwashing by the American propaganda machine and there is simply nothing that I can do. I don't have time and resources to explain to you why this is stupid to believe that market is good because it is market and the market is good. You wouldn't listen to me either (long enough for this to have any effect). It looks like you can't even comprehend that market might not be the best and optimal solution. Well, bad for you.
But who is a dealer? If I upload my collection of child porn to the website and share it for free, am I a dealer? How is anyone abused or exploited when I do it? What if someone shares the collection of child porn that was made before it was outlawed? Scans from paper magazines that were openly sold in sex shops in the US and Europe. Does such "dealer" exploit or abuse children? And what about dealers who are loved by the "abused" kids, because he was able to provide them with food, shelter and some (although perverted) love that they long lived without? Are they scum? What about the person who films his meeting with a child prostitute? Is it abuse if she is already a prostitute and was for several years already? Is he responsible for that? How does filming her and selling/sharing the film cause her any more harm?
And what about children who choose to be in porn? Certainly if adults can choose it, so can some of the kids. And even if they don't choose it completely voluntarily, there is a large grey area between being forced under the point of the gun and choosing it out of your free will. Certainly kidnapping and raping is bad, but what about persuading over a long period to start posing and then having seducing to have sex? Is it as bad as rape?
The point about the sister-in-law was that looking at the result of someone's bad action is not bad itself. Otherwise how would you watch the evening news? As for producing child porn or ordering it, I completely and wholeheartedly agree - both things can have negative impact on kids. But getting it for free doesn't. Same, killing someone or paying for the murder is bad - reading about it in the newspaper or watching the dead body on TV is not bad.
Another thing, these kids aren't just posing. Many of them are being held hostage and raped.
And many of them are not. Kidnapping and rape are crimes even if no pictures is made. Some child porn was/is made with consent of children and sometimes even parents and doesn't harm children (especially the legit porn from 70s and 80s) or harms them less than the alternative (starving).
If everyone in this country started looking at child porn, you can bet the number of abducted or exploited children would skyrocket!
Take it for what it's worth, but I've heard that some time ago paedophiles offered FBI to help with fighting child abuse if existing child porn would be legalised (at least de-facto). Of course, that didn't happen. But really, think of the amount of porn. I would bet there is already enough of it, so everyone could watch the same existing images and the number of abducted children would stay roughly the same.
NO child under the age of 18 can consent to committing sexual acts...period. :) I know some people who have been able to consent to sex before 18 just fine. I probably would consent myself if anyone offered. :) And whole countries like Holland somehow manage with this "problem". :))))
:)
That's hilarious.
The so-called "innocents" that you describe are not quite so innocent. They continue to feed an industry
Tell me please, how downloading a child porn image from a free anonymous website feeds any industry? I can only see how it starves the industry by wasting precious traffic.
Your twisted rationality is that these children are so much better off...but are they? Do you really think that the children are the true beneficiaries of any of that money?
Usually not. But you can't ignore things like schoolgirl prostitutes in Japan (although it is controlled by yakudza to some extent) and the fact that sometimes selling yourself is the only way to get something to eat. Great that you don't need to do that. Many people are not so lucky. As I said elsewhere, there are hundreds of children living on under 1$/day. Do you realise that they might have different standards of what is acceptable?
If you were in the U.S. and dirt poor with a couple of kids, would you send out your 13 year-old daughter to give out BJs for $5?
I didn't mean the US. It's a fucked up country but hopefully not as fucked up as that. But in other places some kids (and not their parents, simply because they are orphans) don't have other choice. Of course, there is stealing and begging, but these might be more dangerous and less profitable.
Then when they kids get older, what are they worth and how much emotional baggage do they get to carry with them for the rest of their lives?
Do you realise that these kids often have more emotional baggage already than you can accumulate over your whole life? The problem of child porn is not that evil pedophile scum kidnaps an American white honour student and forces her to pose for child porn (though RIAA might do that if next 12-year old will not have $2000 to pay ransom). The problem is that there are already some kids for whom child porn is an ok way to get money. You can't fix this problem by through child porn viewers in jail. These kids are fucked up because of the socio-economical situation in their countries. These are more difficult so solve.
Like most trial lawyers, it's the brokers of the porn that make the money by their resale...not the people photographed.
Sure. But
1) Kids usually get something and that "something" is often valuable enough (like food, shelter, alcohol and drugs - they are often already addicts, sorry) for them not to worry about potential psychological problems.
2) Once the damage is done, those who distribute it for free do not cause any additional harm to the kids (neither to those filmed, nor to any other kids) and even somewhat harm the child porn industry by providing free substitute. If more people can get free child porn, less people will be willing to pay someone to make new one (although that would mean those kids will starve...).
Fact: People who are aroused by images of children engaging in sexual acts are a very small minority.
:) Now that was sick. Compared with that any child porn would look mainstream.
:) And as I said elsewhere, rape porn is legal and it doesn't turn people into rapists. Why should child porn be different. Most people are capable of self-control and know the difference between fantasy and reality.
:)
Yep. So what? People who are aroused by images of pregnant chicks or by wearing diapers are a minority as well. Does that mean these practices should also be prohibited?
Fact: The vast majority of people are sickened by such images.
False. Reality is that the majority of people have never seen such images. And just like everyone and his dog in the USSR was against Boris Pasternak when party started the famous defamation campaign without even reading any of his poems. There are some sick child porn images, but then there are many normal ones that would probably make a normal person aroused, not sick. As for the sick porn, the sickest I ever saw was some sadistic anime with some pretty girls cut into slices alive.
Fact: Viewing of such images is very strongly correlated with acting on the fantasies represented there, in other words having sex with children.
First, any data is skewed, because as you are well aware, people do not normally reveal the fact that they enjoy child porn. The only ones that we know about are those that were busted by the police. Not a very representative sample. Second, correlation does not equal causation. Obviously, child abusers would be interested in child porn, but that doesn't mean that child porn viewers are likely to become child abusers.
Do straight guys seek out gay porn?
Do straight guys seek out lesbian porn? Again, there is some correlation between your tastes in porn and your sexual preferences, but trust me, not every hentai fan wants to be raped by a giant squid.
Coercing children to have sex--raping children--causes profound psychological damage which takes at minimum years for them to get over.
1) You can have sex without coercing anyone. You ignore the fact that some kids might be ok with having sex with adults. Consensual sex with kids is illegal in the US, but there is nothing unethical about it.
2) Raping kids is not much different from raping adults. And nobody is advocating raping humans of any age (of course, I mean real rape, statutory rape is ok in many cases). But there is no proof that child porn viewers will turn to raping kids in reality.
3) There are some indications that psychological damage is caused by joint efforts of police, family and psychologists. Many kids are just fine after having sex with adult, but are royally screwed by people who care more about jailing a paedophile than about the well-being of the child.
some never manage to live normal lives.
Fact: Consensual sex with other kids before 18 doesn't not lead to any harm and is perfectly ok in most cases.
Please tell me how it is so much different in case of an adult? Physically sexual contact with adult is possible as early as in 5 years or so. Psychologically some kids are ready as early and many are ready around 12 years or so.
I don't believe you are a monster; I just believe you are an ignorant fool.
Of course I can't guarantee you that a random paedophile would not try to seduce your kids. But neither can I prove that your random neighbour will not simply kill them or steal your car, or poison your cat, or anything like that. There is no need to single out all paedophiles as some sort of maniacs without self-control.
/. we usually laugh at the notion that video-games can turn a normal person into a murderous freak. How then could photos of naked kids having sex change a person into a creep? If you compare these two things, the games are more likely to be dangerous, because there is interactivity, people "train" to become killers. With child porn there is none. Rape porn is legal and it apparently doesn't turn viewers into rapists. Then why do people assume that watching child porn will turn everyone into a paedophile and child abuser?
But what I can guarantee you is that there definitely are some people who look at child porn, but who are normal people, just like you and me. I know some and I would even trust them to look after my kids, just like I would trust another friend of mine who enjoys BDSM roleplay.
I mean, this is just porn. Here at
If I said to you "my sister-in-law regularly goes to the local river and watches and smells the toxic sludge that was dumped there by your relatives. Does that mean she's a creep?" what would be your reaction?
Consumers of child porn are different. There are apparently many innocent consumers, whose only wrongdoing is that they are sexually aroused by scenes of kids in erotic/sexual situations. These people do not pay for child porn (so no money for the producers) and they do not act on their fantasies (if they even have paedophilic fantasies). What is wrong with having on your PC an image of a child having sex? I have much more disgusting images in my browser cache after a visit to rotten.com. How does me having such image cause any harm to anyone else? I don't see that. And furthermore, how does having such an image suddenly change a person from moral and ethical one, who works for a respectable software company, has a social security number, pays his taxes, and helps the landlady carry out her garbage, into a creep? Do you really think such moral absolutism is possible?
So, in summary
1) I don't see how consumers who do not pay for child porn and are sane enough not to harm any children themselves can cause any noticable harm.
2) Watching child porn may not be the most ethical thing to do, but I fail to see how everyone who does that, immediately turns into a creep (unless he is a LEO, in which case he is immune).
In addition to that I want you to realise that for many children that are filmed for child porn this is not a big deal. In many countries you can get a blowjob from a 13-year old girl for 5 bucks. Do you think posing for some pictures would really do her any additional harm? What about hungry and homeless orphans? Sometimes (not always, of course) they even love (like) the person who exploits them for child porn because at least with him they are fed and have a place they can call their home. I am not even saying anything about those hundreds of millions of kids who live on less than 1$/day (guess how long do they live on average). Do you still think the problem of child porn has any relevance whatsoever?
I am not a monster - I am just a rational person, who is able to see through the media-induced bloodlust and who is happy to live in a country where posession of any and all digital materials on your PC are legal and where a thought can no longer be a crime.