So you would say it's justified to kill people for what they are, for a character trait they didn't have a choice in developing? What's next, killing off other undesirable humans? I think we should be above that, but then again I'm German and we learned our lecture about selectively killing off undesirable people very thoroughly.
I maintain that prevention is a much better idea than retaliation. If we can keep the paedophiles from assaulting children in the first place we create a better environment both for them and the children. Self-help groups help alcoholics, substitutes (methadone) help heroin addicts and psychological counseling* helps lots of different people to ignore what their subconscious is telling them. All of them could keep paedophiles "clean".
If we have an environment where being a paedophile means that someone out there definitely wants to kill you and you can't even seek help because that has a high probability of ruining your life - no wonder they rape and kill children! You - yes, you are why they do! When murder is only a relatively minor offense in comparison to child rape then killing of the kid in order to improve the chance of getting away with the rape is the only logical choice. And when it's absolutely impossible to get relief or adequate help dealing with the urges in a socially acceptable way then raping a child is the only choice at all.
So in essence (and both karma and Godwin be damned), your stance is not only not a single bit above the social darwinists in the brown shirts, it's also among the most child-hostile stances one could possibly take. I hope you're happy that children die in the name of violence, because that's what you fight for.
* Note that I don't say it's a psychic disorder or should be treated like one. It isn't and it shouldn't. But the psychologists do give people the tools to work around the quirks of their psyche and that could be useful.
The solution is simple: Only take things you absolutely have to when you go or from to the United States. Data doesn't have to travel with you; you can either transmit it in and out of the country via VPN or have a logistics service transport the hard drive to your destination in a parcel. Laptops shouldn't cross the border. Electronic devices shouldn't, as well. Maybe an iPod or an NDS, but still it'd be better to travel without them.
Just assume that every additional item you bring with you will be seen as an additional potential bomb/hidden weapon/evil secret data storage device. America is a fearful place; no need to further scare them by bringing gadgets with you.
Well, in my country movies with people killing each other are prefectly legal. A free-TV station has Saw 2 in their May lineup. Saw 2 ist quite disturbing and anyone performing the acts shown within would end up in preventive detention for life. For some reason, though, RTL doesn't get shut down for showing it.
Why is Saw 2 legal? Because the acts shown within aren't really performed. They're just cuts, camera angles and special effects. Nobody really dies. A very important distinction.
The interesting question is now: What about animated/rendered child porn? It's child porn, but no actual children are involved in the acts shown. If we say it's illegal because the acts are illegal then 90% of what Hollywood produces immediately becomes illegal as well, because it also show (and often glorifies) illegal acts. We can't say that mere concepts are illegal in one case and completely irrelevant in another.
And even if we can define a particular concept as so abhorrent that it may not be depicted we don't magically eliminate the concept. There's the same effect seen during the prohibition or the War on Drugs: Making something illegal doesn't make it go away, it merely pushes it underground, where there are no laws and checks. It also means that any money paid for the stuff automatically goes to criminals. Both results aren't desirable, especially not with respect to child porn.
Also, there's the question of whether banning all kinds of child porn isn't actually harmful.
Paedophilia is a sexual preference. You don't usually get to choose those, you just end up with one or more of them. Telling someone to stop having that preference doesn't work at all. So we absolutely can not expect anything positive from criminalizing and demonizing those who have it. We have to deal with it in a constructive manner if we want to help the children (and the paedophiles as well; they too deserve help).
I think that legalizing certain kinds of child porn (namely drawn/animated/rendered stuff where the producer can vouch that no children came to harm during the production) as something for the paedophiles to blow off steam over would be a step in the right direction: An environment where paedophilia is seen more as a controllable urge rather than a demonic possession that automatically turns one into a subhuman.
"Safe" porn, self-help groups, maybe government-sponsored programs that train paedophiles to better control themselves - all those things might help them to better live with what they are, without raping someone out of sexual frustration and then killing them out of fear. Paedophiles aren't automatically homicidal rape monsters, but our current society is the perfect environment to turn them into that.
Or we could just wait until the next child is raped and killed and have a great witch burning for the media to salivate over.
It's really amazing how few people are actually able to treat topics like paedophilia as adults. Most revert to a primal state of instincitvely trying to kill that which looks threatening, even if the threat could be largely mitigated.
Boll really needs to make a Sashdot movie. It'd be awesome and it would have absolutely no relation to this site whatsoever. Well, maybe they'd mention the internet at one point.
Not to forget that important parts of the movie would take place on an island and during a raid on an abandoned mine. Also, Rogues could throw fireballs and the hero would be a Tauren goat-man working for the Alliance.
Yeah, he's not so big with faithful reproductions.
We just use the extension.docx for the legacy format and.docy for the new one. The next revision of the OOXML standard will then use.docz and the one after that.docaa...
If your standard is full of shit, clap your hands.
If your standard is full of shit, clap your hands.
If your standard is full of shit and you really want to show it,
If your standard is full of shit clap your hands.
If you can't implement the damn thing, clap your hands.
If you can't implement the damn thing, clap your hands.
If you can't implement the damn thing and the mere thought sends you crying,
If you can't implement the damn thing, clap your hands.
If the developers are dying, clap your hands.
If the developers are dying, clap your hands.
If the developers are dying 'cause Steve Ballmer's chairs are flying
If the developers are dying, clap your hands.
That was fun, kids! And next up is an exciting new episode of Billy Rich! Today, Billy buys Norway!
Where does 1024 follow from a byte having eight bits? 1024 is not a power of eight. It's divisible by eight, but so are more reaonable numbers like 512, 4096 or 32768.
But still, if we assume a byte to be one unit we can as well use powers of ten.
Of course you could argue that the tendency of certain things (like RAM chips) to have sizes that are powers of two might imply using a power of two in language usage. But then again, lots of other things don't use power of two (e.g. most storage media and almost everything transmission-related). Who prevails? Do we follow RAM usage and have non-fitting storage and transmission? Do we follow storage/transmission and have non-fitting RAM? Do we follow xkcd and settle on 1012 bytes per kilobyte?
Or, of course, we just use unambiguous prefixes so people know which base we use. If you don't like "kibibyte" you can lobby IEC to instead adopt "computer science (not storage) kilobyte (CSkB)" and "general standard kilobyte (GSkB)".
For transfer rates, "kilo-" usually means "1000". Transferring 1 kB of data at 1 kB/s takes longer than one second because 1 kB of storage != 1 kB of bandwidth.
Yeah, but the probability of stuff like prions forming is nonzero, people are easily influenced and the media are sure to write articles with headlines like: "MUTANT MEAT MADNESS!Will clone cows make us all die of Alzheimer's?"
I agree that it's unlikely that a killer mutation randomly forms in clone meat, but as long as there is a chance, people will insist on paranoia-level checks. For about three months, until the tabloids discover that "THIS IMMIGRANT (might have) RAPED A GIRL". But with a bit of luck enough of the sentiment sticks at the government level to insure reasonable quality checks for vat-grown meat.
Also, have you never seen Threshold? The mere presence of a piece of wood that has been in contact with noise made by an UFO weeks ago might rewrite my DNA, so surely vat-grown meat would easily be able to turn me into an evil space monster from hell!
(Aside: I would never have thought that you could turn Z-level mystery movies into a TV show. Compared to this, shows like Star Trek: The Next Generation or Dexter's Laboratory are paragons of sound science and common sense. Also, Brent Spiner plays the only character that isn't completely insane.)
If we go from stem cells we might actually get them to grow in such a way as to create, for example, a leg. Electrostimulation might train that leg (as I think a leg that never saw use is not going to produce good meat). Of course, once we're that far we might as well apply the same technology for therapeutic cloning. Vat-growing body parts would take too long, but taking high-compatibility donors and cloning their livers, kidneys , bone marrow etc. for transplantation might be feasible.
Of course there's the issue with cloned cells tending to have genetic anomalies. Having a DNA scan for every batch of meat would drive up the cost quite a lot.
A gag - now that's a good idea! All travelers are stripped naked, hogtied and (to preserve the modesty of the other travellers) blindfolded. They spend the entire time from checkin to checkout like that. That should make it very difficult to hijack a plane. In order to further improve airport security, the stripping happens as soon as you enter the airport for any reason (security personnel exempt). If anyone talks up they are fitted with an inflatable gag.
That's amazingly secure! People are going to love it!
Don't worry, ARMOR is a red-7 system and not connected to the airport's public PLTG.
(It's unlikely that they have ARMOR hooked up to the internet. And if you're capable of physically accessing airport security internal hardware you're a much bigger problem than a random smuggler anyway.)
Slashdot Mirror
So you would say it's justified to kill people for what they are, for a character trait they didn't have a choice in developing? What's next, killing off other undesirable humans? I think we should be above that, but then again I'm German and we learned our lecture about selectively killing off undesirable people very thoroughly.
I maintain that prevention is a much better idea than retaliation. If we can keep the paedophiles from assaulting children in the first place we create a better environment both for them and the children. Self-help groups help alcoholics, substitutes (methadone) help heroin addicts and psychological counseling* helps lots of different people to ignore what their subconscious is telling them. All of them could keep paedophiles "clean".
If we have an environment where being a paedophile means that someone out there definitely wants to kill you and you can't even seek help because that has a high probability of ruining your life - no wonder they rape and kill children! You - yes, you are why they do! When murder is only a relatively minor offense in comparison to child rape then killing of the kid in order to improve the chance of getting away with the rape is the only logical choice. And when it's absolutely impossible to get relief or adequate help dealing with the urges in a socially acceptable way then raping a child is the only choice at all.
So in essence (and both karma and Godwin be damned), your stance is not only not a single bit above the social darwinists in the brown shirts, it's also among the most child-hostile stances one could possibly take. I hope you're happy that children die in the name of violence, because that's what you fight for.
* Note that I don't say it's a psychic disorder or should be treated like one. It isn't and it shouldn't. But the psychologists do give people the tools to work around the quirks of their psyche and that could be useful.
The solution is simple: Only take things you absolutely have to when you go or from to the United States. Data doesn't have to travel with you; you can either transmit it in and out of the country via VPN or have a logistics service transport the hard drive to your destination in a parcel. Laptops shouldn't cross the border. Electronic devices shouldn't, as well. Maybe an iPod or an NDS, but still it'd be better to travel without them.
Just assume that every additional item you bring with you will be seen as an additional potential bomb/hidden weapon/evil secret data storage device. America is a fearful place; no need to further scare them by bringing gadgets with you.
Well, in my country movies with people killing each other are prefectly legal. A free-TV station has Saw 2 in their May lineup. Saw 2 ist quite disturbing and anyone performing the acts shown within would end up in preventive detention for life. For some reason, though, RTL doesn't get shut down for showing it.
Why is Saw 2 legal? Because the acts shown within aren't really performed. They're just cuts, camera angles and special effects. Nobody really dies. A very important distinction.
The interesting question is now: What about animated/rendered child porn? It's child porn, but no actual children are involved in the acts shown. If we say it's illegal because the acts are illegal then 90% of what Hollywood produces immediately becomes illegal as well, because it also show (and often glorifies) illegal acts. We can't say that mere concepts are illegal in one case and completely irrelevant in another.
And even if we can define a particular concept as so abhorrent that it may not be depicted we don't magically eliminate the concept. There's the same effect seen during the prohibition or the War on Drugs: Making something illegal doesn't make it go away, it merely pushes it underground, where there are no laws and checks. It also means that any money paid for the stuff automatically goes to criminals. Both results aren't desirable, especially not with respect to child porn.
Also, there's the question of whether banning all kinds of child porn isn't actually harmful.
Paedophilia is a sexual preference. You don't usually get to choose those, you just end up with one or more of them. Telling someone to stop having that preference doesn't work at all. So we absolutely can not expect anything positive from criminalizing and demonizing those who have it. We have to deal with it in a constructive manner if we want to help the children (and the paedophiles as well; they too deserve help).
I think that legalizing certain kinds of child porn (namely drawn/animated/rendered stuff where the producer can vouch that no children came to harm during the production) as something for the paedophiles to blow off steam over would be a step in the right direction: An environment where paedophilia is seen more as a controllable urge rather than a demonic possession that automatically turns one into a subhuman.
"Safe" porn, self-help groups, maybe government-sponsored programs that train paedophiles to better control themselves - all those things might help them to better live with what they are, without raping someone out of sexual frustration and then killing them out of fear. Paedophiles aren't automatically homicidal rape monsters, but our current society is the perfect environment to turn them into that.
Or we could just wait until the next child is raped and killed and have a great witch burning for the media to salivate over.
It's really amazing how few people are actually able to treat topics like paedophilia as adults. Most revert to a primal state of instincitvely trying to kill that which looks threatening, even if the threat could be largely mitigated.
I asked for a Slashdot movie, although I could believe that the Boll production would hit the shelves as "Sashdot".
Also, the world really needs a Sashdot site. "Belts for nerds, sashes that matter". Hell yeah.
Boll really needs to make a Sashdot movie. It'd be awesome and it would have absolutely no relation to this site whatsoever. Well, maybe they'd mention the internet at one point.
Not to forget that important parts of the movie would take place on an island and during a raid on an abandoned mine. Also, Rogues could throw fireballs and the hero would be a Tauren goat-man working for the Alliance.
Yeah, he's not so big with faithful reproductions.
We just use the extension .docx for the legacy format and .docy for the new one. The next revision of the OOXML standard will then use .docz and the one after that .docaa...
Hey, children! Let's sing a happy little song!
If your standard is full of shit, clap your hands.
If your standard is full of shit, clap your hands.
If your standard is full of shit and you really want to show it,
If your standard is full of shit clap your hands.
If you can't implement the damn thing, clap your hands.
If you can't implement the damn thing, clap your hands.
If you can't implement the damn thing and the mere thought sends you crying,
If you can't implement the damn thing, clap your hands.
If the developers are dying, clap your hands.
If the developers are dying, clap your hands.
If the developers are dying 'cause Steve Ballmer's chairs are flying
If the developers are dying, clap your hands.
That was fun, kids! And next up is an exciting new episode of Billy Rich! Today, Billy buys Norway!
There is an easy solution: We stop the binary silliness and go with base-ten computers.
As was the guy wh used identical-sounding words for "bit" and "byte" - ask any French!
Sometimes a word doesn't work perfectly in all cultures. Tough. If you don't like it, exterminate all cultures except one.
Where does 1024 follow from a byte having eight bits? 1024 is not a power of eight. It's divisible by eight, but so are more reaonable numbers like 512, 4096 or 32768.
But still, if we assume a byte to be one unit we can as well use powers of ten.
Of course you could argue that the tendency of certain things (like RAM chips) to have sizes that are powers of two might imply using a power of two in language usage. But then again, lots of other things don't use power of two (e.g. most storage media and almost everything transmission-related). Who prevails? Do we follow RAM usage and have non-fitting storage and transmission? Do we follow storage/transmission and have non-fitting RAM? Do we follow xkcd and settle on 1012 bytes per kilobyte?
Or, of course, we just use unambiguous prefixes so people know which base we use. If you don't like "kibibyte" you can lobby IEC to instead adopt "computer science (not storage) kilobyte (CSkB)" and "general standard kilobyte (GSkB)".
For transfer rates, "kilo-" usually means "1000". Transferring 1 kB of data at 1 kB/s takes longer than one second because 1 kB of storage != 1 kB of bandwidth.
A kilobyte is 1024 bytes.
A megabyte is 1024 * 1000 = 1024000 bytes.
We have multiple definitions of what "mega-" means, so let's just go with the one used in the 3.5" floppy disk.
Yeah, but the probability of stuff like prions forming is nonzero, people are easily influenced and the media are sure to write articles with headlines like: "MUTANT MEAT MADNESS! Will clone cows make us all die of Alzheimer's?"
I agree that it's unlikely that a killer mutation randomly forms in clone meat, but as long as there is a chance, people will insist on paranoia-level checks. For about three months, until the tabloids discover that "THIS IMMIGRANT (might have) RAPED A GIRL". But with a bit of luck enough of the sentiment sticks at the government level to insure reasonable quality checks for vat-grown meat.
Also, have you never seen Threshold? The mere presence of a piece of wood that has been in contact with noise made by an UFO weeks ago might rewrite my DNA, so surely vat-grown meat would easily be able to turn me into an evil space monster from hell!
(Aside: I would never have thought that you could turn Z-level mystery movies into a TV show. Compared to this, shows like Star Trek: The Next Generation or Dexter's Laboratory are paragons of sound science and common sense. Also, Brent Spiner plays the only character that isn't completely insane.)
If we go from stem cells we might actually get them to grow in such a way as to create, for example, a leg. Electrostimulation might train that leg (as I think a leg that never saw use is not going to produce good meat). Of course, once we're that far we might as well apply the same technology for therapeutic cloning. Vat-growing body parts would take too long, but taking high-compatibility donors and cloning their livers, kidneys , bone marrow etc. for transplantation might be feasible.
Of course there's the issue with cloned cells tending to have genetic anomalies. Having a DNA scan for every batch of meat would drive up the cost quite a lot.
...how the moon's magnetotail would affect theoretical people on the Earth. We never went there, you know. It's scientifically impossible.
That's right, we Europeans are above randomly threatening people. And if anyone disagrees I'll smash his face in with a brick!
I couldn't help imagining that scene and the guy's facial expression is comedy gold. *g*
We have a bunch of DOS computers and each of them has a directory called ACTIVE. Works like a charm.
Dear eBay staff,
The link you sent me returned a 404 error. Can you send me the data via some other way? I can privide my home address and telephone number.
Sincerely,
Gullible I. Diot
Mac users aren't retarded, we're fashionably late. ;)
I recommend using DOSBox. It runs the game perfectly and you don't even need Windows.
A gag - now that's a good idea! All travelers are stripped naked, hogtied and (to preserve the modesty of the other travellers) blindfolded. They spend the entire time from checkin to checkout like that. That should make it very difficult to hijack a plane. In order to further improve airport security, the stripping happens as soon as you enter the airport for any reason (security personnel exempt). If anyone talks up they are fitted with an inflatable gag.
That's amazingly secure! People are going to love it!
Don't worry, ARMOR is a red-7 system and not connected to the airport's public PLTG.
(It's unlikely that they have ARMOR hooked up to the internet. And if you're capable of physically accessing airport security internal hardware you're a much bigger problem than a random smuggler anyway.)
How the hell did I make that mistake?