An extremely clear and cogent riposte, thank you, particularly since my orginal posting had a hint of flame about it.
As you say, the proposed law criminalizes what an act based on the fact that it offers potential resources to those with criminal intent. I suspect that there are an almost limitless number of such acts however, so focussing in on unsecured WiFi appears to be an odd and arbitrary selection.
Everything from dropping a $10 to giving your seat up on a bus could, in theory be aiding and abetting a criminal. That's one of the reasons I simply don't think the legislation will fly - it sets a precedent which would have all sorts of strange ramifications if law makers subsequently attempted to be consistent.
So let's be clear. You are in favour of strict penalties for anyone who leaves their house with a door unlocked on the grounds that the premises may be used for illegal behaviour?
In that case, I would like to propose compulsory content analysis and blocking on all backbone routers. Because you never know when someone somewhere might use the Internet for something distasteful.
I suspect that the proposed legislation has zero chance of getting anywhere.
This week; why social activist activity is like modding.
Next week, why modding and social activism are like biological viruses: 'both set out to commandeer the host and change its functions to their own end'.
The week after, why the IETF is like a shoemaker; both provide the tools that let people transfer information from place to place.
The difficulty with analogies is not creating them, but in creating ones that shed valuable light on either topic. This analogy doesn't help understaning of modding or social activism.
I think you probably nailed my problem on the head; I didn't want to be evil, yet it is impossible to get a non-whinging healthy population without being evil.
The school head is behaving stupidly and is missing an opportunity to actually educate.
The correct action, in my opinion would be for the school to put together an informative fact sheet talking about the potential risks of blogging etc. and how to mitigate them. This sheet should be sent home to the parents with a suggestion that you should discuss this with your child.
It would probably be worth devoting an assembly to getting an expert in (perhaps from the police or an ISP group) to talk the issues through with the children too.
The value of personal information and the problems inherent in giving it away too freely is something that everyone should be taught - the issues are not just applicable to blogging, taught properly it could help to protect these children from future problems of phishing scams, identity theft etc.
Err, the point about using the gestures was that you had to learn and practice to be good with them; particularly in combat when rushing the spells sometimes go wrong. I personally thought this was a bloody clever aspect to the game-play. Much more involving that simply clicking an 'annihilate enemies' button.
The main problem I had with the B+W 1 gameplay was the sheer amount of graft I seemed to have to do to keep my civilisation running. No matter how much I tried to train my population (or animal) to look after themselves, I seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time watering crops, placing individual huts etc...
Is that any better in version 2? I'd like the criters to get on with their lives more like Sim City
That's interesting stuff and I'm a big fan of Dennett. The problem is however that we won't be interfacing Xanadu directly to the underlying parallel fundamentals of the brain. It will have to work through the slow serial port.
So from a practical point of view the underlying cognitive architecture is moot.
I'm politically of a greenish hue and while I used to be anti-nuclear, it is now my belief that nuclear powers going to be the only way that we can realistically cut C02 emissions in the medium term while other technological fixes kick in. I feel passionately that anyone who is truly green will have to support nuclear power soon if we are going to avoid global environmental catastrophe.
Your point 5 about the difficult of handling nuclear waste is right on the money, yet 180 degrees out of wack. Yes nuclear waste is difficult to contain and is very dangerous. Yet it is an absolute walk in the park compared to handling the waste being pumped out by our fossil-fuel-based generators. You can't contain CO2 (yes I know there are some fancy plans to sequester it, but those are years out).
Nuclear waste has the potential to kill people living in large areas if something goes wrong. The threat and danger is apparent. People worry about it. C02 goes up a chimney and people don't worry about it at all, yet the threat is (in my opinion much much greater) we're not talking about large areas being contaminated for 100s of years - with C02 we are talking about the globe being 'contaminated' for millenia, possibly irreversibly.
Personally, as a London resident, I';d like to see a nice big nuclear power station built in the middle of London, and other major cities. "When you reduce you energy consumption sufficiently that we don't need it we will decommission it."
In answer to your initial point - yes, I also believe that we will have to promote peaceful nuclear proliferation. It's nasty stuff, but not as nasty and pervasive as the alternative.
Oh - scrap the manned Mars mission, put the money into fusion research.
Et voila, I've transformed myself into an Internet kook.
I don't see that the original poster has missed the point at all. Currently the disease is very bad news for birds and bad news for poultry workers, it has few implications for the general population. I think it's pretty inevitable that this will become a human-human infective virus, but we are not there yet.
Your analogy is over-simplistic. One of the key aspects of the open source methodology is to blur the distinction between 'provider' and 'customer'. A user of open source software is not necessarily simply a consumer.
I think you've pretty much missed the point of PDAs:
And really, do I need a computer just to go to the theater or out to dinner? Not really.
Let's see, you're out at dinner and one of your friends says "hey let's go to theatre, do have any free evenings the week after next and do you have Jenny's phone number". You going consult your laptop? Nope.
Among its efforts, the government has worked to shield private U.S. companies from demands by the United Nations and other countries for multilateral control of the Net."
we mean, of course that U.S politicians have worked to maintain their unilateral control of an international infrastructure
Excuse me, but doesn't "the last 3 star trek films" encompass First Contact? That was, in my opinion a truly splendid film, irrespective of whether you like ST. The more recent two were utter tripe, true.
Wow, that's a nice idea. That'll mean that all I have to do is run a bit of Ethernet into a peering point and I'll get free connections to all the tier ones. Fabulous.
Oh - hang on, if someone else runs a bit of Ethernet in, do I have to connect to them? Damn.
The fact is that taking that money out of a bank account deprives somebody of something they absolutely own. It is real and it has real value and if you remove it from somebody's possession, they have less value for it. Conversely, downloading a song might deprive somebody of something they might get.
OK, so if I steal someone's lottery ticket - that's not really theft because it might not be a winning lottery ticket. Is that a more palatable analogy for you?
Slashdot Mirror
An extremely clear and cogent riposte, thank you, particularly since my orginal posting had a hint of flame about it.
As you say, the proposed law criminalizes what an act based on the fact that it offers potential resources to those with criminal intent. I suspect that there are an almost limitless number of such acts however, so focussing in on unsecured WiFi appears to be an odd and arbitrary selection.
Everything from dropping a $10 to giving your seat up on a bus could, in theory be aiding and abetting a criminal. That's one of the reasons I simply don't think the legislation will fly - it sets a precedent which would have all sorts of strange ramifications if law makers subsequently attempted to be consistent.
So let's be clear. You are in favour of strict penalties for anyone who leaves their house with a door unlocked on the grounds that the premises may be used for illegal behaviour?
In that case, I would like to propose compulsory content analysis and blocking on all backbone routers. Because you never know when someone somewhere might use the Internet for something distasteful.
I suspect that the proposed legislation has zero chance of getting anywhere.
Speaking as someone who lives in London, UK, and is employed by a New York-based company, and pays UK taxes, I think I see a flaw in your argument.
Presumably that's the point; in the last 15 years you've seen literally millions of poorly or zero-targetted ads.
Google has nothing of interest to me, except search results.
And you know this, because....?
A fun game anyone can play.
This week; why social activist activity is like modding.
Next week, why modding and social activism are like biological viruses: 'both set out to commandeer the host and change its functions to their own end'.
The week after, why the IETF is like a shoemaker; both provide the tools that let people transfer information from place to place.
The difficulty with analogies is not creating them, but in creating ones that shed valuable light on either topic. This analogy doesn't help understaning of modding or social activism.
I think you probably nailed my problem on the head; I didn't want to be evil, yet it is impossible to get a non-whinging healthy population without being evil.
Precisely,
The school head is behaving stupidly and is missing an opportunity to actually educate.
The correct action, in my opinion would be for the school to put together an informative fact sheet talking about the potential risks of blogging etc. and how to mitigate them. This sheet should be sent home to the parents with a suggestion that you should discuss this with your child.
It would probably be worth devoting an assembly to getting an expert in (perhaps from the police or an ISP group) to talk the issues through with the children too.
The value of personal information and the problems inherent in giving it away too freely is something that everyone should be taught - the issues are not just applicable to blogging, taught properly it could help to protect these children from future problems of phishing scams, identity theft etc.
Err, the point about using the gestures was that you had to learn and practice to be good with them; particularly in combat when rushing the spells sometimes go wrong. I personally thought this was a bloody clever aspect to the game-play. Much more involving that simply clicking an 'annihilate enemies' button.
Well, the original version of B&W worked beautifully on the Mac; on this 800Mhz G4 iMac with 512MB RAM it was pretty smooth.
The main problem I had with the B+W 1 gameplay was the sheer amount of graft I seemed to have to do to keep my civilisation running. No matter how much I tried to train my population (or animal) to look after themselves, I seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time watering crops, placing individual huts etc...
Is that any better in version 2? I'd like the criters to get on with their lives more like Sim City
That's interesting stuff and I'm a big fan of Dennett. The problem is however that we won't be interfacing Xanadu directly to the underlying parallel fundamentals of the brain. It will have to work through the slow serial port.
So from a practical point of view the underlying cognitive architecture is moot.
And yet, and yet, you read this article and comment on it.
I'm politically of a greenish hue and while I used to be anti-nuclear, it is now my belief that nuclear powers going to be the only way that we can realistically cut C02 emissions in the medium term while other technological fixes kick in. I feel passionately that anyone who is truly green will have to support nuclear power soon if we are going to avoid global environmental catastrophe.
Your point 5 about the difficult of handling nuclear waste is right on the money, yet 180 degrees out of wack. Yes nuclear waste is difficult to contain and is very dangerous. Yet it is an absolute walk in the park compared to handling the waste being pumped out by our fossil-fuel-based generators. You can't contain CO2 (yes I know there are some fancy plans to sequester it, but those are years out).
Nuclear waste has the potential to kill people living in large areas if something goes wrong. The threat and danger is apparent. People worry about it. C02 goes up a chimney and people don't worry about it at all, yet the threat is (in my opinion much much greater) we're not talking about large areas being contaminated for 100s of years - with C02 we are talking about the globe being 'contaminated' for millenia, possibly irreversibly.
Personally, as a London resident, I';d like to see a nice big nuclear power station built in the middle of London, and other major cities. "When you reduce you energy consumption sufficiently that we don't need it we will decommission it."
In answer to your initial point - yes, I also believe that we will have to promote peaceful nuclear proliferation. It's nasty stuff, but not as nasty and pervasive as the alternative.
Oh - scrap the manned Mars mission, put the money into fusion research.
Et voila, I've transformed myself into an Internet kook.
" I mean, how many non-techie Mac users have anything except Adobe or Apple software on their systems?"
Well in my experience, about 90% of them have Microsoft Office installed, plus heaps of shareware/freeware
I don't see that the original poster has missed the point at all. Currently the disease is very bad news for birds and bad news for poultry workers, it has few implications for the general population. I think it's pretty inevitable that this will become a human-human infective virus, but we are not there yet.
Your analogy is over-simplistic. One of the key aspects of the open source methodology is to blur the distinction between 'provider' and 'customer'. A user of open source software is not necessarily simply a consumer.
I think you've pretty much missed the point of PDAs:
And really, do I need a computer just to go to the theater or out to dinner? Not really.
Let's see, you're out at dinner and one of your friends says "hey let's go to theatre, do have any free evenings the week after next and do you have Jenny's phone number". You going consult your laptop? Nope.
Wow, my first ever troll moderation. I guess sometimes the truth hurts.
And when we say
Among its efforts, the government has worked to shield private U.S. companies from demands by the United Nations and other countries for multilateral control of the Net."
we mean, of course that U.S politicians have worked to maintain their unilateral control of an international infrastructure
Excuse me, but doesn't "the last 3 star trek films" encompass First Contact? That was, in my opinion a truly splendid film, irrespective of whether you like ST. The more recent two were utter tripe, true.
Just FYI, it runs on Mac OS X just fine. So it's not just a Windows thing. If anything this makes it more puzzling that it doesn't run on Linux.
I don't quite understand why you feel animosity towards a post which is simply telling you that PostgreSQL has native Window builds.
you come across as the one who has the religion, not him.
Wow, that's a nice idea. That'll mean that all I have to do is run a bit of Ethernet into a peering point and I'll get free connections to all the tier ones. Fabulous.
Oh - hang on, if someone else runs a bit of Ethernet in, do I have to connect to them? Damn.
The fact is that taking that money out of a bank account deprives somebody of something they absolutely own. It is real and it has real value and if you remove it from somebody's possession, they have less value for it. Conversely, downloading a song might deprive somebody of something they might get.
OK, so if I steal someone's lottery ticket - that's not really theft because it might not be a winning lottery ticket. Is that a more palatable analogy for you?