Well, IANAL, but doesn't this somehow interfere with getting out the Truth(tm) and that whole Free Speach(tm) thing that everyone is always getting worked up about? I realize that this may be hurting their business, but if they suck so much that people feel the need to complain, don't they have the right to complain?
Free speech does not give the right to libel. It never has, and that has not changed with advent of the Internet.
Apple inherently lends itself to this problem by marketing its computers as "easy to use." So, inevitably you get heaps of people buying them who know absolutely nothing about computers and don't want to learn. As long as they can get on the internet they're all smiles!
Windows has exactly the same problem. I doubt that the clientele is much more technically savvy in Best Buy than in Apple stores.
Errr its a nice attempt at a troll but you let yourself down here... the US is the FIRST nation to enforce by force... and the last to resort to justice.
Justice is merely force that is applied in the right places (ie, the force is justified). The grandparent is not a troll. All law depends on enforcement. A lawyer can make a case and a judge can sentence a criminal to jail, but that's all just empty words unless someone is willing to use force to make the sentence happen.
That's not to say that all force is justice, and I don't believe the grandparent said that either.
I take issue with listing this as a "terrorist attack." The USS Cole is a US-flagged vessel of war, and if that's not a valid military target then I don't know what is.
This is an interesting point. Is it a terrorist attack because it was carried out in support of Al Qaeda? Or was it a legitimate military attack? If the latter, then the US was certainly within its rights to kill those responsible. Amnesty International complained that the USA should have arrested the suspects instead, so presumably they believe that terrorists retain the status of criminals even when they temporarily assume the role of lawful warriors.
9/11 had nothing to do with Iraq. Bin Laden claims 9/11 was because he wanted US forces out of Saudi Arabia.
Actually Bin Laden's 1996 declaration of war against America specifically mentioned Iraq:
More than 600,000 Iraqi children have died due to lack of food and medicine and as a result of the unjustifiable aggression (sanctions) imposed on Iraq and its nation.
The realistic alternative to not invading Iraq was the policy of containment, which meant US troops in Saudi Arabia and sanctions to keep Iraq from rebuilding its military machine. No American government, Republican or Democrat, was ever going to abandon the Middle East and return to isolationism, and I doubt that Europe (who get a large fraction of their oil from the region) would want that either.
I agree that there were terrorist attacks before, but the problem I have is that the (completely uncalled for) war in Iraq has given extremists a made-to-order training camp.
You are right that Iraq is providing training for terrorists. Your original post spoke of a "breeding ground" rather than a training camp. In my opinion the true breeding grounds are the places all over the world where the terrorists learn their ideological motivations for attacking the infidels. The terrorists may pick up battlefield experience in Iraq, but that is a separate issue.
It was bound to happen, sooner or later, unfortunately. The US & UK went to war on a country that had done nothing to them (Iraq), and created a fertile breeding ground for terrorists. The results are going to impact us for a long time, I fear.
You say that like there were no terrorist attacks before Iraq! What about Bali (punishment for Aussies helping the UN in East Timor)? What about 9/11 (punishment for not invading Iraq and taking the alternative of long-term sanctions)? What about the attack on the USS Cole (no retaliation for that IIRC, looks like the "violence begets violence" crowd forgot to congratulate the USA on that, and the terrorists forgot to take notice)? The French convicted several terrorists who planned to attack Strasbourg in 2000 -- and they didn't want anything to do with attacking Iraq. They'd even stopped enforcing the no fly zone and called for an end to sanctions on Iraq!
Canada is also on the Al-Qaeda hit list, and they opposed Iraq. Their crime was to help get rid of the Taliban. Elsewhere, Russia, Thailand, Phillipines, Saudi Arabia, and Lebanon are just some of the countries facing Islamic terror right now. You'd have to be pretty naive to think all of those countries are being attacked over Iraq.
No doubt the terrorists will mention Iraq when they claim this attack. It is propaganda, and all the people who feel so clever because they don't believe Bush's "they hate our freedom" explanations should also be smart enough not to believe that jihad terror began with Iraq and is related only to that.
There are other less obvious odd things that make it clear that some weapons are intended for murder, not self defence. Almost no one goes on attacking people after they've been shot, even if they aren't going to die from it. So what are high-power handguns for?
Many police departments use such things as expanding bullets and high power (a relative term but nobody issues.22 sidearms) cartridges. Do you think that law enforcemement buys its weapons with an intent to murder? I think you are over-optimistic about being able to stop a dangerous suspect with a single shot.
I agree - though as a side note, there have been instances where gun manufacturers were marketing very odd things. For example, one of the manufacturers was selling a gun that had as one of its selling points the fact that the grip was fingerprint-resistant. Hm. This was remarked upon by then-President Bill Clinton in a press conference in these or almost these exact words: 'you don't have to be broke out in brilliance to figure out what that's all about.'
I remember that, but I think the fingerprint thing was bogus. If you leave fingerprints on gun metal you will soon (suprisingly soon) have ugly rust stains. Every gun owner wants to avoid that, not just the criminal ones. Any criminal with the foresight to buy a gun with this kind of protective coating (last time I checked most criminal weapons were not bought retail anyhow) would also have the foresight to use gloves to load the ammo and shoot the gun.
I never found the Simpsons that funny to begin with... in fact, it always seemed kind of stupid. And as long as it's been on, it's been running on empty for years by now. Why don't they just put it out of it's misery rather than attempt to squeeze these last few dollars from the dead horse?
A man is capable of having children with multiple women. For a woman to do the opposite is not as advantageous.
It is if the woman can keep it a secret. In many species, including humans, females will mate with other males while their partner is otherwise engaged. That way they vary the genetic mix of their children, while still keeping a male partner to look after them.
Maybe not a classic atomic bomb. But I remember reading somewhere that the Nazi bomb would have been something closer to a "dirty bomb". Which spreads radioactive material with conventional explosives.
In 1945 the Germans put their supply of uranium on a submarine, with the intention of delivering it to the Japanese. I imagine a dirty bomb would have been the most likely purpose. More information here.
It's an absolute disgrace, that the UK media aren't covering this very important issue. The European council have disregarded the decision of the elected Parliament, and have tried to force this through.
Maybe the next draft of the EU constitution could introduce some real democracy to the EU institutions. I'm not going to hold my breath, though.
Something similar happened in Northern Ireland about a decade ago: a car failed to stop for a checkpoint, the troops there fired at it, and continued firing once it had passed.
Wasn't Clegg freed on appeal, on the grounds that his bullets couldn't be proved to come from behind?
Please, show me the section of the constitution that says "The preceding stuff doesn't apply when the US government is acting abroad, and the victims of its actions are foreigners."
The US Supreme Court says just this in UNITED STATES v. VERDUGO-URQUIDEZ. You can always rely on the war on drugs to ensure that government interest prevail.
Re:more censorship, unimpressed
on
Google TrustRank
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· Score: 2, Insightful
so when google desides what's trusted for us, what is good content and what isnt, are they still not being "evil"? additionally, how are the pages seperated? on what criteria? man or machine (potential for flaws on either side)?
It's not necessarily censorship. They could just present the "trustworthy" pages first. You could always skip to the later pages if you wanted, just like you can browse/. at -1 if you want.
And yes, this means that the system could be abused, just like PageRank and/. moderation. Anyone want to do away with those?
Those judged to be criminally insane are detained at Her Majesty's Pleasure, i.e. indefinitely, typically in a secure mental hospital. This is currently the law in the UK for those judged to be criminally insane (e.g. psychopathic). So I am not sure where you get the idea this might have been some new proposal. Ian Brady, Dennis Neilsen, etc fit into the criminally insane category.
I'm not talking about people who are insane in the legal sense. I'm talking about people with "personality disorders" who know the difference between right and wrong but don't care. Such people know that violence is illegal, because they lie to cover up their actions. Contrast to the insanity defence cases, where the offender often waits calmly for police and freely confesses their delusional stories to the police. To be insane, you have to not know the difference between right and wrong, no? If you know but have no emotional barrier to doing wrong things, that isn't itself (AFAIK) grounds for detention.
The idea that psycopaths could be locked up indefinitely without committing a crime that carries a life sentence is a relatively new proposal to me, I first heard about it in 1999.
Our penal system is based on the "Penetentiary" concept developed by the Quakers. Basically, sitting in a room, unable to leave, and deprived of your senses gives you time to think about your crimes. It also turned out to be a reasonably heinous form of psychological torture.
The trouble is, not all criminals care about what they've done. Some of them just don't feel pity or remorse.
CS Lewis argued against a purely penetentiary model of justice on the grounds that it would lead to disproportionate punishment. If we discount punishment as a motive for putting people in jail, then the only reason to send people to jail is to reform them and protect the public. This means that instead of sending people to jail for a fixed time that matches how much punishment the criminal deserves, it is more logical to imprison people until they see the error of their ways and are deemed safe to release. But in some cases this could take a very long time, and there are some criminals who will never be reformed.
Are we really willing to put people in jail indefinitely? It was proposed here in the UK that "psycopathic" criminals who were judged a permanent danger could be subject to open-ended detention. This met widespread opposition from people who, I assume, feel that jail sentences should fit the crime (ie, they believe in just and proportionate punishment, rather than simply the necessary evil of reformative incarceration).
As another Slashdotter once put it, imagine if someone was in jail for sharing MP3s online. Should they stay there until they can convince the parole board that they're sorry and won't do it again, even if that takes years? I would say that the punishment for copyright infringement should be proportionate to the harm it causes. Those who make illegal copies should only be punished as much as their crime deserves to be punished. Under a purely penetentiary regime, the whole question of punishment and how much a person deserves to be punished is irrelevant.
Reforming criminals is a vital part of the justice system, but I wouldn't like a society where it was the only part. I don't believe in insanely heavy penalties for file sharing. Likewise I would be angered if a murderer got off with a light sentence on the grounds that he was unlikely to do it again.
In this sense, I think the Internet is not "public communication" because it is listener initiated. In other words, individual members of the public have to request the materials (by visiting web sites, viewing blogs, subscribing to mailing lists, etc.) to be contacted.
The TV is also listener initiated, because I have to turn it on and set the channel I want. I know lots of people have a problem with that idea, and throw tantrums at Fox / boobies / etc, but they choose what they watch.
I've seen TV regulation justified because it uses a public resource (a portion of the EM spectrum), and therefore the public has a right to expect something in return. A private individual publishing his own text doesn't use a public resource, so he owes the public nothing and can exercise his free speech as he sees fit.
Is TV really regulated because it uses public EM space, or is that just a constitutional fig leaf? I would say TV is regulated because it has such power. People already worship the box to the extent that many want the FCC to look after them, because it's beyond them to just not watch crap (except maybe this guy). The Internet at the moment is a bit less useful in manipulating public opinion, because it takes more effort to read things than to sit in front of the TV, and while on the net it's much easier to find other angles on the same story. But in years to come the Internet won't be mostly text, it'll be more like the TV. Eventually blogs could be full-blown Fox / Michael Moore multimedia propaganda, with as much if not more power over public opinion than TV. Today people navigate to blogs, but what if the browser model of the Internet changes? In the future, people may just fire up Realplayer and take whatever is thrown at them (just as they do on TV). The "broadcast" part of the Internet would probably have to be regulated in some way.
I suppose a good counter-argument is that regulation has proved useless at keeping corporate / political bias out of broadcast TV, and so it shouldn't be applied to the Net. But the unsatisfactory performance of TV regulators hasn't led to less regulation.
I missed the part where it was abuse of a child to store a series of bits on a hard drive, floppy, or other type of storage media. Here's a hint, no matter how much you Bush worshipers want it to be, a series of bits doesn't hurt a child. Your use of the words "violate and abuse" is ridiculous. How about trying to have a logical discussion without throwing your Jesus-freak words around?
Bush? Jesus? Obvious trolling. But you raise an interesting point.
If someone is raped, and the rapist takes pictures for his own gratification, is there a 1st amendment right to view and distribute those pictures? I would say not. It's not even legal for legitimate journalists to name rape victims, much less should it be legal for sick people, sorry (being illogical again), for people to further humiliate the victims by distributing images of the crime.
Having pictures of rape (of adults or children) distributed is clearly harmful to the victim. How can this harm be justified on the grounds of free speech? By definition, there's no freedom in rape.
Matplotlib does plotting in a Matlab-esque style in Python. It also comes with a bunch of Matlab-like commands for reading and manipulating data. It doesn't do any 3D plots, but it has a good range of 2D capabilities.
I'm sorry for what you've been through but I'm sure your sister did NOT do it out of careless selfishness.
If you are going to say twice in caps that something did NOT happen, you're going to need more than conjecture to back it up. Are you saying that no suicides are motivated by selfishness? If so, I'd like to hear your basis for this.
Slashdot Mirror
Free speech does not give the right to libel. It never has, and that has not changed with advent of the Internet.
Windows has exactly the same problem. I doubt that the clientele is much more technically savvy in Best Buy than in Apple stores.
Justice is merely force that is applied in the right places (ie, the force is justified). The grandparent is not a troll. All law depends on enforcement. A lawyer can make a case and a judge can sentence a criminal to jail, but that's all just empty words unless someone is willing to use force to make the sentence happen.
That's not to say that all force is justice, and I don't believe the grandparent said that either.
This is an interesting point. Is it a terrorist attack because it was carried out in support of Al Qaeda? Or was it a legitimate military attack? If the latter, then the US was certainly within its rights to kill those responsible. Amnesty International complained that the USA should have arrested the suspects instead, so presumably they believe that terrorists retain the status of criminals even when they temporarily assume the role of lawful warriors.
Actually Bin Laden's 1996 declaration of war against America specifically mentioned Iraq:
More than 600,000 Iraqi children have died due to lack of food and medicine and as a result of the unjustifiable aggression (sanctions) imposed on Iraq and its nation.
The realistic alternative to not invading Iraq was the policy of containment, which meant US troops in Saudi Arabia and sanctions to keep Iraq from rebuilding its military machine. No American government, Republican or Democrat, was ever going to abandon the Middle East and return to isolationism, and I doubt that Europe (who get a large fraction of their oil from the region) would want that either.
You are right that Iraq is providing training for terrorists. Your original post spoke of a "breeding ground" rather than a training camp. In my opinion the true breeding grounds are the places all over the world where the terrorists learn their ideological motivations for attacking the infidels. The terrorists may pick up battlefield experience in Iraq, but that is a separate issue.
You say that like there were no terrorist attacks before Iraq! What about Bali (punishment for Aussies helping the UN in East Timor)? What about 9/11 (punishment for not invading Iraq and taking the alternative of long-term sanctions)? What about the attack on the USS Cole (no retaliation for that IIRC, looks like the "violence begets violence" crowd forgot to congratulate the USA on that, and the terrorists forgot to take notice)? The French convicted several terrorists who planned to attack Strasbourg in 2000 -- and they didn't want anything to do with attacking Iraq. They'd even stopped enforcing the no fly zone and called for an end to sanctions on Iraq!
Canada is also on the Al-Qaeda hit list, and they opposed Iraq. Their crime was to help get rid of the Taliban. Elsewhere, Russia, Thailand, Phillipines, Saudi Arabia, and Lebanon are just some of the countries facing Islamic terror right now. You'd have to be pretty naive to think all of those countries are being attacked over Iraq.
No doubt the terrorists will mention Iraq when they claim this attack. It is propaganda, and all the people who feel so clever because they don't believe Bush's "they hate our freedom" explanations should also be smart enough not to believe that jihad terror began with Iraq and is related only to that.
Many police departments use such things as expanding bullets and high power (a relative term but nobody issues .22 sidearms) cartridges. Do you think that law enforcemement buys its weapons with an intent to murder? I think you are over-optimistic about being able to stop a dangerous suspect with a single shot.
I remember that, but I think the fingerprint thing was bogus. If you leave fingerprints on gun metal you will soon (suprisingly soon) have ugly rust stains. Every gun owner wants to avoid that, not just the criminal ones. Any criminal with the foresight to buy a gun with this kind of protective coating (last time I checked most criminal weapons were not bought retail anyhow) would also have the foresight to use gloves to load the ammo and shoot the gun.
You are obviously over-stimulated.
It is if the woman can keep it a secret. In many species, including humans, females will mate with other males while their partner is otherwise engaged. That way they vary the genetic mix of their children, while still keeping a male partner to look after them.
Excellent.
In 1945 the Germans put their supply of uranium on a submarine, with the intention of delivering it to the Japanese. I imagine a dirty bomb would have been the most likely purpose. More information here.
Maybe the next draft of the EU constitution could introduce some real democracy to the EU institutions. I'm not going to hold my breath, though.
Ackbar: It's a plug!
It's bad enough seeing Master Yoda reduced to the rank of Pepsi frontman, without having Slashdot turn into a SW hype vehicle too!
Wasn't Clegg freed on appeal, on the grounds that his bullets couldn't be proved to come from behind?
The US Supreme Court says just this in UNITED STATES v. VERDUGO-URQUIDEZ. You can always rely on the war on drugs to ensure that government interest prevail.
It's not necessarily censorship. They could just present the "trustworthy" pages first. You could always skip to the later pages if you wanted, just like you can browse /. at -1 if you want.
And yes, this means that the system could be abused, just like PageRank and /. moderation. Anyone want to do away with those?
I'm not talking about people who are insane in the legal sense. I'm talking about people with "personality disorders" who know the difference between right and wrong but don't care. Such people know that violence is illegal, because they lie to cover up their actions. Contrast to the insanity defence cases, where the offender often waits calmly for police and freely confesses their delusional stories to the police. To be insane, you have to not know the difference between right and wrong, no? If you know but have no emotional barrier to doing wrong things, that isn't itself (AFAIK) grounds for detention.
The idea that psycopaths could be locked up indefinitely without committing a crime that carries a life sentence is a relatively new proposal to me, I first heard about it in 1999.
The trouble is, not all criminals care about what they've done. Some of them just don't feel pity or remorse.
CS Lewis argued against a purely penetentiary model of justice on the grounds that it would lead to disproportionate punishment. If we discount punishment as a motive for putting people in jail, then the only reason to send people to jail is to reform them and protect the public. This means that instead of sending people to jail for a fixed time that matches how much punishment the criminal deserves, it is more logical to imprison people until they see the error of their ways and are deemed safe to release. But in some cases this could take a very long time, and there are some criminals who will never be reformed.
Are we really willing to put people in jail indefinitely? It was proposed here in the UK that "psycopathic" criminals who were judged a permanent danger could be subject to open-ended detention. This met widespread opposition from people who, I assume, feel that jail sentences should fit the crime (ie, they believe in just and proportionate punishment, rather than simply the necessary evil of reformative incarceration).
As another Slashdotter once put it, imagine if someone was in jail for sharing MP3s online. Should they stay there until they can convince the parole board that they're sorry and won't do it again, even if that takes years? I would say that the punishment for copyright infringement should be proportionate to the harm it causes. Those who make illegal copies should only be punished as much as their crime deserves to be punished. Under a purely penetentiary regime, the whole question of punishment and how much a person deserves to be punished is irrelevant.
Reforming criminals is a vital part of the justice system, but I wouldn't like a society where it was the only part. I don't believe in insanely heavy penalties for file sharing. Likewise I would be angered if a murderer got off with a light sentence on the grounds that he was unlikely to do it again.
The TV is also listener initiated, because I have to turn it on and set the channel I want. I know lots of people have a problem with that idea, and throw tantrums at Fox / boobies / etc, but they choose what they watch.
I've seen TV regulation justified because it uses a public resource (a portion of the EM spectrum), and therefore the public has a right to expect something in return. A private individual publishing his own text doesn't use a public resource, so he owes the public nothing and can exercise his free speech as he sees fit.
Is TV really regulated because it uses public EM space, or is that just a constitutional fig leaf? I would say TV is regulated because it has such power. People already worship the box to the extent that many want the FCC to look after them, because it's beyond them to just not watch crap (except maybe this guy). The Internet at the moment is a bit less useful in manipulating public opinion, because it takes more effort to read things than to sit in front of the TV, and while on the net it's much easier to find other angles on the same story. But in years to come the Internet won't be mostly text, it'll be more like the TV. Eventually blogs could be full-blown Fox / Michael Moore multimedia propaganda, with as much if not more power over public opinion than TV. Today people navigate to blogs, but what if the browser model of the Internet changes? In the future, people may just fire up Realplayer and take whatever is thrown at them (just as they do on TV). The "broadcast" part of the Internet would probably have to be regulated in some way.
I suppose a good counter-argument is that regulation has proved useless at keeping corporate / political bias out of broadcast TV, and so it shouldn't be applied to the Net. But the unsatisfactory performance of TV regulators hasn't led to less regulation.
Bush? Jesus? Obvious trolling. But you raise an interesting point.
If someone is raped, and the rapist takes pictures for his own gratification, is there a 1st amendment right to view and distribute those pictures? I would say not. It's not even legal for legitimate journalists to name rape victims, much less should it be legal for sick people, sorry (being illogical again), for people to further humiliate the victims by distributing images of the crime.
Having pictures of rape (of adults or children) distributed is clearly harmful to the victim. How can this harm be justified on the grounds of free speech? By definition, there's no freedom in rape.
Matplotlib does plotting in a Matlab-esque style in Python. It also comes with a bunch of Matlab-like commands for reading and manipulating data. It doesn't do any 3D plots, but it has a good range of 2D capabilities.
Remember that Garry is friendly with Microsoft (remember Kasparov vs the World). Allofmp3.com might not last too long if he takes over!
If you are going to say twice in caps that something did NOT happen, you're going to need more than conjecture to back it up. Are you saying that no suicides are motivated by selfishness? If so, I'd like to hear your basis for this.