Your rights as citizens are being weithered away by your Americanized 'Committee of Public Safety'. Look how well that worked for the French.
And out come the fallacious slippery slope arguments from slashdot's army of libertarians who think that absolute freedom is both desirable and practicable.
The point of outlawing child abuse imagery is to protect children from the people who make such imagery, not from the people who view it, by attacking the distribution chain. By arresting customers en masse, the theory is that there will be no market for child abuse imagery and thus it will not be made (at least not as frequently).
If you do not outlaw the possession of child abuse imagery, it legitimises the notion of child abuse.
It would also make it much easier for the producers of child abuse imagery to get away with their behaviour, as unless they were stupid enough to be caught red handed identifiably filming themselves raping a child, they would always be able to plead that they were just watching something someone else had made.
You do realize what these lists ACTUALLY are, right? Yes, they include rapists and molesters. They also include people who got drunk and pissed in the bushes that one time on college, or went streaking, or skinny-dipping (basically any form of public nudity) or sent topless pictures of themselves to their significant other when they were 17......
Lots of ways to end up on these lists. Some are not even in your control.
The fact that the US has insane ideas about what constitutes a "sex offender" does not mean that there are not genuine sexual predators.
If someone has served their time...why are they still being persecuted?
Public safety. The criminal justice system is a mixture of punishment, rehabilitation and protection of society.
Most murderers who are not professional criminals do not re-offend, as their crimes tend to be domestic and caused by a unique set of circumstances. The ones who are deemed to still be a danger to society stay in prison for a very long time, if not for ever (at least here in the UK).
I understand that sex offenders have an unusually high recidivism rate and the laws are intended to "protect the children" (or others) but isn't this simply shifting the responsibility of parents to teach their children, and for the children themselves, to act safely and responsibly and for parents to monitor their children properly?
Blaming children for being raped by paedophiles is about as vile an argument as I have ever heard on slashdot, and that's saying something.
The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.
- H. L. Mencken
Unfortunately, some people by their previous actions have proved that they are a danger to others, and need to be monitored and controlled. The alternative to keeping a close watch on a convicted paedophile and restricting his freedom is simply to chuck him in prison and throw away the key.
Mencken is generally an interesting writer, but he has fallen victim to the "absolute freedom" idea that so many Americans seem to believe in.
Briefly, by having any laws and punishments at all you are impinging on people's freedom; most people prefer this to absolute anarchy and the law of the jungle.
Until we can exactly copy a human brain into a blank one, the fact that you can make an identical looking body is totally irrelevant. You could probably get that by cosmetic surgery now anyway, but no one would think for a minute that it was a replica of the original you had lost.
My step-dad died at 55, shortly after his mother died. She had a stroke, and for about 10 years visited almost every day and spent a lot of time taking care of her. He had health problems for a while, but he stayed alive until shortly after she died. It almost seemed that he was holding out until she was gone.
It don't work like that, kid. I'm sixty, most sixty year old women are as repulsive to me as they are to you. To me, women in their forties are HOT, women in their twenties look like children. So add the plans for a sixty or seventy year old woman.
One of the main disadvantages of growing older is that you effectively lose the "hot older woman" fantasy/option.
The sweet spot is roughly 30 when you can still be interested in the range from 18 up to 55 or so.
With regards to a person's overall intelligence; a high IQ means you will score highly in IQ tests
But the problem is that you can have a moderate IQ and score highly in IQ tests (with enough practice) and you can have a high IQ and score poorly in IQ tests for any number of reasons including lack of self belief, laziness, physical maladies, mental blindspots, over confidence, poor time management or whatever.
I knew it was bullshit after I took several online IQ tests & kept getting a result of 130-140 back. I know I'm not THAT fucking smart lol!
You don't need to be a genius to get an IQ score of 130-140. Doing lots of different IQ tests certainly helps to get a decent score though.
When I was at school, my mother (who was a teacher) always got me to do a few practise tests at home before the not-secret-to-teachers official IQ tests at school. Unsurprisingly, I always did well on them (not 180+ genius level, but over 130).
Being good at tests/exams is a combination of basic knowledge, practice, but mostly being good at tests/exams. I found school quite easy even though I'm lazy and unmotivated, simply because I had reasonable intelligence, the ability not to panic, and was simply good at doing exams.
This may seem unfair to other struggling but diligent kids at school, but it just meant that in the real world, where hard work is much more highly looked on than intelligence, I was never going to be a superstar, because I simply couldn't be arsed.
Land is the one thing that should never have been allowed to be owned by private indivuduals. At least with writing a book or making a piece of music you are creating something new. No piece of land was ever created by a human [*] it was just squatted on at some point by the blokes with the biggest sticks.
[*] Yes, I know we have reclaimed some of the Netherlands from the sea, that is still a communal effort, not the work of one man.
Well, if you keep up with the news, turns out the guy was an Honors Student and a nerd who ran LAN parties with his friends.
So be glad that they're still in the "ban guns / ban psychos" phase before they inevitably move on to the "ban nerds & nerd activities" phase. We're certainly going to be hearing more of this here.
Where's Jon Katz with another whiny "Hellmouth" article when you need him?
If you're a nutter in a country with restrictive gun laws, it's highly unlikely that you will be able to get your hands on any guns when you finally flip, so you'll have to resort to knives, sticks or whatever you can lay your hands on. Unless you're Rambo, you're unlikely to end up killing 20 or more people with basically your bare hands.
Whereas if you're in a place where more or less anyone can get hold of guns legally, there will simply be more around for you to use, including your own.
This past year over 20 children died the slow death of heatstroke/hypothermia after their parents locked them in cars.
And in an ideal world, you would identify those stupid parents in advance, and not allow them to have either children or cars. As it is, I suppose you only prosecute them for murder after the event, but at least this might act as a wake up call to other similar people.
More people have been killed this year (including children) by drunk or distracted driving. Since alcohol doesn't benefit society, should we bring back prohibition for the safety of the children?
No, what you do is use a combination of education and punishment to drive home to people the point that drink driving is unacceptable.
Neither of these cases are analogous to preventing easy access to guns for people with no need for them, or performing more rigourous checks to weed out unsuitable gun owners in advance.
If the unquestioning fear of firearms leads us to always ask why crazy people are permitted to have guns rather than why people go crazy and nobody notices
It's nothing to do with fear, it's about respect for danger. Guns are dangerous, even the most fanatically pro-gun person would have to admit that, because if they're not dangerous, there's really not much point to them is there?
You can never stop some people going crazy, but you can most certainly restrict access to guns for those showing signs of it. But then the ultras will say that this is penalising "thoughtcrime" and restricting the potential nutter's freedom of speech.
It seems to me that the only "tyranny" which gun-fans are prepared to actually stand up against is the evil government taking away their guns. Nothing else seems to worry them, or else you should have had an armed rebellion to overthrow Bush and the illegal Iraq war (for instance).
The right to revolt against illegitimate authoritarian government
If ot when the time comes to revolt against the government, questions about rights go out the window. It just becomes a matter of who's prepared to die for their beliefs. Look at the Arab Spring, those countries basically relied on the unarmed majority rising up against those in power with all the guns. Contrast with Syria, where the rebels have plenty of weapons by the look of it, but the civil war has dragged on for a year and a half.
The things is, no government, however authoritarian, can kill all its people.
Slashdot Mirror
Because this is another no fly list.
Your rights as citizens are being weithered away by your Americanized 'Committee of Public Safety'. Look how well that worked for the French.
And out come the fallacious slippery slope arguments from slashdot's army of libertarians who think that absolute freedom is both desirable and practicable.
The point of outlawing child abuse imagery is to protect children from the people who make such imagery, not from the people who view it, by attacking the distribution chain. By arresting customers en masse, the theory is that there will be no market for child abuse imagery and thus it will not be made (at least not as frequently).
If you do not outlaw the possession of child abuse imagery, it legitimises the notion of child abuse.
It would also make it much easier for the producers of child abuse imagery to get away with their behaviour, as unless they were stupid enough to be caught red handed identifiably filming themselves raping a child, they would always be able to plead that they were just watching something someone else had made.
You do realize what these lists ACTUALLY are, right? Yes, they include rapists and molesters. They also include people who got drunk and pissed in the bushes that one time on college, or went streaking, or skinny-dipping (basically any form of public nudity) or sent topless pictures of themselves to their significant other when they were 17......
Lots of ways to end up on these lists. Some are not even in your control.
The fact that the US has insane ideas about what constitutes a "sex offender" does not mean that there are not genuine sexual predators.
If someone has served their time...why are they still being persecuted?
Public safety. The criminal justice system is a mixture of punishment, rehabilitation and protection of society.
Most murderers who are not professional criminals do not re-offend, as their crimes tend to be domestic and caused by a unique set of circumstances. The ones who are deemed to still be a danger to society stay in prison for a very long time, if not for ever (at least here in the UK).
So if someone set up a new church in the middle of the area to guide the lost sheep, would they all be forced to move again?
The Church of the Latterday Pedophiles welcomes all repentant sinners!
I understand that sex offenders have an unusually high recidivism rate and the laws are intended to "protect the children" (or others) but isn't this simply shifting the responsibility of parents to teach their children, and for the children themselves, to act safely and responsibly and for parents to monitor their children properly?
Blaming children for being raped by paedophiles is about as vile an argument as I have ever heard on slashdot, and that's saying something.
The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all. - H. L. Mencken
Unfortunately, some people by their previous actions have proved that they are a danger to others, and need to be monitored and controlled. The alternative to keeping a close watch on a convicted paedophile and restricting his freedom is simply to chuck him in prison and throw away the key.
Mencken is generally an interesting writer, but he has fallen victim to the "absolute freedom" idea that so many Americans seem to believe in.
Briefly, by having any laws and punishments at all you are impinging on people's freedom; most people prefer this to absolute anarchy and the law of the jungle.
Until we can exactly copy a human brain into a blank one, the fact that you can make an identical looking body is totally irrelevant. You could probably get that by cosmetic surgery now anyway, but no one would think for a minute that it was a replica of the original you had lost.
As someone from the UK I find it ironic that you can buy a fucking tank but not a .22 handgun here.
My step-dad died at 55, shortly after his mother died. She had a stroke, and for about 10 years visited almost every day and spent a lot of time taking care of her. He had health problems for a while, but he stayed alive until shortly after she died. It almost seemed that he was holding out until she was gone.
It's called love.
Having a hobby wouldn't have made any difference.
congrats on the video game interest but the guitar screams midlife crisis.
Cashing in all your savings, buying a Porsche, leaving your wife and shacking up with an 19 year old stripper is a midlife crisis.
Learning new skills is what keeps your mind active.
It don't work like that, kid. I'm sixty, most sixty year old women are as repulsive to me as they are to you. To me, women in their forties are HOT, women in their twenties look like children. So add the plans for a sixty or seventy year old woman.
One of the main disadvantages of growing older is that you effectively lose the "hot older woman" fantasy/option.
The sweet spot is roughly 30 when you can still be interested in the range from 18 up to 55 or so.
Forget that! Add in the plans for a 90-year-old woman.
He'd probably prefer the plans to a hot 21 year old pornstar, although he might not still be around next Xmas to thank you.
With regards to a person's overall intelligence; a high IQ means you will score highly in IQ tests
But the problem is that you can have a moderate IQ and score highly in IQ tests (with enough practice) and you can have a high IQ and score poorly in IQ tests for any number of reasons including lack of self belief, laziness, physical maladies, mental blindspots, over confidence, poor time management or whatever.
I knew it was bullshit after I took several online IQ tests & kept getting a result of 130-140 back. I know I'm not THAT fucking smart lol!
You don't need to be a genius to get an IQ score of 130-140. Doing lots of different IQ tests certainly helps to get a decent score though.
When I was at school, my mother (who was a teacher) always got me to do a few practise tests at home before the not-secret-to-teachers official IQ tests at school. Unsurprisingly, I always did well on them (not 180+ genius level, but over 130).
Being good at tests/exams is a combination of basic knowledge, practice, but mostly being good at tests/exams. I found school quite easy even though I'm lazy and unmotivated, simply because I had reasonable intelligence, the ability not to panic, and was simply good at doing exams.
This may seem unfair to other struggling but diligent kids at school, but it just meant that in the real world, where hard work is much more highly looked on than intelligence, I was never going to be a superstar, because I simply couldn't be arsed.
Other people manage to maintain high karma based on being funny
I thought you didn't get karma points just for being funny? That's why you see some hilarious posts modded as "informative" or something instead.
nevermind 30+ children died today in automobile accidents (statistical average)
The school shooting wasn't a fucking "accident", genius.
[*] Yes, I know we have reclaimed some of the Netherlands from the sea, that is still a communal effort, not the work of one man.
Well, if you keep up with the news, turns out the guy was an Honors Student and a nerd who ran LAN parties with his friends.
So be glad that they're still in the "ban guns / ban psychos" phase before they inevitably move on to the "ban nerds & nerd activities" phase. We're certainly going to be hearing more of this here.
Where's Jon Katz with another whiny "Hellmouth" article when you need him?
Incorrect. Europe has extremely strict gun laws. Could you point me to a few dictators of which you speak in Europe?
Great Britain, Ireland, Spain, Germany...all have strict gun laws.
They do not have dictators. Your assertion is disproven.
GP probably thinks that Hitler is still in charge of Germany, and King George III of England.
Whereas if you're in a place where more or less anyone can get hold of guns legally, there will simply be more around for you to use, including your own.
This past year over 20 children died the slow death of heatstroke/hypothermia after their parents locked them in cars.
And in an ideal world, you would identify those stupid parents in advance, and not allow them to have either children or cars. As it is, I suppose you only prosecute them for murder after the event, but at least this might act as a wake up call to other similar people.
More people have been killed this year (including children) by drunk or distracted driving. Since alcohol doesn't benefit society, should we bring back prohibition for the safety of the children?
No, what you do is use a combination of education and punishment to drive home to people the point that drink driving is unacceptable.
Neither of these cases are analogous to preventing easy access to guns for people with no need for them, or performing more rigourous checks to weed out unsuitable gun owners in advance.
If the unquestioning fear of firearms leads us to always ask why crazy people are permitted to have guns rather than why people go crazy and nobody notices
It's nothing to do with fear, it's about respect for danger. Guns are dangerous, even the most fanatically pro-gun person would have to admit that, because if they're not dangerous, there's really not much point to them is there?
You can never stop some people going crazy, but you can most certainly restrict access to guns for those showing signs of it. But then the ultras will say that this is penalising "thoughtcrime" and restricting the potential nutter's freedom of speech.
It seems to me that the only "tyranny" which gun-fans are prepared to actually stand up against is the evil government taking away their guns. Nothing else seems to worry them, or else you should have had an armed rebellion to overthrow Bush and the illegal Iraq war (for instance).
The right to revolt against illegitimate authoritarian government
If ot when the time comes to revolt against the government, questions about rights go out the window. It just becomes a matter of who's prepared to die for their beliefs. Look at the Arab Spring, those countries basically relied on the unarmed majority rising up against those in power with all the guns. Contrast with Syria, where the rebels have plenty of weapons by the look of it, but the civil war has dragged on for a year and a half.
The things is, no government, however authoritarian, can kill all its people.