I know the prefix invokes unpleasant connotations, but it also means 10^15.
When I see the word "peta" I think of naked supermodels in public protesting about animals, or something. Call me superficial but I'm prepared not to worry about the animals they're insulting if I get to see more naked supermodels.
We've already had stories of people being charged with "child porn" by undressing a child, e.g. to change its diaper. t's very easy for child-porn laws to be used against anyone who has a child, at least if they want to keep that child reasonably clean and healthy.
To quote your sig [citation needed].
That sounds like some Daily Fail "social workers took my children off me because I voted conservative" story.
Slashdot users amaze me. They're experts not just on U.S. law but Canadian law as well!
It's a thing called common sense. Try using it sometime and you will see how liberating it can be. This common sense stuff allows for discussions on any number of topics without having to be fully schooled in the subject and a practitioner in that field. It also allows you to go about your day to day life without having to appeal to some higher authority for permission to engage in most anything you feel like doing that is harmless to all.
The law is not just about common sense, or you wouldn't need to train lawyers and judges, would you?
Someone tangentially related to me got himself killed covering a story, he got too close to riots in Mexico some years ago.
Conceivably he might have been able to handle himself better or get away with it if he had a press card on him
People involved in riots don't tend to take the time to check your credentials before deciding whether to beat you to death or not. As a photographer you are potentially collecting evidence of crimes. A lot of criminals don't like that.
Libertarians believe that bankers will behave when they're accountable to their customers
Well, to be more precise: there's no better regulation than profit and loss, and government shelters incompetent bankers from their losses.
-jcr
No, the point was that the government decided there would be less hardship to innocent people by not letting the banks fail. However what they should have done, was to nationalise them completely (yes I'm in the UK) or at least impose severe pay limits and require that all profit was repaid to the government rather than in bonuses or dividends for ever.
Libertarians believe that bankers will behave when they're accountable to their customers
The only way to do that would be to nationalise the whole lot of them so that everybody had an equal stake in running them. But while "the market" rules, then the banks will do whatever they can to make more profits, including relying on ever more outlandish financial products, unless they are stopped by regulators.
The reason regulators were inefffective is because the financial services industry did a huge lobbying job tow ater down their effectiveness. That is the fault of the financial services industry, not the regulators.
Those who support government are childish and dangerous, if not naive. Your beliefs are based on the doctrine of "Power doesn't corrupt".
Your beliefs are based on the notion that the power structure of society is limited entirely to "the government" and that if you magically get rid of "the government" all you'll be left with are free and equal citizens.
In fact, it is only the presence of a democratically accountable government and system of law that prevents the rich and powerful from becoming absolutely rich and powerful, which most of us think is a good thing.
The laws libertarians disagree with are the special handouts in tax law, the heavy regulation of business, government dictating what people can do with their property,
and certain criminal laws that try to regulate society
No, what libertarians really disagree with are any attempts by the democratically elected government to redistribute wealth (and therefore power) from the rich to the poor, so they should just admit this rather than make up unconvincing theoretical arguments about freedom.
What's to get? All great civilizations and empires have fallen. One reason (thinking of Rome) is they simply become too big to manage and ran into communication, economics and logistics barriers. Another is they were attacked and ruined with the very same technology they had passed on to conquered peoples in ill-advised remote wars (rather like the US training of fanatics such as Osama Bin Laden gave birth to AQ). Another is the famous moral and ethical decline of rulers (Rome).
Why should the US be exempt from what seems to be historically inevitable?
The very wealthy form their own nation, and won't care what happens to the US, China or ayone else, as long as they get to stay comfortable and in contol.
How are rich people responsible for thuggish, authoritarian cops and security guards? It sounds to me like governments ultimately have to be held responsible for it. The War Against Photography has little to do with any sort of rich vs poor class warfare.
You seem to be suffering from the current US delusion that there is an evil government which has no connection with the rich and powerful, that the rich and powerful are basically the good guys, and that by scaling down or abolishing government everyone will be free to live happy lives.
In actual fact, once the rich and powerful were completely free form any remaining shreds of democratically accountability and law, you'd end up with a monopolistic Big Boys Club that would make the Nineteenth Centurey robber barons and Twentieth Century dictators look like amateurs.
I don't believe any one person deserves to be that rich.
its disgusting and the disparity is just too great, these days.
sorry, but its just disgusting. and I'm not at all referring to the stupid boat.
Agreed. What you need to do is vote for people who will introduce serious progressive taxes, as in 90%+ over a certain amount ($1m a year or whatever). Then, the wealthiest will want to plough profits back into society rather than paying it out to themselves in order to buy ever more ridiculous penis substitute toys.
And, no I don't really care about the impact of jobs on the $250m a go luxury yacht industry. They can find something more useful to do with their skills instead.
Contrary to what almost everyone else here thinks, I think it's a striking, beautiful design. And no, I'm not an Apple fanboi, I haven't owned a single Apple product in my life and I'm not particularly interested in them. But I can appreciate the design, or should I say architecture, of this yacht.
You are, of course, entitled to your opinion, in the same way that you are at liberty to believe in a Flat Earth.
It in fact has graceful and classic lines reminiscent of the Art Deco movement of the 1920's.
There really should be a "-1 factually incorrect" mod option on slashdot. That boat is nothing like art deco. You presumably just saw a picture of something art deco and white once and thought that anything white must be art deco.
As other comments below say, it's more like some brutalist 60s creation.
Only korabl' (ship) is masculine. Yahta (yacht), lodka (boat) and several other words are feminine, and sudno (ship, synonym of kobabl' in common usage though not in nautical terminology) is neuter.
Proof yet again of the pointlessness of gender in grammar, apart from referring to actual biological males or females.
Actually, if the kickstarter had been made factoring in a salary, it could have been both free AND for profit.
That is why I don't understand Kickstarter. If you want to give some random guy a few hundred quid to support him as he sits at home writing a book, I suppose that's up to you, but if there is no possible profit involved you shouldn't be allowed to treat it as a business transaction. It's just a donation to an individual who sounds ethically highly dubious.
If you want to start an educational charity, fine, but do it properly, including complying with the laws about being a registered charity.
Perhaps I am missing something, as Kickstarter seems to be loved by most people on slashdot, where all I can see is people conning money out of gullible well off geeks.
That's silly. Lots of things are done for free with the option to donate something to the author.
I know the nasty "profit-is-evil" streak is about to rear its ugly head here... but before it does, I'd suggest there's nothing wrong with providing a mechanism for this. Just so long as he honors the original arrangement from the Kickstarter, first and foremost.
If he sells it for profit, he should return all the money he has received from Kickstarter, if that was raised on the basis of being funding for a free e-book that just needed to cover some up front costs.
Otherwise, it's just fraud, which does not surprise me in the least since Kickstarter is involved. Profit is not bad in itself, but you shouldn't be able to mix up charitable donations and business funding, they're two separate things.
I taught my 5th grader the right way to 2 digit multiplication, and she said "That was much easier then my teacher taught me, I hope I don't get in trouble for doing it you're way".
1. Yes she probably would annoy her teacher, I make a point of sticking to my kids' schools set ways of doing things, it's just going to cause confusion if you're not careful, and
2. It's "your" so it's lucky you weren't helping her with English homework.
Your examples use the very brightest of those civilizations and doesn't necessarily disagree with TFA. It's entirely plausible that the brightest of today may not be any more intelligent then the brightest from centuries ago, but that average intelligence has risen due to access to information, public education, etc.
It's only relatively recently in the West that the poor/average person has had a decent diet and enough spare time to read books and so on.
BBC News is pretty simplistic too. It's good for getting a broad overview, but if there's any story you're interested in you'll almost certainly have to go somewhere else if you want to get actual detail. Channel 4 news are better at detail, but sometimes prone to over editorialising.
To be honest, you're better off reading a decent newspaper (dead tree or web version). In the half hour it takes to watch the TV news, you can amass a lot more detailed information from the 'paper.
Slashdot Mirror
I know the prefix invokes unpleasant connotations, but it also means 10^15.
When I see the word "peta" I think of naked supermodels in public protesting about animals, or something. Call me superficial but I'm prepared not to worry about the animals they're insulting if I get to see more naked supermodels.
Even a dressed 17 year old in a non-sexual pose could count as child pornography, in the UK.
Could you please provide links to a few actual cases where this has happened?
Because I don't believe you.
We've already had stories of people being charged with "child porn" by undressing a child, e.g. to change its diaper. t's very easy for child-porn laws to be used against anyone who has a child, at least if they want to keep that child reasonably clean and healthy.
To quote your sig [citation needed].
That sounds like some Daily Fail "social workers took my children off me because I voted conservative" story.
Slashdot users amaze me. They're experts not just on U.S. law but Canadian law as well!
It's a thing called common sense. Try using it sometime and you will see how liberating it can be. This common sense stuff allows for discussions on any number of topics without having to be fully schooled in the subject and a practitioner in that field. It also allows you to go about your day to day life without having to appeal to some higher authority for permission to engage in most anything you feel like doing that is harmless to all.
The law is not just about common sense, or you wouldn't need to train lawyers and judges, would you?
Someone tangentially related to me got himself killed covering a story, he got too close to riots in Mexico some years ago. Conceivably he might have been able to handle himself better or get away with it if he had a press card on him
People involved in riots don't tend to take the time to check your credentials before deciding whether to beat you to death or not. As a photographer you are potentially collecting evidence of crimes. A lot of criminals don't like that.
Libertarians believe that bankers will behave when they're accountable to their customers
Well, to be more precise: there's no better regulation than profit and loss, and government shelters incompetent bankers from their losses.
-jcr
No, the point was that the government decided there would be less hardship to innocent people by not letting the banks fail. However what they should have done, was to nationalise them completely (yes I'm in the UK) or at least impose severe pay limits and require that all profit was repaid to the government rather than in bonuses or dividends for ever.
Libertarians believe that bankers will behave when they're accountable to their customers
The only way to do that would be to nationalise the whole lot of them so that everybody had an equal stake in running them. But while "the market" rules, then the banks will do whatever they can to make more profits, including relying on ever more outlandish financial products, unless they are stopped by regulators.
The reason regulators were inefffective is because the financial services industry did a huge lobbying job tow ater down their effectiveness. That is the fault of the financial services industry, not the regulators.
>Libertarians are childish and dangerous
Those who support government are childish and dangerous, if not naive. Your beliefs are based on the doctrine of "Power doesn't corrupt".
Your beliefs are based on the notion that the power structure of society is limited entirely to "the government" and that if you magically get rid of "the government" all you'll be left with are free and equal citizens.
In fact, it is only the presence of a democratically accountable government and system of law that prevents the rich and powerful from becoming absolutely rich and powerful, which most of us think is a good thing.
The laws libertarians disagree with are the special handouts in tax law, the heavy regulation of business, government dictating what people can do with their property, and certain criminal laws that try to regulate society
No, what libertarians really disagree with are any attempts by the democratically elected government to redistribute wealth (and therefore power) from the rich to the poor, so they should just admit this rather than make up unconvincing theoretical arguments about freedom.
What's to get? All great civilizations and empires have fallen. One reason (thinking of Rome) is they simply become too big to manage and ran into communication, economics and logistics barriers. Another is they were attacked and ruined with the very same technology they had passed on to conquered peoples in ill-advised remote wars (rather like the US training of fanatics such as Osama Bin Laden gave birth to AQ). Another is the famous moral and ethical decline of rulers (Rome).
Why should the US be exempt from what seems to be historically inevitable?
The very wealthy form their own nation, and won't care what happens to the US, China or ayone else, as long as they get to stay comfortable and in contol.
How are rich people responsible for thuggish, authoritarian cops and security guards? It sounds to me like governments ultimately have to be held responsible for it. The War Against Photography has little to do with any sort of rich vs poor class warfare.
You seem to be suffering from the current US delusion that there is an evil government which has no connection with the rich and powerful, that the rich and powerful are basically the good guys, and that by scaling down or abolishing government everyone will be free to live happy lives.
In actual fact, once the rich and powerful were completely free form any remaining shreds of democratically accountability and law, you'd end up with a monopolistic Big Boys Club that would make the Nineteenth Centurey robber barons and Twentieth Century dictators look like amateurs.
I don't believe any one person deserves to be that rich.
its disgusting and the disparity is just too great, these days.
sorry, but its just disgusting. and I'm not at all referring to the stupid boat.
Agreed. What you need to do is vote for people who will introduce serious progressive taxes, as in 90%+ over a certain amount ($1m a year or whatever). Then, the wealthiest will want to plough profits back into society rather than paying it out to themselves in order to buy ever more ridiculous penis substitute toys.
And, no I don't really care about the impact of jobs on the $250m a go luxury yacht industry. They can find something more useful to do with their skills instead.
Contrary to what almost everyone else here thinks, I think it's a striking, beautiful design. And no, I'm not an Apple fanboi, I haven't owned a single Apple product in my life and I'm not particularly interested in them. But I can appreciate the design, or should I say architecture, of this yacht.
You are, of course, entitled to your opinion, in the same way that you are at liberty to believe in a Flat Earth.
It in fact has graceful and classic lines reminiscent of the Art Deco movement of the 1920's.
There really should be a "-1 factually incorrect" mod option on slashdot. That boat is nothing like art deco. You presumably just saw a picture of something art deco and white once and thought that anything white must be art deco.
As other comments below say, it's more like some brutalist 60s creation.
This: http://www.luxuo.com/yachting/schopfer-yachts-infinitas-superyacht.html
Wow, that looks like a (very big) dildo, unlike Jobs's yacht which just looks like wank.
Only korabl' (ship) is masculine. Yahta (yacht), lodka (boat) and several other words are feminine, and sudno (ship, synonym of kobabl' in common usage though not in nautical terminology) is neuter.
Proof yet again of the pointlessness of gender in grammar, apart from referring to actual biological males or females.
I love your reply because it shows exactly what uncritical hero worship looks like. I imagine that you can be easily manipulated to fawn.
9. Initially sell the ebook only, and then unlock it for free for all people after $xxxx has been raised
I like this idea very much — although I wonder if this is akin to what the Kickstarter model was meant to achieve.
Yes, financially penalising your early supporters seems like a brilliant marketing move. Just imagine how keen they'll be to buy your next work.
Translation: I once tried to use paypal as a business bank account while passing myself off as a private buyer/seller and got caught.
Actually, if the kickstarter had been made factoring in a salary, it could have been both free AND for profit.
That is why I don't understand Kickstarter. If you want to give some random guy a few hundred quid to support him as he sits at home writing a book, I suppose that's up to you, but if there is no possible profit involved you shouldn't be allowed to treat it as a business transaction. It's just a donation to an individual who sounds ethically highly dubious.
If you want to start an educational charity, fine, but do it properly, including complying with the laws about being a registered charity.
Perhaps I am missing something, as Kickstarter seems to be loved by most people on slashdot, where all I can see is people conning money out of gullible well off geeks.
That's silly. Lots of things are done for free with the option to donate something to the author.
I know the nasty "profit-is-evil" streak is about to rear its ugly head here... but before it does, I'd suggest there's nothing wrong with providing a mechanism for this. Just so long as he honors the original arrangement from the Kickstarter, first and foremost.
If he sells it for profit, he should return all the money he has received from Kickstarter, if that was raised on the basis of being funding for a free e-book that just needed to cover some up front costs.
Otherwise, it's just fraud, which does not surprise me in the least since Kickstarter is involved. Profit is not bad in itself, but you shouldn't be able to mix up charitable donations and business funding, they're two separate things.
I taught my 5th grader the right way to 2 digit multiplication, and she said "That was much easier then my teacher taught me, I hope I don't get in trouble for doing it you're way".
1. Yes she probably would annoy her teacher, I make a point of sticking to my kids' schools set ways of doing things, it's just going to cause confusion if you're not careful, and
2. It's "your" so it's lucky you weren't helping her with English homework.
Your examples use the very brightest of those civilizations and doesn't necessarily disagree with TFA. It's entirely plausible that the brightest of today may not be any more intelligent then the brightest from centuries ago, but that average intelligence has risen due to access to information, public education, etc.
It's only relatively recently in the West that the poor/average person has had a decent diet and enough spare time to read books and so on.
I went through the Thames years of The Benny Hill Show,
Only someone from the US would use that pile of crap as an example of good TV.
BBC News is pretty simplistic too. It's good for getting a broad overview, but if there's any story you're interested in you'll almost certainly have to go somewhere else if you want to get actual detail. Channel 4 news are better at detail, but sometimes prone to over editorialising.
To be honest, you're better off reading a decent newspaper (dead tree or web version). In the half hour it takes to watch the TV news, you can amass a lot more detailed information from the 'paper.