So how much longer until Germany get declared a "rogue" state by the USA for "aiding and abetting in terrorist activities" and undermining the Pentagon's domination of the world? Seems like a brave bold move for a NATO ally to stick it to Uncle Sam like this.
Re:This is why there are moderated groups
on
Usenet Gag Order
·
· Score: 1
Besides, I see this matter rather more like banning a rude/drunk/idiot from a business establishment. If I'm making an idiot of myself in a bar or a restaurant, the manager can call the police and have me removed. If I keep going back and making a nuisance of myself, they can probably ban me and have a judge prevent me from returning. This isn't censoring my right to free speech or thoughts, it falls under the public nuisance areas of law. My suggestion is that this whole incident falls under that category.
A bar or restaurant is private property, and if the owner or those put in charge don't want you there, they can tell you to leave. If you don't comply, then they can call the police and have you arrested. The Usenet, on the other hand, does not belong to anyone, individual or organization, and is not for anyone to decide who can or cannot post to it. At most, it is up to the poster's ISP to decide whether or not they want such a nuisance posting from their system, and if they don't, then they can nuke his/her account.
If the authorities wish, they can arrest him for the actual threats, etc. posted to the Usenet, but banning him from posting altogether is exercising their control to an unacceptable extent. The powers that be (politicians, judiciaries, etc.) are authoritarian by their very nature. Give them an inch (of our freedom) and they'll take a mile.
I guess this goes to show that professors and the institutions they represent are generally mercenaries interested in the almighty buck than genuine intellectuals interested in contributing to humankind's pool of knowledge.
As for Oz implementing some sort of Age Verification system - I'm all for it. I hate censorship but then again I do think that certain material should be withheld from minors. What constitutes "certain material" is another question altogether though:)
Well, maybe the "age verification" and censorship should be done at the recepient's end. The Internet community is not your children's babysitter. Something to think about before you give your kids unsupervised access to the Internet.
yes, i know the people making the "death to spammers" were probably joking (i hope), but this guys had family who cared about them....even if they stole $$$, they deserve to punished to the full extent of the law, but laughing and joking about their deaths is so cold hearted and sick. have someone close to you die, and then see how quickly you find the death of others so god damn funny.
Oh boo hoo hoo! Cry me a fucking river, why don't you?
If their family members aided and abetted in their thieving activities, or if they benefitted from them in any way, or are responsible for their upbringing into being such crooked bastards, then there ought to be absolutely no sympathy for them whatsoever. Do try and think on rational terms for once, and please spare us your misguided human compassion.
Correction. The radical right needs to be whacked.
Nah! I think they do enough whacking off to all the porno mags and pictures they keep stashed in their drawers,while proclaiming the supreme morality....That's when they're not engaged in kinky perverse sexual acts with prostitutes in motel rooms or molesting little children. But nobody suspects them, because they've been "saved".
I propose that all the backers of the X is too many people movement lead the way and voluntarily sterilize themselves. This will show true dedication to your cause. Call it a "put your money where your mouth is" suggestion.
I propose that you find a way to feed and house every starving person in the world without polluting more air/water and destroying more wilderness habitat.
I agree with Monsanto in this. Since they have spent millions creating a seed variation, they now "own" that variation. If the farmer doesn't like it, then don't use the variation. Don't believe the hype that the farmer is some starving hick. Most farmers are large conglomerates earning millions every year.
Then at the very least, Monsanto should be required to develop its product so that it does not pollute the air with pollen and genetically contaminate the crops of those farmers who did not "buy" the right to grow their seeds. Otherwise, it's the farmer's right to do as he pleases with it.
I agree. In nature, we see the "selfish gene theory." Which basically means animals (including humans) reproduce to further their genes through children. This has been going on since the beginning of life. I see dangers in the social implications, such as superiority, but what about us messing with nature, which is something we absolutely do not understand. Can this lead to a demise in our species? Let me elaborate... Say we can engineer children, and parents have a favorite "gene combination" that they want their kids to have. This combination makes them smarter or stronger, or whatever. 20 years later, all these genetically engineered humans died from a blood disease. This is because we didn't know all there was to know about the human genome and we unknowingly messed up their resistance to a disease. I think we should leave it to nature. Does anyone else think this is a possibility? Should we even attempt something with such severe implications? What do you think?
Just approach with extreme caution one small step at a time and don't do anything too drastic too suddenly, until this science is much better understood.
Seriously, we need something like this to make up for the lack of natural selection that now takes place in the human species, now that civilization does all to let everyone who otherwise couldn't survive in the wild live and breed.
Yeah!....I would love to see the rich kids get even cockier and smarter and have EVEN MORE of an edge over the poor kids. Picture it: inner city kids staying as worthless as they are now; rich suburban kids (with their genetically enhanced bodies and brains) gaining all the world's power.
Replace "poor inner-city" with "black", and "rich suburban" with "white", and you'll get a pretty accurate picture of the situation.
Maybe these white kids will also be engineered to become better runners and basketball players than the blacks. And Hitler will be laughing in his grave when the white guys once again dominate in the Olympics at track and field. Whats next? Inner-city kids becoming slaves???? Sounds scary. I would never participate in genetic altering of my children. Never.
And watch your children become one of the "slaves"?
How about just using setxkbmap instead. The keymappings for both QWERTY and Dvorak are included in the XFree86 package without the need to download any new files. Just make the following aliases instead: % alias asdf 'setxkbmap dvorak' % alias aoeu 'setxkbmap us'
By bestowing a life long burden on the taxpayers to support a child that should have been naturally un-selected, we are in essence creating a life where there should never have been one.
Basically what you say is that children should be killed because they cost the taxpayer money. This is probably the most disgusting attitude a human being can have. You should be ashamed of yourself. I can't even come up with a good term to describe you. You disgust me.
So maybe you and all other likeminded folks should adopt all these defective and unwanted babies, and raise and feed them till their deaths entirely at your own expense.
Maybe one day, you can even let one of them marry your own daughter, without any concern for any of their disabilities and shortfallings, since they're just as good as anyone else to you, and produce you some wonderful grandchildren, for whom you shall also pick up the tab if necessary.
This all reminds me of an incident that took place around here not too long ago. A woman tried to stage an accidental fall of her Downs syndrome-afflicted baby daughter by dropping her off a 45-meter-high suspension bridge. The baby somehow miraculously survived. Apparently, the mother had attempted to put her up for adoption three times in the past, unsuccessfully. Now, where the bloody hell were the folks like you to pick up for her and adopt this child and avert a tragedy like this from ever occuring in the first place???
Edison may have given us the light bulb, but without some artistic and imaginative minds, how would we ever have Christmas lights, disco lights, chandeliers, etc.? It would be pretty sad if we only had plain light bulbs with simple on/off switches.
Likewise, the geeks may have given us the internet, but the imaginative and creative people have provided most of the content for it (news and sports columns, movie reviews, downloadable Southpark episodes, music files, porn, etc.).
Geeks and such scientific people may have given us the means to live on this planet with six billion people, but the more human humans actually give us a reason for living.
Well, I can't think of any Edisons, but there are a few pop star geeks....:
Tom Scholz(excellent guitarist of Boston) was an engineer and certifiable geek (Mechanical Engineering, MIT) before he hit it big, and has subsequently engineered a lot of cool sounding musical gear. Tommy Tutone ("Jenny Jenny, etc...867-5309") is a software engineer.
I'm sure there must be others. Can anyone name some others?
Elvis Costello--A former computer programmer before becoming a musician. Has a very geeky appearance, no doubt.
Thomas Dolby--80's musician with hits like "She Blinded Me With Science" and primary developer of the Beatnik audio plugin.
Devo--Turned geekiness into a fad in the early 80's.
In a sense, we already have this, except we call it Usenet and fill it with porn.
The problem with this is, there's no way to get any formal accreditation for anything learned over the Usenet.
What needs to be done is for intellectuals to donate their time and knowledge to put out instructional material organized and bundled together as entire course packages (ie. everything needed to be learned to gain credit for a particular course). With the knowledge gained, the student ought to be able to write and pass a final exam for any equivalent course offered at a traditional university, or better yet, have the option of writing one over the net, or prove their mastery of the course material by posting his/her own thesis for the course over the Internet for all to see.
If the author of the course package doesn't have a Ph.D. or any other formal credentials, WHO CARES!?! PhD's aren't necessarily the best teachers anyways, and why leave it to an elite clique of brown-nosers who conformed to all the formalities of a traditional institution and sucked up to enough old men throughout their student years to decide who is worthy of credit/respect in society anyways? As a comparison, who makes better, more reliable software? The professional programmers/software engineers with CS degrees who work at Microsoft, or the many fine hackers around the world who have brought us Linux and many other such free software?
Although I think an anarchic approach to higher education like this would be ideal, of course not all courses and programs can be substituted by what can be read over the net, especially those that require hands-on experience and practice. But the time needlessly wasted attending useless and boring lectures and the hard-earned money lining the instructors' and institutions' pockets ought to be brought to a minimum.
Since most geeks have a hard time interacting with real people, not having to confront them (or sunlight) while getting a degree can only help get the mind and body ready for an lifetime full of junk food, carbonated beverages, florescent lighting and no girlfriends.
Well, that depends on how one manages one's own life if given more time to him/herself, doesn't it?
On the other hand, it may give the student more time to mingle with people from all walks of life other than fellow studious academic nerds, and give them a more well-rounded perspective of the real world outside of the mostly irrelevant ivory tower. Spend some of the time saved from not having to commute at a neighbourhood pub, instead of the one on campus, or something. Sure beats limiting oneself to and being consumed by an academic environment day and night.
When you need to discuss matters relating to the material being studied, do it online in the form of Usenet or chat rooms with students around the world, and get a broader, more complete perspective of it than you would by limiting your interaction on it to others in the same class taught by the same instructor. For discussing necessary course-specific material, use web-based message boards or e-mail.
How about a free virtual university, sort of like the free software movement, but with intellectuals of all subjects (instead of just techno geeks) contributing their knowledge and expertise over the Internet? Maybe with minimal administrative fees for examinations, laboratory work, etc. It would make education accessible to those who cannot afford the exorbitant tuition fees charged by the "real" unis.
The problem isn't linking in general. The problem is linking to something which breaks the law. Like it or not, posting .mp3s is a copyright violation. Knowingly pointing other people to them is aiding and abeting.
(Warning: extreme example coming)
Say you had a friend who you KNEW killed people for a living. Say someone came to you and said, "Hi! I'd like to have someone killed. Do you know who I can go to?" You say, "Sure! Just go ask my friend."
If I know of someone who is willing to do it, I have the right to inform him of it. On the other hand, if I am aware of his intention, I am obligated to notify the authorities.
Slashdot Mirror
So how much longer until Germany get declared a "rogue" state by the USA for "aiding and abetting in terrorist activities" and undermining the Pentagon's domination of the world? Seems like a brave bold move for a NATO ally to stick it to Uncle Sam like this.
Besides, I see this matter rather more like banning a rude/drunk/idiot from a business establishment. If I'm
making an idiot of myself in a bar or a restaurant, the manager can call the police and have me removed. If I
keep going back and making a nuisance of myself, they can probably ban me and have a judge prevent me
from returning. This isn't censoring my right to free speech or thoughts, it falls under the public nuisance areas
of law. My suggestion is that this whole incident falls under that category.
A bar or restaurant is private property, and if the owner or those put in charge don't want you there, they can tell you to leave. If you don't comply, then they can call the police and have you arrested. The Usenet, on the other hand, does not belong to anyone, individual or organization, and is not for anyone to decide who can or cannot post to it. At most, it is up to the poster's ISP to decide whether or not they want such a nuisance posting from their system, and if they don't, then they can nuke his/her account.
If the authorities wish, they can arrest him for the actual threats, etc. posted to the Usenet, but banning him from posting altogether is exercising their control to an unacceptable extent. The powers that be (politicians, judiciaries, etc.) are authoritarian by their very nature. Give them an inch (of our freedom) and they'll take a mile.
I guess this goes to show that professors and the institutions they represent are generally mercenaries interested in the almighty buck than genuine intellectuals interested in contributing to humankind's pool of knowledge.
How about Red Flag Linux?
(Ducks)
As for Oz implementing some sort of Age Verification system - I'm all for it. I hate censorship but then again :)
I do think that certain material should be withheld from minors. What constitutes "certain material" is another
question altogether though
Well, maybe the "age verification" and censorship should be done at the recepient's end. The Internet community is not your children's babysitter. Something to think about before you give your kids unsupervised access to the Internet.
yes, i know the people making the "death to spammers" were probably joking (i hope), but this guys had family who
cared about them....even if they stole $$$, they deserve to punished to the full extent of the law, but laughing and joking
about their deaths is so cold hearted and sick. have someone close to you die, and then see how quickly you find the
death of others so god damn funny.
Oh boo hoo hoo! Cry me a fucking river, why don't you?
If their family members aided and abetted in their thieving activities, or if they benefitted from them in any way, or are responsible for their upbringing into being such crooked bastards, then there ought to be absolutely no sympathy for them whatsoever. Do try and think on rational terms for once, and please spare us your misguided human compassion.
They're dead.
So they won't be around to rip any more innocent people off. How is that a bad thing?
How about 'entertainment'?
Maybe this is just the result of a very agressive procmail filter.
!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!!
Classic!
I suggest we start a "Best of Slashdot" archive, and I nominate the above comment for inclusion in it.
As someone who isn't Christian, it worries me that more Christians don't point out how whacked the radical right is.
(BTW, I am a Republican. And yes, I'm angry.)
If you're a free-market capitalist, but not a Christian righter, shouldn't you be a Libertarian instead of a Republican?
Correction. The radical right needs to be whacked.
Nah! I think they do enough whacking off to all the porno mags and pictures they keep stashed in their drawers,while proclaiming the supreme morality.
So how long until they're hunted for ivory or for medicinal purposes for the Chinese?
I propose that all the backers of the X is too many people movement lead the way and voluntarily sterilize themselves.
This will show true dedication to your cause. Call it a "put your money where your mouth is" suggestion.
I propose that you find a way to feed and house every starving person in the world without polluting more air/water and destroying more wilderness habitat.
I agree with Monsanto in this. Since they have spent millions creating a seed variation, they now "own" that variation.
If the farmer doesn't like it, then don't use the variation. Don't believe the hype that the farmer is some starving hick.
Most farmers are large conglomerates earning millions every year.
Then at the very least, Monsanto should be required to develop its product so that it does not pollute the air with pollen and genetically contaminate the crops of those farmers who did not "buy" the right to grow their seeds. Otherwise, it's the farmer's right to do as he pleases with it.
I agree. In nature, we see the "selfish gene theory." Which basically means animals (including humans) reproduce to
further their genes through children. This has been going on since the beginning of life. I see dangers in the social
implications, such as superiority, but what about us messing with nature, which is something we absolutely do not
understand. Can this lead to a demise in our species? Let me elaborate... Say we can engineer children, and parents
have a favorite "gene combination" that they want their kids to have. This combination makes them smarter or
stronger, or whatever. 20 years later, all these genetically engineered humans died from a blood disease. This is
because we didn't know all there was to know about the human genome and we unknowingly messed up their
resistance to a disease. I think we should leave it to nature. Does anyone else think this is a possibility? Should we even
attempt something with such severe implications? What do you think?
Just approach with extreme caution one small step at a time and don't do anything too drastic too suddenly, until this science is much better understood.
Seriously, we need something like this to make up for the lack of natural selection that now takes place in the human species, now that civilization does all to let everyone who otherwise couldn't survive in the wild live and breed.
Yeah!....I would love to see the rich kids get even cockier and smarter and have EVEN MORE of an edge over the
poor kids. Picture it: inner city kids staying as worthless as they are now; rich suburban kids (with their genetically
enhanced bodies and brains) gaining all the world's power.
Replace "poor inner-city" with "black", and "rich suburban" with "white", and you'll get a pretty accurate picture of the situation.
Maybe these white kids will also be engineered to become better runners and basketball players than the blacks. And Hitler will be laughing in his grave when the white guys once again dominate in the Olympics at track and field.
Whats next? Inner-city kids becoming slaves???? Sounds
scary. I would never participate in genetic altering of my children. Never.
And watch your children become one of the "slaves"?
How about just using setxkbmap instead. The keymappings for both QWERTY and Dvorak are included in the XFree86 package without the need to download any new files. Just make the following aliases instead:
% alias asdf 'setxkbmap dvorak'
% alias aoeu 'setxkbmap us'
By bestowing a life long burden on the taxpayers to support a child that should have been naturally un-selected, we
are in essence creating a life where there should never have been one.
Basically what you say is that children should be killed because they cost the taxpayer money. This is probably the
most disgusting attitude a human being can have. You should be ashamed of yourself. I can't even come up with a
good term to describe you. You disgust me.
So maybe you and all other likeminded folks should adopt all these defective and unwanted babies, and raise and feed them till their deaths entirely at your own expense.
Maybe one day, you can even let one of them marry your own daughter, without any concern for any of their disabilities and shortfallings, since they're just as good as anyone else to you, and produce you some wonderful grandchildren, for whom you shall also pick up the tab if necessary.
This all reminds me of an incident that took place around here not too long ago. A woman tried to stage an accidental fall of her Downs syndrome-afflicted baby daughter by dropping her off a 45-meter-high suspension bridge. The baby somehow miraculously survived. Apparently, the mother had attempted to put her up for adoption three times in the past, unsuccessfully. Now, where the bloody hell were the folks like you to pick up for her and adopt this child and avert a tragedy like this from ever occuring in the first place???
How old is this particular NAZI puke? Could he be the same one, or does Princeton have an ongoing tradition of
avocoating crimes against humanity?
Yes, NAZIs also have an ongoing tradition of supporting the Green Party and supporting various world aid organization.
Edison may have given us the light bulb, but without some artistic and imaginative minds, how would we ever have Christmas lights, disco lights, chandeliers, etc.? It would be pretty sad if we only had plain light bulbs with simple on/off switches.
Likewise, the geeks may have given us the internet, but the imaginative and creative people have provided most of the content for it (news and sports columns, movie reviews, downloadable Southpark episodes, music files, porn, etc.).
Geeks and such scientific people may have given us the means to live on this planet with six billion people, but the more human humans actually give us a reason for living.
Well, I can't think of any Edisons, but there are a few pop star geeks....:
Tom Scholz(excellent guitarist of Boston) was an engineer and certifiable geek (Mechanical Engineering, MIT)
before he hit it big, and has subsequently engineered a lot of cool sounding musical gear.
Tommy Tutone ("Jenny Jenny, etc...867-5309") is a software engineer.
I'm sure there must be others. Can anyone name some others?
Elvis Costello--A former computer programmer before becoming a musician. Has a very geeky appearance, no doubt.
Thomas Dolby--80's musician with hits like "She Blinded Me With Science" and primary developer of the Beatnik audio plugin.
Devo--Turned geekiness into a fad in the early 80's.
In a sense, we already have this, except we call it Usenet and fill it with porn.
The problem with this is, there's no way to get any formal accreditation for anything learned over the Usenet.
What needs to be done is for intellectuals to donate their time and knowledge to put out instructional material organized and bundled together as entire course packages (ie. everything needed to be learned to gain credit for a particular course). With the knowledge gained, the student ought to be able to write and pass a final exam for any equivalent course offered at a traditional university, or better yet, have the option of writing one over the net, or prove their mastery of the course material by posting his/her own thesis for the course over the Internet for all to see.
If the author of the course package doesn't have a Ph.D. or any other formal credentials, WHO CARES!?! PhD's aren't necessarily the best teachers anyways, and why leave it to an elite clique of brown-nosers who conformed to all the formalities of a traditional institution and sucked up to enough old men throughout their student years to decide who is worthy of credit/respect in society anyways? As a comparison, who makes better, more reliable software? The professional programmers/software engineers with CS degrees who work at Microsoft, or the many fine hackers around the world who have brought us Linux and many other such free software?
Although I think an anarchic approach to higher education like this would be ideal, of course not all courses and programs can be substituted by what can be read over the net, especially those that require hands-on experience and practice. But the time needlessly wasted attending useless and boring lectures and the hard-earned money lining the instructors' and institutions' pockets ought to be brought to a minimum.
Since most geeks have a hard time interacting with real people, not having to confront them (or sunlight) while getting
a degree can only help get the mind and body ready for an lifetime full of junk food, carbonated beverages, florescent
lighting and no girlfriends.
Well, that depends on how one manages one's own life if given more time to him/herself, doesn't it?
On the other hand, it may give the student more time to mingle with people from all walks of life other than fellow studious academic nerds, and give them a more well-rounded perspective of the real world outside of the mostly irrelevant ivory tower. Spend some of the time saved from not having to commute at a neighbourhood pub, instead of the one on campus, or something. Sure beats limiting oneself to and being consumed by an academic environment day and night.
When you need to discuss matters relating to the material being studied, do it online in the form of Usenet or chat rooms with students around the world, and get a broader, more complete perspective of it than you would by limiting your interaction on it to others in the same class taught by the same instructor. For discussing necessary course-specific material, use web-based message boards or e-mail.
How about a free virtual university, sort of like the free software movement, but with intellectuals of all subjects (instead of just techno geeks) contributing their knowledge and expertise over the Internet? Maybe with minimal administrative fees for examinations, laboratory work, etc. It would make education accessible to those who cannot afford the exorbitant tuition fees charged by the "real" unis.
The problem isn't linking in general. The problem is linking to something which breaks the law. Like it or not, posting
(Warning: extreme example coming)
Say you had a friend who you KNEW killed people for a living. Say someone came to you and said, "Hi! I'd like to have
someone killed. Do you know who I can go to?" You say, "Sure! Just go ask my friend."
If I know of someone who is willing to do it, I have the right to inform him of it. On the other hand, if I am aware of his intention, I am obligated to notify the authorities.