I take a more moderate view. Not all forms of censorship are alike. There is a huge difference between making something illegal to view and keeping it out of plain sight in public places.
I don't think most people would rather see porn banned. It's the biggest money maker on the internet, I think most people use it.
But there is nothing wrong with making compromises to respect the rights of others to not have to see material they find offensive, or expose their children to such. It doesn't infringe on your rights at all to prevent you from browsing "cum-slurping-sluts.com" in plain view of everyone that happens to walk by your library terminal. It's the equivalent of making it illegal to blast loud music from your front porch in the middle of the night...
Is the government just as guilty of censorship for not allowing Penthouse magazine on the racks in a public library?
I suppose so, but most rational people would consider that a reasonable and desirable amount of censorship. After all, we don't want parents forbidding their children to go to the library because they have porn on the shelves.
As long as they are censoring "obscene" material and not "subversive content" then there is no real ethical problem (as long as we can agree on the definition of obscenity, but that's another kettle of fish.)
It's just too bad that censorware doesn't really work.
No, the government asked the networks not to broadcast those speeches. They most definitely did not and would not make it illegal, much less arrest citizens for accessing foreign feeds of those same speeches over the internet.
Nothing naive about it. People can stand up for themselves or not. Unfortunately, the Chinese culture is extremely authoritarian. I should have said "learn to question authority" instead of "grow some balls" as there are undoubtedly some very brave Chinese citizens.
If the majority of the people decided to revolt the Red Army would be powerless to stop them.
It was marked as troll because it dismissed a lot of very talented and experienced programmers as "geeks in their bedrooms," it made an inane analogy with farmers when we all know that software, unlike food, can be reproduced without cost and often requires maintenance, and it missed the whole point of Free software in general. If he had said, "Basing businesses around Open Source was a mass delusion," then he might have had a point and probably would not have gotten modded as a troll. But to most of us that have been using and contributing to Free software for years it has nothing to do with business, it is a community effort to build ourselves a computing environment that we control and can be happy with.
Why is it suprising that Red Hat should remain Free? They have always released all their source code and have cut paychecks for many an Open Source programmer. For them to remain steadfast in their policy is hardly suprising.
Personally, I don't use Red Hat Linux as I find it rather byzantine, but I have always held them in the highest regard when it comes to their ethical stance on Free software.
Well, that's how it used to be until the Republicans morphed into the Jesus party, with all their war-on-drugs, prayer-in-schools, we-will-legislate-your-morals bullshit.
Apples and oranges. Blackbox is just a window manager, so basically you prefer plain old X without a "Desktop Environment" like those offered by Gnome and KDE.
So do I, but I get tired of explaining the difference, that's left as an exercise for the reader...
There is plenty of money to be made in tech-support on the side. Try an approach more along the lines of, "Pay/trade me up front for time and labor and I'll help you."
The high moderation of this comment has made it clear to me just how many Slashdot readers really need to "get a life" (in the immortal words of Bill Shatner.)
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Good point. I was not really thinking of Federal vs. Local legislation, just the level of censorship in general.
I guess I'm not aware of the laws governing the content of public libraries. Are there no Federal guidelines on the content of printed material?
I take a more moderate view. Not all forms of censorship are alike. There is a huge difference between making something illegal to view and keeping it out of plain sight in public places.
I don't think most people would rather see porn banned. It's the biggest money maker on the internet, I think most people use it.
But there is nothing wrong with making compromises to respect the rights of others to not have to see material they find offensive, or expose their children to such. It doesn't infringe on your rights at all to prevent you from browsing "cum-slurping-sluts.com" in plain view of everyone that happens to walk by your library terminal. It's the equivalent of making it illegal to blast loud music from your front porch in the middle of the night...
That's odd. I just tried it with IE 6.0 and it worked.
Is the government just as guilty of censorship for not allowing Penthouse magazine on the racks in a public library?
I suppose so, but most rational people would consider that a reasonable and desirable amount of censorship. After all, we don't want parents forbidding their children to go to the library because they have porn on the shelves.
As long as they are censoring "obscene" material and not "subversive content" then there is no real ethical problem (as long as we can agree on the definition of obscenity, but that's another kettle of fish.)
It's just too bad that censorware doesn't really work.
No, the government asked the networks not to broadcast those speeches. They most definitely did not and would not make it illegal, much less arrest citizens for accessing foreign feeds of those same speeches over the internet.
Nothing naive about it. People can stand up for themselves or not. Unfortunately, the Chinese culture is extremely authoritarian. I should have said "learn to question authority" instead of "grow some balls" as there are undoubtedly some very brave Chinese citizens.
If the majority of the people decided to revolt the Red Army would be powerless to stop them.
True for porn (not unreasonable in a public place), but in China the "subversive content" would include foreign newsfeeds as stated in the article.
I would call this an abrogation of a fundamental freedom, but that's just me.
Most of China is not at all technologically advanced, the rural areas are still practically pre-Industrial. Perhaps you are thinking of Japan?
Yes, we do.
People get the kind of government they deserve. I mean really, grow some balls already.
Actually, I'm married with 3 kids. Perhaps you are projecting?
It was marked as troll because it dismissed a lot of very talented and experienced programmers as "geeks in their bedrooms," it made an inane analogy with farmers when we all know that software, unlike food, can be reproduced without cost and often requires maintenance, and it missed the whole point of Free software in general. If he had said, "Basing businesses around Open Source was a mass delusion," then he might have had a point and probably would not have gotten modded as a troll. But to most of us that have been using and contributing to Free software for years it has nothing to do with business, it is a community effort to build ourselves a computing environment that we control and can be happy with.
Why is it suprising that Red Hat should remain Free? They have always released all their source code and have cut paychecks for many an Open Source programmer. For them to remain steadfast in their policy is hardly suprising.
Personally, I don't use Red Hat Linux as I find it rather byzantine, but I have always held them in the highest regard when it comes to their ethical stance on Free software.
my vi-trained fingers have a tendancy to hit escape after typing a bunch of text, and in IE this resets the text area to the default value
I have this same problem. In case you didn't know, you can type ctrl-z to undo the reset and get all your text back.
Still annoying though...
I though I was the only one with this strange habit. We need a name for this compulsive behavior. "Selectivitis?"
Rubbish. They would point it out as an oversimplification of a purely theoretical concept.
Why don't you guys (and the genius moderator) do a little web search for "time fourth dimension" and read what the current theories are...
(mumble, mumble, pissant moderators, mumble, pet theory, mumble, mumble, closet Luddites)
Time is not seriously believed to be a 4th dimension. That's popular pseudo-science garbage.
Well, that's how it used to be until the Republicans morphed into the Jesus party, with all their war-on-drugs, prayer-in-schools, we-will-legislate-your-morals bullshit.
Not that Democratic party is any prize either. ;-P
They require literate users and can be used over a ssh session. Obviously the inferior solution is better since it's more like Microsoft's solution
Apples and oranges. Blackbox is just a window manager, so basically you prefer plain old X without a "Desktop Environment" like those offered by Gnome and KDE.
So do I, but I get tired of explaining the difference, that's left as an exercise for the reader...
Sounds like you need to learn how to say No.
There is plenty of money to be made in tech-support on the side. Try an approach more along the lines of, "Pay/trade me up front for time and labor and I'll help you."
Sorry, I'm going to whine. Moderate me down if you must, but...
If there's one thing I'd rather not hear about it's marketing. For the love of Bob, make it stop! *sobbing*
Thank you.
My God...
The high moderation of this comment has made it clear to me just how many Slashdot readers really need to "get a life" (in the immortal words of Bill Shatner.)
Actually, FreeBSD contains hardly any GNU code in the main tree, with the notable exception of the gcc suite.