There's a middle ground between 'every idea or work of art is free' and 'we've patented inspirating oxygenated air through an orifice, now pay up.'
Our society doesn't work that way anymore. We can't find any common ground because once one side gains prominence, they use rhetoric and apathy to slowly move society to the more radical position. We have lost the ability to apply common sense, particularly where it comes to the interpretation of the law.
The very existence of a company like Intellectual Ventures is proof of how the systems we create degenerate to an extreme. The copyright status of the song "Happy Birthday" is another. In the sphere of commerce, the collapse of Enron and Lehman Brothers provide yet more. The overfishing of Tuna, the property bubble, the California amendment system, the punishment of sex offenders, the decline of the media, the war on terrorism with its extraordinary renditions and torture, the filtering/monitoring of the internet, etc, etc.
The old Anglo-Saxon model of government was that of recognition of both written law and public custom (i.e. common sense). Somewhere along the way, the system lost sight of both. It didn't gravitate towards an Irish model (Less law and more custom) or towards a French one (More law and less custom). The system just degenerated. Right now in the US you can't take pictures of many public monuments or buy your children proper chemistry sets. What frightens me is how much the US model is influencing the rest of the Anglophone world.
I refuse to call someone a "pedophile" who is attracted to 17-year-old girls,
"That is a very interesting remark," sneered a voice, softer than the others but more evil. "I may have to report that." -- Grishnack the Orc, The Two Towers
Socioeconomic and ethnic data is important in determining the types of services various areas need and plays an important part in know just who an "American" really is.
Does it? Does it really? Is all this information overload really that useful? Is it being collected because it is actually useful, or just because the Central Statistics Office has an insatiable urge to know as many details as it can feasibly get (This isn't necessarily a malicious desire; just a dysfunctional one).
Here's an example of some of the questions that came around in the 2006 Irish Census (Bear in mind the population is only ~4 million).
Question H1) What type of accommodation does your household occupy?
A whole house or bungalow that is: * Detached * Semi-detacted * Terraced A flat or apartment that is.... etc
Question H5) How many rooms do you have in your household?
Question P1-9) Where did you usually live a year ago?
Question P1-18) What time do you usually leave home to go to work, school or college?
Question P1-33) What is (was) the business of your employer at the place where you work(ed) in your main job?
Needless to say, the form took about three hours to fill in.
I thought the census was supposed to be about counting the number of people in the country, not simulating an interrogation by the local village busybody. Though this time, instead of the valley of the squinting windows, it's the Panopticon of the slavering database clients.
Needless to say, the next time that form comes around in 2011, there is going to be an obscene amount of questions, potentially done either online or using a computer. Speaking for myself, I'm just not going to fill it out.
Just because a space is empty does not mean it is being "wasted". For example, watch as I proceed to "waste" space by leaving an empty line between this paragraph and the next one. Watch closely now.
See? There's a big gap between this paragraph and the last one. You could easily argue that this is in fact larger than the one shown in the GP's post. Now my own thinking on this is that what goes for text largely goes for UIs as well. Buttons, icons, text and windows all need some kind of "space" between them. You can't have the screen crammed with buttons widgets and interfaces with only a pixel or two between them. Especially if people are using the mouse.
Sometimes it's good to have empty space. Sometimes it's good to have a big blue window bar at the top of every window, which users know they can easily drag and drop the window with. I can't imagine the horror of replacing that with some tiny tab with has to be carefully tweezered in order to move the window. Sometimes it's good to have a big bold square "X" for closing the window right there in the top right corner, so that everyone knows they can close the program just by going to the top right corner of the screen. One thing I detest about the OSX UI is how it breaks this convention by making the close button a) small, b) in a non standard location and c) ensures it can never be in a proper corner of the screen.
I don't care what the latest fad on the UI scene is. These changes to Ubuntu suck bigtime. The reason the standard UI hasn't changed much in 30 years is because the stand UI is a good UI. It's sometimes difficult for many to accept this fact, but the system has stood the test of time because of its simplicity, utility and ergonomics. Many have tried to change it, and all have failed; yes even Apple. Ubuntu is, frankly, going to crash and burn.
I really like what I see, but it is a little... counter-intuitive that they not only put the window controls on the left side of windows but put them in order of Maximize-Minimize-Close.
Mindlessly aping Apple interfaces has been the long term goal of Linux window managers for at least the last 5 years. I expect they'll be migrating the file menu up into that heathen upper taskbar within the next two releases or so, and hang the wasted screen space.
I don't think Ubuntu really understand where they should be going with their UI. Their goal should be to attract windows users, not play second fiddle to Apple and ultimately become a stepping stone for users on the way to their iMacs. Things like the new notifications system show how Ubuntu can be a leader in UI innovation all by itself without having to be lead around by the Apple fashion police.
I never agreed with the top taskbar and I don't agree with this. I abhorred the spatial browsing farce and the pulseaudio debacle. Every recent Ubuntu update has forced one or two more irritants down my gullet to the point where I'm seriously considering switching distros for the first time in a while. If Lynx manages to screw up the UI to the extent I think it's going to, I'm going to install Gentoo.
It's likely that Brin's parents were part of that totalitarianism, that they enjoyed favoured status by reporting dissidents etc.
Even in the most ideologically fervent periods of communist rule, the soviets still saw the advantage in recognizing and promoting ability in certain fields. Sure, you could rise up the university ranks by being an obsequious toady and/or an unscrupulous informant and denouncer. But it was in fact also possible to rise up the ranks (though perhaps not to the top) simply on the basis of merit alone.
Considering that they eventually had to leave their home, I'm guessing Brin's parents were in the latter category.
Furthermore, my wife lost her virginity at 14 and said she felt it was a huge mistake. In fact, most of the women I know who lost their virginity before 18 have told me they wished they hadn't....Many of them didn't have sex again for several years after breaking up with their first partner because they didn't feel they could handle it yet (my wife incuded).
With all the supposedly intelligent and future thinking people pushing the Internet forward, I am stunned at their inability to comply with W3C standards.
One of those W3C standards is that an element id or name cannot begin with a digit. It can contain digits mind you, it just can't begin with one.
Most browsers wisely ignored this ridiculous stipulation(It's a string field) and sites could happily use numeric element ids and link to them with impunity. This is still the case in Firefox, Opera, etc, and all the IEs up to 7. However, IE 8, choosing the most ridiculous standard on which to comply, now no longer recognises links with numeric ids, e.g. "page.html#01" no longer works. I have personally had to recode the link across and entire site as a result of this decision.
Sometimes, not every word of gospel that comes out of W3C is worth following.
like this approach - Google has the power to change people's perceptions of companies (and countries)...
All without so much as a speck of substantiating evidence. I'd especially like to hear how they plan to prove Viacom was sending employees to Kinko's to upload videos.
This turns my stomach on all counts. Google is attempting to force the courts hand by making this public, relying on the court of public opinion to win the case for them. Moreover, if these charges are indeed true, it is a testament to:
a) Just how much information and the ability to process it Google has and more importantly b) how willing Google is to use this information to its own advantage when neccessary.
Knowladge is power, and power corrupts. Viacom's fate is but a taste of what awaits anyone who dares to cross Google in future. If Google decides to win a case against you in the court of public opinion, just think of how much rope you've already given them to hang you with.
The game rating system (aside from the "Adults Only" debacle, which honestly isn't much of a problem anymore) has been hugely successful. The ratings system for games isn't meant to be something that parents follow word for word, it is just a clear and easy to understand system they can use to determine whether they want their child playing something or not.
A friend of mine worked in a video game shop. He used to have parents with, say nine or ten year old children in tow, come up to him with a game like "LittleBigPlanet" which was rated as 7+. They would then ask him "Is this too babyish for him?" or "Is he[the child] too old for this?". My friends efforts to dissuade them were met with dubious looks. Often, the child would saunter up with a 12+ or 15+ title and wave it about, usually with rhetoric along the lines of "Well DAVE has this game!" or "Timmy's parent let him have this". The parent would then purchase the higher age rated title (usually inferior) confident in the knowledge that it couldn't possibly be "too babyish" for their growing youngster.
There were a couple of funny stories along this line though. One day, one of these pairs came in looking to buy "Grand Theft Auto:San Andreas"(18); my friend decided to have a little fun. He informed the parent that the game she was buying contained scenes of extreme violence, gore, brutality--and here he proceeded to really embellish the content--, you could run people over, kill them with baseball bats, shoot their dead bodies, commit murder, burglary, arson, kill policemen,--here he went off the rails altogether--,kill children, kill animals, kidnap people, and see brains and guts strwn about everywhere. The woman only nodded and said, "Sure, he'll be alright. His friend has it anyway".
About to ring it up, he then dropped the bomb. "You do know as well that, the game has some...sexual content.". The woman's face contorted and she began to slowly recoil. "Well! I did not. He's not getting that so!". Amid protestations from her ward, the woman paced the game back on the shelf and walked out of the shop. My friend said the look the child gave him as it was dragged out of the shop was worth it alone.
Your morals, are not my morals, and they are not the morals of most other people. People have their own morals. If your 18s game has heads getting blown off, some people will quite happily give it to their ten year olds. If your 7s game has a character in a miniskirt, or two characters kissing, some people won't let their 14 year old play it. Yet more people look on your ratings as recommended age ratings, not minimum age ratings. Putting those numbers on the boxes does nothing but placate the outrage brigade; it doesn't help real people make purchasing decisions, or at least, help them in the way you have intended. Even indicators like the PEGI, Violence/Sex/Discrimination/Gambling logos are of little help as they are often inappropriately applied or give the wrong connotations.
Giving video games age ratigns is like trying to give clothes in a shop window age ratings. It's doomed to failure no matter how its done. People are individuals and they should be entitled to buy clothes for themselves and their children as they see fit, and not have someone else's morals thrust upon them from on high. I've trotted this one out before, but Ratchet and Clank for years had a 12+ rating in Europe, despite the creators stated objective to be the video game equivalent of a Pixar film. The most recent title has a 7+ rating, and I shudder to think of the self censorship the team had to go through to secure that rating.
Content suffers from censorship. People aren't help by censorship. Good games are not purchased because of censorship. Children are not protected by censorship. The only people who win from censorship are the censors, and they are the very people who our society should not allow to triumph. We don't need video game censorship, at least not in its current form.
Yes, they did. From what I understand, they had two random samples of children: One group that was given a Playstation, and another that didn't.
Sit down my son.
What do we mean when we say random? We mean there is an equal chance any given child would receive a Playstation or not. Any given child. The best way to ensure this is to use a good quality random number generator. Leaving aside this--very interesting--topic, I'm going to assume the team had access to such a generator. Now, supposing the team had this generator, it might stand to reason that the two children would indeed have an equal chance of getting a playstation. That is, if you thought about this for less than twenty seconds.
Lets take two children. Little Johnny who has a rather sheltered and strict upbringing with an emphasis on self betterment and education. And little Jimmy, who lives with two working parents who barely have the time to kiss him goodnight in the evening, let alone worry about his upbringing. Now, our ever exacting scientists have an equal chance of offering either little Johnny or little Jimmy a playstation. But, do you really think that little Johnny and Jimmy have an equal chance of receiving a playstation? I think not.
Of course, you might counter that the whole study was done scientifically by professional, blah, blah, etc, etc. But let me tell you something. Most psychologists have about as much scientific rigour as a fifth century alchemist, as much political motivation and funding as a republican congressional candidate, and about as much understanding of statistics as a primary school student. I'm sure their r=0.3 shows a statistically significant correlation in their eyes, but you and I know a little better.
Just because you've put on a lab coat, run a random number generator, and crunched some statistical calculation, that does not make you a scientists or indeed make your work good science.
To paraphrase Thomas Wolfe: "A religion is a cult with political power".
The modern mantra of "separation of church and state" has lead some to the erroneous conclusion that religions exist entirely in the private sphere and have no interaction with the public and especially political one. Of course, nothing could be farther from the truth. Religions are inherently political institutions who will at all times strive to commandeer the powers of the state in enforcing their religious views. I'm not attempting to be controversial here. This kind of church-state interaction goes back to the early days of the Roman empire and before. Separation of church and state only puts limits on the level of official political status a church can have. It doesn't make their political status go away though.
The "Jedi" religion does not attempt to court political influence, and as such is only a cult, not a religion. By contrast, the Sikh religion is very politically influential in many areas of Britian via voting blocks etc, and so are able to obtain exemptions on motorcycle helmets and ceremonial knifes and so forth.
Religions are inherantly political institutions and modern society would be a lot better off it it came to terms with this fact rather than pretending it had somehow gone away.
Criminal laws assumes criminal intent. If you don't know what SECRET/NOFORN means (I didn't before reading the GGP) then how can your intent in simply reading a document be criminal. If the simple act of reading this is illegal, then you could in theory get someone arrested just by posting this to their house.
Well that makes you a selfish, heartless meanie and the modern media won't be inclined to give you much of a platform. So you may a well just stop talking while they get a weeping family who lost someone due to lack of organs to bawl until the next time slot. Once those tears start to flow, your cause is a good as dead. Which is fine anyway, because the majority is just going to vote to make your organs belong to them anyway.
The only thing holding LOLCODE back is the VISIBLE keyword. It's not funny, makes little sense, and breaks the whole illusion of an informal programming langauage by throwing right back into stuffed shirt syntax.
If child pornography is being freely distributed amongst anonymous networks of paranoid people, what is the problem?
The problem is that it offends people who love reading about these stories. Those who are not offended enough to really care will still go along with those who do for fear of being targeted. We live in a democracy, ergo the will of the vocal minority will make it illegal. Moreover, this same will leads to draconian restrictions and state surveillance of the internet and indeed the general population.
The "problem" here is less the child pornographers than it is the people who go into irrational emotional meltdowns whenever someone mentions the password("pedophiles") and who then proceed in their hysteria to tear down the great society that has been built over the last 200 years. Child pornography is at worst an unpleasant nuisance. These crusaders on the other hand are a direct and immediate threat to our way of life--or at least what our way of life used to be.
Slashdot Mirror
Our society doesn't work that way anymore. We can't find any common ground because once one side gains prominence, they use rhetoric and apathy to slowly move society to the more radical position. We have lost the ability to apply common sense, particularly where it comes to the interpretation of the law.
The very existence of a company like Intellectual Ventures is proof of how the systems we create degenerate to an extreme. The copyright status of the song "Happy Birthday" is another. In the sphere of commerce, the collapse of Enron and Lehman Brothers provide yet more. The overfishing of Tuna, the property bubble, the California amendment system, the punishment of sex offenders, the decline of the media, the war on terrorism with its extraordinary renditions and torture, the filtering/monitoring of the internet, etc, etc.
The old Anglo-Saxon model of government was that of recognition of both written law and public custom (i.e. common sense). Somewhere along the way, the system lost sight of both. It didn't gravitate towards an Irish model (Less law and more custom) or towards a French one (More law and less custom). The system just degenerated. Right now in the US you can't take pictures of many public monuments or buy your children proper chemistry sets. What frightens me is how much the US model is influencing the rest of the Anglophone world.
How dare you sir. Slashdot is Serious Business.
"That is a very interesting remark," sneered a voice, softer than
the others but more evil. "I may have to report that."
-- Grishnack the Orc, The Two Towers
Does it? Does it really? Is all this information overload really that useful? Is it being collected because it is actually useful, or just because the Central Statistics Office has an insatiable urge to know as many details as it can feasibly get (This isn't necessarily a malicious desire; just a dysfunctional one).
Here's an example of some of the questions that came around in the 2006 Irish Census (Bear in mind the population is only ~4 million).
Needless to say, the form took about three hours to fill in.
I thought the census was supposed to be about counting the number of people in the country, not simulating an interrogation by the local village busybody. Though this time, instead of the valley of the squinting windows, it's the Panopticon of the slavering database clients.
Needless to say, the next time that form comes around in 2011, there is going to be an obscene amount of questions, potentially done either online or using a computer. Speaking for myself, I'm just not going to fill it out.
And the big red fart button will be the wedge that slips through that chink.
Oh definitely, from a technological point of view its entirely feasible. After all genetically, pedophiles have more in common with crabs than you or me.
Just because a space is empty does not mean it is being "wasted". For example, watch as I proceed to "waste" space by leaving an empty line between this paragraph and the next one. Watch closely now.
See? There's a big gap between this paragraph and the last one. You could easily argue that this is in fact larger than the one shown in the GP's post. Now my own thinking on this is that what goes for text largely goes for UIs as well. Buttons, icons, text and windows all need some kind of "space" between them. You can't have the screen crammed with buttons widgets and interfaces with only a pixel or two between them. Especially if people are using the mouse.
Sometimes it's good to have empty space. Sometimes it's good to have a big blue window bar at the top of every window, which users know they can easily drag and drop the window with. I can't imagine the horror of replacing that with some tiny tab with has to be carefully tweezered in order to move the window. Sometimes it's good to have a big bold square "X" for closing the window right there in the top right corner, so that everyone knows they can close the program just by going to the top right corner of the screen. One thing I detest about the OSX UI is how it breaks this convention by making the close button a) small, b) in a non standard location and c) ensures it can never be in a proper corner of the screen.
I don't care what the latest fad on the UI scene is. These changes to Ubuntu suck bigtime. The reason the standard UI hasn't changed much in 30 years is because the stand UI is a good UI. It's sometimes difficult for many to accept this fact, but the system has stood the test of time because of its simplicity, utility and ergonomics. Many have tried to change it, and all have failed; yes even Apple. Ubuntu is, frankly, going to crash and burn.
Mindlessly aping Apple interfaces has been the long term goal of Linux window managers for at least the last 5 years. I expect they'll be migrating the file menu up into that heathen upper taskbar within the next two releases or so, and hang the wasted screen space.
I don't think Ubuntu really understand where they should be going with their UI. Their goal should be to attract windows users, not play second fiddle to Apple and ultimately become a stepping stone for users on the way to their iMacs. Things like the new notifications system show how Ubuntu can be a leader in UI innovation all by itself without having to be lead around by the Apple fashion police.
I never agreed with the top taskbar and I don't agree with this. I abhorred the spatial browsing farce and the pulseaudio debacle. Every recent Ubuntu update has forced one or two more irritants down my gullet to the point where I'm seriously considering switching distros for the first time in a while. If Lynx manages to screw up the UI to the extent I think it's going to, I'm going to install Gentoo.
Every major corporation also has a PR department. Guess who writes the charter.
Even in the most ideologically fervent periods of communist rule, the soviets still saw the advantage in recognizing and promoting ability in certain fields. Sure, you could rise up the university ranks by being an obsequious toady and/or an unscrupulous informant and denouncer. But it was in fact also possible to rise up the ranks (though perhaps not to the top) simply on the basis of merit alone.
Considering that they eventually had to leave their home, I'm guessing Brin's parents were in the latter category.
Reminds me of my first job.
Sit down my son.....
Caller: Please hurry!! He's fallen down a 30ft well! Can't you get here any faster!?
A&E Drone: *clackety clackety* ...... Computer say Nooooo....
One of those W3C standards is that an element id or name cannot begin with a digit. It can contain digits mind you, it just can't begin with one.
Most browsers wisely ignored this ridiculous stipulation(It's a string field) and sites could happily use numeric element ids and link to them with impunity. This is still the case in Firefox, Opera, etc, and all the IEs up to 7. However, IE 8, choosing the most ridiculous standard on which to comply, now no longer recognises links with numeric ids, e.g. "page.html#01" no longer works. I have personally had to recode the link across and entire site as a result of this decision.
Sometimes, not every word of gospel that comes out of W3C is worth following.
All without so much as a speck of substantiating evidence. I'd especially like to hear how they plan to prove Viacom was sending employees to Kinko's to upload videos.
This turns my stomach on all counts. Google is attempting to force the courts hand by making this public, relying on the court of public opinion to win the case for them. Moreover, if these charges are indeed true, it is a testament to:
a) Just how much information and the ability to process it Google has and more importantly
b) how willing Google is to use this information to its own advantage when neccessary.
Knowladge is power, and power corrupts. Viacom's fate is but a taste of what awaits anyone who dares to cross Google in future. If Google decides to win a case against you in the court of public opinion, just think of how much rope you've already given them to hang you with.
We tried that. It didn't work.
A friend of mine worked in a video game shop. He used to have parents with, say nine or ten year old children in tow, come up to him with a game like "LittleBigPlanet" which was rated as 7+. They would then ask him "Is this too babyish for him?" or "Is he[the child] too old for this?". My friends efforts to dissuade them were met with dubious looks. Often, the child would saunter up with a 12+ or 15+ title and wave it about, usually with rhetoric along the lines of "Well DAVE has this game!" or "Timmy's parent let him have this". The parent would then purchase the higher age rated title (usually inferior) confident in the knowledge that it couldn't possibly be "too babyish" for their growing youngster.
There were a couple of funny stories along this line though. One day, one of these pairs came in looking to buy "Grand Theft Auto:San Andreas"(18); my friend decided to have a little fun. He informed the parent that the game she was buying contained scenes of extreme violence, gore, brutality--and here he proceeded to really embellish the content--, you could run people over, kill them with baseball bats, shoot their dead bodies, commit murder, burglary, arson, kill policemen,--here he went off the rails altogether--,kill children, kill animals, kidnap people, and see brains and guts strwn about everywhere. The woman only nodded and said, "Sure, he'll be alright. His friend has it anyway".
About to ring it up, he then dropped the bomb. "You do know as well that, the game has some...sexual content.". The woman's face contorted and she began to slowly recoil. "Well! I did not. He's not getting that so!". Amid protestations from her ward, the woman paced the game back on the shelf and walked out of the shop. My friend said the look the child gave him as it was dragged out of the shop was worth it alone.
Your morals, are not my morals, and they are not the morals of most other people. People have their own morals. If your 18s game has heads getting blown off, some people will quite happily give it to their ten year olds. If your 7s game has a character in a miniskirt, or two characters kissing, some people won't let their 14 year old play it. Yet more people look on your ratings as recommended age ratings, not minimum age ratings. Putting those numbers on the boxes does nothing but placate the outrage brigade; it doesn't help real people make purchasing decisions, or at least, help them in the way you have intended. Even indicators like the PEGI, Violence/Sex/Discrimination/Gambling logos are of little help as they are often inappropriately applied or give the wrong connotations.
Giving video games age ratigns is like trying to give clothes in a shop window age ratings. It's doomed to failure no matter how its done. People are individuals and they should be entitled to buy clothes for themselves and their children as they see fit, and not have someone else's morals thrust upon them from on high. I've trotted this one out before, but Ratchet and Clank for years had a 12+ rating in Europe, despite the creators stated objective to be the video game equivalent of a Pixar film. The most recent title has a 7+ rating, and I shudder to think of the self censorship the team had to go through to secure that rating.
Content suffers from censorship. People aren't help by censorship. Good games are not purchased because of censorship. Children are not protected by censorship. The only people who win from censorship are the censors, and they are the very people who our society should not allow to triumph. We don't need video game censorship, at least not in its current form.
Sit down my son.
What do we mean when we say random? We mean there is an equal chance any given child would receive a Playstation or not. Any given child. The best way to ensure this is to use a good quality random number generator. Leaving aside this--very interesting--topic, I'm going to assume the team had access to such a generator. Now, supposing the team had this generator, it might stand to reason that the two children would indeed have an equal chance of getting a playstation. That is, if you thought about this for less than twenty seconds.
Lets take two children. Little Johnny who has a rather sheltered and strict upbringing with an emphasis on self betterment and education. And little Jimmy, who lives with two working parents who barely have the time to kiss him goodnight in the evening, let alone worry about his upbringing. Now, our ever exacting scientists have an equal chance of offering either little Johnny or little Jimmy a playstation. But, do you really think that little Johnny and Jimmy have an equal chance of receiving a playstation? I think not.
Of course, you might counter that the whole study was done scientifically by professional, blah, blah, etc, etc. But let me tell you something. Most psychologists have about as much scientific rigour as a fifth century alchemist, as much political motivation and funding as a republican congressional candidate, and about as much understanding of statistics as a primary school student. I'm sure their r=0.3 shows a statistically significant correlation in their eyes, but you and I know a little better.
Just because you've put on a lab coat, run a random number generator, and crunched some statistical calculation, that does not make you a scientists or indeed make your work good science.
To paraphrase Thomas Wolfe:
"A religion is a cult with political power".
The modern mantra of "separation of church and state" has lead some to the erroneous conclusion that religions exist entirely in the private sphere and have no interaction with the public and especially political one. Of course, nothing could be farther from the truth. Religions are inherently political institutions who will at all times strive to commandeer the powers of the state in enforcing their religious views. I'm not attempting to be controversial here. This kind of church-state interaction goes back to the early days of the Roman empire and before. Separation of church and state only puts limits on the level of official political status a church can have. It doesn't make their political status go away though.
The "Jedi" religion does not attempt to court political influence, and as such is only a cult, not a religion. By contrast, the Sikh religion is very politically influential in many areas of Britian via voting blocks etc, and so are able to obtain exemptions on motorcycle helmets and ceremonial knifes and so forth.
Religions are inherantly political institutions and modern society would be a lot better off it it came to terms with this fact rather than pretending it had somehow gone away.
But how else is it supposed to get it hands on the devil's money? Selling out has a substantial dollar value!
Criminal laws assumes criminal intent. If you don't know what SECRET/NOFORN means (I didn't before reading the GGP) then how can your intent in simply reading a document be criminal. If the simple act of reading this is illegal, then you could in theory get someone arrested just by posting this to their house.
Well that makes you a selfish, heartless meanie and the modern media won't be inclined to give you much of a platform. So you may a well just stop talking while they get a weeping family who lost someone due to lack of organs to bawl until the next time slot. Once those tears start to flow, your cause is a good as dead. Which is fine anyway, because the majority is just going to vote to make your organs belong to them anyway.
Isn't democracy grand.
The only thing holding LOLCODE back is the VISIBLE keyword. It's not funny, makes little sense, and breaks the whole illusion of an informal programming langauage by throwing right back into stuffed shirt syntax.
FAIL.
Easily. You just need to pick the right value for B_s.
The problem is that it offends people who love reading about these stories. Those who are not offended enough to really care will still go along with those who do for fear of being targeted. We live in a democracy, ergo the will of the vocal minority will make it illegal. Moreover, this same will leads to draconian restrictions and state surveillance of the internet and indeed the general population.
The "problem" here is less the child pornographers than it is the people who go into irrational emotional meltdowns whenever someone mentions the password("pedophiles") and who then proceed in their hysteria to tear down the great society that has been built over the last 200 years. Child pornography is at worst an unpleasant nuisance. These crusaders on the other hand are a direct and immediate threat to our way of life--or at least what our way of life used to be.