Looking at the picture in question, I have little doubt that it would be considered child porn under the modern laws of at least US and UK, and possibly most European countries.
You neglect to add that most advertisements for childrens suncream would also be considered child porn, as would half the contents for a family pictures album.
I can set any damn price I feel like setting, even as low as a penny, because *I* own it.
No. You don't own it. That was the end result of the supreme court decision. You no longer own the goods you buy. You only have a "licence" for them. Just like in the software industry.
Manufacturers took their cue from software developers. They wanted the ability to sell a product, yet maintain ownership. They got it. When the day comes and you cannot sell or paint or add and extension to your "Hometech" built house because the company still holds rights over it, then the gravity of the court decision will truly hit home. You can't own anything anymore without a company charter and a team of high priced lawyers.
They will label the protesters pedophile sympathizers. Insinuations will fly. Motives will be questioned. Fingers will be pointed. Dissent will disintegrate.
Newspapers will be sold.
Find out just what a people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. Frederick Douglass
These protesters are only protesting the symptoms and not the root causes of modern censorship. That is why they will fail.
That in 80% of cases some remnant, some energy of that person was left behind? Just because it happens frequently doesn't mean it is *not* supernatural in nature.
Absolutely. Why, in 46% of documented cases, energy inductance drain has been detected in the vicinity of dead bodies, decaying exponentially with time and oscillating about a void karma mean. And in 67.2% of such cases, inductance eddies were suggested by gathered data as having occurred before the obituarial event. Couple this evidence with well known ESP studies and psionic-harmonics studies, and the case for ghosts, and particularly poltergeists becomes more than compelling, it's practically irrefutable.
You can link these findings with the proven influence of Saturn, on general supernatural phenomena, especially those involving the recently deceased. True, r is only 0.13 in the case of 80% energy remnants(measured on a Kasparov scale), but the results ARE statistically significant.
It doesn't guarantee that the other option won't be found to be possible at some point.
Or has been found already, and is just being ignored my small minded skeptics. The truth is out there. Keep the faith!
Because belief in an afterlife didn't make him feel any better. Since that was in fact its major selling point, as an all purpose disaster recovery solution, he wisely decided not to renew the license after the incident.
People really need to understand that while religious solution providers have great marketing departments, by objective measures their systems leave a lot to be desired and often don't justify the TCO, or the inevitable lock in to the providers total solution suite.
RISE UP! Oh, oppressed people ground under the jackboots of Santa Claus. We will be cleansed in the blood of carolers and bell-ringers. FIGHT ON! FIGHT ON! Free our righteous minds from the tyranny of low low prices, today only, on plasma screens and blue-ray DVD players. We will snuff the multi-colored lights from the trees and eaves and find sanctuary in the darkness once again my brothers and sisters. FOR I AM THE WRATH OF GOD!!!!... who is with me?
Didn't you read my post?! I am not getting involved in any holiday activities, festivities, celebrations or indulgences of any kind; no matter how tempting they may be!
It's a terrible redesign. The css for comment previews renders "i" tags as blockquotes both in Firefox 3.0.4 at least and depending on the section you are in (main/yro/politics/it), the colour scheme can make the text and like on your homepage go from difficult to see to practically invisible. Was this even tested, or is it being rolled out first to users who have displeased the site most, first?
The main homepage does not even link to comments made anymore, and instead has a ghastly mix of comments, and story that you have tagged, and even stories you didn't tag but that have tags that are the same as the tags you used to tag other stories.
The first thing I looked for was an opt out option in preferences (which took me a while to spot in the colour scheme). Not finding it there was a massive disappointment.
For the last few years, I have taken the stance that Christmas could do with a good Humbuggering, and have taken to actually saying, literally, "Humbug" whenever people start with the "Merry..." , "Happy,..." etcs and general ostentatious jolliness on December 1st!
For many years prior, my lack of delirious excitement and palpable enthusiasm, as well as overt cynicism about the commercialization and general over-selling of the holiday, had me labeled "miserable", "hopeless", "a grump" and in recent years "the grinch". The way I see it, "Humbug" is just giving the crowd what they want, and it has the added advantage that people no longer expect, nay, demand my mandatory jolliness throughout the "season".
I actually enjoy Christmas, but the way I see it, the holidays are from the 23rd to the 31st of December. None of this all winter madness. The bastards are not getting once once ounce of holiday cheer out of me outside of those dates, and inside of them, I'm spending most of the time asleep.
A great many innovations, and most of the hard slog work needed to implement them, are made by young graduate students to obtain their PhDs, or else by younger researchers shortly after obtaining their PhD. Older doctorates tend to spend most of their time teaching and writing monographs or textbooks.
I was always a skeptic when it came to Dark Matter(I am not an astronomer, so this all technically an uniformed opinion). But now I know that it really is all a load of idle speculation coupled with incomplete investigation, and an excessive dose of hype. It only took a few minutes of googling to come up with this paper.
One of the biggest pieces of evidence for Dark Matter is the Galaxy Rotation Problem. Basically the rotations of Galaxies do not behave as astronomers expect them to do, leading to the hypothesis that there is more matter in them that we cannot see, "Dark Matter". The velocity profiles that Astronomers expect to see are Keplerian. That is, they expect star systems in galaxies to behave like planets in solar systems when it comes to orbit speed and distance from the focus of rotation.
The bottom line is, as shown in the paper, this assumption is totally unjustified. The integrals in the 2D galactic disc case do not work out using Shell Theorem, which cannot be applied. They are instead quite nasty singular integrals, but twenty minutes with MATLAB and the "QUAD" function will be all it takes to see that basic gravitational theory most certainly does not predict that Galaxies should have Keplerian(Solar System-like) rotation curves, and there is no reason whatsoever for astronomers to assume this. It's all basic mathematical physics well withing the reach of many reading this post.
The galactic rotation problem is not evidence for Dark Matter. It is only evidence of the need for more applied mathematics courses in astronomy undergraduate degrees. Of course the Galactic rotation problem is not the only evidence for Dark Matter, but it is a big part. The other big piece of evidence was the Galactic Cluster mass problem. It's been a while since I read the relevant papers, but as I recall, Zwicky played hard and fast with the virial theorem, in particular making assumptions about the stability of Galactic clusters.
Again of course, I am not an astronomer. I am essentially a lay person in these matters, so my posts and opinions (not only in this thread) should be taken with a pinch of salt. Still, I stand by my overall skepticism of Dark Matter theories, and I stand quite firmly on my objections to the interpretation of the Galactic rotation problem. I expect that in the near future, as our ability to analyse and simulate galatic dynamics improves, Dark Matter will finally be debunked.
Homework or a few minutes of e-mail, not a big deal... Wasting four hours on a video game because you need to "relax"... It gives a clear message: I'm not wanted. And when it's my boyfriend doing that, then it's elevate to not only aren't I wanted, but that I'm less attractive than a hunk of circuits and plastic.
Yes I think that is indeed the plain truth, and people fool themselves into thinking that they either automatically deserve to be wanted by their designated *friend, or more importantly that they should desire to be wanted. The reality is that most people hook up with boyfriends or girlfriends for two reasons.
1) Sex
But, the plain fact of the matter is that after a few months, the novelty of sex will wear off. Now, this can be replaced by a long term emotional bond formed over the past few months of intimate contact, but only if that bond was formed. If it wasn't, then there really is no reason for people to stay together except for our other important reason.
2) Social pressures.
Many people in dead end relationships stay there for one primary reason. It is more painful and socially unacceptable for them to have no partner than it is to have a poor partner. The pressure, internal and external, for an adult of "marriageable" age to at least be dating is real and present. I have seen people remain in miserable relationships that are well past their sell by date, and the only reason is that they have, in the colloquial, "settled". The (minor) risk of ending up alone for ever or even for a short period of time is regarded as too frightening to justify leaving a gangrenous union.
The single best lampooning of this behavior can be seen in the South Park episode where Satan is paralyzed with indecision because he cannot decide which boyfriend to settle on. His dilemma is resolved by consulting God, who reveals that his dilemma was a false one because he never actually needed to settle for anyone at all. The Lord of Darkness rediscovered his happiness by simply leaving relationships that were never going to work out.
Returning to the original point, you are correct. Someone's boyfriend spending four hours a night on video game does mean that that they are not wanted, and the incorrect conclusion is to attempt to "salvage" a relationship that is almost certainly doomed anyway. As the saying goes, there are plenty of other fish in the sea and in any case, sometimes fish is not worth the the sacrifices to the rest of your diet!
Move on. Loneliness is temporary. But misery lasts 'till death does you part.
I can also report a spate of recent frustration via the recent Slashdot homepage changes. I can't find anything, links and blockquotes are impossible to read in some section colour schemes and there's no way to turn it off!!
In short, if you have some meaningful argument against patents in principle, please present it.
The Patent system, and its proponents, have degenerated into a farcical spectacle which is rightly the laughing stock of the modern world. As evidence, I offer your very own post. Specifically.
...then I counter that you have not proved that a novel and non-obvious method of making a sandwich should not be patentable.
And from what I was told while working there, the company didn't record any calls unless specifically ordered to by authorities.
Why not. It's perfectly feasible for a large telcom to do this. Because it's illegal? Phhft! Here's a modest proposal I drafted some time ago, based on some conservative estimates. Not sure if I already posted this, but since it's not entirely off topic, what the hell. I'll indulge my inner conspiracy nut.
Average US telephone usage: 600 minutes month, say 900 mins = 30 mins/day = 1800 sec/day Telephone Codec data rate: ~10KB/sec => Average user needs 18000 KB/day to store conversation ~1.76 MB/day
For one million users ~ 1.68 TB/day
Approximate cost per Terabyte(Hard Disk) as of 2007 ~ $300USD per TB => Give 2x data redundancy ~ $600USD per TB => ~$1,008 USD per one million users per day
World population ~7 billion
=> ~$7.1 million USD per day
=> It would cost approximately $2.6 billion USD per year to permanently store all the telephone conversations of everyone in the entire world. Assuming talktime rates of ~900 mins per month.
Since Sealand quite obviously has no chance in Hell in fighting off Great Britain, they're not sovereign.
Strictly speaking the Vatican has no chance in hell of fighting off Great Britian or, say, the Italian Republic. This does not mean however that the Vatican is not a sovereign country.
People are bored of spending $60 on a game that has $3 million worth of graphics content and $.35 worth of game. You know what games I sell used? Crappy ones with no replay value. You know what games I still own? Kick ass games that I still play from time to time, even though they may be old.
Absolutely. I will gladly pay +$60 dollars for a quality title and will be proud to have it in my collection till the day I die. I never sell games, just like I never sell books. It's just not worth it to lose an item of such high quality. It's practically blasphemous.
True AAA games rarely get sold, and when they do, it's for a premium. The original God of War still sells for $30 on the second hand market. Titles like these are the reason things like the sony platinium series were created, so that developers could still make money off quality titles long after the initial release. And it works! The original Starcraft is still for sale, 10 years after it was released.
Video games, despite popular opinion, do not become outdated. True classics shine through time and pixelation. Frankly, the danm things age like wine in many instances. But of course, to become a classic, you actually need to be a very good game, which brings us to our original point. Developers want a quick buck through marketing tripe rather than long term revenue from brilliant titles. Naturally, my heart bleeds for them.
In it, Lee argues that because a neutral network works better than a non-neutral one, the Internet's open-ended architecture is not likely to vanish, despite the fears of net neutrality proponents,
$traceroute slashdot.org traceroute to slashdot.org (216.34.181.45), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 10.100.56.1 (10.100.56.1) 17.348 ms 17.801 ms 18.228 ms
2 10.220.17.1 (10.220.17.1) 3.171 ms 3.270 ms 5.564 ms
3 * * *
4 * * *
5 * * *
I've got a Bell cellphone w/3 year contract. They've added charges left, right and center since I've got it. So I'm tied in, but they're not.
Take the phone. Remove the Battery. Place the phone on the ground. Smash it into several dozen splintered pieces with a large hammer. Go to town and purchase a new phone, and a new connection from a different mobile provider. This will cost you slightly more money, but not a penny of that will be going to Bell. If they continue to charge your credit card or bank account, close the account and get another one.
This will all cause some inconvenience. But this is a small price to pay for your dignity.
Slashdot Mirror
I thank all the gods for the Slashdot link location notifier.
You neglect to add that most advertisements for childrens suncream would also be considered child porn, as would half the contents for a family pictures album.
No. You don't own it. That was the end result of the supreme court decision. You no longer own the goods you buy. You only have a "licence" for them. Just like in the software industry.
Manufacturers took their cue from software developers. They wanted the ability to sell a product, yet maintain ownership. They got it. When the day comes and you cannot sell or paint or add and extension to your "Hometech" built house because the company still holds rights over it, then the gravity of the court decision will truly hit home. You can't own anything anymore without a company charter and a team of high priced lawyers.
Never mud wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty, and the pig likes it.
Just hire, or ask, a legit copper salvager to come over instead.
They will label the protesters pedophile sympathizers. Insinuations will fly. Motives will be questioned. Fingers will be pointed. Dissent will disintegrate.
Newspapers will be sold.
These protesters are only protesting the symptoms and not the root causes of modern censorship. That is why they will fail.
Absolutely. Why, in 46% of documented cases, energy inductance drain has been detected in the vicinity of dead bodies, decaying exponentially with time and oscillating about a void karma mean. And in 67.2% of such cases, inductance eddies were suggested by gathered data as having occurred before the obituarial event. Couple this evidence with well known ESP studies and psionic-harmonics studies, and the case for ghosts, and particularly poltergeists becomes more than compelling, it's practically irrefutable.
You can link these findings with the proven influence of Saturn, on general supernatural phenomena, especially those involving the recently deceased. True, r is only 0.13 in the case of 80% energy remnants(measured on a Kasparov scale), but the results ARE statistically significant.
Or has been found already, and is just being ignored my small minded skeptics. The truth is out there. Keep the faith!
Because belief in an afterlife didn't make him feel any better. Since that was in fact its major selling point, as an all purpose disaster recovery solution, he wisely decided not to renew the license after the incident.
People really need to understand that while religious solution providers have great marketing departments, by objective measures their systems leave a lot to be desired and often don't justify the TCO, or the inevitable lock in to the providers total solution suite.
Didn't you read my post?! I am not getting involved in any holiday activities, festivities, celebrations or indulgences of any kind; no matter how tempting they may be!
That sounds like just about every biology class I've ever heard of.
It's a terrible redesign. The css for comment previews renders "i" tags as blockquotes both in Firefox 3.0.4 at least and depending on the section you are in (main/yro/politics/it), the colour scheme can make the text and like on your homepage go from difficult to see to practically invisible. Was this even tested, or is it being rolled out first to users who have displeased the site most, first?
The main homepage does not even link to comments made anymore, and instead has a ghastly mix of comments, and story that you have tagged, and even stories you didn't tag but that have tags that are the same as the tags you used to tag other stories.
The first thing I looked for was an opt out option in preferences (which took me a while to spot in the colour scheme). Not finding it there was a massive disappointment.
For the last few years, I have taken the stance that Christmas could do with a good Humbuggering, and have taken to actually saying, literally, "Humbug" whenever people start with the "Merry..." , "Happy,..." etcs and general ostentatious jolliness on December 1st!
For many years prior, my lack of delirious excitement and palpable enthusiasm, as well as overt cynicism about the commercialization and general over-selling of the holiday, had me labeled "miserable", "hopeless", "a grump" and in recent years "the grinch". The way I see it, "Humbug" is just giving the crowd what they want, and it has the added advantage that people no longer expect, nay, demand my mandatory jolliness throughout the "season".
I actually enjoy Christmas, but the way I see it, the holidays are from the 23rd to the 31st of December. None of this all winter madness. The bastards are not getting once once ounce of holiday cheer out of me outside of those dates, and inside of them, I'm spending most of the time asleep.
So in conclusion; Christmas!? HUMBUG!!!
A great many innovations, and most of the hard slog work needed to implement them, are made by young graduate students to obtain their PhDs, or else by younger researchers shortly after obtaining their PhD. Older doctorates tend to spend most of their time teaching and writing monographs or textbooks.
I was always a skeptic when it came to Dark Matter(I am not an astronomer, so this all technically an uniformed opinion). But now I know that it really is all a load of idle speculation coupled with incomplete investigation, and an excessive dose of hype. It only took a few minutes of googling to come up with this paper.
One of the biggest pieces of evidence for Dark Matter is the Galaxy Rotation Problem. Basically the rotations of Galaxies do not behave as astronomers expect them to do, leading to the hypothesis that there is more matter in them that we cannot see, "Dark Matter". The velocity profiles that Astronomers expect to see are Keplerian. That is, they expect star systems in galaxies to behave like planets in solar systems when it comes to orbit speed and distance from the focus of rotation.
The bottom line is, as shown in the paper, this assumption is totally unjustified. The integrals in the 2D galactic disc case do not work out using Shell Theorem, which cannot be applied. They are instead quite nasty singular integrals, but twenty minutes with MATLAB and the "QUAD" function will be all it takes to see that basic gravitational theory most certainly does not predict that Galaxies should have Keplerian(Solar System-like) rotation curves, and there is no reason whatsoever for astronomers to assume this. It's all basic mathematical physics well withing the reach of many reading this post.
The galactic rotation problem is not evidence for Dark Matter. It is only evidence of the need for more applied mathematics courses in astronomy undergraduate degrees. Of course the Galactic rotation problem is not the only evidence for Dark Matter, but it is a big part. The other big piece of evidence was the Galactic Cluster mass problem. It's been a while since I read the relevant papers, but as I recall, Zwicky played hard and fast with the virial theorem, in particular making assumptions about the stability of Galactic clusters.
Again of course, I am not an astronomer. I am essentially a lay person in these matters, so my posts and opinions (not only in this thread) should be taken with a pinch of salt. Still, I stand by my overall skepticism of Dark Matter theories, and I stand quite firmly on my objections to the interpretation of the Galactic rotation problem. I expect that in the near future, as our ability to analyse and simulate galatic dynamics improves, Dark Matter will finally be debunked.
Indeed. I would suggest "Baby Beater" as a suitable alternative.
In fact; Forget the Tailpipe!
Yes I think that is indeed the plain truth, and people fool themselves into thinking that they either automatically deserve to be wanted by their designated *friend, or more importantly that they should desire to be wanted. The reality is that most people hook up with boyfriends or girlfriends for two reasons.
1) Sex
But, the plain fact of the matter is that after a few months, the novelty of sex will wear off. Now, this can be replaced by a long term emotional bond formed over the past few months of intimate contact, but only if that bond was formed. If it wasn't, then there really is no reason for people to stay together except for our other important reason.
2) Social pressures.
Many people in dead end relationships stay there for one primary reason. It is more painful and socially unacceptable for them to have no partner than it is to have a poor partner. The pressure, internal and external, for an adult of "marriageable" age to at least be dating is real and present. I have seen people remain in miserable relationships that are well past their sell by date, and the only reason is that they have, in the colloquial, "settled". The (minor) risk of ending up alone for ever or even for a short period of time is regarded as too frightening to justify leaving a gangrenous union.
The single best lampooning of this behavior can be seen in the South Park episode where Satan is paralyzed with indecision because he cannot decide which boyfriend to settle on. His dilemma is resolved by consulting God, who reveals that his dilemma was a false one because he never actually needed to settle for anyone at all. The Lord of Darkness rediscovered his happiness by simply leaving relationships that were never going to work out.
Returning to the original point, you are correct. Someone's boyfriend spending four hours a night on video game does mean that that they are not wanted, and the incorrect conclusion is to attempt to "salvage" a relationship that is almost certainly doomed anyway. As the saying goes, there are plenty of other fish in the sea and in any case, sometimes fish is not worth the the sacrifices to the rest of your diet!
Move on. Loneliness is temporary. But misery lasts 'till death does you part.
Congratulation! You've just explained why the DNSSEC will never be implemented on the root server.
I can also report a spate of recent frustration via the recent Slashdot homepage changes. I can't find anything, links and blockquotes are impossible to read in some section colour schemes and there's no way to turn it off!!
The Patent system, and its proponents, have degenerated into a farcical spectacle which is rightly the laughing stock of the modern world. As evidence, I offer your very own post. Specifically.
Patents are Broken. The Prosecution rests.
Why not. It's perfectly feasible for a large telcom to do this. Because it's illegal? Phhft! Here's a modest proposal I drafted some time ago, based on some conservative estimates. Not sure if I already posted this, but since it's not entirely off topic, what the hell. I'll indulge my inner conspiracy nut.
Average US telephone usage: 600 minutes month, say 900 mins
= 30 mins/day = 1800 sec/day
Telephone Codec data rate: ~10KB/sec
=> Average user needs 18000 KB/day to store conversation ~1.76 MB/day
For one million users ~ 1.68 TB/day
Approximate cost per Terabyte(Hard Disk) as of 2007 ~ $300USD per TB
=> Give 2x data redundancy ~ $600USD per TB
=> ~$1,008 USD per one million users per day
World population ~7 billion
=> ~$7.1 million USD per day
=> It would cost approximately $2.6 billion USD per year to permanently store all the telephone conversations of everyone in the entire world. Assuming talktime rates of ~900 mins per month.
Addendum:
Approximate NSA budget (estimated) ~$3.6 billion USD
So for the paranoid amoung you, don't worry about people listening in on your phone calls. They probably already have.
Strictly speaking the Vatican has no chance in hell of fighting off Great Britian or, say, the Italian Republic. This does not mean however that the Vatican is not a sovereign country.
Absolutely. I will gladly pay +$60 dollars for a quality title and will be proud to have it in my collection till the day I die. I never sell games, just like I never sell books. It's just not worth it to lose an item of such high quality. It's practically blasphemous.
True AAA games rarely get sold, and when they do, it's for a premium. The original God of War still sells for $30 on the second hand market. Titles like these are the reason things like the sony platinium series were created, so that developers could still make money off quality titles long after the initial release. And it works! The original Starcraft is still for sale, 10 years after it was released.
Video games, despite popular opinion, do not become outdated. True classics shine through time and pixelation. Frankly, the danm things age like wine in many instances. But of course, to become a classic, you actually need to be a very good game, which brings us to our original point. Developers want a quick buck through marketing tripe rather than long term revenue from brilliant titles. Naturally, my heart bleeds for them.
Sorry. The Vice President has records, but they don't have to be recorded.
$traceroute slashdot.org
traceroute to slashdot.org (216.34.181.45), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 10.100.56.1 (10.100.56.1) 17.348 ms 17.801 ms 18.228 ms
2 10.220.17.1 (10.220.17.1) 3.171 ms 3.270 ms 5.564 ms
3 * * *
4 * * *
5 * * *
.....
28 * * *
29 * * *
30 * * *
Take the phone. Remove the Battery. Place the phone on the ground. Smash it into several dozen splintered pieces with a large hammer. Go to town and purchase a new phone, and a new connection from a different mobile provider. This will cost you slightly more money, but not a penny of that will be going to Bell. If they continue to charge your credit card or bank account, close the account and get another one.
This will all cause some inconvenience. But this is a small price to pay for your dignity.