Yes, I stand by that. peacefire.org is hosted at a provider that also hosts a fair number of spammers. The owner's been complaining about this for a long time. He knows what kind of people he's standing with. He declines to move. Those spammers are blocked by the RBL, which means all sites on the same machines are blocked. Including peacefire.org.
If school buses refuse to go through anywhere in your neighborhood because one of your neighbors is a registered offender, would you move somewhere else or would you complain against the school bus system?
If it's proper for an ISP to block email that has questionable or unwanted content (eg, spam), why is it not proper for that same ISP to block Websites that also have questionable or unwanted content (eg, phishing sites)?
Because email and web site are two entirely different animals as far as the accessing paradigm is concerned? It's proper for an ISP to block email spams because they consume the ISP's resources and they come from someone who didn't pay for the consumption and those who paid to consume don't have a chance to say they don't want it.
On the other hand, the content of a web site cannot flow through an ISP's network without a paying customer having chosen so consciously.
I don't think your analogy is logically appropriate. Filtering spam ends up being source based, not because it should be done that way or anybody wants it to be done that way, but because filtering based on volume isn't possible in most of the cases. In the UPS scenario, as soon as the 10000lbs package walks in, the UPS guys can see right away it's more than what they can handle. On the other hand, nobody can possibly know or assume that a spammer is spamming for the first 10 emails sent. One would have to have observed, say, 10000 emails sent within a short period of time, to realize that he's being spammed. In other words, pure volume-based observation (and in turn any defense) can only be after the fact as far as email spamming goes.
A better analogy would be if someone manages to keep showing up at UPS for 100 times in a day, every time trying to send a 1lb package, and keep doing that for a month. What would happen is the UPS guys would take good care of him for the first couple of days like they would any other customers, but after a week they'd start ignoring him, and after two weeks they'd be calling the cops anytime he walks in. 8-)
Of course I read what you wrote. You are missing the points (partly my fault as I was too busy being sarcastic):
1. The assessment on intent of many things if not all things is very subjective, in both technical and moral senses. For instance, what makes you so sure that guns are designed to "kill" people, rather than to "injure" people? What makes you so sure that guns are designed to kill "people", rather than to kill "deers"?
2. One step further, whether something should be controlled has little to do with the intent of designing that thing. The intent of designing certain drugs is to relieve people in pain. Does that justify not controlling drug abuse?
3. Yet another step further - all tools are most certainly morally neutral. Even granting that guns are designed to easily kill people, "easily killing people" does not automatically become morally wrong. It is the context of using them that is not morally neutral. You pull a gun out of the glove apartment during a road rage, walk over to the other car, and shoot the driver. That's morally wrong. You see the other driver walking towards you with a gun in his hand, you pull a gun out of the glove apartment and shoot him first. That's not morally wrong.
...a gun is not neutral technology: it is designed with a specific purpose in mind, that enables people to easily express murderous will in a way that without easy access to guns, they would not be able to express...
What, never heard of people "expressing murderous will" with baseball bats?
And which part of the Olympic shooting games looks "murderous" to you?
You announce a sequel to an extremely popular and profitable game, vanish, come back every two years and announce that "we are completely rewriting the engine to leverage the latest hardware," and then vanish.
No, it's the Free and Open that got Linux where it is today. If everybody from the Linux community had been thrusting their ideals down others' throats, we wouldn't have had Ubuntu, Linspire, or CNR. All we would've had would be "THE Linux" - and that term would have likely been trademarked by someone.
"According to recent research by the U.S. military and CERT, workers who sabotage corporate systems are almost always IT workers who are disgruntled, paranoid, generally show up late, argue with colleagues, and generally perform poorly."
I'll admit I didn't RTFA, but isn't the slashdot summarization basically a "duh"? I mean it's not like we have ever thought "workers who sabotage corporate systems" would be IT workers who are happy, optimistic, open-minded, generally show up on time, good at teamworking, and generally corporate stars?
The linux comunity can't blame everything on microsoft's "proactive non-cooperation."
I have just (almost) finished migrating my main desktop from XP to Ubuntu. While I won't hesitate to say that I'm able to do almost all the work I do daily, and I'm pretty happy with Ubuntu, there have definitely been a lot of issues that didn't have anything to do with Microsoft.
Just give you one example - for a few months, my gnome desk panel (still with all the default config from the installation) had a very nasty bug. Everytime I tried to move an app launcher icon to somewhere else on the panel, if I didn't drop it at the "right place," e.g., if my finger slipped and happened to drop it on top of another icon, it would corrupt all the configuration in the launcher and turn it into an empty dummy.
Of course, the fine moment of FOSS came when this was soon fixed with a patch. And no, I am not being sarcastic, I truely appreciated the quick turnaround. But that's not the point here, the point is I have never seen a UI bug this bad happening in Windows (the OS itself not including applications of course). And I could get over it because I still _wanted_ to migrate to linux. How do you think this kind of blow-up-in-your-face UI behavior would demostrate Linux's stability to some half-hearted "non-believing" manager?
And how do you think it would make them think if all the response they can get from the Linux community is "drag and drop is a Microsoft thing, learn to adapt and not to do that in Linux"? (I know drag and drop is not a Microsoft thing and I'm dramatizing the response in this case, but you get the point)
Man, now I can't wait for the wide business adoption of vista. That would be the beginning of a new era in the history of office spanking.
And apparently, improper sexual conduct in a modern office would be deemed far worse than any attempt to format others c:\, so I'll just settle with "office pranking".
(assuming you're from the US) Because you live in a democracy where, in theory, the population chose their government.
which isn't done on the sole ground of the government's act/agenda on the global warming issue.
//hands in the air
I'm not arguing for either side, just wanted to point out that it's not as simple as "you elected them" when it gets to finger-pointing time.
That is, censorship forces you to act on incomplete information, which is to say, probably wrong.
It's a case of keeping the people (citizens, and ultimately the government - because those _are_ - elected - citizens) stupid deliberately. Only goes downhill from there
I don't usually reply to ACs, but this kind of "matters," so:
You are right above in general, but that still doesn't get you to the point of "all censorships are bad." For that, you'd have to establish that acting on incomplete information is always a bad thing - I mean, what kind of legal act of yours could go wrong if you are missing some child porn?
Protect-the-children is the primary excuse for all kinds of totalitarian laws anyway.
No, I can tell you right now that is not true and simply some other overglossing. Just take the case at discussion as an example, most of the politically-oriented censoring in China (mind you indeed according to Chinese laws) is done on the ground of "keeping a stable and harmonic society."
We should respect the right of other countries to form their laws around their own moral values.
No, it should be "We should respect the right of other peoples to form their laws around their own moral values." I don't really think in a country where its government censors all the publications, public speeches, and Internet traffic the people actually would have any right to form their own laws.
Nothing personal, but I think applying moral relativism to some fundamental human right issues is both hiding one's head in a sand hole and grabbing moral highgrounds hypocritically.
Do the US Representatives and Senators that passed this law remember that they also passed laws banning certain content on the Internet? I realize that blocking child pornography and blocking political speech are two different things, but it is still censorship.
And...?
You can't just label something and go "case rested." If you do realize blocking child pornography and blocking political speech are two different things, then you should also realize that not all kinds of "censorship" are bad, otherwise you would just be overglossing.
"I realize the cop shooting a running-away fugitive and a rapist strangling his victim are two different things, but it is still killing human beings." Is that statement true? Of course, but does it get us anywhere? No.
Translation: We don't have the balls to stand on principle and we don't want the loss of revenue that would result from getting out of these markets, so we have to be able to say that our gov't made us do it.
slashdot never fails to amaze me in terms of finding out there is always somebody who is capable of climbing to an even higher moral highground, no matter where the rest of the world stand.
Maybe the author is simply speculating on what those companies are thinking, but wouldn't this still be a lot better than "we don't have the balls to stand up, and we secretly hope that our government doesn't either?"
And how is that - a state decides to practice its legitimate rights and not to do things as the federal government wishes - the same as in Waco - a group of people were believed to have commited a crime?
At the end of a dinner, you are asked if you'd like anything else, and you say "No, I'm fine." How would you like to be denied any food forever simply because you have said that once?
"Nice little road system you got here -- be a shame to see it deteriorate!" is functionally equivalent to "Nice little candy store you got here -- be a shame to see something bad happen to it!" Which one is the Mafia, and which is the government?
Ow, come on, I don't like the highway fund holdup scam either, but you are overstretching it. The mafia would actually proactively come and torch your place if you don't pay up, whereas the federal government isn't going to, like, send in the troops and destroy the highways. They are just not going to pay for maintaining it - which is bad in the political sense of an overly enpowered central government, but nothing wrong in the (common) sense of "I'm not paying you if you don't do it my way".
I think the OP meant that the "it's standard for your position" part was expressed verbally, but not necessarily the package itself. From what I read, the problem doesn't seem to be that he found out the package wasn't standard for the position, but rather whatever actually implemented was far different from the package at all.
Slashdot Mirror
On the other hand, the content of a web site cannot flow through an ISP's network without a paying customer having chosen so consciously.
A better analogy would be if someone manages to keep showing up at UPS for 100 times in a day, every time trying to send a 1lb package, and keep doing that for a month. What would happen is the UPS guys would take good care of him for the first couple of days like they would any other customers, but after a week they'd start ignoring him, and after two weeks they'd be calling the cops anytime he walks in. 8-)
Of course I read what you wrote. You are missing the points (partly my fault as I was too busy being sarcastic):
1. The assessment on intent of many things if not all things is very subjective, in both technical and moral senses. For instance, what makes you so sure that guns are designed to "kill" people, rather than to "injure" people? What makes you so sure that guns are designed to kill "people", rather than to kill "deers"?
2. One step further, whether something should be controlled has little to do with the intent of designing that thing. The intent of designing certain drugs is to relieve people in pain. Does that justify not controlling drug abuse?
3. Yet another step further - all tools are most certainly morally neutral. Even granting that guns are designed to easily kill people, "easily killing people" does not automatically become morally wrong. It is the context of using them that is not morally neutral. You pull a gun out of the glove apartment during a road rage, walk over to the other car, and shoot the driver. That's morally wrong. You see the other driver walking towards you with a gun in his hand, you pull a gun out of the glove apartment and shoot him first. That's not morally wrong.
What, never heard of people "expressing murderous will" with baseball bats?
And which part of the Olympic shooting games looks "murderous" to you?
You announce a sequel to an extremely popular and profitable game, vanish, come back every two years and announce that "we are completely rewriting the engine to leverage the latest hardware," and then vanish.
I can only imagine what would happen if there were 65 RMS all starting to talk abuot online music sharing at the same time.
Well he probably needed a cup holder anyway.
I have just (almost) finished migrating my main desktop from XP to Ubuntu. While I won't hesitate to say that I'm able to do almost all the work I do daily, and I'm pretty happy with Ubuntu, there have definitely been a lot of issues that didn't have anything to do with Microsoft.
Just give you one example - for a few months, my gnome desk panel (still with all the default config from the installation) had a very nasty bug. Everytime I tried to move an app launcher icon to somewhere else on the panel, if I didn't drop it at the "right place," e.g., if my finger slipped and happened to drop it on top of another icon, it would corrupt all the configuration in the launcher and turn it into an empty dummy.
Of course, the fine moment of FOSS came when this was soon fixed with a patch. And no, I am not being sarcastic, I truely appreciated the quick turnaround. But that's not the point here, the point is I have never seen a UI bug this bad happening in Windows (the OS itself not including applications of course). And I could get over it because I still _wanted_ to migrate to linux. How do you think this kind of blow-up-in-your-face UI behavior would demostrate Linux's stability to some half-hearted "non-believing" manager?
And how do you think it would make them think if all the response they can get from the Linux community is "drag and drop is a Microsoft thing, learn to adapt and not to do that in Linux"? (I know drag and drop is not a Microsoft thing and I'm dramatizing the response in this case, but you get the point)
Man, now I can't wait for the wide business adoption of vista. That would be the beginning of a new era in the history of office spanking.
I'm not arguing for either side, just wanted to point out that it's not as simple as "you elected them" when it gets to finger-pointing time.
You are right above in general, but that still doesn't get you to the point of "all censorships are bad." For that, you'd have to establish that acting on incomplete information is always a bad thing - I mean, what kind of legal act of yours could go wrong if you are missing some child porn?
No, I can tell you right now that is not true and simply some other overglossing. Just take the case at discussion as an example, most of the politically-oriented censoring in China (mind you indeed according to Chinese laws) is done on the ground of "keeping a stable and harmonic society."Nothing personal, but I think applying moral relativism to some fundamental human right issues is both hiding one's head in a sand hole and grabbing moral highgrounds hypocritically.
You can't just label something and go "case rested." If you do realize blocking child pornography and blocking political speech are two different things, then you should also realize that not all kinds of "censorship" are bad, otherwise you would just be overglossing.
"I realize the cop shooting a running-away fugitive and a rapist strangling his victim are two different things, but it is still killing human beings." Is that statement true? Of course, but does it get us anywhere? No.
Maybe the author is simply speculating on what those companies are thinking, but wouldn't this still be a lot better than "we don't have the balls to stand up, and we secretly hope that our government doesn't either?"
At the end of a dinner, you are asked if you'd like anything else, and you say "No, I'm fine." How would you like to be denied any food forever simply because you have said that once?
It's called "context", stupid.
Are you just trolling or simply too stupid to understand the concept of "context"?
I think the OP meant that the "it's standard for your position" part was expressed verbally, but not necessarily the package itself. From what I read, the problem doesn't seem to be that he found out the package wasn't standard for the position, but rather whatever actually implemented was far different from the package at all.