Richard Stallman talks about some upcoming laws that could be disasterous for British citizens." Guilty until you prove you're innocent, no right to remain silent, no right to a jury trial, produce your encryption keys or go to jail..
So what do they do just beat you until you talk? Dosn't the military work like this?
In this case refering to the key that was used to encrypt the information. Realistically you can't be expected to deliver information that you don't have.
Perhaps the best idea that I have is to simply have a convincing fake on hand to lure would be lawyers into thinking something else when it's really not the case.
There is a program produced under the GNU GPL called octave that supposedly interprets mathlab commands. Never tried it because it barfed on my libc version.
Your example is not a good one. Utah will not be physically assaulting you for looking at porn, they will just attempt to prevent you from doing it in a public library with tax payer funded computers. It is the same thing as having a smoking and non-smoking section in a restaurant. The idea is to seperate those who want to look at porn from those who don't. Seperation is necessary since anyone can look over your shoulder and see what is on the screen. This is just like smoke drifts around and people who don't want to smoke still breathe it. A second point is that the computers and Internet connection are paid for by taxpayers. Taxpayers have every right to scrutinize how their money is being spent and for what purposes.
Well then unless everyone wants libraries filtered (as a percentage of what their senators believe) there should theoretically be at least one computer that adults can use that isn't filtered within the library. Democracy is not an excuse to step over people's ability to access information in a public setting just because a lot of people don't like that information. I know of a certain German shaped country that at one time thought that the "cool thing to do" was burn books and rewrite history to their likeing but I might have dreamed it.
Why should the Mormons give up their beliefs just because you don't agree and happen to be in the same locality as them?
No but I don't have to be put under the same restrictions that others want if I don't agree with their policy.
I've got a question, that I was just waiting for the right Mormon to come along and answer.
Although I feel I am not associated with the Mormon church I think I can answer because there are other non-Mormons who have raised this type of question.
I don't know if it's true or simply anti-mormon propaganda, but I remember hearing that according to Mormon mythology, Black people have dark skin as a punishment for not choosing sides in that "war in heavan" that was waged.
Alright this is completely unfounded and take this with a grain of salt. In the beginning there was Adam and Eve well for some rather harsh reason they got kicked out of paradise and had to make a living. They had two sons. Cain and Abel. Abel did a good job with his lot in life but Cain just sucked at getting his jobs to actually work. I think he was a herdsman or something. and Abel was a farmer. Supposedly Cain decided to assassinate Abel with a large rock (ok so he didn't figure out how to cary a knife this was the first murder). Well obviously Abel didn't have a thick enough skin to prevent the rock from braining him so he dies.
Later God wants to find Abel to talk to him about something. Cain then makes a fameous line "Am I my brother's keeper" roughly translated into "How the hell should I know where my brother is"?
Well since God isn't stupid (at least in the Bible) he got rather pissed and turned Cain's skin black for his fiendish deed and banished Cain. Well eventually Cain found some little female number because there are other people with "Cain's mark". Totally racist and toally biased with regards to the concepts of cultural flow but that's how it is.
look s-t. You spout off way too often on stuff you have NO idea about.
What that I post too often? I really don't think it's that much. And yes I think I can add to this discussion.
No, like most other major religions outsider are tolerated and encouraged to join up. The Mormon religion also has a doctrine on how un-believers will be given a chance to recieve the gospel after they die. When you hold incredibly high standards you get real good at tolerating those that don't, or you form a hate group. If you want to read about whipped and beaten read a little bit of Mormon history. Ever seen somebody tarred and feathered? You do know how Joseph Smith died right?
Extreme religious groups tend to to things of this nature. Look at Puritan New England areas such as Massachusetts. This was a common thing and usually happens elsewhere in the world but because the people living there control the information you don't see anything like this.
Oh and yes I know about Joseph Smith. PBS had a documentary about him done by people who were obviously paid handsomly to do what they did. He really wasn't a great guy and he did a great deal to piss people off around him. A number of religions also do the same thing and usually got the same results throughout history. The Boxer rebellion in China is a good source for things like this. Spouting off gibberish saying that you are better than someone else and everyone is damned to hell is not the best way to get friends. Remember you catch more flies with honney than you can with vinegar.
Whoever wrote this missed the point. It no CAFFEINE, no NICOTINE (i.e. all tobacco), no rated-R movies is also a big one. These are all things that various Prophets of the church have counciled against (the current leader of the church is called the Prophet)
Well I guess you increased the taboo list there even more. That basically screws over people like Rob and most of the people who do development on the kernel and emacs and other projects.
If you replace ideas with ideals you would be closer, but still dead wrong. Every single one of the things they prohibit can cause severe health problems or unneeded trauma in one's life. The movie thing is to try and avoid unpure images being introduced into the brain, where they have a hard time getting out.
Ideals are ideas that are held as standards for example for the Borg perfection is their ultimate goal or ideal but it is also an idea: the state of having no flaws.
You haven't spent much time on the Net have you? I still don't think that filtering is the "right" thing to do, but avoiding the truth is not the way to prove your point. I prefer the "place Net-enabled computers in well-lit, high traffic areas" and let the patrons filer themselves. Very few people read Swank on the bus
Most of the obvious sites and methods that Jonny the slacker would employ to get porn are usually pay sites with free trials and such. I do not discount the possibility that you can get material that is objectionable but I would say that it's just a little bit harder and meanwhile you are hitting thousands of porn sites and someone is bound to notice if they are looking.
No, that's for Congress to do. How do you impose a national speed limit, drinking age? Threaten to hold back funding for those that don't comply. Monkey see, monkey do. For a better picture of what Mormons believe at the root level go here
Those are ideals and essentially quite lofty ones. I can also have ideals perhaps never drinking water for 3 weeks or perhaps not eating for 6 months, perhaps never having to use the toilet. Standing on the mountain condemning all those people who are not as "pure" as others is not a good hobby for the person who loves life.
I am no longer a part of the Church by personal choice. This choice in Mormon terminoloy is called "Free Agency" (aka Free Will) and is regarded as one of the greatest gifts we recieved. We fought a war for it in Heaven, or so the story goes. They have faults, which MANY Internet sites are more than willing to point out, but the core of the religion is the family and most of the doctrine is designed to strengthen that aspect of life. Which is why I'm defending my family's beliefs here. And please don't bring up evolution, it's taught in the Book of Mormon.
Really interesting is how apparently the Mormons take gospel from a group of people that most Christians would consider "heathens" and that most of the people who lived down in that area of the world were in fact natives: Aztecs, Incas, and the Maya, there is no actual archielogical evidence for even one word of what is said or even mentioned in said book. The destruction of Jersualem is a fact and can be proved all the rest is hogwash.
A little question I would like to know from anyone who is involved in Christianity really heavily (anyone will do). If god exists why does he need constant attention. Why all the pretence and pazaz with all the knee bowing, worshiping, strange rituals that serve no outward logic. If a superior being "The Picard" has ultimate power why does he constantly need people telling him he's ok and cool and the like? Seems like god has a inferirity complex of some sort.
What exactly is McCain's position on internet censorship? And where do the other candidates stand on this and other issues that would be important to the typical/. reader?
Well he wouldn't be against it if that answers your question. He authored the CDA2 and would probably support other rotten crummy things of the like
Does anyone else like the idea of having slashdot interviews with the presidential canidates?
Would be nice but not practal in terms of what most candiates think. You might get someone from a really insignificant party but not the major ones because their schedule is so tight and competitive.
The bill only requires that filtering be used for minors. I don't see the problem.
The bill requires that any public library receiving state funds:
"...adopts and enforces a policy to restrict access by minors to Internet or online sites that contain obscene material."
emphasis added.
In almost every library I have seen there is not special XXX or "adults only" room or any means to authenticate yourself as an adult. Please tell me how realistically you can tell the difference between little Billy walking up to the library computer and say Trucker Bob?
The Mormon capitol of the world. Whether you share their beliefs or not, you have to respect them.
What if I am not a mormon what then? Public execution? whipped and beaten? I really shouldn't have to respect certain beliefs if I happen to just be in the same locality as you. Suppose I like to smoke, further suppose that you don't like smoking now besides that inate stupidity of smoking and the fact that I can die from cancer eventually does that give you an excuse to punch me in the face? No it dosn't.
No Smoking, No Boozing, No Coffee, no Tea, No Pre-Marital Sex and many other rules that may seem arcane to outsiders.
Only if you are actually part of the mormons these are not laws but ideas that they cary and ideas that really don't have much purpose.
I would have a very serious problem if my tax dollars were going directly to perform abortions. The people of Utah seem to have a problem with their tax dollars going to give people access to porn.
Giving unrestricted access to the internet is not the same as giving everyone a free adult check id number and free unmetered access to porn sites. Geez you do know don't you that access to most of the good porn sites is usually something you have to pay for don't you?
We all know that filtering doesn't work. Too many legitimate sites are blocked. And although I'd prefer a decision like this be done on a community by community basis, the people of Utah are within their rights to do this. Boneheaded idea or not.
Unfortunately you are not correct. When you deal in first Ammendment issues you are dealing on the *FEDERAL* level of government and that means you have to take your cues from federal authorities and the laws that they make. Utah is not a country in and of it's own right and it dosn't get the right to change the constitution on a whim.
Utah is just entirely wacked out to begin with. Most libraries carry Playboy magazine and they will not back down from having it on their shelves...Government-attempted censorship at its finest...
Exactly which library was this I have seen many, many libraries across the country and I don't think things like Playboy were amongst the periodicals but I could be wrong.
This isn't a violation of my first amendment rights? So do the UT libraries censor books as well? Same difference, right?
Nope I have been there (unfortunately not something I am proud of mostly business trip related and some sight seeing that included a look at one of my favorite places the library) and they have displays of "banned books" from the American Library Association.
Books and the internet are different things namely that books are more cherished and that the internet to many people is just a commmunications medium wheras books are more of an information or idea medium. I know this overlaps but books have been around for over 500 years and the internet as we know it for about less than 10 (well for all practal purposes).
The internet would have to have the same level of maturity to get the protection that books receive.
You can actually look at the avaible titles of various utah books at their web sites via web interfaces or through telnet at:
You can get books on such topics as The New Joy of Sex, The New Joy of Sex (gay), various books on polygamy, Access to material that is against the powers that be, etc.
Not only does the fact that they plan to implement filtering frighten me, but that they are dictating policy for every library in the state. Policy should be up to each individual library.
A good concept however libraries are usually under control of the state/federal government and not under control of private citizens or groups of them usually.
Oh well, this is probably nothing compared to what McCain would like to do. Picture a bill dictating policy for every library in the nation.
And also disturbingly he is protrayed well on the net and by media. If you want conspiracy this would be a good one.
What ever happened to local governments having some degree of control?
History has taught us that local governments are usually quite dispotic and when given infinite control over do and do nots of a region can take us pack to the good ol' days of small city-states of the likes of Italy pre 1830's or so.
Ever read "The Scarlet Letter" another example of the "friendly" and "close knit" group of people that make up local governments.
Does anyone else have a similar experience? I was about 13, and 100% self-confident when it came to computers. I bought a similar book in hope of writing the next Doom, and it has successfully gathered dust on my shelves since then.
Yeah I have had experiences like that. Trying to get programs to compile that I thought surely that they would work, ideas that fizzled, concepts that if someone actually worked on them would make for a game better than the ones that we have now.
For example. Suppose you have a star trek like game. Well I thoght of creating say a universe and have individual planets that one could explore and look at and perhaps meet new and interesting life forms. Have this game be infinitely playable and expandable and use plenty of randomness. You could play for years and never win but have a hell of a lot of fun doing it.
I am wondering if perhaps there are any games like this or that have the concept of infinite play with a continuous running story that are open for expansion at will. Say perhaps a level or mission pack every 6 months.
Release a game like that and you will have people battering down the doors to get it.
Games were important back in the 80's and 90's, but that era is coming to a close. The future is here, and the future is business. As our society advances, people will spend more and more time at work, and less time with unproductive activities such as games. If software developers are smart, they'll switch over to business applications such as spreadsheets, word processors, billing and accounting software, etc. In fact, I would say that it's their patriotic duty to do just that, so that their country will be able to better compete with the other countries. One could even make a case that games should be outlawed as a drain on the resources of society. Perhaps it's time to finally put selfish individualism to rest.
I doubt you have realistically seen what happens to people when they don't have anything that they enjoy to do. Ever watch any sitcom? Notice something? Usually the person really hates their job and do let off steam they decide to do crazy random stuff.
I think that games will be played in some fashion even if it's just a handheld thing like a gameboy or maybe a good book or a crossword puzzle.
Since we haven't really seen much data to determine if the decade of 2000 will herald any such change we just have to look at what we have now.
Games sell more and more PCs every year. It's what basically keeps video card manufacturers in business. I mean come on do you really need that Voodoo 3 6000 do produce "scientific charts" or work related material. Well maybe but most of the hardware in this category is in the form of game desires from people who play games.
Well I think I have a really good question how do you get the time? Seriously making a game is a very labor intensive process. Hell anything even as simple as packman or perhaps a card game is difficult to code (have to write some crappy maze analysis thing so I know). How can one person be expected to "revolutionize" the game industry. I don't think that Carmack could have kept his sanity and still made something as complex as what we have now all by himself.
How do you really get all the skills necessary to do this?
*Scariest voice possible* "Do you like scary movies?" I, for one, enjoy them quite a bit.. Perhaps you're too wrapped up in your sterotypical, "I am a geek, I may not have PATHETIC entertainment such as the general masses enjoy.", bullshit, but hey, it's fun. ~neeko
I can enjoy things to but as a whole I would rather watch a good factual or at least intriguing film rather than people acting stupid and getting brutally slaughtered. If anyone even tried to attack me with a knife I think that the proper Miss Manners approach would be to take a long range projectile weapon and use it liberally but hey that's just me in this case.
I'm glad you mentioned that, because I strongly believe that a number of places have had big Y2K problems, but don't want to report them. I remember calling Intuit just after the New Year, while I was placed on hold, they said something about experiencing Y2K problems. I didn't see any announcements in the news about Intuit's Y2K problem.
Hope it wasn't anything serious!
So, why the secrecy? Why isn't any one 'fessing up to their Y2K problems? Nobody wants the embarrassment, the shame of knowing they've had these problems exposed to the public.
Well after doing some reading mostly legal problems. When you get a group of people like lawyers together you really start to have a problem quite fast. Suppose that someone depends on Intuit's software in a major way. Now add in the fact that the person is a large company that has very vested interests in said software. That means that Intuit's in the middle of things and needs to act fast. By not telling anyone they are in effect doing what your probably did as kids: break old man Peterson's window just run and hide and dont' fess up.
Then why are you even reading this article, let alone posting to it? Some of us here have a slightly broader circle of interests than just Linux you know.
I think the poster is pointing out a series of what psychologists call personality types and various circles of interest. People like Ned Flanders usually don't go off riding on their motorcycles and cause a mess of trouble on Sundays and people who are technologically inclined usually don't care about various actors and "entertainment" news unless it is science fiction or something to do with technologically interesting subjects.
If you like Scream fine but could someone please mention why this was posted and say not perhaps various political news? How about the newly elected president of Indonesia? Middle East peace talks? What about some issue that affects technology? I just would like some concrete proof and answers.
God: Does he exist? Linux or 2000: Which is better? Why ESR got it wrong. Why patents are good.
Oh, God I could go on for ever...
What's wrong with sensationalism? It looks good and it get's the vengence ouf of people. I think that it really can't hurt. Besides tell me exactly how it gets responses if everyone hates it?
I mean really a review of a film that's been out for more than month. This isn't news for news, it doesn't matter. Its not a very good film. The only way this story should have run is if the site has been hacked.
Could someone please, please, PLEASE tell me how any of the Scream series relates to geeks? I didn't think geeks like "scary" movies.
Was it just me, or did the whole thing come off as a direct ripoff of the "Holodeck gone wrong" episodes from ST:TNG?
As recent as the last episode of Voyager we had one of those little dealies. Now we don't have any pretence. Janeway decides it's better to keep the holideck people than her own crew. Judging from the last 2 main characters in ST:DS9 and ST:VOY (Sisko, and Janeway respectively) I wouldn't want to be in the same sector as either of them.
Is it just me or are half the things that the lone gunmen and the X-files actually protray just crap? I mean the concept of being able to do fantastic things I for one can understand. However massive virtual reality?, actual working AI, being able to "upload" your conciousness on the internet, cracking government and industrial databases with impunity? These ideas are cracked at best and dangerous at worst.
I think you are glossing over years of interesting history and computer architecture. IBM's mainframe division might have lost mililions because of PCs, but not because PCs were superior computing platforms for big data.
I am basing this on what I have read. Most of the time this interesting stuff was going on I wasn't alive so I can't totally say yea or nea on this.
PCs won for the same reason that we have traffic problems on our highways--everybody wants to be a driver and doesn't want to share. This was, it seems, part of the rationale for the federally funded development of the internet (well, ARPANET): getting scientists to share computing resources bought with federal money (c.f. A History of Modern Computing, Ceruzzi 1998, p 296). This is of course the same phenomenon that drove minicomputers, which were also replaced by PCs. I'm not saying this is bad, well, not in the case of computing anyway.
From some of the horror stories of various teachers who had to take CS back in the good ol' days (read 60's 70's and early 80's) it really sucked without a PC of your own. My shitty 486 currently ourpreforms all those worthless mainframes from those days and I have complete control over it (well I can't orger it to do something that it can't but some linux apps try).
But PCs still suck at any number of computing tasks, and aren't really improving in areas that can't be mass marketed. That's why my lab bought a very expensive dual Alpha machine instead of spending that money on the 5-to-20 equivalently clocked P-IIIs (these numbers come from real computations). Not to mention a farm of PCs can only handle embarassingly parallel computations at the same speed has the Alpha, and require more programming effort than the Alpha. The Alpha isn't even close to a mainframe, either.
Buying machines of massive quality just because you can is just silly. I have never ran an app that actually took that much processor power and I haven't actually wrote one myself that could do anything that I would like. Programming is quite difficult (I am currently struggling with a couple of programming assingments myself and they just suck (Just for kicks I am thinking of ditching CS any good schools for say professionals in American History or in history related fields that I could just get a teaching degree in? I really hate programming)) and not something that can easily take control of massive quantities of data. Maybe people should expect things to take a little longer than 10ns or has attention span decreased?
And I haven't even gotten to bandwidth issues that sponsered this thread (well, they're part of the 5-to-20 figure above, in some ways). IBM lost on mainframes because they dealt _only_ with mainframes. DEC lost with minicomputers because they too were arrogant/ignorant about PCs. And while Intel seems to acknowledge the information appliance ideas, they're x86 tech will only go so far (we can hope, can't we?). But just as information appliances aren't the best choice for PC-type tasks, PCs aren't aren't the best choice for mainframe-sized loads.
I shudder at the thought of "information appliances" I pointed out once that I think that the only thing that will do for me is increase PC prices at least 4x the current rate because all the mass market decided to get some AOLphone or something like that. It just ends up screwing me in the end.
Oversimplification is a marketing tool. It has no place in intelligent discussion, where flippant remarks are better replaced by _questions_.
I have never done any marketing at all but I still say that at least from all the reading I have done and all the current businesses I have seen in operation that most of them use a client server setup wherein employees have PCs and are connected to a server or servers which run some network aware OS where data and applications reside. The client has more responsibility for data than in the mainframe days and also the server has less work to do but is at least smaller than the mainframes of old in a ratio. This is what I have seen maybe it's different in a few of the richer companies.
Errr, what time frame are you talking about? No sane person I know would tell you that mainframes are the be-all and end-all of computing. No computer is perfectly suited for all tasks. When was the last time you saw a tape robot hanging off a PC that was acting as something other than a controller? When did you hear about PCs churning out billing statements for a million customers twice a month? (And finishing the actual print job in a day?) It's just a matter of tuning your platform to the task, and mainframes are seriously tuned for big volume.
Sounds like the job for a lot of PCs with load balancing or perhaps some form of a beowulf cluster for the actual processing. Also you could have multiple high speed printers I really can't believe that you need a mainframe to increase something that is on the device end like a printer.
Slashdot Mirror
Richard Stallman talks about some upcoming laws that could be disasterous for British citizens." Guilty until you prove you're innocent, no right to remain silent, no right to a jury trial, produce your encryption keys or go to jail..
So what do they do just beat you until you talk? Dosn't the military work like this?
In this case refering to the key that was used to encrypt the information. Realistically you can't be expected to deliver information that you don't have.
Perhaps the best idea that I have is to simply have a convincing fake on hand to lure would be lawyers into thinking something else when it's really not the case.
There is a program produced under the GNU GPL called octave that supposedly interprets mathlab commands. Never tried it because it barfed on my libc version.
Your example is not a good one. Utah will not be physically assaulting you for looking at porn, they will just attempt to prevent you from doing it in a public library with tax payer funded computers. It is the same thing as having a
smoking and non-smoking section in a restaurant. The idea is to seperate those who want to look at porn from those who don't. Seperation is necessary since anyone can look over your shoulder and see what is on the screen. This is
just like smoke drifts around and people who don't want to smoke still breathe it. A second point is that the computers and Internet connection are paid for by taxpayers. Taxpayers have every right to scrutinize how their money is
being spent and for what purposes.
Well then unless everyone wants libraries filtered (as a percentage of what their senators believe) there should theoretically be at least one computer that adults can use that isn't filtered within the library. Democracy is not an excuse to step over people's ability to access information in a public setting just because a lot of people don't like that information. I know of a certain German shaped country that at one time thought that the "cool thing to do" was burn books and rewrite history to their likeing but I might have dreamed it.
Why should the Mormons give up their beliefs just because you don't agree and happen to be in the same locality as them?
No but I don't have to be put under the same restrictions that others want if I don't agree with their policy.
I've got a question, that I was just waiting for the right Mormon to come along and answer.
Although I feel I am not associated with the Mormon church I think I can answer because there are other non-Mormons who have raised this type of question.
I don't know if it's true or simply anti-mormon propaganda, but I remember hearing that according to Mormon mythology, Black people have dark skin as a punishment for not choosing sides in that "war in heavan" that was waged.
Alright this is completely unfounded and take this with a grain of salt. In the beginning there was Adam and Eve well for some rather harsh reason they got kicked out of paradise and had to make a living. They had two sons. Cain and Abel.
Abel did a good job with his lot in life but Cain just sucked at getting his jobs to actually work. I think he was a herdsman or something. and Abel was a farmer. Supposedly Cain decided to assassinate Abel with a large rock (ok so he didn't figure out how to cary a knife this was the first murder). Well obviously Abel didn't have a thick enough skin to prevent the rock from braining him so he dies.
Later God wants to find Abel to talk to him about something. Cain then makes a fameous line "Am I my brother's keeper" roughly translated into "How the hell should I know where my brother is"?
Well since God isn't stupid (at least in the Bible) he got rather pissed and turned Cain's skin black for his fiendish deed and banished Cain. Well eventually Cain found some little female number because there are other people with "Cain's mark". Totally racist and toally biased with regards to the concepts of cultural flow but that's how it is.
look s-t. You spout off way too often on stuff you have NO idea about.
What that I post too often? I really don't think it's that much. And yes I think I can add to this discussion.
No, like most other major religions outsider are tolerated and encouraged to join up. The Mormon religion also has a doctrine on how un-believers will be given a chance to recieve the gospel after they die. When you hold incredibly
high standards you get real good at tolerating those that don't, or you form a hate group. If you want to read about whipped and beaten read a little bit of Mormon history. Ever seen somebody tarred and feathered? You do know how
Joseph Smith died right?
Extreme religious groups tend to to things of this nature. Look at Puritan New England areas such as Massachusetts. This was a common thing and usually happens elsewhere in the world but because the people living there control the information you don't see anything like this.
Oh and yes I know about Joseph Smith. PBS had a documentary about him done by people who were obviously paid handsomly to do what they did. He really wasn't a great guy and he did a great deal to piss people off around him. A number of religions also do the same thing and usually got the same results throughout history. The Boxer rebellion in China is a good source for things like this. Spouting off gibberish saying that you are better than someone else and everyone is damned to hell is not the best way to get friends. Remember you catch more flies with honney than you can with vinegar.
Whoever wrote this missed the point. It no CAFFEINE, no NICOTINE (i.e. all tobacco), no rated-R movies is also a big one. These are all things that various Prophets of the church have counciled against (the current leader of the
church is called the Prophet)
Well I guess you increased the taboo list there even more. That basically screws over people like Rob and most of the people who do development on the kernel and emacs and other projects.
If you replace ideas with ideals you would be closer, but still dead wrong. Every single one of the things they prohibit can cause severe health problems or unneeded trauma in one's life. The movie thing is to try and avoid unpure
images being introduced into the brain, where they have a hard time getting out.
Ideals are ideas that are held as standards for example for the Borg perfection is their ultimate goal or ideal but it is also an idea: the state of having no flaws.
You haven't spent much time on the Net have you? I still don't think that filtering is the "right" thing to do, but avoiding the truth is not the way to prove your point. I prefer the "place Net-enabled computers in well-lit, high traffic
areas" and let the patrons filer themselves. Very few people read Swank on the bus
Most of the obvious sites and methods that Jonny the slacker would employ to get porn are usually pay sites with free trials and such. I do not discount the possibility that you can get material that is objectionable but I would say that it's just a little bit harder and meanwhile you are hitting thousands of porn sites and someone is bound to notice if they are looking.
No, that's for Congress to do. How do you impose a national speed limit, drinking age? Threaten to hold back funding for those that don't comply. Monkey see, monkey do.
For a better picture of what Mormons believe at the root level go here
Those are ideals and essentially quite lofty ones. I can also have ideals perhaps never drinking water for 3 weeks or perhaps not eating for 6 months, perhaps never having to use the toilet. Standing on the mountain condemning all those people who are not as "pure" as others is not a good hobby for the person who loves life.
I am no longer a part of the Church by personal choice. This choice in Mormon terminoloy is called "Free Agency" (aka Free Will) and is regarded as one of the greatest gifts we recieved. We fought a war for it in Heaven, or so the
story goes. They have faults, which MANY Internet sites are more than willing to point out, but the core of the religion is the family and most of the doctrine is designed to strengthen that aspect of life. Which is why I'm defending
my family's beliefs here. And please don't bring up evolution, it's taught in the Book of Mormon.
Really interesting is how apparently the Mormons take gospel from a group of people that most Christians would consider "heathens" and that most of the people who lived down in that area of the world were in fact natives: Aztecs, Incas, and the Maya, there is no actual archielogical evidence for even one word of what is said or even mentioned in said book. The destruction of Jersualem is a fact and can be proved all the rest is hogwash.
A little question I would like to know from anyone who is involved in Christianity really heavily (anyone will do). If god exists why does he need constant attention. Why all the pretence and pazaz with all the knee bowing, worshiping, strange rituals that serve no outward logic. If a superior being "The Picard" has ultimate power why does he constantly need people telling him he's ok and cool and the like? Seems like god has a inferirity complex of some sort.
What exactly is McCain's position on internet censorship? And where do the other candidates stand on this and other issues that would be important to the typical /. reader?
Well he wouldn't be against it if that answers your question. He authored the CDA2 and would probably support other rotten crummy things of the like
Does anyone else like the idea of having slashdot interviews with the presidential canidates?
Would be nice but not practal in terms of what most candiates think. You might get someone from a really insignificant party but not the major ones because their schedule is so tight and competitive.
The bill only requires that filtering be used for minors. I don't see the problem.
The bill requires that any public library receiving state funds:
"...adopts and enforces a policy to restrict access by minors to Internet or online sites that contain obscene material."
emphasis added.
In almost every library I have seen there is not special XXX or "adults only" room or any means to authenticate yourself as an adult. Please tell me how realistically you can tell the difference between little Billy walking up to the library computer and say Trucker Bob?
The Mormon capitol of the world. Whether you share their beliefs or not, you have to respect them.
What if I am not a mormon what then? Public execution? whipped and beaten? I really shouldn't have to respect certain beliefs if I happen to just be in the same locality as you. Suppose I like to smoke, further suppose that you don't like smoking now besides that inate stupidity of smoking and the fact that I can die from cancer eventually does that give you an excuse to punch me in the face? No it dosn't.
No Smoking, No Boozing, No Coffee, no Tea, No Pre-Marital Sex and many other rules that may seem arcane to outsiders.
Only if you are actually part of the mormons these are not laws but ideas that they cary and ideas that really don't have much purpose.
I would have a very serious problem if my tax dollars were going directly to perform abortions. The people of Utah seem to have a problem with their tax dollars going to give people access to porn.
Giving unrestricted access to the internet is not the same as giving everyone a free adult check id number and free unmetered access to porn sites. Geez you do know don't you that access to most of the good porn sites is usually something you have to pay for don't you?
We all know that filtering doesn't work. Too many legitimate sites are blocked. And although I'd prefer a decision like this be done on a community by community basis, the people of Utah are within their rights to do this.
Boneheaded idea or not.
Unfortunately you are not correct. When you deal in first Ammendment issues you are dealing on the *FEDERAL* level of government and that means you have to take your cues from federal authorities and the laws that they make. Utah is not a country in and of it's own right and it dosn't get the right to change the constitution on a whim.
Utah is just entirely wacked out to begin with. Most libraries carry Playboy magazine and they will not back down from having it on their shelves. ..Government-attempted censorship at its finest...
Exactly which library was this I have seen many, many libraries across the country and I don't think things like Playboy were amongst the periodicals but I could be wrong.
This isn't a violation of my first amendment rights? So do the UT libraries censor books as well? Same difference, right?
Nope I have been there (unfortunately not something I am proud of mostly business trip related and some sight seeing that included a look at one of my favorite places the library) and they have displays of "banned books" from the American Library Association.
Books and the internet are different things namely that books are more cherished and that the internet to many people is just a commmunications medium wheras books are more of an information or idea medium. I know this overlaps but books have been around for over 500 years and the internet as we know it for about less than 10 (well for all practal purposes).
The internet would have to have the same level of maturity to get the protection that books receive.
You can actually look at the avaible titles of various utah books at their web sites via web interfaces or through telnet at:
Salt Lake City Public Library
and
Salt Lake County Public Library
You can get books on such topics as The New Joy of Sex, The New Joy of Sex (gay), various books on polygamy, Access to material that is against the powers that be, etc.
Not only does the fact that they plan to implement filtering frighten me, but that they are dictating policy for every library in the state. Policy should be up to each individual library.
A good concept however libraries are usually under control of the state/federal government and not under control of private citizens or groups of them usually.
Oh well, this is probably nothing compared to what McCain would like to do. Picture a bill dictating policy for every library in the nation.
And also disturbingly he is protrayed well on the net and by media. If you want conspiracy this would be a good one.
What ever happened to local governments having some degree of control?
History has taught us that local governments are usually quite dispotic and when given infinite control over do and do nots of a region can take us pack to the good ol' days of small city-states of the likes of Italy pre 1830's or so.
Ever read "The Scarlet Letter" another example of the "friendly" and "close knit" group of people that make up local governments.
Does anyone else have a similar experience? I was about 13, and 100% self-confident when it came to computers. I bought a similar book in hope of writing the next Doom, and it has successfully gathered dust on my shelves since
then.
Yeah I have had experiences like that. Trying to get programs to compile that I thought surely that they would work, ideas that fizzled, concepts that if someone actually worked on them would make for a game better than the ones that we have now.
For example. Suppose you have a star trek like game. Well I thoght of creating say a universe and have individual planets that one could explore and look at and perhaps meet new and interesting life forms. Have this game be infinitely playable and expandable and use plenty of randomness. You could play for years and never win but have a hell of a lot of fun doing it.
I am wondering if perhaps there are any games like this or that have the concept of infinite play with a continuous running story that are open for expansion at will. Say perhaps a level or mission pack every 6 months.
Release a game like that and you will have people battering down the doors to get it.
Games were important back in the 80's and 90's, but that era is coming to a close. The future is here, and the future is business. As our society advances, people will spend more and more time at work, and less time with
unproductive activities such as games. If software developers are smart, they'll switch over to business applications such as spreadsheets, word processors, billing and accounting software, etc. In fact, I would say that it's their patriotic
duty to do just that, so that their country will be able to better compete with the other countries. One could even make a case that games should be outlawed as a drain on the resources of society. Perhaps it's time to finally put selfish
individualism to rest.
I doubt you have realistically seen what happens to people when they don't have anything that they enjoy to do. Ever watch any sitcom? Notice something? Usually the person really hates their job and do let off steam they decide to do crazy random stuff.
I think that games will be played in some fashion even if it's just a handheld thing like a gameboy or maybe a good book or a crossword puzzle.
Since we haven't really seen much data to determine if the decade of 2000 will herald any such change we just have to look at what we have now.
Games sell more and more PCs every year. It's what basically keeps video card manufacturers in business. I mean come on do you really need that Voodoo 3 6000 do produce "scientific charts" or work related material. Well maybe but most of the hardware in this category is in the form of game desires from people who play games.
I think you are dead wrong on this one.
Well I think I have a really good question how do you get the time? Seriously making a game is a very labor intensive process. Hell anything even as simple as packman or perhaps a card game is difficult to code (have to write some crappy maze analysis thing so I know). How can one person be expected to "revolutionize" the game industry. I don't think that Carmack could have kept his sanity and still made something as complex as what we have now all by himself.
How do you really get all the skills necessary to do this?
*Scariest voice possible* "Do you like scary movies?" I, for one, enjoy them quite a bit.. Perhaps you're too wrapped up in your sterotypical, "I am a geek, I may not have PATHETIC entertainment such as the general
masses enjoy.", bullshit, but hey, it's fun. ~neeko
I can enjoy things to but as a whole I would rather watch a good factual or at least intriguing film rather than people acting stupid and getting brutally slaughtered. If anyone even tried to attack me with a knife I think that the proper Miss Manners approach would be to take a long range projectile weapon and use it liberally but hey that's just me in this case.
I'm glad you mentioned that, because I strongly believe that a number of places have had big Y2K problems, but don't want to report them. I remember calling Intuit just after the New Year, while I was placed on hold, they said
something about experiencing Y2K problems. I didn't see any announcements in the news about Intuit's Y2K problem.
Hope it wasn't anything serious!
So, why the secrecy? Why isn't any one 'fessing up to their Y2K problems? Nobody wants the embarrassment, the shame of knowing they've had these problems exposed to the public.
Well after doing some reading mostly legal problems. When you get a group of people like lawyers together you really start to have a problem quite fast. Suppose that someone depends on Intuit's software in a major way. Now add in the fact that the person is a large company that has very vested interests in said software. That means that Intuit's in the middle of things and needs to act fast. By not telling anyone they are in effect doing what your probably did as kids: break old man Peterson's window just run and hide and dont' fess up.
Then why are you even reading this article, let alone posting to it? Some of us here have a slightly broader circle of interests than just Linux you know.
I think the poster is pointing out a series of what psychologists call personality types and various circles of interest. People like Ned Flanders usually don't go off riding on their motorcycles and cause a mess of trouble on Sundays and people who are technologically inclined usually don't care about various actors and "entertainment" news unless it is science fiction or something to do with technologically interesting subjects.
If you like Scream fine but could someone please mention why this was posted and say not perhaps various political news? How about the newly elected president of Indonesia? Middle East peace talks? What about some issue that affects technology? I just would like some concrete proof and answers.
You forgot:
God: Does he exist?
Linux or 2000: Which is better?
Why ESR got it wrong.
Why patents are good.
Oh, God I could go on for ever...
What's wrong with sensationalism? It looks good and it get's the vengence ouf of people. I think that it really can't hurt. Besides tell me exactly how it gets responses if everyone hates it?
I mean really a review of a film that's been out for more than month. This isn't news for news, it doesn't matter. Its not a very good film. The only way this story should have run is if the site has been hacked.
Could someone please, please, PLEASE tell me how any of the Scream series relates to geeks? I didn't think geeks like "scary" movies.
Was it just me, or did the whole thing come off as a direct ripoff of the "Holodeck gone wrong" episodes from ST:TNG?
As recent as the last episode of Voyager we had one of those little dealies. Now we don't have any pretence. Janeway decides it's better to keep the holideck people than her own crew. Judging from the last 2 main characters in ST:DS9 and ST:VOY (Sisko, and Janeway respectively) I wouldn't want to be in the same sector as either of them.
Is it just me or are half the things that the lone gunmen and the X-files actually protray just crap? I mean the concept of being able to do fantastic things I for one can understand. However massive virtual reality?, actual working AI, being able to "upload" your conciousness on the internet, cracking government and industrial databases with impunity? These ideas are cracked at best and dangerous at worst.
Client server is dying...mark my words, son, mark my words....
Actual evidence for your claims? I would be interested in something that dosn't seem to be a fad or just wishful thinking.
I think you are glossing over years of interesting history and computer architecture. IBM's mainframe division might have lost mililions because of PCs, but not because PCs were superior computing platforms for big data.
I am basing this on what I have read. Most of the time this interesting stuff was going on I wasn't alive so I can't totally say yea or nea on this.
PCs won for the same reason that we have traffic problems on our highways--everybody wants to be a driver and doesn't want to share. This was, it seems, part of the rationale for the federally funded development of the internet (well,
ARPANET): getting scientists to share computing resources bought with federal money (c.f. A History of Modern Computing, Ceruzzi 1998, p 296). This is of course the same phenomenon that drove minicomputers, which were
also replaced by PCs. I'm not saying this is bad, well, not in the case of computing anyway.
From some of the horror stories of various teachers who had to take CS back in the good ol' days (read 60's 70's and early 80's) it really sucked without a PC of your own. My shitty 486 currently ourpreforms all those worthless mainframes from those days and I have complete control over it (well I can't orger it to do something that it can't but some linux apps try).
But PCs still suck at any number of computing tasks, and aren't really improving in areas that can't be mass marketed. That's why my lab bought a very expensive dual Alpha machine instead of spending that money on the 5-to-20
equivalently clocked P-IIIs (these numbers come from real computations). Not to mention a farm of PCs can only handle embarassingly parallel computations at the same speed has the Alpha, and require more programming effort than
the Alpha. The Alpha isn't even close to a mainframe, either.
Buying machines of massive quality just because you can is just silly. I have never ran an app that actually took that much processor power and I haven't actually wrote one myself that could do anything that I would like. Programming is quite difficult (I am currently struggling with a couple of programming assingments myself and they just suck (Just for kicks I am thinking of ditching CS any good schools for say professionals in American History or in history related fields that I could just get a teaching degree in? I really hate programming)) and not something that can easily take control of massive quantities of data. Maybe people should expect things to take a little longer than 10ns or has attention span decreased?
And I haven't even gotten to bandwidth issues that sponsered this thread (well, they're part of the 5-to-20 figure above, in some ways). IBM lost on mainframes because they dealt _only_ with mainframes. DEC lost with
minicomputers because they too were arrogant/ignorant about PCs. And while Intel seems to acknowledge the information appliance ideas, they're x86 tech will only go so far (we can hope, can't we?). But just as information
appliances aren't the best choice for PC-type tasks, PCs aren't aren't the best choice for mainframe-sized loads.
I shudder at the thought of "information appliances" I pointed out once that I think that the only thing that will do for me is increase PC prices at least 4x the current rate because all the mass market decided to get some AOLphone or something like that. It just ends up screwing me in the end.
Oversimplification is a marketing tool. It has no place in intelligent discussion, where flippant remarks are better replaced by _questions_.
I have never done any marketing at all but I still say that at least from all the reading I have done and all the current businesses I have seen in operation that most of them use a client server setup wherein employees have PCs and are connected to a server or servers which run some network aware OS where data and applications reside. The client has more responsibility for data than in the mainframe days and also the server has less work to do but is at least smaller than the mainframes of old in a ratio. This is what I have seen maybe it's different in a few of the richer companies.
Errr, what time frame are you talking about? No sane person I know would tell you that mainframes are the be-all and end-all of computing. No computer is perfectly suited for all tasks. When was the last time you saw a tape robot
hanging off a PC that was acting as something other than a controller? When did you hear about PCs churning out billing statements for a million customers twice a month? (And finishing the actual print job in a day?) It's just a
matter of tuning your platform to the task, and mainframes are seriously tuned for big volume.
Sounds like the job for a lot of PCs with load balancing or perhaps some form of a beowulf cluster for the actual processing. Also you could have multiple high speed printers I really can't believe that you need a mainframe to increase something that is on the device end like a printer.