I was a representative for a minority party during the 2000 elections in my country (Uruguay, one of the most transparent countries in the world in that area), and while you could theoretically identify a ballot, ballot lists are pre printed, and any visible mark on the ballot disqualifies the vote, so it doesn't happen that way
Voters choose one list from among hundreds of options available and put it into an envelope with no identifying information
Ballots are opened in front of representatives of every party, the table head lifts every vote so representatives from each party can verify that the vote was cast, and it is entered (in 2000 it was manually, but these days it's electronic I think).)
Hypothetical vote buyers would have to buy the table heads in every subdivision, and make sure representatives from the other parties don't notice any strange behaviour from the table head (looking for scrathes, marks or whatever identificatory information was included.) (And ours is not a 2-party system, and even the majority party is made up of dozens of smaller parties which I expect would not all be involved in the collusion).
But the particular pattern voting example could not happen under our system.
A few decades ago the supply of copper seemed to run out. This resulted in a large hike in copper prices that made the copper in AT&T's wires in the US more valueble than the stocks of the entire company. Then a bunch of people opened new copper mines that extracted copper ore that was not profitable to extract at the earlier lower price.
1st World vs 3rd World: you know what happened here when copper went up? Uruguay became a net exporter of copper... only... there is no copper in Uruguay... it all came from stolen telephone and power lines (many a thief got fried in the process), until copper exports were banned last year.
Re:Get Over Yourselves People!
on
Terminal Chaos
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· Score: 1
I used to love flying; now you couldn't get me on a plane without putting a gun to my head. But as long as people make their travel decisions based primarily on price, airlines have no incentive to make things better. I wouldn't argue with a few protective laws and regulations, but airlines' failure to unilaterally improve things in a hypercompetitive market is a matter of economics, not "criminal neglect". I haven't flown much in the last 10 years, not because I don't want to, but because I can't afford it (I'm from Uruguay), and as long as they take me safely from point A to point B, I don't mind if the plane is crowded and treated like what it is - a flying bus (overcrowded and especially overbooked IS annoying). If you have more money, by all means fly business, I'd do that if I could.
OTOH, the security theater adds nothing but delays to the flights (I only experienced it once, but searching the soles of my shoes??? come on!). I'd definitely do away with THAT.
I'm somewhat obese, and I don't deny that you can control your weight through diet and exercise... but for some people it's harder than for others, that's what I think he was saying.
Everybody knows that guy that eats more than you do and doesn't gain an ounce... my uncle is one such, and it's probably because he's a bundle of nerves, never staying quiet
I eat a reasonably healthy diet, but with basically no exercise, it's not enough (I keep saying I'll start my exercise plan "next month":P ).
Thanks for the informative post (mods: hint, hint:) )
I was a sprinter at school and pretty lean during college/university, but as soon as I started working it all went through the roof... I'm now really overweight (not obese but getting close) and I miss my energy. I now eat a healthy diet but I'll never go back to thin unless I excercise regularly like you advocate (as I keep saying, I'll start next month:)
Didn't know those facts about caffeine, I drink diet soft drinks but I have a couple cups of coffee at work.
So, we've been doing pretty well working with both at the same time for years. You mean to say the rest of the world can't keep up?;) Ok, I understand it wasn't meant to be taken seriously;) but, the only time I EVER come across a Fahrenheit reference is on./ , I think I wasn't even taught it EXISTED at school (same for ounces, gallons or rods per hogshead. Miles & nautical miles and such did come up, and I think we were told the "feet" measuring unit was Hercules' feet as a trivia item, and that stadiums were the length of Athens stadium).
I only have an idea of some US measures by watching US TV (example: I wouldn't know what my height was in feet & inches), but Fahrenheit is one such which I have no point of reference, and baffles me whenever I come across it - for me, degrees Celsius are natural, as well as meters and the rest of the international system units.
start publicly posted how much everybody makes? I never understood what's wrong with that... Of course every company is different, and it gives the company more bargaining power if it doesn't disclose what each employee makes, but don't employees talk to each other?
I have a fair idea of what every employee in the company I'm in makes, and, I suspect, so does everybody else - plus, they don't try to hide salaries too much, when you sign your receipt you can see many of the others.
And I've asked friends or former classmates in other companies (and I look at the job offers too) so I have an idea of how much the "market value" for someone with my skillset is - depressingly not much:P but much better than the average Uruguayan.
Re:Warning: clear history before updating from FF2
on
A Few Firefox 3 Followups
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Is the awesomebar and the URLs it quick-fetches(?) customizable?
Sounds nice but it could be annoying (and potentially embarassing).
From what you say, I'd actually want to keep my history so it already recognizes my surfing habits (if I understood correctly...).
I'm not trying to belittle your problems and I am in no way affiliated with Mozilla or Firefox, but on the dozen of machines I use regularly I have never seen the problem you describe. Even though I regularly have twenty, thirty, or more tabs open at a time, and have lots of extensions installed, and leave FF open for the entire day.
And I haven't seen FF crash. Never. On any of those machines. Apart from your little report, and the link (which conveniently points to another posting by you(!)), I haven't heard of people complaining about it either. Ironically, my FF (2) died on me just before reading this post.
I suspect it was due to a combination of one of the pages I was watching + some extension.
NBA.com used to freeze my machine due to their Flash boxscore pages, now they switched to Silverlight but it was probably the culprit again as it was open on one of the tabs.
Still, I have to agree that the OP's bug report is not the way to go (no steps to reproduce means it's unhelpful, totally useless for the devs)
It's even worse than you think, because our capitalist economy is no more than a giant pyramidal scheme based on the growth of the population. If people somehow manage to slow down their reproductive habits, we'll get an economic collapse that will make 1929 look like a golden age. I don't know about the economy, but over here (Uruguay) Social Security IS a huge pyramid scheme - and I'm at the wrong end, with the most intelligent young people having emigrated.
And yet most people don't understand what's "wrong" with a pyramid-scheme social security, and demand to be paid for money they didn't save in the first place (at least it's not like Bolivia or other countries where if you know the right people you can get paid retirement without having ever paid a dime).
There really aren't that many consumer electronics items from the 1950s and 1960s in general use. There were hundreds - possible thousands - of millions of radios and TVs made during that time, for example. (snip) Where are they now?
Well, I have a Sony Trinitron color TV from the late 70's / early 80's, still in working condition though it's not as sharp as a modern TV (not to mention LCDs and HDTV).
I only use it as a piece of furniture these days, I don't know what to do with it - I don't want to just throw it away, it used to belong to my great-grandmother so it has some sentimental value as well as historical one I guess (I wish I had had the foresight to stop my father from giving away his old 8086 computer).
2) Germany has WAY lower crime rates than the US, as shown by the g-grandparent post itself, and I was comparing Austria (which probably has even lower rates) to the US, not having lived anywhere else in the EU (my brother did live in Barcelona, and while it wasn't comparatively as safe as Vienna, I do think it was much safer than your average US city).
And really, the gun culture is REALLY a US (and Canadian) thing. Not that I'm seeing things through rose-colored glasses, every country has its bad things.
Here in Uruguay you can sell the house and transfer the mortgage to the next owner (of course, if the value of the remaining mortgage is larger than the value of the house, you should have to give it away !! Or give the new owner some cash !).
Of course, moving to another city for a new job is not common at all here - I guess that in the example, the new job should pay substantially higher than the old one, or else even working in say McDonald's would be a better alternative than moving...
There are plenty of other crimes going around in our native Uruguay, but gun control has worked out pretty well I'd say (there are some pockets of poverty where guns are prevalent, but it's nothing like what he tells me he sees in Canada or the US). I didn't see crime during my stay in Canada firsthand, but a man did die of a gunshot just by walking on the wrong sidewalk in a place I had been walking by just a few days before, and I did see a black guy arrested and being badly handled by a policeman on Bloor Street.
By comparison, while I was in Austria (more than 6 months in total), the highest point in violence was that a nearby shop was robbed. The police response was astonishingly swift, they promptly surrounded the area and the thieves were caught - and that was quite the event.
From my anecdotal evidence, comparing US/Canada with at least central Europe, I'd say Europe looks safer by a mile. I'd even dare say that you're more likely to die from a gunfight in the US or Canada than in Uruguay even (you're way more likely to be robbed in Uruguay though).
If you need to move for a job and find that your home is now worth significantly less than you paid for it, you are screwed. I don't get this point.. are homes depreciating at different rates in different areas of the US? Otherwise, you just trade a depreciated house for another depreciated house and you're set.
They do have some pretty good coders in the organization (I happen to know one of them), but they're usually very busy - the one I know is being sucked dry by a large US corporation and barely has time for the Boy Scout meetings, let alone coding for them.
What truly turned me off the Prius however was the way it feels as a car. It's really about as much fun as driving a dishwasher. I really wanted to like the Prius, but I can't.
If I want fun, I'll fire up the quad.
Totally agree with the above poster. Cars are usually for moving from point A to point B. I can "get" people wanting them to be faster in highways, but being "fun" ???
They are just as affectionate as dogs, and require much less maintenance. I'm not sure why more people prefer dogs.
I don't have a dog currently, but I grew up with dogs as pets, and I found them very affectionate; even my relatives' dogs are affectionate with me and I might see them once a month or less.
On the other hand, I've never seen cats exibit that kind of behavior, even though a friend of mine I visit more frequently than once a month has several, they're more standoff-ish; they are affectionate, but not as much as dogs I think.
Also, even though some other poster says you can teach cat tricks, I doubt you can play with them the way I played with my dogs (my dog liked fetching sticks, my uncle's dog has been very well trained and does somersaults, plays dead, etc). Also, cats sometimes give me allergies:P
Nice. Now go and explain that to the other 99% of the Bible readers (those that probably don't read Slashdot). Starting with some idiotic Protestant churches my sister was involved with, the Pare de Sufrir cult here in Uruguay, and all those Catholics that believe that pope Benedict somehow has a direct line to God.
Oh, you want guarantees? You want promises? You want perfection? You want hard and fast rules? You want uniformity?
You get none of those. Sorry, I think I didn't get this. I'm not being sarcastic, it might be a language problem (native Spanish speaker here).
Further, you may well have convinced yourself of the vast sophistication of being an athiest, which would, without warrant, elevate your opinion of yourself and lower your opinion of any sort of believer. Including your sister. I consider myself an agnostic. I don't rule out the existence of a god. It does elevate my opinion of myself slightly:P but I tend to be tolerant of most religions. I don't think the monotheist "God" portrayed in the Bible, who meddles in the affairs of men so, to be very likely. I do appreciate most of the Christian moral code my catechism teachers wanted to teach us, but I think you can take that without having to be religious
On my sister, I think she's well intentioned but way too gullible - her church convinced her to donate a laptop to a Canadian family that's way better off than she is, and to pay and go for a "mission" to Croatia which from what she showed me was way better off than our native Uruguay, not to mention she donates 10% of her meager salary to her church.
In exchange she gets a sense of satisfaction, thinking better of herself (you think I might feel myself superior? You haven't met her:P ), and belonging to a group which has been very important and supportive to her (and I can appreciate that, I think they're good people in general). They do have some VERY odd beliefs though:(
Wasn't voluntary when I was a kid. Heh. I had to read the Bible in its entirety for mandatory Catechism classes - Old Testament included. Tends to make a lot of Atheists/Agnostics:)
But the problem to us heathens is that religious texts like the bible are supposed to be infallible morality from God.
(snip)
Your second problems is you don't expect anything from anyone. I expect a reader, who wants to get the most out of any text, to be a thinking adult with a strong moral code. You want life answers soley from a book, even a book such as the bible?
They aren't there, at least not all of them. It's a guide. Nice. Now go and explain that to the other 99% of the Bible readers (those that probably don't read Slashdot). Starting with some idiotic Protestant churches my sister was involved with, the Pare de Sufrir cult here in Uruguay, and all those Catholics that believe that pope Benedict somehow has a direct line to God.
my little 4 cylinder Civic? Man you USians have a distorted view of reality. My father used to have a Citroen 2cv, it delivered 50 miles per gallon (in the 80's), now he has a Hyundai Atos and it also delivers 50 mpg. 25 mpg is considered a car that spends a lot here in Uruguay (and a Civic is a high-end car, no kidding).
I currently don't have a car but I'm looking into buying a Fiat Uno (about 40 mpg in good condition).
Most North Americans say "but the highway blah blah blah", and it's true, you would get creamed in a highway in any of the cars I mentioned, but they would be more than adequate for everyday use in your standard US city from what I've seen, it's just a cultural problem (a friend of mine moved to Seattle from my country, and his coworkers at Microsoft wonder at the "tiny" car he bought, and it's actually a mid-to-large sized car by our country's standards !!! He's single, WTF would he want an SUV for?).
But today, child porn in most states is defined as
"any image of a child, or someone appearing to be a child (or fictionally created to represent a child) which is viewed with the intent to cause arousal or sexual satisfaction"
Wow... that would be very troubling with so many ambiguous cartoons / mangas (okay, hentai).
I looked it up with Google, and here's what Cornell has to say about it:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/2256.html
(8) "child pornography" means any visual depiction, including any photograph, film, video, picture, or computer or computer-generated image or picture, whether made or produced by electronic, mechanical, or other means, of sexually explicit conduct, where--
(A) the production of such visual depiction involves the use of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct;
(B) such visual depiction is a digital image, computer image, or computer-generated image that is, or is indistinguishable from, that of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct; or
(C) such visual depiction has been created, adapted, or modified to appear that an identifiable minor is engaging in sexually explicit conduct.
(9) "identifiable minor"--
(A) means a person--
(i)
(I) who was a minor at the time the visual depiction was created, adapted, or modified; or
(II) whose image as a minor was used in creating, adapting, or modifying the visual depiction; and
(ii) who is recognizable as an actual person by the person's face, likeness, or other distinguishing characteristic, such as a unique birthmark or other recognizable feature; and
(B) shall not be construed to require proof of the actual identity of the identifiable minor.
(10) "graphic", when used with respect to a depiction of sexually explicit conduct, means that a viewer can observe any part of the genitals or pubic area of any depicted person or animal during any part of the time that the sexually explicit conduct is being depicted; and
(11) the term "indistinguishable" used with respect to a depiction, means virtually indistinguishable, in that the depiction is such that an ordinary person viewing the depiction would conclude that the depiction is of an actual minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct.
This definition does not apply to depictions that are drawings, cartoons, sculptures, or paintings depicting minors or adults.
It's the US code, which I don't know how it works in the US, but state laws take precedence over it? Or it's a diferent jury, prision, sentence, etc?
Apparently it's not illegal (whether it's amoral or unethical is another matter)
"Supreme Court strikes down ban on 'virtual child porn'":
WASHINGTON (CNN) April 18, 2002 -- The U.S. Supreme Court Tuesday struck down a 6-year-old law that prohibits the distribution and possession of virtual child pornography that appears to -- but does not -- depict real children.
I'm not an US citizen (but my country usually follows any "suggestion" by the US anyway), but all this is troubling. I can certainly imagine ways these laws could be abused - what happened to the teacher that had popups showing up during class? (Oh, apparently she was not imprisioned after a retrial) Teacher story on Slashdot:
http://slashdot.org/articles/07/01/13/0753209.shtmlhttp://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/06/06/1917255
Indeed, I had an old Thinkpad P III that was given to me from a family member in Canada last year, and I was very happy with it even though it only held 15 mins of charge (and it died 6 months later:( ). I live in Uruguay, South America.
It ran Windows XP decently (I'm using a P III with XP RIGHT NOW for some office software tasks ), could play some older games, view pictures, and of course surf the Internet. That's pretty much what 80% of the computer users over here want to do.
Uruguay's commited to buying tens of thousands of OLPC laptops though, so you should send it somewhere else (or just ship it to me:P )
Slashdot Mirror
I was a representative for a minority party during the 2000 elections in my country (Uruguay, one of the most transparent countries in the world in that area), and while you could theoretically identify a ballot, ballot lists are pre printed, and any visible mark on the ballot disqualifies the vote, so it doesn't happen that way
.
Voters choose one list from among hundreds of options available and put it into an envelope with no identifying information
Ballots are opened in front of representatives of every party, the table head lifts every vote so representatives from each party can verify that the vote was cast, and it is entered (in 2000 it was manually, but these days it's electronic I think).)
Hypothetical vote buyers would have to buy the table heads in every subdivision, and make sure representatives from the other parties don't notice any strange behaviour from the table head (looking for scrathes, marks or whatever identificatory information was included.) (And ours is not a 2-party system, and even the majority party is made up of dozens of smaller parties which I expect would not all be involved in the collusion)
But the particular pattern voting example could not happen under our system.
A few decades ago the supply of copper seemed to run out. This resulted in a large hike in copper prices that made the copper in AT&T's wires in the US more valueble than the stocks of the entire company. Then a bunch of people opened new copper mines that extracted copper ore that was not profitable to extract at the earlier lower price.
1st World vs 3rd World: you know what happened here when copper went up? Uruguay became a net exporter of copper... only... there is no copper in Uruguay... it all came from stolen telephone and power lines (many a thief got fried in the process), until copper exports were banned last year.
http://www.presidencia.gub.uy/_web/noticias/2007/10/2007100106.htm
OTOH, the security theater adds nothing but delays to the flights (I only experienced it once, but searching the soles of my shoes??? come on!). I'd definitely do away with THAT.
I'm somewhat obese, and I don't deny that you can control your weight through diet and exercise... but for some people it's harder than for others, that's what I think he was saying.
:P ).
Everybody knows that guy that eats more than you do and doesn't gain an ounce... my uncle is one such, and it's probably because he's a bundle of nerves, never staying quiet
I eat a reasonably healthy diet, but with basically no exercise, it's not enough (I keep saying I'll start my exercise plan "next month"
Thanks for the informative post (mods: hint, hint :) )
:)
I was a sprinter at school and pretty lean during college/university, but as soon as I started working it all went through the roof... I'm now really overweight (not obese but getting close) and I miss my energy. I now eat a healthy diet but I'll never go back to thin unless I excercise regularly like you advocate (as I keep saying, I'll start next month
Didn't know those facts about caffeine, I drink diet soft drinks but I have a couple cups of coffee at work.
How does one get to be your friend :)
:P )
(Not at all interested in knowing those "hot chicks", no sireee...
I only have an idea of some US measures by watching US TV (example: I wouldn't know what my height was in feet & inches), but Fahrenheit is one such which I have no point of reference, and baffles me whenever I come across it - for me, degrees Celsius are natural, as well as meters and the rest of the international system units.
I have a fair idea of what every employee in the company I'm in makes, and, I suspect, so does everybody else - plus, they don't try to hide salaries too much, when you sign your receipt you can see many of the others.
And I've asked friends or former classmates in other companies (and I look at the job offers too) so I have an idea of how much the "market value" for someone with my skillset is - depressingly not much
Is the awesomebar and the URLs it quick-fetches(?) customizable?
Sounds nice but it could be annoying (and potentially embarassing).
From what you say, I'd actually want to keep my history so it already recognizes my surfing habits (if I understood correctly...).
And I haven't seen FF crash. Never. On any of those machines. Apart from your little report, and the link (which conveniently points to another posting by you(!)), I haven't heard of people complaining about it either.
Ironically, my FF (2) died on me just before reading this post.
I suspect it was due to a combination of one of the pages I was watching + some extension.
NBA.com used to freeze my machine due to their Flash boxscore pages, now they switched to Silverlight but it was probably the culprit again as it was open on one of the tabs.
Still, I have to agree that the OP's bug report is not the way to go (no steps to reproduce means it's unhelpful, totally useless for the devs)
And yet most people don't understand what's "wrong" with a pyramid-scheme social security, and demand to be paid for money they didn't save in the first place (at least it's not like Bolivia or other countries where if you know the right people you can get paid retirement without having ever paid a dime).
Well, I have a Sony Trinitron color TV from the late 70's / early 80's, still in working condition though it's not as sharp as a modern TV (not to mention LCDs and HDTV).
I only use it as a piece of furniture these days, I don't know what to do with it - I don't want to just throw it away, it used to belong to my great-grandmother so it has some sentimental value as well as historical one I guess (I wish I had had the foresight to stop my father from giving away his old 8086 computer).
Well, his statistics do agree with my anecdotal evidence:
1) You're twice as likely to be murdered in the US than in the European Union:
(European stats source) http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/cache/ITY_OFFPUB/KS-SF-07-015/EN/KS-SF-07-015-EN.PDF
(US & individual European countries stats source) http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_percap-crime-murders-per-capita
2) Germany has WAY lower crime rates than the US, as shown by the g-grandparent post itself, and I was comparing Austria (which probably has even lower rates) to the US, not having lived anywhere else in the EU (my brother did live in Barcelona, and while it wasn't comparatively as safe as Vienna, I do think it was much safer than your average US city).
And really, the gun culture is REALLY a US (and Canadian) thing. Not that I'm seeing things through rose-colored glasses, every country has its bad things.
Ah, ok, thanks. I had forgotten the mortgages.
Here in Uruguay you can sell the house and transfer the mortgage to the next owner (of course, if the value of the remaining mortgage is larger than the value of the house, you should have to give it away !! Or give the new owner some cash !).
Of course, moving to another city for a new job is not common at all here - I guess that in the example, the new job should pay substantially higher than the old one, or else even working in say McDonald's would be a better alternative than moving...
My brother lives in Canada, and one of my sisters in Austria, and I've been to both.
As my brother tells it, he had never been exposed to gun violence before, nor to the US (and to a lesser extent, Canadian) gun culture. He even blogged about it: http://mrhathouse.blogspot.com/2005/11/my-2-cents-when-you-live-abroad-you.html
There are plenty of other crimes going around in our native Uruguay, but gun control has worked out pretty well I'd say (there are some pockets of poverty where guns are prevalent, but it's nothing like what he tells me he sees in Canada or the US). I didn't see crime during my stay in Canada firsthand, but a man did die of a gunshot just by walking on the wrong sidewalk in a place I had been walking by just a few days before, and I did see a black guy arrested and being badly handled by a policeman on Bloor Street.
By comparison, while I was in Austria (more than 6 months in total), the highest point in violence was that a nearby shop was robbed. The police response was astonishingly swift, they promptly surrounded the area and the thieves were caught - and that was quite the event.
From my anecdotal evidence, comparing US/Canada with at least central Europe, I'd say Europe looks safer by a mile. I'd even dare say that you're more likely to die from a gunfight in the US or Canada than in Uruguay even (you're way more likely to be robbed in Uruguay though).
They do have some pretty good coders in the organization (I happen to know one of them), but they're usually very busy - the one I know is being sucked dry by a large US corporation and barely has time for the Boy Scout meetings, let alone coding for them.
If I want fun, I'll fire up the quad.
Totally agree with the above poster. Cars are usually for moving from point A to point B. I can "get" people wanting them to be faster in highways, but being "fun" ???
I don't have a dog currently, but I grew up with dogs as pets, and I found them very affectionate; even my relatives' dogs are affectionate with me and I might see them once a month or less.
On the other hand, I've never seen cats exibit that kind of behavior, even though a friend of mine I visit more frequently than once a month has several, they're more standoff-ish; they are affectionate, but not as much as dogs I think.
Also, even though some other poster says you can teach cat tricks, I doubt you can play with them the way I played with my dogs (my dog liked fetching sticks, my uncle's dog has been very well trained and does somersaults, plays dead, etc). Also, cats sometimes give me allergies
Oh, you want guarantees? You want promises? You want perfection? You want hard and fast rules? You want uniformity?
You get none of those. Sorry, I think I didn't get this. I'm not being sarcastic, it might be a language problem (native Spanish speaker here).
Further, you may well have convinced yourself of the vast sophistication of being an athiest, which would, without warrant, elevate your opinion of yourself and lower your opinion of any sort of believer. Including your sister. I consider myself an agnostic. I don't rule out the existence of a god. It does elevate my opinion of myself slightly
On my sister, I think she's well intentioned but way too gullible - her church convinced her to donate a laptop to a Canadian family that's way better off than she is, and to pay and go for a "mission" to Croatia which from what she showed me was way better off than our native Uruguay, not to mention she donates 10% of her meager salary to her church.
In exchange she gets a sense of satisfaction, thinking better of herself (you think I might feel myself superior? You haven't met her
(snip) Your second problems is you don't expect anything from anyone. I expect a reader, who wants to get the most out of any text, to be a thinking adult with a strong moral code. You want life answers soley from a book, even a book such as the bible?
They aren't there, at least not all of them. It's a guide.
Nice. Now go and explain that to the other 99% of the Bible readers (those that probably don't read Slashdot). Starting with some idiotic Protestant churches my sister was involved with, the Pare de Sufrir cult here in Uruguay, and all those Catholics that believe that pope Benedict somehow has a direct line to God.
I currently don't have a car but I'm looking into buying a Fiat Uno (about 40 mpg in good condition).
Most North Americans say "but the highway blah blah blah", and it's true, you would get creamed in a highway in any of the cars I mentioned, but they would be more than adequate for everyday use in your standard US city from what I've seen, it's just a cultural problem (a friend of mine moved to Seattle from my country, and his coworkers at Microsoft wonder at the "tiny" car he bought, and it's actually a mid-to-large sized car by our country's standards !!! He's single, WTF would he want an SUV for?).
"any image of a child, or someone appearing to be a child (or fictionally created to represent a child) which is viewed with the intent to cause arousal or sexual satisfaction"
Wow... that would be very troubling with so many ambiguous cartoons / mangas (okay, hentai).
I looked it up with Google, and here's what Cornell has to say about it:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/2256.html (8) "child pornography" means any visual depiction, including any photograph, film, video, picture, or computer or computer-generated image or picture, whether made or produced by electronic, mechanical, or other means, of sexually explicit conduct, where--
(A) the production of such visual depiction involves the use of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct;
(B) such visual depiction is a digital image, computer image, or computer-generated image that is, or is indistinguishable from, that of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct; or
(C) such visual depiction has been created, adapted, or modified to appear that an identifiable minor is engaging in sexually explicit conduct.
(9) "identifiable minor"--
(A) means a person-- (i)
(I) who was a minor at the time the visual depiction was created, adapted, or modified; or
(II) whose image as a minor was used in creating, adapting, or modifying the visual depiction; and
(ii) who is recognizable as an actual person by the person's face, likeness, or other distinguishing characteristic, such as a unique birthmark or other recognizable feature; and
(B) shall not be construed to require proof of the actual identity of the identifiable minor. (10) "graphic", when used with respect to a depiction of sexually explicit conduct, means that a viewer can observe any part of the genitals or pubic area of any depicted person or animal during any part of the time that the sexually explicit conduct is being depicted; and
(11) the term "indistinguishable" used with respect to a depiction, means virtually indistinguishable, in that the depiction is such that an ordinary person viewing the depiction would conclude that the depiction is of an actual minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct.
This definition does not apply to depictions that are drawings, cartoons, sculptures, or paintings depicting minors or adults.
It's the US code, which I don't know how it works in the US, but state laws take precedence over it? Or it's a diferent jury, prision, sentence, etc? Apparently it's not illegal (whether it's amoral or unethical is another matter)
"Supreme Court strikes down ban on 'virtual child porn'":
http://archives.cnn.com/2002/LAW/04/16/scotus.virtual.child.porn/
WASHINGTON (CNN) April 18, 2002 -- The U.S. Supreme Court Tuesday struck down a 6-year-old law that prohibits the distribution and possession of virtual child pornography that appears to -- but does not -- depict real children.
I'm not an US citizen (but my country usually follows any "suggestion" by the US anyway), but all this is troubling. I can certainly imagine ways these laws could be abused - what happened to the teacher that had popups showing up during class? (Oh, apparently she was not imprisioned after a retrial) Teacher story on Slashdot: http://slashdot.org/articles/07/01/13/0753209.shtml http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/06/06/1917255
Indeed, I had an old Thinkpad P III that was given to me from a family member in Canada last year, and I was very happy with it even though it only held 15 mins of charge (and it died 6 months later :( ). I live in Uruguay, South America.
:P )
It ran Windows XP decently (I'm using a P III with XP RIGHT NOW for some office software tasks ), could play some older games, view pictures, and of course surf the Internet. That's pretty much what 80% of the computer users over here want to do.
Uruguay's commited to buying tens of thousands of OLPC laptops though, so you should send it somewhere else (or just ship it to me