It's a wild overstatement. If DRM actually happened as the companies hope, which is utterly absurd, then computer users would permanently lose much power. But that's a far cry from "being enslaved."
So piating the games is illegal. But can they be bought legally from the Bureau of Video Games? Could they ever have been? The article was ambiguous, so does anyone have outside info?
First off, internet use by novices is easy to track to an ISP, general location, and IP address. Cops can turn that into a real human ID pretty easily. But in either case, I wouldn't call the anonymity an illusion; and experienced users, including the kiddie-porn monsters, use proxies.
I'd say the internet's partial anonymity, sense of playing a game, and willingness to grow beyond yourself and cross boundaries have been a net gain for the world as a whole, and the vast majority of individual users, and should be preserved. This thread has been more defensive on this point than I expected; but then, 10 years ago the newspapers were constantly running stories on how "THE INTARWEB WILL RAPE OUR BABIES". Apparently Slashdot's knee-jerk defensiveness can't just turn on a 5-year dime.
The Tiffany lamp thread is probably too cynical, but fascinating, and has a grain of truth. Maybe the internet does help cops more than criminals, and maybe downloading porn shouldn't be as harshly punished as soliciting. bhima's post in a different thread, about a jailed co-worker, makes the point pretty well. Do we run the justice system to serve the criminal? The victim? Society at large? Or just the demands of a God or a public sentiment that demands vengeance?
My personal best guess is that pornography doesn't really help anyone "get over" or "satisfy" an attraction; it's more like a borderland between fantasy and action. Some people turn back there, and some go right on through. Same goes for violence, really. But how do you test that guess? Find 1,000 12 year olds and start giving them anonymous surveys every year about fantasies, pornography, and sex acts they'd had? I don't even think it's legal to ask "Have you molested anyone?", hear "Yes", and not call the cops.
The article is horrifying in general, but particularly the lack of research: if the doctors and cops don't learn anything new, will the problem ever get any better? Even rough statistics on what percentage of children are abused and how many cases occur in a given year seem hamstrung by taboos on reporting these cases to agencies. Are 90% of perps male, or is reporting female perps much less common? Where in the given ranges do the stats on prevalence of molestation fall? How do these stats change based on technology, how close people live to extended family, ZIP code, population density, divorce rate, or simply the progress of time?
Also, when he was told to rate images based on arousal from 1 to 7, with a female doctor standing while he sat, and maintaining an expressionless face, isn't that situation in and of itself loaded with overtones of sex, power, and dominance? It reads like an S&M script, although no doubt the NYT's bombastic reporting is partly to blame. Do the therapists have any mechanism for including little details like "atmosphere" in their papers? Have they researched how a gulag, conference room, parlor, the subject's own house, outdoors, or various other settings affect the answers given? (It might also depend on how the subject rated his or her enthusiasm for and tension in those locations.)
The Abel Assessment sounds impressive, though-- useful and reasonable. To what extent can patients/cultivate/ desire, in a way that shows shifts on the Abel test, even if they're ignorant that it actually uses time and not rating? This matters to "ex-gay" organizations as well.
The post title "Priests prefer face to face contact first." may be the best troll this week. Does he win a t-shirt?
[blush] I sure wish slashdot allowed editing of posts. I'll have to be more careful with the submit button!
Well, slight distinction: Hitler and the SS were using ugly ends to justify other means, they (mostly) didn't just hurt people because it was fun. Pedophiles don't have sexual contact with kids in pursuit of another goal; they just do it. It's a different kind of problem.
Also, they're cheering each other on to abstinence, not to abuse.
And the claims that pedophiles can be cured, and aren't born that way but become that way by "failing to grow up", sound possible but unproven. Any evidence?
On another note, I'm sure boychat.org would have an easier time in the world if it was run by a mental health group. Having just read their FAQ, I'm not even sure the doctors would change it much; although I'm sure they'd suggest therapy as well as posting online, and they might prohibit contact between adult users anywhere but the forum.
I will say that no man is without sin, and I sympathize somewhat with attacks on any adult, whether it's the moralist or the Anonymous Coward boychat.org user. However, hurting children, even if with inappropriate love instead of malice, just doesn't appeal as much. So if AC wants sex with kids and the moralist wants to kill AC, I'd reluctantly be more sympathetic with the violent, illiterate one. I think Hannibal Lecter's damn cool too, although I certainly don't think people/should/ murder or maim.
Finally, I disagree with the moralist's low opinion of free speech; the fact that you replied instead of turning off the computer and walking away suggests a bit of a knee-jerk contradiction, I think.
Well, slight distinction: Hitler and the SS were using ugly ends to justify other means, they (mostly) didn't just hurt people because it was fun. Pedophiles don't have sexual contact with kids in pursuit of another goal; they just do it. It's a different kind of problem.
Also, they're cheering each other on to abstinence, not to abuse.
And the claims that pedophiles can be cured, and aren't born that way but become that way by "failing to grow up", sound possible but unproven. Any evidence?
On another note, I'm sure boychat.org would have an easier time in the world if it was run by a mental health group. Having just read their FAQ, I'm not even sure the doctors would change it much; although I'm sure they'd suggest therapy as well as posting online, and they might prohibit contact between adult users anywhere but the forum.
Finally, I disagree with your low opinion of free speech; the fact that you replied instead of turning off the computer and walking away suggests a bit of a knee-jerk contradiction, I think.
I will say that no man is without sin, and I sympathize somewhat with attacks on any adult, whether it's the moralist or the boychat.org user. However, attacks on children just don't appeal as much, so if AC wants sex with kids and the moralist wants to kill AC, I'd reluctantly be more sympathetic with the violent, illiterate one.
That does sound pretty raw and wrenching, and I'd like to see it. The "24 of 40" number does surprise me, and the taboo on talking about this sort of thing is damaging.
And I hate to be a cold-blooded bastard who nitpicks over statistics. But. A first name is a pretty strong demographic selection pressure, and last names and full names may be too. So as random as sharing the same full name may seem, it is an indicator of other similarities.
You mention that you found 16 year olds hot when you were 16, and don't now, 16 years later. That isn't merely based on how you've changed. It's also because the language, clothing, body language, and culture of today's 16 year olds is different than that of a 16 year old in 1980. So if one of your classmates, say, rode a DeLorean through a time warp to get here, I honestly don't know if she'd seem attractive to you or not. (Age 16 is generally pretty developed, physically, so that isn't strictly pedophilia. People also hit puberty sooner due to better nutrition since a century or so ago; this makes it doubly surprising that UK age of consent used to be 10.)
Argh, sorry, already found the first three here. http://elonka.com/kryptos/ So what did your gf find in the "overall shape"? Was it as lengthy and relevant as the other passages?;)
"reaching for their wallets to eagerly pay for yet another link in a chain being forged to enslave them and all the future generations to come." You, sir, are my hero. One day I hope to troll as well as you.
IBM is wisely compiling its abstraction instead of interpreting it every time the program runs, as with bytecode. OS-agnostic sandboxed mini-executables... brilliant. Way to go, IBM. Of course, they have the luxury of no back compatibility when they work with TVs and game consoles.
Note that unless someone finally makes machine-checkable watermarking work in the real world, DRM is much more for proprietary software product activation, and pretty much worthless for content. All you need is one machine somewhere with "AV in" jacks, and Radio Shack cables. Even if that's not what the DRM salesmen say.
I have enormous hopes you're right this design will, as you say, play German heavy metal! Just don't forget the possibility that they're over-patenting and quoting a lot of maximum numbers: "On this 10th day of June 1919, the Estes model rocket corporation hereby patents solid propellant, which could hypothetically possibly be used to reach the moon and/or accelerate a human to half lightspeed."
"many OSs will support multiple processors but many applications do not and will need to be modified accordingly - a process which will take many, many years. Cell applications will be written to be scalable from the very beginning as that's how the system works." What's in a name? That which we call a rewrite by any other name would take as long. Perhaps you're right that JIT emulation can solve it. I hope so, since this would also free the market from back-compatibility and the associated monopolies and shoddiness. Especially productivity apps, since old games are fairly unpopular anyway. I'd love to see the Cell kill x86, and for that matter Linux and OpenOffice kill MS, but I'm not laying bets.
"Sony could always pull a fast one and produce a PS3 on a card for the PC. Since it would not depend on the PC's computational or memory resources it's irrelevant how weak or strong they are." Except backplane bottlenecks in the motherboard, especially for AV output. Of course, this would cut into Sony's actual PS3 sales. I hope IBM doesn't have contractual or strategic reasons to keep the Cell out of the x86 market. Just as Intel licensed x86 to AMD, IBM or the consortium will have to license Cell to any new manufacturers. (Can anyone please update the "x86" entry at wikipedia to clarify the IP status of x86?)
You're right about Apple having a new chance at the mainstream; but after their bizarre failure to do the same until now, I'm half convinced they're just secretly a research firm owned and operated by and for Microsoft.:) Maybe MS will even take a lesson from the XBox and start selling desktops with IBM chips, as you say; the tech industry is a very surprising place.
I lean towards the conservative view when it comes to tech market predictions. The last genuinely disruptive consumer technologies we've had are, what? Cameras going digital? Cell phone texting? Blackberries and laptops and Palms, which have been around for ages? Java squeezing C++ for the past 10+ years? MS crushing Netscape nearly 7 years ago?! On the other hand, Firefox rocks. Maybe copyleft really is where it's at.
The final word? You may be right, and I admire you for trying to extract useful information from a patent. But have you read many other patents, and are you sure you can derive specs from this one with any reliability? If not, this will only be an incremental step, not a revolution. And even if it could be a sharp increase, it may never take on Intel for the desktop, as the PS2 shows.
Dick also wrote Minority Report, made into the recent movie Minority Report. His protagonists are usually cops. Brilliant insane technologists create new technologies like drugs and weapons, and the poor cops, like most people, are left to try and deal with it as best they can.
Blade Runner is the best movie I've ever seen, while Minority Report is just very good. Guess which one had flashier special effects?
The protagonist is a drug dealer and a narcotics agent. The IMDB summary implies this is only because he uses drugs that split his personality. The much more interesting truth, which shone through Dick's novel, is that people do switch sides all the time! Captured drug dealers really are offered immunity from punishment if they'll be DEA double-agents. And agents who realize the money to be made, and their privileged position, really do succumb to temptation and start dealing drugs. More generally, both cartels and the DEA work to preserve the current Drug War, rather than managed and taxed legalization as with alcohol since Prohibition. Hopefully the movie pushes this home, despite IMDB's summary.
Plus, he's played by Keanu Reeves. I mean, really.
On the plus side, if they left the EEG machine in the movie, this should spike interest in OpenEEG.
Slashdot Mirror
It's a wild overstatement. If DRM actually happened as the companies hope, which is utterly absurd, then computer users would permanently lose much power. But that's a far cry from "being enslaved."
So piating the games is illegal. But can they be bought legally from the Bureau of Video Games? Could they ever have been? The article was ambiguous, so does anyone have outside info?
First off, internet use by novices is easy to track to an ISP, general location, and IP address. Cops can turn that into a real human ID pretty easily. But in either case, I wouldn't call the anonymity an illusion; and experienced users, including the kiddie-porn monsters, use proxies.
/cultivate/ desire, in a way that shows shifts on the Abel test, even if they're ignorant that it actually uses time and not rating? This matters to "ex-gay" organizations as well.
I'd say the internet's partial anonymity, sense of playing a game, and willingness to grow beyond yourself and cross boundaries have been a net gain for the world as a whole, and the vast majority of individual users, and should be preserved. This thread has been more defensive on this point than I expected; but then, 10 years ago the newspapers were constantly running stories on how "THE INTARWEB WILL RAPE OUR BABIES". Apparently Slashdot's knee-jerk defensiveness can't just turn on a 5-year dime.
The Tiffany lamp thread is probably too cynical, but fascinating, and has a grain of truth. Maybe the internet does help cops more than criminals, and maybe downloading porn shouldn't be as harshly punished as soliciting. bhima's post in a different thread, about a jailed co-worker, makes the point pretty well. Do we run the justice system to serve the criminal? The victim? Society at large? Or just the demands of a God or a public sentiment that demands vengeance?
My personal best guess is that pornography doesn't really help anyone "get over" or "satisfy" an attraction; it's more like a borderland between fantasy and action. Some people turn back there, and some go right on through. Same goes for violence, really. But how do you test that guess? Find 1,000 12 year olds and start giving them anonymous surveys every year about fantasies, pornography, and sex acts they'd had? I don't even think it's legal to ask "Have you molested anyone?", hear "Yes", and not call the cops.
The article is horrifying in general, but particularly the lack of research: if the doctors and cops don't learn anything new, will the problem ever get any better? Even rough statistics on what percentage of children are abused and how many cases occur in a given year seem hamstrung by taboos on reporting these cases to agencies. Are 90% of perps male, or is reporting female perps much less common? Where in the given ranges do the stats on prevalence of molestation fall? How do these stats change based on technology, how close people live to extended family, ZIP code, population density, divorce rate, or simply the progress of time?
Also, when he was told to rate images based on arousal from 1 to 7, with a female doctor standing while he sat, and maintaining an expressionless face, isn't that situation in and of itself loaded with overtones of sex, power, and dominance? It reads like an S&M script, although no doubt the NYT's bombastic reporting is partly to blame. Do the therapists have any mechanism for including little details like "atmosphere" in their papers? Have they researched how a gulag, conference room, parlor, the subject's own house, outdoors, or various other settings affect the answers given? (It might also depend on how the subject rated his or her enthusiasm for and tension in those locations.)
The Abel Assessment sounds impressive, though-- useful and reasonable. To what extent can patients
The post title "Priests prefer face to face contact first." may be the best troll this week. Does he win a t-shirt?
[blush] I sure wish slashdot allowed editing of posts. I'll have to be more careful with the submit button!
/should/ murder or maim.
Well, slight distinction: Hitler and the SS were using ugly ends to justify other means, they (mostly) didn't just hurt people because it was fun. Pedophiles don't have sexual contact with kids in pursuit of another goal; they just do it. It's a different kind of problem.
Also, they're cheering each other on to abstinence, not to abuse.
And the claims that pedophiles can be cured, and aren't born that way but become that way by "failing to grow up", sound possible but unproven. Any evidence?
On another note, I'm sure boychat.org would have an easier time in the world if it was run by a mental health group. Having just read their FAQ, I'm not even sure the doctors would change it much; although I'm sure they'd suggest therapy as well as posting online, and they might prohibit contact between adult users anywhere but the forum.
I will say that no man is without sin, and I sympathize somewhat with attacks on any adult, whether it's the moralist or the Anonymous Coward boychat.org user. However, hurting children, even if with inappropriate love instead of malice, just doesn't appeal as much. So if AC wants sex with kids and the moralist wants to kill AC, I'd reluctantly be more sympathetic with the violent, illiterate one. I think Hannibal Lecter's damn cool too, although I certainly don't think people
Finally, I disagree with the moralist's low opinion of free speech; the fact that you replied instead of turning off the computer and walking away suggests a bit of a knee-jerk contradiction, I think.
Well, slight distinction: Hitler and the SS were using ugly ends to justify other means, they (mostly) didn't just hurt people because it was fun. Pedophiles don't have sexual contact with kids in pursuit of another goal; they just do it. It's a different kind of problem. Also, they're cheering each other on to abstinence, not to abuse. And the claims that pedophiles can be cured, and aren't born that way but become that way by "failing to grow up", sound possible but unproven. Any evidence? On another note, I'm sure boychat.org would have an easier time in the world if it was run by a mental health group. Having just read their FAQ, I'm not even sure the doctors would change it much; although I'm sure they'd suggest therapy as well as posting online, and they might prohibit contact between adult users anywhere but the forum. Finally, I disagree with your low opinion of free speech; the fact that you replied instead of turning off the computer and walking away suggests a bit of a knee-jerk contradiction, I think. I will say that no man is without sin, and I sympathize somewhat with attacks on any adult, whether it's the moralist or the boychat.org user. However, attacks on children just don't appeal as much, so if AC wants sex with kids and the moralist wants to kill AC, I'd reluctantly be more sympathetic with the violent, illiterate one.
That does sound pretty raw and wrenching, and I'd like to see it. The "24 of 40" number does surprise me, and the taboo on talking about this sort of thing is damaging.
And I hate to be a cold-blooded bastard who nitpicks over statistics. But. A first name is a pretty strong demographic selection pressure, and last names and full names may be too. So as random as sharing the same full name may seem, it is an indicator of other similarities.
You mention that you found 16 year olds hot when you were 16, and don't now, 16 years later. That isn't merely based on how you've changed. It's also because the language, clothing, body language, and culture of today's 16 year olds is different than that of a 16 year old in 1980. So if one of your classmates, say, rode a DeLorean through a time warp to get here, I honestly don't know if she'd seem attractive to you or not. (Age 16 is generally pretty developed, physically, so that isn't strictly pedophilia. People also hit puberty sooner due to better nutrition since a century or so ago; this makes it doubly surprising that UK age of consent used to be 10.)
Argh, sorry, already found the first three here. http://elonka.com/kryptos/ So what did your gf find in the "overall shape"? Was it as lengthy and relevant as the other passages? ;)
So what message did she see? And what were the first two?
"reaching for their wallets to eagerly pay for yet another link in a chain being forged to enslave them and all the future generations to come." You, sir, are my hero. One day I hope to troll as well as you.
To: Nicholas Blachford
:) Maybe MS will even take a lesson from the XBox and start selling desktops with IBM chips, as you say; the tech industry is a very surprising place.
Cc: Slashdot
IBM is wisely compiling its abstraction instead of interpreting it every time the program runs, as with bytecode. OS-agnostic sandboxed mini-executables... brilliant. Way to go, IBM. Of course, they have the luxury of no back compatibility when they work with TVs and game consoles.
Note that unless someone finally makes machine-checkable watermarking work in the real world, DRM is much more for proprietary software product activation, and pretty much worthless for content. All you need is one machine somewhere with "AV in" jacks, and Radio Shack cables. Even if that's not what the DRM salesmen say.
I have enormous hopes you're right this design will, as you say, play German heavy metal! Just don't forget the possibility that they're over-patenting and quoting a lot of maximum numbers: "On this 10th day of June 1919, the Estes model rocket corporation hereby patents solid propellant, which could hypothetically possibly be used to reach the moon and/or accelerate a human to half lightspeed."
"many OSs will support multiple processors but many applications do not and will need to be modified accordingly - a process which will take many, many years. Cell applications will be written to be scalable from the very beginning as that's how the system works." What's in a name? That which we call a rewrite by any other name would take as long. Perhaps you're right that JIT emulation can solve it. I hope so, since this would also free the market from back-compatibility and the associated monopolies and shoddiness. Especially productivity apps, since old games are fairly unpopular anyway. I'd love to see the Cell kill x86, and for that matter Linux and OpenOffice kill MS, but I'm not laying bets.
"Sony could always pull a fast one and produce a PS3 on a card for the PC. Since it would not depend on the PC's computational or memory resources it's irrelevant how weak or strong they are." Except backplane bottlenecks in the motherboard, especially for AV output. Of course, this would cut into Sony's actual PS3 sales. I hope IBM doesn't have contractual or strategic reasons to keep the Cell out of the x86 market. Just as Intel licensed x86 to AMD, IBM or the consortium will have to license Cell to any new manufacturers. (Can anyone please update the "x86" entry at wikipedia to clarify the IP status of x86?)
You're right about Apple having a new chance at the mainstream; but after their bizarre failure to do the same until now, I'm half convinced they're just secretly a research firm owned and operated by and for Microsoft.
I lean towards the conservative view when it comes to tech market predictions. The last genuinely disruptive consumer technologies we've had are, what? Cameras going digital? Cell phone texting? Blackberries and laptops and Palms, which have been around for ages? Java squeezing C++ for the past 10+ years? MS crushing Netscape nearly 7 years ago?! On the other hand, Firefox rocks. Maybe copyleft really is where it's at.
The final word? You may be right, and I admire you for trying to extract useful information from a patent. But have you read many other patents, and are you sure you can derive specs from this one with any reliability? If not, this will only be an incremental step, not a revolution. And even if it could be a sharp increase, it may never take on Intel for the desktop, as the PS2 shows.
I thought it was RMS as Communist that gave it away... can you really imagine him saluting at one of those big military parades?
Still, I'd rate this troll much better than average; it gives the old "Conservatives are stupid!" banality some real subtlety and bite.
Poindexter and ESR, an authoritarian and a libertarian respectively, would be excellent counter-examples.
Dick also wrote Minority Report, made into the recent movie Minority Report. His protagonists are usually cops. Brilliant insane technologists create new technologies like drugs and weapons, and the poor cops, like most people, are left to try and deal with it as best they can.
Blade Runner is the best movie I've ever seen, while Minority Report is just very good. Guess which one had flashier special effects?
The protagonist is a drug dealer and a narcotics agent. The IMDB summary implies this is only because he uses drugs that split his personality. The much more interesting truth, which shone through Dick's novel, is that people do switch sides all the time! Captured drug dealers really are offered immunity from punishment if they'll be DEA double-agents. And agents who realize the money to be made, and their privileged position, really do succumb to temptation and start dealing drugs. More generally, both cartels and the DEA work to preserve the current Drug War, rather than managed and taxed legalization as with alcohol since Prohibition. Hopefully the movie pushes this home, despite IMDB's summary.
Plus, he's played by Keanu Reeves. I mean, really.
On the plus side, if they left the EEG machine in the movie, this should spike interest in OpenEEG.