The cause of suicide is a brain disorder, a mental illness. It's not something which can be caused by others.
If suicide could be caused by words, then there should be some magic words which we could all use to make each of our enemies kill themselves.
And if these words exist a business could be started to sell these words and create a cyber bullying industry.
Honestly though, I think this law is complete BS. There is no combination of words which could cause me to commit suicide, I'd simply never do it. And anyone who is that suicidal, should probably stay off the internet.
Are you saying that the cyberbullies have the power to block my huge eraser, my block button, my infinite amount of potential names and identities, email addresses and accounts?
Actually, the real bullies always knew I'd be at school and knew where to find me after school. Some of they knew my name and could find out where I live.
Are you telling me that the cyberbullies who are just screen names, 1s and 0s, are more powerful than the physical bullies? Only if you are a complete moron are the cyberbullies more powerful.
Guess what? Not all of us are complete morons. Of course, if I had the kinds of tools I have online to deal with bullies, I'd be able to simply erase them from my life with an eraser, or of course just carry a gun and shoot them.
Why can't I do that? It's illegal to erase the bullies offline but perfectly legal to erase them online. In school I couldn't even get a restraining order so we couldn't even block the bullies.
The point is, if a cyber bully gets pictures of you it's because your dumb ass gave them the material to blackmail you with. If a cyber bully gets your address its because your dumb ass gave it to them. If they impersonate you, it's identity theft, and it can only happen if you are stupid enough to give all your information including your picture and signature.
And there are already laws against identity theft so if thats what this is about, you are in the wrong debate.
Actually, there's a very important reason why math teachers fret over the use of calculators: A lot of students are using calculators as a replacement for knowing how to do basic arithmetic. A lot of researchers have pointed out that the algorithms that get learned with basic arithmetic teach some really important principles that get used later on. It's just not reasonable to learn basic arithmetic anymore.
How does learning basic arithmetic improve an individuals quality of life? The calculator improves quality of life.
My point is that rational choice theory is more important than basic arithmetic. Why? Because if you want quality of life, you have to learn to make rational decisions to get what you want.
Arithmetic does not teach a child how judge right from wrong and weigh their decisions against the consequences. I think we should be focused on teaching children how to weigh their decisions against odds and consequences and stop teaching arithmetic altogether.
The only sorta problems you need to teach your child to solve are the problems of which choices to make in life.
Rational choice theory is more important than arithmetic.
If you think smart is just brute calculation ability, then the computer is already smart so why should humans be smart?
However if being smart is supposed to lead to quality of life, rational choice theory and game theory are far more important to understand than arithmetic.
The point I'm trying to make is that it's more important to be able to judge right from wrong and weigh your decisions against the consequences, than any kinda arithmetic.
Why? Because you cannot solve lives problems with basic arithmetic. You cannot be good at life by mastering arithmetic. Mastery of arithmetic will not raise your quality of life or keep you from making stupid decisions.
The only way to improve your quality of life is by adopting rational behavior, and despite what you think, most humans aren't rational at all, and this includes most of the humans who mastery arithmetic. What this means is, most people have no knowledge of rational choice theory and even among the humans who have knowledge of what it is or how it works, most don't use it in their every day decision making.
We have to teach kids to be rational and forget about using them as human calculators. Because only by being rational can life become better for you.
What this means is, while someone might have a better memory than another person, if they don't know the difference between right and wrong because they have no ability to weigh their own actions, they'll aways be putting themselves into dumb situations no matter what they scored on their written tests and no matter what grade they got in school.
The point is, life is the true test. If you want your kids to be smart, teach them how to measure right from wrong decisions. This means you have to teach them critical thinking and how to weigh their actions against the consequences.
This is something many book smart people are not capable of doing. They might be able to calculate and do advanced math in their head, but if they lack reasoning ability, none of this will matter.
Rational choice theory/game theory is really the only kind of math that must be mastered if a person is to be successful.
When I was growing up many teachers complained I had bad handwriting and wasted months of my life trying to improve it.
Honestly, it was a complete waste of my time. Most of the stuff I learned in school was a complete waste of my time and ultimately I've learned more from search engines like Google that I've learned in my 12 years or more of school.
Now I admit, I'm not an expert at math, but I have a deep understand of philosophy, psychology, technology, and science. Would it have been of benefit if I understood complex calculus? Of course, but can a person be successful without knowing any calculus? Of course.
Game theory is more important than calculus.
Rational choice theory is more important than calculus.
Statistics are more important than calculus.
Logic is more important than calculus.
Basic reasoning skills are more important than calculus.
Many who know calculus have no ability to make reasonable decisions or good choices in life. So they know calculus and math but make dumb decisions because they have no concept of natural law, cause and effect, and forward thinking.
Just think of Han's Reiser, he's a genius at the sorta calculation that it takes to do advanced programming and I'm willing to bet he's book smart, but if you look at the situation he's in, if he actually did kill his wife, he neglected to develop his basic reasoning skills to the level where he can see that:
"If I do X, there's *% percent chance it could lead to Y, so maybe it's not worth the risk to do X."
You know, the basic ability to judge right and wrong. That is the most important kind of calculation ability a human can have, and many humans who get all As and who have mastered the mathbooks have no concept of how to make rational decisions in life. As a result they end up in a lot of dumb situations of their own making.
Do I consider these people to be smart? No. If you don't act smart, you aren't, even if you got all A's in math.
It's not that our children are more stupid overall. I could say the previous generations are stupid because they don't know how to use technology and multitask.
The truth is, todays generation and future generations will benefit multitaskers. People who learned the way you learned by learning one thing at a time will be at a disadvantage in a world of unlimited information coming from multiple sources at a time.
Instead of worrying about who is dumb and smart based on how they do in your math class, why don't we look at the lifestyles of the individuals to see who is dumb and who is smart?
In every generation we have people who are good at math, or very book smart, but dumb at life.
Basically they spent all their time memorizing useless knowledge which was not practical and could not be applied to improve their quality of life. I think we should be focused on teaching children logic and reasoning skills instead of focused on teaching brute memorization and calculation.
We need people who are reasonable and rational, and we honestly don't have many of these people because we don't teach it in school. People learn reason and rationality from church more than from school in fact.
You know, if it wasn't for that pesky 1st Amendment, we could fix a lot of the problems that people think they have.
We could limit advertisers.
We could limit hate groups.
We could stop bullies.
We could stop lobbyists.
But, alas, we are stuck with the damn thing. Ooh, have an idea. We can pass laws to limit the 1st Amendment protections in clear violation of the Constitution. And no one will have the balls to take it to the Supreme Court. And if they do, the Supreme Court *may* overturn the law but we'll have stopped literally *tens* of cyber-bullies.
After all, USians have been shitting on the 2nd Amendment for the last hundred years. It's about time the 1st gets some love too. First we said we should give up our first amendment rights to fight child pornographers. So we created laws to remove freedom of speech if it's pornographic images of children.
But this wasn't enough, we had to outlaw virtual child porn as well, creating the first thought crime.
But that still wasn't enough, we have to now regulate ALL behavior on the internet, with the end result being a completely government controlled internet.
What this means is:
If you go to the wrong website you could lose your license to access the net.
If you insult somebody you could be charged with bullying and go to prison, and or lose your license to access the net.
These virtual bullying laws have to be enforced, so now there will be hundreds of thousands of cops patrolling the chatrooms just like they patrol the highways waiting to see who speeds.
If you bully someone in front of an cybercop, and the victim presses charges, the real cops could show up at your door and arrest you and you could be stripped of your internet license.
Also by forcing you to have an internet license you can be taxed according to your thoughts and online behavior.
If you go to certain websites you could be taxes, say if it's gambling, or porn sites.
If you play games online you could be taxed.
If you own too many screen names you could be taxed.
If you swear online you could be taxed.
Do you see where this is going? And the state and local governments can institute any laws they want to govern internet uses and use their internet cops and license scheme to regulate your thoughts and behavior online.
To wrap it up, this is about thought control, and it has absolutely nothing to do with bullying. If it were about bullying we'd be focused on outlawing bullying, the internet would have nothing to do with it.
And I'd support outlawing bullying if it includes outlawing school bullying. I'm just tired of virtual laws to govern our minds. The virtual sphere is not physically real, it's just in our minds, this website is just infomation and to govern that is to govern our thoughts and speech.
Of course if you get arrested for committing a virtual crime you go to real jail. It's just a way to increase the prison population and provide more jobs for cops.
Why do you think we have so many laws to govern driving? so they can give you tickets for speeding.
Virtual laws will allow them to give you tickets for ANY behavior or THOUGHT you have while using the internet. And the license to access the internet is coming soon and we will all need one to access this site.
Just like you need a license to drive and you can be arrested for driving without a license, this allows cops to charge you for speeding.
They can do the same with the internet. Require a us all to have a license to access the internet and simply arrest everyone who accesses it without a license.
Now they can enforce all their thought crimes and virtual laws.
If they can criminalize behavior in the virtual world on websites and chatrooms, they can tax behavior in the virtual world of video games and X-box live.
Prepare yourself for the day where there is a video game tax.
Prepare yourself for the day where you need a license to access the internet at all just so the government can track your behavior so as to enforce the virtual laws.
Surely all these abuses/bullying are already illegal whether conducted by any means: letters, smoke signals or cyber.
Making special cyber law reenforces the notion that the internet is different and has different rules.
There is a difference. A virtual law is a law which attempts to create virtual crime. A cyber law might just be a law to prosecute identity thieves.
This is a virtual law. Being a bully is not a crime anywhere else. Kids are bullied in school and there is no law against it. Adults are bullied at work and there are barely any laws against it.
Why are we trying to solve the bullying problem in a virtual environment instead of creating laws in the real world? It's simple, this is a way for the government to destroy the internet.
First comes the virtual laws.
Next comes virtual taxes on your screen names and email accounts so the government can tax you for every email you send.
Finally the government will make you use a special ID or license to use the internet at all.
It's coming because we tolerate all these virtual laws that don't really have anything to do with the physical world.
In the case in question, it was the *PARENT* that was doing it.
I dunno... seems to me this could all be handled under existing law. I mean, they DID bring charges against the parent. Let's call it what it is. This is not a law to protect us from identity theft, or from hacking (real physical bullying), this is a virtual bullying law.
We are entering into an era where there will be virtual crimes, governed by virtual laws. I think this has to be stopped now else the internet will be rendered completely useless.
If they keep passing laws like this, us hackers and technical types should leave the USA and go to a country that has laws favorable to our lines of work. I mean seriously, virtual bullying now?
Whats next? Virtual taxes? taxing websites ? taxes users for each screen name they use? Taxing gamers?
Whatever happened to parents' responsibility for what their kids do (including online activities?) This law just goes to show that there is no such thing as parental responsibility. We are the parents now. It's our job to raise their kids.
When some parent lets their kid talk to adults on the internet, it's our job to protect that kid.
I agree with you, I support personal responsibility, but lazy parents want to make the internet into a daycare for their kids.
Slashdot Mirror
Well isn't it a cops job to arrest and stop bullying?
If someone has been bullied before then they know what it's like and would be more likely to stop say, domestic abuse.
Of course they'd also be more likely to shoot the bank robber who has women and children as hostages, but why would this be a bad thing?
Or maybe they should stay off the internet altogether.
I mean come on, if you commit suicide and can blame the internet, why not create laws to end bullying in school?
Many more kids have committed suicide after being bullied in school.
The cause of suicide is a brain disorder, a mental illness. It's not something which can be caused by others.
If suicide could be caused by words, then there should be some magic words which we could all use to make each of our enemies kill themselves.
And if these words exist a business could be started to sell these words and create a cyber bullying industry.
Honestly though, I think this law is complete BS. There is no combination of words which could cause me to commit suicide, I'd simply never do it. And anyone who is that suicidal, should probably stay off the internet.
All you have to do is change your email address. This is a dumb law to protect stupid people from smart bullies.
I'd propose we pass a law to protect smart people from stupid bullies in the real world.
Are you saying that the cyberbullies have the power to block my huge eraser, my block button, my infinite amount of potential names and identities, email addresses and accounts?
Actually, the real bullies always knew I'd be at school and knew where to find me after school. Some of they knew my name and could find out where I live.
Are you telling me that the cyberbullies who are just screen names, 1s and 0s, are more powerful than the physical bullies? Only if you are a complete moron are the cyberbullies more powerful.
Guess what? Not all of us are complete morons.
Of course, if I had the kinds of tools I have online to deal with bullies, I'd be able to simply erase them from my life with an eraser, or of course just carry a gun and shoot them.
Why can't I do that? It's illegal to erase the bullies offline but perfectly legal to erase them online. In school I couldn't even get a restraining order so we couldn't even block the bullies.
The point is, if a cyber bully gets pictures of you it's because your dumb ass gave them the material to blackmail you with. If a cyber bully gets your address its because your dumb ass gave it to them. If they impersonate you, it's identity theft, and it can only happen if you are stupid enough to give all your information including your picture and signature.
And there are already laws against identity theft so if thats what this is about, you are in the wrong debate.
How does learning basic arithmetic improve an individuals quality of life? The calculator improves quality of life.
My point is that rational choice theory is more important than basic arithmetic. Why? Because if you want quality of life, you have to learn to make rational decisions to get what you want.
Arithmetic does not teach a child how judge right from wrong and weigh their decisions against the consequences. I think we should be focused on teaching children how to weigh their decisions against odds and consequences and stop teaching arithmetic altogether.
The only sorta problems you need to teach your child to solve are the problems of which choices to make in life.
Rational choice theory is more important than arithmetic.
If you think smart is just brute calculation ability, then the computer is already smart so why should humans be smart?
However if being smart is supposed to lead to quality of life, rational choice theory and game theory are far more important to understand than arithmetic.
The point I'm trying to make is that it's more important to be able to judge right from wrong and weigh your decisions against the consequences, than any kinda arithmetic.
Why? Because you cannot solve lives problems with basic arithmetic. You cannot be good at life by mastering arithmetic. Mastery of arithmetic will not raise your quality of life or keep you from making stupid decisions.
The only way to improve your quality of life is by adopting rational behavior, and despite what you think, most humans aren't rational at all, and this includes most of the humans who mastery arithmetic. What this means is, most people have no knowledge of rational choice theory and even among the humans who have knowledge of what it is or how it works, most don't use it in their every day decision making.
We have to teach kids to be rational and forget about using them as human calculators. Because only by being rational can life become better for you.
Intelligence is not based on brute calculation.
What this means is, while someone might have a better memory than another person, if they don't know the difference between right and wrong because they have no ability to weigh their own actions, they'll aways be putting themselves into dumb situations no matter what they scored on their written tests and no matter what grade they got in school.
The point is, life is the true test. If you want your kids to be smart, teach them how to measure right from wrong decisions. This means you have to teach them critical thinking and how to weigh their actions against the consequences.
This is something many book smart people are not capable of doing. They might be able to calculate and do advanced math in their head, but if they lack reasoning ability, none of this will matter.
Rational choice theory/game theory is really the only kind of math that must be mastered if a person is to be successful.
When I was growing up many teachers complained I had bad handwriting and wasted months of my life trying to improve it.
Honestly, it was a complete waste of my time. Most of the stuff I learned in school was a complete waste of my time and ultimately I've learned more from search engines like Google that I've learned in my 12 years or more of school.
Now I admit, I'm not an expert at math, but I have a deep understand of philosophy, psychology, technology, and science. Would it have been of benefit if I understood complex calculus? Of course, but can a person be successful without knowing any calculus? Of course.
Game theory is more important than calculus.
Rational choice theory is more important than calculus.
Statistics are more important than calculus.
Logic is more important than calculus.
Basic reasoning skills are more important than calculus.
Many who know calculus have no ability to make reasonable decisions or good choices in life. So they know calculus and math but make dumb decisions because they have no concept of natural law, cause and effect, and forward thinking.
Just think of Han's Reiser, he's a genius at the sorta calculation that it takes to do advanced programming and I'm willing to bet he's book smart, but if you look at the situation he's in, if he actually did kill his wife, he neglected to develop his basic reasoning skills to the level where he can see that:
"If I do X, there's *% percent chance it could lead to Y, so maybe it's not worth the risk to do X."
You know, the basic ability to judge right and wrong. That is the most important kind of calculation ability a human can have, and many humans who get all As and who have mastered the mathbooks have no concept of how to make rational decisions in life. As a result they end up in a lot of dumb situations of their own making.
Do I consider these people to be smart? No.
If you don't act smart, you aren't, even if you got all A's in math.
It's not that our children are more stupid overall.
I could say the previous generations are stupid because they don't know how to use technology and multitask.
The truth is, todays generation and future generations will benefit multitaskers. People who learned the way you learned by learning one thing at a time will be at a disadvantage in a world of unlimited information coming from multiple sources at a time.
Instead of worrying about who is dumb and smart based on how they do in your math class, why don't we look at the lifestyles of the individuals to see who is dumb and who is smart?
In every generation we have people who are good at math, or very book smart, but dumb at life.
Basically they spent all their time memorizing useless knowledge which was not practical and could not be applied to improve their quality of life. I think we should be focused on teaching children logic and reasoning skills instead of focused on teaching brute memorization and calculation.
We need people who are reasonable and rational, and we honestly don't have many of these people because we don't teach it in school. People learn reason and rationality from church more than from school in fact.
I don't see why we should name a filesystem after this guy.
Just because he's an evil genius it does not change the fact that he's evil. It's the OJ Simpson of our community.
It takes 10 minutes to register a new aol screen name. I may take an hour to change all your screen names.
It's easier to change your online screen name than to change your real name.
Why didn't you become a cop? Anyone who got bullied should.
The government and corporations have constitutional rights. We do not.
In fact, the best cops are usually the people who have been bullied.
It's the goddamn internet. If someone is annoying you can delete them or even unplug your machine.
It's not the same as getting punched in the face or jumped by real bullies. Haven't you been bullied in school? You should know the difference.
We could limit advertisers.
We could limit hate groups.
We could stop bullies.
We could stop lobbyists.
But, alas, we are stuck with the damn thing. Ooh, have an idea. We can pass laws to limit the 1st Amendment protections in clear violation of the Constitution. And no one will have the balls to take it to the Supreme Court. And if they do, the Supreme Court *may* overturn the law but we'll have stopped literally *tens* of cyber-bullies.
After all, USians have been shitting on the 2nd Amendment for the last hundred years. It's about time the 1st gets some love too. First we said we should give up our first amendment rights to fight child pornographers. So we created laws to remove freedom of speech if it's pornographic images of children.
But this wasn't enough, we had to outlaw virtual child porn as well, creating the first thought crime.
But that still wasn't enough, we have to now regulate ALL behavior on the internet, with the end result being a completely government controlled internet.
What this means is:
If you go to the wrong website you could lose your license to access the net.
If you insult somebody you could be charged with bullying and go to prison, and or lose your license to access the net.
These virtual bullying laws have to be enforced, so now there will be hundreds of thousands of cops patrolling the chatrooms just like they patrol the highways waiting to see who speeds.
If you bully someone in front of an cybercop, and the victim presses charges, the real cops could show up at your door and arrest you and you could be stripped of your internet license.
Also by forcing you to have an internet license you can be taxed according to your thoughts and online behavior.
If you go to certain websites you could be taxes, say if it's gambling, or porn sites.
If you play games online you could be taxed.
If you own too many screen names you could be taxed.
If you swear online you could be taxed.
Do you see where this is going? And the state and local governments can institute any laws they want to govern internet uses and use their internet cops and license scheme to regulate your thoughts and behavior online.
To wrap it up, this is about thought control, and it has absolutely nothing to do with bullying. If it were about bullying we'd be focused on outlawing bullying, the internet would have nothing to do with it.
And I'd support outlawing bullying if it includes outlawing school bullying. I'm just tired of virtual laws to govern our minds. The virtual sphere is not physically real, it's just in our minds, this website is just infomation and to govern that is to govern our thoughts and speech.
Of course if you get arrested for committing a virtual crime you go to real jail. It's just a way to increase the prison population and provide more jobs for cops.
Why do you think we have so many laws to govern driving? so they can give you tickets for speeding.
Virtual laws will allow them to give you tickets for ANY behavior or THOUGHT you have while using the internet. And the license to access the internet is coming soon and we will all need one to access this site.
Just like you need a license to drive and you can be arrested for driving without a license, this allows cops to charge you for speeding.
They can do the same with the internet. Require a us all to have a license to access the internet and simply arrest everyone who accesses it without a license.
Now they can enforce all their thought crimes and virtual laws.
If they can criminalize behavior in the virtual world on websites and chatrooms, they can tax behavior in the virtual world of video games and X-box live.
Prepare yourself for the day where there is a video game tax.
Prepare yourself for the day where you need a license to access the internet at all just so the government can track your behavior so as to enforce the virtual laws.
Making special cyber law reenforces the notion that the internet is different and has different rules.
There is a difference. A virtual law is a law which attempts to create virtual crime. A cyber law might just be a law to prosecute identity thieves.This is a virtual law. Being a bully is not a crime anywhere else. Kids are bullied in school and there is no law against it. Adults are bullied at work and there are barely any laws against it.
Why are we trying to solve the bullying problem in a virtual environment instead of creating laws in the real world? It's simple, this is a way for the government to destroy the internet.
First comes the virtual laws.
Next comes virtual taxes on your screen names and email accounts so the government can tax you for every email you send.
Finally the government will make you use a special ID or license to use the internet at all.
It's coming because we tolerate all these virtual laws that don't really have anything to do with the physical world.
I dunno... seems to me this could all be handled under existing law. I mean, they DID bring charges against the parent. Let's call it what it is. This is not a law to protect us from identity theft, or from hacking (real physical bullying), this is a virtual bullying law.
We are entering into an era where there will be virtual crimes, governed by virtual laws. I think this has to be stopped now else the internet will be rendered completely useless.
If they keep passing laws like this, us hackers and technical types should leave the USA and go to a country that has laws favorable to our lines of work. I mean seriously, virtual bullying now?
Whats next? Virtual taxes? taxing websites ? taxes users for each screen name they use? Taxing gamers?
When some parent lets their kid talk to adults on the internet, it's our job to protect that kid.
I agree with you, I support personal responsibility, but lazy parents want to make the internet into a daycare for their kids.
This law just proves that our political leaders are complete idiots, at least the people deciding writing the wording on the laws.
Why the hell should we be worried about virtual bullying when we have real bullying to outlaw?