This is completely ridiculous. So you say a working-class kid from the suburbs of Paris has the same social behavior as a rich kid living in Jakarta? Dream on.
Kids naturally do this - or, in other words, people are naturally cruel
I wouldn't know, I don't know kids or adults in a "natural" state. I don't even know what this is supposed to mean - humans are cultural beings, and social behavior certainly is a cultural thing. You might want to say "kids that are brought up in the US* simply do this".
* Or "in western democracies", or whatever. Really, any qualifier will do.
Are you saying the FSF can switch the work of an author to a different licence when the authors are opposed to the new licence and this is a good thing?
He's saying that if the copyright holder licensed it "under v2 or later, at the user's discretion", then the user* (surprise!) has the option to license "under v2 or later". It is a good thing because by choosing this method the copyright holder has said that it is a good thing.
* "User" = anyone bound by the license, i.e. anyone who is redistributing
If the views of the author do not have any bearing on the issue
The views of the author do have bearing. It's just that Linus is not the only author or copyright holder of code in the Linux kernel, and the kernel is distributed under GPL v2 and NOT "or later". In fact, Linus only has copyrights to a small part of the code. Therefore all (or at least a overwhelmingly big majority of) copyright holders would have to agree to a license change. This will not happen. Therefore Linus's opinion about a license change is pretty irrelevant.
If anything, yes. They are probably more harmful to kids than porn. Nearly all kids have contact with the Barbie doll, unlike porn. It can be argued that the Barbie doll instills a sick image of physical perfection in them, contributing to anorexia/bulimia in teenage girls and unability to handle real, non-plastic bodies in boys.
Um, what are toddlers doing on the Google website unsupervised? And I might be odd in this respect, but I am convinced that the real Teletubbies are more harmful.
Well, the law makes it very clear that it is only illegal to use language that is meant to appeal to children with the intent to deceive. That seems to be confusing a lot of you.
You seem to miss my point, sorry if I haven't made myself clear. The point is that language is so difficult and full of meanings that are clear to one group, but completely oblivious to the next, which makes it impossible to legislate this.
In this post you yourself deliver proof for how braindead this law is. How do you propose that the law (which, according to you, is "clear") defines "meant to appeal to children with the intent to deceive", so that in court it can be shown that this intent was there beyond reasonable doubt?
Let me tell you a secret: when porn sites advertise "Barbie" the do NOT appeal to children. They appeal to sexual people (teens, adults, whatever) who have phantasies about women adopting the same style as the Barbie doll, which is a highly sexually charged fetish of western culture.
The fact that you and the law makers don't get this, is proof of my point. Thank you.
I'd like to expand on the sibling who recommended to read Wilhelm Reich. I think the best you can do to learn about how they knew is to read (some of) the many autobiographies written by people who lived through it in Germany or the concentration camps, or fled. There is a huge number of writings available in German. I don't know how many of those are available in English, but I guess at least those of the more famous refugees who have found a haven in the US are.
In German there are whole libraries of first-person accounts by non-famous people, again I don't know about English availability. The Shoah Foundation and the Simon Wiesenthal Center will give you a good start. You might also want to watch Shoah for a first-person account of the times on film.
Isn't it fucking scary that there is need to think about this? In Austria, where I originally come from, a certain local brand of populist neofascism has been on the rise for 20 years (don't believe anyone who tells you it was contained. It was not, it has just become mainstream in a harder-to-detect form) and the political climate in Europe, as in the US, has become considerably scarier. It is/was a common theme among old people I know/knew that it all reminds them terribly of the late 1920ies/1930ies.
Quick, outlaw the contemporary standard family of 1-2 parents, 1-x kids, and the odd relative! Because, you know, the vast majority of child abuse happens within the family or by close family friends.
First of all, what kind of a phantasy is that? Why would a porn site "trick little kids into visiting pornographic sites by using meta keywords" in the first place? Little kids don't have credit cards. Plus, I can't speak for the US, but I would guess you already have laws against showing/selling porn to kids under a certain age.
And you seem to lack imagination. There is no way to legislate this because the English language simply has too few words to express all there is to express. What if it is a site where not the model is called Barbie, but it's about a person's fantasies about Barbie. What about the keyword "Hamster"? Knitwork? Farm? And so on and so forth. Go to the usenet binary groups some time to get an idea of how broad a field human sexuality is.
Yeah, Barbie is certainly totally devoid of any sexual undertones. Are you deaf, dumb and blind?
Anyway, this is completely irrelevant anyway. Subcultures of any form will always use the majority language in unexpected ways. To legislate this is way over the threshold of being a police state. And even regular everyday use of words is ambiguous. What's next, legal teen porn sites can't use the word teen anymore?
An example of the weakness of a true democracy is that, as I have seen mentioned by someone else on Slashdot in the past, 50.0000000000001% of the population could, potentially, vote to have the remaining portion of the American public executed because they don't like them (for whatever reason. race religion, etc.). In the U.S., that pesky thing called the Constitution would stop you from implementing that plan
Wouldn't hurt to read up on how other countries actually handle it before making comparisons. Countries with a majority system and therefore multiple parties usually work like this:
Ca. 50% of the popular vote are needed for an absolute majority in the parliament. With this, you can create normal laws. Usually you don't have these 50%, so you need to enter a coalition with another party(ies). Now, to change the constituion, you need more than 50% of seats, ususally 75%. That means that in addition to your coalition partner (together with whom you generally have somewhere between 52% and 65%), you need to convince yet another party (from the opposition, no less) that the change is a good idea.
Pretty high hurdle if you ask me, and you can make it more than 75% just to be sure.
Slashdot Mirror
This is completely ridiculous. So you say a working-class kid from the suburbs of Paris has the same social behavior as a rich kid living in Jakarta? Dream on.
Kids naturally do this - or, in other words, people are naturally cruel
I wouldn't know, I don't know kids or adults in a "natural" state. I don't even know what this is supposed to mean - humans are cultural beings, and social behavior certainly is a cultural thing. You might want to say "kids that are brought up in the US* simply do this".
* Or "in western democracies", or whatever. Really, any qualifier will do.
Are you saying the FSF can switch the work of an author to a different licence when the authors are opposed to the new licence and this is a good thing?
He's saying that if the copyright holder licensed it "under v2 or later, at the user's discretion", then the user* (surprise!) has the option to license "under v2 or later". It is a good thing because by choosing this method the copyright holder has said that it is a good thing.
* "User" = anyone bound by the license, i.e. anyone who is redistributing
If the views of the author do not have any bearing on the issue
The views of the author do have bearing. It's just that Linus is not the only author or copyright holder of code in the Linux kernel, and the kernel is distributed under GPL v2 and NOT "or later". In fact, Linus only has copyrights to a small part of the code. Therefore all (or at least a overwhelmingly big majority of) copyright holders would have to agree to a license change. This will not happen. Therefore Linus's opinion about a license change is pretty irrelevant.
no.
The point was that just because someone writes it liter, one cannot assume (as the AC did) that the writer is American.
Haven't researched it, but I very much doubt that the German "liter" was derived from the French "litre" via American spelling.
Many languages call it liter, e.g. German.
If anything, yes. They are probably more harmful to kids than porn. Nearly all kids have contact with the Barbie doll, unlike porn. It can be argued that the Barbie doll instills a sick image of physical perfection in them, contributing to anorexia/bulimia in teenage girls and unability to handle real, non-plastic bodies in boys.
Sorry, but IMO TV for toddlers is the tool of the devil.
Um, what are toddlers doing on the Google website unsupervised? And I might be odd in this respect, but I am convinced that the real Teletubbies are more harmful.
Thank you! :)
Exactly. so why again should the porn sites be forbidden to use this meme?
Well, the law makes it very clear that it is only illegal to use language that is meant to appeal to children with the intent to deceive. That seems to be confusing a lot of you.
You seem to miss my point, sorry if I haven't made myself clear. The point is that language is so difficult and full of meanings that are clear to one group, but completely oblivious to the next, which makes it impossible to legislate this.
In this post you yourself deliver proof for how braindead this law is. How do you propose that the law (which, according to you, is "clear") defines "meant to appeal to children with the intent to deceive", so that in court it can be shown that this intent was there beyond reasonable doubt?
Let me tell you a secret: when porn sites advertise "Barbie" the do NOT appeal to children. They appeal to sexual people (teens, adults, whatever) who have phantasies about women adopting the same style as the Barbie doll, which is a highly sexually charged fetish of western culture.
The fact that you and the law makers don't get this, is proof of my point. Thank you.
Fucked up the Karl Popper link.
I'd like to expand on the sibling who recommended to read Wilhelm Reich. I think the best you can do to learn about how they knew is to read (some of) the many autobiographies written by people who lived through it in Germany or the concentration camps, or fled. There is a huge number of writings available in German. I don't know how many of those are available in English, but I guess at least those of the more famous refugees who have found a haven in the US are.
I'd recommend from he top of my head to look into the lives of these people (didn't check that they all have written auobiographies, but their lives and works will be interesting reading nevertheless): Manès Sperber, Hannah Arendt (all is recommended; she wrote an essay, "We Refugees" that was once published by New York Press, I don't know if it is still available), Arnold Schönberg, Maria von Trapp ("The Sound of Music"), Sigmund Freud, Claude Lévi-Strauss, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Popper (required reading for slashdotters in any case), Billy Wilder, Elias Canetti, or Thomas Mann.
Wikipedia has a good list of famous refugees.
In German there are whole libraries of first-person accounts by non-famous people, again I don't know about English availability. The Shoah Foundation and the Simon Wiesenthal Center will give you a good start. You might also want to watch Shoah for a first-person account of the times on film.
Isn't it fucking scary that there is need to think about this? In Austria, where I originally come from, a certain local brand of populist neofascism has been on the rise for 20 years (don't believe anyone who tells you it was contained. It was not, it has just become mainstream in a harder-to-detect form) and the political climate in Europe, as in the US, has become considerably scarier. It is/was a common theme among old people I know/knew that it all reminds them terribly of the late 1920ies/1930ies.
just not attempts to violate little kids
Quick, outlaw the contemporary standard family of 1-2 parents, 1-x kids, and the odd relative! Because, you know, the vast majority of child abuse happens within the family or by close family friends.
First of all, what kind of a phantasy is that? Why would a porn site "trick little kids into visiting pornographic sites by using meta keywords" in the first place? Little kids don't have credit cards. Plus, I can't speak for the US, but I would guess you already have laws against showing/selling porn to kids under a certain age.
And you seem to lack imagination. There is no way to legislate this because the English language simply has too few words to express all there is to express. What if it is a site where not the model is called Barbie, but it's about a person's fantasies about Barbie. What about the keyword "Hamster"? Knitwork? Farm? And so on and so forth. Go to the usenet binary groups some time to get an idea of how broad a field human sexuality is.
In case it wasn't clear I'm sarcastic: I am totally opposed to this new insanity of congress. See the adjacent subthread :)
Yeah, Barbie is certainly totally devoid of any sexual undertones. Are you deaf, dumb and blind?
Anyway, this is completely irrelevant anyway. Subcultures of any form will always use the majority language in unexpected ways. To legislate this is way over the threshold of being a police state. And even regular everyday use of words is ambiguous. What's next, legal teen porn sites can't use the word teen anymore?
How is barbie a tough call for a site full of fake blondes with fake breasts that look 100% american?
Yeah, or use "bad" if they really mean "good". It's unheard of! All words should only have one, government-proscribed, meaning. Think of the children!
So? This is a good argument for wasting one's vote? I don't think so.
And I don't know about the US, but where I live there is no shortage of people who could afford a car but don't have one for environmental reasons.
Europe proves that the ideas of the smaller parties taken together do represent a lot of people.
Otherwise even rational environmentalists would still pollute, since the emissions from your tailpipe alone will never matter
You do realise that there are actual people who do (or don't do) stuff because it's the right thing, yes?
An example of the weakness of a true democracy is that, as I have seen mentioned by someone else on Slashdot in the past, 50.0000000000001% of the population could, potentially, vote to have the remaining portion of the American public executed because they don't like them (for whatever reason. race religion, etc.). In the U.S., that pesky thing called the Constitution would stop you from implementing that plan
Wouldn't hurt to read up on how other countries actually handle it before making comparisons. Countries with a majority system and therefore multiple parties usually work like this:
Ca. 50% of the popular vote are needed for an absolute majority in the parliament. With this, you can create normal laws. Usually you don't have these 50%, so you need to enter a coalition with another party(ies).
Now, to change the constituion, you need more than 50% of seats, ususally 75%. That means that in addition to your coalition partner (together with whom you generally have somewhere between 52% and 65%), you need to convince yet another party (from the opposition, no less) that the change is a good idea.
Pretty high hurdle if you ask me, and you can make it more than 75% just to be sure.