Okay, totally offtopic but this just made me do a double take. I'm quite used to seeing Microsoft ads on Slashdot. Idealogical nutcases aside, ad money is ad money. But until now, the Microsoft ads have been for things like Visual Studio or Microsoft technologies...no real conflict there. Microsoft thinks.NET is great, advertises it on Slashdot where (no doubt) programmers visit...that makes sense, right?
Does anyone else think that this is just going too far? Is Slashdot so hard up for revenue that they are now taking ads that run directly opposite of (what I've understood) is a core philosophy of the site? How many stories do we see on Slashdot about the lengths Microsoft goes to with "independent" research showing how Linux is more expensive, less secure, buggy, etc?
Frankly, I don't care one fig or another about the whole Microsoft vs. Linux argument because there are too many sides to the issue and pros and cons for both. But how can Slashdot editors have any credibility when they post stories that blast SCO for using Microsoft money to propel the FUD juggernaut down the streets of public opinion...while at the same time they have a nice colorful banner at the top of the page that basically says the same thing? If I wanted this kind of Microsoft shilling, I'd read Paul Thurrott.
Frankly, I'd like to see Slashdot say "Hey, you know what, we have some standards for ads we will and will not accept". Otherwise, what next? SCO ads saying "Slashdot runs on stolen SCO UNIX technology! Click here to pay for your license to access this website!" Actually, why not? SCO obviously have lots of money to throw around...Slashdot, why not get a piece of the pie?
I could go on, but I think the point has been made, sorry to take the tangent but well, what's the point of having Excellent karma if you can't shine a spotlight on something bugging you?
I'd hazard a guess and say the answer is because the communications system can't handle it. In any urban area like San Francisco, and it can take more than a day for a cable box to get the activativation message after installation. Each message sent out by the system takes around a minute. Multiply that by the number of people getting new or changed service or PPV and there is quite a communication overload.
Now imagine that customers could tie up that even further deciding no I don't want expanded, wait I want HBO a la carte for this movie, no wait cancel it again, I need a different IP cause this one is getting hammered...it just won't work. Not until the overhaul the whole crappy system. These set top boxes are all junk anyway. Kludge after kludge piled onto a useless and outdated downstream analog network.
Catchy song, but I must confess I didn't get the video at all at first. I had to watch it two or three times before I realized the common element in the various scenes was thepair of jeans). So I'm guessing the "message" of the video was something along the lines of "What if music/media was as easy to buy/sell/rip/mix/reuse as old denim"??
Anyway, I think the message would be much more clear if the video was done in black-and-white with the denim the only thing in color. Then it would be easier to follow it through its various lifecycle...worn by girl in the beginning, sold at garage sale, turned into outfit, thrown away, made into paper. (In Schindler's List, few people would have recognized the dead body was the same little girl if Spielburg hadn't used the red color)
If I had any sort of talent with video editing, the temptation would be to do this myself, and well I guess the CC license that it is under would allow me to, wouldn't it?
This isn't meant as flamebait but...why on earth would you want a video on demand system that uses the horrible bastard of an interface on most modern DVDs? Do you enjoy subjecting yourself to the mind-numbingly stupid Memento menus? Or the Ghostbuster DVD that repeats the same Ghostbuster riff ever five seconds?
To be truly authentic, should this theoretical system also implement the "no fast forward" option during the FBI warning? How about the Coke commercials?
Let's also have to select our audio settings each and every time we change to a new movie. Ignore the fact that your audio system probably changes configuration every two years if you are lucky, let's go ahead and have to choose Dolby 5.1 with English subs every time you pop in Cowboy BeBop.
To me this is a problem in search of another problem. To do what you want is painfully simple. Save the DVDs to hard disk as images, then load in in Daemon Tools/Nero ImageDrive. Poof. Get a cheap PC and use one of the many thousand media management programs as a point and click interface. Have the icons load CUE files for the movies. For a bonus, using multiple virtual drives to load collections like Aliens Quadrilogy etc and then have a playlist to play them all one drive after another.
Or...
Rip them all to a nice quality XviD with AC3 audio, multiple audio tracks if there's a reason (Ebert commentary etc) and subtitle files. Store at least 4 times as many movies with barely any loss in quality, and then have make playlists that play the movie with settings optimized for your sound system and then play deleted scenes and other extras.
Sorry if this seems like a rant, but if you want 1000 DVDs online, make images? Am I overlooking some obvious reason why this won't work?
haven't seen the Dell, but I have a similar wheel on my Creative Jukebox 3, and I never have problems
I haven't used the Jukebox, but I highly doubt the Dell uses a similar design. The wheel on the Dell is the diameter of a pencil. It is made of cheap plastic and has a very firm groove in the "notches" that the wheel ticks off. The end result is you can't spin it, you roll it. The wheel has no inertia and will stop as soon as your thumb stops moving. You have to roll it repeatedly to travel a longer distance. There also does not appear to be any acceleration factor. Flicking it quickly will yeild the same travel as rolling it slowly. A complete roll will only travel about eight lines, so it takes five complete up-down motions to travel from A to Z on the letter selection screen. I can't even imagine trying to get to ZZTop when the thing has a few hundred albums. So you tell me if it seems similar or not to what the Jukebox has.
I ask this question with pure innocence and no intended hidden meanings: how do you do it on an iPod?
Simple. The iPod doesn't require any text input on the unit. It's all done through software. You can do everything from set the device's name to equalizer settings for an individual song using the nice full screen iTunes GUI, then hit sync and have everything come over. But even if I had to use the iPod wheel for text entry, I have a feeling it would do it well. There is a few inches worth of contact point on the wheel. One full cycle of the wheel can travel a huge distance...not to mention I can instantly start a new loop without having to move my thumb from bottom to top. It's also very speed sensative, scrolling quickly when I whip my thumb around the wheel and ticking off line by line as I slow down.
One reason for proprietary software is also to prevent you from loading up some bizarre non-mp3 file (even in my collection I had some that were really MPEG layer 2, and didn't even know it since they were.mp3 and Winamp just plays everything) and crashing their (probably poorly written) firmware.
Bzzzz, no, thanks for playing. You can't copy music to a portable player in removable media mode. The files are actually stored in some subdirectory that the player never sees. Any files you copy over to Dell or iPod are stuck in a lockbox and can't be accessed by the player (although there are probably hacks out there that can do it). So, this is not a valid issue.
Then there's the whole DRM aspect. If it shows up as a drive, how will you stop people copying songs off it? Or will it show up as a drive that is write only (no reading in windows == no listing
Again you do not understand the difference between the portable player and the portable storage function of the player. DRM is irrelevant to files on my computer. An external hard drive is not supposed to know or care what I'm copying to it. A portable music player ostensibly is because they don't want people transferring GB of music from iPod to iPod...but as we already mentioned, that isn't possible because player software puts music in a special folder and anything else goes outside.
No offense, but this seems like a rather lousy reason. If my intent was to copy over my friend's 3GB of MP3's, it is trivial for me to bring the CD...or...just download it from Dell's website. Although I don't know why I would copy my friend's MP3's to it since I can't play them until I get home, copy them back, and load them via MusicMatch. Having to use a CD doesn't raise any hurdle from rampant copying of the "easily burned to CD/DVD" content.
Where this hurts you most is when you go to a school, or Kinko's or a business center or pretty much any place you need to access your data but the computers are locked down to prevent installations.
The likely reason, I believe, is that some idiot in product development wanted the Dell player to show up with a cute little DJ icon instead of the funky trident square USB logo and didn't consider the burden it would place on users. Since people already have to install MusicMatch, he or she reasons, there's no reason why we can't use our own device driver too. The whole "use Dell DJ as portable storage" idea is really just a "me too" afterthought on what the iPod does.
The iPod was purchased as my primary entertainment device, and I later purchased a Dell DJ for use with a project that I am working on for a school.
The iPod was purchased based on winning design, features, available accessories (iTrip, CF reader, etc). The Dell DJ was purchased because it was $219 no tax no shipping for the 15MB version, making it by far the cheapest portable device that can store several GB of data.
However the interface on the DJ is horrid. The display does this "windowing" thing where clicking the main button never performs an action but only leads you to a menu of actions. To do the most simple thing in the world, resume playback where you left off, you have to click three times.
The primary clicker is also a joke. The combo scroll wheel is tacky and too loose. Often I will go to click only to have my thumb spin the wheel down instead. The recording button is a nice idea, but you have to hold it down to register, and there is no way to name your recordings so you know what they are. (By the way, this might be good because the way you enter names in other sections is to wheel tediously through letters A-Z, then choose the options to shift to letters a-z, then wheel to the actual letter you want.)
Also, no dock for the DJ. It uses a USB2 connector on the top...bad design. The connection is so tight I was afraid to plug it in for fear of breaking it. Pulling it out makes me just as fearful.
And finally...worst of all...the Dell DJ does not detect as a standard USB2 device! WTF was Dell smoking? Am I supposed to carry the Dell DJ driver CD around at all times? Why not just carry my data on CD instead? The whole point of portable storage is to load it up, and take it anywhere you need the data to access it. The iPod is detected as a standard firewire/USB device on every version of Windows 98SE or higher.
Overall, it will serve its purpose for a prototype, but Dell needs to spend some serious money to come out with a 2nd generation version that addresses these issues. I understand they can't use a wheel like Apple does, but there has GOT to be a better analog input than what they came up with.
Oh, one last nail in the coffin...the include software is from MusicMatch and is without a doubt the worst piece of software I've ever used. There is no automatic sync. The option to sync your player and computer is buried three levels down in the software. The ID3 tags you make in music match don't translate to the player (will sort 1 10 11 12...19 2 20 21 22 on the player, ignores track number). The only saving grace is that as a standard Windows Media device, you can use pretty much any other program to sync the device, but I think Dell was really stupid to sign up with MusicMatch instead of just writing their own (given that Windows does all the work, all they need is a pretty interface with a big "Sync" button).
That's about all that comes to mind. I wouldn't recommdn the Dell unless you were someone who planned to load their entire collection once and then never ever ever touch the player again. If you had to sync/update the Dell DJ on even a weekly basis it would drive you up the wall. Spend the extra $100 and get the 10GB iPod or the extra $40 and get the 4GB iPod mini.
Disney also has the right to finance and produce sequels if Pixar declines to co-finance and produce them under the current agreement
NO NO DAMMIT NO!
I will make it a personal mission to urinate on Eisner's grave if Disney rapes a single one of Pixar's excellent films. I am so f'ing sick of Disney executives walking around the park trying to figure out what movie, series even RIDE they can milk for another buck. Every time I see an advertisement for (classic movie) 2, 3 etc I want to scream.
Steve Jobs is the biggest ass in the world for allowing Disney this option. Give it a year or two after Pixar profits are gone, and get ready for
* Toy Story 3 - Buzz and Woody go to Camp * Monsters, Inc. 2 - Giggles, Inc. * Finding Nemo 2 - Doria's Quest for Paxil...all done with that craptastic bargain basement 3D animation you see every afternoon on the WB. Ugh. Ugh.
Like how "spam" came to mean "unsolicited email" I propose we make "disney" as a synonym for cancer, as in "my grandfather's prostate got disneyed" or perhaps as synonym for necrophilia.
Digital is all or nothing, but there's no way interference should wipe out the signal completely...especially considering it would not be very hard to overtransmit (send more stream information than needed in case some gets lost). There should be more than enough bandwidth available for a digital solution. Hell, voice sounds fine on a 128kbps MP3, I could send dozens of those on a computer network and play the best one. It shouldn't be that hard to do...remember, plenty of digital solutions exist to play music other ethernet (much higher quality demands) even though it's "all or nothing"...so it does seem to work.
Plus, gaps are not the worse case scenario. Gaps, while irritating, are less irritating than a loud "SNAP" or "PLIC" noise that occasionally comes out when someone cranks up the microphone on a quiet talker. Sometimes they can get loud enough to startle people. People with hearing aids especially. Volume would probably be a lot more stable with a digital solution.
Seriously, you know NexTel lives for these kinds of situations. Get a bunch of NexTels with ample walkie-talkie minutes and then get some headsets. Put the phones on your belt and then either use voice activated talk mode, or the old push-button style. Frankly, I hate half-duplex stuff but it's what you are already used to. The advantage is that you can roam anywhere (not just the gym) and have instant communication. It shouldn't be all that pricey either. They have pay-as-you-go prepaid plans. The school could get a prepaid plan whenever there was a production and then when it was over, collect the phones and leave them in a drawer until they were needed.
Rather than NexTel, I would recommend getting Cingular or Verizon and then signing up for a plan with unlimited Mobile-to-Mobile minutes. Then get headset and now you have a full-duplex system. I don't know Verizon, but Cingular phones can conference up to six other lines, which is probably enough for a stage crew. And you can all hear and talk to each other. Not sure if there is a prepaid or pay-as-you-go option.
But anyway, look cellular. I think it's probably the best option for the money, no need to cobble something together that may not be reliable. Cell phone networks rarely go down...if your homebrew solution blows up on curtain night your ass is grass unless your solution also has an "understudy" ready to go.
I work with a lot of presentations and lectures and I'm dying to know if there is any consumer or prosumer level digital microphone systems out there? Everything that you can find both at cheap ass Radio Shack and even high end audio stores is varying degrees of wireless. 900Mhz or 2.4Ghz just like cordless phones. Some through the word "digital" around but are still susceptible to interference and static.
What I'm dreaming of is something that is purely digital, from the device the speaker wears all the way to the speaker. I envision something like a Bluetooth wireless microphone similar to the bluetooth headsets that some cellular phones use. This bluetooth microphone would relay to either a box in the speaker's pocket or inside the lecturn. This box would then use CAT-5 or 802.11 to transmit the stream as a WAV or MP3 so that it could be played on a SlimMP3 or Shuttle connected directly to the speaker system. In theory the speaker could roam freely and speak clearly and sound crystal clear.
Is there anythign like this? One place that I work for is about 100 feet from high power lines. The resulting RF interference renders even the most expensive $600-800 wireless microphone solutions worthless. Wired microphone even have a problem, even with grounding wires you still pick up pops clicks and hums over fifty feet.
So, how about it? There are plenty of devices that can take an audio stream off a network and output a sound wave? How about a device that can record the sound wave and output an audio stream?
FYI - consumer or prosumer means less than four digits...I'm sure studios and recording studios have plenty of expensive options available.
Maybe I should have said "first timers"...what I meant was that there are some people who just plain freak out at the idea of taking a lie detector test. There are other people who think it is no big deal and can get through it as normal as an oral survey. There are still other people who not only can get through it but can give the proper readings to falsify results. So there are at least two classes other than just normal people.
I was once asked if I would take a lie detector test in a corporate environment regarding some missing equipment. Just the idea of saying I would made me nervous. However it turned out that it was just a bluff because even though I agreed, the matter was eventually dropped and new code access locks were installed.
My point in mentioning it was not that technology hasn't changed in several years but as a warning to people who would plunk down money for this type of snake oil. Once bitten, twice shy, but maybe people forgotten because its been so long.
Truster! Yes, that's exactly it. So many people plunked down for that load of garbage, what a scam. Offer someone people want badly enough they are willing to believe it exists when in fact it does not.
My guess is that in five or six more years after everyone forgets how poorly these glasses work, we can look forward to the introduction of Amir's amazing new telepathy lie detection kit that will let you use a helmet to read people's minds and determine if they are 10% more likely to be lying or not.
Remember back in 96-97 there was a big rage in "lie detection software" which supposedly would analyze audio input of someone speaking and then match their voice stress level to either "True" or "False" indicators?
It was crap. I think more than a few morning radio shows tried to use it on their callers with failure after failure. I tried a copy myself and found that not only was it horribly written, but even if you were able to get the subject to "train" it (by answering several questions that are known to be true) it gave inncorrect responses virtually half the time.
Come to think of it, the software might have been made by an Israeli company too. Maybe the same one, I don't know. Can't remember the name but it was horrid.
Do I think the FBI/CIA might have technology like this, to analyze voice stress or facial temperature and determine if you are lying? Sure, why not. But there's a reason why lie detection technology is not admissible in court. It just doesn't work. Too many experts can beat it and too many amateurs get nervous and give false positives.
How is this really all that unusual? What if Apple released a WinCE version of Quicktime player that let you play Quicktime videos on an HP iPaq? But that iPaq can also play WMV files, so is this smart or stupid of Apple?
I would say smart, because now they have another platform for their content. So isn't the same true for audio? Isn't of looking at it as "Apple is letting WMA infiltrate their iPod!" why isn't it "Apple has expanded AAC to another major portable brand."? You don't think HP has the resources to design their own player? If they had, it would almost assuredly be using Microsoft blessed DRM hobby kit known as WMA. But then HP would need to make decent player software, and find a partner to provide content...by partnering with Apple, they are piggybacking on the success of the existing iTunes client and store. Meanwhile Apple now is selling a player every time someone buys an iPod or the HP version and now has a new customer for iTMS either way.
Apple gets a larger audience used to AAC and iTMS which will someday make a profit, no doubt about it. Maybe right now its a loss-leader to sell iPods, but what do you think will happen next year when music companies post their quarterly reports showing the profits from this major new (and free) income stream? What happens when Apple goes back to renew the contract and says "you know this free money pouring in? Well, you're going to settle for $.30 or we start giving priority placement to indie labels" Not to mention, with the release of GarageBand, Apple is about one puzzle piece away from becoming a completely end-to-end music enterprise, starting with a dude running GarageBand and ending with a thousand people clicking "Buy It Now" on iTMS.
I think you missed something in the blurb about this problem. The problem is Norton Antivirus, not Explorer. Norton is probably doing some kind of check on its virus signature files by validating their signature. This function is probably being handled by IE as the default browser function, which is getting hung up on the unroutable revocation site.
So, to clarify, when you try to do a file operation, like copy, Norton intercepts the operation so it can check the file for a virus, then gets itself held up while waiting for IE to tell it if the signature is valid so it can check for that virus. End result is that Explorer never gets an answer from Norton and the operation hangs. Ditto for Word and other applications Norton watches closely.
I too had this same problem on one of two Dell laptops. One used the default McAfee ScanShield that came with it, the other had been reloaded with Norton Anti-Virus. That machine had all sorts of crazy errors, such as Word hanging during opening, hanging when you right-clicked a file, hanging when you tried copying files.
The system also had ooodles of pending updates from Microsoft that had been downloaded but not installed. I'm willing to bet one of them was a root server update or similar. Of course, the problem could be on Norton's end, meaning they need to update the security cert on their server? I'm not sure exactly how it works.
I recently evaluated several models of color card scanners to scan drivers licenses and when I misplaced my license I grabbed a bill out of my wallet and tried to use that to test.
Much to my surprise, the bill got about 30% in before the was a pause and the rest of the scanned image was blank. I tried again and got the same results. I turned it around, all four orientations and got the same results. About 1/3 of the bill goes in then scanning would either stop or go blank (depending on scanner).
Curious, I cut out piece of post-it and put it over different parts of the bill. I found that putting a piece over either the beginning edge of the portrait, the entire bill would scan, albeit with yellow section. By repeating it, I could in theory stitch together a complete bill.
This made me wonder...is there something that the Secret Service has forced image scanning and editing providers to adopt? These were all rather cheap scanners, a couple seemed like overseas knock-offs. Yet they all seemed to exhibit the same behavior! That seems a remarkable coincidence.
Perhaps there is a barcode or something near the portait, perhaps not visible to the human eye, but completely noticeable to a scanner (some kind of moire pattern or whatever). Something that is consistant enough to flag in the scanner drivers.
Then again, flat scanners don't seem to have this problem, although the story goes that each will embed its information into the scans to allow for tracking.
Anyway...maybe I'll just hang on to my ancient Asus a while longer...I don't necessarily care to scan money or not...but if *someone* can get this kind of image checking in the drivers of half a dozen card scanners...who knows what else *someone* can get in there?
Troll or clueless, I can't tell because as AC there's no post history.
Consumers, at least in Norway, do have more rights. They have the right to use DeCSS to decrypt DVD video to video on the player of their choice. They also, presumably, have the right to publish and obtain the DeCSS program.
Now, back in the land of the free, we have no such rights...why? Because we pussed out. We decided not to pursue our DeCSS case and let stand a lower court ruling that banned it. Oh yeah, this was much better than what Jon did, namely stand up for himself in court.
I'm not so naive to believe that Jon was selfless in his act (he was part of or closely associated with warez groups who were keen on cracking DVD encryption to allow for perfect all-digital rips rather than having to use analog loopback to capture card). But even if DeCSS has a seedy or sordid history no one wants to talk about, the point stands that DeCSS does have legitamate uses and that is where Jon's defense was founded.
When you have precedent set, you don't hide it in your desk and call it a day. You use that precedent to try and set new precedent that is even broader in scope. Jon has stood up to the might of Norway's MPAA/Attorney General equivalents, who now have major egg on their face. How likely do you think they will be to pursue another half-baked case against Jon? Jon is probably bulletproof against anything but real criminal behavior. As soon as the words "fair use" are uttered, I can't imagine there would be a government attorney crazy enough to get struck by lightning twice.
Releasing it anonymously would have only started a witchhunt that could have harmed a lot of other people, people who shouldn't have to be lightning rods for this same kind of treatment. But putting his name on it, yes, he is risked another trial but as I said, it is rather unlikely.
In this world full of people who puss out and settle for lesser charges (cough)Mitnick(cough) I think it's incredible that someone has the guts to put himself at risk to stand up for something. I only wish someone were that brave here in US courts.
What even more of a mind-bender is that arguments against incest all rest on "sex for procreation" and none have ever been formed against "sex for pleasure", for example, sex using contraception or where procreation isn't possible, oral/anal sex, homosexuality.
Homosexuality opened the door by proposing the argument that what two consenting adults did in the privacy of the bedroom was not the business of the police, the courts, or society. The recent Supreme Court decision upheld this.
I believe that incest will be the next sexual frontier for the same reason. If two men can legally have sex, what legal recourse does a society have against two brothers having sex? Or any father/mother/brother/sister coupling where procreation is not possible?
Right now incest is one of the seedier, underground fetishes, much like homosexuality was back in the 1950's or 60's. But sooner or later, someone will be arrested and challenge it, or some event will raise awareness on the issue and once that happens it will be interesting to see if a backlash forms against all forms of "non traditional" sexual contact or if society accepts and even lauds it.
After incest, I believe, genetic engineering might lead to the next major sexual frontier...if you can grow a headless body, or perhaps even just a sexual organs...is that a legal sexual aid like a dildo or rubber vagaina...or is it illegal like beastiality/necrophilia because it cannot give consent? Hmmm?
So consent is being given by those responsible for people who we, as a society, have decided are not yet capable of being responsible for themselves
There are plenty of examples of mature, responsible people who are still denied the opportunity to give consent because of "the greater good". Cancer patients who want medical marijuana, for example. An informed, responsible US citizen cannot get consent from the federal government to treat his own injury or relieve suffering. The federal government argues that dangers of marijuana being legally available outweighs the suffering of a few individuals. US troops were ordered to undergo anthrax vacinations even though the stats said a small percentage could experience life-threatening complications. I place consent and greater good at the same level because they are on almost always on opposite sides of the aisle in any legal dispute...abortion, drug use, euthanasia, etc.
Now where is the greater good for anyone engaging in sexual activity, let alone a child?
Remember, the greater good is the opposition. If sex is pleasurable, then the natural state is for people to seek and desire sex. Yet societies have evolve social and religious laws that restrict sexual behavior for a "greater good". Deny pleasure to individual X because of a harm (or perceived harm) to individual Y. Prostitions is usually illegal, and the reason most often given is that it exploits women (regardless of the fact that male prostitutes aren't legal and women are still able to make a living^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hbe exploited in the adult film industry).
It is almost universally thought that sex involving children is bad. The point I was trying to make (the modern heresy) is that perhaps this ban is not because it serves a "greater good" as we mistakenly believe, but because we are an uptight and sexually repressed society. It's a question that can't really be answered, at least not right now. A hundred years ago, any sex was taboo. In another hundred years, perhaps after perfect contraception and STD control exists, society might think our numerious restrictions on sex were foolish and short-sighted.
I think nothing illustrates my point (and the point of the linked article) than this response.
Just for the sake of discussion, if your child was touched by a mentally retarded adult, would you favor the "smash-the-nuts" response because he hurt your daughter or the "no big deal" response because they were both learning about themselves?
Why is consent the determining factor? Does a child consent to being given injections or going to the dentist? How about eating broccoli? In these situations the issue is not one of consent but "greater good"...that is, the temporary pain a child may experience from a shot or dental drill is better than the more serious pain of preventable diseases or rotting teeth.
In many countries you have to be 21 to drink, well above the age of consent. Why is this? I'm old enough to own a gun or decide who is president but not have a beer? Someone who can drink at age 16 in Germany visits the US and is arrested for doing the same thing.
What's my point? Consent often has little to do with issues of harm or law. It's probably true that there is a greater good served by shielding children from nudity and sex. But what if someone believed or tried to show otherwise? The point of the linked article and the point I was trying to illustrate is that nobody investigates the specifics of the greater good because challenging it is a modern heresy. If children were actually worse off, nobody would know because those making that thesis or investigating it would be labeled "pervert" or "deviant" instead of "mistaken" or "erroneous".
- JoeShmoe .
Re:Nudity harms children
on
What You Can't Say
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Correlary to this, that children are automatically harmed by sexual activity. That is to say, molesting children is a crime because it harms children, yet children have to be actively taught that "certain" forms of pleasure are bad before they are harmed.
IE, if children touch their privates and experience pleasure, that is legal, natural and acceptable, but if another person touches their privates and evokes the same pleasure, that is illegal, perverse and bad. It is interesting to note that a large portion of the population would even consider the first statement about children touching themselves to be "evil".
I think this topic qualifies as the best example of modern heresy.
Slashdot Mirror
Okay, totally offtopic but this just made me do a double take. I'm quite used to seeing Microsoft ads on Slashdot. Idealogical nutcases aside, ad money is ad money. But until now, the Microsoft ads have been for things like Visual Studio or Microsoft technologies...no real conflict there. Microsoft thinks .NET is great, advertises it on Slashdot where (no doubt) programmers visit...that makes sense, right?
Imagine my surprise when I see this:
MSFUD1
MSFUD2
MSFUD3
Does anyone else think that this is just going too far? Is Slashdot so hard up for revenue that they are now taking ads that run directly opposite of (what I've understood) is a core philosophy of the site? How many stories do we see on Slashdot about the lengths Microsoft goes to with "independent" research showing how Linux is more expensive, less secure, buggy, etc?
Frankly, I don't care one fig or another about the whole Microsoft vs. Linux argument because there are too many sides to the issue and pros and cons for both. But how can Slashdot editors have any credibility when they post stories that blast SCO for using Microsoft money to propel the FUD juggernaut down the streets of public opinion...while at the same time they have a nice colorful banner at the top of the page that basically says the same thing? If I wanted this kind of Microsoft shilling, I'd read Paul Thurrott.
Frankly, I'd like to see Slashdot say "Hey, you know what, we have some standards for ads we will and will not accept". Otherwise, what next? SCO ads saying "Slashdot runs on stolen SCO UNIX technology! Click here to pay for your license to access this website!" Actually, why not? SCO obviously have lots of money to throw around...Slashdot, why not get a piece of the pie?
I could go on, but I think the point has been made, sorry to take the tangent but well, what's the point of having Excellent karma if you can't shine a spotlight on something bugging you?
- JoeShmoe
.
I'd hazard a guess and say the answer is because the communications system can't handle it. In any urban area like San Francisco, and it can take more than a day for a cable box to get the activativation message after installation. Each message sent out by the system takes around a minute. Multiply that by the number of people getting new or changed service or PPV and there is quite a communication overload.
Now imagine that customers could tie up that even further deciding no I don't want expanded, wait I want HBO a la carte for this movie, no wait cancel it again, I need a different IP cause this one is getting hammered...it just won't work. Not until the overhaul the whole crappy system. These set top boxes are all junk anyway. Kludge after kludge piled onto a useless and outdated downstream analog network.
- JoeShmoe
.
Catchy song, but I must confess I didn't get the video at all at first. I had to watch it two or three times before I realized the common element in the various scenes was thepair of jeans). So I'm guessing the "message" of the video was something along the lines of "What if music/media was as easy to buy/sell/rip/mix/reuse as old denim"??
Anyway, I think the message would be much more clear if the video was done in black-and-white with the denim the only thing in color. Then it would be easier to follow it through its various lifecycle...worn by girl in the beginning, sold at garage sale, turned into outfit, thrown away, made into paper. (In Schindler's List, few people would have recognized the dead body was the same little girl if Spielburg hadn't used the red color)
If I had any sort of talent with video editing, the temptation would be to do this myself, and well I guess the CC license that it is under would allow me to, wouldn't it?
-JoeShmoe
.
This isn't meant as flamebait but...why on earth would you want a video on demand system that uses the horrible bastard of an interface on most modern DVDs? Do you enjoy subjecting yourself to the mind-numbingly stupid Memento menus? Or the Ghostbuster DVD that repeats the same Ghostbuster riff ever five seconds?
To be truly authentic, should this theoretical system also implement the "no fast forward" option during the FBI warning? How about the Coke commercials?
Let's also have to select our audio settings each and every time we change to a new movie. Ignore the fact that your audio system probably changes configuration every two years if you are lucky, let's go ahead and have to choose Dolby 5.1 with English subs every time you pop in Cowboy BeBop.
To me this is a problem in search of another problem. To do what you want is painfully simple. Save the DVDs to hard disk as images, then load in in Daemon Tools/Nero ImageDrive. Poof. Get a cheap PC and use one of the many thousand media management programs as a point and click interface. Have the icons load CUE files for the movies. For a bonus, using multiple virtual drives to load collections like Aliens Quadrilogy etc and then have a playlist to play them all one drive after another.
Or...
Rip them all to a nice quality XviD with AC3 audio, multiple audio tracks if there's a reason (Ebert commentary etc) and subtitle files. Store at least 4 times as many movies with barely any loss in quality, and then have make playlists that play the movie with settings optimized for your sound system and then play deleted scenes and other extras.
Sorry if this seems like a rant, but if you want 1000 DVDs online, make images? Am I overlooking some obvious reason why this won't work?
- JoeShmoe
.
F---edcompany maybe?
As a double bonus is gets around any Microsoft-friendly internet censorware that has lindows.com blocked as "terrorist" or "hate speech".
-JoeShmoe
.
haven't seen the Dell, but I have a similar wheel on my Creative Jukebox 3, and I never have problems
.mp3 and Winamp just plays everything) and crashing their (probably poorly written) firmware.
I haven't used the Jukebox, but I highly doubt the Dell uses a similar design. The wheel on the Dell is the diameter of a pencil. It is made of cheap plastic and has a very firm groove in the "notches" that the wheel ticks off. The end result is you can't spin it, you roll it. The wheel has no inertia and will stop as soon as your thumb stops moving. You have to roll it repeatedly to travel a longer distance. There also does not appear to be any acceleration factor. Flicking it quickly will yeild the same travel as rolling it slowly. A complete roll will only travel about eight lines, so it takes five complete up-down motions to travel from A to Z on the letter selection screen. I can't even imagine trying to get to ZZTop when the thing has a few hundred albums. So you tell me if it seems similar or not to what the Jukebox has.
I ask this question with pure innocence and no intended hidden meanings: how do you do it on an iPod?
Simple. The iPod doesn't require any text input on the unit. It's all done through software. You can do everything from set the device's name to equalizer settings for an individual song using the nice full screen iTunes GUI, then hit sync and have everything come over. But even if I had to use the iPod wheel for text entry, I have a feeling it would do it well. There is a few inches worth of contact point on the wheel. One full cycle of the wheel can travel a huge distance...not to mention I can instantly start a new loop without having to move my thumb from bottom to top. It's also very speed sensative, scrolling quickly when I whip my thumb around the wheel and ticking off line by line as I slow down.
One reason for proprietary software is also to prevent you from loading up some bizarre non-mp3 file (even in my collection I had some that were really MPEG layer 2, and didn't even know it since they were
Bzzzz, no, thanks for playing. You can't copy music to a portable player in removable media mode. The files are actually stored in some subdirectory that the player never sees. Any files you copy over to Dell or iPod are stuck in a lockbox and can't be accessed by the player (although there are probably hacks out there that can do it). So, this is not a valid issue.
Then there's the whole DRM aspect. If it shows up as a drive, how will you stop people copying songs off it? Or will it show up as a drive that is write only (no reading in windows == no listing
Again you do not understand the difference between the portable player and the portable storage function of the player. DRM is irrelevant to files on my computer. An external hard drive is not supposed to know or care what I'm copying to it. A portable music player ostensibly is because they don't want people transferring GB of music from iPod to iPod...but as we already mentioned, that isn't possible because player software puts music in a special folder and anything else goes outside.
-JoeShmoe
.
No offense, but this seems like a rather lousy reason. If my intent was to copy over my friend's 3GB of MP3's, it is trivial for me to bring the CD...or...just download it from Dell's website. Although I don't know why I would copy my friend's MP3's to it since I can't play them until I get home, copy them back, and load them via MusicMatch. Having to use a CD doesn't raise any hurdle from rampant copying of the "easily burned to CD/DVD" content.
Where this hurts you most is when you go to a school, or Kinko's or a business center or pretty much any place you need to access your data but the computers are locked down to prevent installations.
The likely reason, I believe, is that some idiot in product development wanted the Dell player to show up with a cute little DJ icon instead of the funky trident square USB logo and didn't consider the burden it would place on users. Since people already have to install MusicMatch, he or she reasons, there's no reason why we can't use our own device driver too. The whole "use Dell DJ as portable storage" idea is really just a "me too" afterthought on what the iPod does.
-JoeShmoe
.
The iPod was purchased as my primary entertainment device, and I later purchased a Dell DJ for use with a project that I am working on for a school.
The iPod was purchased based on winning design, features, available accessories (iTrip, CF reader, etc). The Dell DJ was purchased because it was $219 no tax no shipping for the 15MB version, making it by far the cheapest portable device that can store several GB of data.
However the interface on the DJ is horrid. The display does this "windowing" thing where clicking the main button never performs an action but only leads you to a menu of actions. To do the most simple thing in the world, resume playback where you left off, you have to click three times.
The primary clicker is also a joke. The combo scroll wheel is tacky and too loose. Often I will go to click only to have my thumb spin the wheel down instead. The recording button is a nice idea, but you have to hold it down to register, and there is no way to name your recordings so you know what they are. (By the way, this might be good because the way you enter names in other sections is to wheel tediously through letters A-Z, then choose the options to shift to letters a-z, then wheel to the actual letter you want.)
Also, no dock for the DJ. It uses a USB2 connector on the top...bad design. The connection is so tight I was afraid to plug it in for fear of breaking it. Pulling it out makes me just as fearful.
And finally...worst of all...the Dell DJ does not detect as a standard USB2 device! WTF was Dell smoking? Am I supposed to carry the Dell DJ driver CD around at all times? Why not just carry my data on CD instead? The whole point of portable storage is to load it up, and take it anywhere you need the data to access it. The iPod is detected as a standard firewire/USB device on every version of Windows 98SE or higher.
Overall, it will serve its purpose for a prototype, but Dell needs to spend some serious money to come out with a 2nd generation version that addresses these issues. I understand they can't use a wheel like Apple does, but there has GOT to be a better analog input than what they came up with.
Oh, one last nail in the coffin...the include software is from MusicMatch and is without a doubt the worst piece of software I've ever used. There is no automatic sync. The option to sync your player and computer is buried three levels down in the software. The ID3 tags you make in music match don't translate to the player (will sort 1 10 11 12...19 2 20 21 22 on the player, ignores track number). The only saving grace is that as a standard Windows Media device, you can use pretty much any other program to sync the device, but I think Dell was really stupid to sign up with MusicMatch instead of just writing their own (given that Windows does all the work, all they need is a pretty interface with a big "Sync" button).
That's about all that comes to mind. I wouldn't recommdn the Dell unless you were someone who planned to load their entire collection once and then never ever ever touch the player again. If you had to sync/update the Dell DJ on even a weekly basis it would drive you up the wall. Spend the extra $100 and get the 10GB iPod or the extra $40 and get the 4GB iPod mini.
-JoeShmoe
.
Disney also has the right to finance and produce sequels if Pixar declines to co-finance and produce them under the current agreement
...all done with that craptastic bargain basement 3D animation you see every afternoon on the WB. Ugh. Ugh.
NO NO DAMMIT NO!
I will make it a personal mission to urinate on Eisner's grave if Disney rapes a single one of Pixar's excellent films. I am so f'ing sick of Disney executives walking around the park trying to figure out what movie, series even RIDE they can milk for another buck. Every time I see an advertisement for (classic movie) 2, 3 etc I want to scream.
Steve Jobs is the biggest ass in the world for allowing Disney this option. Give it a year or two after Pixar profits are gone, and get ready for
* Toy Story 3 - Buzz and Woody go to Camp
* Monsters, Inc. 2 - Giggles, Inc.
* Finding Nemo 2 - Doria's Quest for Paxil
Like how "spam" came to mean "unsolicited email" I propose we make "disney" as a synonym for cancer, as in "my grandfather's prostate got disneyed" or perhaps as synonym for necrophilia.
- JoeShmoe
.
Digital is all or nothing, but there's no way interference should wipe out the signal completely...especially considering it would not be very hard to overtransmit (send more stream information than needed in case some gets lost). There should be more than enough bandwidth available for a digital solution. Hell, voice sounds fine on a 128kbps MP3, I could send dozens of those on a computer network and play the best one. It shouldn't be that hard to do...remember, plenty of digital solutions exist to play music other ethernet (much higher quality demands) even though it's "all or nothing"...so it does seem to work.
Plus, gaps are not the worse case scenario. Gaps, while irritating, are less irritating than a loud "SNAP" or "PLIC" noise that occasionally comes out when someone cranks up the microphone on a quiet talker. Sometimes they can get loud enough to startle people. People with hearing aids especially. Volume would probably be a lot more stable with a digital solution.
-JoeShmoe
.
Seriously, you know NexTel lives for these kinds of situations. Get a bunch of NexTels with ample walkie-talkie minutes and then get some headsets. Put the phones on your belt and then either use voice activated talk mode, or the old push-button style. Frankly, I hate half-duplex stuff but it's what you are already used to. The advantage is that you can roam anywhere (not just the gym) and have instant communication. It shouldn't be all that pricey either. They have pay-as-you-go prepaid plans. The school could get a prepaid plan whenever there was a production and then when it was over, collect the phones and leave them in a drawer until they were needed.
Rather than NexTel, I would recommend getting Cingular or Verizon and then signing up for a plan with unlimited Mobile-to-Mobile minutes. Then get headset and now you have a full-duplex system. I don't know Verizon, but Cingular phones can conference up to six other lines, which is probably enough for a stage crew. And you can all hear and talk to each other. Not sure if there is a prepaid or pay-as-you-go option.
But anyway, look cellular. I think it's probably the best option for the money, no need to cobble something together that may not be reliable. Cell phone networks rarely go down...if your homebrew solution blows up on curtain night your ass is grass unless your solution also has an "understudy" ready to go.
-JoeShmoe
.
I work with a lot of presentations and lectures and I'm dying to know if there is any consumer or prosumer level digital microphone systems out there? Everything that you can find both at cheap ass Radio Shack and even high end audio stores is varying degrees of wireless. 900Mhz or 2.4Ghz just like cordless phones. Some through the word "digital" around but are still susceptible to interference and static.
What I'm dreaming of is something that is purely digital, from the device the speaker wears all the way to the speaker. I envision something like a Bluetooth wireless microphone similar to the bluetooth headsets that some cellular phones use. This bluetooth microphone would relay to either a box in the speaker's pocket or inside the lecturn. This box would then use CAT-5 or 802.11 to transmit the stream as a WAV or MP3 so that it could be played on a SlimMP3 or Shuttle connected directly to the speaker system. In theory the speaker could roam freely and speak clearly and sound crystal clear.
Is there anythign like this? One place that I work for is about 100 feet from high power lines. The resulting RF interference renders even the most expensive $600-800 wireless microphone solutions worthless. Wired microphone even have a problem, even with grounding wires you still pick up pops clicks and hums over fifty feet.
So, how about it? There are plenty of devices that can take an audio stream off a network and output a sound wave? How about a device that can record the sound wave and output an audio stream?
FYI - consumer or prosumer means less than four digits...I'm sure studios and recording studios have plenty of expensive options available.
-JoeShmoe
.
Maybe I should have said "first timers"...what I meant was that there are some people who just plain freak out at the idea of taking a lie detector test. There are other people who think it is no big deal and can get through it as normal as an oral survey. There are still other people who not only can get through it but can give the proper readings to falsify results. So there are at least two classes other than just normal people.
I was once asked if I would take a lie detector test in a corporate environment regarding some missing equipment. Just the idea of saying I would made me nervous. However it turned out that it was just a bluff because even though I agreed, the matter was eventually dropped and new code access locks were installed.
-JoeShmoe
.
My point in mentioning it was not that technology hasn't changed in several years but as a warning to people who would plunk down money for this type of snake oil. Once bitten, twice shy, but maybe people forgotten because its been so long.
It appears that there is reason to suspect after all.
-JoeShmoe
.
Truster! Yes, that's exactly it. So many people plunked down for that load of garbage, what a scam. Offer someone people want badly enough they are willing to believe it exists when in fact it does not.
My guess is that in five or six more years after everyone forgets how poorly these glasses work, we can look forward to the introduction of Amir's amazing new telepathy lie detection kit that will let you use a helmet to read people's minds and determine if they are 10% more likely to be lying or not.
-JoeShmoe
.
Remember back in 96-97 there was a big rage in "lie detection software" which supposedly would analyze audio input of someone speaking and then match their voice stress level to either "True" or "False" indicators?
It was crap. I think more than a few morning radio shows tried to use it on their callers with failure after failure. I tried a copy myself and found that not only was it horribly written, but even if you were able to get the subject to "train" it (by answering several questions that are known to be true) it gave inncorrect responses virtually half the time.
Come to think of it, the software might have been made by an Israeli company too. Maybe the same one, I don't know. Can't remember the name but it was horrid.
Do I think the FBI/CIA might have technology like this, to analyze voice stress or facial temperature and determine if you are lying? Sure, why not. But there's a reason why lie detection technology is not admissible in court. It just doesn't work. Too many experts can beat it and too many amateurs get nervous and give false positives.
-JoeShmoe
.
How is this really all that unusual? What if Apple released a WinCE version of Quicktime player that let you play Quicktime videos on an HP iPaq? But that iPaq can also play WMV files, so is this smart or stupid of Apple?
I would say smart, because now they have another platform for their content. So isn't the same true for audio? Isn't of looking at it as "Apple is letting WMA infiltrate their iPod!" why isn't it "Apple has expanded AAC to another major portable brand."? You don't think HP has the resources to design their own player? If they had, it would almost assuredly be using Microsoft blessed DRM hobby kit known as WMA. But then HP would need to make decent player software, and find a partner to provide content...by partnering with Apple, they are piggybacking on the success of the existing iTunes client and store. Meanwhile Apple now is selling a player every time someone buys an iPod or the HP version and now has a new customer for iTMS either way.
Apple gets a larger audience used to AAC and iTMS which will someday make a profit, no doubt about it. Maybe right now its a loss-leader to sell iPods, but what do you think will happen next year when music companies post their quarterly reports showing the profits from this major new (and free) income stream? What happens when Apple goes back to renew the contract and says "you know this free money pouring in? Well, you're going to settle for $.30 or we start giving priority placement to indie labels" Not to mention, with the release of GarageBand, Apple is about one puzzle piece away from becoming a completely end-to-end music enterprise, starting with a dude running GarageBand and ending with a thousand people clicking "Buy It Now" on iTMS.
- JoeShmoe
.
I think you missed something in the blurb about this problem. The problem is Norton Antivirus, not Explorer. Norton is probably doing some kind of check on its virus signature files by validating their signature. This function is probably being handled by IE as the default browser function, which is getting hung up on the unroutable revocation site.
So, to clarify, when you try to do a file operation, like copy, Norton intercepts the operation so it can check the file for a virus, then gets itself held up while waiting for IE to tell it if the signature is valid so it can check for that virus. End result is that Explorer never gets an answer from Norton and the operation hangs. Ditto for Word and other applications Norton watches closely.
I too had this same problem on one of two Dell laptops. One used the default McAfee ScanShield that came with it, the other had been reloaded with Norton Anti-Virus. That machine had all sorts of crazy errors, such as Word hanging during opening, hanging when you right-clicked a file, hanging when you tried copying files.
The system also had ooodles of pending updates from Microsoft that had been downloaded but not installed. I'm willing to bet one of them was a root server update or similar. Of course, the problem could be on Norton's end, meaning they need to update the security cert on their server? I'm not sure exactly how it works.
- JoeShmoe
.
I recently evaluated several models of color card scanners to scan drivers licenses and when I misplaced my license I grabbed a bill out of my wallet and tried to use that to test.
Much to my surprise, the bill got about 30% in before the was a pause and the rest of the scanned image was blank. I tried again and got the same results. I turned it around, all four orientations and got the same results. About 1/3 of the bill goes in then scanning would either stop or go blank (depending on scanner).
Curious, I cut out piece of post-it and put it over different parts of the bill. I found that putting a piece over either the beginning edge of the portrait, the entire bill would scan, albeit with yellow section. By repeating it, I could in theory stitch together a complete bill.
This made me wonder...is there something that the Secret Service has forced image scanning and editing providers to adopt? These were all rather cheap scanners, a couple seemed like overseas knock-offs. Yet they all seemed to exhibit the same behavior! That seems a remarkable coincidence.
Perhaps there is a barcode or something near the portait, perhaps not visible to the human eye, but completely noticeable to a scanner (some kind of moire pattern or whatever). Something that is consistant enough to flag in the scanner drivers.
Then again, flat scanners don't seem to have this problem, although the story goes that each will embed its information into the scans to allow for tracking.
Anyway...maybe I'll just hang on to my ancient Asus a while longer...I don't necessarily care to scan money or not...but if *someone* can get this kind of image checking in the drivers of half a dozen card scanners...who knows what else *someone* can get in there?
- JoeShmoe
.
Troll or clueless, I can't tell because as AC there's no post history.
Consumers, at least in Norway, do have more rights. They have the right to use DeCSS to decrypt DVD video to video on the player of their choice. They also, presumably, have the right to publish and obtain the DeCSS program.
Now, back in the land of the free, we have no such rights...why? Because we pussed out. We decided not to pursue our DeCSS case and let stand a lower court ruling that banned it. Oh yeah, this was much better than what Jon did, namely stand up for himself in court.
I'm not so naive to believe that Jon was selfless in his act (he was part of or closely associated with warez groups who were keen on cracking DVD encryption to allow for perfect all-digital rips rather than having to use analog loopback to capture card). But even if DeCSS has a seedy or sordid history no one wants to talk about, the point stands that DeCSS does have legitamate uses and that is where Jon's defense was founded.
When you have precedent set, you don't hide it in your desk and call it a day. You use that precedent to try and set new precedent that is even broader in scope. Jon has stood up to the might of Norway's MPAA/Attorney General equivalents, who now have major egg on their face. How likely do you think they will be to pursue another half-baked case against Jon? Jon is probably bulletproof against anything but real criminal behavior. As soon as the words "fair use" are uttered, I can't imagine there would be a government attorney crazy enough to get struck by lightning twice.
Releasing it anonymously would have only started a witchhunt that could have harmed a lot of other people, people who shouldn't have to be lightning rods for this same kind of treatment. But putting his name on it, yes, he is risked another trial but as I said, it is rather unlikely.
In this world full of people who puss out and settle for lesser charges (cough)Mitnick(cough) I think it's incredible that someone has the guts to put himself at risk to stand up for something. I only wish someone were that brave here in US courts.
-JoeShmoe
.
What even more of a mind-bender is that arguments against incest all rest on "sex for procreation" and none have ever been formed against "sex for pleasure", for example, sex using contraception or where procreation isn't possible, oral/anal sex, homosexuality.
Homosexuality opened the door by proposing the argument that what two consenting adults did in the privacy of the bedroom was not the business of the police, the courts, or society. The recent Supreme Court decision upheld this.
I believe that incest will be the next sexual frontier for the same reason. If two men can legally have sex, what legal recourse does a society have against two brothers having sex? Or any father/mother/brother/sister coupling where procreation is not possible?
Right now incest is one of the seedier, underground fetishes, much like homosexuality was back in the 1950's or 60's. But sooner or later, someone will be arrested and challenge it, or some event will raise awareness on the issue and once that happens it will be interesting to see if a backlash forms against all forms of "non traditional" sexual contact or if society accepts and even lauds it.
After incest, I believe, genetic engineering might lead to the next major sexual frontier...if you can grow a headless body, or perhaps even just a sexual organs...is that a legal sexual aid like a dildo or rubber vagaina...or is it illegal like beastiality/necrophilia because it cannot give consent? Hmmm?
- JoeShmoe
.
So consent is being given by those responsible for people who we, as a society, have decided are not yet capable of being responsible for themselves
There are plenty of examples of mature, responsible people who are still denied the opportunity to give consent because of "the greater good". Cancer patients who want medical marijuana, for example. An informed, responsible US citizen cannot get consent from the federal government to treat his own injury or relieve suffering. The federal government argues that dangers of marijuana being legally available outweighs the suffering of a few individuals. US troops were ordered to undergo anthrax vacinations even though the stats said a small percentage could experience life-threatening complications. I place consent and greater good at the same level because they are on almost always on opposite sides of the aisle in any legal dispute...abortion, drug use, euthanasia, etc.
Now where is the greater good for anyone engaging in sexual activity, let alone a child?
Remember, the greater good is the opposition. If sex is pleasurable, then the natural state is for people to seek and desire sex. Yet societies have evolve social and religious laws that restrict sexual behavior for a "greater good". Deny pleasure to individual X because of a harm (or perceived harm) to individual Y. Prostitions is usually illegal, and the reason most often given is that it exploits women (regardless of the fact that male prostitutes aren't legal and women are still able to make a living^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hbe exploited in the adult film industry).
It is almost universally thought that sex involving children is bad. The point I was trying to make (the modern heresy) is that perhaps this ban is not because it serves a "greater good" as we mistakenly believe, but because we are an uptight and sexually repressed society. It's a question that can't really be answered, at least not right now. A hundred years ago, any sex was taboo. In another hundred years, perhaps after perfect contraception and STD control exists, society might think our numerious restrictions on sex were foolish and short-sighted.
- JoeShmoe
.
I think nothing illustrates my point (and the point of the linked article) than this response.
Just for the sake of discussion, if your child was touched by a mentally retarded adult, would you favor the "smash-the-nuts" response because he hurt your daughter or the "no big deal" response because they were both learning about themselves?
- JoeShmoe
.
Why is consent the determining factor? Does a child consent to being given injections or going to the dentist? How about eating broccoli? In these situations the issue is not one of consent but "greater good"...that is, the temporary pain a child may experience from a shot or dental drill is better than the more serious pain of preventable diseases or rotting teeth.
In many countries you have to be 21 to drink, well above the age of consent. Why is this? I'm old enough to own a gun or decide who is president but not have a beer? Someone who can drink at age 16 in Germany visits the US and is arrested for doing the same thing.
What's my point? Consent often has little to do with issues of harm or law. It's probably true that there is a greater good served by shielding children from nudity and sex. But what if someone believed or tried to show otherwise? The point of the linked article and the point I was trying to illustrate is that nobody investigates the specifics of the greater good because challenging it is a modern heresy. If children were actually worse off, nobody would know because those making that thesis or investigating it would be labeled "pervert" or "deviant" instead of "mistaken" or "erroneous".
- JoeShmoe
.
Correlary to this, that children are automatically harmed by sexual activity. That is to say, molesting children is a crime because it harms children, yet children have to be actively taught that "certain" forms of pleasure are bad before they are harmed.
IE, if children touch their privates and experience pleasure, that is legal, natural and acceptable, but if another person touches their privates and evokes the same pleasure, that is illegal, perverse and bad. It is interesting to note that a large portion of the population would even consider the first statement about children touching themselves to be "evil".
I think this topic qualifies as the best example of modern heresy.