EarthLink changed their news servers so that now, only members can read and post. Before, it was easier for spammers to use ELN news servers, but now it's harder.
If someone gets caught spamming (mail or news), they can be billed upwards of $200.
There is a solution to it that cures the pedophile and his or her victims and allows both parties to resume happy lives, but I won't post it here, since I'm not fireproof. Something in the Bible about not casting your pearls before swine. I'd know what it was if I was religious.
If he crosses state lines, it ceases to be the state's problem and becomes the fed's problem. If convicted, he will go to a federal prison, where he will be treated better than at a state prison.
I say this because where I used to work, a fellow came in one time and told me that when he was in the military, he got busted in a foreign country for drug something or other and then extradited to the US. He was placed in federal prison because it really wasn't any state's problem.
That's why there are laws that specifically contain language to indicate that state lines were crossed.
Let's say I blaze up some crack and chug some beer. I then go driving in my car and hit a school bus. Every child in it is either killed or irreversibly disabled (mentally, physically, whatever). People who do drugs, victimless criminals? Sometimes, sometimes not. Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) would opt for the second.
Personally, I think marijuana should be legal, if beer and cigarettes are. It's arguably just as bad for you, even if it isn't physically addicting. But let's pay attention to facts. Drugs alter how the mind percieves reality. That's the whole point behind them. If you get snockered and then try to drive home and wind up killing someone, it ceases to be victimless.
It's illegal to have it in the USA. This is probably because a child is not able to provide consent, even if for no other reason than that they can't legally sign a contract. I think that part of shooting porn is that you have to have a contract and some sort of evidence that the subject is of age... hmm, chicken or the egg?
However, it is not illegal to take pictures of naked children, as long as they aren't "sexually explicit". I read a news article a long time ago about pictures of Brooke Shields. Her mother signed a contract with a photographer, who then took pictures of her before and during a bath. Rather gross if you ask me, but then I don't understand lots of what people call "art."
I think the whole thing is disgusting. People usually do stuff like this because it was done to them. Instead of giving them the psychological help they need, they're thrown in prison and abused more. When they get out, they're probably in an even more unstable position, likely to strike again. And the people who beat them in prison, who were probably put there for beating people outside of prison, get to do more beating, which doesn't help THEIR case either.
I don't think prison is for correction. I think prison is for revenge. Anyone who thinks otherwise ought to look at the facts. Where is the "correction"? Where is the therapy that will reform the criminal into an ordinary person who will be of some use to themselves and to society?
When he gets out, depending on where he lives, he may be required to inform everyone in his neighborhood of what he's done. Furthermore, he will have to announce it to whoever he tries to get a job from. (I've never seen a job application that didn't require disclosure of any convictions.) His prison sentence really won't end when he gets out. It will continue for the rest of his life.
I don't condone what he did. I think that this variety of perversion is an evil that ought to be eradicated from society. But not by making the perpetrators destitute. It ought to be addressed by treatment. There ARE ways of getting this disease under control.
That experiment, if that's how it really worked, seems to have been engineered to produce a certain result. They should have shown a control group the full license plate.
My point wasn't that hypnosis was perfect. In fact, I said it was dangerous. Those results may simply have been random noise floating around - for example, a bit of the LAST full license plate the person saw. And that last data might have been dubbed in there because the hypnotized test subjects' memory retrieval wasn't staying within bounds. Cognitive function is bypassed by hypnosis. It's quite possible that it may take additional functionality with it. But, as I stated in my original post, the memories ARE there. It's just a matter of training yourself to retrieve them. The haze of time may distort how we percieve memories. It does not distort the memories themselves.
Don't know anything about these false memories of yours. Memories don't change over time, but the way we retrieve them can. As for the whole "enhanced state of suggestibility," that was my point. It's dangerous because it puts your conscious mind in bypass mode.
Some people are more hypnotizable than others. Some people can only be hypnotized with drugs, while others are pretty spaced out all the time.
Contrary to popular belief, the human brain, under normal conditions, does not forget anything. Nothing. Not even a single perceptic. Just ask any hypnotist: Under the right conditions, all of the factors which inhibit memory can be lifted, allowing you to remember the way the wind stirred your hair at the ballpark when you were eight, the angle of the sun when you got your first kiss in junior high, etc.
Of course, hypnotism can be a dangerous game. It essentially puts all cognitive functions in bypass mode. If I tell you to bawk like a chicken every time I snapped my fingers and then forget everything I told you, then snapped you out of the hypnosis, you'd bawk every time I snapped my fingers, until I told you what had transpired during the hypnosis.
A better way of enhancing memory is to review perceptics of past memories - the outlay of colors when you were eating breakfast this morning, the feeling of motion the first time you can remember walking through a park, etc. There is a book which is full of such exercies. I used to use it quite a lot, and it helped my memory. If anyone is interested, e-mail doktor1 at earthlink dot net.
As for sleep shutting down cognitive functions: I don't think it does that. Cognitive functions are still used during dreaming, but the inputs to those functions don't come directly from the senses, but from whatever random traffic the brain generates while it "defragments" the day's events, conducting final assimilation on the thousands of minute events of the day. I think it also does some intermediate assimilation on the larger events of the day (for example, attending a meeting concerning the total re-organization of your department, meaning that you don't know WTF your job description is any more... grrrrrr).
Slashdot Mirror
If someone gets caught spamming (mail or news), they can be billed upwards of $200.
C'est la vie...
I say this because where I used to work, a fellow came in one time and told me that when he was in the military, he got busted in a foreign country for drug something or other and then extradited to the US. He was placed in federal prison because it really wasn't any state's problem.
That's why there are laws that specifically contain language to indicate that state lines were crossed.
Personally, I think marijuana should be legal, if beer and cigarettes are. It's arguably just as bad for you, even if it isn't physically addicting. But let's pay attention to facts. Drugs alter how the mind percieves reality. That's the whole point behind them. If you get snockered and then try to drive home and wind up killing someone, it ceases to be victimless.
Heh... I think the rest of the "13 year old girls" are actually 45-year-old gay men... :)
However, it is not illegal to take pictures of naked children, as long as they aren't "sexually explicit". I read a news article a long time ago about pictures of Brooke Shields. Her mother signed a contract with a photographer, who then took pictures of her before and during a bath. Rather gross if you ask me, but then I don't understand lots of what people call "art."
Where does art end and crime begin?
I don't think prison is for correction. I think prison is for revenge. Anyone who thinks otherwise ought to look at the facts. Where is the "correction"? Where is the therapy that will reform the criminal into an ordinary person who will be of some use to themselves and to society?
When he gets out, depending on where he lives, he may be required to inform everyone in his neighborhood of what he's done. Furthermore, he will have to announce it to whoever he tries to get a job from. (I've never seen a job application that didn't require disclosure of any convictions.) His prison sentence really won't end when he gets out. It will continue for the rest of his life.
I don't condone what he did. I think that this variety of perversion is an evil that ought to be eradicated from society. But not by making the perpetrators destitute. It ought to be addressed by treatment. There ARE ways of getting this disease under control.
My point wasn't that hypnosis was perfect. In fact, I said it was dangerous. Those results may simply have been random noise floating around - for example, a bit of the LAST full license plate the person saw. And that last data might have been dubbed in there because the hypnotized test subjects' memory retrieval wasn't staying within bounds. Cognitive function is bypassed by hypnosis. It's quite possible that it may take additional functionality with it. But, as I stated in my original post, the memories ARE there. It's just a matter of training yourself to retrieve them. The haze of time may distort how we percieve memories. It does not distort the memories themselves.
Some people are more hypnotizable than others. Some people can only be hypnotized with drugs, while others are pretty spaced out all the time.
Of course, hypnotism can be a dangerous game. It essentially puts all cognitive functions in bypass mode. If I tell you to bawk like a chicken every time I snapped my fingers and then forget everything I told you, then snapped you out of the hypnosis, you'd bawk every time I snapped my fingers, until I told you what had transpired during the hypnosis.
A better way of enhancing memory is to review perceptics of past memories - the outlay of colors when you were eating breakfast this morning, the feeling of motion the first time you can remember walking through a park, etc. There is a book which is full of such exercies. I used to use it quite a lot, and it helped my memory. If anyone is interested, e-mail doktor1 at earthlink dot net.
As for sleep shutting down cognitive functions: I don't think it does that. Cognitive functions are still used during dreaming, but the inputs to those functions don't come directly from the senses, but from whatever random traffic the brain generates while it "defragments" the day's events, conducting final assimilation on the thousands of minute events of the day. I think it also does some intermediate assimilation on the larger events of the day (for example, attending a meeting concerning the total re-organization of your department, meaning that you don't know WTF your job description is any more... grrrrrr).