With or without a cellphone, this could be very closely related to Doug Adams' SEP effect. I think sometimes people see things that are so bizarre and out of context that it's easier to subconsciously edit out the image rather than try to make sense of it. Or, alternately, some people are so jaded and inattentive to begin with that the anomaly doesn't even register.
Case in point is a similar college campus experiment I read about. Researchers posed as clipboard-bearing survey takers. One would approach a student and begin asking questions. At some point, in a deftly choreographed stunt, two confederates posing as workmen would briefly pass between interviewer and interviewee, carrying a large door that momentarily obscured sight of the interviewer. A quick switch was made during the maneuver, so that when the door was no longer obscuring sight a few seconds later, there was now a completely different person conducting the interview, picking up where the first had left off and acting totally matter of fact, as if nothing unusual had just happened. What they found was that, even when using obvious extremes of appearance (say, a large African-American man replaced by a small Asian woman), a significant percentage of the subjects never batted an eye, and would later deny they had seen anything unusual when "debriefed" after the mock survey was completed.
There is more and more a trend towards structuring society in such a manner as to accommodate every potential disability, no matter how small the number of affected individuals, in every possible scenario and situation. There has to be a reasonable middle-ground that will assist most disabled folks most of the time, while not unduly burdening or inconveniencing the majority.
I'm all for reasonable accommodations for the disabled. Things like curb cuts and ramps for wheelchair users come to mind. They assist the disabled while still permitting normal use by everyone else. But carry access for the disabled to an extreme, and it just starts to become ludicrous. Should office employees be banned from using perfume, aftershave, or scented hair products because a single employee has an allergy? Must buses accommodate wheelchair users when that extra few minutes loading a passenger may well mean missing a transfer connection and making the other 20 or 30 riders late for work? And while I understand the need of some people for service dogs, I don't really want one at the table next to me in a restaurant.
Again, reasonable accommodations are fine, but I also believe disabled people have to accept at some point that there are some things they just aren't going to be able to do, certain places they can't access, and situations that are best avoided. And, unfortunately, the less common and more obscure/unusual your disability, the greater the odds of limitations. That may not sound sympathetic or P.C., but it's realistic.
This high-risk, long-range Internet research will kick into high gear in 2010, as the US federal government ramps up funding...
Yeah, I concur...I was right there until I reached that phrase. Sure, we know the Feds would like a "new," "revamped" Internet...one with far more built-in peepholes, and some sort of licensing structure to positively identify users. Thanks, but no thanks...
Your country spends way too much time litigating stupid shit instead of actually solving problems.
Hey, you have to go with whatever talents you have. We happen to be very good at litigating stupid shit, thank you. Actually solving problems, not so much....besides being a lot harder, it might actually reduce the amount of stupid shit available to litigate. Then where would we be? Who's going to pay to retrain all those out of work Stupid Shit Litigators? We might get desperate and have to import other countries' stupid shit to litigate. What would that do to our balance of trade?
Clearly, you just do not understand how America works...
Also, most poor people are too busy just trying to survive to plot and plan a terrorist attack. A store holdup, maybe. Isolated violence against individuals, sure. A mass terror attack, not so much. But the children of privilege, who have all their material needs met, and are well-educated, often have a lot of time on their hands. Couple that idleness with intelligence, the money to travel, and the general ennui that can't be satiated with material things, and you're looking at a breeding ground for radicalization in an Islamic society. Sure, the poor can hold extreme religious views, but they're pretty much powerless to act on them to any great extent.
9/11 had such a profound impact on the U.S. because it was spectacular, it was unprecedented, and it happened here. And, thanks to the 24/7 cable news cycle, we watched it unfolding, live, from our living rooms.
Anytime you have a large number of fatalities occurring from a single spectacular event, it will have a stronger emotional impact than a much higher cumulative tally of deaths over time. That's why airliner crashes, for example, are newsworthy and annual statistics are not -- those 100, 200, 300 deaths may be statistically a drop in the bucket compared to the annual deaths from car crashes, cancer, or whatever, but they occurred in a single, dramatic event.
The notion of using airplanes, and civilian airliners at that, as flying bombs was also not a possibility that was in the popular consciousness, not even as a plot element in an action movie. (How many people commented, on 9/11 and in the days following, that it all seemed unreal, like watching a movie and not reality?) And crash those planes into three of the most well-known, high-profile buildings in the world (the two WTC towers and the Pentagon), with a fourth crash into the White House or the Capitol (depending on who you believe) prematurely thwarted, and you have the ingredients for a real-life spectacular that will have a profound impact, regardless of how the numbers stack up statistically.
And it happened on U.S. soil. Prior to 9/11, with the possible exception of the OKC bombing, large scale terrorist attacks were something that happened in those "other" countries around the world. And with the perpetrators being "foreigners" (as opposed to a domestic malcontent like McVeigh and whatever conspirators he may or may not have had, depending on what you believe), and it's not hard to fathom the almost immediate adoption of the "America is under attack" and "we are at war" memes that were so adroitly exploited by the government.
Finally, the smug xenophobia and self-centeredness of Americans played a role. Why do you think a domestic plane crash, even a smaller commuter plane with fewer than 100 souls on board, gets hours of constant, live coverage on CNN while a jumbo jet with hundreds aboard crashing halfway around the world merits but a sentence or two at the hourly update? Think of the impact Hurricane Katrina had while killing fewer than 2000, compared to the Asian tsunami that killed 250,000 five years ago. Now consider how much attention, concern, and TV time were devoted to both. Sure, the Pacific tsunami did get some screen time, especially now that the ubiquitous presence of video cameras in average people's hands gave us some shaky, dramatic, horrifying footage to see. (Though I strongly suspect that if there had been no video at all, the event would have been even more marginalized on U.S. media.) But with the exception of a handful of Western tourists caught up in the disaster, those quarter million souls are "other" people..."fer'iners"...you know, them people that dress weird and talk funny and don't look like us. On the scale of emotional involvement, a couple thousand American lives merits an "OMG, this is horrible, something must be done" while 250,000 Indonesians, Sri Lankans, Thais, et. al. elicits an almost Seinfeldesque "Ah, that's a shame....wonder what's on HBO right now..."
So, it's not sheer numbers that determine what impact death has on a culture; it's all about context. Who got killed, where, how and why.
I'd rather see the end to cash rather than cheques. I hate when people pay with cash.. sitting there holding up the line while they count their dimes and pennies, then end up dropping them. A card is so easy to use, swipe and done. One thing I don't like about cards is that they can track your purchases and locations.
Your last sentence gives the reason why your first sentence is undesired from a privacy standpoint. Cash still provides an almost traceless means of exchange. When everything becomes an electronic transfer, anyone who wants to poke into your financial affairs and monitor your purchases can do so.
As for checks, people still like to use them primarily because you if you're technically broke but facing an imminent need to buy something, you can still write a check Tuesday, knowing it won't be cleared until Thursday when the money will be in your account. This doesn't work at larger retailers now, since they do electronically run it through to verify if sufficient funds exist, but at smaller stores or for private exchange between two individuals, this is still an option.
There are still some valid reasons to use checks in certain situations. Rather than eliminating them entirely, let companies, retailers, and individuals decide for themselves whether or not they will continue to accept checks as policy, and let everyone else that wants to accept them, accept them. But let's keep the option. (Choice is good.)
Have they tried educating rather than penalising? Strange as it may see, most of us respond positively to scientific fact rather than an impersonal fine.
What planet do you live on? Facts don't dissuade people from doing what they want to do. A lot of it in this case is self-overestimation: people will continue to cell/text/IM while they drive because in spite of the evidence, they are all convinced that they are an exception to the rule and can do these things and still drive safely. In their minds, those studies and laws apply to all those other people, not me. It's very reminiscent of "well, most people probably shouldn't drive after drinking, but I can do it just fine."
I think the best way to "think of the children" is to teach the children. If you don't want little Lisa to text and drive into a horrible wreck, teach her how to text and drive responsibly.
How about teaching little Lisa to keep both hands on the wheel, both eyes on the road, and her mind focused on driving? How about teaching her that that phone call or text can wait until she gets where she's going? How about teaching her that the world won't come to an end if she's not constantly in touch with her little friends 24/7?
Every time I hear the "Well, if you have nothing to hide..." canard, I want to scream. I have everything to hide -- my LIFE. To me, it doesn't matter if my life is perfect, "normal," and utterly free of sin, excess, and debauchery -- it's still MY life, and no one else's business. I am currently (AFAIK) committing no crimes or acts of moral turpitude, yet that still doesn't mean I want my conversations, my financial transactions, my e-mail and browsing history, the books I read or music I listen to, etc. open to scrutiny, public, private, or governmental. It's still MY life, and my personal business, and I'll be damned if you or anyone else have a right to poke into it without my expressed consent.
Secondly, if this is their typical method of going after people, it assures that they will ONLY catch the casual browser and never catch the actual distributes or even producers of this stuff. Anyone who is a habitual cyber criminal is going to know better than to keep stuff like that on an unsecure hard-drive for any period of time. They'll likely securely delete and wipe their drives regularly. These idiots were so completely out of it that they thought it was a good idea to suddenly consider it urgent to go after someone who once did something two years ago and has apparently not done so since?
Because this poor sap is one of the best examples of "low hanging fruit." They're going after him because it's a hell of a lot easier than trying to trace the original source of the images and nail the bastards who truly harmed the kids in the first place. They rack up another CP conviction, moralists are satisfied that another pedo has been nailed, and the general public cheers that the good guys are thinking of the children and fighting the scourge. Makes everyone feel warm and fuzzy (except, alas, the poor dude now serving hard time with "Rollo, the Amateur Proctologist" for a cellmate) and pure and smug in spite of the fact that the conviction does nothing -- repeat, NOTHING -- to actually put even the smallest dent in the problem of kiddie porn. He's just like those tens of thousands of small-time casual drug users doing jail time while the big cartels go merrily on.
Why do we have to follow the letter of the law and not the spirit of the law?
Because we're more and more living in a "zero tolerance" society now. Everything must be black-and-white, either/or, no grey areas, no need to use reason or common sense to look at things like context, intent, actual impact/damage, etc. Easier that way: you don't have to think (nasty habit, that) or take responsibility for making decisions.
Well, that certainly illustrates the diversity of the word!
Much better is the real-life example once related in an article I read. A machine in a factory had broken down, and when this guy asked the repairman what was wrong with it, he just sighed, "Fuckin' fucker's fucked."
You're making the fundamental assumption here that no legislature would ever pass a law that couldn't achieve the stated purpose of the law.
History tends to show that few, if any, laws achieve their stated purposes. Though they pretty much all tend to remove a bit of freedom...
Do speed limits stop most drivers from speeding? No. Do drug laws thwart most users of illegal substances? No. It is a matter of (a) a large mass of citizens who disagree with the law, and (b) insufficient resources to punish anywhere near all who break it.
We have an enormous younger generation that has grown up with digital music and video, and see nothing wrong with sharing what's on their electronic gizmos with others. Those RIAA lawsuits that are discussed ad infinitum here affect just a tiny percentage of those who have downloaded/uploaded/shared/partaken of "pirated" material. The RIAA does not have the resources to systematically go after every file sharer, and neither does the government have the resources to prosecute them all, either, any more than they have the ability to ticket every speeder or lock up every casual toker. People who want to freely share their digital data will continue to do so. The alleged, mysterious treaty alluded to may make it easier to some extent for major infringers to be targeted, but there aren't enough prosecutors, judges, and jails in the world to nail everyone who has a few songs or movies that they didn't pay for on their hard drives or portable devices.
Possessing pot has been illegal for a long time, yet millions of people still regularly light up, and most of them have never done jail time. More draconian laws regarding copyright infringement won't make much difference, either.
That's more akin to being charged a performance licence for your car radio while your windows are rolled down.
Now that is a concept I could embrace, if it serves to keep those young idjits with the mega-bass boom boxes on wheels from cruising my neighborhood and disturbing my peace.
(Insert obligatory "now get off my lawn" meme here...)
At this point, I'm afraid that the only way to save our country is with a revolution. People everywhere are certainly getting angry enough for something like that to happen...
Revolution -- hell, yeah, I'm all for that! Count me in!!
Er...that is unless it conflicts with any of my TV shows. And, um...there's not going to be any violence like, say, shooting or anything, right? This is not going to, like, get me in trouble or anything like that, is it?
Oh, hell...on second thought, is there just somewhere I can send a check or something? But, hey, you need someone to post to Internet forums or call some talk shows, I'm your man!
A friend who sells books on eBay often sells used copies of the Jane's books (Jane's All the World's Aircraft, Jane's Fighting Ships, etc.), the annual editions of which sell new for $900+. He's listed many of these over the years, but recently out of nowhere he gets an inquisitory e-mail from Jane's, demanding that he inform them of the source from which he obtained the books, and strongly suggesting that he not list them anymore because the reduced prices he gets for resale are "diminishing the perceived value of our products." He was tempted to tell them what to stick where, but as he put it, "the next step may be legal, and right or wrong, I don't want to get into a transatlantic pissing match over this."
(So now, he sends any Jane's books he finds to me, I list them, and we split the profits. And no nastygrams from across the pond yet. Yay for me.)
A good example, though, of how even a legally misguided implied threat can intimidate someone. If my friend sold nothing but Jane's books, he'd be more inclined to fight, but he does a decent business without them, and just figures he'll avoid getting into something that he has neither the time or money to deal with.
They make it much easier, faster, and cheaper to smuggle goods and other illegal activities across state lines. Obviously they were made to promote such illegal activities...
Well, both the Interstate system (originally known as the National System of Interstate and Defense Highways) and the Internet (which grew out of ARPANET) were both originally conceived at least in part with government/military interests in mind.
You just can't trust civilians with these things...
My impression is that s/he just doesn't think that it's well-defined enough to depend on, much less teach to children. To his/her point in an above thread...
Given that the percentage of Slashdot users who have a uterus is small enough to be rounded to zero, I think we can drop the contrived sexless pseudo-pronouns.....
This is true, however, this is also the reason you don't piss off cops. Don't let them violate your rights, sure, but don't be a jerk. They will instantly acquire an almost da Vinci-like creativity for inventing reasons you've broken the law.
They don't need to "invent" anything. Why do you think all jurisdictions have those "catch-all" laws on the books, like "disorderly conduct" or "creating a disturbance" or "being a public nuisance." These laws are deliberately vague so that if you act like a dick when the cop stops you, he's got plenty of leeway to charge you with something.
Slashdot Mirror
With or without a cellphone, this could be very closely related to Doug Adams' SEP effect. I think sometimes people see things that are so bizarre and out of context that it's easier to subconsciously edit out the image rather than try to make sense of it. Or, alternately, some people are so jaded and inattentive to begin with that the anomaly doesn't even register.
Case in point is a similar college campus experiment I read about. Researchers posed as clipboard-bearing survey takers. One would approach a student and begin asking questions. At some point, in a deftly choreographed stunt, two confederates posing as workmen would briefly pass between interviewer and interviewee, carrying a large door that momentarily obscured sight of the interviewer. A quick switch was made during the maneuver, so that when the door was no longer obscuring sight a few seconds later, there was now a completely different person conducting the interview, picking up where the first had left off and acting totally matter of fact, as if nothing unusual had just happened. What they found was that, even when using obvious extremes of appearance (say, a large African-American man replaced by a small Asian woman), a significant percentage of the subjects never batted an eye, and would later deny they had seen anything unusual when "debriefed" after the mock survey was completed.
There is more and more a trend towards structuring society in such a manner as to accommodate every potential disability, no matter how small the number of affected individuals, in every possible scenario and situation. There has to be a reasonable middle-ground that will assist most disabled folks most of the time, while not unduly burdening or inconveniencing the majority.
I'm all for reasonable accommodations for the disabled. Things like curb cuts and ramps for wheelchair users come to mind. They assist the disabled while still permitting normal use by everyone else. But carry access for the disabled to an extreme, and it just starts to become ludicrous. Should office employees be banned from using perfume, aftershave, or scented hair products because a single employee has an allergy? Must buses accommodate wheelchair users when that extra few minutes loading a passenger may well mean missing a transfer connection and making the other 20 or 30 riders late for work? And while I understand the need of some people for service dogs, I don't really want one at the table next to me in a restaurant.
Again, reasonable accommodations are fine, but I also believe disabled people have to accept at some point that there are some things they just aren't going to be able to do, certain places they can't access, and situations that are best avoided. And, unfortunately, the less common and more obscure/unusual your disability, the greater the odds of limitations. That may not sound sympathetic or P.C., but it's realistic.
I remember her being on Kids TV at about 12. A Maxim Calendar of her is just creepy.
All adults were 12 at one time. Including every other female who has posed for Maxim. How is that creepy?
This high-risk, long-range Internet research will kick into high gear in 2010, as the US federal government ramps up funding...
Yeah, I concur...I was right there until I reached that phrase. Sure, we know the Feds would like a "new," "revamped" Internet...one with far more built-in peepholes, and some sort of licensing structure to positively identify users. Thanks, but no thanks...
Your country spends way too much time litigating stupid shit instead of actually solving problems.
Hey, you have to go with whatever talents you have. We happen to be very good at litigating stupid shit, thank you. Actually solving problems, not so much....besides being a lot harder, it might actually reduce the amount of stupid shit available to litigate. Then where would we be? Who's going to pay to retrain all those out of work Stupid Shit Litigators? We might get desperate and have to import other countries' stupid shit to litigate. What would that do to our balance of trade?
Clearly, you just do not understand how America works...
Also, most poor people are too busy just trying to survive to plot and plan a terrorist attack. A store holdup, maybe. Isolated violence against individuals, sure. A mass terror attack, not so much. But the children of privilege, who have all their material needs met, and are well-educated, often have a lot of time on their hands. Couple that idleness with intelligence, the money to travel, and the general ennui that can't be satiated with material things, and you're looking at a breeding ground for radicalization in an Islamic society. Sure, the poor can hold extreme religious views, but they're pretty much powerless to act on them to any great extent.
9/11 had such a profound impact on the U.S. because it was spectacular, it was unprecedented, and it happened here. And, thanks to the 24/7 cable news cycle, we watched it unfolding, live, from our living rooms.
Anytime you have a large number of fatalities occurring from a single spectacular event, it will have a stronger emotional impact than a much higher cumulative tally of deaths over time. That's why airliner crashes, for example, are newsworthy and annual statistics are not -- those 100, 200, 300 deaths may be statistically a drop in the bucket compared to the annual deaths from car crashes, cancer, or whatever, but they occurred in a single, dramatic event.
The notion of using airplanes, and civilian airliners at that, as flying bombs was also not a possibility that was in the popular consciousness, not even as a plot element in an action movie. (How many people commented, on 9/11 and in the days following, that it all seemed unreal, like watching a movie and not reality?) And crash those planes into three of the most well-known, high-profile buildings in the world (the two WTC towers and the Pentagon), with a fourth crash into the White House or the Capitol (depending on who you believe) prematurely thwarted, and you have the ingredients for a real-life spectacular that will have a profound impact, regardless of how the numbers stack up statistically.
And it happened on U.S. soil. Prior to 9/11, with the possible exception of the OKC bombing, large scale terrorist attacks were something that happened in those "other" countries around the world. And with the perpetrators being "foreigners" (as opposed to a domestic malcontent like McVeigh and whatever conspirators he may or may not have had, depending on what you believe), and it's not hard to fathom the almost immediate adoption of the "America is under attack" and "we are at war" memes that were so adroitly exploited by the government.
Finally, the smug xenophobia and self-centeredness of Americans played a role. Why do you think a domestic plane crash, even a smaller commuter plane with fewer than 100 souls on board, gets hours of constant, live coverage on CNN while a jumbo jet with hundreds aboard crashing halfway around the world merits but a sentence or two at the hourly update? Think of the impact Hurricane Katrina had while killing fewer than 2000, compared to the Asian tsunami that killed 250,000 five years ago. Now consider how much attention, concern, and TV time were devoted to both. Sure, the Pacific tsunami did get some screen time, especially now that the ubiquitous presence of video cameras in average people's hands gave us some shaky, dramatic, horrifying footage to see. (Though I strongly suspect that if there had been no video at all, the event would have been even more marginalized on U.S. media.) But with the exception of a handful of Western tourists caught up in the disaster, those quarter million souls are "other" people..."fer'iners"...you know, them people that dress weird and talk funny and don't look like us. On the scale of emotional involvement, a couple thousand American lives merits an "OMG, this is horrible, something must be done" while 250,000 Indonesians, Sri Lankans, Thais, et. al. elicits an almost Seinfeldesque "Ah, that's a shame....wonder what's on HBO right now..."
So, it's not sheer numbers that determine what impact death has on a culture; it's all about context. Who got killed, where, how and why.
I'd rather see the end to cash rather than cheques. I hate when people pay with cash.. sitting there holding up the line while they count their dimes and pennies, then end up dropping them. A card is so easy to use, swipe and done. One thing I don't like about cards is that they can track your purchases and locations.
Your last sentence gives the reason why your first sentence is undesired from a privacy standpoint. Cash still provides an almost traceless means of exchange. When everything becomes an electronic transfer, anyone who wants to poke into your financial affairs and monitor your purchases can do so.
As for checks, people still like to use them primarily because you if you're technically broke but facing an imminent need to buy something, you can still write a check Tuesday, knowing it won't be cleared until Thursday when the money will be in your account. This doesn't work at larger retailers now, since they do electronically run it through to verify if sufficient funds exist, but at smaller stores or for private exchange between two individuals, this is still an option.
There are still some valid reasons to use checks in certain situations. Rather than eliminating them entirely, let companies, retailers, and individuals decide for themselves whether or not they will continue to accept checks as policy, and let everyone else that wants to accept them, accept them. But let's keep the option. (Choice is good.)
Have they tried educating rather than penalising? Strange as it may see, most of us respond positively to scientific fact rather than an impersonal fine.
What planet do you live on? Facts don't dissuade people from doing what they want to do. A lot of it in this case is self-overestimation: people will continue to cell/text/IM while they drive because in spite of the evidence, they are all convinced that they are an exception to the rule and can do these things and still drive safely. In their minds, those studies and laws apply to all those other people, not me. It's very reminiscent of "well, most people probably shouldn't drive after drinking, but I can do it just fine."
I think the best way to "think of the children" is to teach the children. If you don't want little Lisa to text and drive into a horrible wreck, teach her how to text and drive responsibly.
How about teaching little Lisa to keep both hands on the wheel, both eyes on the road, and her mind focused on driving? How about teaching her that that phone call or text can wait until she gets where she's going? How about teaching her that the world won't come to an end if she's not constantly in touch with her little friends 24/7?
Every time I hear the "Well, if you have nothing to hide..." canard, I want to scream. I have everything to hide -- my LIFE. To me, it doesn't matter if my life is perfect, "normal," and utterly free of sin, excess, and debauchery -- it's still MY life, and no one else's business. I am currently (AFAIK) committing no crimes or acts of moral turpitude, yet that still doesn't mean I want my conversations, my financial transactions, my e-mail and browsing history, the books I read or music I listen to, etc. open to scrutiny, public, private, or governmental. It's still MY life, and my personal business, and I'll be damned if you or anyone else have a right to poke into it without my expressed consent.
Secondly, if this is their typical method of going after people, it assures that they will ONLY catch the casual browser and never catch the actual distributes or even producers of this stuff. Anyone who is a habitual cyber criminal is going to know better than to keep stuff like that on an unsecure hard-drive for any period of time. They'll likely securely delete and wipe their drives regularly. These idiots were so completely out of it that they thought it was a good idea to suddenly consider it urgent to go after someone who once did something two years ago and has apparently not done so since?
Because this poor sap is one of the best examples of "low hanging fruit." They're going after him because it's a hell of a lot easier than trying to trace the original source of the images and nail the bastards who truly harmed the kids in the first place. They rack up another CP conviction, moralists are satisfied that another pedo has been nailed, and the general public cheers that the good guys are thinking of the children and fighting the scourge. Makes everyone feel warm and fuzzy (except, alas, the poor dude now serving hard time with "Rollo, the Amateur Proctologist" for a cellmate) and pure and smug in spite of the fact that the conviction does nothing -- repeat, NOTHING -- to actually put even the smallest dent in the problem of kiddie porn. He's just like those tens of thousands of small-time casual drug users doing jail time while the big cartels go merrily on.
Is everyone in the USA crazy or what?
"Yes." Next question?
Why do we have to follow the letter of the law and not the spirit of the law?
Because we're more and more living in a "zero tolerance" society now. Everything must be black-and-white, either/or, no grey areas, no need to use reason or common sense to look at things like context, intent, actual impact/damage, etc. Easier that way: you don't have to think (nasty habit, that) or take responsibility for making decisions.
You could always use the old Three Stooges line: "When were you born?" "I don't remember -- I was pretty young at the time..."
Naturally this is only being used to break encryption on computers seized with a warrant and suspected of harboring child pornography.
Naturally. (*wink-wink* *nudge-nudge* say no more...)
Fuck you, you fucking fucks!
Well, that certainly illustrates the diversity of the word!
Much better is the real-life example once related in an article I read. A machine in a factory had broken down, and when this guy asked the repairman what was wrong with it, he just sighed, "Fuckin' fucker's fucked."
You're making the fundamental assumption here that no legislature would ever pass a law that couldn't achieve the stated purpose of the law.
History tends to show that few, if any, laws achieve their stated purposes. Though they pretty much all tend to remove a bit of freedom...
Do speed limits stop most drivers from speeding? No. Do drug laws thwart most users of illegal substances? No. It is a matter of (a) a large mass of citizens who disagree with the law, and (b) insufficient resources to punish anywhere near all who break it.
We have an enormous younger generation that has grown up with digital music and video, and see nothing wrong with sharing what's on their electronic gizmos with others. Those RIAA lawsuits that are discussed ad infinitum here affect just a tiny percentage of those who have downloaded/uploaded/shared/partaken of "pirated" material. The RIAA does not have the resources to systematically go after every file sharer, and neither does the government have the resources to prosecute them all, either, any more than they have the ability to ticket every speeder or lock up every casual toker. People who want to freely share their digital data will continue to do so. The alleged, mysterious treaty alluded to may make it easier to some extent for major infringers to be targeted, but there aren't enough prosecutors, judges, and jails in the world to nail everyone who has a few songs or movies that they didn't pay for on their hard drives or portable devices.
Possessing pot has been illegal for a long time, yet millions of people still regularly light up, and most of them have never done jail time. More draconian laws regarding copyright infringement won't make much difference, either.
That's more akin to being charged a performance licence for your car radio while your windows are rolled down.
Now that is a concept I could embrace, if it serves to keep those young idjits with the mega-bass boom boxes on wheels from cruising my neighborhood and disturbing my peace.
(Insert obligatory "now get off my lawn" meme here...)
At this point, I'm afraid that the only way to save our country is with a revolution. People everywhere are certainly getting angry enough for something like that to happen...
Revolution -- hell, yeah, I'm all for that! Count me in!!
Er...that is unless it conflicts with any of my TV shows. And, um...there's not going to be any violence like, say, shooting or anything, right? This is not going to, like, get me in trouble or anything like that, is it?
Oh, hell...on second thought, is there just somewhere I can send a check or something? But, hey, you need someone to post to Internet forums or call some talk shows, I'm your man!
Sincerely,
Mr. Typical American
Therefore, please send a royalty of $5 USD for each infringement (aka view) to my papal account www-data@localhost.
I had no idea His Holiness was a Slashdot user....
A friend who sells books on eBay often sells used copies of the Jane's books (Jane's All the World's Aircraft, Jane's Fighting Ships, etc.), the annual editions of which sell new for $900+. He's listed many of these over the years, but recently out of nowhere he gets an inquisitory e-mail from Jane's, demanding that he inform them of the source from which he obtained the books, and strongly suggesting that he not list them anymore because the reduced prices he gets for resale are "diminishing the perceived value of our products." He was tempted to tell them what to stick where, but as he put it, "the next step may be legal, and right or wrong, I don't want to get into a transatlantic pissing match over this."
(So now, he sends any Jane's books he finds to me, I list them, and we split the profits. And no nastygrams from across the pond yet. Yay for me.)
A good example, though, of how even a legally misguided implied threat can intimidate someone. If my friend sold nothing but Jane's books, he'd be more inclined to fight, but he does a decent business without them, and just figures he'll avoid getting into something that he has neither the time or money to deal with.
They make it much easier, faster, and cheaper to smuggle goods and other illegal activities across state lines. Obviously they were made to promote such illegal activities...
Well, both the Interstate system (originally known as the National System of Interstate and Defense Highways) and the Internet (which grew out of ARPANET) were both originally conceived at least in part with government/military interests in mind.
You just can't trust civilians with these things...
My impression is that s/he just doesn't think that it's well-defined enough to depend on, much less teach to children. To his/her point in an above thread...
Given that the percentage of Slashdot users who have a uterus is small enough to be rounded to zero, I think we can drop the contrived sexless pseudo-pronouns.....
This is true, however, this is also the reason you don't piss off cops. Don't let them violate your rights, sure, but don't be a jerk. They will instantly acquire an almost da Vinci-like creativity for inventing reasons you've broken the law.
They don't need to "invent" anything. Why do you think all jurisdictions have those "catch-all" laws on the books, like "disorderly conduct" or "creating a disturbance" or "being a public nuisance." These laws are deliberately vague so that if you act like a dick when the cop stops you, he's got plenty of leeway to charge you with something.
Forget anonymity. I'm better off living in a glass house, so it's easier for me to know when I need to yell "Get off my lawn!"
That's what they make electric fences for. A far better deterrent, and you don't get hoarse yelling at the little bastards...