Still though, collecting passwords is one thing, sure. However, USING a password that you have collected to gain unauthorized access to a box is still unauthorized access.... fundamentally no different than exploiting a software bug to get in.
I think Unions are a good thing. However, Uninions nee dto be well run. A poorly run or corrupt union can be worst than no union at all.
In principal though I agree with the "United we negotiate, divided we beg" philosophy (or I would if I worked at the corperate world, motives are different working in Acedemia)
> why can't you see that the corporate world is
> not about "freedom" it's about $$$$
Exactly. Much like benevolent dictators, sure sometimes a corperation comes by that does care about such things, but they are the exception, not the rule.
However, any company can be made to care about such freedoms when their bottom line is effected by them. Which is why those of us who care about freedom should use whatever influence we may have to make sure that it DOES effect their bottom line.
A corperation that violates the GPL or other free software license is uncatchable, until they piss off an employee who decides to blow the whistle.
if enough of the work force insists on not selling their rights away to their employer, then they will be forced to not make people sign their rights away.
The only way things will change are to make people understand the importance of standing up for their own rights, and that a job is not worth having if it means that you have to sign away that which you hold dear.
Ok... You could argue that what happened (the cracking) was on russian machines owned by a russion, and the FBI has no jurisdiction there, so no warrent.
They may have thus broken Russian law, but until they go to russia (or russia petitions for extradition (assuming there is a treaty allowing it)) there is no problem.
SO.,.. what the FBI is saying is, what happens on a server in another country, happens in that country according to that countries law:)
I would be happy to see that argument set a precident in court. Pleased as punch I would be.
So what _I_ as a US citizen put up on a web page hosted in another countru, should be governed by THAT countries law...not US law. I am down with that.
He was given a challenge where it was obvious that the giver knew it was impossible (he never said he would use random data, but it would be the obvious way to give someone an uncompressable file - and he did it)
So he took this "impossible challange" and attacked the challenge itself. The challenge said "file size" so he put the data somewhere else.
So he showed up the trickster. Of course, the trickster then got defensive and said "no wait you didn't win" and started making up new rules... typical really:)
Well in theory you could do it for a couple of hundred (less if you have free scrap metal and or charcoal) by building a small foundry and then building a lathe (believe it or not, a guy by the name of Gingery did it, and published a set of books on it)
For the more practical person though, a metal lathe can be bought for less than a thousand. A drill press can then be made, or purchased for another couple of hundred.
You don't need much more. My guess is an initial investment of $1200 or so would set a person well on their way to producing illicit guns. Even making proper bullets would be trivial with this sort of equipment. (if its not quite ideal)
Oh, need to cast something? You can MAKE a simple furnace and setup a simple foundry for around $50 or so. Works great for bullets of all kinds.
My cousin has a bullet filling setup. Simple press. One could easily be custom made with little more than the lathe and drill press.
crude black powders wont prove hard to make.
remember... we are thinking black market here. Few are going to spend the bucks to "do it right" or put in real quality control. They will cut corners as muchj as possible. Even if 15 out of every hundred of these guns blows up within the first dozen times you shoot it - the producers will STILL make a mint.
Heh no. They sit around talking about how easy it would be for them to break into cars, if they wanted to, and go aroun dgiving people advice on how to not have their cars broken into:)
Interesting but again.... this is not an attempt to prosecute people. It is watching them - the other part of entrapment is the goal - in entrapment the idea is to catch the criminal, here the goal is to "study the criminal in his natural habitat"... not to interfere, but to study (much like the discovery chanel where cameras will follow wild animals and document their activities, not stopping them from being killed by the elements or predetors, nor stopping them from killing other animals)
It would be kind of like buying a car thats a common target, parking it in the good times parking lot (local place, more cars get stolen from that lot each week then the whole rest of the city combined - last i checked anyway), and then hiding cameras to watch it, and see how the theif gets in and takes it.
does he use a slim jim? How does he defeat the ignition lock? etc etc. Maybe we will catch something that we havn't seen before.
Not a wholly bad example eather. Evidently the "black hat" car stealing community has their own guide files and standard ways of teaching the trade, much like script kiddies. (saw a news show that interviewed an ex car theif and showed some of the manuals a while back)
Well kinda yea. Actually there has always been some sort of prohibition. Alcohol prohibition was the big one that turned some crooks into very wealthy men (like Capone and the other famous gangsters).
However, there have always been "protection rackets" and the like. There are lots of places for organized crime to dig in and make money. However, prohibition of products is their real gold mine. Organized crime of one sort or another has been around for centuries. (like early Colonists who used to smuggle goods around to skirt colonial taxation).
While prisons themselves may not be very profitable, they are profitable to the people that they employ (corrections offciers). They are profitable for companies that sell supllies, and contract companies that BUILD prisons (or do any sort of upkeep work)
Also, who runs the "jail store". I didn't know about this till a friend got arrested recently (underage girl lies about her age... need I say more?) this may vary by state but the inmates have to BUY soap, shampoo, razors etc. They can't bring their own, they have to bring money to buy them at the prison store! (this friend is in rhode island btw)
So sure, running a prison costs money, but there are plenty of vultures willing to make a buck from it.
But yea, firearms dealers selling guns to the police. Not to mention helicopters with infrared cameras (used to detect indoor pot growing setups based on heat emissions - check out the Frontline Episode on the war on marijuana to see them in use by police)
Lots of people are profiting here. Not to mention police who participate in the DARE program. Sit around talking with kids about drugs (gee doesn't it seem like a DOCTOR would do a better job of that? Since when does becomming a cop require one to go through med school?) instead of doing real work - like catching theives, murderers, and rapists.
> Quick question--Is 2+2=5 close enough to be
> acceptable? What about 2+2=3.9? If these are not
> acceptable, then why is "thru" when you mean
> "through"?
Yes. In some situations 2+2 = 5 is close enough. You also make my case for me, you obviously understood that "thru" meant "through" - which is my own sound-alike abreiviation and not a misspelling.
Just like 3.14 is often close enough to pi. Unless you are talking pure math (as oposed to math being applied to solve a problem) then at some level rounding is acceptable.
So yes, sometimes 5 is close enough to 4. Just like in human communication via text, "rounding" is acceptable.
This occurs in 3 ways (that I have identified)
Abreviations:
r u going 2 the mall?
brb afk
IANAL but WYSIWYG
or as I tend to do:
tho thru etc etc. Comes from doing alot
of typing and being lazy. Humans are lazy, and
laziness has nothing to do with education.
If you don't like which things I abreviate, well, then fuck you. If you really want to solve that problem, then I put an offer on the table. You may come here and take dictation to do my typing for me. Then you may use whichever abreviations bother you the least (or none at all).
Typos:
teh and its numerous friends. (usually easy to
catch, and usually caught immediatly after typing.
they happen - again humans are lazy, I do enough typing of various types that, unless I am writting te\chnical text, I don't go back and look for them - they are usually innocuous)
"Misspellings":
English isn't an easy language and has a hundred exceptions to every rule. I shoot for spell-alike if I can and sound-alike if I can't. Works good for me.
> Sorry. I'm not normally this combatitive, but
> your defense of symple lazynes kinda iritated
> mi.)
If other peoples laziness bothers you, then perhaps you should just not read it. Your not doing the typing, so don't criticize how its done.
Or better yet, criticize all you want (you are doing the typing in that case), but you will be either argued with, or ignored.
> The making of guns is FAR from simple. If you
> truly believe someone would build one at home
> from common household parts your a moron.
You can't make methamphetamine from "common household chemicals", but the chemicals are easy to obtain. Hence the explosion of in-home meth labs (which is much more dangerous to make than guns).
Can you do it with "common household" stuff. Hell no. But buying a lathe doesn't draw much attention. With a lathe you can make a bullett filling tool, barrels, etc.
Few hundred dollar investment.
> By your logic then rape should be legal because
> people will just do it anyway since it's
> illegal.
Only if it had no victem. It also has little comercial value. Guns can be produced easily in a makeshift gunmaking shop. Turning your basement into a gunsmith shop could be done easily and woul dbe harder to detect, than a pot garden (which can be found with infrared cameras from helicopters)
A study was done in switzerland a couple of years back. They did a study on "what happens if we sell clean heroin to addicts at a price comparable to what it would be if it were legal (prohibition tends to greatly inflate prices), and gave them a safe place to use it".
The study showed a great reduction in the crimes commited by this group of people. In fact, (I forget the number 60%-80% range) a huge reduction in the illicit activities (as gauged by the amount of money they were taking in from illicit activities) within a very short period of time.
They were able to hold down jobs, and lead otherwise normal lives. All because they didn't have to pay overly inflated black market prices (where its cheaper per gram to buy gold than most drugs).
Cig smokers are no less addicted than the worst heroin addicts (actually, by all accounts, its easier to quit heroin). Can't remember the last time I heard of someone being mugged so that a junkie could afford a pack of cigs.
As far as I can see, legalizing (which is the same as decriminilizing, because if its not criminal, then its legal) and regulating seem to be wins for everyone. Wins for parents (since now the drug dealers are licensed buisnesses and can be controlled and stopped from selling to kids), a win for users (clean drugs at fair prices, no fear of arrest and jail time).
The only people its not a win for are the prisons (they would lose a signifigant portion of their population, as the number of prisoners in jail for non-violent drug offences dwarfs all violent crimes) and the street level pushers, who would no longer have a profitable buisness.
What value do guns provide to society? Well what value do kiddie bopper boy groups provide to society? What value does alcogol provide to our society?
I think it is plain: government enforced prohibition does not work. When a person wants something, they will obtain it. If there are enough people who want something and are willing to pay money for it, someone will produce it.
There will be arms rings "diverting" guns from legal shipments to the police and armed forces (well I supose they already exist for some things).
There will be illegal production houses making guns. Its not hard. It would take less to teach someone how to use a few machine tools to make a gun than to make drugs.
Sure, these wouldn't be highquality guns. Hell, alot would probably blow up in peoples hands after a few rounds... but they would still be guns.
Why make an even larger black market? Hasn't our government been funding black markets by creating niches for them for entirely too long?
Are there things that our government needs to prohibit? Sure, actions. We prohibit murder, we prohibit rape. However, at least those are crimes with victems and evidence, we can hunt for them.
Owning a gun would be another crime with no victem. Another product that can be easily made, transported and sold. AAnother niche black market.
Do we really need to make organized crime organizations more profitable?
They always have effects on communities that are many times worst than the ills that we try to prohibit in the first place.
Just look at alcohol prohibition (which made alcohol many times more available to children than previously, or currently). Or drug prohibition.
Ok... calm down. Take a drink. Maybe pop some valium or something. Then go back and re-read the post that you were replying to.
He said "I can better see how they might blame". Not "They should blame" or "I agree lets blame all the media companies".
Then he said:
"But I still wouldn't blame the MPAA, RIAA, and much less, a gaming company"
So um... besides that, yea I agree. this is silly, are these people just stupid and looking to lash out against percieved wrongs? or are they money grubbing amoral wackos who are looking to capitalise on their own pain?
I see. Interesting concept. Probably partially. Still. Even your example is not very hard to read. However, alot of it is bad.
While most of the spelling differences that you used in your example are possible, most are not common ones. They are not the type that most people use. Firstly that is.
Secondly, while many people may use some similar spellings, few use all of them at once, as you did. Also, many of your examples are more examples of typos than creative spelling.
Typos, however, tend to be regular. Things like "teh" for "the". A person who spends alot of time typing has an easy time reading through them.
I am, personally, of the opinion that the time spent proofreading and hunting down such typos that are not caught immediatly (as most are) is wasted time.
As for general lack of education, I think thats a pretty silly assumption to make. This is one specific area which some people accel at where others don't. Its also, when your talking about a persons native language, rooted in very early childhood development. Really has very very little to do with "general education".
The only times that I ever see things spelled so unfortunatly rthat they are AT ALL hard to read is when people, like yourself, purposfully use LOTS of different spellings in rapid succession as an example of why "spelling is important".
Yup... napster is on deaths door now. Its Alienating its userbase.
Now people will switch to the next big thing. Life will march. We will start to have to see stories about the RIAA fighting Flapster, the new music sharing service that claims to not be making the mistakes napeter made...and the whole damned comedy will begin all over again.
What fun, what joy. Whatever.
Hows about people just start setting up freenet nodes and be done with it. At least freenet has a real purpose - making censorship of any type, for any reason, impossible. Whats even better, its decentralised and it will lead to lower network loads between networks as the number of distributed servers grows.
Win situation for everyone. Well... ok not everyone, but everyone who wants such a system to exist:)
Perhaps not everyone believes in so called "correct" spelling. I know that I don't.
I have always said that its a damned unimaginitive fool who can only think of one way to spell a word.
There is an old phrase "can't see the forrest for the trees". Sometimes little details matter, sure. Spelling isn't one of them. As long as you can read it and get the meaning, thats whats important.
Nothing annoys me more than a person who nitpicks about the smallest details and then goes on to demonstrate that they have no comprehension of the bigger picture.
(especially when its plain that being unable to figure out what word was meant was not actually a problem for them)
> I smoke, and frankly, I'd rather spend my last
> days wringing the mucus out of my shriveled,
> blackened lungs than have the pleasure of
> living to the age of 175, all the while sharing
> oxygen with snotty self righteous fucks like
> that.
Heh yea. Their propaganda campaign just goes too far. Its really sick I think.
I don't smoke, never have (not tobacco anyway), but man, their campaign almost makes me want to, just because they are so obnoxious.
As bill hicks said "I would quit smoking if I didn't think I would become one of them".
This was in a schoolyard or some such place, possibly a study hall (did the article say?). The rules of conduct are different there then in say a classroom.
Kids joke, kids interact with their peers. This sort of thing and more is to be expected. In fact, any school that says that this wont be tolerated in this context is being unrealistic at best.
Plainly it was not only a sarchastic remark, but he was baited (whether intentionally or not, it sounds like they were giving him a hard time for their own amusement and never expected him to respond with words at all). I would have probably reacted similarly, or "worst".
You might as well try to forbid the sun from shining or the couds from raining. A school has just as much control over these situations as it does over them. It is only their own reacations that they can control. This time, their reaction was WAY out of line.
> He should find out who ratted him out and make
> their life difficult.
Well the old saying goes "Snitches get stitches"
I do have to wonder what would posess a person to go to the school and report a statment like that? How paranoid are people. I mean, there are things I could see reporting, but sarcastic comments?
Making a smartass crack about guns and toying weith a key case like its a gun (and obviously not fooling anyone, nor trying to) needs to be justified?
since when has making a sarchatic comment acompanied by body movements with a harmless prop needed to be "justified"
If anyone needed a talking to, its the student who reported him. "Get a sense of humor", "Don't take sarchastic remarks so seriously", "Get a life".
Or perhaps its the school administrators. One student reports a comment and there is NO investigation, no questions asked, jump right to punitive measures?!?
Slashdot Mirror
That wasn't in the article.
Still though, collecting passwords is one thing, sure. However, USING a password that you have collected to gain unauthorized access to a box is still unauthorized access.... fundamentally no different than exploiting a software bug to get in.
Its still a form of cracking
-Steve
I too agree.... but am cautious.
I think Unions are a good thing. However, Uninions nee dto be well run. A poorly run or corrupt union can be worst than no union at all.
In principal though I agree with the "United we negotiate, divided we beg" philosophy (or I would if I worked at the corperate world, motives are different working in Acedemia)
-Steve
> why can't you see that the corporate world is
> not about "freedom" it's about $$$$
Exactly. Much like benevolent dictators, sure sometimes a corperation comes by that does care about such things, but they are the exception, not the rule.
However, any company can be made to care about such freedoms when their bottom line is effected by them. Which is why those of us who care about freedom should use whatever influence we may have to make sure that it DOES effect their bottom line.
A corperation that violates the GPL or other free software license is uncatchable, until they piss off an employee who decides to blow the whistle.
if enough of the work force insists on not selling their rights away to their employer, then they will be forced to not make people sign their rights away.
The only way things will change are to make people understand the importance of standing up for their own rights, and that a job is not worth having if it means that you have to sign away that which you hold dear.
-Steve
Whats interesting here...
:)
Ok... You could argue that what happened (the cracking) was on russian machines owned by a russion, and the FBI has no jurisdiction there, so no warrent.
They may have thus broken Russian law, but until they go to russia (or russia petitions for extradition (assuming there is a treaty allowing it)) there is no problem.
SO.,.. what the FBI is saying is, what happens on a server in another country, happens in that country according to that countries law
I would be happy to see that argument set a precident in court. Pleased as punch I would be.
So what _I_ as a US citizen put up on a web page hosted in another countru, should be governed by THAT countries law...not US law. I am down with that.
-Steve
Yes exactly. Whats wrong with that?
:)
He was given a challenge where it was obvious that the giver knew it was impossible (he never said he would use random data, but it would be the obvious way to give someone an uncompressable file - and he did it)
So he took this "impossible challange" and attacked the challenge itself. The challenge said "file size" so he put the data somewhere else.
So he showed up the trickster. Of course, the trickster then got defensive and said "no wait you didn't win" and started making up new rules... typical really
-Steve
Well in theory you could do it for a couple of hundred (less if you have free scrap metal and or charcoal) by building a small foundry and then building a lathe (believe it or not, a guy by the name of Gingery did it, and published a set of books on it)
For the more practical person though, a metal lathe can be bought for less than a thousand. A drill press can then be made, or purchased for another couple of hundred.
You don't need much more. My guess is an initial investment of $1200 or so would set a person well on their way to producing illicit guns. Even making proper bullets would be trivial with this sort of equipment. (if its not quite ideal)
Oh, need to cast something? You can MAKE a simple furnace and setup a simple foundry for around $50 or so. Works great for bullets of all kinds.
My cousin has a bullet filling setup. Simple press. One could easily be custom made with little more than the lathe and drill press.
crude black powders wont prove hard to make.
remember... we are thinking black market here. Few are going to spend the bucks to "do it right" or put in real quality control. They will cut corners as muchj as possible. Even if 15 out of every hundred of these guns blows up within the first dozen times you shoot it - the producers will STILL make a mint.
-Steve
Oh my.... That sounds just divine :)
hmmm I may have to do something like that.
Actually.... hmmm maybe something graphical. Like a big pot leaf outline... so many possibilities.
Would need ALOT of diodes. hmmm where can I buy infra-red emmitting diodes cheap and in bulk?
-Steve
Heh no. They sit around talking about how easy it would be for them to break into cars, if they wanted to, and go aroun dgiving people advice on how to not have their cars broken into :)
-Steve
Interesting but again.... this is not an attempt to prosecute people. It is watching them - the other part of entrapment is the goal - in entrapment the idea is to catch the criminal, here the goal is to "study the criminal in his natural habitat"... not to interfere, but to study (much like the discovery chanel where cameras will follow wild animals and document their activities, not stopping them from being killed by the elements or predetors, nor stopping them from killing other animals)
It would be kind of like buying a car thats a common target, parking it in the good times parking lot (local place, more cars get stolen from that lot each week then the whole rest of the city combined - last i checked anyway), and then hiding cameras to watch it, and see how the theif gets in and takes it.
does he use a slim jim? How does he defeat the ignition lock? etc etc. Maybe we will catch something that we havn't seen before.
Not a wholly bad example eather. Evidently the "black hat" car stealing community has their own guide files and standard ways of teaching the trade, much like script kiddies. (saw a news show that interviewed an ex car theif and showed some of the manuals a while back)
-Steve
Well kinda yea. Actually there has always been some sort of prohibition. Alcohol prohibition was the big one that turned some crooks into very wealthy men (like Capone and the other famous gangsters).
However, there have always been "protection rackets" and the like. There are lots of places for organized crime to dig in and make money. However, prohibition of products is their real gold mine. Organized crime of one sort or another has been around for centuries. (like early Colonists who used to smuggle goods around to skirt colonial taxation).
-Steve
While prisons themselves may not be very profitable, they are profitable to the people that they employ (corrections offciers). They are profitable for companies that sell supllies, and contract companies that BUILD prisons (or do any sort of upkeep work)
Also, who runs the "jail store". I didn't know about this till a friend got arrested recently (underage girl lies about her age... need I say more?) this may vary by state but the inmates have to BUY soap, shampoo, razors etc. They can't bring their own, they have to bring money to buy them at the prison store! (this friend is in rhode island btw)
So sure, running a prison costs money, but there are plenty of vultures willing to make a buck from it.
But yea, firearms dealers selling guns to the police. Not to mention helicopters with infrared cameras (used to detect indoor pot growing setups based on heat emissions - check out the Frontline Episode on the war on marijuana to see them in use by police)
Lots of people are profiting here. Not to mention police who participate in the DARE program. Sit around talking with kids about drugs (gee doesn't it seem like a DOCTOR would do a better job of that? Since when does becomming a cop require one to go through med school?) instead of doing real work - like catching theives, murderers, and rapists.
-Steve
> Quick question--Is 2+2=5 close enough to be
> acceptable? What about 2+2=3.9? If these are not
> acceptable, then why is "thru" when you mean
> "through"?
Yes. In some situations 2+2 = 5 is close enough. You also make my case for me, you obviously understood that "thru" meant "through" - which is my own sound-alike abreiviation and not a misspelling.
Just like 3.14 is often close enough to pi. Unless you are talking pure math (as oposed to math being applied to solve a problem) then at some level rounding is acceptable.
So yes, sometimes 5 is close enough to 4. Just like in human communication via text, "rounding" is acceptable.
This occurs in 3 ways (that I have identified)
Abreviations:
r u going 2 the mall?
brb afk
IANAL but WYSIWYG
or as I tend to do:
tho thru etc etc. Comes from doing alot
of typing and being lazy. Humans are lazy, and
laziness has nothing to do with education.
If you don't like which things I abreviate, well, then fuck you. If you really want to solve that problem, then I put an offer on the table. You may come here and take dictation to do my typing for me. Then you may use whichever abreviations bother you the least (or none at all).
Typos:
teh and its numerous friends. (usually easy to
catch, and usually caught immediatly after typing.
they happen - again humans are lazy, I do enough typing of various types that, unless I am writting te\chnical text, I don't go back and look for them - they are usually innocuous)
"Misspellings":
English isn't an easy language and has a hundred exceptions to every rule. I shoot for spell-alike if I can and sound-alike if I can't. Works good for me.
> Sorry. I'm not normally this combatitive, but
> your defense of symple lazynes kinda iritated
> mi.)
If other peoples laziness bothers you, then perhaps you should just not read it. Your not doing the typing, so don't criticize how its done.
Or better yet, criticize all you want (you are doing the typing in that case), but you will be either argued with, or ignored.
-Steve
> The making of guns is FAR from simple. If you
> truly believe someone would build one at home
> from common household parts your a moron.
You can't make methamphetamine from "common household chemicals", but the chemicals are easy to obtain. Hence the explosion of in-home meth labs (which is much more dangerous to make than guns).
Can you do it with "common household" stuff. Hell no. But buying a lathe doesn't draw much attention. With a lathe you can make a bullett filling tool, barrels, etc.
Few hundred dollar investment.
> By your logic then rape should be legal because
> people will just do it anyway since it's
> illegal.
Only if it had no victem. It also has little comercial value. Guns can be produced easily in a makeshift gunmaking shop. Turning your basement into a gunsmith shop could be done easily and woul dbe harder to detect, than a pot garden (which can be found with infrared cameras from helicopters)
-Steve
Well....
A study was done in switzerland a couple of years back. They did a study on "what happens if we sell clean heroin to addicts at a price comparable to what it would be if it were legal (prohibition tends to greatly inflate prices), and gave them a safe place to use it".
The study showed a great reduction in the crimes commited by this group of people. In fact, (I forget the number 60%-80% range) a huge reduction in the illicit activities (as gauged by the amount of money they were taking in from illicit activities) within a very short period of time.
They were able to hold down jobs, and lead otherwise normal lives. All because they didn't have to pay overly inflated black market prices (where its cheaper per gram to buy gold than most drugs).
Cig smokers are no less addicted than the worst heroin addicts (actually, by all accounts, its easier to quit heroin). Can't remember the last time I heard of someone being mugged so that a junkie could afford a pack of cigs.
As far as I can see, legalizing (which is the same as decriminilizing, because if its not criminal, then its legal) and regulating seem to be wins for everyone. Wins for parents (since now the drug dealers are licensed buisnesses and can be controlled and stopped from selling to kids), a win for users (clean drugs at fair prices, no fear of arrest and jail time).
The only people its not a win for are the prisons (they would lose a signifigant portion of their population, as the number of prisoners in jail for non-violent drug offences dwarfs all violent crimes) and the street level pushers, who would no longer have a profitable buisness.
-Steve
I would go the other way.
What value do guns provide to society? Well what value do kiddie bopper boy groups provide to society? What value does alcogol provide to our society?
I think it is plain: government enforced prohibition does not work. When a person wants something, they will obtain it. If there are enough people who want something and are willing to pay money for it, someone will produce it.
There will be arms rings "diverting" guns from legal shipments to the police and armed forces (well I supose they already exist for some things).
There will be illegal production houses making guns. Its not hard. It would take less to teach someone how to use a few machine tools to make a gun than to make drugs.
Sure, these wouldn't be highquality guns. Hell, alot would probably blow up in peoples hands after a few rounds... but they would still be guns.
Why make an even larger black market? Hasn't our government been funding black markets by creating niches for them for entirely too long?
Are there things that our government needs to prohibit? Sure, actions. We prohibit murder, we prohibit rape. However, at least those are crimes with victems and evidence, we can hunt for them.
Owning a gun would be another crime with no victem. Another product that can be easily made, transported and sold. AAnother niche black market.
Do we really need to make organized crime organizations more profitable?
They always have effects on communities that are many times worst than the ills that we try to prohibit in the first place.
Just look at alcohol prohibition (which made alcohol many times more available to children than previously, or currently). Or drug prohibition.
-Steve
Ok... calm down. Take a drink. Maybe pop some valium or something. Then go back and re-read the post that you were replying to.
He said "I can better see how they might blame". Not "They should blame" or "I agree lets blame all the media companies".
Then he said:
"But I still wouldn't blame the MPAA, RIAA, and much less, a gaming company"
So um... besides that, yea I agree. this is silly, are these people just stupid and looking to lash out against percieved wrongs? or are they money grubbing amoral wackos who are looking to capitalise on their own pain?
-Steve
I see. Interesting concept. Probably partially. Still. Even your example is not very hard to read. However, alot of it is bad.
While most of the spelling differences that you used in your example are possible, most are not common ones. They are not the type that most people use. Firstly that is.
Secondly, while many people may use some similar spellings, few use all of them at once, as you did. Also, many of your examples are more examples of typos than creative spelling.
Typos, however, tend to be regular. Things like "teh" for "the". A person who spends alot of time typing has an easy time reading through them.
I am, personally, of the opinion that the time spent proofreading and hunting down such typos that are not caught immediatly (as most are) is wasted time.
As for general lack of education, I think thats a pretty silly assumption to make. This is one specific area which some people accel at where others don't. Its also, when your talking about a persons native language, rooted in very early childhood development. Really has very very little to do with "general education".
The only times that I ever see things spelled so unfortunatly rthat they are AT ALL hard to read is when people, like yourself, purposfully use LOTS of different spellings in rapid succession as an example of why "spelling is important".
-Steve
Yup... napster is on deaths door now. Its Alienating its userbase.
:)
Now people will switch to the next big thing. Life will march. We will start to have to see stories about the RIAA fighting Flapster, the new music sharing service that claims to not be making the mistakes napeter made...and the whole damned comedy will begin all over again.
What fun, what joy. Whatever.
Hows about people just start setting up freenet nodes and be done with it. At least freenet has a real purpose - making censorship of any type, for any reason, impossible. Whats even better, its decentralised and it will lead to lower network loads between networks as the number of distributed servers grows.
Win situation for everyone. Well... ok not everyone, but everyone who wants such a system to exist
-Steve
Perhaps not everyone believes in so called "correct" spelling. I know that I don't.
I have always said that its a damned unimaginitive fool who can only think of one way to spell a word.
There is an old phrase "can't see the forrest for the trees". Sometimes little details matter, sure. Spelling isn't one of them. As long as you can read it and get the meaning, thats whats important.
Nothing annoys me more than a person who nitpicks about the smallest details and then goes on to demonstrate that they have no comprehension of the bigger picture.
(especially when its plain that being unable to figure out what word was meant was not actually a problem for them)
-Steve
I do know how to spell sarchastic. Its not my fault that the people who write dictionaries often spell it differently.
Unimaginative folks if you ask me, what kind of idiot can only think of one way to spell a wurd?
-Steve
> I smoke, and frankly, I'd rather spend my last
> days wringing the mucus out of my shriveled,
> blackened lungs than have the pleasure of
> living to the age of 175, all the while sharing
> oxygen with snotty self righteous fucks like
> that.
Heh yea. Their propaganda campaign just goes too far. Its really sick I think.
I don't smoke, never have (not tobacco anyway), but man, their campaign almost makes me want to, just because they are so obnoxious.
As bill hicks said "I would quit smoking if I didn't think I would become one of them".
-Steve
Context is important here.
This was in a schoolyard or some such place, possibly a study hall (did the article say?). The rules of conduct are different there then in say a classroom.
Kids joke, kids interact with their peers. This sort of thing and more is to be expected. In fact, any school that says that this wont be tolerated in this context is being unrealistic at best.
Plainly it was not only a sarchastic remark, but he was baited (whether intentionally or not, it sounds like they were giving him a hard time for their own amusement and never expected him to respond with words at all). I would have probably reacted similarly, or "worst".
You might as well try to forbid the sun from shining or the couds from raining. A school has just as much control over these situations as it does over them. It is only their own reacations that they can control. This time, their reaction was WAY out of line.
-Steve
> He should find out who ratted him out and make
> their life difficult.
Well the old saying goes "Snitches get stitches"
I do have to wonder what would posess a person to go to the school and report a statment like that? How paranoid are people. I mean, there are things I could see reporting, but sarcastic comments?
"He said the word gun" ohhh scary.
-Steve
Justify his actions?
Making a smartass crack about guns and toying weith a key case like its a gun (and obviously not fooling anyone, nor trying to) needs to be justified?
since when has making a sarchatic comment acompanied by body movements with a harmless prop needed to be "justified"
If anyone needed a talking to, its the student who reported him. "Get a sense of humor", "Don't take sarchastic remarks so seriously", "Get a life".
Or perhaps its the school administrators. One student reports a comment and there is NO investigation, no questions asked, jump right to punitive measures?!?
Thats just insane.
-Steve
Unfortunaly whatwe don't have is enough money to line their pockets and grease their palms.
Fair representation is expensive you know.
-Steve
(who may be a bit too cynical)