> Any type of download "eats" bandwidth away from > other users. If 20% of the university is > downloading *BSD or linux ISO images, that will > prevent others from having full access to the > total bandwidth.
Very true...and if that became an issue we would need to find a way to deal with it. That has not yet happend.
> The administrator angle is a red herring to > cover up the fact that the universities are > pussying out in the face of the RIAA.
I can only speak from what _I_ have personally witnessed, and what I see says that is utter bullshit.
I may not be in the network group, but I see EVERY complaint the RIAA sends us about ftp sites etc (the adress it goes to forwards to a bunch of people in various groups)
There have been _NO_ RIAA complaints to us about napster. In fact, I have seen 0 complaints from them in over a month and a half now.
Hoever I do remember the day one of the network guys came in telling the story of how the student segment was completely saturated and, after much digging, were able to figure out that napster was the cause of the saturation.
I don't see how we can be "pussying out" when the RIAA hasn't even sent us a single complaint about it.
> If having MP3s of any type was illegal, you'd be > right. However some bands freely distribute > music in MP3 format and allow people to trade > them.
Actually copyright law explicitly allows the copying of audio recording. In fact, it is vague in a way that there is debate over whether it is legal to make copies for friends.
The law in this area of personal copying and trading is about as grey as law gets.
In any case...legality of mp3 trading is bayond the scope of network administration (that is the realm of lawyers). Napster eats bandwidth to the point that it does effect other users ability to use the system. That is legitamite reason to ban it, which of course leaves people still able to use ftp and http and get all sorts of MP3s.
> When you live on campus, for 9 months out of the > year, that IS your home. They pay tuition, > technology, and housing fees. They've paid for > it, they can use it as they see fit.
I agree with you...for a student, campus IS home. (temporary but home none the less).
However, the network is a shared resource. when the net is so saturated that real work can't be done, there is a problem, and a problem that can have a negative impact on other peoples education.
Yes, they pay for network connectivity, however so did everyone else. Here, our student network was very saturated with napster before we blocked it.
Yes, I am usually the first person to advocate free speach. Yes, I hate copyright laws and think it is generally right for people to break them. However, people need to live and work together, hogging all the bandwidth is unacceptable when others have real work to do.
Of course, I had no say in my employer (a university) blocking napster as I am not in charge of the routers and firewall, but I think they made the right decision for the circumstances
From what I have heard (never used napster myself) napster uses ALOT more bandwidth than it really should, its probably a design flaw. I doubt it was designed with the idea that multiple people on 1 segment might run it at the same time.
> Except for the fact that EVERY OS has these > types of bugs - I find it funny that not only > MS, but Solaris, all the flavors of *nix, etc, > all have security flaws...It really DOES come > down to fixing them.
It does and it doesn't. I think there are a couple of issues here. YES, most programmers make mistakes or fail to consider things and these bugs DO creep in, even in the skilled code of the best programmers. (being a programmer, and NOT one of "the best" I find it comforting to know they are human too)
It is a matter of learning from ones mistakes and the mistakes of others, and thinking about security.
You will not write secure code if you are not writting it from a security consious mindset. Every time your code takes input from a user, or anything outside of your own code, then you must be thinking to yourself "what if I get back what im not expecting".
Its easy to make the mistake of allocating a static bufffer thinking "no username will be longer than X chars", and never think someone might purposfully HOPE you assumed that.
Now...how does this relate to microsoft?
They are well known for having all night hacking runs for days on end as it comes down to the wire. When they see that release date aproaching, its "balls to the wall" time to code like a madman.
I do not think that that type of event is condusive to writting a secure system. Its allot easier to forgo bounds checking on every little variable that came from userspace and to take dangerous shortcuts as that clock ticks away.
Of course, you are right, careful programming only goes so far (however it *IS* the first step). After that response is what matters. I think that their response has shown to be pretty bad too.
They have earned a reputation for denying the existance of problems and stalling. They have made it difficult to find real information on the security problems in their OS. (back when I used windows...I found that every time I went to their website looking for security patches etc I found them increasingly hard to find every time)
> If you think that both major parties aren't > worth voting for, such that you're considering > not voting at all, why not find whichever > minority party you most agree with and voting > for them?
Well...at this stage in the game, about the only "Party" that might come close to advocating what I stand for would probably be the US Socialist party or the "Labor Party". However, they don't seem to be a "third party" with much support.
At the heart tho, I have some severe philosophical problems with "representative democracy".
The first being that it reduces the people's involvment in government down to a popularity contest, no more mature or meaningful than some high school student body election. "Hair, Teeth, smile" are the holy trinity of the political scene.
Secondly it puts a small elite in power. People who can be easily corrupted, and rewarded richly for their corruption (even if it were illegal, they could still take direct bribes through more round about and covert channels)
Thirdly, and perhaps worst of all, it gives the people a false sense of power. every election year you hear people saying "Don't throw your vote away" and that "We have the power", however no REAl change ever comes of it.
All this sense of power serves to do is make the poeople too complacent to revolt. It gives them a feeling as if they can work through the system for change, when in truth, the current system is so dug in that it just isn't going to happen.
If you have any doubt, listen to Jesse Venturas story. When he ran for mayor, both the Democrats and Republicans in his town joined forces against him. They said that he was the worst thing that could happen to the city, and painted him as a clown.
After he got elected, both sides aproached him seprately and asked him to join up with them. No morals have these people. How many people without the Unique mixture of fame and hard nose personality could have got in against that oposition? How many could have resisted the temptation after getting in?
Sure, he makes for a symbol of hope. However, it would take hundreds of men like him to cause even the beginings of change.
In the end, all people lik ehim could acomplish is short term gains. In the end, the system is made to support corruption and traditional politics. That I fear, is not fixable.
MANY states do not allow ballot initives. Federal level certainly doesn't. This means of course that you have to vote in someone who will do it.
The problem is, you have to vote in enough people who will do it. Anyone voted in will immediatly be aproached by the other side with reasons to change their mind.
What else? well the "Rich Ass People" control the mass media. They have the ability to pipe their political views into hundreds of millions of homes at any time they please.
It is in their best interest to opose the changes you talk of...and of course to make you "feel" like you have the power. Voter apathy is what "They" want.
Unfortunaly...it is deserved. The current system is so encroached that I fear nothing short of revolution will fix it. Im just waiting for more people to realize this.
I tried to goto www.intel.com and look at how the 1 watt power consumption looks compared to the Intel Celeron.
Unfortunaly, Intels web designers decided that people who leave Javascript (and java) turned off in their browser don't deserve to be able to look up intel product info.
Nice guys.
Anyway, does anyone know how the Intel chips compare power wise?
> Free speach is not about the right to say any > thing one pleases, it's about being able to > voice an opinion. There are such things as > pointless spewing, and the line between > worthwhile and worthless is fine and fuzzy.
You have half of what theprotection of "Free Speach" is. The other half is the realization that there is no objective and directly definable way to say what is "Worthwhile" and what is "Worthless".
It entails the belief that it is more important to protect peoples ability to speak their mind than it is to stop people from "being offensive".
The first amendment is the founders of the US government saying "We have no way of saying absolutely what is harmful and what is socially constructive speach, so the only rational thing we can do is decide to protect ALL speach"
In the words of a Judge whose name I can not remember (which is ok, since many people seem to even forget his words, which were much more important) "It is better to let 100 guilty men go free than to convict 1 innocent man".
The spirit of that should be applied whenever possible, especially to law MAKING. It is a direct echo of the very ideals that wrote the first ammendment.
> Probably the reason many people assert that only > the government can censor, is because in the > absence of trademark and copyright law (and > illegal actions such as coersion), it IS only > the government that can censor. Copyright and > trademark law gives you your own mini-government > over the use of your
Which of course leads to the philosophical questions of who gives the government the right to censor or give someone else the right to censor?
If I do not recognize the governments right to censor, then why should I recognize their right to authorize someone else to?
Generally, we assume that the government is authorized to do whatever they want as they are the "Supreme power". Or perhaps we say that the powr of government derives from a mandate of the masses? Perhaps it is a devine right?
The dictionary I am capable of using makes no philosophical distinctions as to who has the right to "authorize" this activity.
While I agree with you that the OED is THE definititve dictionary (I love using it), I do not have a copy, and the dictionary I did quote is nicely available for lookups online.
Would my point be more effective is I spelled American "right"? Maybe. However, I am horrible at spelling. Sorry, I just don't care enough.
Complaining about spelling is akin, in my book, to complaining that a car doesn't have a vanity mirror. Nice to have, but completely not necissary.
I just use what tools are available to me. It is much more effective than sitting around waiting for censor to become the "Word of the day" at OED.com before I post.
> What's needed is for the youth of this country > to be shown, not told, how the government > works. They have to believe that corruption is > beatable. Right now, even I have a hard time > believing that.
Well...why should we teach that "Corruption is beatable". IS it more important to teach things that make you feel good about the system rather than the truth?
Personally, I do not think corruption is beatable. I AM apathetic about voteing. I have never in my life voted. I will never vote an individual into office (I do plan to vote for a certain voter ballot initiative in my state....but thats a differnt matter..I will not vote for a candidate into office).
As long as the system is being setup, and trampling upon my rights as an individual, and forcing me to pay them money, why should I care who is doing it?
All voteing boils down to is deciding whose bank acount the special interest money goes into.
> Huh? Why? You need to be the exact opposite of > that. You need to be identifyable. Not so the > government can print in the papers "Joe Schmoe > voted for a 'looser'", but so people can be > accountable.
Accountable? um no The idea is to have it be identifiable that Only an identified person could have voted but there should be NO way at all to deterime what their vote was.
> Wouldn't PKI be the perfect solution in this > case?
Actually... Applied Cryptography has a few interesting protocols for Secure Anonymous Voteing. Its interesting because (I don't have the book with me here) it can provide a way to verify that only allowed people can vote, and also make sure that it is impossible to correlate votes with individuals.
Personally I would be alot more interested if instead of working on better ways of voteing, the worked on ways to give you something worthwhile to vote for.
When its a vote to decide WHICH corrupt authoritarian asshole will be fucking me over for at least the next 2-4 years, there is not much incentive to vote at all.
Might as well let them decide by a best 2 out of 3 competition of Rock Paper Scissors, the result would be the same.
um...sorry but the Americain Heritage Dictionary disagrees with you:
censor (snsr) n.
1.A person authorized to examine books, films, or other material and to remove or suppress what is considered morally, politically, or otherwise objectionable.
2.An official, as in the armed forces, who examines personal mail and official dispatches to remove information considered secret or a risk to security.
3.One that condemns or censures.
4.One of two officials in ancient Rome responsible for taking the public census andsupervising public behavior and morals.
5.Psychology. The agent in the unconscious that is responsible for censorship.
--- The obvious one I am asserting here is #1. There is no mention of WHO "Authorizes" a person. USUALLY it is used in terms of a "Government" action.
It should be noted that even in common usage, employees of Television broadcasting stations who decide what content has to be edited from movies (which I find ruins the whole movie and is the reason I refuse to watch movies on TV) are called "Censors".
However, your statment that it can only be applied to government action (as if the government is the only sickening band of authoritarians around) is a common assertation.
> I believe the Free Software Foundation would > represent the GPL. I seem to recall > that question coming up before.
The FSF wrote the GPL. They do not however own the copyright on ALL GPLd code.
The GPL is basically a contract between you (the user) and the original author. It states that YOU have been granted the right to distribute the software with or without changes, as long as you also distribute the source code with it (ok its a bit more complicated...thats the general gist)
If you violate the GPL, you are breaching your licence agreement with the author. As such the author would be the one to sue you, not the FSF (they may get help from the FSF, but it is them NOT the FSF who would actually bring suit).
Of course, if you don't wish to defend your software, and do not wish to ever release it under a seprate licence to someone else, then the FSF is uauly happy to take the copyright transfer and watch over the code.
Of course I happen to think of an interesting point. Does the GPL state that any person who makes changes to a program retains copyright on their own changes?
If not, then I believe copyright law would state that the changed code is a derivitive work and thus even your changes are copyright by the original author. (many people have claimed to the contrary, but I believe copyright law is fairly explicit about this)
> Will there be an updated potato using 2.4 after > the new stable kernel is released, or will we > have to wait another year to catch up again?
Well the whole point of the freeze is to lock things in for testing. Moving a new kernel in, after the freeze, would defeat the whole purpose of the freeze and stable.
AFAIK Debian policy is ONLY to update stable for security fixes.
Of course, unstable is always available and anyone who uses potato should be able to download a woody kernel package and install it with no fuss. Unlike the old 1.3->2.0 jump, there should be no huge, distribution-wide differences so packages should be compatible.
It seems I am dweeling on this more personal seprate sissue stuff this morning.
> The first of it being at a young age. I can > tell you that porn is very addictive and porn > does not exactly blend with my > personal beliefs. This leaves me with a personal > conflict that would not be nearly as bad I feel > if I had never been shown porn in the first > place. Thus according to my beliefs seeing a > naked human body is a very dangerous thing
Yes, it is. I agree with you that ideas as such can be dangerous on a personal level. I watched the movie "Apocalypse Now" tonight, which leaves me with alot of thoughts and conflicts on a very personal level.
Just about any subject touches someone somewhere at a personal level, and can cause conflict. This is, however, par for the course. It would be impossible to sheild yourself from these dangerous ideas, without first acknowledging them as dangerous, and thus causing the internal conflict that you attempted to avoid.
What right have you to pre-emtivly decided that an idea of any type (be it sexual or otherwise) should be barred from others to "protect them". Part of being human is meeting new ideas and comming to terms with them.
I understand how "addictive" porn can be. Just like any of a thousand things. I understand how upon seeing porn on a screen, you may find it hard to concentrate on what you are doing and easy to concentrate on it. Many people have this situation. (I, myself, think of the brain as a huge set of regular expressions, constantly matching patterns... it fits in nicely with thinking about attention and focusing).
However, we all have a brain, and we all have to deal with the quirks of our own. It is kind of silly to expect the rest of the world to conform to your version of reality.
In essense you are saying "please take it away because I enjoy it too much and I feel bad about enjoying it", at least that is what I am taking away from your statments.
In any case, I supose I am very much a believer in the idea that "there are no rules unless you chose to make them." (which is suposed to be a quote but for the life of me I can't find it now and knowing the source would ruin its credibility anyway...anyone who knows the quote would know why thats true;) )
As such I can certainly understand why you might want to make rules...rules like sexuality and fun in general is somehow wrong. If thats your trip, enjoy it, if not then enjoy whatever it is. Just please don't try to make others play by your rules. We all have our own games and our own rules to play with.
Perhaps I am writting nopw from a somewhat compromised state, and would better leave this to when I was more in touch with my mental facultis than at 6:30 am this morning.
I am not arguing n favor of looking at porn in libraries. I do discount the "harm of porn" but that is a completely seprate topic, and should not have been mixed in.
The fact is that MOST people do not observe porn on public terminals. All of your argument is based not on the fact that someone, at some point, ever DID actually sit at a library terminal and display porn for you to see, but that they could.
Yes, without these "safegaurds" it is POSSIBLE (however unlikely) that you may be in the library and you may turn your head or whatever, and you may see a naked person.
While I will agree that it is a violation of YOUR rights to shove pornographic imagry in your face. I will NOT agree that it is a violation of YOUR rights, or anyone elses, cause these things to be displayed where you MIGHT see them, especially since your seeing them is completely periferal to the reason they ar ebeing displayed.
Your basic argument is "You should be barred from looking at anything I might not like to accidently glance at, in my presense". This attitude is fundamentaly at odds with the entire idea of a library being where people of diverse backgrounds can go and look up any sort of information that their minds would desire.
So I agree...the library is not a proper place to ebe viewing porn, however I think that is pretty well socially understood, and that not having filters has yet to produce any sort of problem, with the exeption of a few people who are burning mad about what COULD be displayed.
I have a basic problem with the whole concept of such filters being "government sponsored" (not only because I am an anarchist myself, but because however unwilling, my tax dollars are paying for it). It sets dangerous precident (not that it hasn't been set before), that the government certainly should be able to filter or limit what you see. As soon as we enter into a context where we accept that sometimes its ok for the government to say what we can look at, we find that we can justify its use in more and more places.
You want to make this about religon. It isn't. Noone is infringing on religon by not placing pre-emptive blocks ok these library terminals. What you are arguing for is not freedom of religon it is simply an attempt to limit others by the limits of your religon, and that isn't a freedom anyway I cut it.
Freedom of speach means I can speak. It means you can listen. However, you have no right to stop me from talking to someone else, no matter how much you dislike my speach, or how you try to distance the issue by claiming it isn't really speach.
I still fail to see how you can call these filters a compromise. They are still filters. It is still pre-emptive blocking.
When you have an argument between a 1 and a 0 sometimes there can be no compromise. In this case I have to vote for 0.
> Ok, two questions. First, what is the difference > between libraries filtering porn for children > and people walking around naked in public? I > don't know maybe you have a problem with > lewdness laws too. But couldn't you argue that > freedom of speech is being infringed upon?
Well I do think it is pretty barbaric to arrest someone and bring them to jail for being naked. The human body is a natural and beautiful thing. No human being has ever been harmed by seeing a human body. (some have been offended but, thats life...if people chose to be offended by something that is there problem).
Cloths protect one from the elements and provide pockets. No other function exists in my eyes. If someone wishes to walk around naked, that is up to them. They will of course be missing out on the benefit of pockets but, thats not my problem.
> And IMO it's fairly easy to distinguish between > what a child should see and what a child should > not see.
I disagree...you keep going back to this "protecting children" thing, when there is NO evidence whatsoever that any child has ever been harmed psycologically by viewing porn. Not only have psychologists said that viewing naked people is not harmful to children, I can introduce you to a large number of people who saw porn when they were little children and were no worst off for it.
The only danger is a 'percieved" danger in the mind of overprotective, uninformed, parents. Protecting people from imaginary dangers is a silly thing to be spending _MY_ hard earned money on (money which I never said was ok to take in the first place)
> You keep sending the issue off into these > extremes that no one is talking about. You > keep trying to imply that if we restrict > children from viewing porn in the library > somehow art is going to get banned for everyone.
As soon as we allow something to be done to sheild us from an imaginary problem, as soon as we give up a right for percieved "safty" we open the door to more.
Are you aware that these same people who now tout these blocks have tried to have art censored? They have rallied and tried to have books like "Catcher in the Rye" and "Canterbury Tales" removed from schools and libraries because they could be "Harmful to children".
It all comes in steps. Sure today it is just porn. However once the battle is won, and filters are installed, the next time someone wants to "filter out" something, it is easier...the filters are already there. Just a matter of reconfiguring them.
This is how the march to a police state happens (not that we arn't practically already there). Slow. First they make you see a problem, but to solve it we have to give up a tiny bit of freedom. Thats ok though, its just a tiny bit and its worth it. Then another little bit. AFter that maybe a new problem...just need to giveup a little more. In the end, you look around and realize your rights are all gone.
...course its ok...cuz your still free. You can do anything you want that doesn't harm anyone else ,...as long as its socially acceptable, and it doesn't offend anyone, or possibly make you look differnt from anyone else. Howd that quote go? "no person is ever more enslaved than the man who thinks he is free"
> Actually no I'm not, please re-read my previous > post. I am advocating that the government be > employed to merely say that there is a line to > be drawn. The original intent of this entire > slashdot article was to talk about an open > source blacklist was it not?
The intent, IMHO, was to point out what is going on. The fact that the blacklists are "closed" is currently a fact. This is something most people never think about.
It is certainly a problem, however I am going beyond the scope of that. I think that these blacklists themselves are a problem, open or not.
> If the blacklist is open source, I'm sure there > will be many groups contributing their ideas, > most, if not all, not related to the government.
And what groups will be listend to? The problem is that you are asking PUBLIC libraries to enforce the "decency standards" of a subset of the population.
Seriously, I ask again, what is porn? How is it defined? Where do you draw the line between "socially acceptable" and "Unacceptable". Who gets to make the determination? There is no objective way to draw a line.
> Now when viewing the library situation we have > the religious saying that porn should be banned > from libraries and the free speech people saying > porn should not be banned in libraries. > Then there is me saying that porn should not be > viewed out in the open where children can see it > and should not be made accessible to them on any > computers they have access to.
What if children "can't see the screen"? What if I am going through a book in public at the library?
Should I not be allowed to sit at the library and read the kama sutra for fear that some child will look over my shoulder and see explicit sexual drawings? What about the FACt that there is nothing stopping that same child from going to the library and picking up or even taking out a copy of said book.
What about books on art? Pictures of "David", or some other book. How about Madonna's "Sex". Where is the line drawn between "Art" and "porn"?
The simple fact is that yes SOME (not all) religious people (even some non-religous people) dislike porn. However, on just about ANY topic that you can think of, someone is offended.
What about websites that talk openly about homosexuality? That could certainly "corrupt" nice little "religious" boys.
Why is it the job of the library to enforce YOUR moral beliefs, in what people other than yourself are able to access?
Perhaps we should go the other way. Allow nothing inside any library that could possibly offend anyone in the world?
The most ironic part of the whole thing is all these "protected" children will just now go and get their porn from their friends at school... just as they always have...just as they always will.
> I wonder what the response will be, this is > essentially the same thing they have been doing > for a while (I had sendmail misconfigured and > they sent me an e-mail about it a while back) > but the problem still exists.
Go read the UDP FAQ that I read yesterday (see yesterdays article for URL). Many companies have responded to the UDP call by cleaning up their act and getting the UDP revoked.
ALL that is being asked for is that they take spam complaints seriously and make an effort to secure their own network enough to curb the spam. Just educate their users and help them.
This is really something that effects their users without them knowing. Their customers are misconfiguring proxies. This allows spammers to use their reseources. The network link that these people are paying for, is being slowed down by immoral spammers, who want to make a buck and don't care who gets hurt in the process.
It is their users that cause the problem, however its not their users fault. They are ignorant. it is @Homes responsibility to try to educate them to keep the network secure.
>>...If parents want to shelter their children >>from information, then they should not allow >>them to go to where that information is...at >>the library.
> If my kid has a research project due at > school, or perhaps wants to read recreationally, > or maybe is just curious, I have to deny him > access to information? Religious kids will be > forced to grow up ignorant?
Well, sheltering a child from anything is forcing them to "grow up ignorant".
I say it again. Libraries are respositories of information. That is all. They are places where you can research and read. It is not the job of the library to make moral judgements of information, just to hold it and make it available to those who want it.
Noone at the library is there to force you or your children to read or see anything. However, noone is there to enforce any sort of protection from that information either.
If YOU feel protection of information is necissary then it is up to YOU to enforce it for yourself and your children.
> I said earlier, there is overlap and you are > advocating a one sided victory while I am > advocating a compromise.
You are advocating that the government be employed to draw the line in the sand. You are advocating that the government be the ones who decide where the line gets drawn.
I am sorry, but that "Compromise" is a win for censorship, not a real compromise. It is unacceptable to me to have the government makeing decisions on what is art and what is porn. It is unacceptable to me to have them deciding what is "acceptable" and what is "indecent".
I re-iterate. It is the function of a library to collect information and make it available to ANYONE who enters the library. it is *NOT* the function of the library to enforce YOUR religious belifs on others. It is *NOT* the libraries job to decide what is inapropriate for who. It is simply their job to provide information to whoever seeks it.
What is next? Seriously...will we next be deciding what books are indecent? What art? What about art books containing the works of Divinci? Picasso? How about the kama sutra?
Once you let them draw one line in the sand, you open the door to them drawing more.
> I've unvillingly stumbled across a number of > porn sites. I hate it. If I want to look at > dirty pics I can find them myself, thank you.
heh same here. I also havn't spent more than 2 hours looking for porn since I turned 18 several years ago. Now that Its legal and acceptable its just no fun;)
> What I've *never* seen is this famous internet > kiddie porn. (though I haven't really looked for >it). How come, do you think?
Interesting story...I came across it exactly once. but never realized it till a couple of years later.
I originally joined "the net" over a 14.4 dialup on my Apple IIGS. I was 16 and would search usenet for porn. I downloaded a sizeable amount for a 16 year old with a 14.4 and a 2.6 MHz computer:)
Well on my GS I could only view JPGs in black and white (limitation in the jpg viewer) and it took SEVERAL MINITES to decode and display 1 JPG.
Years later I moved all those JPGs to my PC...one day I went through them all and saw one picture I never knew was there...it was an "index" of about 5 pictures of some girl who looked about 9 years old.
She certainly apeared to be enjoying showing herself off to the camera (guess she hadn't been taught how traumatized she is suposed to feel yet)
I dunno...I still have the picture filed away somewhere...but I never throw anything out...too much of a packrat I guess.
Just my little anectdote. Take it how you will. However out of the hundreds of pics I downloaded back then, only 1 turned out to be this kiddie porn.
Slashdot Mirror
Everyone who is a true follower knows that is
not Jesus's web site. for His web site is
http://www.trog.com/jesus
Jesus rocks nads!
> Any type of download "eats" bandwidth away from
> other users. If 20% of the university is
> downloading *BSD or linux ISO images, that will
> prevent others from having full access to the
> total bandwidth.
Very true...and if that became an issue we would
need to find a way to deal with it. That has
not yet happend.
> The administrator angle is a red herring to
> cover up the fact that the universities are
> pussying out in the face of the RIAA.
I can only speak from what _I_ have personally
witnessed, and what I see says that is utter
bullshit.
I may not be in the network group, but I see EVERY
complaint the RIAA sends us about ftp sites etc
(the adress it goes to forwards to a bunch of
people in various groups)
There have been _NO_ RIAA complaints to us about
napster. In fact, I have seen 0 complaints from
them in over a month and a half now.
Hoever I do remember the day one of the network
guys came in telling the story of how the student
segment was completely saturated and, after much
digging, were able to figure out that napster was
the cause of the saturation.
I don't see how we can be "pussying out" when
the RIAA hasn't even sent us a single complaint
about it.
> If having MP3s of any type was illegal, you'd be
> right. However some bands freely distribute
> music in MP3 format and allow people to trade
> them.
Actually copyright law explicitly allows the
copying of audio recording. In fact, it is
vague in a way that there is debate over
whether it is legal to make copies for
friends.
The law in this area of personal copying and
trading is about as grey as law gets.
In any case...legality of mp3 trading is
bayond the scope of network administration
(that is the realm of lawyers). Napster eats
bandwidth to the point that it does effect
other users ability to use the system. That is
legitamite reason to ban it, which of course
leaves people still able to use ftp and http
and get all sorts of MP3s.
> When you live on campus, for 9 months out of the
> year, that IS your home. They pay tuition,
> technology, and housing fees. They've paid for
> it, they can use it as they see fit.
I agree with you...for a student, campus IS home.
(temporary but home none the less).
However, the network is a shared resource. when
the net is so saturated that real work can't be
done, there is a problem, and a problem that
can have a negative impact on other peoples
education.
Yes, they pay for network connectivity, however
so did everyone else. Here, our student network
was very saturated with napster before we blocked
it.
Yes, I am usually the first person to advocate
free speach. Yes, I hate copyright laws and think
it is generally right for people to break them.
However, people need to live and work together,
hogging all the bandwidth is unacceptable when
others have real work to do.
Of course, I had no say in my employer (a
university) blocking napster as I am not in
charge of the routers and firewall, but I think
they made the right decision for the circumstances
From what I have heard (never used napster myself)
napster uses ALOT more bandwidth than it really
should, its probably a design flaw. I doubt it
was designed with the idea that multiple people
on 1 segment might run it at the same time.
Well here (yes I work for a university) our
network group blocked all traffic to any of the
napster severs right at thr router.
Of course the only reason we cite is bandwidth.
The segments were SATURATED with napster
traffic. They didn't have much choice.
> Except for the fact that EVERY OS has these
> types of bugs - I find it funny that not only
> MS, but Solaris, all the flavors of *nix, etc,
> all have security flaws...It really DOES come
> down to fixing them.
It does and it doesn't. I think there are a
couple of issues here. YES, most programmers
make mistakes or fail to consider things and these
bugs DO creep in, even in the skilled code of the
best programmers.
(being a programmer, and NOT one of "the best" I
find it comforting to know they are human too)
It is a matter of learning from ones mistakes and
the mistakes of others, and thinking about
security.
You will not write secure code if you are not
writting it from a security consious mindset.
Every time your code takes input from a user, or
anything outside of your own code, then you must
be thinking to yourself "what if I get back what
im not expecting".
Its easy to make the mistake of allocating a
static bufffer thinking "no username will be
longer than X chars", and never think someone
might purposfully HOPE you assumed that.
Now...how does this relate to microsoft?
They are well known for having all night hacking
runs for days on end as it comes down to the
wire. When they see that release date aproaching,
its "balls to the wall" time to code like a
madman.
I do not think that that type of event is
condusive to writting a secure system. Its
allot easier to forgo bounds checking on every
little variable that came from userspace and
to take dangerous shortcuts as that clock ticks
away.
Of course, you are right, careful programming only
goes so far (however it *IS* the first step).
After that response is what matters. I think that
their response has shown to be pretty bad too.
They have earned a reputation for denying the
existance of problems and stalling. They have
made it difficult to find real information on
the security problems in their OS. (back when
I used windows...I found that every time I went
to their website looking for security patches etc
I found them increasingly hard to find every time)
-Steve
I would bet he'd kick an ass or two
> If you think that both major parties aren't
> worth voting for, such that you're considering
> not voting at all, why not find whichever
> minority party you most agree with and voting
> for them?
Well...at this stage in the game, about the
only "Party" that might come close to advocating
what I stand for would probably be the US
Socialist party or the "Labor Party". However,
they don't seem to be a "third party" with much
support.
At the heart tho, I have some severe philosophical
problems with "representative democracy".
The first being that it reduces the people's
involvment in government down to a popularity
contest, no more mature or meaningful than some
high school student body election. "Hair, Teeth,
smile" are the holy trinity of the political
scene.
Secondly it puts a small elite in power. People
who can be easily corrupted, and rewarded richly
for their corruption (even if it were illegal,
they could still take direct bribes through
more round about and covert channels)
Thirdly, and perhaps worst of all, it gives the
people a false sense of power. every election
year you hear people saying "Don't throw your vote
away" and that "We have the power", however no
REAl change ever comes of it.
All this sense of power serves to do is make
the poeople too complacent to revolt. It gives
them a feeling as if they can work through the
system for change, when in truth, the current
system is so dug in that it just isn't going
to happen.
If you have any doubt, listen to Jesse Venturas
story. When he ran for mayor, both the Democrats
and Republicans in his town joined forces against
him. They said that he was the worst thing that
could happen to the city, and painted him as
a clown.
After he got elected, both sides aproached him
seprately and asked him to join up with them.
No morals have these people. How many people
without the Unique mixture of fame and hard nose
personality could have got in against that
oposition? How many could have resisted the
temptation after getting in?
Sure, he makes for a symbol of hope. However, it
would take hundreds of men like him to cause even
the beginings of change.
In the end, all people lik ehim could acomplish
is short term gains. In the end, the system is
made to support corruption and traditional
politics. That I fear, is not fixable.
Hmmm voters with the power?
How would you vote in these changes?
MANY states do not allow ballot initives. Federal
level certainly doesn't. This means of course that
you have to vote in someone who will do it.
The problem is, you have to vote in enough
people who will do it. Anyone voted in will
immediatly be aproached by the other side with
reasons to change their mind.
What else? well the "Rich Ass People" control the
mass media. They have the ability to pipe their
political views into hundreds of millions of
homes at any time they please.
It is in their best interest to opose the changes
you talk of...and of course to make you "feel"
like you have the power. Voter apathy is what
"They" want.
Unfortunaly...it is deserved. The current system
is so encroached that I fear nothing short of
revolution will fix it. Im just waiting for more
people to realize this.
I tried to goto www.intel.com and look at how
the 1 watt power consumption looks compared to
the Intel Celeron.
Unfortunaly, Intels web designers decided that
people who leave Javascript (and java) turned off
in their browser don't deserve to be able to look
up intel product info.
Nice guys.
Anyway, does anyone know how the Intel chips
compare power wise?
-Steve
> Free speach is not about the right to say any
> thing one pleases, it's about being able to
> voice an opinion. There are such things as
> pointless spewing, and the line between
> worthwhile and worthless is fine and fuzzy.
You have half of what theprotection of "Free
Speach" is. The other half is the realization
that there is no objective and directly definable
way to say what is "Worthwhile" and what is
"Worthless".
It entails the belief that it is more important
to protect peoples ability to speak their mind
than it is to stop people from "being offensive".
The first amendment is the founders of the US
government saying "We have no way of saying
absolutely what is harmful and what is socially
constructive speach, so the only rational thing
we can do is decide to protect ALL speach"
In the words of a Judge whose name I can not
remember (which is ok, since many people seem
to even forget his words, which were much more
important) "It is better to let 100 guilty men
go free than to convict 1 innocent man".
The spirit of that should be applied whenever
possible, especially to law MAKING. It is a
direct echo of the very ideals that wrote the
first ammendment.
> Probably the reason many people assert that only
> the government can censor, is because in the
> absence of trademark and copyright law (and
> illegal actions such as coersion), it IS only
> the government that can censor. Copyright and
> trademark law gives you your own mini-government
> over the use of your
Which of course leads to the philosophical
questions of who gives the government the
right to censor or give someone else the right
to censor?
If I do not recognize the governments right
to censor, then why should I recognize their
right to authorize someone else to?
Generally, we assume that the government is
authorized to do whatever they want as they
are the "Supreme power". Or perhaps we say that
the powr of government derives from a mandate
of the masses? Perhaps it is a devine right?
The dictionary I am capable of using makes no
philosophical distinctions as to who has the
right to "authorize" this activity.
While I agree with you that the OED is THE
definititve dictionary (I love using it),
I do not have a copy, and the dictionary I did
quote is nicely available for lookups online.
Would my point be more effective is I spelled
American "right"? Maybe. However, I am horrible
at spelling. Sorry, I just don't care enough.
Complaining about spelling is akin, in my book,
to complaining that a car doesn't have a
vanity mirror. Nice to have, but completely
not necissary.
I just use what tools are available to me.
It is much more effective than sitting around
waiting for censor to become the "Word of the
day" at OED.com before I post.
> What's needed is for the youth of this country
> to be shown, not told, how the government
> works. They have to believe that corruption is
> beatable. Right now, even I have a hard time
> believing that.
Well...why should we teach that "Corruption is
beatable". IS it more important to teach things
that make you feel good about the system rather
than the truth?
Personally, I do not think corruption is beatable.
I AM apathetic about voteing. I have never in my
life voted. I will never vote an individual into
office (I do plan to vote for a certain voter
ballot initiative in my state....but thats a
differnt matter..I will not vote for a candidate
into office).
As long as the system is being setup, and
trampling upon my rights as an individual, and
forcing me to pay them money, why should I care
who is doing it?
All voteing boils down to is deciding whose
bank acount the special interest money goes into.
> Huh? Why? You need to be the exact opposite of
> that. You need to be identifyable. Not so the
> government can print in the papers "Joe Schmoe
> voted for a 'looser'", but so people can be
> accountable.
Accountable? um no
The idea is to have it be identifiable that
Only an identified person could have voted but
there should be NO way at all to deterime what
their vote was.
> Wouldn't PKI be the perfect solution in this
> case?
Actually... Applied Cryptography has a few
interesting protocols for Secure Anonymous
Voteing. Its interesting because (I don't have the
book with me here) it can provide a way to verify
that only allowed people can vote, and also make
sure that it is impossible to correlate votes
with individuals.
Personally I would be alot more interested if
instead of working on better ways of voteing,
the worked on ways to give you something
worthwhile to vote for.
When its a vote to decide WHICH corrupt
authoritarian asshole will be fucking me over
for at least the next 2-4 years, there is not
much incentive to vote at all.
Might as well let them decide by a best 2 out of
3 competition of Rock Paper Scissors, the result
would be the same.
um...sorry but the Americain Heritage Dictionary
disagrees with you:
censor (snsr)
n.
1.A person authorized to examine books, films, or other material and to remove or suppress what is considered morally, politically, or otherwise objectionable.
2.An official, as in the armed forces, who examines personal mail and official dispatches to remove information considered secret or a risk to security.
3.One that condemns or censures.
4.One of two officials in ancient Rome responsible for taking the public census andsupervising public behavior and morals.
5.Psychology. The agent in the unconscious that is responsible for censorship.
---
The obvious one I am asserting here is #1.
There is no mention of WHO "Authorizes" a person.
USUALLY it is used in terms of a "Government"
action.
It should be noted that even in common usage,
employees of Television broadcasting stations
who decide what content has to be edited from
movies (which I find ruins the whole movie and
is the reason I refuse to watch movies on TV)
are called "Censors".
However, your statment that it can only be applied
to government action (as if the government is the
only sickening band of authoritarians around) is
a common assertation.
> I believe the Free Software Foundation would
> represent the GPL. I seem to recall
> that question coming up before.
The FSF wrote the GPL. They do not however own the
copyright on ALL GPLd code.
The GPL is basically a contract between you (the
user) and the original author. It states that YOU
have been granted the right to distribute the
software with or without changes, as long as you
also distribute the source code with it (ok its
a bit more complicated...thats the general gist)
If you violate the GPL, you are breaching your
licence agreement with the author. As such the
author would be the one to sue you, not the FSF
(they may get help from the FSF, but it is them
NOT the FSF who would actually bring suit).
Of course, if you don't wish to defend your
software, and do not wish to ever release it
under a seprate licence to someone else, then
the FSF is uauly happy to take the copyright transfer and watch over the code.
Of course I happen to think of an interesting
point. Does the GPL state that any person who
makes changes to a program retains copyright
on their own changes?
If not, then I believe copyright law would state
that the changed code is a derivitive work and
thus even your changes are copyright by the
original author. (many people have claimed to
the contrary, but I believe copyright law is
fairly explicit about this)
-Steve
> Will there be an updated potato using 2.4 after
> the new stable kernel is released, or will we
> have to wait another year to catch up again?
Well the whole point of the freeze is to lock
things in for testing. Moving a new kernel in,
after the freeze, would defeat the whole purpose
of the freeze and stable.
AFAIK Debian policy is ONLY to update stable
for security fixes.
Of course, unstable is always available and anyone
who uses potato should be able to download a
woody kernel package and install it with no
fuss. Unlike the old 1.3->2.0 jump, there should
be no huge, distribution-wide differences so
packages should be compatible.
Personally, I compile all my own kernels anyway.
It seems I am dweeling on this more personal
;) )
seprate sissue stuff this morning.
> The first of it being at a young age. I can
> tell you that porn is very addictive and porn
> does not exactly blend with my
> personal beliefs. This leaves me with a personal
> conflict that would not be nearly as bad I feel
> if I had never been shown porn in the first
> place. Thus according to my beliefs seeing a
> naked human body is a very dangerous thing
Yes, it is. I agree with you that ideas as
such can be dangerous on a personal level. I
watched the movie "Apocalypse Now" tonight, which
leaves me with alot of thoughts and conflicts on
a very personal level.
Just about any subject touches someone somewhere
at a personal level, and can cause conflict. This
is, however, par for the course. It would be
impossible to sheild yourself from these dangerous
ideas, without first acknowledging them as
dangerous, and thus causing the internal conflict
that you attempted to avoid.
What right have you to pre-emtivly decided that an
idea of any type (be it sexual or otherwise)
should be barred from others to "protect them".
Part of being human is meeting new ideas and
comming to terms with them.
I understand how "addictive" porn can be. Just
like any of a thousand things. I understand how
upon seeing porn on a screen, you may find it
hard to concentrate on what you are doing and easy
to concentrate on it. Many people have this
situation. (I, myself, think of the brain
as a huge set of regular expressions, constantly
matching patterns... it fits in nicely with
thinking about attention and focusing).
However, we all have a brain, and we all have to
deal with the quirks of our own. It is kind of
silly to expect the rest of the world to conform
to your version of reality.
In essense you are saying "please take it away
because I enjoy it too much and I feel bad about
enjoying it", at least that is what I am taking
away from your statments.
In any case, I supose I am very much a believer
in the idea that "there are no rules unless you
chose to make them." (which is suposed to be a
quote but for the life of me I can't find it now
and knowing the source would ruin its credibility
anyway...anyone who knows the quote would know
why thats true
As such I can certainly understand why you might
want to make rules...rules like sexuality and fun
in general is somehow wrong. If thats your trip,
enjoy it, if not then enjoy whatever it is. Just
please don't try to make others play by your
rules. We all have our own games and our own
rules to play with.
"Tis an ill wind that blows no minds"
Perhaps I am writting nopw from a somewhat
compromised state, and would better leave this
to when I was more in touch with my mental facultis than at 6:30 am this morning.
I am not arguing n favor of looking at porn in
libraries. I do discount the "harm of porn" but
that is a completely seprate topic, and should not
have been mixed in.
The fact is that MOST people do not observe porn
on public terminals. All of your argument is based
not on the fact that someone, at some point, ever
DID actually sit at a library terminal and display
porn for you to see, but that they could.
Yes, without these "safegaurds" it is POSSIBLE
(however unlikely) that you may be in the library
and you may turn your head or whatever, and you
may see a naked person.
While I will agree that it is a violation of YOUR
rights to shove pornographic imagry in your face.
I will NOT agree that it is a violation of YOUR
rights, or anyone elses, cause these things to
be displayed where you MIGHT see them, especially
since your seeing them is completely periferal to
the reason they ar ebeing displayed.
Your basic argument is "You should be barred from
looking at anything I might not like to accidently
glance at, in my presense". This attitude is fundamentaly at odds with the entire idea of a
library being where people of diverse backgrounds
can go and look up any sort of information that
their minds would desire.
So I agree...the library is not a proper place
to ebe viewing porn, however I think that is
pretty well socially understood, and that not
having filters has yet to produce any sort of
problem, with the exeption of a few people who
are burning mad about what COULD be displayed.
I have a basic problem with the whole concept of
such filters being "government sponsored" (not
only because I am an anarchist myself, but because
however unwilling, my tax dollars are paying for
it). It sets dangerous precident (not that it
hasn't been set before), that the government
certainly should be able to filter or limit what
you see. As soon as we enter into a context where
we accept that sometimes its ok for the government
to say what we can look at, we find that we can
justify its use in more and more places.
You want to make this about religon. It isn't.
Noone is infringing on religon by not placing
pre-emptive blocks ok these library terminals.
What you are arguing for is not freedom of religon
it is simply an attempt to limit others by the
limits of your religon, and that isn't a freedom
anyway I cut it.
Freedom of speach means I can speak. It means you
can listen. However, you have no right to stop me
from talking to someone else, no matter how much
you dislike my speach, or how you try to distance
the issue by claiming it isn't really speach.
I still fail to see how you can call these filters
a compromise. They are still filters. It is still
pre-emptive blocking.
When you have an argument between a 1 and a 0
sometimes there can be no compromise. In this
case I have to vote for 0.
> Ok, two questions. First, what is the difference
> between libraries filtering porn for children
> and people walking around naked in public? I
> don't know maybe you have a problem with
> lewdness laws too. But couldn't you argue that
> freedom of speech is being infringed upon?
Well I do think it is pretty barbaric to arrest
someone and bring them to jail for being naked.
The human body is a natural and beautiful thing.
No human being has ever been harmed by seeing a
human body. (some have been offended but, thats
life...if people chose to be offended by something
that is there problem).
Cloths protect one from the elements and provide
pockets. No other function exists in my eyes.
If someone wishes to walk around naked, that
is up to them. They will of course be missing out
on the benefit of pockets but, thats not my
problem.
> And IMO it's fairly easy to distinguish between
> what a child should see and what a child should
> not see.
I disagree...you keep going back to this
"protecting children" thing, when there is NO
evidence whatsoever that any child has ever been
harmed psycologically by viewing porn. Not only
have psychologists said that viewing naked
people is not harmful to children, I can introduce
you to a large number of people who saw porn when
they were little children and were no worst off
for it.
The only danger is a 'percieved" danger in the
mind of overprotective, uninformed, parents.
Protecting people from imaginary dangers is
a silly thing to be spending _MY_ hard earned
money on (money which I never said was ok to
take in the first place)
> You keep sending the issue off into these
> extremes that no one is talking about. You
> keep trying to imply that if we restrict
> children from viewing porn in the library
> somehow art is going to get banned for everyone.
As soon as we allow something to be done to
sheild us from an imaginary problem, as soon
as we give up a right for percieved "safty"
we open the door to more.
Are you aware that these same people who now
tout these blocks have tried to have art censored?
They have rallied and tried to have books like
"Catcher in the Rye" and "Canterbury Tales"
removed from schools and libraries because they could be "Harmful to children".
It all comes in steps. Sure today it is just porn.
However once the battle is won, and filters
are installed, the next time someone wants to
"filter out" something, it is easier...the filters
are already there. Just a matter of reconfiguring
them.
This is how the march to a police state happens
(not that we arn't practically already there).
Slow. First they make you see a problem, but to
solve it we have to give up a tiny bit of
freedom. Thats ok though, its just a tiny bit
and its worth it. Then another little bit.
AFter that maybe a new problem...just need to
giveup a little more. In the end, you look around
and realize your rights are all gone.
...course its ok...cuz your still free. You can
do anything you want that doesn't harm anyone else
,...as long as its socially acceptable, and
it doesn't offend anyone, or possibly make you
look differnt from anyone else.
Howd that quote go? "no person is ever more
enslaved than the man who thinks he is free"
> Actually no I'm not, please re-read my previous
> post. I am advocating that the government be
> employed to merely say that there is a line to
> be drawn. The original intent of this entire
> slashdot article was to talk about an open
> source blacklist was it not?
The intent, IMHO, was to point out what is going
on. The fact that the blacklists are "closed" is
currently a fact. This is something most people
never think about.
It is certainly a problem, however I am going
beyond the scope of that. I think that these
blacklists themselves are a problem, open or
not.
> If the blacklist is open source, I'm sure there
> will be many groups contributing their ideas,
> most, if not all, not related to the government.
And what groups will be listend to?
The problem is that you are asking PUBLIC
libraries to enforce the "decency standards" of
a subset of the population.
Seriously, I ask again, what is porn? How is it
defined? Where do you draw the line between
"socially acceptable" and "Unacceptable". Who
gets to make the determination? There is no
objective way to draw a line.
> Now when viewing the library situation we have
> the religious saying that porn should be banned
> from libraries and the free speech people saying
> porn should not be banned in libraries.
> Then there is me saying that porn should not be
> viewed out in the open where children can see it
> and should not be made accessible to them on any
> computers they have access to.
What if children "can't see the screen"? What
if I am going through a book in public at the
library?
Should I not be allowed to sit at the library
and read the kama sutra for fear that some child
will look over my shoulder and see explicit
sexual drawings? What about the FACt that there
is nothing stopping that same child from going to
the library and picking up or even taking out a
copy of said book.
What about books on art? Pictures of "David", or
some other book. How about Madonna's "Sex". Where
is the line drawn between "Art" and "porn"?
The simple fact is that yes SOME (not all)
religious people (even some non-religous people)
dislike porn. However, on just about ANY topic
that you can think of, someone is offended.
What about websites that talk openly about
homosexuality? That could certainly "corrupt"
nice little "religious" boys.
Why is it the job of the library to enforce YOUR
moral beliefs, in what people other than yourself
are able to access?
Perhaps we should go the other way. Allow nothing
inside any library that could possibly offend
anyone in the world?
The most ironic part of the whole thing is all
these "protected" children will just now go and
get their porn from their friends at school...
just as they always have...just as they always
will.
> I wonder what the response will be, this is
> essentially the same thing they have been doing
> for a while (I had sendmail misconfigured and
> they sent me an e-mail about it a while back)
> but the problem still exists.
Go read the UDP FAQ that I read yesterday (see
yesterdays article for URL). Many companies
have responded to the UDP call by cleaning up
their act and getting the UDP revoked.
ALL that is being asked for is that they take
spam complaints seriously and make an effort
to secure their own network enough to curb the
spam. Just educate their users and help them.
This is really something that effects their
users without them knowing. Their customers are
misconfiguring proxies. This allows spammers to
use their reseources. The network link that these
people are paying for, is being slowed down
by immoral spammers, who want to make a buck
and don't care who gets hurt in the process.
It is their users that cause the problem, however
its not their users fault. They are ignorant. it
is @Homes responsibility to try to educate them
to keep the network secure.
>>...If parents want to shelter their children
>>from information, then they should not allow
>>them to go to where that information is...at
>>the library.
> If my kid has a research project due at
> school, or perhaps wants to read recreationally,
> or maybe is just curious, I have to deny him
> access to information? Religious kids will be
> forced to grow up ignorant?
Well, sheltering a child from anything is
forcing them to "grow up ignorant".
I say it again. Libraries are respositories
of information. That is all. They are places
where you can research and read. It is not the
job of the library to make moral judgements of
information, just to hold it and make it
available to those who want it.
Noone at the library is there to force you or your
children to read or see anything. However, noone
is there to enforce any sort of protection from
that information either.
If YOU feel protection of information is necissary
then it is up to YOU to enforce it for yourself
and your children.
> I said earlier, there is overlap and you are
> advocating a one sided victory while I am
> advocating a compromise.
You are advocating that the government be
employed to draw the line in the sand. You
are advocating that the government be the ones
who decide where the line gets drawn.
I am sorry, but that "Compromise" is a win for
censorship, not a real compromise. It is
unacceptable to me to have the government
makeing decisions on what is art and what is
porn. It is unacceptable to me to have them
deciding what is "acceptable" and what is
"indecent".
I re-iterate. It is the function of a library
to collect information and make it available to
ANYONE who enters the library. it is *NOT*
the function of the library to enforce YOUR
religious belifs on others. It is *NOT* the
libraries job to decide what is inapropriate
for who. It is simply their job to provide
information to whoever seeks it.
What is next? Seriously...will we next be deciding
what books are indecent? What art? What about art
books containing the works of Divinci? Picasso?
How about the kama sutra?
Once you let them draw one line in the sand,
you open the door to them drawing more.
> I've unvillingly stumbled across a number of
;)
:)
> porn sites. I hate it. If I want to look at
> dirty pics I can find them myself, thank you.
heh same here. I also havn't spent more than 2
hours looking for porn since I turned 18 several
years ago. Now that Its legal and acceptable
its just no fun
> What I've *never* seen is this famous internet
> kiddie porn. (though I haven't really looked for
>it). How come, do you think?
Interesting story...I came across it exactly once.
but never realized it till a couple of years
later.
I originally joined "the net" over a 14.4 dialup
on my Apple IIGS. I was 16 and would search
usenet for porn. I downloaded a sizeable amount
for a 16 year old with a 14.4 and a 2.6 MHz
computer
Well on my GS I could only view JPGs in black and
white (limitation in the jpg viewer) and it took
SEVERAL MINITES to decode and display 1 JPG.
Years later I moved all those JPGs to my PC...one
day I went through them all and saw one picture
I never knew was there...it was an "index" of
about 5 pictures of some girl who looked about
9 years old.
She certainly apeared to be enjoying showing
herself off to the camera (guess she hadn't been
taught how traumatized she is suposed to feel yet)
I dunno...I still have the picture filed away
somewhere...but I never throw anything out...too
much of a packrat I guess.
Just my little anectdote. Take it how you will.
However out of the hundreds of pics I downloaded
back then, only 1 turned out to be this kiddie
porn.