The difference is that it happens to be on your person at the time of your arrest, and you lose the constitutional right to privacy when you are arrested. I suppose the original idea was that the police would be able to search your bag for weapons, or something like that, and it has (like so many others) been blown way out of proportion.
Well it sounds like we are in agreement: there is an important role that businessmen fill in society, and we do need them. I only went further and said that society needs more than just businessmen, which is true and which you seem to agree with as well.
Why do corporate apologists keep saying this crap? Censorship does not mean "action by the government," it just means that materials deemed inappropriate are not allowed to be published.
All they'll do is open the door for alternative online book sale sites catering to specific tastes.
You are assuming that such a website would make economic sense; this is not necessarily true. Part of what makes Amazon so successful is that they can cater to a lot of unusual interests -- the economics of catering to a single interest are entirely different. It may very well be the case that there are just not enough people interested in these books for a store that caters to their interests to remain in business; it may take a business that can compete with Amazon, but does not censor its store, to cater to those interests.
Like I said, businessmen certainly have their place in society. You say that we need more people investing; perhaps so, but we also need people to actually do something with the money that businessmen are investing. We need researchers to actually develop the ideas, we need workers to actually implement the ideas, managers to keep things organized, and so forth.
My point is not that we need to encourage everyone to be a scientist, but rather, that we need to not encourage everyone to be a businessman.
drives science, nothing else can do it, only new business can do it.
Not true; businesses do not build large particle accelerators, radio telescopes, nor will businesses fund studies on rare and endangered species. Not all science creates profit.
Nothing is wrong with being a businessman or a celebrity; such people certainly have a place in society. The problem is that is pretty much the only thing we encourage people to do, at least in terms of what popular media outlets are promoting. It takes more than executives and Hollywood stars to maintain a functional society.
The media also strongly discourages participation in science when it depicts it as a field that only socially awkward people would ever have an interest in. We really see a lot more of that, coupled with a strong push for everyone to become some kind of businessman, than we see of movies that might encourage children to become scientists. Welcome to American culture.
Oh, my apologies. The real point was about industries that died in the face of new technology, not about the ability to copy things. I suppose I should be more careful next time!
Devices like the iPad are just holders and consumers of media
No, the iPad is a tablet computer, albeit one that Apple designed to thwart attempts by its users to control. Hard drives and SSDs are holders of media, people are consumers of it, who use software to aid them in that consumption. Dividing tablet computers into different classes based on what some corporation thinks you should use it for is not a game I want to play, and it is frankly counter-productive. The sooner we start calling the iPad what it is, the better.
A Windows PC is the usual culprit when it comes to actually defeating copy protection and doing the duping
As are a number of other systems -- routers, switches, etc. -- which operate the Internet and enable the existence of file sharing networks and hosting services. Why leave out all of the other computers and operating systems involved in the process? Why single out "consumer" computers?
This seems bass ackwards to me as they should be taxing the computer, not that they should be taxing either.
Now there I agree with you. Frankly, I think it is time to start asking why we are continuing to placate the recording industry. Nobody shed a tear for all those typewriter companies, or those film manufacturers, or those buggy whip producers and horse breeders, when their industries became obsolete. They either learned to adapt and play by the new rules (e.g. Kodak seeking other ways to make money on photography) or they went out of business. Why should we not expect the recording industry to do the same? The age of CDs is long gone, we just continue to cling to it because the record executives are whining about how awful it is that all these horrible computer users are destroying their business. If they want to stay in business, they need to find a new way to make money on recorded music, rather than trying to fight back against the new technological reality that is here to stay.
However, I'd like to know where you would draw the line for when a girl no longer has the right to change her mind and withdrawal consent.
Anyone can change their mind, at any time, and I would not claim there is any limit to that. My only point was that it should not be easy to be found guilty off raping someone. Suppose that someone does change their mind, right in the middle of having sex with someone else, and makes that very clear...how long are we willing to wait until the other person stops, before we start calling it rape? What if someone changes their mind right before the sex would have stopped anyway (e.g. just a moment before a man has an orgasm), and their partner just finishes as usual?
My point all along has been that, in my opinion, it is wrong to call what Assange did "rape," mainly because what he did sounds an awful lot like what a lot of other people do, so many people that we would literally be living in a society saturated by rapists. You might think he is an asshole, you might think what he did is rude, selfish, etc., but calling him a rapist amounts to calling a lot of other people rapists. What it comes down to is this: should every person have to be worried about being accused of being a rapist, unless they have a entered into a written agreement that specifies what will happen, how long it will happen, and what the contingencies are? Things do not always go as planned with sex; people are sometimes spontaneous; sometimes, people do not like what winds up happening. People sometimes even have sex with someone they never would have considered having sex with otherwise, but they get caught up in the heat of the moment and whatnot.
Call Julian Assange an asshole, call him a cad, a womanizer, whatever. "Rapist" just seems like the wrong description to me, it leaves us in the precarious situation of implicating mass numbers of people.
Do you browse your friends' profiles? Do you send Facebook messages to them? Do you use Facebook's real-time chat? Facebook records everything you do on the website -- just using Facebook means giving them information. It does not really matter if you lie about your age -- what matters is if you list your friends (not even accurately -- even if you have 1000 "friends," they will just take a look at the profiles you visit most frequently).
Everything about Facebook is designed to extract information from you. The fact that you lied or left things blank on your profile has probably been detected, and used to construct the real profile about you: what sort of a person you are, what sort of advertisements you are most likely to pay attention to.
People are terrified of doing that. Seriously, they are terrified of what might happen if they were to not be on Facebook anymore. You would think that Room 101 contains nothing but "delete your profile" buttons...
So basically, if no consent was given, it's rape with no violence. Correct? Great, thanks for confirming my point.
Again, it depends on the situation. Just because someone does not have a signed and notarized document detailing consent does not mean that they are committing rape. These situations are not at all clear-cut.
We also put people in prison because of illegal, not predatory, actions and those do not imply violence
Yeah, and in fact our prisons are overflowing with them, which is why I made the point that ideally we would only imprison people who are dangerous and need to be kept separated from everyone else. There are a lot of other things we could do with non-violent criminals: community service, fines, probation, etc. The fact that we often choose to toss them in prison cells, where they are nothing more than a drain on society, is a problem, not a solution, created by "tough on crime" political platforms.
If someone has sex with a woman who's passed out drunk, what would you call it?
It depends a lot on the circumstances. If it is a total stranger doing it, and no consent was ever given, then I see no reason not to call it rape. If, on the other hand, two people decide to have a wild night of drinking and sex, and at some point one of them loses consciousness, I really do not think that "rape" is the appropriate label.
I never claimed to have a better definition for rape, I only said that the simplistic one based on "consent given" or "consent not given" may imply that a lot of people are rapists, and that certain very common behaviors would be inappropriately classified as "rape." That very same Wiki article makes the point that just defining when consent is given or not given is difficult, and that explicitly stating "yes" is not the be-all and end-all of consent (and that not explicitly stating "no" does not imply consent either). Making a blanket statement like, "Having sex with someone who is asleep is rape," fails to properly capture the difference between a predatory who sneaks into someone's bedroom and starts having sex with them without any sort of permission, and a consenting couple that has been having sex all night anyway. Likewise with drugs: simply stating that having sex with someone whose judgement is impaired by the effects of a drug constitutes rape implies that a whole lot of people are raping each other right now.
Most people associate rape with violence, or perhaps more generally with predatory behavior, which is why we put convicted rapists in prison: they are dangerous and need to be kept separate from the rest of society (at least in theory; in practice, we put plenty of non-violent criminals in prison, but that is an entirely separate issue). If we start calling people rapists who are not exhibiting any sort of violent or predatory behavior, then we will wind up diminishing the seriousness of "rape" as a crime or allegation, which we definitely do not want to do. We already have a serious problem with false allegations of violent rape, why would we want to create a whole new problem of mass rape allegations for activities and behaviors that most people would not consider "rape?"
Cryptome is not ignored, I have seen articles about it in the news, and have seen people discuss some of the documents posted there in online forums. The fact that it is not as famous as Wikileaks probably has more to do with the fact that the information posted there is not quite as high profile...
If you are referring to the "definition" given by Wikipedia...maybe you should have looked at the second paragraph, where rape is described as an underreported category of sexual violence.
Slashdot Mirror
What if you store everything on the net?
Then you forfeit your rights whether or not you are arrested.
The difference is that it happens to be on your person at the time of your arrest, and you lose the constitutional right to privacy when you are arrested. I suppose the original idea was that the police would be able to search your bag for weapons, or something like that, and it has (like so many others) been blown way out of proportion.
It won't be long before we see another court case concerning a defendant's right not to disclose his whole disk encryption passphrase.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_Zimbabwe
Well it sounds like we are in agreement: there is an important role that businessmen fill in society, and we do need them. I only went further and said that society needs more than just businessmen, which is true and which you seem to agree with as well.
It is also not censorship.
Why do corporate apologists keep saying this crap? Censorship does not mean "action by the government," it just means that materials deemed inappropriate are not allowed to be published.
All they'll do is open the door for alternative online book sale sites catering to specific tastes.
You are assuming that such a website would make economic sense; this is not necessarily true. Part of what makes Amazon so successful is that they can cater to a lot of unusual interests -- the economics of catering to a single interest are entirely different. It may very well be the case that there are just not enough people interested in these books for a store that caters to their interests to remain in business; it may take a business that can compete with Amazon, but does not censor its store, to cater to those interests.
My point is not that we need to encourage everyone to be a scientist, but rather, that we need to not encourage everyone to be a businessman.
drives science, nothing else can do it, only new business can do it.
Not true; businesses do not build large particle accelerators, radio telescopes, nor will businesses fund studies on rare and endangered species. Not all science creates profit.
If all someone is doing is browsing Facebook, why even bother going to class? They might as well have just stayed in their dorm room.
Nothing is wrong with being a businessman or a celebrity; such people certainly have a place in society. The problem is that is pretty much the only thing we encourage people to do, at least in terms of what popular media outlets are promoting. It takes more than executives and Hollywood stars to maintain a functional society.
OK, keeping in mind this is /., could you please tell me who Charro is? I swear to you, this is not a troll post.
It is that every kid with an IQ of 90 or more is told that they can be a doctor, lawyer, or scientist
Who is telling them that? Last I checked, we were telling our children that they should aspire to be either businessmen or celebrities.
The media also strongly discourages participation in science when it depicts it as a field that only socially awkward people would ever have an interest in. We really see a lot more of that, coupled with a strong push for everyone to become some kind of businessman, than we see of movies that might encourage children to become scientists. Welcome to American culture.
Probably not, since doing so would endanger the welfare of a former American soldier...
Oh, my apologies. The real point was about industries that died in the face of new technology, not about the ability to copy things. I suppose I should be more careful next time!
Devices like the iPad are just holders and consumers of media
No, the iPad is a tablet computer, albeit one that Apple designed to thwart attempts by its users to control. Hard drives and SSDs are holders of media, people are consumers of it, who use software to aid them in that consumption. Dividing tablet computers into different classes based on what some corporation thinks you should use it for is not a game I want to play, and it is frankly counter-productive. The sooner we start calling the iPad what it is, the better.
A Windows PC is the usual culprit when it comes to actually defeating copy protection and doing the duping
As are a number of other systems -- routers, switches, etc. -- which operate the Internet and enable the existence of file sharing networks and hosting services. Why leave out all of the other computers and operating systems involved in the process? Why single out "consumer" computers?
This seems bass ackwards to me as they should be taxing the computer, not that they should be taxing either.
Now there I agree with you. Frankly, I think it is time to start asking why we are continuing to placate the recording industry. Nobody shed a tear for all those typewriter companies, or those film manufacturers, or those buggy whip producers and horse breeders, when their industries became obsolete. They either learned to adapt and play by the new rules (e.g. Kodak seeking other ways to make money on photography) or they went out of business. Why should we not expect the recording industry to do the same? The age of CDs is long gone, we just continue to cling to it because the record executives are whining about how awful it is that all these horrible computer users are destroying their business. If they want to stay in business, they need to find a new way to make money on recorded music, rather than trying to fight back against the new technological reality that is here to stay.
Why not take the same approach with the music industry that we took with the typewriter, camera film, and buggy-whip industries?
...does it run Linu..oh wait.
In terms of its market capitalization, Red Hat is indeed worth billions of dollars.
However, I'd like to know where you would draw the line for when a girl no longer has the right to change her mind and withdrawal consent.
Anyone can change their mind, at any time, and I would not claim there is any limit to that. My only point was that it should not be easy to be found guilty off raping someone. Suppose that someone does change their mind, right in the middle of having sex with someone else, and makes that very clear...how long are we willing to wait until the other person stops, before we start calling it rape? What if someone changes their mind right before the sex would have stopped anyway (e.g. just a moment before a man has an orgasm), and their partner just finishes as usual?
My point all along has been that, in my opinion, it is wrong to call what Assange did "rape," mainly because what he did sounds an awful lot like what a lot of other people do, so many people that we would literally be living in a society saturated by rapists. You might think he is an asshole, you might think what he did is rude, selfish, etc., but calling him a rapist amounts to calling a lot of other people rapists. What it comes down to is this: should every person have to be worried about being accused of being a rapist, unless they have a entered into a written agreement that specifies what will happen, how long it will happen, and what the contingencies are? Things do not always go as planned with sex; people are sometimes spontaneous; sometimes, people do not like what winds up happening. People sometimes even have sex with someone they never would have considered having sex with otherwise, but they get caught up in the heat of the moment and whatnot.
Call Julian Assange an asshole, call him a cad, a womanizer, whatever. "Rapist" just seems like the wrong description to me, it leaves us in the precarious situation of implicating mass numbers of people.
Do you browse your friends' profiles? Do you send Facebook messages to them? Do you use Facebook's real-time chat? Facebook records everything you do on the website -- just using Facebook means giving them information. It does not really matter if you lie about your age -- what matters is if you list your friends (not even accurately -- even if you have 1000 "friends," they will just take a look at the profiles you visit most frequently).
Everything about Facebook is designed to extract information from you. The fact that you lied or left things blank on your profile has probably been detected, and used to construct the real profile about you: what sort of a person you are, what sort of advertisements you are most likely to pay attention to.
People are terrified of doing that. Seriously, they are terrified of what might happen if they were to not be on Facebook anymore. You would think that Room 101 contains nothing but "delete your profile" buttons...
So basically, if no consent was given, it's rape with no violence. Correct? Great, thanks for confirming my point.
Again, it depends on the situation. Just because someone does not have a signed and notarized document detailing consent does not mean that they are committing rape. These situations are not at all clear-cut.
We also put people in prison because of illegal, not predatory, actions and those do not imply violence
Yeah, and in fact our prisons are overflowing with them, which is why I made the point that ideally we would only imprison people who are dangerous and need to be kept separated from everyone else. There are a lot of other things we could do with non-violent criminals: community service, fines, probation, etc. The fact that we often choose to toss them in prison cells, where they are nothing more than a drain on society, is a problem, not a solution, created by "tough on crime" political platforms.
If someone has sex with a woman who's passed out drunk, what would you call it?
It depends a lot on the circumstances. If it is a total stranger doing it, and no consent was ever given, then I see no reason not to call it rape. If, on the other hand, two people decide to have a wild night of drinking and sex, and at some point one of them loses consciousness, I really do not think that "rape" is the appropriate label.
I never claimed to have a better definition for rape, I only said that the simplistic one based on "consent given" or "consent not given" may imply that a lot of people are rapists, and that certain very common behaviors would be inappropriately classified as "rape." That very same Wiki article makes the point that just defining when consent is given or not given is difficult, and that explicitly stating "yes" is not the be-all and end-all of consent (and that not explicitly stating "no" does not imply consent either). Making a blanket statement like, "Having sex with someone who is asleep is rape," fails to properly capture the difference between a predatory who sneaks into someone's bedroom and starts having sex with them without any sort of permission, and a consenting couple that has been having sex all night anyway. Likewise with drugs: simply stating that having sex with someone whose judgement is impaired by the effects of a drug constitutes rape implies that a whole lot of people are raping each other right now.
Most people associate rape with violence, or perhaps more generally with predatory behavior, which is why we put convicted rapists in prison: they are dangerous and need to be kept separate from the rest of society (at least in theory; in practice, we put plenty of non-violent criminals in prison, but that is an entirely separate issue). If we start calling people rapists who are not exhibiting any sort of violent or predatory behavior, then we will wind up diminishing the seriousness of "rape" as a crime or allegation, which we definitely do not want to do. We already have a serious problem with false allegations of violent rape, why would we want to create a whole new problem of mass rape allegations for activities and behaviors that most people would not consider "rape?"
Cryptome is not ignored, I have seen articles about it in the news, and have seen people discuss some of the documents posted there in online forums. The fact that it is not as famous as Wikileaks probably has more to do with the fact that the information posted there is not quite as high profile...
If you are referring to the "definition" given by Wikipedia...maybe you should have looked at the second paragraph, where rape is described as an underreported category of sexual violence.