The point is, it's not that the EU governments are cracking down on anti-semetic views that's worrying (anti-semetism = not good), but more that a precedent has been set where the disputing of officially true information can become a crime.
Here's an extreme example:
You are a member of an oppressed minority.
One day, the government sends troops into your city and 50,000 other members of your group are killed.
The government says that only 100 were killed, by "vigilantes."
You publicly dispute this.
The government puts you in prison.
A large portion of spyware comes not from downloading p2p programs and the 82 KB "WindowsXPFULLVERSION.exe" files found on them, but from stuff like the free screensavers, pointers, games etc. that pop-up ads can be seen advertising. Not all spyware comes from piracy, not all "free" things come from piracy.
Uhm, people build and test their own cars all the time. Look up "kit cars", or even search around and find some homebuilt (unique, not from a kit) projects. Some even get them road registered. I don't understand what makes building your own car illegal or open to litigation (unless of course it careens out of control and knocks a house down, but that's your own fault). The Wright brothers replica seems to be the same thing, although you might have trouble getting it licensed (or whatever, don't know the exact term for it), I wouldn't think it would be a problem if you built and tested it on your own, somewhere away from other people or property. The other examples, I don't know enough about each.
Neal Stephenson had the idea in his book "The Diamond Age." IIRC they were called cookie cutters and used in prisions to discourage escape and as a method of execution. The book is one of my all time favorites and a great read for anyone remotely interested in nanotech.
The idea that the Sun may be kicking it up a knotch and warming up our planet a little more than "normal" is disturbing.
I find the idea that one of the most powerful nations on Earth is ignoring a human-caused problem with severe global consequences a little more disturbing.
You seem to be stuck on the idea that some sort of suppressed underground research has debunked global warming. Any citations/links? Surely an open discussion form such as this is an appropriate way to reveal this special research you hold so dear.
The standard Ubuntu repositories(Dapper, Edgy too, probably) have gtk and qt graphical interface versions of nethack. They are easily avaliable through the Add/Remove Programs interface or apt-get.
Hold on there, as I understand it the scouts require belief in God and have a strong pro-nationalistic bent to them. I believe that these two topics are those that often require the most critical thinking applied to them, and an organization that promotes complete acceptance of these concepts certainily does not teach "thinking", at least not in a complete, critical, and analytical way. Note here that I am not saying that you have to be atheist/antinationalist to be a good critical thinker, just that you have to think about these issues before accepting a viewpoint. Promoting a one-sided view of any political, religious or corporate (such as the RIAA/MPAA) idea is never the way to teach thinking. Anyone with more personal experience with the BSA organization is welcome to refute me, in case I'm severely out of touch or something.
But which is the most frequent offender? The idiot who leaves a loaded gun lying around the house where his kids can find it, the common street criminal, or the Really Bad People (TM)? Hint: Which are you most likely to be affected by walking down the street in your town?
The bottom line is that if someone is extremely determined to get weaponry no laws or regulations will stop them. But what limiting access to guns will help is, as the poster said, keeping them out of the hands of the stupid/stupid bad people, which are the problem 90% of the time anyway.
I would argue that in order to know there is the potential for something to go wrong, some kind of problem has to occur.
Unfortunately, to many people it seems that it is about just GM being bad. I fully support controls on GM foods-it's just common sense-but the media hysteria surrounding it is ridiculous. There is no reason to perpetuate that viewpoint.
I think the parent poster brings up a good point here, in that many of the comments on this article so far that have been in opposition to GM foods have failed to cite any specific examples. If you're going to talk about some mysterious bad voodoo that GM foods have perpetrated on the unsuspecting populace, at least take the 5 minutes required to google it and provide some citations. Just saying "oh well, you know, GM foods are pretty bad and can do some nasty stuff" isn't going to convince anyone or make for a constructive debate.
No one said that social networking sites wouldn't change. There is no doubt that social networking sites, like everything else on the internet, will change and shift as the demands of users likewise change and shift. However, the underlying concept of a social networking site is something that can remain viable over the years. Unlike something like, for example, shiny white DRM-ed mp3 players, people, teenagers especially, will always see value in something like a social networking site, preventing the concept from quickly becoming a fad. Social networking sites simply allow someone to easily transfer their real-life relationships to an easy to use online hub, a fairly simple concept. In this simplicity lies its value.
...
Of course, I could be wrong, and next year we could all be using shiny white DRM-ed devices to communicate with our friends instead.
Although most laptops today have builtin winmodems (with what would normally be hardware implemented in the software drivers themselves) that don't usually work with most linux distros out of the box, there is still support for winmodems running as "linmodems" avaliable. Using the "scanmodem" tool (http://linmodems.technion.ac.il/#scanmodemread more here) I quickly found out what drivers I required and installing them was a painless process.
IIRC, the primary reason Google refused to release this data was to protect"trade secrets," presumably some sort of information revealing characteristics of their search algorithm. I somehow have a hard time believing that the whole "protecting civil rights" thing was anything more than a periphery public relations benefit, especially considering several other search engines released the data to the government, even when this request could be easily and legally turned down. I wouldn't be suprised if Google did yield the audio information.
I'm not defending the arguement that all misbehavior stems from bad teaching (I consider dull, unstimulating lectures to be bad teaching) and can be solved by more engaging teaching. Like you said, there are many students with problems developed outside of the school (home problems, mental problems etc.) that virtually no amount of good teaching will fix. However bad teaching does exacerbate this problem, and just continuing to teach in this method is certainly not a step in the right direction. To teach effectively, a teacher must be able to present the material compellingly and in a fashion that encourages the students direct their attention towards the subject at hand. Good teaching can solve many problems, and is the first step to getting students to learn, but it is certainly not a cure-all for attention problems.
While behavioral problems are not created by boring lectures, they are certainly brought out by them in many cases. A student who is not stimulated or interested in the subject matter is one more likely to create problems in class. Do not discount the effects poor teaching has on student behavior.
What specific time period are you referring to?
I would argue that even though less of the population may be religious now as they were in the past, religious fundamentalists are gaining more political power in the U.S. today, regardless of their actual footprint in society. As their influence over the general social environment has waned (this is why one would not get elected president, although Bush is somewhat of a fundie), fundies have gotten more into learning how to influence U.S. politics directly, bypassing public opinion. Although I do agree with you on the problems with corporations, it is not right to entirely exonerate the fundies in this case.
What differences are there inthe effectiveness of ipfilter/iptables-based Linux firewalls as compared to Windows software firewalls (i.e. Zonealarm et al). If anyone has anything illuminating on this topic I would be interested to hear it. I've been using Firestarter for awhile now on my Ubuntu box, and have been wondering if I'm missing out on some of the more sophisticated or subtle features of iptables.
Um, people have been posting TV shows on youtube and such (streaming video 'channels' is one thing that readily springs to mind). Of course, it's not completely legit. You don't have to wait for the revolution, it's already in progress.
The point is, it's not that the EU governments are cracking down on anti-semetic views that's worrying (anti-semetism = not good), but more that a precedent has been set where the disputing of officially true information can become a crime.
Here's an extreme example:
You are a member of an oppressed minority.
One day, the government sends troops into your city and 50,000 other members of your group are killed.
The government says that only 100 were killed, by "vigilantes."
You publicly dispute this.
The government puts you in prison.
A large portion of spyware comes not from downloading p2p programs and the 82 KB "WindowsXPFULLVERSION.exe" files found on them, but from stuff like the free screensavers, pointers, games etc. that pop-up ads can be seen advertising. Not all spyware comes from piracy, not all "free" things come from piracy.
Uhm, people build and test their own cars all the time. Look up "kit cars", or even search around and find some homebuilt (unique, not from a kit) projects. Some even get them road registered. I don't understand what makes building your own car illegal or open to litigation (unless of course it careens out of control and knocks a house down, but that's your own fault). The Wright brothers replica seems to be the same thing, although you might have trouble getting it licensed (or whatever, don't know the exact term for it), I wouldn't think it would be a problem if you built and tested it on your own, somewhere away from other people or property. The other examples, I don't know enough about each.
Neal Stephenson had the idea in his book "The Diamond Age." IIRC they were called cookie cutters and used in prisions to discourage escape and as a method of execution. The book is one of my all time favorites and a great read for anyone remotely interested in nanotech.
I find the idea that one of the most powerful nations on Earth is ignoring a human-caused problem with severe global consequences a little more disturbing.
You seem to be stuck on the idea that some sort of suppressed underground research has debunked global warming. Any citations/links? Surely an open discussion form such as this is an appropriate way to reveal this special research you hold so dear.
The standard Ubuntu repositories(Dapper, Edgy too, probably) have gtk and qt graphical interface versions of nethack. They are easily avaliable through the Add/Remove Programs interface or apt-get.
Hold on there, as I understand it the scouts require belief in God and have a strong pro-nationalistic bent to them. I believe that these two topics are those that often require the most critical thinking applied to them, and an organization that promotes complete acceptance of these concepts certainily does not teach "thinking", at least not in a complete, critical, and analytical way. Note here that I am not saying that you have to be atheist/antinationalist to be a good critical thinker, just that you have to think about these issues before accepting a viewpoint. Promoting a one-sided view of any political, religious or corporate (such as the RIAA/MPAA) idea is never the way to teach thinking. Anyone with more personal experience with the BSA organization is welcome to refute me, in case I'm severely out of touch or something.
The bottom line is that if someone is extremely determined to get weaponry no laws or regulations will stop them. But what limiting access to guns will help is, as the poster said, keeping them out of the hands of the stupid/stupid bad people, which are the problem 90% of the time anyway.
I would argue that in order to know there is the potential for something to go wrong, some kind of problem has to occur. Unfortunately, to many people it seems that it is about just GM being bad. I fully support controls on GM foods-it's just common sense-but the media hysteria surrounding it is ridiculous. There is no reason to perpetuate that viewpoint.
I think the parent poster brings up a good point here, in that many of the comments on this article so far that have been in opposition to GM foods have failed to cite any specific examples. If you're going to talk about some mysterious bad voodoo that GM foods have perpetrated on the unsuspecting populace, at least take the 5 minutes required to google it and provide some citations. Just saying "oh well, you know, GM foods are pretty bad and can do some nasty stuff" isn't going to convince anyone or make for a constructive debate.
Try the noscript extension for firefox. That neuters myspace pages to a reasonable level for me.
Of course, I could be wrong, and next year we could all be using shiny white DRM-ed devices to communicate with our friends instead.
Although most laptops today have builtin winmodems (with what would normally be hardware implemented in the software drivers themselves) that don't usually work with most linux distros out of the box, there is still support for winmodems running as "linmodems" avaliable. Using the "scanmodem" tool (http://linmodems.technion.ac.il/#scanmodemread more here) I quickly found out what drivers I required and installing them was a painless process.
IIRC, the primary reason Google refused to release this data was to protect"trade secrets," presumably some sort of information revealing characteristics of their search algorithm. I somehow have a hard time believing that the whole "protecting civil rights" thing was anything more than a periphery public relations benefit, especially considering several other search engines released the data to the government, even when this request could be easily and legally turned down. I wouldn't be suprised if Google did yield the audio information.
I'm not defending the arguement that all misbehavior stems from bad teaching (I consider dull, unstimulating lectures to be bad teaching) and can be solved by more engaging teaching. Like you said, there are many students with problems developed outside of the school (home problems, mental problems etc.) that virtually no amount of good teaching will fix. However bad teaching does exacerbate this problem, and just continuing to teach in this method is certainly not a step in the right direction. To teach effectively, a teacher must be able to present the material compellingly and in a fashion that encourages the students direct their attention towards the subject at hand. Good teaching can solve many problems, and is the first step to getting students to learn, but it is certainly not a cure-all for attention problems.
Sadly, an all too true representation of most powerpoints used in school today.
While behavioral problems are not created by boring lectures, they are certainly brought out by them in many cases. A student who is not stimulated or interested in the subject matter is one more likely to create problems in class. Do not discount the effects poor teaching has on student behavior.
What specific time period are you referring to? I would argue that even though less of the population may be religious now as they were in the past, religious fundamentalists are gaining more political power in the U.S. today, regardless of their actual footprint in society. As their influence over the general social environment has waned (this is why one would not get elected president, although Bush is somewhat of a fundie), fundies have gotten more into learning how to influence U.S. politics directly, bypassing public opinion. Although I do agree with you on the problems with corporations, it is not right to entirely exonerate the fundies in this case.
What differences are there inthe effectiveness of ipfilter/iptables-based Linux firewalls as compared to Windows software firewalls (i.e. Zonealarm et al). If anyone has anything illuminating on this topic I would be interested to hear it. I've been using Firestarter for awhile now on my Ubuntu box, and have been wondering if I'm missing out on some of the more sophisticated or subtle features of iptables.
Um, people have been posting TV shows on youtube and such (streaming video 'channels' is one thing that readily springs to mind). Of course, it's not completely legit. You don't have to wait for the revolution, it's already in progress.