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Op-Ed |
It's a discussion site, so tell us what *you* think.
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What Is Terrorism? Can it Ever be Ethical? (Op-Ed)
By harrystottle Sun Oct 16th, 2005 at 07:42:08 PM EST
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Surprisingly the answer to the second question is "Yes" but we need
to work up to that more slowly.
Let's begin with the Dialogue of the Daft:
The UN Debate on Terrorism which culminated in a banal Security Council resolution,
on Wednesday 14 September 2005 - a date which will surely sink without a trace
in the annals of intelligent statesmanship - proposed by our own glorious
leader Mr Anthony Blair. The Council unanimously adopted Resolution 1624 to
"prohibit by law incitement to commit a terrorist act or acts" and
to "deny safe haven" to anyone even suspected of incitement.
Unfortunately, they failed to agree on what constituted the terrorism,
the incitement of which the world is now committed to prevent!
Frankly, if a novelist wrote such a plot, the editor would reject it as childishly
implausible.
(Warning: Long Article. Here, if you prefer, is a pdf
version.)
Full Story (133 comments, 13902 words in story)
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I'm Floridian; Don't Fuck With Me (Op-Ed)
By loteck Thu Oct 6th, 2005 at 02:16:52 PM EST
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I've got Good News and I've got Bad News.
Recently, the government of Florida managed to pull together to pass HB 0249, a law now commonly known as the "Stand Your Ground" law. This law provides for the following:
"A person, not engaged in an unlawful activity, who is attacked in any other place where he or she has a right to be has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so, to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself, herself, or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony."
So, finally, this Christmas, when we all leave our trailer parks and go to line up outside Walmart to score those cheap 40" TVs, and there is a riot when they finally open the doors, I can light you up like 2Pac when you get in my face.
Now, on to the bad news.
Full Story (157 comments, 2098 words in story)
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I am a newbie, I have a problem, so you must help me! (Op-Ed)
By Sad Mephisto Tue Sep 27th, 2005 at 03:18:26 PM EST
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Many people from various Open Source communities wave their hands and shout "Switch to Linux, switch to Free software". But when Windows users invite Tux to their computers, they face various problems with installation and configuration. They look for help, but they can hear nothing but "RTFM" or "Google it". Let's think about us - experienced users and them - newbies. They need help and we know the answer. We try to teach them not to ask stupid questions. However, our answers are stupid as well. Where's the golden mean? Let's try to find it.
If you work at technical customer support, you are paid to be nice and being helpful is your duty. You have to solve typical problems many times a day and you can't point users to the manual. But let's assume that you're a computer geek - you know everything and you are eager to share your knowledge. However, when somebody asks you for the sixth time in a week how to turn on a mouse wheel in Linux you lose your temper and explode.
Full Story (280 comments, 892 words in story)
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The news on Katrina from outside the USA (Op-Ed)
By blackpaw Sun Sep 4th, 2005 at 05:51:06 PM EST
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First off - someone might want to tell George about the internet, or get him a TV feed to ABC news, it was obvious to us foreigners that New Orleans was facing a disaster, including the high probability of the levees breaking well before Katrina struck.
Or perhaps just a link to the US National Weather Service which pretty accurately predicated what would happen.
But enough on the administration failures - its sure to be done to death by better than me. What's stunning Australians, and I'm sure most other countries around the world is the anarchy that's occurring in New Orleans, the complete lack of community spirit.
Full Story (488 comments, 526 words in story)
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A Proposal for a Copy Optimized DVD Audio Format (Op-Ed)
By MichaelCrawford Sat Sep 3rd, 2005 at 12:00:34 AM EST
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I got to thinking about something after setting up the
Ogg Vorbis
and cdparanoia tools on my Mac so
I could back up my collection
of two hundred compact discs to a few DVD-Rs.
I'm writing to suggest the community work together to specify a standard for the
format of DVD Audio discs that will be
Free as in Freedom. There are a couple of competing standards proposals for
DVD Audio discs that have the advantage of higher audio fidelity than Compact Discs
(sampled at, say, 24 bits instead of 16) and that can hold more minutes of music,
but it's quite clear that the companies behind the standardization efforts
consider copy-protection their first priority.
You can be sure that the very finest minds in cryptography, mathematics,
physics, optics and electrical, mechanical and software engineering
are working together, and working very hard, to make sure that
when 24-bit Britney Spears DVD Audio disks hit the stores that they won't
end up on eMule the very next day,
in fact not even within the next decade. I don't think a very serious
effort was made to ensure that the DVD Content Scrambling System was
entirely secure. I also don't think that mistake will be made a second time.
Could there be a better way?
Full Story (134 comments, 2767 words in story)
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The "Zero Tolerance" Approach to Fighting in Schools (Op-Ed)
By lostincali Sun Aug 14th, 2005 at 10:49:09 PM EST
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Many school districts have recently implemented "Zero Tolerance" fighting policies. What this means varies from locality to locality, but it generally involves severe punishments for anyone involved in fighting, without regard to any details of the case. In practice this means that those who attack others and those who defend themselves are punished equally.
Recently a student has sued his school district because of severe injuries sustained in a fight where he did not fight back out of respect for the policy.
These cases pose several interesting questions about the way schools are administered, and, more importantly about a trend in which even self-defense has come to be viewed as inappropriate, unsanctioned, and potentially illegal violence.
Full Story (134 comments, 1730 words in story)
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