itistoday

It also seems like something that would be very difficult to implement and enforce, you know, considering the whole no-boundaries thing.

Edit: Ah, just a zip file. Change the extension to .zip and you're good to go. :-)

Edit: Found this http://epub2pdf.com/

It's OK... Looks like it might be good for reading on an iPhone, not an iPad. Are the pages supposed to be this tiny or did the converter not do a very good job?

So, I'm quite excited to have found the answer to my question, AND someone has already started a clojure/netty project:

http://github.com/texodus/saturnine

Check out these comparisons of Netty vs others:

http://gleamynode.net/articles/2232/

http://amix.dk/blog/post/19456

http://www.znetdevelopment.com/blogs/2009/04/07/scalable-nio...

http://www.znetdevelopment.com/blogs/2009/04/09/scalable-nio...

http://www.znetdevelopment.com/blogs/2009/04/13/scalable-nio...

I haven't tried circumventing their form, and maybe they didn't do this, but the basic idea is to store the submission URL in javascript, and assign it to the form only on the slider event.

Edit: I forget, does java.nio already use kqueue/epoll and friends? If so then Netty should do the trick as it uses java.nio.

http://www.cepr.net/index.php/publications/reports/the-high-...

Thankfully, the article does point out the discrepancies in Biden's claims:

  Interestingly, the statements seem to fly in the face of a  
  recent Government Accountability Office study released to 
  U.S. Congress earlier this year, which concluded that there 
  is virtually no evidence for the claimed million dollar 
  losses by the entertainment industry. That study suggested 
  that piracy could even benefit the economy.

Ars Technica did a great job thoroughly debunking the claims of the RIAA and MPAA:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2008/10/dodgy-digits...

And here's their take on the referenced government study:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/04/us-governmen...

But in this country, facts don't really have much weight when it comes to policy making.

The irony of all of this is that like the War on Drugs, instead of keeping people safe and happy, this coming War on Piracy will only serve as a drain on America's economy and morale, and yes, could even result in the creation of a dangerous black market. Tax dollars flushed down the toilet for the purpose of spreading misery and soothing the irrational fears of an aging and nervous minority of rich people.

Aerospace_Cadet wrote: Wouldn't any planet found no matter it's size or location be considered alien?

The notion of world-as-machine is becoming dated I think, as a more organic understanding arises, both from the mixing of western and eastern ideas, as well as better physics.

You really don't see how your words could have been interpreted that way?

I never said she had underage sexual relationships, I've always been referring to online porn and unrestricted internet access. Sorry if there was confusion.

Although on the other hand, I don't think 16 or 18 are magic numbers, but as you correctly point out, there are legal concerns to watch out for.

That's unfortunate. :-\

It's a bit disappointing to me that you're able to come to an understanding with the perspective of conservative Christians who want to ban gay marriage, yet aren't able to see my point of view.

That said, if you allow your own mature 9 year old daughter or so to have laissez-faire, unmonitored sexual relationships and write an article about it, I'd love to read it.

I'll be sure to if I ever get that opportunity. What I can say is that my sister does fit that description, and she alright, recently graduated at the top of her class, and has been accepted to an ivy league. No cybersex horror stories to speak of. Perhaps my parents did something right, besides giving her unrestricted internet access.

It's not about the content that's online, it's about the person who's viewing it. If they're intelligent and know what to watch out for, they'll be just fine, and love you the more for letting them masturbate in peace.

It's sillier still to apply those generalizations to a "9-year old" with a beard and who made other 9-year olds cry to their mothers saying he made them feel stupid.

I know plenty of examples of 9-year olds who are more mature than many 20 year-olds I know.

Plus, 9 years isn't all that young to be watching or talking about porn. Perhaps just one standard-deviation from the norm (just a guess, based on my personal experience).

I'm also not sure what exactly the alternative to "free rein" is with regards to porn (other than blocking it completely). I don't know about you, but I'd rather not have anyone watch me as I jerk off to porn, much less my parents. I'm sure they would want to be there either (at least I hope so).

BTW, did you know it was only a few centuries ago that 15 year olds were wed and started families?

The great thing about this story though is we know how it ends. The boy who jerked off to hardcore pornography at the age of 9 (or younger) is all grown up and he's not a murderer or a rapist. Instead, he's won recognition for his intellect, and seems to be an all-around OK guy.

I can't say I blame them. The mother also admits she knew nothing about porn at all, and thought that he was looking at still pictures. This is not surprising considering his parents most likely grew up with exactly that, still pictures and perhaps VHS tapes, not the stuff we have today.

Sure, they could have done a better job, but I maintain the route they took was better than killing off his access (which they actually tried to do, see the comment made by the dad after the story, they eventually realized it was futile, and I think they would have saved themselves a lot of heartache had they approached it intelligently from the start).

And letting the lice-infested homeless craigslist woman come live with them? I can't see any way to spin that as a good idea.

Well, another thing to consider is that a lot was left out from the story. It may very well be they didn't know how he found here.

Again, from the comment made by the father:

  And then there is the matter of the homeless woman. Again, we did not simply let
  this happen. For months the police, the courts, and an entire team of medical
  professionals who were not mentioned in the story were involved. We all agreed,
  after months of agony, that the approach we finally took was the least of a
  multitude of evils. Everything that happened over this period of time, and with
  all of these people, is left out of the story, again, to save Alex
  embarrassment.

Giving their son unrestricted access to pornography was a smart thing to do, especially considering, as explained in the article, he could get it either way.

If your child is smart and educated about the potential dangers associated with online sex chatrooms and the like, there are only benefits to reap.

Pornography does the world a load of good. In countries that are sexually liberal, and where sex is not as taboo as it is in other countries, the population has less sexual crime. The opposite is true of sexually repressive countries. Why this is so shouldn't be difficult to understand.

Pornography gives sexually charged males an outlet, one that does not involve raping and abusing women.

What matters most with respect to porn, is not whether someone has access to it, or even the sort of porn they watch, but their own character, which determines how they react to it.

Or would you have preferred that they block his internet access (a futile endeavor as explained in the article), made him resent and rebel against his parents more, and forced him at the age of 9 to turn his sexual drive and impulses toward the underage girls around him? Turning off the porn doesn't turn off natural sexual urges, if anything, it ensures they're at the forefront of his consciousness. Any honest person with a penis can tell you that.

For a child in his position, he turned out remarkably well. This should not be surprising considering the excellent parenting he received. They didn't give up on him, they home-schooled him and taught him well, and they gave him freedom to learn from his own mistakes:

Alex took the therapist at his word and walked out of the office to go live with his girlfriend. He was 15. I reported the incident and the therapist to the Department of Human Services and called the police, who monitored Alex from the distance. Two-and-a-half difficult days passed before Alex returned home, his body language meek and his words—to me, at least—repentant. He barely spoke to his father.

Down the road, Alex realized how blessed he was to have such great parents:

A strict vegan, Alex had just apprised me of new research on latent carcinogens in poultry as well as the news that he was to receive the award for the university’s Outstanding Computer Science Student of 2010. Holding a corn chip midway to his mouth, he said, “I appreciate all that you do for me. I know I couldn’t have come this far without you.”

http://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/ceufi/remember_that_guy...

I'll copy a comment I made there:

Actually, the laws of physics are not necessarily being called into question here.

As Gravity13 pointed out, this actually is possible within known physics. It's possible he's getting his energy from some other source. He's not breaking the law of conservation of energy (as demonstrated by the fact that he didn't poop or pee).

You also have to keep in mind that even modern physics doesn't know exactly what the nature of energy is. When modern physics can't tell you for sure whether a block of space has a very low amount of energy, or an infinite amount of energy, that should give you pause.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_energy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-point_energy

That said, I think we need to get James Randi on this.

  I hate to see fiction encouraging a deterministic model.

Really though, this is a fantastic article, and I think the best bit of advice is at the end:

  Again, I remind you to ignore me.

I've always considered geeks to be those who "know their shit" about some technical topic (often multiple topics), and nerds to be more along the lines of "gamers and dungeon and dragon players."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Hand_(nuclear_war)