Yes. I had prepared a sarcastic rebuttal to your post, as I am wont to do, but I'm sure someone would have misread it.

The game is rated M for a reason, and they aren't trying to sugar coat it. I mean, anyone who played WaW knows that the COD series is not for children (dismemberment and all). There may be a place for more child-friendly war games (aka, the T rating), but that doesn't mean we can't have games that try to present reality. In fact, presenting nothing but child-friendly war is probably more harmful to society as a whole than presenting a smattering of reality. The main problem is that too many parents aren't going to know/care enough to stop children who are too young from playing such things, but there's no easy cure for that (except where they ban such things, and that's a whole other problem).

No, what will end Net Neutrality will be a criminal debate (priotitize traffic to limit piracy or child porn! It's for the children) or national security debate of some kind (those Korean Haxors will kill us all! PANIC!). The H1N1 thing will pass over too quickly (and I believe that Markey prsnts that bill every year... just this time he might finally get it through). But seriously... never waste a good crisis, right? If you do, people might think logically, and that's bad for policy.

Yes, but MI6 was a Bond film.

But... but... encryption is only for hardened CRIMINALS! No one would EVER encrypt stuff that isn't illegal! (see signature for explination). Nice quote, btw... I wish more people thought like that.

Not only that, but it usually requires a much more involved process of those troublesome warrents and all to get actual wire-tepping done (usually, not always). Curse that due process!

Let's not be too disparaging here, the police sometimes have legitamte interests in information gathering, there really are some people who need to be taken down. It is not their job to just protect our rights politically, that's our job and the job of the politicians (who epically fail in internet law). It is their job to protect our rights in life, but not to lobby for it in law-making; so they serve their own interests here, but they do so legitimatly (refering to other posts, not yours here). At least it does point out one of the social problems of treating practitioners internet freedoms as common criminals... it makes real criminals easily lost in the system.

I'll hold off my judgment until I try it, but so far such attempts to "bridge the gap" have all failed. Although most of those attempts start with the hardcore side and water it down (Empire Earth 3 anyone?). IMO, it seems best just to let hardcore gamers have their hardcore games, and casual gamers have their casual games, and those who want a mix, can get some of each. But I hope they pleasantly surprise me.

...they are educated and savvy enough to inject their opinions in any arena they see fit, and how dare anyone presume to tell them otherwise.

You mean like passing judgment on an entire generation? Don't for a second pretend that ego is a phenomena new to this generation. The simple fact is that every older generation in history has felt that the next generation was presumptuous and rude, and all too full of themselves. But what does that have to do with the law?

Young people will be immature, and, since it is a forum on which they are a disproportional demographic, will be the majority of the forum trolls and flame-baiters and haters out there, and thus are most likely to get caught under this law (yes, I know the law doesn't cover trolling, but the trolls mentality is much closer producing threats than is the average mature person's). This does not change the fact that classifying threats online as illegal breaks with free speech precedent. Free speech does not include threats ONLY if it is backed by the threat of imminent violence, or if it is defamation (ok, most trolls fit here, but that's a civil matter, not a felony), or if it incites to riot. Threatening online matches none of these; no threat is imminent, as I'd have to get up, drive to your house, and THEN do whatever I said (in which case the prosecutable act is the physical one, the speech is peripheral and can only be evidence of forethought and intent, not a crime itself). So no, we are not claiming "responsibility-less intrinsic rights;" we are merely pointing out that the same rights that we enjoy elsewhere also should apply online.

I've always kind of wanted to see bees sucking on some Bawls, does that make me abnormal?

Ah, thank you.

Isn't this exactly the same as the P45 chipsets? Those things had SLI support but not crossfire; if you want Crossfire, you got/get an X48 or whatever. Seriously, this doesn't seem like news to me, other than a new chipset will be produced in the future. Now if it said there will NOT be a chipset for the new generation ATI cards... then that'd be news. Did I miss something?

Well, in my case, as and experimentalist, it's simply that I don't consider thinking about subject matter that I love and playing with expensive toys that I could never afford on my own as "work." And as long as I produce publishable results every so often, no one bothers me. Maybe when I get my own lab, or otherwise rise through the ranks, this will change, but right now, I'm high enough level to not be belabored with the mundane, but low enough that I can go unnoticed by the higher-ups. It's a sweet deal... although the pay is certainly better higher up.

As a research scientist, I don't even 'work' ON the clock... hehe.

Ya, the whole cooperate "elite management" style is really troublesome to me; you know, the idea that the company pretty well owns you, and that the managers are superior human beings simply because they are above you on the food chain. That's why I'm staying the heck away from it all.

Also, many programs like ultrasurf and gtunnel work quite well, so you don't even have to search for those proxies. The problem is, your average user doesn't know that, and will not acquire the knowledge easily (websense and others like it can block most sites that link to/advertise proxies, too... you have to already have some knowledge of it).

Having operated under a rather oppressive form of websense at college for years, I have very little love for the company. But this still seems like a case of over-extending the blame. Sure, they are probably more evil than they want to pretend, but at least they bother pretending; which is more than I can say for some.

I think I'll reserve judgment until more facts are out, especially Websense's next step. If they actually do uphold their anti-censorship statement, then props to them; they'll be the least annoying filtering software in the market, which is not saying a whole lot.

It is unfortunate, but it is certainly not without precedent. During major wars, we usually censor mail from soldiers to try to prevent security leaks, accidentally revealing the rumors to the enemy really can cost lives.

We need to strike a balance between freedom and safety/security. Preventing all social networking seems excessive to me, but perhaps there were some recent incidents that made the Pentagon panic that we don't know about. I doubt such a policy will stand for long, perhaps they just need some extra training in cyber-safety (like most of America).