january is almost over..
time for new resolution ….
USE ONLY LEFT HAND FOR ALL COMPUTER-RELATED ACTIVITIES.
dont know wht advantage it provides…. but one thing is sure..it will improve my left hand’s efficacy.
Monthly Archives: January 2009
online freedom saved, atleast in US
U.S. Supreme Court refused to step in and save the Child Online Protection Act. Children should be protected from sexually explicit online material, but a misguided law is not the answer to it. A law against a social evil cant another social evil – in this case, infringing free speech.
Child Online Protection Act was passed in 1998. It imposed civil and criminal penalties, including up to six months in prison, for offering materials online that was harmful to minors.
But the courts quickly blocked the law from taking effect. In July, the Circuit Court in Philadelphia, struck down the act, which it found to violate the First Amendment in a number of ways.
Among other things, the court ruled that the law’s purpose could be achieved, with less damage to free expression, if parents used filtering software to keep objectionable material away from children.
The Bush administration appealed that ruling, arguing that if it were allowed to stand, millions of children would be exposed to online pornography. But the American Civil Liberties Union, which had brought the original challenge, insisted that the act unconstitutionally stifled the free speech rights of adult Internet users – because it would cover more than just pornography that children may be seeing.
The act was ineffective since it did not regulate foreign Web sites.
We cannot attain the goal of protecting minors through a censorship regime. One option is filtering software. But schools and colleges using such filtering software will also look to cut out other websites like facebook and myspace, thus violating civil rights again.
free speech versus religion
Geert Wilders, a provincial Dutch parliamentarian, is now world-famous for wanting the Koran to be banned in his country and for making a movie degrading the holy book. According to him, it is “sick ideology of Allah and Muhammad.” The Dutch government decided that such views are acceptable contribution to political debate. Last week an Amsterdam court decided that Wilders should be prosecuted for “insulting” and “spreading hatred” against Muslims.
British Parliament refused to screen Wilders’s film at Westminster this week. His reaction was “yet more proof that Europe is losing its freedom.”
Another battle against free speech and religion, i guess.
Muslims believes Allah is their god and for them Allah stands first. So, naturally when a person of other faith praises his/her god – it will be a direct maligning of muslim belief ! SO, WILL COURTS ACROSS THE GLOBE PUNISH MEN AND WOMEN FROM ALL OTHER FAITH ?
I dont understand one thing: Why cant people take criticism ? If they can take criticism in other way of life like in their company or school, why cant they take criticism about their religion ?
why is religion considered as a NON-CRITICAL thing ?
I am an Athiest. So when a muslim or Christain or Hindu say their God is the paramount ruler of universe – they are insulting my faith and belief. CAN I GO TO COURT ON THAT ?
There is no proof to religion nor there is any evidence to the existence of GOD anywhere. How can COURT and LAW support “a thing” without any proof ?
if there is FREE SPEECH, it should be 100%.
humanity should GROW UP MENTALLY to accept criticism
In India, one of the national party – BJP – thrives on their ideology of Hindusm. They will attack -both physically and ideologically- all other faiths if they think the other faith is a threat to their VOTE BANK.
These kind of political wings should be BANNED. They dont really deserve a place in the 21st Century world. The other day, one of the hindu-support group attacked bar-going women and men saying they are degrading Indian culture !
I think, they are degrading Indian culture by attacking hapless women. If Indian culture can support and cradle things like Kamasutra, it can easily bear with pub culture.
Time has long past for countries to protect their citizen with things like US’ First Amendment.
CIA rape case
Atleast two Algerian women came forward in September alleging that they had been raped by the CIA’s former Algeria chief of station, identified as Andrew Warren. He was ordered back to the U.S. in October after the two women accused him of drugging them and raping them in his residence in Algiers. Law enforcement officials say they found tapes of sex acts Warren had apparently recorded surreptitiously.
This reminds me of the Indian army’s misbehavior with women in Sri lanka some years ago. Nothing came to light then. I hope America with its better legal system can give justice to the victims in this case. I hope the senate committee which is hearing this case will see through it as soon as possible.
Once again, I think media should be applauded for doing their service to the society – in this case, the big international society as a whole. Lack of lawfulness in the military is very common around the world. I think governments across the globe should realise this and take neccesary steps to prevent such gruesome incidents.
awakening from death
Scientists in Japan say they have successfully cloned a mouse from a body that had been frozen for 16 years, theoretically opening the door to a range of possibilities from preserving endangered animals, to resurrecting extinct animals to cloning Albert Einstein.
It has been suggested that the ‘resurrection’ of frozen extinct species, such as the woolly mammoth, is impracticable, as no live cells are available, and the genomic material that remains is inevitably degraded,” wrote the authors in the Monday edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
But the researchers say they got around the dead tissue issue by adapting new fertilization techniques for damaged sperm into a cloning technique for damaged frozen tissue. The authors of the study concluded these techniques could be used to ‘resurrect’ animals or maintain valuable genomic stocks from tissues frozen for prolonged periods without any cryopreservation.
