One of these things just doesn’t belong

One of the webcomics I read regularly is Home on the Strange. Today’s Home on the Strange makes fun of the Fox network’s tendency to cancel shows without giving them much of a chance.

But, Ferrett’s accompanying newspost goes a bit far, I think:

What inspired this? Oh, I don’t know – maybe the fact that “Drive” was cancelled before I even had a chance to watch it on my TiVo, is all. Or maybe Firefly, Space: Above and Beyond, Wonderfalls, or Futurama would like to have a chat with them.

Drive had four episodes aired when it was cancelled. Wonderfalls also only had four episodes aired (though several more were available on the DVD set). Firefly had eleven (again, more on the DVDs). All of these shows were very arguably killed without having been given a chance to find an audience. Heck, even Space: Above and Beyond only had a single season to find an audience, and it was moved around a lot and (allegedly) not marketed well, so I can even get behind that.

But Futurama?

I loved the show, don’t get me wrong. I have all four box sets of DVDs, and I’m sorry that’s all there is to collect. I’m glad it’s being given a chance to return as a set of movies or whatever (though I would happily trade those for new Firefly/Serenity material). However, the show ran for four seasons, and, as I recall, was pretty heavily marketed, since it was created by the creator of The Simpsons. Yes, it got moved around a lot, but there are still 72 episodes. Even including Space: Above and Beyond, that’s nearly thirty more episodes than every other show listed there combined (and if you exclude Space: Above and Beyond, Futurama had nearly twice as much run-time as the other shows combined, and almost four times as many episodes)!

Yes, Fox has a history of cancelling shows without giving them any time to find an audience (something I’ve started to believe is actually a marketing strategy — get the people who tend to fall in love with a show early on hooked, then cancel it; they have to buy the DVDs, or they’re left without the whole story, and you can use the timeslot for something with more mass-market appeal or cheaper production costs (see: American Idol, Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?)), but Futurama isn’t one of the shows given that treatment.

Between the time that I wrote that last post about the Sex Offender Search Engine and the time I posted it*, I talked the topic over with a friend, and it occurred to me that there was, perhaps, another problem with the search engine in addition to the possibility of false negatives. Depending on how the system is set up, it may be possible for sex offenders to manipulate the system.

Let’s say that, despite the fact that I have no more than a dozen or so readers (on a very good day — most of the time, I wager I average closer to around three readers), I manage to offend someone who is on this registry. He gets angry, calls the state police and says, “Hey, I just wanted you guys to know… I just registered a new e-mail address. It’s RobinS at one stack mind dot com.” Do the state police then send one of those “Your e-mail address has been registered” notifications to me, or do they just add it straightaway?

On a small scale, this could be a very effective way for a sex offender to get even with someone who has made him angry. On a larger scale, it could be used to completely undermine the effectiveness of the system as it’s proposed.

*I saved this point for today mostly so that I could pad my post count for the month and make the calendar in the upper right look more full.

The state of West Virginia has launched a search engine that provides parents with a way to check up on the people their children have been corresponding with over the internet:

Under a 2001 law, convicted sex offenders have had to register e-mail addresses and screen names with the State Police * but that law made the information confidential. With the new search engine, parents can enter screen names or e-mail addresses, and if those match up with any of the more than 2,800 registered sex offenders in West Virginia, the Web site will link to the offender’s information page, which includes the current address, description and criminal offense.

…

By law, registered sex offenders must notify State Police of all e-mail addresses and screen names, just as they must provide their current places of residence.

For most offenders, failure to provide the correct Internet information to the State Police is a felony, punishable by one to five years in prison for a first offense, and 10 to 25 years for subsequent convictions.

I suspect that Evan Jenkins, the state Senator who pushed for making this information public last year, probably had his heart in the right place. I believe that he truly wants to help protect the state’s children. Unfortunately, I fear that this law (and its counterpart, the 2001 law that requires sex offenders to register) is ultimately useless. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth it.

First of all, these are convicted criminals. They’ve already shown that the law won’t stop them from sexually assaulting others. If they’re willing to violate that law again (and if they’re not going to be assaulting anyone else, the registry is pretty much a moot point), I can’t imagine they’re not also willing to violate the law that requires them to register their e-mail addresses.

Secondly, I fear that the presence of this search engine might lead to a false sense of security. Parents see their child conversing with a name they don’t recognize, they check on the sex offender search engine, and nothing pops up.

Also, e-mail addresses and IM screen names aren’t like physical addresses and phone numbers. A new physical address takes a bit of effort, as does a new phone number. In the time it has taken me to write this post so far, I could have generated a dozen new e-mail addresses (on my own domains, from my ISP, or on several free e-mail sites), and a similar number of new IM screen names. Yes, it would be illegal for a convicted sex offender in West Virginia to do that without informing the state police, but as I pointed out before, these aren’t people who have shown a large amount of respect for the law in their previous behavior.

Unless we are willing to actively monitor every keystroke that a convicted sex offender makes, it’s going to be nigh-impossible to truly know whether they’ve registered all of their screen names. Of course, if we’re willing to do that, if we have such a fear that these individuals will relapse and commit these crimes again on new innocent victims, why are they allowed to be out in public in the first place?

I’ve said before that, when dealing with the government, I don’t usually ask why it shouldn’t do something; I ask to be convinced why it should. Let’s assume that the law won’t be effective, that most of those criminals to whom it applies either a.) don’t recidivate or b.) get around the law. Let’s say that, over the next three years, it protects one potential victim. What is the harm? Isn’t that worth it?

I don’t have children of my own, but on my desk at work, I have several pictures of my cousin, who just turned two. Sitting in my e-mail box right now, I have a picture of one of my best friends sitting with his wife and his daughter. Looking at them, I can’t tell you that it’s not worth any amount of money and manpower to save just one child. This law doesn’t affect law-abiding citizens in any negative way (other than government money being spent on a hugely inefficient project, but that’s nothing new); at worst, it inconveniences people convicted of sexual assault (or is that at best?).

In the final analysis, I believe that this search engine is probably not going to be particularly useful in helping to combat sexual predation online, but as long as parents don’t rely on this alone as a method of protecting their children, it causes no significant harm that I can see, and I hope it works.

Heroes is back, with the first of the final five episodes of the season.

Linderman gives Nathan a little more information about what is to come, and attempts to recruit a new employee. Mr. Bennet, Matt Parkman, and Ted Sprague are held captive by The Company, and Peter’s confrontation with Sylar leads to tragedy.

While this wasn’t the best episode of Heroes (I’m leaning toward Company Man or Homecoming for that, though several other episodes are close behind), it was a pretty good one. As always, spoilers follow.

More …

Orson Scott Card, at The Ornery American, writes about American Honor:

As an embarrassed Democrat, I am ashamed of my party, because I know that at the grass roots level there are plenty of Democrats who care about honor and wish their party had any. But as long as the press remains silent about Democratic dishonor while harping on any trumped-up charge they can lay against Republicans, it’s hard for many people to believe that the dishonor really happened, or that anybody cares that it did.

That’s why Clinton could fire all the U.S. Attorneys, but Bush can’t fire eight of them. That’s why Clinton could scoff at Congressional subpoenas and pretend they had “lost” files they didn’t want to hand over, while Bush is pummeled for refusing to respect Congressional demands for things no Congress has ever claimed a right to have.

That’s why the politically correct are the main censors and suppressors of free speech in our country today, the deniers of diversity and the elitist enemies of democratic process — and yet are able to claim credit for their tolerance and love of freedom, and the media, which they control, does not expose their shame.

Because they have no shame.

That’s the sorry state of honor in America today. It is regarded as a relic that only matters to those dunderheads who still believe in God and morality and fairness and decency and all those other outmoded concepts. You know. Regular people. Not the cool, elite, smart people who all have identical — and completely unexamined — opinions.

So why is it any surprise that our nation is also on the verge of losing its honor?

The whole thing is worth reading, as usual.