Yes, you are correct that I might have conflated two similar-pointing eyes with "stereoscopic", for some of those creatures.
But on the other hand, I do know what stereoscopic vision is, and some arthropods are known to have it (like some of the spiders I mentioned above for example). So I wasn't completely wrong.
By the way: "stereoscopic" vision is hardly unusual in arthropods. Most crabs and shrimp have it. Hunting spiders often have it (not even just "stereo"... more like surround sound). And so on. I am pretty sure a lot of flies can see forward in stereo.
They're both real, but the government one is a slower and subtler game.
In general these things may be true, but at times it is neither.
For example, there is very strong evidence that there was government tampering with both the events and reporting immediately after the Sandy Hook shooting. I'm not going so far as to say conspiracy or anything, but there was a pretty darned evident political agenda.
Unless you believe correcting an occurrence of discrimination is necessarily as offensive as the discrimination itself.
The majority of the libertarians that post here on Slashdot, would indeed find that correcting an occurrence of discrimination as offensive as discrimination itself.
I dispute both of these statements. It isn't the "attempt" that is offensive. It is when well-intended "attempts" to fix a problem instead become a problem in themselves.
The problem with too many NON-libertarians is that they pass legislation based on good intentions, rather than practical solutions to real problems. And these good intentions often (not always) run into The Law of Unintended Consequences. Precisely because the law was based on good intentions rather than practical reality.
But that is, quite literally, insane. When it comes to legislation, good intentions don't matter worth a damn. What matters is the result.
I am ALL FOR the intent of Affirmative Action. Sadly, the reality (especially in recent years) falls far, far short of the intent. And in fact in many cases has had the reverse effect of what was intended, by discriminating against non-minorities in the name of NOT discriminating against minorities. Again not always, but often enough, AA has become a textbook example of how to NOT solve a problem via government intervention. In spite of all the good intentions.
There is no such thing as discrimination in the libertarian mind. There only a exists a failure of the recipient of discrimination to exercise personal responsibility to adequately prove to the perpetrators of the discrimination that they do not conform to the negative stereotypes of the group in question and thus don't deserve the punishment or distrust that particular group deserves by default.
This is absolute BS, and is a great example of the typical Leftist BS propaganda about Libertarians. (I'm not claiming that you're a Leftist, only that this statement is typical cookie-cutter Leftist mischaracterization of Libertarian philosophy.)
Here is what actually exists in the Libertarian mind: the knowledge that as a practical matter, no matter how much good intention is behind it, AA has largely been a failure (as explained in TFA).
Contrary to popular belief, Libertarians are not completely anti-regulation. They ARE, however, against regulation that is (A) unnecessary, or (B) doesn't work.
And it doesn't matter how many people think it's necessary, if it doesn't work.
I leave you with an insightful quote from an otherwise pretty much forgettable President, Lyndon B. Johnson:
"You do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered."
Every one of these hard radical Right talking points and phony anecdotes that has been investigated has proven to be false, most of the maliciously so. Every single one. But apparently we are supposed to just blindly swallow the latest from the breitbart propaganda machine?
Sorry (not really), but WHOOSH again. I am not "right wing" at all, much less "hard right". I call it like I see it, not how somebody else tells me what to believe.
This article itself says that the Obama administration simply doesn't even HAVE the data to be saying that 8 million people are now "enjoying" Obamacare via this sign-up process. So the figure is bullshit on its very face, and I don't need anybody else to either prove or disprove it. One plus one still equals two, no matter how much you try to spin it.
I have a mod stalker who is modding down my past comments and is too much of a cowardly pussy to admit it or face me.
I have been though this myself. I had one "stalker" who had several sockpuppet accounts, and would save up points then look up my comments and mod them down en masse. After a while the pattern became pretty obvious.
I find it hard to imagine doing something of such extraordinary, blatant cowardice.
Because wanting equal opportunity for the only jobs worth a damn is somehow wanting an advantage?
No. That isn't what I was saying and you damned well know it.
Wanting only the positives, while ignoring or rejecting the negatives, is not "seeking equality". It is looking for advantage. If you want equality, you have to accept the negatives along with that better paycheck.
I highly recommend the book "Men On Strike" by Helen Smith, PhD. (Available from Amazon, ironically enough.) It is full of insights regarding why the modern "feminism" movement has been failing. Hint, sisters: it ain't all their fault.
Jack Vance probably said it best, in one of his novels. Here a ruler is speaking to the legislative body of government (e.g., congress, parliament):
I urge you not to endorse this sinister measure. Humanity many times has had sad experience of superpowerful police forces...
As soon as [the police] slip out from under the firm thumb of a suspicious local tribune, they become arbitrary, merciless, a law unto themselves. They think no more of justice, but only of establishing themselves as a privileged and envied elite. They mistake the attitude of natural caution and uncertainty of the civilian population as admiration and respect, and presently they start to swagger back and forth, jingling their weapons in megalomaniac euphoria.
People thereupon become not masters, but servants. Such a police force becomes merely an aggregate of uniformed criminals, the more baneful in that their position is unchallenged and sanctioned by law. The police mentality cannot regard a human being in terms other than as an item or object to be processed as expeditiously as possible. Public convenience or dignity means nothing; police prerogatives assume the status of divine law. Submissiveness is demanded. If a police officer kills a civilian, it is a regrettable circumstance: the officer was possibly overzealous. If a civilian kills a police officer all hell breaks loose. The police foam at the mouth. All other business comes to a standstill until the perpetrator of this most dastardly act is found out. Inevitably, when apprehended, he is beaten or otherwise tortured for his intolerable presumption.
The police complain that they cannot function efficiently, that criminals escape them. Better a hundred unchecked criminals than the despotism of one unbridled police force.
Again I warn you, do not endorse this measure. If you do, I shall surely veto it."
From The Star King, by Jack Vance
This passage is notable for how demonstrably true it is. We have had exactly this problem with our local police, for many years, and we are only now beginning to get a handle on them.
The other side of this discussion are false positives. In any system where discrimination is allowed, power hungry climbers can throw a rival under the bus with a quick click.
The Obama administration trying to define "discrimination" through data is a joke of cosmic proportion. But it isn't a funny one.
Second, a lot of people defend capitalism, because they mistake it for market economy.
It is not a "mistake". While they are of course not the same things, free market economies do not exist without capitalism, and vice versa. History tells us very clearly that one does not occur without the other. So it's pretty natural to conflate them.
Third, a large person think capitalism is freedom and any change is dictatorship, like Russia.
But you neglect to mention that there are very good reasons to think that.
Yes, people confuse political systems with economic systems, but they are tied together.
Those who control the states in Western country are in favor of the present economy.
Which is the whole point here. They may not be the same things, but when you don't have free markets, neither do you have a free political system. There is not a single exception in the history of the world.
And as wealth is generally decreasing,sharing start to become interesting again. Furthermore, capitalism is no longer that popular.
... Which is the REASON that wealth has generally been decreasing.
Haven't you noticed? It's a blatantly obvious correlation: as Western society has become more "socialist", and its governments more interventionist, its economies have been slumping, in pretty much direct proportion.
While the countries that have been becoming more capitalist -- like China and the former Soviet states -- are doing far BETTER than they were before.
So flagging popularity of "capitalism" is problematic because history unfailingly tells us that capitalism WORKS... and those other things don't.
So I would have to wonder how much perceived crime rate has gone down...
This is easy to answer. "Perceived" crime rate is way UP, because of media and government scare-mongering. There have been many studies and polls, and people keep screaming that we must "do something" about the "increasing" crime rate, which simply does not exist.
It's a classic case of how the news can make people think things that simply are not so. (With government's help.)
In my opinion, the news and government scare-mongering have a lot more to do with it than learned attitudes about race, etc. We're constantly being TOLD that the crime rate is abominable, when that's the opposite of the truth.
you missed the memo where administration claims 8 million plus subscribers, supposedly 2.7 million appeared out of nowhere after March to give us this 8M total
And apparently you both missed the memo where those weren't paid subscribers, either, but supposedly the number who applied.
So... Obama has decided to bypass even more of the law he helped shove down our throats and is now ignoring on a massive scale?
Hint, Mr. President: you aren't a King. When you sidestep laws passed by Congress, you're a criminal. Even if it's your own pet law.
(Or he would be, if the law were Constitutional in the first place. SCOTUS says it's a "tax"? Well, tax laws have to originate in the House. Obamacare didn't.)
Microsoft's Irish branches are Irish companies. Its U.S. branches are U.S. companies. If they are all owned by the U.S. company, I suppose this might hold. But I'm not exactly an attorney specializing in international affairs, so I don't claim to be an expert in this.
What bothers me primarily is that more and more, the erstwhile "leaders" of the U.S. (I use the term leaders very loosely, because I think many of them are incompetent at actually leading) have seemed to think they have legal jurisdiction over the world.
I hate to disabuse them of that notion, but they really should be disabused of that notion.
well no shit. but leaking details on how to circumvent what you're doing is not the solution. Sometimes the opportunity to snark outweighs reading comprehension i guess.
Nothing wrong with MY reading comprehension. GP didn't recommend "leaking" anything, he recommended working on a separate, outside software project to circumvent the DRM.
Granted, that still could get you fired. But it isn't "leaking". And I repeat: GP had already recommended that he quit anyway. And I repeat: there are times when principle is worth more than a fat paycheck.
Purely out of curiosity: what percentage of this "management 'S' team", that the article refers to, are working as box shifters?
It's amazing to me how so many people in these threads keep missing each others' points.
Like GP, and apparently the parent commenter, who seem to have totally WHOOSHED the point that "gender inequality" is usually only raised when the subject is attractive, well-paying jobs, which is hypocrisy. Equality is equality, including garbage collection. Anything else is inequality, by definition.
This only serves to reinforce the same old point I have been making for many years: most "feminists" I have met did not really want equality; they wanted advantage.
man, while DRM is total bullshit, suggesting someone to do something that almost certainly would end with them getting fired (that's the best case, worse is being sued into oblivion) is just as bad.
Um... you didn't get that GP was recommending they quit anyway?
There DOES come a point at which your principles are worth more than a fat paycheck. Some people seem to have forgotten this.
So I take it that check-stops don't exist in your jurisdiction?
Correct. I have lived in states before where mass (100%) stops were considered legal, and I know of other states where random stops are considered legal.
Both are quite illegal here.
Police need probable cause not only to pull you over, but even to look up your license plate information (which is not public record).
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, you are correct that I might have conflated two similar-pointing eyes with "stereoscopic", for some of those creatures.
But on the other hand, I do know what stereoscopic vision is, and some arthropods are known to have it (like some of the spiders I mentioned above for example). So I wasn't completely wrong.
That's a good point.
But I do know that certain hunting spiders do have stereoscopic vision, however I don't know what the resolution is. It might be terrible.
By the way: "stereoscopic" vision is hardly unusual in arthropods. Most crabs and shrimp have it. Hunting spiders often have it (not even just "stereo"... more like surround sound). And so on. I am pretty sure a lot of flies can see forward in stereo.
Reid and her colleagues want to learn how the insect's vision differs from ours.
I think I'd start with: compound eyes.
They're both real, but the government one is a slower and subtler game.
In general these things may be true, but at times it is neither.
For example, there is very strong evidence that there was government tampering with both the events and reporting immediately after the Sandy Hook shooting. I'm not going so far as to say conspiracy or anything, but there was a pretty darned evident political agenda.
Unless you believe correcting an occurrence of discrimination is necessarily as offensive as the discrimination itself.
The majority of the libertarians that post here on Slashdot, would indeed find that correcting an occurrence of discrimination as offensive as discrimination itself.
I dispute both of these statements. It isn't the "attempt" that is offensive. It is when well-intended "attempts" to fix a problem instead become a problem in themselves.
The problem with too many NON-libertarians is that they pass legislation based on good intentions, rather than practical solutions to real problems. And these good intentions often (not always) run into The Law of Unintended Consequences. Precisely because the law was based on good intentions rather than practical reality.
But that is, quite literally, insane. When it comes to legislation, good intentions don't matter worth a damn. What matters is the result.
I am ALL FOR the intent of Affirmative Action. Sadly, the reality (especially in recent years) falls far, far short of the intent. And in fact in many cases has had the reverse effect of what was intended, by discriminating against non-minorities in the name of NOT discriminating against minorities. Again not always, but often enough, AA has become a textbook example of how to NOT solve a problem via government intervention. In spite of all the good intentions.
There is no such thing as discrimination in the libertarian mind. There only a exists a failure of the recipient of discrimination to exercise personal responsibility to adequately prove to the perpetrators of the discrimination that they do not conform to the negative stereotypes of the group in question and thus don't deserve the punishment or distrust that particular group deserves by default.
This is absolute BS, and is a great example of the typical Leftist BS propaganda about Libertarians. (I'm not claiming that you're a Leftist, only that this statement is typical cookie-cutter Leftist mischaracterization of Libertarian philosophy.)
Here is what actually exists in the Libertarian mind: the knowledge that as a practical matter, no matter how much good intention is behind it, AA has largely been a failure (as explained in TFA).
Contrary to popular belief, Libertarians are not completely anti-regulation. They ARE, however, against regulation that is (A) unnecessary, or (B) doesn't work.
And it doesn't matter how many people think it's necessary, if it doesn't work.
I leave you with an insightful quote from an otherwise pretty much forgettable President, Lyndon B. Johnson:
"You do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered."
If Obama were acting like a king, he'd put some heads on pikes and you know what? Most of the pointless bickering would end.
This "pointless bickering" is also known as "free speech" and "democracy".
There. Fixed that for you.
Every one of these hard radical Right talking points and phony anecdotes that has been investigated has proven to be false, most of the maliciously so. Every single one. But apparently we are supposed to just blindly swallow the latest from the breitbart propaganda machine?
Sorry (not really), but WHOOSH again. I am not "right wing" at all, much less "hard right". I call it like I see it, not how somebody else tells me what to believe.
This article itself says that the Obama administration simply doesn't even HAVE the data to be saying that 8 million people are now "enjoying" Obamacare via this sign-up process. So the figure is bullshit on its very face, and I don't need anybody else to either prove or disprove it. One plus one still equals two, no matter how much you try to spin it.
I have a mod stalker who is modding down my past comments and is too much of a cowardly pussy to admit it or face me.
I have been though this myself. I had one "stalker" who had several sockpuppet accounts, and would save up points then look up my comments and mod them down en masse. After a while the pattern became pretty obvious.
I find it hard to imagine doing something of such extraordinary, blatant cowardice.
Because wanting equal opportunity for the only jobs worth a damn is somehow wanting an advantage?
No. That isn't what I was saying and you damned well know it.
Wanting only the positives, while ignoring or rejecting the negatives, is not "seeking equality". It is looking for advantage. If you want equality, you have to accept the negatives along with that better paycheck.
I highly recommend the book "Men On Strike" by Helen Smith, PhD. (Available from Amazon, ironically enough.) It is full of insights regarding why the modern "feminism" movement has been failing. Hint, sisters: it ain't all their fault.
Interesting story. Do you have any links to confirm that's how it happened?
Right... cases before the Supreme Court just appear out of thin air, eh?
I urge you not to endorse this sinister measure. Humanity many times has had sad experience of superpowerful police forces...
As soon as [the police] slip out from under the firm thumb of a suspicious local tribune, they become arbitrary, merciless, a law unto themselves. They think no more of justice, but only of establishing themselves as a privileged and envied elite. They mistake the attitude of natural caution and uncertainty of the civilian population as admiration and respect, and presently they start to swagger back and forth, jingling their weapons in megalomaniac euphoria.
People thereupon become not masters, but servants. Such a police force becomes merely an aggregate of uniformed criminals, the more baneful in that their position is unchallenged and sanctioned by law. The police mentality cannot regard a human being in terms other than as an item or object to be processed as expeditiously as possible. Public convenience or dignity means nothing; police prerogatives assume the status of divine law. Submissiveness is demanded. If a police officer kills a civilian, it is a regrettable circumstance: the officer was possibly overzealous. If a civilian kills a police officer all hell breaks loose. The police foam at the mouth. All other business comes to a standstill until the perpetrator of this most dastardly act is found out. Inevitably, when apprehended, he is beaten or otherwise tortured for his intolerable presumption.
The police complain that they cannot function efficiently, that criminals escape them. Better a hundred unchecked criminals than the despotism of one unbridled police force.
Again I warn you, do not endorse this measure. If you do, I shall surely veto it."
From The Star King, by Jack Vance
This passage is notable for how demonstrably true it is. We have had exactly this problem with our local police, for many years, and we are only now beginning to get a handle on them.
When the census-takers came around a couple of years ago, they asked me how many people lived in my home. I told them.
Then they started asking me questions about income, the race of everybody in the home, etc. I did not tell them.
I said "The Constitution provides that you take an enumeration of the population. You have done so. You have no other business here. Goodbye."
Close door.
The other side of this discussion are false positives. In any system where discrimination is allowed, power hungry climbers can throw a rival under the bus with a quick click.
The Obama administration trying to define "discrimination" through data is a joke of cosmic proportion. But it isn't a funny one.
Second, a lot of people defend capitalism, because they mistake it for market economy.
It is not a "mistake". While they are of course not the same things, free market economies do not exist without capitalism, and vice versa. History tells us very clearly that one does not occur without the other. So it's pretty natural to conflate them.
Third, a large person think capitalism is freedom and any change is dictatorship, like Russia.
But you neglect to mention that there are very good reasons to think that.
Yes, people confuse political systems with economic systems, but they are tied together.
Those who control the states in Western country are in favor of the present economy.
Which is the whole point here. They may not be the same things, but when you don't have free markets, neither do you have a free political system. There is not a single exception in the history of the world.
And as wealth is generally decreasing,sharing start to become interesting again. Furthermore, capitalism is no longer that popular.
... Which is the REASON that wealth has generally been decreasing.
Haven't you noticed? It's a blatantly obvious correlation: as Western society has become more "socialist", and its governments more interventionist, its economies have been slumping, in pretty much direct proportion.
While the countries that have been becoming more capitalist -- like China and the former Soviet states -- are doing far BETTER than they were before.
So flagging popularity of "capitalism" is problematic because history unfailingly tells us that capitalism WORKS... and those other things don't.
So I would have to wonder how much perceived crime rate has gone down...
This is easy to answer. "Perceived" crime rate is way UP, because of media and government scare-mongering. There have been many studies and polls, and people keep screaming that we must "do something" about the "increasing" crime rate, which simply does not exist.
It's a classic case of how the news can make people think things that simply are not so. (With government's help.)
In my opinion, the news and government scare-mongering have a lot more to do with it than learned attitudes about race, etc. We're constantly being TOLD that the crime rate is abominable, when that's the opposite of the truth.
Marx was a hireling of ideologues. He might have been a genius but he SOLD his genius and his integrity for "capitalist" dollars.
He wrote what his ideologist friends told him to write, and he did it for money.
you missed the memo where administration claims 8 million plus subscribers, supposedly 2.7 million appeared out of nowhere after March to give us this 8M total
And apparently you both missed the memo where those weren't paid subscribers, either, but supposedly the number who applied.
So... Obama has decided to bypass even more of the law he helped shove down our throats and is now ignoring on a massive scale?
Hint, Mr. President: you aren't a King. When you sidestep laws passed by Congress, you're a criminal. Even if it's your own pet law.
(Or he would be, if the law were Constitutional in the first place. SCOTUS says it's a "tax"? Well, tax laws have to originate in the House. Obamacare didn't.)
It's a multinational company.
Microsoft's Irish branches are Irish companies. Its U.S. branches are U.S. companies. If they are all owned by the U.S. company, I suppose this might hold. But I'm not exactly an attorney specializing in international affairs, so I don't claim to be an expert in this.
What bothers me primarily is that more and more, the erstwhile "leaders" of the U.S. (I use the term leaders very loosely, because I think many of them are incompetent at actually leading) have seemed to think they have legal jurisdiction over the world.
I hate to disabuse them of that notion, but they really should be disabused of that notion.
well no shit. but leaking details on how to circumvent what you're doing is not the solution. Sometimes the opportunity to snark outweighs reading comprehension i guess.
Nothing wrong with MY reading comprehension. GP didn't recommend "leaking" anything, he recommended working on a separate, outside software project to circumvent the DRM.
Granted, that still could get you fired. But it isn't "leaking". And I repeat: GP had already recommended that he quit anyway. And I repeat: there are times when principle is worth more than a fat paycheck.
Purely out of curiosity: what percentage of this "management 'S' team", that the article refers to, are working as box shifters?
It's amazing to me how so many people in these threads keep missing each others' points.
Like GP, and apparently the parent commenter, who seem to have totally WHOOSHED the point that "gender inequality" is usually only raised when the subject is attractive, well-paying jobs, which is hypocrisy. Equality is equality, including garbage collection. Anything else is inequality, by definition.
This only serves to reinforce the same old point I have been making for many years: most "feminists" I have met did not really want equality; they wanted advantage.
man, while DRM is total bullshit, suggesting someone to do something that almost certainly would end with them getting fired (that's the best case, worse is being sued into oblivion) is just as bad.
Um... you didn't get that GP was recommending they quit anyway?
There DOES come a point at which your principles are worth more than a fat paycheck. Some people seem to have forgotten this.
So I take it that check-stops don't exist in your jurisdiction?
Correct. I have lived in states before where mass (100%) stops were considered legal, and I know of other states where random stops are considered legal.
Both are quite illegal here.
Police need probable cause not only to pull you over, but even to look up your license plate information (which is not public record).
That's an important idea.
The U.S. government (stupidly, in my opinion) started selling off its Strategic Helium Reserves years ago. I wonder if there is any left.