In this day and age a rifle isn't a whole lot of help against a drone, but it is better than nothing
This detail is something that seems to be missed by a lot of people. It's obvious that a war against your own government isn't likely to be winnable- but that isn't the point.
Armed conflict is loud, ugly, and newsworthy. We live in a connected age; word of an incident can travel around the world almost instantly. The government has better weapons, but gunning down citizens in the street is perhaps the quickest way to diminish any perception of legitimacy that a government has.
By contrast, someone governing an unarmed populace can simply make dissidents disappear without incident. That is the kind of tyranny that we are protected from by the Second Amendment.
Admittedly, this is still an improvement over the current state of affairs, in which identity information of University students/faculty/staff is somewhat regularly distributed to scammers and spammers free of charge.
That's assuming you'll even be able to find non-brand replacement parts. Figure that the wear and tear on an autonomous vehicle should be even more predictable than current service intervals, and these vehicles can drive themselves in for service. Manufacturers and their dealer networks stand to win back a much greater share of vehicle service and repairs than they get now. With that shift, independent mechanics may become a thing of the past.
...And that's the "benign" version. Before we get to that point, my guess is that automakers will increasingly push leases and similar arrangements over actual ownership, to the point that it becomes a matter of managing "their" fleet, not servicing "your" car. Magnuson-Moss compliance won't be an issue; you won't have a say in who does the work because you don't own the vehicle. There could also be upsides to this model, e.g. after a wreck the company might just send you another (refurbished, but otherwise equivalent) car instead of making you wait on repairs.
I agree wholeheartedly with your sentiment, but I also acknowledge that you and I are both mortal. The people who insist on driving "manually" will die off eventually. We can only hope to enjoy it that long, instead of being forced off the roads early by a human driver ban.
Insurance companies may be our friend in that regard, fighting such legislation while they cling to life.
It's hard to say without knowing what the specific limits are.
Would an advertisement for an anti-malware product run afoul of this new policy, given that the ad is straightforward and not waving an alarmist "Your PC is infected" message at the user? technically that's not an ad for support, per se, but an actual software product.
I can also understand the existence of "legitimate" third party tech support services, but I'm not sure how many use cases there are for such a service to be advertising itself via a search engine. That really seems like it'd be mostly scam/trojan territory.
If Microsoft isn't overzealous about the rule, it's possible that any disruption of legitimate business would be minimal. However, I'd not be surprised if some fake AV peddler tried to take MS to court over it.
Amusingly, the Windows 7 installation on my dual-boot Asus system has been trying and failing to install this update for a few weeks now, presumably because GRUB is in the way.:)
Two people conversing in person tend to be more receptive to the ambient noise level, and will moderate their volume accordingly. For normal conversation, that means they're generally not going to be too obnoxious to those around them.
Cell phone conversations throw that off. The lack of visual feedback from the listener, and distraction of the speaker, combined with people's general tendency to speak into cell phones at an almost-yelling volume, means that cell phone conversations are often overly loud and irritating in public spaces.
No, if only for the simple fact that the existing "legal limits" clearly aren't stopping them, if that is the case. More legal limits won't help matters.
Indeed, though, the thought itself is scary- whether the goons are trying to obtain greater powers of surveillance, or just trying to legitimize what they are already doing...
I wonder where the odds are, that they'd need to draw the line. What if a hypothetical threat was targeted at "A school in California", or even the entire USA? Or perhaps, what if there was a threat to bomb a non-specific LAUSD campus, some time in the next 30 days? in the next year? in the next 10 years?
The problem with that is that the transition can't happen all at once, and it certainly isn't fair to only expect some people to work.
The ideal solution, as I see it, is that as automation lowers the cost of living, less labor is expected from the average person. That would mean a shorter work week, or earlier retirement. That presents two issues though. First, I don't see a way to get there. The preference for both employees and employers would be to have fewer employees who work more hours, rather than many who work fewer hours. Second, the reduction of the labor force isn't going to happen evenly. Job markets that are already short on labor won't be seeing that decrease.
But even then, a reduction in work for (almost) everyone would be a less bumpy transition than just eliminating it for some and going whole-hog into socialism, even if socialism is seen as an inevitable endgame.
Up to now, we've seen plenty of evidence that the intelligence agencies don't seem to have major qualms about violating US law, as long as it's done quietly. Who's going to prosecute? This is just Congress realizing that it does not need to take the political heat for broad surveillance that it authorized. Once in place, NSA will happily continue the operations without overt permission to do so.
People who are high up in government intelligence are going to bank on not being caught performing illegal surveillance over not being taken to task over the first thing they "miss" due to inadequate coverage.
GamerGate will never be covered "fairly" because it's not in the interest of anyone with a soapbox tall enough to do so.
Journalistic integrity is a fat fucking joke, and probably always has been. We've been buying the lie for decades because, surprise surprise, the people who benefit from that notion are in the perfect position to broadcast it to the entire world. They've got it great, so no one wants to risk exposing an ugly truth just because a few individuals weren't discreet enough about collecting their benefits. You bet your ass they're going to censor it and pretend it didn't happen!
I mean, really. The Hollywood types have got nothing on the self-important assclowns who call themselves "journalists", whether they roll with "New" media or "old".
The SJW "movement" is vile, but it's also extremely naive of the opposition to think that they'll get anywhere by exposing abuses of the press. They don't care, and they never cared. That battle is lost.
Maybe someday, with the democratization of news that's been brought on by the internet, average people will finally learn to engage ALL media with reasoned skepticism and critical thinking. THEN we can start thinking about ways to make the journalists honest.
Minecraft is already well established, there's no need to bother with gimmicks like DLC or any need to pay for development with an upfront purchase price. Such an approach would be a waste of the game's convenient addictiveness.
After corporate meddling pisses off most of the core Mojang developers enough to jump ship, Microsoft will drop in a new default resource pack, maybe add another boss or two to the game, and sell it as "Minecraft 2.0". Realms will be the only multiplayer option, and the game will be sold as a monthly subscription rather than an upfront purchase.
The game's popularity will probably tank at that point, but not so much that MS doesn't get something for it. Much of the existing community will probably stick with the latest 1.x release, or perhaps the latest Bukkit-supported version
They should have called it the "Galaxy Fruit", as a simultaneous jab at Apple and the dimwits who'd refused to buy a previous Samsung phone because it was "too plastic".
Perhaps a percentage-based tire tax? It covers hybrids/electrics well, Correlates to usage, is less regressive (cheaper cars usually run cheaper tires), and does a better job of addressing the truck/bus issue, without tracking.
I think the base price of gas does enough to encourage efficiency. The tricky thing is that cost per mile of road tires is really low, so the tax would have to be pretty steep. Still might be less unpopular than a gas tax, though.
Figures, now that the federal government finally has a surveillance apparatus that could make this viable for the first time in history, neither party is actually willing to commit to it.
There is zero intersection between the "They" who are being pushed to denounce science to whom you are referring and the "They" who are now easier to fire without tenure. This is a ruling in California. Teachers will probably get fired for petty and political reasons, but I'd think it far more likely that a Californian teacher will get canned for insisting on teaching creationism than for refusing to teach it.
If Oklahoma or some other very red state rules against tenure for public school teachers, then we'll talk. But I'd imagine that those states are already less sympathetic to the teacher's unions, and there are fewer perks to fight over. I also don't think that California has established any precedent outside of California, as the ruling pertains to the state constitution.
And while it is indeed troubling that certain school curricula are increasingly trying to pass off religious hogwash as science, addressing it with that kind of generalization and paranoia really doesn't help the case for purely secular instruction.
And, what if this kid commits a Columbine-esque revenge scenario? They'll blame it on some other bullshit, not their own lack of souls...
They'd blame it on mental illness, and they'd be right. A mass shooting is not a rational response to bullying, even if it's severe.
What happened in this case is deplorable, but no one deserves to be killed over it. The amount of apparent sympathy for perpetrators of "Columbine scenarios" in this thread is a bit frightening. I get that this is Slashdot and most of us were probably tormented to some degree while we were growing up. Many probably even fantasized about doing something similar, but there's a huge gap between fantasizing and actually going through with it.
Bullies are pricks, but that doesn't make them responsible for the actions of victims who happen to be mentally unstable. It's the same thing as the notion of "making someone kill themself". As evil and disgusting as that degree of bullying may be, at the end of the day each individual is responsible for their own actions, not the actions of others.
Also, while the prevention of school shootings is an obvious reason that bullying needs to be dealt with, I find it rather insensitive to refer to this in the context of a specific case. "What if this kid goes Columbine?" sort of insinuates that he's not right in the head, which isn't very nice.
True on both points. However, It doesn't change the fact that software still "ages" in a way, and that software that works acceptably at one point in time may become unsafe to continue using at a later date. GP seems to think that the intangible nature of software means that its utility can't diminish over time.
All software has defects, it's the nature of the beast. If vendors were liable for every last bug in their software, the commercial software industry would not exist. (I'm sure there are freetards who feel that would be a good thing, but let's not go there.)
It's not like Microsoft deliberately released XP with 2,722 flaws with the intent to fix them gradually over the next ~12.5 years. That's the problem with security vulnerabilities- they need to be discovered. Odds are, there are plenty more in Windows XP that have yet to be found. XP EOL isn't going to make your XP machine explode and kill your family. Before long, though, unpatched XP systems will be rife with exposed vulerabilities. Browser updates will drop support for XP. It will become unsafe to use any XP machine in any capacity that involves internet connectivity. Advising your clients to continue using XP is irresponsible at best.
Really, since you're so convinced that MS is outright evil, I'm surprised you're not trying to push some linux-based XP replacement. Though, for what it's worth, even free operating systems often have an end of support life, absent any profit motive.
A better analogy would be for Toyota to stop manufacturing parts for very old cars, and most car manufacturers do just that. Aftermarket is more able to fill the void in that case, but it's the same concept. And let's be real, $200 scaled up to a car would be thousands, not millions. Software doesn't have "mechanical" wear, but it has ongoing discovery of security vulnerabilities that require maintenance from the vendor. Delivering that maintenance costs money.
Even the newest systems that shipped with XP are really old now. Hell, I still use one at work (not by choice), and it's a slow piece of shit by today's standards. It's nice that so many have been able to sit on similar rigs for this long, but it's time to move on. That kind of service life in commodity-level PCs was almost unheard of a decade ago. Upgrades are a part of life in the tech business, and I don't think it's fair to bitch this time just because you got a little extra mileage out of the last round.
The masses of now-unsupported XP users reflects badly on the users, not Microsoft. If you missed the boat on a Windows 7 upgrade, it's your own damn fault. On the upside, the ensuing clusterfucks at various large enterprises should teach yet another hard lesson about the perils of under-funding your IT department.
Nice plug, by the way, though it's amusing that "Futurepower" is so willing to cling to the past.
Slashdot Mirror
In this day and age a rifle isn't a whole lot of help against a drone, but it is better than nothing
This detail is something that seems to be missed by a lot of people. It's obvious that a war against your own government isn't likely to be winnable- but that isn't the point.
Armed conflict is loud, ugly, and newsworthy. We live in a connected age; word of an incident can travel around the world almost instantly. The government has better weapons, but gunning down citizens in the street is perhaps the quickest way to diminish any perception of legitimacy that a government has.
By contrast, someone governing an unarmed populace can simply make dissidents disappear without incident. That is the kind of tyranny that we are protected from by the Second Amendment.
Admittedly, this is still an improvement over the current state of affairs, in which identity information of University students/faculty/staff is somewhat regularly distributed to scammers and spammers free of charge.
C-Rap... very nice.
I also prefer to spell "Country Music" without the "o". :)
That's assuming you'll even be able to find non-brand replacement parts. Figure that the wear and tear on an autonomous vehicle should be even more predictable than current service intervals, and these vehicles can drive themselves in for service. Manufacturers and their dealer networks stand to win back a much greater share of vehicle service and repairs than they get now. With that shift, independent mechanics may become a thing of the past.
...And that's the "benign" version. Before we get to that point, my guess is that automakers will increasingly push leases and similar arrangements over actual ownership, to the point that it becomes a matter of managing "their" fleet, not servicing "your" car. Magnuson-Moss compliance won't be an issue; you won't have a say in who does the work because you don't own the vehicle. There could also be upsides to this model, e.g. after a wreck the company might just send you another (refurbished, but otherwise equivalent) car instead of making you wait on repairs.
I agree wholeheartedly with your sentiment, but I also acknowledge that you and I are both mortal. The people who insist on driving "manually" will die off eventually. We can only hope to enjoy it that long, instead of being forced off the roads early by a human driver ban.
Insurance companies may be our friend in that regard, fighting such legislation while they cling to life.
It's hard to say without knowing what the specific limits are.
Would an advertisement for an anti-malware product run afoul of this new policy, given that the ad is straightforward and not waving an alarmist "Your PC is infected" message at the user? technically that's not an ad for support, per se, but an actual software product.
I can also understand the existence of "legitimate" third party tech support services, but I'm not sure how many use cases there are for such a service to be advertising itself via a search engine. That really seems like it'd be mostly scam/trojan territory.
If Microsoft isn't overzealous about the rule, it's possible that any disruption of legitimate business would be minimal. However, I'd not be surprised if some fake AV peddler tried to take MS to court over it.
Amusingly, the Windows 7 installation on my dual-boot Asus system has been trying and failing to install this update for a few weeks now, presumably because GRUB is in the way. :)
Two people conversing in person tend to be more receptive to the ambient noise level, and will moderate their volume accordingly. For normal conversation, that means they're generally not going to be too obnoxious to those around them.
Cell phone conversations throw that off. The lack of visual feedback from the listener, and distraction of the speaker, combined with people's general tendency to speak into cell phones at an almost-yelling volume, means that cell phone conversations are often overly loud and irritating in public spaces.
No, if only for the simple fact that the existing "legal limits" clearly aren't stopping them, if that is the case. More legal limits won't help matters.
Indeed, though, the thought itself is scary- whether the goons are trying to obtain greater powers of surveillance, or just trying to legitimize what they are already doing...
I wonder where the odds are, that they'd need to draw the line. What if a hypothetical threat was targeted at "A school in California", or even the entire USA? Or perhaps, what if there was a threat to bomb a non-specific LAUSD campus, some time in the next 30 days? in the next year? in the next 10 years?
The problem with that is that the transition can't happen all at once, and it certainly isn't fair to only expect some people to work.
The ideal solution, as I see it, is that as automation lowers the cost of living, less labor is expected from the average person. That would mean a shorter work week, or earlier retirement. That presents two issues though. First, I don't see a way to get there. The preference for both employees and employers would be to have fewer employees who work more hours, rather than many who work fewer hours. Second, the reduction of the labor force isn't going to happen evenly. Job markets that are already short on labor won't be seeing that decrease.
But even then, a reduction in work for (almost) everyone would be a less bumpy transition than just eliminating it for some and going whole-hog into socialism, even if socialism is seen as an inevitable endgame.
Smells like plausible deniability to me.
Up to now, we've seen plenty of evidence that the intelligence agencies don't seem to have major qualms about violating US law, as long as it's done quietly. Who's going to prosecute? This is just Congress realizing that it does not need to take the political heat for broad surveillance that it authorized. Once in place, NSA will happily continue the operations without overt permission to do so.
People who are high up in government intelligence are going to bank on not being caught performing illegal surveillance over not being taken to task over the first thing they "miss" due to inadequate coverage.
GamerGate will never be covered "fairly" because it's not in the interest of anyone with a soapbox tall enough to do so.
Journalistic integrity is a fat fucking joke, and probably always has been. We've been buying the lie for decades because, surprise surprise, the people who benefit from that notion are in the perfect position to broadcast it to the entire world. They've got it great, so no one wants to risk exposing an ugly truth just because a few individuals weren't discreet enough about collecting their benefits. You bet your ass they're going to censor it and pretend it didn't happen!
I mean, really. The Hollywood types have got nothing on the self-important assclowns who call themselves "journalists", whether they roll with "New" media or "old".
The SJW "movement" is vile, but it's also extremely naive of the opposition to think that they'll get anywhere by exposing abuses of the press. They don't care, and they never cared. That battle is lost.
Maybe someday, with the democratization of news that's been brought on by the internet, average people will finally learn to engage ALL media with reasoned skepticism and critical thinking. THEN we can start thinking about ways to make the journalists honest.
Minecraft is already well established, there's no need to bother with gimmicks like DLC or any need to pay for development with an upfront purchase price. Such an approach would be a waste of the game's convenient addictiveness.
After corporate meddling pisses off most of the core Mojang developers enough to jump ship, Microsoft will drop in a new default resource pack, maybe add another boss or two to the game, and sell it as "Minecraft 2.0". Realms will be the only multiplayer option, and the game will be sold as a monthly subscription rather than an upfront purchase.
The game's popularity will probably tank at that point, but not so much that MS doesn't get something for it. Much of the existing community will probably stick with the latest 1.x release, or perhaps the latest Bukkit-supported version
I think they hired Microsoft's marketing department to do the commercial.
It's not even believable anyway. My irritating hipster children only use Apple products!
They should have called it the "Galaxy Fruit", as a simultaneous jab at Apple and the dimwits who'd refused to buy a previous Samsung phone because it was "too plastic".
Perhaps a percentage-based tire tax? It covers hybrids/electrics well, Correlates to usage, is less regressive (cheaper cars usually run cheaper tires), and does a better job of addressing the truck/bus issue, without tracking.
I think the base price of gas does enough to encourage efficiency. The tricky thing is that cost per mile of road tires is really low, so the tax would have to be pretty steep. Still might be less unpopular than a gas tax, though.
Figures, now that the federal government finally has a surveillance apparatus that could make this viable for the first time in history, neither party is actually willing to commit to it.
There is zero intersection between the "They" who are being pushed to denounce science to whom you are referring and the "They" who are now easier to fire without tenure. This is a ruling in California. Teachers will probably get fired for petty and political reasons, but I'd think it far more likely that a Californian teacher will get canned for insisting on teaching creationism than for refusing to teach it.
If Oklahoma or some other very red state rules against tenure for public school teachers, then we'll talk. But I'd imagine that those states are already less sympathetic to the teacher's unions, and there are fewer perks to fight over. I also don't think that California has established any precedent outside of California, as the ruling pertains to the state constitution.
And while it is indeed troubling that certain school curricula are increasingly trying to pass off religious hogwash as science, addressing it with that kind of generalization and paranoia really doesn't help the case for purely secular instruction.
Clearly, the submitter was instructed by a series of undeservedly-tenured English teachers.
We're talking about California here. The ruling could certainly bring some unfavorable consequences, but I doubt that will be one of them.
And, what if this kid commits a Columbine-esque revenge scenario? They'll blame it on some other bullshit, not their own lack of souls...
They'd blame it on mental illness, and they'd be right. A mass shooting is not a rational response to bullying, even if it's severe.
What happened in this case is deplorable, but no one deserves to be killed over it. The amount of apparent sympathy for perpetrators of "Columbine scenarios" in this thread is a bit frightening. I get that this is Slashdot and most of us were probably tormented to some degree while we were growing up. Many probably even fantasized about doing something similar, but there's a huge gap between fantasizing and actually going through with it.
Bullies are pricks, but that doesn't make them responsible for the actions of victims who happen to be mentally unstable. It's the same thing as the notion of "making someone kill themself". As evil and disgusting as that degree of bullying may be, at the end of the day each individual is responsible for their own actions, not the actions of others.
Also, while the prevention of school shootings is an obvious reason that bullying needs to be dealt with, I find it rather insensitive to refer to this in the context of a specific case. "What if this kid goes Columbine?" sort of insinuates that he's not right in the head, which isn't very nice.
True on both points. However, It doesn't change the fact that software still "ages" in a way, and that software that works acceptably at one point in time may become unsafe to continue using at a later date. GP seems to think that the intangible nature of software means that its utility can't diminish over time.
All software has defects, it's the nature of the beast. If vendors were liable for every last bug in their software, the commercial software industry would not exist. (I'm sure there are freetards who feel that would be a good thing, but let's not go there.)
It's not like Microsoft deliberately released XP with 2,722 flaws with the intent to fix them gradually over the next ~12.5 years. That's the problem with security vulnerabilities- they need to be discovered. Odds are, there are plenty more in Windows XP that have yet to be found. XP EOL isn't going to make your XP machine explode and kill your family. Before long, though, unpatched XP systems will be rife with exposed vulerabilities. Browser updates will drop support for XP. It will become unsafe to use any XP machine in any capacity that involves internet connectivity. Advising your clients to continue using XP is irresponsible at best.
Really, since you're so convinced that MS is outright evil, I'm surprised you're not trying to push some linux-based XP replacement. Though, for what it's worth, even free operating systems often have an end of support life, absent any profit motive.
It's like Toyota told all owners of older Toyota vehicles that the vehicles are unsafe now and owners must buy new vehicles or pay millions of dollars to keep them. Except its worse: Software doesn't have mechanical wear.
A better analogy would be for Toyota to stop manufacturing parts for very old cars, and most car manufacturers do just that. Aftermarket is more able to fill the void in that case, but it's the same concept. And let's be real, $200 scaled up to a car would be thousands, not millions. Software doesn't have "mechanical" wear, but it has ongoing discovery of security vulnerabilities that require maintenance from the vendor. Delivering that maintenance costs money.
Even the newest systems that shipped with XP are really old now. Hell, I still use one at work (not by choice), and it's a slow piece of shit by today's standards. It's nice that so many have been able to sit on similar rigs for this long, but it's time to move on. That kind of service life in commodity-level PCs was almost unheard of a decade ago. Upgrades are a part of life in the tech business, and I don't think it's fair to bitch this time just because you got a little extra mileage out of the last round.
The masses of now-unsupported XP users reflects badly on the users, not Microsoft. If you missed the boat on a Windows 7 upgrade, it's your own damn fault. On the upside, the ensuing clusterfucks at various large enterprises should teach yet another hard lesson about the perils of under-funding your IT department.
Nice plug, by the way, though it's amusing that "Futurepower" is so willing to cling to the past.