Seriously, how much sympathy can you garner for an institution that can't stay solvent with a $320 million budget and damn near 2000 employees? $5 million is about 1.5% of their total annual budget, and this is what keeps them running? That's not a sign of poor support from the government, that's a sign of serious mis-management. Yes, it's probably very expensive to run a place like Fermilab, but you can't bitch when you're getting a third of a billion dollars straight from the pockets of the taxpayers every year.
It's an unfortunate reality that taxpayer funded institutions are often horribly inefficient, and pay little attention to keeping their costs down. Why should an organization that has proven that it's incapable of setting its books right, an institution that has a budget of over $160,000 per employee, play on our heart strings when they let people go? Sharpen up the operation, and then come cry when you run out of cash.
I agree with the few posts I've read that've recommended PGP, but there's an easier alternative if you don't want to go through the hassle of setting up PGP keys for non-technical users: SFTP. It runs over SSH, so you're as secure as you would be when logged into a shell, and it doesn't matter which one of you has which side of the connection (client/server, I mean). There are probably some auxiliary benefits to SFTP, like controlling at least one place where the document is stored (as opposed to having it sit on some random company's email server, even in encrypted form), but the ease of use is probably the main reason to use it.
I'd probably be persuaded that the overall benefit of spreading the use of encrypted and digitally signed email is greater than the effort put into explaining to Suzy Secretary how to install Enigmail.
Fantastic. Next week, I expect to see "Ask Slashdot: It still counts if she's drunk when she says yes, right?", followed by "Science: How to make rohypnol".
I've had reasonably good experiences with Godaddy, and as far as I know, they're one of the cheapest around.
SSL cert signing is mostly just snake oil anyway. It's not like the company signing your cert for you has any impact on the actual security of your site, and I can't imagine that many customers look at the cert signer and go "RapidSSL? No way! Fuck those guys! I'm gonna go spend my money at some other dildo store". So, your best bet is to go with the cheapest one around that's likely to be in all the major browsers' trusted CA list.
1.) The VA Supreme Court made the ruling, not any federal court, and certainly not a jury.
2.) Because it was a state court that made the ruling, what they say about whether or not SPAM is protected free speech is completely irrelevant. State courts have no jurisdiction over federal questions. They can no more declare SPAM not protected than they can declare that you really only have to be 32 to be President.
3.) This will obviously be appealed to the Supreme Court (that's the only outlet left after traversing the State courts), and, my guess is, it'll be shot down. The defendant's attorney is correct when it states that the VA law doesn't make exceptions for explicitly protected free speech, such as political speech, and the Supreme Court's strict scrutiny standard for this kind of thing won't let it through. VA may re-write the law to prevent commercial SPAM as different from SPAM that's simply expressing an opinion, but that'd be open to a variety of challenges as well.
4.) Nine years? What the fuck?! I mean, I hate SPAM as much as the next guy, and I spend a stupid amount of time keeping it out of the inboxes of my users, but nine years?!
Seriously, wouldn't that make sense? I mean, we're trying to prevent Islamic terrorism and, with very few exceptions, almost every Islamic terrorist is an Arab/Persian. If we're talking about ways to speed up the checkout lines at the airport, that seems like a pretty efficient way to do so. Send all non-Arab (or otherwise visibly Muslim) passengers through the standard metal detector quickly, and then make like 8% of the population go through the more rigorous searches. It's not polite, but it's damn effective, and makes a hell of a lot more sense than making old black ladies get anal probed by some TSA flunky.
I don't know how this is even remotely blackmail. What do companies like Real pay their QA guys to find the exact kind of 0-day exploits that the Russians discovered? I'll bet it's not 0. And why should the Soviet's be required, morally, ethically, or otherwise, to provide something for free that any responsible software company pays talented people for? Maybe it's sort of dickish to sell it to Soviet hackers, but the fact is, it's their work that produced the knowledge of the exploit, and they should profit from it. Information isn't always free, nor should it be.
It's not exactly an adventurous or controversial pick, but for me, Bioshock was far and away the best game of 2007. It represents a new era of the video game as a story, continually engaging players in the plot of the world that unfolds around them. The art was downright stunning, the characters interesting, the gameplay was great, and you got to engage in the exciting-yet-gross act of harvesting a 9 year old girl for her body fluids.
The lede doesn't match the article at all. What's actually going on is this:
Currently, there's an FCC rule preventing multiple media channel ownership by teh same company in the same city/region. You can get waivers for this, but it's kind of a pain in the ass. What the current FCC chair wants to do is abolish that rule, allowing companies to own as many media channels (ie, a newspaper, a TV, and a radio station) as they'd like. In general, the Republican appointees support this plan, the Democrat appointees oppose it. Regardless, however, the post states the exact OPPOSITE of what's really happening.
Solar power satellites aren't a new idea. I first encountered the concept in high school when I read Robert Zubrin's "The Case for Mars". We already have the tech (and we may have in fact constructed, although I dunno) for microwave power receivers, and the studies that have been done have shown that it's a pretty safe way to move power around. While it's in its microwave form, there's almost zero effect on anything that crosses in between the transmitter and receiver, including wildlife. It's cheap, it's infinite, and it's about a gazillion times more efficient than terrestrial solar power, so it would cut down on the amount of pollution produced when we make solar cells (lots of silver and such).
From an environmental standpoint (which I don't care much about anyway, but whatever), it'd be nice to see China's growing space agency grab onto this idea as well, since they're the largest source of pollution in the world, and their energy demands are only increasing. But, in any case, at least someone is starting to take the concept seriously.
Cool, so, we're not even pretending anymore that the use of cameras are anything less than the complete and total expansion of the panopticon, are we? I mean, of course, you'll still have the people who say "well, if you aren't doing anything wrong, why are you worried", but for the most part, we're pretty up front about the fact that we're going to be using cameras to keep our citizenry under the thumb. Who defines what constitutes "suspicious behavior", local cops, politicians, computer techs? There will be essentially zero guidelines for the implementation of this technology, so what's to stop the local PD, or the DEA from auto-flagging someone who looks like they're raising a pipe to their mouths, or, even better, engaging in nefarious acts like leaving the house late at night? And not just that, but how many citizens will have their rights violated because of a false positive from the "suspicious behavior" flag? Will the flag be enough to get a warrant to search someone's car or home?
Why isn't it time for the PARENTS to step in? Who gave the Headmaster the authority to tell someone's child what kind of behavior is or is not appropriate outside of school? What if the kid's parents know what the kid is doing, and either a.) are permissive, or b.) outright approving. The school now has the authority to directly contradict the will of the parents on non-criminal behavior? On permissible speech? This is the head of a school we're talking about giving what amounts to POLICE powers, and making them the final arbiter of what's acceptable and not in a child's private life. Fuck, if we're going to do that, let's just cede our will over to our betters, so that they might guide us without fear of our faltering.
For that matter, I don't know that racial or sexual insults in a public forum is necessarily that bad of a thing for "kids". Remember, anyone who's under 18 is basically a rightless entity thats considered a child. What makes it OK to say that to an 18 year old, but not to a 17 year old? That seems like a silly, arbitrary line. Or, even better, what if the student IS 18, with all the rights gained by surviving that long? Should the headmaster be able to restrict the speech of an adult?
Who gets to make the call on whether or not behavior is "cyber bullying", or just plain old fashioned, zero harm trolling? I mean, regardless of whether or not it's the school's responsibility, or even within their legitimate power, to police the actions of students after they leave the building or associated events (it's not), this is essentially enabling content censors not just of violence, but of speech. Say kid A calls kid B a "cunt nigger bitch" on a forum somewhere, and Headmaster Brothinbersonshire sees that. Now, it's clearly mean, and offensive to some, but does it cross the line of cyber bullying? Well, that's up to the whims of Headmaster Brothinbersonshire, and if he's a prick, a very real, very chilling, and very arbitrary limitation on the speech of anyone who goes to school, regardless of whether it's related in any way.
The apostrophe in the line you quoted is correct - it is an abbreviation of 'I will'.
Ohhhh, sorry, but you're straight up fucking wrong. I was criticizing his LACK of an apostrophe in the "I'll assume _your_ from the US". Clearly, the correct word there is "you're", as "your" doesn't make any fucking sense. If you're going to try to play cockfaced grammar Nazi, you should make sure that you're _right_ first, dick.
Part 2:
Now, could you try to rewrite your piece without using expletives?
Fuck no.
Part 3 (in many acts):
He didn't say that there was not corruption in the UN.
He was obviously arguing against my indictment of the United Nations by making the completely unrelated point that the United Stats is corrupt and evil as well. I mean, I can't understand it _for_ you, you have to make it on your own, but that's pretty basic reading comprehension.
But, as you quite rightly pointed out, there is also corruption in your own government so there is little point in following this particular argument.
Wait, so, because there's corruption by a government that I don't endorse, corruption by the UN becomes a moot point? Dude, that's FANTASTIC!!! Next time I go on a raping spree, I'll just be like "But yer honor, there's other rapists too, so throwing me in jail is a moot point." Brilliant!
You criticised other countries for their soldiers' involvement with rape - it was then pointed out that US soldiers (in much the same way as armies from anywhere for that matter) also break the law on occasion, including the offence of rape. You have acknowledged that fact but it doesn't do much to help convince me that your view of the UN is correct because some soldiers wearing the blue beret have committed offences.
You're making the EXACT same assumption that he is, that, because I'm from America, I'm somehow obligated to defend American actions. I'm not. I don't offer US rule of the internet as my alternative to UN control. As I've said before, I'm in favor of a decentralized root DNS structure with a low barrier to entry and upkeep. I think that the US government is a corrupt bunch of fucks, and has been for at least the past 100 years, and I think that the UN is a corrupt bunch of fucks. I've also not only argued against the actions of the UN "peace keepers", but also the actions of the Secretary General and the bureaucracy, so don't make this all about military corruption. The UN is corrupt and evil because it engages in corrupt an evil activities, same as the USFG, and I don't want EITHER party controlling DNS. So either man up and actually argue against a point that I've made, or go back to chilling in the coffee shops, complimenting yourself on your intelligence as you pretend to read a Derrida book hoping the cute emo girl at the counter will notice and think you're all deep and shit.
I'll bet some Texans have broken the law on occasion, but it doesn't seem to have changed your view of your own state so why should anyone think of the UN any differently?
This isn't even an argument. Yes, Texans have done some bad shit, the Texas government has done bad shit, and I wouldn't trust THEM with sole authority over the root DNS system either. GOVERNMENTS in general are evil, corrupt institutions. The fact that I like being a Texan is a cultural thing, not a governmental thing, not a policy endorsement. Seriously, this is one of the dumbest things I've seen someone say in a long time. Your entire argument, to this point, has basically been "Corruption exists everywhere, so you can't criticize anything."
We all understand the details of the mutilation that takes place and going into graphic detail does not change the argument.
Aww, look guys! It's a EuroTroll! Or at least a CoolCollegeLeftistTroll! Alright kid, I'll play.
Hello Mr Righteous, I'll assume your from the USA
Nope. I'm from Texas. And down here in the Republic, we know how to use apostrophes.
Yes the UN costs money, what a surprise. Nearly all the nations pay for it, though. The US likes not to.
I don't think I bitched about the UN costing money, I bitched about the fact that so much of that money gets siphoned off into someone else's pockets. See, for example, Kofi Annan and his son Kojo, or the people involved in the Food for Oil program, or the people who manage the "Palestinian" aid program, or . I'm glad that the US doesn't pay its UN bill. It's one less thing I have to be pissed about my tax money being spent on.
2- Have you never heard of US soldiers raping local women ?
You know, I'll bet when you wrote that, you were thinking all "Oh man, I am so nailing this fucking Yank. He's going to try to defend the US military and then I'll have him because I am just so fucking clever." Too bad that's not going to work out today. Yes, US soldiers rape teh shit out of people to. How the fuck does that make the UN non-corrupt? When did I _ever_ argue that the US _wasn't_ corrupt? When did I endorse US actions _anywhere_? I hate the United States government the same way I hate all governments, because they're bodies that exist only through thuggery and violence. Fucking stunning. There's no such thing as a good government, and there's no such thing as a good military. Every military has a shitload of raping, murdering, brutal fucking assholes who are only in the military because it gives them an outlet to rape and kill without getting into too much trouble over it. Way to be on point here, chief. You totally fucking nailed me on this one.
3- China, Cuba, etc on UN councils. Learn how they work, representative from every country get to be in them in turns. That doesn't mean they run them. At the UN, you are bound to find people from nations you disagree with in various commissions. The #1 rule of diplomacy is that you keep talking to these people anyway.
Yes, I know how the fucking UN councils work, shitbreather. I don't know if that "Look how smart I am and how dumb you are" bullshit works in Mrs. Kensington's 6th grade english class, but maybe you should fucking make a valid argument before you start claiming that I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about. Most of the UN councils rotate on a regional basis, so that a European nation will have a seat, as will a South American, as will an Asian, as will a Middle Eastern. The problem is, these are fucking POLICY MAKING boards for the United Nations, and having Cuba/China/Sudan on the HR council is like having a bunch of fucking rapists run a victims outreach program.
And we aren't talking about goddamn policy disagreements. Sudan allows and promotes SLAVERY AND FEMALE FUCKING GENITAL MUTILATION. Not the nice kind that they do in some other Muslim countries, where there's some anesthesia at least, the kind where they take a little girl, forcibly hold her down, dive into her vagina with a sharp piece of glass or a rusty piece of metal, gouge out her clit, and then sew up the fucking gully hole. That's _fucked_, to the point where, if you do it, you should not be allowed to sit on a board whose job it is to dictate Human Fucking Rights Policy to the rest of the fucking world. "#1 rule of diplomacy", suck my fucking cock. What the fuck is the point of it when these nations are NEVER sanctioned or even given a stern talking to? Christ, what are you, 7 fucking years old? "Maybe if we all hold hands and sing, the Sudanese will stop shredding little girl cunt to ribbons". Fuck you.
4- The UN suck, have never done anything good, etc. The UN weapons inspectors in Iraq got rid of all the WMDs. You are aware the US troops hav
Well, only sort of. From what I understand, ICANN is not so much an agency controlled by the US DOC as it is a non-profit with a contractual, working agreement with the Commerce Dept. I'm not particularly stoked about that either, like I said in my reply to the other AC below, ICANN is too centralized and too restrictive for my tastes ( I would personally have no barriers to creating a new TLD, it seems like an unnecessarily bureaucratic process to me), and it's too receptive to pressure from the USFG. However, it's not _controlled_ by a government agency, which is a pretty important bright line.
No, actually, I favor decentralizing the shit as much as possible. I'm not even particularly happy with ICANN, I think they're too unnecessarily restrictive. I'd be OK with a setup similar to OpenNIC, or any other alternative root DNS setup. I'm not specifically endorsing OpenNIC, I just think the concept is neat.
No, but siphoning billions of dollars dedicated to "aid" or "development", raping the shit out of every AIDS ridden African woman it's "peace keepers" are supposed to be there to protect, rubber-stamping Syrian and Lebanese aggression in PLAIN VIEW of those same, vaunted "Peace Keepers" and "Inspectors", and having a Human Rights Council with China, Cuba, Syria, and Sudan (where the practices of Female Genital Mutilation and, just for kicks, slavery, are still rampant) go a REAL long fucking way towards making them corrupt or incompetent though. It's cool, bro. I know that you got all tingly because you got to make that TOTALLY edgy and deep "ZOMFG IMPERALIZSM LOLZ" argument that you heard in your freshman poli sci class, but you made a shitty arg. Disagreeing with the United States, however totally cool and emo and hip and edgy and whatever else it is you kids use to refer to the shit you do to try to get laid, does not make a body good. The act of disagreeing with the United States may in itself be good, but if it's done by a bunch of raping thieves, they're still a bunch of fucking raping thieves.
The UN, as with all world-government bodies, fucking sucks. They're corrupt, they're a money sink, and they haven't done a fucking single bit of good since they were created. The last thing I want to do is to give the powers ICANN has to ANY government agency, let alone the fucking UN.
Is more speech, not censorship. Yes, I understand that this is not a First Amendment issue. Facebook is not the government, and is fully within its rights to enforce any conditions it sees fit (within the constraints of the law) on their user base. However, that does NOT take this out of the arena of free speech issues.
Free speech should, in every case, be promoted wherever possible, especially in online outlets of communication. Regardless of whether or not you like the "fuck muslims" group, approve of their message (or not), there is a non-zero possibility that they have some new ideas that nobody's introduced into the marketplace, or have a new way of thinking about old concepts. Hell, even if they don't, they obviously believe what they endorsed via membership in the group, and that should be enough to trigger our desire to protect it.
The ideas contained in speech we find offensive don't go away just because we shut them up. The "fuck muslims" group will move on, maybe list their ideas somewhere else, probably with a smaller readership, but they won't disappear. If you want to combat them, read their args, make your own, defeat them with logic and reason.
Also, the last bit of the squib on the article seems like kind of a whiny thing to say. "Why won't X Company enforce Y provision of their User Agreement?" Well, because they haven't chosen to. They're not OBLIGATED to. The User Agreement is pretty one way. And I'm willing to bet that the poster and people who agree with him would have a HUGE problem if Facebook decided to shut something that they believe in down.
Long and short, free speech is good, always, and man up and argue things you don't like on their merits.
Same problem, different subject. For decades, really, the public's conception of computers has been jacked up by Hollywood. I mean, I know that I, like the rest of you, skateboard through my 3D, holographic mainframe every day (you know, the one that shows a picture of my screaming face when there's a kernel panic), but how many people have an 800 monitor setup like in Swordfish? In fact, when was the last time you saw an interface in a movie that made any goddamn sense at all?
I don't know that having one of the machines at Oak Ridge is that big of a deal. One simple explanation is that the NSF is going to share time on the mainframe with the DoE, and in exchange, the DoE foots the energy bills and finds a place to put it. I'd rather have the agencies sharing multi-million dollar computers than buying them and not using them to capacity.
Of course I have sympathy for these companies that cheat stockholders by backdating stocks options, cashing in stock options based on insider information and in general treating stockholder property as personal disposal income. Not to mention research and development product that are perfectly willing to engage in mass murder for profits. A terrorist kills a few thousand people, we go to war. A corporation kills a few tens of thousand of people we let them continue to do the same thing another day. I mean corporate balance sheets are so much more a justification for the death of humans than a desire for political change.
Ooo, an anti-corporatism rant. How original. Yes, that's exactly right. Every company cheats stockholders, jacks them based on insider information, and totally screws their investors. You've nailed it! We should clearly just get rid of private enterprise and allow the government to run everything, because it's comprised of completely altruistic individuals who would never play fast and loose with taxpayer money, engage in corrupt financial dealings, and would probably give us all kisses on the cheek before we went to bed.
Look, of _course_ you'll have individual instances of corruption in ANY sector. Managing a company doesn't change someone's core proclivities any more than getting a job with Uncle Sam does. The point here is that private organizations are far less distasteful than large federal bureaucracies. For one, you can _choose_ to invest in a company, whereas you don't have a choice when it comes to investing in Uncle Sam. He's gonna take his 25% no matter what you do. Also, if a company screws up, they get punished. If the government screws up, what happens? Nothing. There's no effective feedback for the government, and don't say elections, because that's a change of, at most, a couple thousand elected officials and political appointees. There's at least _some_ check on private agencies.
If you'd really rather descend into hysteria and claim that corporations are mass murdering assholes who've killed BILLIONS of people, OK, fine. You just don't have the evidence to back that shit up. Again, yes, corporations can behave badly, but the _overwhelming_ majority of them do not, and provide valuable services to the economy via job creation and the sale of their products and services. Also, what you ignore is how many people the FDA has killed through dragging its feet on approving medical and pharm. technology, how many people either couldn't get the drugs that would save their lives, or simply couldn't afford them because insurance companies frown upon "experimental" drugs. The FDA has FAR more blood on its hands than any company does.
Perhaps the FDA exists to give products official government credibility. Perhaps it works closely with private firms, including the emerging nanotech industry, to create a set of rules that creates a sufficient sense of safety such that consumer can spend more time purchasing products than evaluating products, which in turn allows money to have sufficient velocity to grow the economy.
Cool, so, basically, you're willing to be an ignorant sheep and let Daddy Government step in and make all those difficult decisions for you? Yeah man, when I decide whether or not something is safe for me to consume, I look for the FDA stamp of approval instead of, I dunno, investigating the matter myself, doing some damn reading on the subject, and forming my own conclusions. That's really smart. I mean, if the government says it's OK, it must be, right? Because they're the government, and they know WAY more about everything than the people who actually work on these products.
But, assume you're right for a moment, that the economy does need some kind of paternalistic organization to verify what's good to eat and what isn't. Why couldn't this duty be performed by any number of private organizations? Why get the government involved? If you had priva
Who said anything about assuming that nanotech is harmless? Of course there are risks involved with it, just like there are like any venture. But now, if it turns out that nano causes cancer or something, I _won't_ be screaming for the FDA, because I don't want them involved in much of anything, let alone areas where they don't need to be. We already have a system to handle damages of that sort through the courts, and we should continue to use it to punish companies who release harmful products _after_ they've done real harm. Nobody is helped by having a large government agency impose billions of dollars in costs to companies wishing to do R&D, especially when the process is entirely politicized and susceptible to corruption. That's punishing the innocent.
Additionally, the market is a much better force for ensuring product safety than the FDA. All the FDA's stamp of approval does is lull people into a false sense of security, and what happens when the product in question still ends up killing you? The Merck drugs that turned out to cause serious heart problems all passed the FDA, for example. I'd rather rely on a company's profit motive not to kill me, a customer, than some government bureaucracy that has no incentive to do _anything_ right because their funding is guaranteed, and it's not like people can get fired from a federal agency.
Slashdot Mirror
Seriously, how much sympathy can you garner for an institution that can't stay solvent with a $320 million budget and damn near 2000 employees? $5 million is about 1.5% of their total annual budget, and this is what keeps them running? That's not a sign of poor support from the government, that's a sign of serious mis-management. Yes, it's probably very expensive to run a place like Fermilab, but you can't bitch when you're getting a third of a billion dollars straight from the pockets of the taxpayers every year.
It's an unfortunate reality that taxpayer funded institutions are often horribly inefficient, and pay little attention to keeping their costs down. Why should an organization that has proven that it's incapable of setting its books right, an institution that has a budget of over $160,000 per employee, play on our heart strings when they let people go? Sharpen up the operation, and then come cry when you run out of cash.
I agree with the few posts I've read that've recommended PGP, but there's an easier alternative if you don't want to go through the hassle of setting up PGP keys for non-technical users: SFTP. It runs over SSH, so you're as secure as you would be when logged into a shell, and it doesn't matter which one of you has which side of the connection (client/server, I mean). There are probably some auxiliary benefits to SFTP, like controlling at least one place where the document is stored (as opposed to having it sit on some random company's email server, even in encrypted form), but the ease of use is probably the main reason to use it.
I'd probably be persuaded that the overall benefit of spreading the use of encrypted and digitally signed email is greater than the effort put into explaining to Suzy Secretary how to install Enigmail.
Fantastic. Next week, I expect to see "Ask Slashdot: It still counts if she's drunk when she says yes, right?", followed by "Science: How to make rohypnol".
I've had reasonably good experiences with Godaddy, and as far as I know, they're one of the cheapest around. SSL cert signing is mostly just snake oil anyway. It's not like the company signing your cert for you has any impact on the actual security of your site, and I can't imagine that many customers look at the cert signer and go "RapidSSL? No way! Fuck those guys! I'm gonna go spend my money at some other dildo store". So, your best bet is to go with the cheapest one around that's likely to be in all the major browsers' trusted CA list.
1.) The VA Supreme Court made the ruling, not any federal court, and certainly not a jury.
2.) Because it was a state court that made the ruling, what they say about whether or not SPAM is protected free speech is completely irrelevant. State courts have no jurisdiction over federal questions. They can no more declare SPAM not protected than they can declare that you really only have to be 32 to be President.
3.) This will obviously be appealed to the Supreme Court (that's the only outlet left after traversing the State courts), and, my guess is, it'll be shot down. The defendant's attorney is correct when it states that the VA law doesn't make exceptions for explicitly protected free speech, such as political speech, and the Supreme Court's strict scrutiny standard for this kind of thing won't let it through. VA may re-write the law to prevent commercial SPAM as different from SPAM that's simply expressing an opinion, but that'd be open to a variety of challenges as well.
4.) Nine years? What the fuck?! I mean, I hate SPAM as much as the next guy, and I spend a stupid amount of time keeping it out of the inboxes of my users, but nine years?!
Seriously, wouldn't that make sense? I mean, we're trying to prevent Islamic terrorism and, with very few exceptions, almost every Islamic terrorist is an Arab/Persian. If we're talking about ways to speed up the checkout lines at the airport, that seems like a pretty efficient way to do so. Send all non-Arab (or otherwise visibly Muslim) passengers through the standard metal detector quickly, and then make like 8% of the population go through the more rigorous searches. It's not polite, but it's damn effective, and makes a hell of a lot more sense than making old black ladies get anal probed by some TSA flunky.
I don't know how this is even remotely blackmail. What do companies like Real pay their QA guys to find the exact kind of 0-day exploits that the Russians discovered? I'll bet it's not 0. And why should the Soviet's be required, morally, ethically, or otherwise, to provide something for free that any responsible software company pays talented people for? Maybe it's sort of dickish to sell it to Soviet hackers, but the fact is, it's their work that produced the knowledge of the exploit, and they should profit from it. Information isn't always free, nor should it be.
If anybody asks, I'll say that I was trying to Rescue her and my finger hit the wrong button.
13 times.
While I was naked.
It's not exactly an adventurous or controversial pick, but for me, Bioshock was far and away the best game of 2007. It represents a new era of the video game as a story, continually engaging players in the plot of the world that unfolds around them. The art was downright stunning, the characters interesting, the gameplay was great, and you got to engage in the exciting-yet-gross act of harvesting a 9 year old girl for her body fluids.
The lede doesn't match the article at all. What's actually going on is this:
Currently, there's an FCC rule preventing multiple media channel ownership by teh same company in the same city/region. You can get waivers for this, but it's kind of a pain in the ass. What the current FCC chair wants to do is abolish that rule, allowing companies to own as many media channels (ie, a newspaper, a TV, and a radio station) as they'd like. In general, the Republican appointees support this plan, the Democrat appointees oppose it. Regardless, however, the post states the exact OPPOSITE of what's really happening.
Solar power satellites aren't a new idea. I first encountered the concept in high school when I read Robert Zubrin's "The Case for Mars". We already have the tech (and we may have in fact constructed, although I dunno) for microwave power receivers, and the studies that have been done have shown that it's a pretty safe way to move power around. While it's in its microwave form, there's almost zero effect on anything that crosses in between the transmitter and receiver, including wildlife. It's cheap, it's infinite, and it's about a gazillion times more efficient than terrestrial solar power, so it would cut down on the amount of pollution produced when we make solar cells (lots of silver and such).
From an environmental standpoint (which I don't care much about anyway, but whatever), it'd be nice to see China's growing space agency grab onto this idea as well, since they're the largest source of pollution in the world, and their energy demands are only increasing. But, in any case, at least someone is starting to take the concept seriously.
Cool, so, we're not even pretending anymore that the use of cameras are anything less than the complete and total expansion of the panopticon, are we? I mean, of course, you'll still have the people who say "well, if you aren't doing anything wrong, why are you worried", but for the most part, we're pretty up front about the fact that we're going to be using cameras to keep our citizenry under the thumb. Who defines what constitutes "suspicious behavior", local cops, politicians, computer techs? There will be essentially zero guidelines for the implementation of this technology, so what's to stop the local PD, or the DEA from auto-flagging someone who looks like they're raising a pipe to their mouths, or, even better, engaging in nefarious acts like leaving the house late at night? And not just that, but how many citizens will have their rights violated because of a false positive from the "suspicious behavior" flag? Will the flag be enough to get a warrant to search someone's car or home?
End of the fucking universe, right here.
Why isn't it time for the PARENTS to step in? Who gave the Headmaster the authority to tell someone's child what kind of behavior is or is not appropriate outside of school? What if the kid's parents know what the kid is doing, and either a.) are permissive, or b.) outright approving. The school now has the authority to directly contradict the will of the parents on non-criminal behavior? On permissible speech? This is the head of a school we're talking about giving what amounts to POLICE powers, and making them the final arbiter of what's acceptable and not in a child's private life. Fuck, if we're going to do that, let's just cede our will over to our betters, so that they might guide us without fear of our faltering.
For that matter, I don't know that racial or sexual insults in a public forum is necessarily that bad of a thing for "kids". Remember, anyone who's under 18 is basically a rightless entity thats considered a child. What makes it OK to say that to an 18 year old, but not to a 17 year old? That seems like a silly, arbitrary line. Or, even better, what if the student IS 18, with all the rights gained by surviving that long? Should the headmaster be able to restrict the speech of an adult?
Who gets to make the call on whether or not behavior is "cyber bullying", or just plain old fashioned, zero harm trolling? I mean, regardless of whether or not it's the school's responsibility, or even within their legitimate power, to police the actions of students after they leave the building or associated events (it's not), this is essentially enabling content censors not just of violence, but of speech. Say kid A calls kid B a "cunt nigger bitch" on a forum somewhere, and Headmaster Brothinbersonshire sees that. Now, it's clearly mean, and offensive to some, but does it cross the line of cyber bullying? Well, that's up to the whims of Headmaster Brothinbersonshire, and if he's a prick, a very real, very chilling, and very arbitrary limitation on the speech of anyone who goes to school, regardless of whether it's related in any way.
Ohhhh, sorry, but you're straight up fucking wrong. I was criticizing his LACK of an apostrophe in the "I'll assume _your_ from the US". Clearly, the correct word there is "you're", as "your" doesn't make any fucking sense. If you're going to try to play cockfaced grammar Nazi, you should make sure that you're _right_ first, dick.
Part 2:
Fuck no.
Part 3 (in many acts):
He was obviously arguing against my indictment of the United Nations by making the completely unrelated point that the United Stats is corrupt and evil as well. I mean, I can't understand it _for_ you, you have to make it on your own, but that's pretty basic reading comprehension.
Wait, so, because there's corruption by a government that I don't endorse, corruption by the UN becomes a moot point? Dude, that's FANTASTIC!!! Next time I go on a raping spree, I'll just be like "But yer honor, there's other rapists too, so throwing me in jail is a moot point." Brilliant!
You're making the EXACT same assumption that he is, that, because I'm from America, I'm somehow obligated to defend American actions. I'm not. I don't offer US rule of the internet as my alternative to UN control. As I've said before, I'm in favor of a decentralized root DNS structure with a low barrier to entry and upkeep. I think that the US government is a corrupt bunch of fucks, and has been for at least the past 100 years, and I think that the UN is a corrupt bunch of fucks. I've also not only argued against the actions of the UN "peace keepers", but also the actions of the Secretary General and the bureaucracy, so don't make this all about military corruption. The UN is corrupt and evil because it engages in corrupt an evil activities, same as the USFG, and I don't want EITHER party controlling DNS. So either man up and actually argue against a point that I've made, or go back to chilling in the coffee shops, complimenting yourself on your intelligence as you pretend to read a Derrida book hoping the cute emo girl at the counter will notice and think you're all deep and shit.
This isn't even an argument. Yes, Texans have done some bad shit, the Texas government has done bad shit, and I wouldn't trust THEM with sole authority over the root DNS system either. GOVERNMENTS in general are evil, corrupt institutions. The fact that I like being a Texan is a cultural thing, not a governmental thing, not a policy endorsement. Seriously, this is one of the dumbest things I've seen someone say in a long time. Your entire argument, to this point, has basically been "Corruption exists everywhere, so you can't criticize anything."
No, but maybe it'll fucking point
I did for a while. Nobody read it. Plus, I'm way better in an argumentative format than an expository one. Thanks though!
Nope. I'm from Texas. And down here in the Republic, we know how to use apostrophes.
I don't think I bitched about the UN costing money, I bitched about the fact that so much of that money gets siphoned off into someone else's pockets. See, for example, Kofi Annan and his son Kojo, or the people involved in the Food for Oil program, or the people who manage the "Palestinian" aid program, or . I'm glad that the US doesn't pay its UN bill. It's one less thing I have to be pissed about my tax money being spent on.
You know, I'll bet when you wrote that, you were thinking all "Oh man, I am so nailing this fucking Yank. He's going to try to defend the US military and then I'll have him because I am just so fucking clever." Too bad that's not going to work out today. Yes, US soldiers rape teh shit out of people to. How the fuck does that make the UN non-corrupt? When did I _ever_ argue that the US _wasn't_ corrupt? When did I endorse US actions _anywhere_? I hate the United States government the same way I hate all governments, because they're bodies that exist only through thuggery and violence. Fucking stunning. There's no such thing as a good government, and there's no such thing as a good military. Every military has a shitload of raping, murdering, brutal fucking assholes who are only in the military because it gives them an outlet to rape and kill without getting into too much trouble over it. Way to be on point here, chief. You totally fucking nailed me on this one.
Yes, I know how the fucking UN councils work, shitbreather. I don't know if that "Look how smart I am and how dumb you are" bullshit works in Mrs. Kensington's 6th grade english class, but maybe you should fucking make a valid argument before you start claiming that I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about. Most of the UN councils rotate on a regional basis, so that a European nation will have a seat, as will a South American, as will an Asian, as will a Middle Eastern. The problem is, these are fucking POLICY MAKING boards for the United Nations, and having Cuba/China/Sudan on the HR council is like having a bunch of fucking rapists run a victims outreach program.
And we aren't talking about goddamn policy disagreements. Sudan allows and promotes SLAVERY AND FEMALE FUCKING GENITAL MUTILATION. Not the nice kind that they do in some other Muslim countries, where there's some anesthesia at least, the kind where they take a little girl, forcibly hold her down, dive into her vagina with a sharp piece of glass or a rusty piece of metal, gouge out her clit, and then sew up the fucking gully hole. That's _fucked_, to the point where, if you do it, you should not be allowed to sit on a board whose job it is to dictate Human Fucking Rights Policy to the rest of the fucking world. "#1 rule of diplomacy", suck my fucking cock. What the fuck is the point of it when these nations are NEVER sanctioned or even given a stern talking to? Christ, what are you, 7 fucking years old? "Maybe if we all hold hands and sing, the Sudanese will stop shredding little girl cunt to ribbons". Fuck you.
Well, only sort of. From what I understand, ICANN is not so much an agency controlled by the US DOC as it is a non-profit with a contractual, working agreement with the Commerce Dept. I'm not particularly stoked about that either, like I said in my reply to the other AC below, ICANN is too centralized and too restrictive for my tastes ( I would personally have no barriers to creating a new TLD, it seems like an unnecessarily bureaucratic process to me), and it's too receptive to pressure from the USFG. However, it's not _controlled_ by a government agency, which is a pretty important bright line.
No, actually, I favor decentralizing the shit as much as possible. I'm not even particularly happy with ICANN, I think they're too unnecessarily restrictive. I'd be OK with a setup similar to OpenNIC, or any other alternative root DNS setup. I'm not specifically endorsing OpenNIC, I just think the concept is neat.
No, but siphoning billions of dollars dedicated to "aid" or "development", raping the shit out of every AIDS ridden African woman it's "peace keepers" are supposed to be there to protect, rubber-stamping Syrian and Lebanese aggression in PLAIN VIEW of those same, vaunted "Peace Keepers" and "Inspectors", and having a Human Rights Council with China, Cuba, Syria, and Sudan (where the practices of Female Genital Mutilation and, just for kicks, slavery, are still rampant) go a REAL long fucking way towards making them corrupt or incompetent though. It's cool, bro. I know that you got all tingly because you got to make that TOTALLY edgy and deep "ZOMFG IMPERALIZSM LOLZ" argument that you heard in your freshman poli sci class, but you made a shitty arg. Disagreeing with the United States, however totally cool and emo and hip and edgy and whatever else it is you kids use to refer to the shit you do to try to get laid, does not make a body good. The act of disagreeing with the United States may in itself be good, but if it's done by a bunch of raping thieves, they're still a bunch of fucking raping thieves.
The UN, as with all world-government bodies, fucking sucks. They're corrupt, they're a money sink, and they haven't done a fucking single bit of good since they were created. The last thing I want to do is to give the powers ICANN has to ANY government agency, let alone the fucking UN.
Is more speech, not censorship. Yes, I understand that this is not a First Amendment issue. Facebook is not the government, and is fully within its rights to enforce any conditions it sees fit (within the constraints of the law) on their user base. However, that does NOT take this out of the arena of free speech issues.
Free speech should, in every case, be promoted wherever possible, especially in online outlets of communication. Regardless of whether or not you like the "fuck muslims" group, approve of their message (or not), there is a non-zero possibility that they have some new ideas that nobody's introduced into the marketplace, or have a new way of thinking about old concepts. Hell, even if they don't, they obviously believe what they endorsed via membership in the group, and that should be enough to trigger our desire to protect it.
The ideas contained in speech we find offensive don't go away just because we shut them up. The "fuck muslims" group will move on, maybe list their ideas somewhere else, probably with a smaller readership, but they won't disappear. If you want to combat them, read their args, make your own, defeat them with logic and reason.
Also, the last bit of the squib on the article seems like kind of a whiny thing to say. "Why won't X Company enforce Y provision of their User Agreement?" Well, because they haven't chosen to. They're not OBLIGATED to. The User Agreement is pretty one way. And I'm willing to bet that the poster and people who agree with him would have a HUGE problem if Facebook decided to shut something that they believe in down.
Long and short, free speech is good, always, and man up and argue things you don't like on their merits.
Same problem, different subject. For decades, really, the public's conception of computers has been jacked up by Hollywood. I mean, I know that I, like the rest of you, skateboard through my 3D, holographic mainframe every day (you know, the one that shows a picture of my screaming face when there's a kernel panic), but how many people have an 800 monitor setup like in Swordfish? In fact, when was the last time you saw an interface in a movie that made any goddamn sense at all?
I don't know that having one of the machines at Oak Ridge is that big of a deal. One simple explanation is that the NSF is going to share time on the mainframe with the DoE, and in exchange, the DoE foots the energy bills and finds a place to put it. I'd rather have the agencies sharing multi-million dollar computers than buying them and not using them to capacity.
Ooo, an anti-corporatism rant. How original. Yes, that's exactly right. Every company cheats stockholders, jacks them based on insider information, and totally screws their investors. You've nailed it! We should clearly just get rid of private enterprise and allow the government to run everything, because it's comprised of completely altruistic individuals who would never play fast and loose with taxpayer money, engage in corrupt financial dealings, and would probably give us all kisses on the cheek before we went to bed.
Look, of _course_ you'll have individual instances of corruption in ANY sector. Managing a company doesn't change someone's core proclivities any more than getting a job with Uncle Sam does. The point here is that private organizations are far less distasteful than large federal bureaucracies. For one, you can _choose_ to invest in a company, whereas you don't have a choice when it comes to investing in Uncle Sam. He's gonna take his 25% no matter what you do. Also, if a company screws up, they get punished. If the government screws up, what happens? Nothing. There's no effective feedback for the government, and don't say elections, because that's a change of, at most, a couple thousand elected officials and political appointees. There's at least _some_ check on private agencies.
If you'd really rather descend into hysteria and claim that corporations are mass murdering assholes who've killed BILLIONS of people, OK, fine. You just don't have the evidence to back that shit up. Again, yes, corporations can behave badly, but the _overwhelming_ majority of them do not, and provide valuable services to the economy via job creation and the sale of their products and services. Also, what you ignore is how many people the FDA has killed through dragging its feet on approving medical and pharm. technology, how many people either couldn't get the drugs that would save their lives, or simply couldn't afford them because insurance companies frown upon "experimental" drugs. The FDA has FAR more blood on its hands than any company does.
Cool, so, basically, you're willing to be an ignorant sheep and let Daddy Government step in and make all those difficult decisions for you? Yeah man, when I decide whether or not something is safe for me to consume, I look for the FDA stamp of approval instead of, I dunno, investigating the matter myself, doing some damn reading on the subject, and forming my own conclusions. That's really smart. I mean, if the government says it's OK, it must be, right? Because they're the government, and they know WAY more about everything than the people who actually work on these products.
But, assume you're right for a moment, that the economy does need some kind of paternalistic organization to verify what's good to eat and what isn't. Why couldn't this duty be performed by any number of private organizations? Why get the government involved? If you had priva
Who said anything about assuming that nanotech is harmless? Of course there are risks involved with it, just like there are like any venture. But now, if it turns out that nano causes cancer or something, I _won't_ be screaming for the FDA, because I don't want them involved in much of anything, let alone areas where they don't need to be. We already have a system to handle damages of that sort through the courts, and we should continue to use it to punish companies who release harmful products _after_ they've done real harm. Nobody is helped by having a large government agency impose billions of dollars in costs to companies wishing to do R&D, especially when the process is entirely politicized and susceptible to corruption. That's punishing the innocent.
Additionally, the market is a much better force for ensuring product safety than the FDA. All the FDA's stamp of approval does is lull people into a false sense of security, and what happens when the product in question still ends up killing you? The Merck drugs that turned out to cause serious heart problems all passed the FDA, for example. I'd rather rely on a company's profit motive not to kill me, a customer, than some government bureaucracy that has no incentive to do _anything_ right because their funding is guaranteed, and it's not like people can get fired from a federal agency.