"Friending" on Facebook is different from "Following" on Twitter. On Facebook it's symmetrical -- I can't friend you, unless you also friend me. On Twitter it's asymmetrical -- you can follow me, without me following you back.
This difference alone is why Facebook will never kill Twitter. (And I'm not even talking about the horrible UI mess that is Facebook, or it's atrocious privacy reputation.)
Google+ follows Twitter's following philosophy and in that way is much more like to Twitter than Facebook is. OTOH, Twitter allows anonymity which Google+ sadly doesn't.
Aren't your purchaces linked to your app store account? IOW, unless Apple looses your data on their servers, you should be able to download it as many times as you like.
Disclaimer: I've only downloaded free (as in beer) software from the app store, with fake ID information, and without giving my credit card info. Hopefully, I'll be able to install Lion using app store gift certificates. If not, I'll have to create another app store account to download Lion. I do this, because I don't think Apple has a legitimate interest to know what software I run on my computer.
How about we stop giving more money to those who don't need it and share the wealth more evenly? Oh noes, that's socialism. Give me a fucking break.
I am pissed, because of a very recent study, that has shown once again that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Between 2000 and 2010 net income has dropped by 2.5% in Germany. Lower income groups have had a decrease between 16% and 22% in their paycheck. High income groups have seen a modest increase of 1%. Partly, because the low-wage sector was expanded massively by our politicians in that time.
Meanwhile, the economy is booming. But only the ultra-rich are profiting from it. And our very own party of corporate whores^W advocates, the FDP, says that the "Leistungsträger" (translation: those who know how to successfully game the system) need to be relieved.
When will people learn that the law is only tangentially related to ethics? Just because it's the law doesn't make it right and just because it's against the law doesn't make it wrong.
The criminal investigation will most likely lead nowhere or be forgotten in a years time.
OTOH, if the information is made public, there's a big chance that Murdoch & Co. will be tried in the court of public opinion with unforeseeable fallout. Provided, there's actually evidence of criminal behavior there. Which there is, judging by Murdoch's reaction.
We Germans are very much aware that there are nuclear reactors in other countries that are close to our borders and that phasing out nuclear in our country won't eliminate the risk entirely. That is why we try to convince other countries to follow our lead. But someone has to make the first step.
For example, there was a protest against the Fessenheim nuclear reactor in France just on Tuesday. Fessenheim basically sits on the French side of the Rhine in southwest Germany. Apparently, it just got an extension for another 10 years, but I'm hopeful that that's not the end of the story.
Now, the article was written almost 2 weeks after the earthquake and talks about "missing bodies." But it's clear that the nuclear accident tied up resources that could otherwise be used to search for survivors in the days after the accident and therefore increase the chances of those buried under the debris to be rescued.
But since there is no hard data, it is easy to discount this assessment if one holds pro-nuclear views.
My guess would be an extreme emphasis on individuality and competition in the US. This exasperates the effects of three very unfortunate cognitive biases, namely that (a) people boost their self-esteem by looking down on others, (b) fearing the unknown or what one doesn't understand, and (c) the dehumanization of outsiders of a particular social group.
But I think your premise is wrong. For example, in Germany, students who learn a lot and excel in school are called "Strebers" (from the verb streben, english: aspire) and they are ridiculed just like nerds are in the US.
This line of reasoning comes up from time to time on Slashdot, but I think it is fallacious. Any community with a million+ users will have wildly diverging views. And people choose to comment on the topics they are passionate about. So the behavior you describe is to be expected here.
And therein lies the problem, laws are static while social interactions are not. OTOH, laws are not an end to themselves, but a means to regulate society through common agreement. Thus there will always been friction when it comes to law and society acknowledges this. That's why we have courts.
I'm afraid that I didn't make myself clear enough, so I'll try again. The speed limit codifies a social norm, namely a proscription of driving at unsafe speeds. But the law is not the same as the norm, it's just the way the state chooses to regulate it. And the law doesn't even cover the entire norm. If visibility is low, it is expected that one drives slower. OTOH, someone driving well below the speed limit on a highway in good conditions will become a hindrance. One might be following (the letter of) the law, but at the same time, one is violating the social norm of not driving at an unsafe speed.
In other words, laws are decidedly not black and white. There are always open to interpretation even if the text leaves little wiggle room.
If they cancelled rescue efforts, because they were afraid of another tsunami -- it would be the same deal, deaths of crushed non-rescued people are a result of not being rescued, not the result of another tsunami.
It's not the same deal at all, because we can't prevent tsunamis, only mitigate their effects. But we can prevent nuclear meltdowns entirely by not building nuclear power plants in the first place. The whole point of the argument is that there are risks in life that we have to live with and risks we as a society choose to live with.
A reaching argument, that theoretically, some people who died of something else might not have died if not for a distraction created by the plant, is hard to swallow.
I guess it depends on were you stand on the issue. It's pretty obvious to me.
OTOH, the original poster argued that nobody died because of the meltdown, thus there was no danger at all, and presumably the government overreacted. It begs the question whether there would be fatalities caused by the meltdown had the government reacted differently and his whole argument becomes an exercise of circular logic.
How thick can you be? It was the nuclear meltdown that created the dilemma for the government between evacuating people (including rescue personel or even volunteers) or searching for survivors. Japan is well equipped to deal with a tsunami, that much is plain by the relatively low death count (compared to e.g. the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that killed ten times as much). But earthquakes and tsunamis are a fact of nature and you have to live with them. The same is not true with nuclear power plants.
Or are you suggesting that the Japanese government should have handled the accident like the Russians did? (Act like nothing happened, send scores of people to their certain deaths, and lie to the people they do evacuate?)
The issue is not that I do not understand what is right or wrong, as in a law, but what is expected in social situations. In fact Aspergers has made me more of a rules lawyer than the average person. Laws are very black and white; it is very clear what is right or wrong and I have no problem discerning that. The widely known law against DoS attacks is not an issue for people with Asperger's.
Maybe I'm reading too much into what you're saying, but the law does not determine what is right or wrong. Laws are a kind of social norm and every social norm is learned through social interaction [1]. The only thing that makes laws special is that they are enforced by the state, through violence if necessary. But that doesn't mean that every individual has to automatically follow them. Just with every other norm (e.g. clothing standards, etiquette) it is up to the individual to decide to conform to the norm or reject it if one is prepared to face the consequences. And if one decides that a particular law is unjust, it could be argued that the morally right thing to do is to break the law and live with the consequences.
[1] For example, the law might say that the speed limit is 55, but that's not the social norm that is codified by the law. On the highway, you'll find that people go faster or slower depending on circumstances. In other words, just reading what the law says won't give you a complete picture on how society generally agrees to interpret the law.
You're forgetting that the nuclear accident seriously hampered search and rescue efforts within the evacuation zone. So it is very much conceivable that there were people trapped beneath the tsunami debris that could have been rescued, but died anyway because the nuclear accident prevented help from getting to them in time.
From what I read, the output of Stallman and Torwalds is roughly comparable. They're both awesome programmers who have the ability to create well-designed code in a short amount of time.
However, whereas Stallman started out with a clear agenda, an extreme sense of perseverance and tried to build a free Unix system no what, Torwalds basically got lucky. If there hadn't been a nearly-complete GNU system (written by Stallman and others) at the time he wrote his terminal emulator^W^Wkernel, Linux would very likely not have taken off.
PS: Why does Slashdot not support <strike>? Oh that's right, Slashdot sux.
I guess you missed the part where they experienced an unexpected, and so far unexplained, sudden drop of pressure in the reactor vessel 10 minutes after the quake.
Also, the article is extremely vague on the subsequent work on the cooling system by the engineers. I don't know where you get your sense that everything was peachy there. The article certainly doesn't say either way.
Slashdot Mirror
"Friending" on Facebook is different from "Following" on Twitter. On Facebook it's symmetrical -- I can't friend you, unless you also friend me. On Twitter it's asymmetrical -- you can follow me, without me following you back.
This difference alone is why Facebook will never kill Twitter. (And I'm not even talking about the horrible UI mess that is Facebook, or it's atrocious privacy reputation.)
Google+ follows Twitter's following philosophy and in that way is much more like to Twitter than Facebook is. OTOH, Twitter allows anonymity which Google+ sadly doesn't.
Apparently, isolated local networks are no defense to Lady Gaga CDs.
Aren't your purchaces linked to your app store account? IOW, unless Apple looses your data on their servers, you should be able to download it as many times as you like.
Disclaimer: I've only downloaded free (as in beer) software from the app store, with fake ID information, and without giving my credit card info. Hopefully, I'll be able to install Lion using app store gift certificates. If not, I'll have to create another app store account to download Lion. I do this, because I don't think Apple has a legitimate interest to know what software I run on my computer.
Thanks for some perspective. I'd up-mod you, but your post is already maxed out.
How about we stop giving more money to those who don't need it and share the wealth more evenly? Oh noes, that's socialism. Give me a fucking break.
I am pissed, because of a very recent study, that has shown once again that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Between 2000 and 2010 net income has dropped by 2.5% in Germany. Lower income groups have had a decrease between 16% and 22% in their paycheck. High income groups have seen a modest increase of 1%. Partly, because the low-wage sector was expanded massively by our politicians in that time.
Source: http://www.berlinonline.de/berliner-zeitung/wirtschaft/einkommen-gehaelter-sinken-im-aufschwung/351611.php (The study was done by the Deutsche Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, an institution that isn't known for its pro-labour bias.)
Meanwhile, the economy is booming. But only the ultra-rich are profiting from it. And our very own party of corporate whores^W advocates, the FDP, says that the "Leistungsträger" (translation: those who know how to successfully game the system) need to be relieved.
Now, go mod me Troll or Off-Topic.
When will people learn that the law is only tangentially related to ethics? Just because it's the law doesn't make it right and just because it's against the law doesn't make it wrong.
The criminal investigation will most likely lead nowhere or be forgotten in a years time.
OTOH, if the information is made public, there's a big chance that Murdoch & Co. will be tried in the court of public opinion with unforeseeable fallout. Provided, there's actually evidence of criminal behavior there. Which there is, judging by Murdoch's reaction.
IOW, I'm all for leaking the mails.
Exactly. What I want to know is this: Who is adeelarshad82 and did he get some free shit from Dvorak?
Yeah, Streber is not exactly the same as nerd/geek, but they do get picked on a lot.
Also, I think a better translation for streben would be strive in this context.
We Germans are very much aware that there are nuclear reactors in other countries that are close to our borders and that phasing out nuclear in our country won't eliminate the risk entirely. That is why we try to convince other countries to follow our lead. But someone has to make the first step.
For example, there was a protest against the Fessenheim nuclear reactor in France just on Tuesday. Fessenheim basically sits on the French side of the Rhine in southwest Germany. Apparently, it just got an extension for another 10 years, but I'm hopeful that that's not the end of the story.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fessenheim_Nuclear_Power_Plant
How's that?
Rescue workers and even the Japanese military have said that the meltdown has hindered their efforts. Source: http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9M57OR80&show_article=1
Now, the article was written almost 2 weeks after the earthquake and talks about "missing bodies." But it's clear that the nuclear accident tied up resources that could otherwise be used to search for survivors in the days after the accident and therefore increase the chances of those buried under the debris to be rescued.
But since there is no hard data, it is easy to discount this assessment if one holds pro-nuclear views.
Replying to myself, a personal low on Slashdot, but before I spread misinformation...
The word is "Streber", with "Strebers" being the plural.
My guess would be an extreme emphasis on individuality and competition in the US. This exasperates the effects of three very unfortunate cognitive biases, namely that (a) people boost their self-esteem by looking down on others, (b) fearing the unknown or what one doesn't understand, and (c) the dehumanization of outsiders of a particular social group.
But I think your premise is wrong. For example, in Germany, students who learn a lot and excel in school are called "Strebers" (from the verb streben, english: aspire) and they are ridiculed just like nerds are in the US.
Yep, that is why opinions on Slashdot are so entrenched. OTOH, it makes for great comic relief at times.
And it doesn't entirely discount the possibility that someone actually does harbor conflicting views.
This line of reasoning comes up from time to time on Slashdot, but I think it is fallacious. Any community with a million+ users will have wildly diverging views. And people choose to comment on the topics they are passionate about. So the behavior you describe is to be expected here.
And therein lies the problem, laws are static while social interactions are not. OTOH, laws are not an end to themselves, but a means to regulate society through common agreement. Thus there will always been friction when it comes to law and society acknowledges this. That's why we have courts.
I'm afraid that I didn't make myself clear enough, so I'll try again. The speed limit codifies a social norm, namely a proscription of driving at unsafe speeds. But the law is not the same as the norm, it's just the way the state chooses to regulate it. And the law doesn't even cover the entire norm. If visibility is low, it is expected that one drives slower. OTOH, someone driving well below the speed limit on a highway in good conditions will become a hindrance. One might be following (the letter of) the law, but at the same time, one is violating the social norm of not driving at an unsafe speed.
In other words, laws are decidedly not black and white. There are always open to interpretation even if the text leaves little wiggle room.
If they cancelled rescue efforts, because they were afraid of another tsunami -- it would be the same deal, deaths of crushed non-rescued people are a result of not being rescued, not the result of another tsunami.
It's not the same deal at all, because we can't prevent tsunamis, only mitigate their effects. But we can prevent nuclear meltdowns entirely by not building nuclear power plants in the first place. The whole point of the argument is that there are risks in life that we have to live with and risks we as a society choose to live with.
A reaching argument, that theoretically, some people who died of something else might not have died if not for a distraction created by the plant, is hard to swallow.
I guess it depends on were you stand on the issue. It's pretty obvious to me.
OTOH, the original poster argued that nobody died because of the meltdown, thus there was no danger at all, and presumably the government overreacted. It begs the question whether there would be fatalities caused by the meltdown had the government reacted differently and his whole argument becomes an exercise of circular logic.
How thick can you be? It was the nuclear meltdown that created the dilemma for the government between evacuating people (including rescue personel or even volunteers) or searching for survivors. Japan is well equipped to deal with a tsunami, that much is plain by the relatively low death count (compared to e.g. the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that killed ten times as much). But earthquakes and tsunamis are a fact of nature and you have to live with them. The same is not true with nuclear power plants.
Or are you suggesting that the Japanese government should have handled the accident like the Russians did? (Act like nothing happened, send scores of people to their certain deaths, and lie to the people they do evacuate?)
The issue is not that I do not understand what is right or wrong, as in a law, but what is expected in social situations. In fact Aspergers has made me more of a rules lawyer than the average person. Laws are very black and white; it is very clear what is right or wrong and I have no problem discerning that. The widely known law against DoS attacks is not an issue for people with Asperger's.
Maybe I'm reading too much into what you're saying, but the law does not determine what is right or wrong. Laws are a kind of social norm and every social norm is learned through social interaction [1]. The only thing that makes laws special is that they are enforced by the state, through violence if necessary. But that doesn't mean that every individual has to automatically follow them. Just with every other norm (e.g. clothing standards, etiquette) it is up to the individual to decide to conform to the norm or reject it if one is prepared to face the consequences. And if one decides that a particular law is unjust, it could be argued that the morally right thing to do is to break the law and live with the consequences.
[1] For example, the law might say that the speed limit is 55, but that's not the social norm that is codified by the law. On the highway, you'll find that people go faster or slower depending on circumstances. In other words, just reading what the law says won't give you a complete picture on how society generally agrees to interpret the law.
You're forgetting that the nuclear accident seriously hampered search and rescue efforts within the evacuation zone. So it is very much conceivable that there were people trapped beneath the tsunami debris that could have been rescued, but died anyway because the nuclear accident prevented help from getting to them in time.
In other words, you're full of shit.
From what I read, the output of Stallman and Torwalds is roughly comparable. They're both awesome programmers who have the ability to create well-designed code in a short amount of time.
However, whereas Stallman started out with a clear agenda, an extreme sense of perseverance and tried to build a free Unix system no what, Torwalds basically got lucky. If there hadn't been a nearly-complete GNU system (written by Stallman and others) at the time he wrote his terminal emulator^W^Wkernel, Linux would very likely not have taken off.
PS: Why does Slashdot not support <strike>? Oh that's right, Slashdot sux.
It's worse, the whole civil nuclear industry is just a fig leaf to make nuclear weapons more acceptable to the public. Google "Atoms for peace".
That is why, to this day, the IAEA is able to censor the WHO when it comes to nuclear accidents.
Um, whatever. It was supposed to be a joke.
I guess you missed the part where they experienced an unexpected, and so far unexplained, sudden drop of pressure in the reactor vessel 10 minutes after the quake.
Also, the article is extremely vague on the subsequent work on the cooling system by the engineers. I don't know where you get your sense that everything was peachy there. The article certainly doesn't say either way.
real progress generally is baby steps, and stumbles.
FTFY. Don't forget the occasional revolution. (Which, of course, are impossible without many baby steps before.)