If editors are changing stories or headlines to give them a negative spin it will be simple to prove: just link to a firehose submission and the accepted story where it occurred.
Although of course what we want is no spin at all, positive or negative. Just report the facts. One step in the right direction would be for the submission form to say something like "Submissions which put a spin on the facts will be rejected." and for the editors to enforce it.
Wait until you've actually tried to make a change before damning the editors for something they might not be doing, though. Again, it's the readers who influence which stories get published by voting them up or down on the firehose. If you want to see a change, start there.
But it's the readers who supply the stories and write the headlines - if you think there's a bias and want to see a change then start submitting stories with cheerier headlines.
Absolutely; don't go mad with it. The problem with advice like that, though, is that the people who follow it don't need it and the people who need it don't follow it. If you have an addictive personality you will know you are doing too much and do it anyway. Be careful out there, kids.
Yes. Mind altering drugs are a great way to gain objectivity on yourself - to step outside your normal way of seeing things and then step back in with a new perspective. It's very therapeutic, like taking a wonderful holiday, and something a lot of people would benefit from - not everyone, though. If you are well balanced and content and not actively searching for a "bigger view of things", then it will just be an annoyance. It is not at all surprising that it can benefit people with an addiction problem.
If you're having trouble finding LSD I recommend ketamine. It is a far stronger hallucinogen, but (bizarrely) it carries a lighter penalty if you are caught with it. A couple of small lines and the filters on your perception of time and space start to disappear. A few more lines and all of reality slides through an infinite point in your head - everything you experience is created by you - full hallucination - and then after experiencing infinity (truly revelatory) you gradually slide back through layer after layer of complementary realities until you land back in this one. Beautiful.
Or you could keep your phone in a small metal tin?
When you actually need to use your phone all those security measures for the mic/battery/antenna/etc are going to have to be disabled anyway. Easier to keep it in a tin.
I'm 38 and had the same symptoms as you (tinnitus in my left ear, ability to hear high-pitched sounds) until early last year when I found I was losing the ability to hear high pitched sounds because I could no longer hear the Mosquito alarm. I consider it quite a sad loss. There's an Animal Collective album called Danse Manatee that has plenty of high-pitched sounds on it, and I know I'm missing something when I listen to it now. Again, my tinnitus started with a physical injury to the ear.
A bigger vessel means either more fuel or a longer journey. For humans that's a hell of a lot of fuel or an incredibly long time. It's on the scale of thinking of the Earth as a spaceship.
With computers, theoretically you could fit thousands of distinct consciousnesses in a computer the size of a sugar cube. And computer consciousnesses could be "frozen" rather than put in to suspended animation for the journey. Add some nano-tech replicators and a spacecraft could be no larger than a football, shoot out across the galaxy, find a planet and start building android bodies, buildings, telecoms, a complete civilization. Even human bodies if you really want.
Again, fanciful, but more likely than sending people.
it will take a long time until we have any hint of this life-giving resource on worlds orbiting stars thousands of light-years away.
Doesn't matter. By the time we reach any planets in other solar systems we won't need water to survive. We'll have transferred our brains to computers and will use whatever android bodies are suitable for the terrain.
I know, sounds fanciful, but it's more realistic than to think that we'll be sending human beings to other solar systems. The amount of oxygen, water, food, and other resources required - even if we invent some kind of suspended animation - makes it laughably unlikely.
We're not reproducing any faster - we're having children later and we're having fewer of them. We're just being rather selfish and refusing to drop dead as quickly as we used to.
You missed out the "self-respecting geek", and the "passive, slack-jawed consumption"
No I didn't. Believe it or not "geeks" is a subset of "people", not a separate set, and I specifically pointed out that your definition of "passive slack-jawed entertainment" can equally apply to reading, listening to the radio, or watching sport. Or looking at art, for that matter.
Digressions into what autism is aside, well so what? Significant degrees of autistic behaviours are generally accepted to be more common in in the "geek" population than in the "normal" population. So?
I made no judgement on autism. I just pointed out that if your argument against television viewing is not just rhetoric, then you are probably an extremely unusual person so your views would not apply to the general population. It would also explain why you can't understand how a geek could enjoy watching Star Trek.
You can't work out how people can enjoy entertainment? Honestly?
I'm trying to work out why any self-respecting geek would participate in any pastime that requires passive, slack-jawed consumption of entertainment over something that requires active involvement.
In this respect, how is watching a screen any different to reading a book? Or listening to the radio? Or being at a hockey match? Or is it just fiction in any form you dislike as opposed to factual, because you think fiction doesn't engage the brain but factual does? Because there is nothing "passive" about watching or reading or listening to entertainment - entertainment is processed by the brain just as any other information is, often more intensely and vividly.
You are either being wilfully obtuse, or you are somewhere way out in the autistic spectrum. People need entertainment and I'd be very surprised to find you had none in your life - no music, no books, no films, no sport, no hobbies. Singling out and demonising television as being "slack-jawed consumption of entertainment" just makes you sound like you think other people are inferior to you.
That's in addition to Paypal. You still HAVE to offer Paypal on your listings as well, and that's what most buyers will choose because that's what they're familiar with. It doesn't solve the problem at all.
I imagine it would also mean that any life that evolved there would evolve an eye that would be capable of seeing a broader spectrum of light as well, though, so the plants wouldn't look black to them.
Still, it's cool; worlds with black & grey plants. Very Star Trek.
Slashdot Mirror
I had an accepted submission three days ago. Nothing was changed. Firehose submission, Posted story.
If editors are changing stories or headlines to give them a negative spin it will be simple to prove: just link to a firehose submission and the accepted story where it occurred.
Although of course what we want is no spin at all, positive or negative. Just report the facts. One step in the right direction would be for the submission form to say something like "Submissions which put a spin on the facts will be rejected." and for the editors to enforce it.
Wait until you've actually tried to make a change before damning the editors for something they might not be doing, though. Again, it's the readers who influence which stories get published by voting them up or down on the firehose. If you want to see a change, start there.
But it's the readers who supply the stories and write the headlines - if you think there's a bias and want to see a change then start submitting stories with cheerier headlines.
Absolutely; don't go mad with it. The problem with advice like that, though, is that the people who follow it don't need it and the people who need it don't follow it. If you have an addictive personality you will know you are doing too much and do it anyway. Be careful out there, kids.
Yes. Mind altering drugs are a great way to gain objectivity on yourself - to step outside your normal way of seeing things and then step back in with a new perspective. It's very therapeutic, like taking a wonderful holiday, and something a lot of people would benefit from - not everyone, though. If you are well balanced and content and not actively searching for a "bigger view of things", then it will just be an annoyance. It is not at all surprising that it can benefit people with an addiction problem.
If you're having trouble finding LSD I recommend ketamine. It is a far stronger hallucinogen, but (bizarrely) it carries a lighter penalty if you are caught with it. A couple of small lines and the filters on your perception of time and space start to disappear. A few more lines and all of reality slides through an infinite point in your head - everything you experience is created by you - full hallucination - and then after experiencing infinity (truly revelatory) you gradually slide back through layer after layer of complementary realities until you land back in this one. Beautiful.
So I've heard, anyway.
Just you and Alanis Morrisette, at a guess.
Or you could keep your phone in a small metal tin?
When you actually need to use your phone all those security measures for the mic/battery/antenna/etc are going to have to be disabled anyway. Easier to keep it in a tin.
"Lego is available to all men, and what a multitude of things you can do with it."
Those Latins, they knew a thing or two.
I'm 38 and had the same symptoms as you (tinnitus in my left ear, ability to hear high-pitched sounds) until early last year when I found I was losing the ability to hear high pitched sounds because I could no longer hear the Mosquito alarm. I consider it quite a sad loss. There's an Animal Collective album called Danse Manatee that has plenty of high-pitched sounds on it, and I know I'm missing something when I listen to it now. Again, my tinnitus started with a physical injury to the ear.
A bigger vessel means either more fuel or a longer journey. For humans that's a hell of a lot of fuel or an incredibly long time. It's on the scale of thinking of the Earth as a spaceship.
With computers, theoretically you could fit thousands of distinct consciousnesses in a computer the size of a sugar cube. And computer consciousnesses could be "frozen" rather than put in to suspended animation for the journey. Add some nano-tech replicators and a spacecraft could be no larger than a football, shoot out across the galaxy, find a planet and start building android bodies, buildings, telecoms, a complete civilization. Even human bodies if you really want.
Again, fanciful, but more likely than sending people.
Doesn't matter. By the time we reach any planets in other solar systems we won't need water to survive. We'll have transferred our brains to computers and will use whatever android bodies are suitable for the terrain.
I know, sounds fanciful, but it's more realistic than to think that we'll be sending human beings to other solar systems. The amount of oxygen, water, food, and other resources required - even if we invent some kind of suspended animation - makes it laughably unlikely.
So just chop off someone else's finger and use that for your car door lock. See? - the basic idea is fine.
Well, if it's a place you can drop in to and visit then add it. The site is driven by visitors adding their own places of interest.
We're not reproducing any faster - we're having children later and we're having fewer of them. We're just being rather selfish and refusing to drop dead as quickly as we used to.
Seconded. Started by Ben Goldacre, with plenty of destinations in the UK and the US, and if you know of any more just add them:
Nerdy Day Trips
The article ends by calling Woz "the creator of the Macintosh" - he isn't, he's the creator of the Apple computer. The Mac was Jobs's baby.
ALOT ISNOT AWORD
"A mere abacus. Mention it not."
No I didn't. Believe it or not "geeks" is a subset of "people", not a separate set, and I specifically pointed out that your definition of "passive slack-jawed entertainment" can equally apply to reading, listening to the radio, or watching sport. Or looking at art, for that matter.
I made no judgement on autism. I just pointed out that if your argument against television viewing is not just rhetoric, then you are probably an extremely unusual person so your views would not apply to the general population. It would also explain why you can't understand how a geek could enjoy watching Star Trek.
In this respect, how is watching a screen any different to reading a book? Or listening to the radio? Or being at a hockey match? Or is it just fiction in any form you dislike as opposed to factual, because you think fiction doesn't engage the brain but factual does? Because there is nothing "passive" about watching or reading or listening to entertainment - entertainment is processed by the brain just as any other information is, often more intensely and vividly.
You are either being wilfully obtuse, or you are somewhere way out in the autistic spectrum. People need entertainment and I'd be very surprised to find you had none in your life - no music, no books, no films, no sport, no hobbies. Singling out and demonising television as being "slack-jawed consumption of entertainment" just makes you sound like you think other people are inferior to you.
That's in addition to Paypal. You still HAVE to offer Paypal on your listings as well, and that's what most buyers will choose because that's what they're familiar with. It doesn't solve the problem at all.
And disable the microphone. People always forget the microphone.
Every time someone on Slashdot complains about a group mentality on Slashdot they invalidate their own argument.
I imagine it would also mean that any life that evolved there would evolve an eye that would be capable of seeing a broader spectrum of light as well, though, so the plants wouldn't look black to them.
Still, it's cool; worlds with black & grey plants. Very Star Trek.