There's something rather important you're forgetting which makes your rant hilariously wrong, but I'll leave it to you to RTFA and WTFV (and code up the simulation yourself, if you like.) The short version is, whatever "nerd cred" you once had, you've blown it all to hell.
I'm proud to report that a friend of mine grabbed http://www.bankofamericasucks.org/ before BoA got to it. Currently it's just a redirect to an IT World article, but oh, the possibilities... especially since she works for a hosting company.
I think you mean 'and' as in the primary school published and the journal's scientific reputation perished.
I guarantee you that the reputation of Biology Letters is not in any danger. It is and will remain a top-tier journal, and its readership will pay no attention to the opinions of trolls in making this judgement.
I believe you, but I have to point out that this state of affairs is why so many people hate the patent system. If I can file a patent with an absurd number of absurdly broad claims, and then sue you for infringing on some specific part of one claim for which prior art exists, and to use the prior art defense you have to show that every claim in my patent is covered by prior art -- then the laws and regulations which allow this situation to exist are badly, badly broken. I defy anyone to explain how such a troll-friendly setup "promote[s] the Progress of Science and useful Arts."
Actually the leaks from Wikileaks proves there WERE wmd's in iraq.
Oh yeah? Cite the relevant passages, and give the name of the document and the page number. But before you post it here, give Fox News a call. The "b-b-but they were really there, we promise!" crowd has been groping after some kind of hard evidence for their claims and coming up empty for years now; if you've found the bombshell (so to speak) that will prove them right, you'll earn yourself their eternal gratitude and probably a shitload of Rupert Murdoch's money. So go for it.
Go here. Follow, read, and understand the links on the first, say, three or four pages of search results. Then, maybe, you'll know enough to have a meaningful opinion on the subject.
The US government is a very large organization. It does a lot of different things. Some things it does well, other things it does badly. Some of the people who work for it do their jobs well, others do their jobs badly. Some types of people take some kinds of jobs, others take other types of jobs. There is no one "the government" doing everything the same way. Welcome to the real world.
Control is a constant. If you deny it here, you grant it here.
If that were true, then the considerable progress toward human freedom which has characterized the last half-millennium or so would have been impossible. People in general, and particularly in the industrialized world, suffer less control now than our ancestors did at any point in human history. Unfortunately, the forces of control have never quite forgotten their ancient privileges, and they're constantly fighting to put things back the way they were. Defeatist attitudes like yours aid them in this goal.
[sigh] I'm going to explain this as simply as possible.
There are people who want to censor the internet. Some of them are in government, some of them are in industry. There are also people who want to keep the internet free. Some of them are in government, some of them are in industry. Those of us who want the internet to remain a medium for free speech should oppose the actions of the first group, wherever they appear, and support the actions of the second group, wherever they appear. The choice is not "government control vs. industry control" but "censorhip vs. freedom," and net neutrality serves the "freedom" side.
If you oppose net neutrality, you are on the side of the censors. If you support net neutrality, you are on the side of freedom.
In the real world, slopes are often very slippery indeed. The "slippery slope fallacy" is, I think, largely a creation of logicians who live in a world of carefully contrived examples designed to make their opponents' arguments look absurd -- which is in fact an example of another fallacy, the straw man, in action. If you can't see how slippery this slope is, and how fast we're already sliding over the edge, you're not paying attention.
Actually that is called "the slippery slope argument" and is a logical fallacy. Once you do X then Y must surely follow. For example "once you outlaw the private ownership of nuclear weapons the next thing they will outlaw is butter knives."
Unfortunately, that means of "proving" that the slippery slope is fallacious falls squarely into another logical fallacy, namely, the straw man. In the real world, slippery slopes are not anywhere near as extreme as "nukes and butter knives," and history is replete with examples of slopes that have shown to be very slippery indeed. The "Logical Fallacies 101" list of which every philosophy department seems to have some variant on its website is a useful introduction to some common rhetorical traps, but it shouldn't be taken as the be-all and end-all of logic.
Unfortunately, the reality is that any precedent set in this case isn't going to apply to the MAFIAA, for the simple reason that porn producers are Evil And Nasty And Disgusting while major music and movie studios are Good And True And All-American.
I don't want to be dug up by scientists writing papers that nobody reads.
Anonymous cowards are dug up and put on public display quite often. Do something noteworthy enough that you get a fancy tomb and you might avoid this fate. Not that the rest of us will be holding our breaths for you to accomplish anything... we'll just be standing over at the edge of the graveyard with shovels. "Specimen of early 21st-century Homo semi-sapiens trollicus patheticus. Name unknown."
Not until this kind of crap stops being possible. I don't just mean "Amazon stops pulling Kindle books that people have already purchased and promises not to do it again," I mean when they can't -- i.e. when e-books can actually be purchased, in a non-DRM, non-phone-home format that the people who buy them actually own.
Yes, I know there are people selling plain PDFs, and good for them. But Amazon is such a dominant force in the market that they're going to have to take the lead, or be replaced at the top spot. I'm not optimistic -- this is going to drag on for years, maybe decades, and the potential of the e-book market will go largely unfulfilled in the meantime.
The point of special effects, whether done with models or CGI, is not to show off the effects-maker's art; it's to make things that aren't actually happening look as much as possible like they are happening. CGI is a powerful tool to help accomplish this goal, no more and no less. It's really silly to talk about it as though it's something separate from the rest of the tools in the film-making toolkit.
However, Assange is NOT a journalist. Journalists are supposed to have a sense of responsibility. All Assange does is release documents no matter what they are, without apparently trying to determine if they NEED to be leaked.
I don't think you know what the word "journalist" means. A journalist is anyone who reports the news as an occupation. That's it. No other qualification needed.
And journalists who worry about "sense of responsibility" are everywhere -- they're the folks writing bland, instantly forgettable wire service stories; they're the interchangeable talking heads on TV; they're the soothing voices on the radio that you couldn't put names to if your life depended on it. The very few journalists who dig deeper, who know there's always more muck to rake, who have the intelligence and dedication and raw courage to speak truth to power, are the ones whose names are remembered, and rightly so.
Woodward and Bernstein are still household names long after most of their contemporaries have been utterly forgotton. So will Assange be. And while people like you may continue to whine, those of us who want to live in a better world will remember why.
Slashdot Mirror
There's something rather important you're forgetting which makes your rant hilariously wrong, but I'll leave it to you to RTFA and WTFV (and code up the simulation yourself, if you like.) The short version is, whatever "nerd cred" you once had, you've blown it all to hell.
I'm proud to report that a friend of mine grabbed http://www.bankofamericasucks.org/ before BoA got to it. Currently it's just a redirect to an IT World article, but oh, the possibilities ... especially since she works for a hosting company.
I think you mean 'and' as in the primary school published and the journal's scientific reputation perished.
I guarantee you that the reputation of Biology Letters is not in any danger. It is and will remain a top-tier journal, and its readership will pay no attention to the opinions of trolls in making this judgement.
Oops, sorry, I misread.
I believe you, but I have to point out that this state of affairs is why so many people hate the patent system. If I can file a patent with an absurd number of absurdly broad claims, and then sue you for infringing on some specific part of one claim for which prior art exists, and to use the prior art defense you have to show that every claim in my patent is covered by prior art -- then the laws and regulations which allow this situation to exist are badly, badly broken. I defy anyone to explain how such a troll-friendly setup "promote[s] the Progress of Science and useful Arts."
Actually the leaks from Wikileaks proves there WERE wmd's in iraq.
Oh yeah? Cite the relevant passages, and give the name of the document and the page number. But before you post it here, give Fox News a call. The "b-b-but they were really there, we promise!" crowd has been groping after some kind of hard evidence for their claims and coming up empty for years now; if you've found the bombshell (so to speak) that will prove them right, you'll earn yourself their eternal gratitude and probably a shitload of Rupert Murdoch's money. So go for it.
40% of US residents believe in creationism. What are you going to say to them, huh?
As little as possible.
Go here. Follow, read, and understand the links on the first, say, three or four pages of search results. Then, maybe, you'll know enough to have a meaningful opinion on the subject.
Yeah, but the law'n'order card trumps their desire to make Obama look bad.
The US government is a very large organization. It does a lot of different things. Some things it does well, other things it does badly. Some of the people who work for it do their jobs well, others do their jobs badly. Some types of people take some kinds of jobs, others take other types of jobs. There is no one "the government" doing everything the same way. Welcome to the real world.
I really hope the Republicans make a civil rights issue out of this.
LOL! You're a funny guy.
Wait. You were serious?
Oh, dear.
Control is a constant. If you deny it here, you grant it here.
If that were true, then the considerable progress toward human freedom which has characterized the last half-millennium or so would have been impossible. People in general, and particularly in the industrialized world, suffer less control now than our ancestors did at any point in human history. Unfortunately, the forces of control have never quite forgotten their ancient privileges, and they're constantly fighting to put things back the way they were. Defeatist attitudes like yours aid them in this goal.
[sigh] I'm going to explain this as simply as possible.
There are people who want to censor the internet. Some of them are in government, some of them are in industry. There are also people who want to keep the internet free. Some of them are in government, some of them are in industry. Those of us who want the internet to remain a medium for free speech should oppose the actions of the first group, wherever they appear, and support the actions of the second group, wherever they appear. The choice is not "government control vs. industry control" but "censorhip vs. freedom," and net neutrality serves the "freedom" side.
If you oppose net neutrality, you are on the side of the censors. If you support net neutrality, you are on the side of freedom.
That's it. That's all there is.
False dichotomy much?
In the real world, slopes are often very slippery indeed. The "slippery slope fallacy" is, I think, largely a creation of logicians who live in a world of carefully contrived examples designed to make their opponents' arguments look absurd -- which is in fact an example of another fallacy, the straw man, in action. If you can't see how slippery this slope is, and how fast we're already sliding over the edge, you're not paying attention.
Yahoo is dusted.
Put a stake in it, it's done.
Actually that is called "the slippery slope argument" and is a logical fallacy. Once you do X then Y must surely follow.
For example "once you outlaw the private ownership of nuclear weapons the next thing they will outlaw is butter knives."
Unfortunately, that means of "proving" that the slippery slope is fallacious falls squarely into another logical fallacy, namely, the straw man. In the real world, slippery slopes are not anywhere near as extreme as "nukes and butter knives," and history is replete with examples of slopes that have shown to be very slippery indeed. The "Logical Fallacies 101" list of which every philosophy department seems to have some variant on its website is a useful introduction to some common rhetorical traps, but it shouldn't be taken as the be-all and end-all of logic.
Unfortunately, the reality is that any precedent set in this case isn't going to apply to the MAFIAA, for the simple reason that porn producers are Evil And Nasty And Disgusting while major music and movie studios are Good And True And All-American.
Freedom has always been popular, but since the early 19th c. it's gone much better with "democracy" than with "republic".
I don't want to be dug up by scientists writing papers that nobody reads.
Anonymous cowards are dug up and put on public display quite often. Do something noteworthy enough that you get a fancy tomb and you might avoid this fate. Not that the rest of us will be holding our breaths for you to accomplish anything ... we'll just be standing over at the edge of the graveyard with shovels. "Specimen of early 21st-century Homo semi-sapiens trollicus patheticus. Name unknown."
He sounds like a great monarch, truly ahead of his time.
Like GPP said: go complain to Tolkien.
Not until this kind of crap stops being possible. I don't just mean "Amazon stops pulling Kindle books that people have already purchased and promises not to do it again," I mean when they can't -- i.e. when e-books can actually be purchased, in a non-DRM, non-phone-home format that the people who buy them actually own.
Yes, I know there are people selling plain PDFs, and good for them. But Amazon is such a dominant force in the market that they're going to have to take the lead, or be replaced at the top spot. I'm not optimistic -- this is going to drag on for years, maybe decades, and the potential of the e-book market will go largely unfulfilled in the meantime.
This.
The point of special effects, whether done with models or CGI, is not to show off the effects-maker's art; it's to make things that aren't actually happening look as much as possible like they are happening. CGI is a powerful tool to help accomplish this goal, no more and no less. It's really silly to talk about it as though it's something separate from the rest of the tools in the film-making toolkit.
However, Assange is NOT a journalist. Journalists are supposed to have a sense of responsibility. All Assange does is release documents no matter what they are, without apparently trying to determine if they NEED to be leaked.
I don't think you know what the word "journalist" means. A journalist is anyone who reports the news as an occupation. That's it. No other qualification needed.
And journalists who worry about "sense of responsibility" are everywhere -- they're the folks writing bland, instantly forgettable wire service stories; they're the interchangeable talking heads on TV; they're the soothing voices on the radio that you couldn't put names to if your life depended on it. The very few journalists who dig deeper, who know there's always more muck to rake, who have the intelligence and dedication and raw courage to speak truth to power, are the ones whose names are remembered, and rightly so.
Woodward and Bernstein are still household names long after most of their contemporaries have been utterly forgotton. So will Assange be. And while people like you may continue to whine, those of us who want to live in a better world will remember why.