Well, crack-whores can be men, too, and will perform the same tasks for their fixes, so while you're right about crude, I don't think we can be sure if the GP poster is misogynistic or simply flipped a coin.
Crack-whores: Yet another reason to use indeterminate gender "they"! They just keep piling up!
Well.... having the game, I can tell you that there's really not a "single player mode". Any of your battle.net friends can log into your game at anytime, or send you party invites. The best you can do is set yourself to "busy" and tell your friends to leave you alone. All characters also have access to the on-line D3 features, such as the auction house, achievement system, chat, and "public game" options, at all times. The "single player" game experience is identical to "multi-player" with a party of one; even if you don't have battle.net friends to play D3 with. The fact that they didn't include a truly single player mode in the first place is what is annoying people who just want to experience the latest Diablo chapter (if the online requirement is that bothersome, and I do understand why it would be to some people, I suggest Wikipedia and Youtube for this. The whole story is there.).
Regardless, Blizzard chose to force people online for a reason: The items or gold you get playing in a party of one are just as valid for trading with friends or on the auction house as those gained from groups. Had Blizzard designed a single player mode that didn't have access to the auction house, achievements, chat, battle.net, or classic co-op multi-player, it could have been done without a connection, but a) it would have been a very short single-player campaign, indeed, and b) simply put, they didn't. It's obvious they want people utilizing the Auction House (a clever take on pay to play, when you think about it), but they also have an interest in having people play their games online for as long as possible, just like Starcraft 1 & 2 and Diablo 1 & 2.
Incidentally, D3 is actually pretty fun, but like WoW (or Star Wars, or Tera, etc), a lot of the fun comes from the people I play with, and we all live too far apart to have a LAN party. It's very much like going to the bar with my local buddies and playing pool or darts while we chat, or watching the superbowl or playing poker in my living room. I could do all those things alone, but it's more fun with friends. Specific to the game, it's a riot to watch the loot explosions and wonder what dropped for everybody else, laugh at your friend for being a dumbass monk and standing in green fire, or helping your barbarian buddy (or maybe just some random AH buyer) out with a sweet new pair of boots that your wizard would just trash in a truly single player mode. I'd have finished the whole thing on a lazy Saturday afternoon without these social features; a truly single player mode would have been a waste of cash.
I think we often miss the point of why relatives are so often the perpetrators of child abuse. It's a proximity and trust thing. If "strangers" could get that level of trust easily (say, with candy, videogames, music, fancy vans with no windows, or anything else you might warn your kids about) I think child abuse by people the victims don't know would be far more common.
Another key point is we often lump all child abuse into one grouping. A whopping 84% of all child abuse is done by a child's biological parents, but 60% of child *sexual* abuse is done by people known to the child but who are not family members (babysitters, teachers, family friends, neighbors etc). People completely unknown to the child only comprise about 10% of sexual abuses, most of the rest are family. You were close; family members are FAR more common perpetrators than strangers, but that third category of abusers - non-family members in authority positions - make up the majority of sexual abusers.
Of course, all of this explains why child abuse in any form is such a violation of the kids in question; these are the people who are supposed to be teaching kids about and protecting kids from the world, but instead these people are harming them. These children tend to learn there IS no safe place or person, and that's a tough lesson to learn that young.
As a brief anecdote (feel free to skip if it's TL;DR. It only serves as a personal example proving no statistics, just how it sometimes happens):
My "inappropriate touching" guy was my piano teacher when I was 9. He had all sorts of "games" to play when I did well on the lessons. I knew the guy; he was from our church ward, and he was always sort of antisocially creepy, like the house the kids don't want to trick or treat at kind of thing. Shit started to get WAY creepy though. That's a difficult spot to be in as a kid; my folks PAY this guy to teach me piano one hour a week, and I really was learning the piano, and he was a nice enough guy when he wasn't being creepy and pushy as fuck, so what was I supposed to do? I mean, some of the stuff was sorta... oogily nice at the time, I guess, but when I thought about it after the fact it was just half guilt (shame? shrug) and half gross. I didn't want to see the guy in jail forever, or whatever; just to get him to knock it off and not feel... responsible for any of it, I guess. I just ended up quitting piano, instead of dealing with it directly. Looking back, I wouldn't say it damaged me permanently or anything, but it was an odd and emotionally complicated way to learn how to "make the white stuff come out" (admittedly, certain specifics got burned permanently into memory). Last I heard, some 25 years ago, a different kid DID tell his folks, and the guy ended up getting arrested. Not sure what happened after that. To this day, I don't have any hate for the guy; it wouldn't serve any purpose. OTOH, I do sure as *hell* keep tabs on who watches my little girls a lot more closely because of it.
Meh. I'd be just as happy going to a sports bar to watch the game, or going camping, and then watching the game later on via Hulu or the like. I don't think I'm alone anymore. Who wants to plan their life around what time an event airs, now that we don't have to?
Well, the reality is pretty simple. The show creators can:
1- Lower the cost of production (this, of course, risks lowering the quality of the product)
2- Increase the revenue brought in by the show to compensate for the higher production values, which can be done by:
2a- Sell as many units of your product to as many consumers as possible at the highest price the market will bear (which is calculated from factors such as competition, demand, available supply, and elasticity of your product). This is the ideal situation. If you cannot make a profit doing this, you must resort to option 1 above or 2b below, and should probably be planning on ways to get here through better marketing, better distribution, better quality, better price, or lower elasticity (i.e. make your product one that people can't live without). If you cannot do this, you should be questioning how viable your product is.
2b- Create artificial scarcity in order to get a higher sales price at the risk of not selling to as many consumers (this almost guarantees a very high rate of piracy for digital goods). This is especially effective for ultra-high demand goods, like jewelry, which oddly enough only has value because it is scarce in the first place.
Disclaimer: It's been many years since my ECON classes; someone will surely have better or more correct ways to put this.
Businesses have been using option 2b for years and years, and it works terrifically, until people find a way to do an end-run around your artificial scarcity techniques. It's never been easier to do this than now, with the advent of the digital age. While I don't have the answer to your question, it's obvious that protecting the ability to create artificial scarcity for digital goods simply isn't long-term viable option.
I guess this is why we are seeing a new wave of "constantly phoning home" software; it's really the last line of defense for digital scarcity. I have no doubt that it's a stop-gap solution, too; I don't think consumers will stand for this behavior over the long run. Can you imagine what things will be like when every piece of software you use needs to constantly fire off packets to stay running? Not just Diablo 3, but Office, Photoshop, or what the hell, Windows?
I always find it interesting how corporations rail against the morality of piracy, which is questionably effective as a deterrent, and try to use that to justify everything from stronger copyright laws to DRM. I think they use moral dogma to train honest consumers that increasingly draconian protection is a necessary pain in the ass due to the evil pirates, rather than to actually prevent people from pirating their product. They HAVE to realize that since digital piracy isn't going away, the right or wrong of it is irrelevant, from a practical standpoint. Once honest consumers realize this, too, and how much easier AND cheaper it is to just pirate crap they want, they'll become significantly less honest. Can these corps really not see the end result of this cycle? I envision one last very rich fellow as the sole customer for all software, paying millions of dollars for each title, with the rest of the world downloading his provided software cracks, lighting his PayPal account up each time.
Your whole argument fails because LinkedIn isn't "many people".
LinkedIn is a multi-million user networking site for professionals.
Uhm.... I think you may be mis-informed. LinkedIn is simply Facebook for your career. No more and no less. Whether you're linked to highly professional expert and/or leadership types or somebody that flips burgers all day, it's all in the groups and contacts you make.
Because of this, you can be pretty sure not everybody with a LinkedIn account knows proper password selection techniques, or that their chosen professions require this knowledge anyway. Many of my contacts are technical contacts, but many are marketing, sales, production, and management people, too. Limiting my network to people who are in my field doesn't expand my network as much as networking with all of the people I know professionally, so if you're not doing this, you're doing it wrong. We techs seem to love thinking anybody who doesn't know how to protect their online accounts is just plain stupid, but the fact is many people DON'T know these things, and calling them idiots for it doesn't help them learn (and makes you look like a condescending ass in the process).
Of course everyone should be educated in ways to protect themselves, but we, as technical people, should be helping to educate these folks, not being snide about their misfortune after the fact.
LinkedIn has a goddamn team of coders and server monkeys.
Salting your hashes is really really basic stuff. It's at the level of "look both ways before crossing the street."
If you don't look both ways before crossing the street, it's your own damn fault for stepping in front of a car.
And yes, I'm comparing malicious hackers to cars. They will run you over if you give them a chance.
I agree with this statement, including your comparison of a malicious hacker to a car, though I'm confused why you made it in response to my post. Of course we can blame LinkedIn's team for not salting their hashes, but I don't see how this is an argument that supports blaming users for choosing weak or similar passwords for their online accounts. In your analogy, this would be akin to blaming a kid in a stroller (LinkedIn user) for not looking both ways (salting hashes) before his mom (LinkedIn) crosses the street.
In any case, both LinkedIn and their users should learn to do things as securely as possible, and LinkedIn should probably be held liable for any damage caused by their negligence, but the people who's accounts got compromised don't need to hear "I told you so" by a bunch of arrogant neckbeards. In fact, arrogance is hands down the biggest problem I see in this industry, from those who with-hold information to feel superior, to those who blame the "dumbasses" for getting into the situation they're in. I'd rather be a helpful hero than a snide dick, personally, but I guess that's just me.
No, but you can steal other people's resumes and append them to your own. Resumes are like sausage or cocktail waitress bustlines; the bigger the better!
I just hope my "leaked" LinkedIn info gets passed on to a potential overseas employer!! This new "automatic international networking" feature they implemented is going to be GREAT!
Not taking a jab at you personally, but I've never understood the "you deserve what you got, silly victim!" mentality. No victims *deserve* to be victimized. Sure, they could have taken better steps to protect themselves, but I can just as easily say "you deserve that cancer you got" for not getting regular boob or prostate squashings. It's technically true that many people are vulnerable because they don't know how important it is to protect themselves, but directly blaming them for it is counter-productive.
Education of users is a very, very good goal, especially when so many users don't fully understand the risks out there, but the first step in educating them is having empathy for their plight. Sure, victims learn the most valuable of lessons, but it would far better to have them learn to protect themselves *before* the damage is done.
Heh - I hear ya! One of my early asshole doctors gave me a lovely little mix of Seroquel and Trazodone. The first makes you sleep, and the second makes you sleep HARD. It took me 6 months to get my sleep cycle back after I switched out to the current Lamictal/Depakote mix, which works pretty ok for the most part.
You may want to try picking up some OTC Melatonin from the grocery store; pop 3 or 4 of those before bed. They don't make you sleepy, necessarily, but they help a TON in getting good sleep. I've found that taking a few of those, a heartburn med, and my crazy pills (as my daughter likes to call em) I'm sleeping better than I ever have in my life.
It can be rough. Nothing sucks more than not being able to muster emotion at a wedding, or worse, a funeral. Assuming, of course, you can muster the motivation to go in the first place. It can be rough, especially when so many people just think you're an asshole.
One interesting thing is how broad the spectrum of depression is. For instance, you mention you had work induced depression. That sounds difficult, and I'm glad you were able to find a way to get through it. It's always difficult to discuss this because a great many people really, really struggle, and it feels somehow holier than thou to say "well, yes, but I'm talking about something different here..." I truly mean it; I think it's awesome that you've come to where you are, and I'm sorry that you still have troubles hearkening back to those days. I hope your recovery will continue.
Now, the sometimes awkward bit. I'll put a TL;DR summary of the below here: For some people, depression is a different beast. We've struggled all our lives to understand it, to combat it, and there IS no "emotional problem" or "open issues with parents" that cause it. Much like a diabetic, it's just there, and just like taking insulin, we take our meds to lesson our symptoms, but these symptoms are always, always, always there, in good times or bad. Often, the best we can hope for is "Take for 60 days with a 5% improvement."; lord knows that the 5% improvement I get from my Lamictal and Depokote cocktail might just be what holds this job down by letting me stagger to the shower in the mornings, instead of sleeping through the alarm and feeling vaguely disappointed I woke up at all. The same goes for important relationships; I have my girlfriend and kids to love; even with my meds, it's a large task; without them... well, I already had one divorce, causing me to lose nearly everything. That is not something I'll risk again, even though it's still difficult. The symptoms themselves are less "horribly sad and emotionally troubled" and more "completely empty and motivationally lethargic" from what I've found, and that is simply not a feeling that's easy to convey.
The long version:
Another area of depression, though, is no "reason-induced" depression; it's just there. To many of us that have struggled with depression all our lives, our parents tell us that even as a very young child we were "moody". Of course we feel bad when we go through the normal struggles of life; job issues, deaths of family members, divorce, etc, just like everybody else, and we can get through those moments, just like everybody else. My dad's death and my divorce were rough, but at no time did I think I couldn't get through them, bad as they were, unless I was also feeling this second kind of depressed, too. I guess I had something of a rough childhood, but there's really no trigger point I can point to that says "Yup. That's why I got sad for no reason last Saturday and couldn't shake it until yesterday". Even "sad" or the common meaning of "depression" aren't the right words. It's more a feeling of complete and total apathy, lethargy, no motivation, just no... substance or will. I think of it more as simply and totally "empty" than "sad", and most of my focus group members have felt much the same.
In my early 20s I would wonder if I was "self-faking" it (something like the Dunning-Kruger link above) to avoid success, or that if I could just find the right supplement or eat right or exercise I'd feel better, but was the lack of motivation my problem? Everybody else seemed to think so, well-meaning or not. If I could power through and find that one thing I need to shake this shit off, would I feel better? I felt so hopeless after I'd let myself get dragged to various drug stores or gyms and find that the latest thing to "cheer me up " STILL wouldn't work. What a pain in the ass.
I had an epiphany one night in my late teens when all my buddies convinced me to take ecstasy. Being on the high-octane side of the bipolar coin at the time, I thought this was a balls-to-the-wall good idea. While everyone at the party was having a great time, I got nothing, all night and after 3 or 4 pills (I assumed the first 2 were duds). May has well have been a handful of Tylenol. In the 12 years since, I've tried q
You won't get an argument from me that myths aren't valuable. Learning by analogy and parable is very effective, and risk free. My point was simply that the word "myth" should not cause undue stress on anybody. It's not meant to be a derogatory term; hell, it doesn't even necessarily mean a story is untrue!
CS Lewis' mistake was lumping "myths" in with "lies", which does come across as insulting. Tolkien then goes on to point out the purpose of myths, which is to highlight some life lesson or truism that would be difficult to express otherwise. (He then goes on with the god is great bit, which is where he loses me). Anyway, both myths and lies may be technically untrue (and some myth may even be have roots in truth), but they serve different purposes. There's a category that lies between truth and lie, and that is legend, myth, fable, etc. When you read a bedtime story to your kid, are you lying to her?
My take on the whole shebang is this: Aesop's fables probably never happened, but it really doesn't matter. They are useful. His fables stop being useful and start being scary when organized religion is built around them being official historical record.
Agree with you, except for one small bone to pick: these are NOT liberal ethics, in general. Liberal ethics would be more about finding ways to help these people get to where they need to be instead of resorting to stupid scams like this; not justifying clear-cut assholery based on poverty level. In this particular situation, both conservative and liberal ethics have the same goal; prevent assholes from screwing other people. The means to do so are where the differences come into play.
Anyway, it wouldn't be very interesting at all to see what people do at the end of the rope; we know what they will do. Assholes will be assholes, and honorable people will be honorable. There are other means to pull yourself out of poverty, and you can't use "But, I'm poor!" as an excuse to systematically victimize others. Hell, just speaking English in the first place should open a bunch of opportunities up. May not be as profitable, but therein lies the rub.
The problem comes in when these assholes all over the planet can find jobs where they call people to safely victimize them with no repercussions. Being poor simply doesn't excuse victimizing someone; it doesn't even put it into a gray area. It's the difference between asking for spare change and mugging someone for it.
Oh, and before someone chimes in with the classic "but, but, but! you've never lived in poverty before!" I'll pre-empt it: There is a standard, on some continent, in some country, in some city, for some person, that can be used to conclude "neither have these motherfuckers."
I think "adorasturbing" would be if a regular old cat crashed into a regular old copter, and this abomination happened. At best, this is only awwwstonishing.
You might really enjoy Stephen Pinker then. He deals largely in psychology, so there's that little bit of voodoo going on, but I've found he constructs his arguments really, really well. I also liked that a lot of the common atheist snark was absent, or at least I didn't notice it. The Blank Slate was one of the most informative and interesting books I've ever read.
Fair point, but the age of a story really has nothing to do with whether it is a myth or not.
Both ancient and more modern religious stories can be correctly labelled as "myth", assuming the intended definition is: "a traditional or legendary story, usually concerning some being or hero or event, with or without a determinable basis of fact or a natural explanation, especially one that is concerned with deities or demigods and explains some practice, rite, or phenomenon of nature." http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/myth
I'd rather just leave people alone, but does that mean we have to be on eggshells?
This is a great comment. I think it's interesting that so many people get so uppity about their belief systems, regardless of where they stand on the religion chessboard. Of course, from my perspective it seems a little one-sided, but it does happen from all quarters. I think it's fair to say we live in a world of many beliefs, some nutty, some "metaphorical", and some 100% rational (as in, no "leap of faith" is required).
It'd be nice to think we could discuss the things we discover or believe without people getting all bent out of shape. We all know you can't change someone else's belief system; the best you can do is plant a seed which may find fertile ground. If that seed doesn't take, so be it. As someone who grew up in a pretty religious family, but pulled the cord the chute as early into adulthood as I could, I have to live in both worlds (every holiday, baby!). Our rabid defense of our belief systems make it far more difficult than necessary to explain our thoughts and why we think the way we do. I'm struggling pretty hard to keep my cool and bite off the snark when explaining why the whole "god" thing doesn't jibe for me, and I'm getting better at it. I'd like to think I'm not alone.
To some, it does. To others, it doesn't. You've just pointed out the eternal struggle between religion and rationality. Some believers have the wisdom to accept both; the first metaphorically and the second logically (these people are actually pretty interesting to talk to, and I'm atheist!).
Most people pick a side and rabidly defend it, though. Until that changes (and it's happening now, albeit in fits and starts), you risk a flame war to say Christianity (or any religion, really) fits point #1.
Dude!! You just blew my pastafarian mind... pitchforks WOULD be the natural enemy of the FSM! This explains everything from medieval times forward! Pirates, we must unite to defend our great propagator using our sporks of injustice!!
It's half in the usage and half in the reception. Using "mythology" as a descriptor for various religions *can* be offensive to religious folks because "mythology" typically makes one think of the Greek myths and the like. Nobody likes to have their religion compared to obviously metaphorical legends from a couple thousand years ago.
What these offended believers don't understand is "mythology" is a neutral term, used to describe a belief system not rooted in fact. If you are offended by the term when used in a neutral fashion such as the GGP's post, you should be questioning how firm your beliefs really are, not the intent of the speaker.
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Well, crack-whores can be men, too, and will perform the same tasks for their fixes, so while you're right about crude, I don't think we can be sure if the GP poster is misogynistic or simply flipped a coin.
Crack-whores: Yet another reason to use indeterminate gender "they"! They just keep piling up!
Well.... having the game, I can tell you that there's really not a "single player mode". Any of your battle.net friends can log into your game at anytime, or send you party invites. The best you can do is set yourself to "busy" and tell your friends to leave you alone. All characters also have access to the on-line D3 features, such as the auction house, achievement system, chat, and "public game" options, at all times. The "single player" game experience is identical to "multi-player" with a party of one; even if you don't have battle.net friends to play D3 with. The fact that they didn't include a truly single player mode in the first place is what is annoying people who just want to experience the latest Diablo chapter (if the online requirement is that bothersome, and I do understand why it would be to some people, I suggest Wikipedia and Youtube for this. The whole story is there.).
Regardless, Blizzard chose to force people online for a reason: The items or gold you get playing in a party of one are just as valid for trading with friends or on the auction house as those gained from groups. Had Blizzard designed a single player mode that didn't have access to the auction house, achievements, chat, battle.net, or classic co-op multi-player, it could have been done without a connection, but a) it would have been a very short single-player campaign, indeed, and b) simply put, they didn't. It's obvious they want people utilizing the Auction House (a clever take on pay to play, when you think about it), but they also have an interest in having people play their games online for as long as possible, just like Starcraft 1 & 2 and Diablo 1 & 2.
Incidentally, D3 is actually pretty fun, but like WoW (or Star Wars, or Tera, etc), a lot of the fun comes from the people I play with, and we all live too far apart to have a LAN party. It's very much like going to the bar with my local buddies and playing pool or darts while we chat, or watching the superbowl or playing poker in my living room. I could do all those things alone, but it's more fun with friends. Specific to the game, it's a riot to watch the loot explosions and wonder what dropped for everybody else, laugh at your friend for being a dumbass monk and standing in green fire, or helping your barbarian buddy (or maybe just some random AH buyer) out with a sweet new pair of boots that your wizard would just trash in a truly single player mode. I'd have finished the whole thing on a lazy Saturday afternoon without these social features; a truly single player mode would have been a waste of cash.
I think we often miss the point of why relatives are so often the perpetrators of child abuse. It's a proximity and trust thing. If "strangers" could get that level of trust easily (say, with candy, videogames, music, fancy vans with no windows, or anything else you might warn your kids about) I think child abuse by people the victims don't know would be far more common.
Another key point is we often lump all child abuse into one grouping. A whopping 84% of all child abuse is done by a child's biological parents, but 60% of child *sexual* abuse is done by people known to the child but who are not family members (babysitters, teachers, family friends, neighbors etc). People completely unknown to the child only comprise about 10% of sexual abuses, most of the rest are family. You were close; family members are FAR more common perpetrators than strangers, but that third category of abusers - non-family members in authority positions - make up the majority of sexual abusers.
Sources:
http://faq.acf.hhs.gov/app/answers/detail/a_id/70/~/who-typically-abuses-children%3F
http://www.apa.org/pi/families/resources/child-sexual-abuse.aspx
Of course, all of this explains why child abuse in any form is such a violation of the kids in question; these are the people who are supposed to be teaching kids about and protecting kids from the world, but instead these people are harming them. These children tend to learn there IS no safe place or person, and that's a tough lesson to learn that young.
As a brief anecdote (feel free to skip if it's TL;DR. It only serves as a personal example proving no statistics, just how it sometimes happens):
My "inappropriate touching" guy was my piano teacher when I was 9. He had all sorts of "games" to play when I did well on the lessons. I knew the guy; he was from our church ward, and he was always sort of antisocially creepy, like the house the kids don't want to trick or treat at kind of thing. Shit started to get WAY creepy though. That's a difficult spot to be in as a kid; my folks PAY this guy to teach me piano one hour a week, and I really was learning the piano, and he was a nice enough guy when he wasn't being creepy and pushy as fuck, so what was I supposed to do? I mean, some of the stuff was sorta... oogily nice at the time, I guess, but when I thought about it after the fact it was just half guilt (shame? shrug) and half gross. I didn't want to see the guy in jail forever, or whatever; just to get him to knock it off and not feel... responsible for any of it, I guess. I just ended up quitting piano, instead of dealing with it directly. Looking back, I wouldn't say it damaged me permanently or anything, but it was an odd and emotionally complicated way to learn how to "make the white stuff come out" (admittedly, certain specifics got burned permanently into memory). Last I heard, some 25 years ago, a different kid DID tell his folks, and the guy ended up getting arrested. Not sure what happened after that. To this day, I don't have any hate for the guy; it wouldn't serve any purpose. OTOH, I do sure as *hell* keep tabs on who watches my little girls a lot more closely because of it.
Humm. I'll check it out. Thank you!
Good point. I think that at some level the decision must be made between convenience and saving money. This is one such situation.
Meh. I'd be just as happy going to a sports bar to watch the game, or going camping, and then watching the game later on via Hulu or the like. I don't think I'm alone anymore. Who wants to plan their life around what time an event airs, now that we don't have to?
Well, the reality is pretty simple. The show creators can:
1- Lower the cost of production (this, of course, risks lowering the quality of the product)
2- Increase the revenue brought in by the show to compensate for the higher production values, which can be done by:
2a- Sell as many units of your product to as many consumers as possible at the highest price the market will bear (which is calculated from factors such as competition, demand, available supply, and elasticity of your product). This is the ideal situation. If you cannot make a profit doing this, you must resort to option 1 above or 2b below, and should probably be planning on ways to get here through better marketing, better distribution, better quality, better price, or lower elasticity (i.e. make your product one that people can't live without). If you cannot do this, you should be questioning how viable your product is.
2b- Create artificial scarcity in order to get a higher sales price at the risk of not selling to as many consumers (this almost guarantees a very high rate of piracy for digital goods). This is especially effective for ultra-high demand goods, like jewelry, which oddly enough only has value because it is scarce in the first place.
Disclaimer: It's been many years since my ECON classes; someone will surely have better or more correct ways to put this.
Businesses have been using option 2b for years and years, and it works terrifically, until people find a way to do an end-run around your artificial scarcity techniques. It's never been easier to do this than now, with the advent of the digital age. While I don't have the answer to your question, it's obvious that protecting the ability to create artificial scarcity for digital goods simply isn't long-term viable option.
I guess this is why we are seeing a new wave of "constantly phoning home" software; it's really the last line of defense for digital scarcity. I have no doubt that it's a stop-gap solution, too; I don't think consumers will stand for this behavior over the long run. Can you imagine what things will be like when every piece of software you use needs to constantly fire off packets to stay running? Not just Diablo 3, but Office, Photoshop, or what the hell, Windows?
I always find it interesting how corporations rail against the morality of piracy, which is questionably effective as a deterrent, and try to use that to justify everything from stronger copyright laws to DRM. I think they use moral dogma to train honest consumers that increasingly draconian protection is a necessary pain in the ass due to the evil pirates, rather than to actually prevent people from pirating their product. They HAVE to realize that since digital piracy isn't going away, the right or wrong of it is irrelevant, from a practical standpoint. Once honest consumers realize this, too, and how much easier AND cheaper it is to just pirate crap they want, they'll become significantly less honest. Can these corps really not see the end result of this cycle? I envision one last very rich fellow as the sole customer for all software, paying millions of dollars for each title, with the rest of the world downloading his provided software cracks, lighting his PayPal account up each time.
Your whole argument fails because LinkedIn isn't "many people". LinkedIn is a multi-million user networking site for professionals.
Uhm.... I think you may be mis-informed. LinkedIn is simply Facebook for your career. No more and no less. Whether you're linked to highly professional expert and/or leadership types or somebody that flips burgers all day, it's all in the groups and contacts you make.
Because of this, you can be pretty sure not everybody with a LinkedIn account knows proper password selection techniques, or that their chosen professions require this knowledge anyway. Many of my contacts are technical contacts, but many are marketing, sales, production, and management people, too. Limiting my network to people who are in my field doesn't expand my network as much as networking with all of the people I know professionally, so if you're not doing this, you're doing it wrong. We techs seem to love thinking anybody who doesn't know how to protect their online accounts is just plain stupid, but the fact is many people DON'T know these things, and calling them idiots for it doesn't help them learn (and makes you look like a condescending ass in the process).
Of course everyone should be educated in ways to protect themselves, but we, as technical people, should be helping to educate these folks, not being snide about their misfortune after the fact.
LinkedIn has a goddamn team of coders and server monkeys. Salting your hashes is really really basic stuff. It's at the level of "look both ways before crossing the street." If you don't look both ways before crossing the street, it's your own damn fault for stepping in front of a car. And yes, I'm comparing malicious hackers to cars. They will run you over if you give them a chance.
I agree with this statement, including your comparison of a malicious hacker to a car, though I'm confused why you made it in response to my post. Of course we can blame LinkedIn's team for not salting their hashes, but I don't see how this is an argument that supports blaming users for choosing weak or similar passwords for their online accounts. In your analogy, this would be akin to blaming a kid in a stroller (LinkedIn user) for not looking both ways (salting hashes) before his mom (LinkedIn) crosses the street.
In any case, both LinkedIn and their users should learn to do things as securely as possible, and LinkedIn should probably be held liable for any damage caused by their negligence, but the people who's accounts got compromised don't need to hear "I told you so" by a bunch of arrogant neckbeards. In fact, arrogance is hands down the biggest problem I see in this industry, from those who with-hold information to feel superior, to those who blame the "dumbasses" for getting into the situation they're in. I'd rather be a helpful hero than a snide dick, personally, but I guess that's just me.
No, but you can steal other people's resumes and append them to your own. Resumes are like sausage or cocktail waitress bustlines; the bigger the better!
I just hope my "leaked" LinkedIn info gets passed on to a potential overseas employer!! This new "automatic international networking" feature they implemented is going to be GREAT!
Not taking a jab at you personally, but I've never understood the "you deserve what you got, silly victim!" mentality. No victims *deserve* to be victimized. Sure, they could have taken better steps to protect themselves, but I can just as easily say "you deserve that cancer you got" for not getting regular boob or prostate squashings. It's technically true that many people are vulnerable because they don't know how important it is to protect themselves, but directly blaming them for it is counter-productive.
Education of users is a very, very good goal, especially when so many users don't fully understand the risks out there, but the first step in educating them is having empathy for their plight. Sure, victims learn the most valuable of lessons, but it would far better to have them learn to protect themselves *before* the damage is done.
I think it's even better that the summary answered its own headline. Man, I wish my girlfriend would do that:
Honey, do you want to talk about our relationship problems? I sure don't. (Woo!)
Heh - I hear ya! One of my early asshole doctors gave me a lovely little mix of Seroquel and Trazodone. The first makes you sleep, and the second makes you sleep HARD. It took me 6 months to get my sleep cycle back after I switched out to the current Lamictal/Depakote mix, which works pretty ok for the most part.
You may want to try picking up some OTC Melatonin from the grocery store; pop 3 or 4 of those before bed. They don't make you sleepy, necessarily, but they help a TON in getting good sleep. I've found that taking a few of those, a heartburn med, and my crazy pills (as my daughter likes to call em) I'm sleeping better than I ever have in my life.
http://www.sleepfoundation.org/article/sleep-topics/melatonin-and-sleep
It can be rough. Nothing sucks more than not being able to muster emotion at a wedding, or worse, a funeral. Assuming, of course, you can muster the motivation to go in the first place. It can be rough, especially when so many people just think you're an asshole.
:)
Love the sig, too. How appropriate.
One interesting thing is how broad the spectrum of depression is. For instance, you mention you had work induced depression. That sounds difficult, and I'm glad you were able to find a way to get through it. It's always difficult to discuss this because a great many people really, really struggle, and it feels somehow holier than thou to say "well, yes, but I'm talking about something different here..." I truly mean it; I think it's awesome that you've come to where you are, and I'm sorry that you still have troubles hearkening back to those days. I hope your recovery will continue.
Now, the sometimes awkward bit. I'll put a TL;DR summary of the below here: For some people, depression is a different beast. We've struggled all our lives to understand it, to combat it, and there IS no "emotional problem" or "open issues with parents" that cause it. Much like a diabetic, it's just there, and just like taking insulin, we take our meds to lesson our symptoms, but these symptoms are always, always, always there, in good times or bad. Often, the best we can hope for is "Take for 60 days with a 5% improvement."; lord knows that the 5% improvement I get from my Lamictal and Depokote cocktail might just be what holds this job down by letting me stagger to the shower in the mornings, instead of sleeping through the alarm and feeling vaguely disappointed I woke up at all. The same goes for important relationships; I have my girlfriend and kids to love; even with my meds, it's a large task; without them... well, I already had one divorce, causing me to lose nearly everything. That is not something I'll risk again, even though it's still difficult. The symptoms themselves are less "horribly sad and emotionally troubled" and more "completely empty and motivationally lethargic" from what I've found, and that is simply not a feeling that's easy to convey.
The long version:
Another area of depression, though, is no "reason-induced" depression; it's just there. To many of us that have struggled with depression all our lives, our parents tell us that even as a very young child we were "moody". Of course we feel bad when we go through the normal struggles of life; job issues, deaths of family members, divorce, etc, just like everybody else, and we can get through those moments, just like everybody else. My dad's death and my divorce were rough, but at no time did I think I couldn't get through them, bad as they were, unless I was also feeling this second kind of depressed, too. I guess I had something of a rough childhood, but there's really no trigger point I can point to that says "Yup. That's why I got sad for no reason last Saturday and couldn't shake it until yesterday". Even "sad" or the common meaning of "depression" aren't the right words. It's more a feeling of complete and total apathy, lethargy, no motivation, just no... substance or will. I think of it more as simply and totally "empty" than "sad", and most of my focus group members have felt much the same.
In my early 20s I would wonder if I was "self-faking" it (something like the Dunning-Kruger link above) to avoid success, or that if I could just find the right supplement or eat right or exercise I'd feel better, but was the lack of motivation my problem? Everybody else seemed to think so, well-meaning or not. If I could power through and find that one thing I need to shake this shit off, would I feel better? I felt so hopeless after I'd let myself get dragged to various drug stores or gyms and find that the latest thing to "cheer me up " STILL wouldn't work. What a pain in the ass.
I had an epiphany one night in my late teens when all my buddies convinced me to take ecstasy. Being on the high-octane side of the bipolar coin at the time, I thought this was a balls-to-the-wall good idea. While everyone at the party was having a great time, I got nothing, all night and after 3 or 4 pills (I assumed the first 2 were duds). May has well have been a handful of Tylenol. In the 12 years since, I've tried q
You won't get an argument from me that myths aren't valuable. Learning by analogy and parable is very effective, and risk free. My point was simply that the word "myth" should not cause undue stress on anybody. It's not meant to be a derogatory term; hell, it doesn't even necessarily mean a story is untrue!
CS Lewis' mistake was lumping "myths" in with "lies", which does come across as insulting. Tolkien then goes on to point out the purpose of myths, which is to highlight some life lesson or truism that would be difficult to express otherwise. (He then goes on with the god is great bit, which is where he loses me). Anyway, both myths and lies may be technically untrue (and some myth may even be have roots in truth), but they serve different purposes. There's a category that lies between truth and lie, and that is legend, myth, fable, etc. When you read a bedtime story to your kid, are you lying to her?
My take on the whole shebang is this: Aesop's fables probably never happened, but it really doesn't matter. They are useful. His fables stop being useful and start being scary when organized religion is built around them being official historical record.
Agree with you, except for one small bone to pick: these are NOT liberal ethics, in general. Liberal ethics would be more about finding ways to help these people get to where they need to be instead of resorting to stupid scams like this; not justifying clear-cut assholery based on poverty level. In this particular situation, both conservative and liberal ethics have the same goal; prevent assholes from screwing other people. The means to do so are where the differences come into play.
Anyway, it wouldn't be very interesting at all to see what people do at the end of the rope; we know what they will do. Assholes will be assholes, and honorable people will be honorable. There are other means to pull yourself out of poverty, and you can't use "But, I'm poor!" as an excuse to systematically victimize others. Hell, just speaking English in the first place should open a bunch of opportunities up. May not be as profitable, but therein lies the rub.
The problem comes in when these assholes all over the planet can find jobs where they call people to safely victimize them with no repercussions. Being poor simply doesn't excuse victimizing someone; it doesn't even put it into a gray area. It's the difference between asking for spare change and mugging someone for it.
Oh, and before someone chimes in with the classic "but, but, but! you've never lived in poverty before!" I'll pre-empt it: There is a standard, on some continent, in some country, in some city, for some person, that can be used to conclude "neither have these motherfuckers."
I think "adorasturbing" would be if a regular old cat crashed into a regular old copter, and this abomination happened. At best, this is only awwwstonishing.
You might really enjoy Stephen Pinker then. He deals largely in psychology, so there's that little bit of voodoo going on, but I've found he constructs his arguments really, really well. I also liked that a lot of the common atheist snark was absent, or at least I didn't notice it. The Blank Slate was one of the most informative and interesting books I've ever read.
Oh, man... what if they use our giant sporks against us!?
Fair point, but the age of a story really has nothing to do with whether it is a myth or not.
Both ancient and more modern religious stories can be correctly labelled as "myth", assuming the intended definition is: "a traditional or legendary story, usually concerning some being or hero or event, with or without a determinable basis of fact or a natural explanation, especially one that is concerned with deities or demigods and explains some practice, rite, or phenomenon of nature." http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/myth
I'd rather just leave people alone, but does that mean we have to be on eggshells?
This is a great comment. I think it's interesting that so many people get so uppity about their belief systems, regardless of where they stand on the religion chessboard. Of course, from my perspective it seems a little one-sided, but it does happen from all quarters. I think it's fair to say we live in a world of many beliefs, some nutty, some "metaphorical", and some 100% rational (as in, no "leap of faith" is required).
It'd be nice to think we could discuss the things we discover or believe without people getting all bent out of shape. We all know you can't change someone else's belief system; the best you can do is plant a seed which may find fertile ground. If that seed doesn't take, so be it. As someone who grew up in a pretty religious family, but pulled the cord the chute as early into adulthood as I could, I have to live in both worlds (every holiday, baby!). Our rabid defense of our belief systems make it far more difficult than necessary to explain our thoughts and why we think the way we do. I'm struggling pretty hard to keep my cool and bite off the snark when explaining why the whole "god" thing doesn't jibe for me, and I'm getting better at it. I'd like to think I'm not alone.
To some, it does. To others, it doesn't. You've just pointed out the eternal struggle between religion and rationality. Some believers have the wisdom to accept both; the first metaphorically and the second logically (these people are actually pretty interesting to talk to, and I'm atheist!).
Most people pick a side and rabidly defend it, though. Until that changes (and it's happening now, albeit in fits and starts), you risk a flame war to say Christianity (or any religion, really) fits point #1.
Dude!! You just blew my pastafarian mind... pitchforks WOULD be the natural enemy of the FSM! This explains everything from medieval times forward! Pirates, we must unite to defend our great propagator using our sporks of injustice!!
Agreed completely.
It's half in the usage and half in the reception. Using "mythology" as a descriptor for various religions *can* be offensive to religious folks because "mythology" typically makes one think of the Greek myths and the like. Nobody likes to have their religion compared to obviously metaphorical legends from a couple thousand years ago.
What these offended believers don't understand is "mythology" is a neutral term, used to describe a belief system not rooted in fact. If you are offended by the term when used in a neutral fashion such as the GGP's post, you should be questioning how firm your beliefs really are, not the intent of the speaker.