Well... the Buddhist and the Christian ministers are married, so of course they'll preach at the same church. On Palm Sunday, we had a guest speaker, who happened to also me our music director. After running into the sanctuary singing about being late for church, he wet his throat from a martini glass before speaking, and ended the service with a drum solo blending into a polka. The Christian minister danced in the aisle with one of our atheist members, before we all filed out of the sanctuary to go worship our sacred coffeepot.
I am being completely honest about all that, too.
My church is Unitarian Universalist. We don't care who you are, what you believe, or (generally) what your political preferences are, as long as you treat other people with dignity and respect. Our sermons usually revolve around taking lessons from ancient and modern philosophy, and applying them to our lives to help others and generally work toward a better society, with very loose definitions of "better". On special occasions, such as April Fool's Day, we'll adjust the service to focus more on that holiday. Services are followed by a social coffee hour, where we discuss the service and socialize.
You can do the numbers on a per-line or a per-substation basis, possibly even more granular than that.
That's brilliant! To get specific enough information for legal recourse, we'll need maximum granularity, which means tracking the usage for each customer! We can put their meter right on their house for convenience!
Re:If your customers aren't always right...
on
IT Calls of Shame
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· Score: 2
Sounds about right to me. I dealt with a similar user (a nice old guy, about 85, but inept as far as technology's concerned) who had once been told "viruses can come through the cable", which I assume was part of a sales pitch somewhere. He insisted that I "disinfect" the cable before hooking up his new computer to his home router. Fine. I took the cable out the door, went to my car, opened the back, and stood there laughing for a few minutes. Then I came back in, finished the job, and left. Probably not the nicest thing to do, but for as little as he knows or needs to know about computers, it's enough.
1) A lighting "redesign" (adding 3 Source Four's from the back of the sanctuary to soften shadows) is in progress, and I'm in charge of that. We're likely only going to have one camera.
2) It can't, but can be upgraded to do so.
3) Only stuff I expect to need is a tiny Linux box. Seriously considering a Raspberry Pi with a web-based remote admin interface, because it screams "don't touch". Will likely end up with something small enough to fit in a spare slot in our audio rack.
4) We're a Unitarian Universalist church. We already run a tight schedule, because our congregation gets downright cranky if their coffee social hour gets delayed by that silly "sermon" thing.
5) Our board already likes the idea, and we have some influential/generous members who've offered to donate toward equipment and bandwidth.
Biggest roadblock is that nobody (myself included) can honestly say that a live stream is worth the time, effort, and instability it'd take to implement. There are a few technology-inclined people who are fine with managing complex systems, but many of the longtime volunteers who currently help are not. Even minor changes (like moving the mixer board) are met with resistance, because something's different. Live streaming has been discussed and is still an option for the future (and is being considered when other projects are discussed) but it's not likely to happen soon.
I go to church and do not believe in God. One of our two main ministers is a Buddhist. The other is Christian (of a near-Catholic variety). We publish the sermons weekly as an audio stream, are working on video, and have considered live streaming and tablet-formatted newsletters.
Attending a church, using a given technology, holding a particular belief, and being a member of a website are all independent events, with their own independent causative situations.
Skimming TFA, I see nothing about surveillance, or reporting someone's location back to any Big Brother entity. It talks about a nice new chip that can use many different resources including GPS, WiFi SSIDs, Bluetooth beacons, and dead reckoning to accurately determine location in adverse circumstances. The only reference to the retail industry at all is this:
"The use case [for Bluetooth beacons] might be malls," says Pomerantz. "It would be a good investment for a mall to put up a deployment—perhaps put them up every 100 yards, and then unlock the ability for people walking around mall to get very precise couponing information."
So I can walk around a mall, and my phone will tell me that the restaurant I just passed is having a special. Wow. I'm terrified by the implications here. I might actually have to exercise some willpower!
Problem: 100 people on a sinking boat, only enough lifeboat space for 50
Ethical solution: Pick 50 people at random for the boats
Politically-correct statement the public wants the captain to say: "Put a few extra people in the boats! We'll save as many as we can!!">
Politically-correct statement the company wants him to say: "We'll make a lottery, remove ourselves, and pick 10 people at random, then we'll let them take their families, and pick more until we run out of space"
Quick statement: "We'll pick 50 people at random. There will be orphans."
Frankly, I'd be pissed if my knee-jerk reaction statements were recorded, too, regardless of whether my behavior is ethical or not. The public at large is so quick to become enraged, and the media is so willing to sensationalize, that anything but silence in a bad situation is a PR mess.
Well, yeah... Bosses are human, too, of course. They don't want to be embarrassed any more than anybody else, but being at a higher position within the company, their reputation is directly tied to many other people's reputations as well. That goes for any other collective entity, too, including churches, charities, sailing crews, police, etc... Nobody wants to have anything recorded, because they know they might make a mistake, and that recording will be used against them, out of context and long after any reasonably limited time. Being nice and friendly regarding recording just isn't worth the risk of having a mistake get blown out of proportion.
This is Slashdot, though, where we love the Average Joe who does whatever he wants with whatever he wants, and damn the corporations that make it happen! Managers are the personification of the corporation, so we hate them, too. Any story that attacks a company or anyone in the company (except the lowest tier, who's always oppressed and overworked by their superiors) is instantly approved and the hivemind lauds its message.
I suppose this will head off into the world of "Flamebait" if I continue ranting... There's no "Annoyed at Slashdot" mod.
Unfortunately, it also stops people like a close relative of mine, who invented a new and useful mechanism for a common device (involving optics and high temperatures), but had no interest in developing the business around it himself, or dealing with the cutthroat competition in that particular industry. He sold licenses to the major manufacturers, recouped what he spent developing the mechanism (because lenses aren't cheap), and went back to his normal life.
A genuine innovator, who advanced technology in a meaningful way, and yet to my knowledge he personally only made a single demonstration device.
Not quite Cornucopian. The point of my post is that having "unlimited economic growth" does not require unlimited natural resources, or an unlimited civilization. Quite the contrary, really: We'd have to have exactly zero population growth (to avoid resources being tied up in bodies), recycling of dead people (to reclaim their elements), and most likely complete integration with technology (to mitigate wasteful decisions). It's nothing that can happen soon, but we may be able to reach equilibrium before dying off.
To adapt Liebig's water-barrel analogy, consider that regardless of the water's level, it can still be stirred, and (except for centrifugal motions) the speed of stirring is irrelevant to how high the walls are. That is the economy. Economic growth is not necessarily attached to the population size.
With the right technology (and application thereof) to reduce and mitigate human's continued impact on global resources, the economy can indeed grow with practically no limit. It won't grow in industries like oil production, logging, or real estate, but it can in industries like manufacturing, recycling, and clean energy production.
Economic growth means more trade. Exchange more goods, faster, with no physical restraints like "limited natural resources" (because you're using those green technologies extensively), and the only limits you'll hit are due to the trading technology available at the time.
I am strongly in favor of limiting free speech, and opposed to "rampant profanity", but I have my limits. Clearly, the law is intended to stop online bullying and harassment, but the broad ruling leaves a ridiculous amount of power in the hands of any public individual. It reminds me of those "it's not what you intended, but how they felt" lines from every sexual harassment seminar.
Without further ado, I must speak what's really on my mind, as intended for this law's authors and supporters.. Fuck this shitty law, and everything about it. Does it offend your short-sighted sensibilities that someone's fucking language could be used for some fucking emphasis? If you want to curb offensive abuses of free speech, then use your brain and figure out a legal wording that doesn't also cover anything poorly-worded. You've reached a point where, in your cowardly mind, you cannot empathize with someone else's point of view, that might lead them to say the things they say? Must you censor them, not by attacking their methods, but by attacking their very words?
If this obsession with political correctness continues, we, as a society, are fucked. In my ideal world, intent to cause harm would be illegal, but accidental harm is repaired and forgiven. Why the fuck can't we work toward that?
I have also "defaced" many sites on my own. I very recently defaced Slashdot itself, with a silly message mocking a group of hacktivists for contributing approximately nothing to the world but headlines.
My message is subtle enough that it will likely remain on the site for the remainder of its existence. Anonymous can't say the same for their messages.
Not being able to do anything you want like skipping to the end boss with an unworkable build or giving yourself a zillion skill points is not an issue that needs to be fixed.
I didn't ever say it should be fixed, but it does diminish the fun of the game for me, so I simply won't buy it. Less game for me, less money for Blizzard... Too bad.
With a steady income and a shiny new computer, I've grown into playing games. Heck, I bought Portal 2 within the first hour it was available (which was conveniently 7 hours before I left on a long car trip, where I was conveniently a passenger). I'm just not excited about this one, and don't see Blizzard doing anything to make me excited.
I do recall some areas being empty of monsters after the first run, but I may be mistaken. It's been too long.
If I'm already hacking the character, the reward is pointless, but yes, playing the boss battle again was fun, and that couldn't always be done. Yes, it's mucking with the game flow, but it's a game. If I want to make it more entertaining without affecting anyone else, why stop me? If I want to make a character with a single health point and an undead horde take on the final boss, what exactly is the problem?
It's more than just skills, though... Resetting skill points will not change my barbarian to a rogue, reopen a particular quest dungeon, or let me play an act backwards.
It's much harder to entertain that asinine entitlement mentality when eating fried chicken means going to the coop and wringing its neck yourself*
Now, I have a few Mennonite friends who've explained this to me, and from my understanding, this is exactly the point. Religion aside, the Amish culture values hard work, cooperation, and human interaction above worldly things like material goods, entertainment, and wealth. Putting in a good day's work to produce something is valued more in their society than coming home to a store-bought meal and the latest TV show.
In that way, Linux fans are much like the Amish. Open-source developers often contribute not for money, but for the pride in having contributed to a larger goal. Sure, there are some who sell their open code to earn money, just as there are Amish who have cars, phones, and radios to interact with the world outside their hometown.
It is the ideals we live by, not the technology we use, that truly defines who we are. Linux embodies a certain set of ideals, that the OP claims to live by.
Hacking my characters was half the fun of D2. I wanted to play different builds, but really wasn't interested in going through the beginning of the game another dozen times.
Diablo 2 was great... good enough graphics for its time, with a challenging skill system and, most importantly to me, a fantastic story. Then it ended on a cliffhanger, with one of the Prime Evils still loose. Then the expansion ended on somewhat less of a cliffhanger: "I'm going to destroy this thing, and I have no idea what's going to happen to the world."
I want to play the next installment, I really do... but I probably won't. I've been hearing about it for two years, and the excitement's gone. Sure, it was neat to read about the new classes and see the new baddies. It was fun to go back and play the first two again to remember the story. Now all I hear about is DRM and auctions.
If I wanted artificial restrictions, I'd go lock myself in a dark room for a few hours. If I wanted an auction, I'd go browse eBay. I don't want those, though. I want a visual interactive story, so I'm going to play a video game. Perhaps someday I'll be able to buy D3 off of GOG to find out the end of the story, or perhaps even get a pirated version (ignoring my usual attitude toward those lazy mooching pirates). Maybe I'll break down and buy the retail version, if I get excited again.
My attitude right now is an utterly non-committal "meh." Sorry, Blizzard, but you've lost my attention, and I doubt you'll get it back again.
Slashdot Mirror
Well... the Buddhist and the Christian ministers are married, so of course they'll preach at the same church. On Palm Sunday, we had a guest speaker, who happened to also me our music director. After running into the sanctuary singing about being late for church, he wet his throat from a martini glass before speaking, and ended the service with a drum solo blending into a polka. The Christian minister danced in the aisle with one of our atheist members, before we all filed out of the sanctuary to go worship our sacred coffeepot.
I am being completely honest about all that, too.
My church is Unitarian Universalist. We don't care who you are, what you believe, or (generally) what your political preferences are, as long as you treat other people with dignity and respect. Our sermons usually revolve around taking lessons from ancient and modern philosophy, and applying them to our lives to help others and generally work toward a better society, with very loose definitions of "better". On special occasions, such as April Fool's Day, we'll adjust the service to focus more on that holiday. Services are followed by a social coffee hour, where we discuss the service and socialize.
You can do the numbers on a per-line or a per-substation basis, possibly even more granular than that.
That's brilliant! To get specific enough information for legal recourse, we'll need maximum granularity, which means tracking the usage for each customer! We can put their meter right on their house for convenience!
Sounds about right to me. I dealt with a similar user (a nice old guy, about 85, but inept as far as technology's concerned) who had once been told "viruses can come through the cable", which I assume was part of a sales pitch somewhere. He insisted that I "disinfect" the cable before hooking up his new computer to his home router. Fine. I took the cable out the door, went to my car, opened the back, and stood there laughing for a few minutes. Then I came back in, finished the job, and left. Probably not the nicest thing to do, but for as little as he knows or needs to know about computers, it's enough.
1) A lighting "redesign" (adding 3 Source Four's from the back of the sanctuary to soften shadows) is in progress, and I'm in charge of that. We're likely only going to have one camera.
2) It can't, but can be upgraded to do so.
3) Only stuff I expect to need is a tiny Linux box. Seriously considering a Raspberry Pi with a web-based remote admin interface, because it screams "don't touch". Will likely end up with something small enough to fit in a spare slot in our audio rack.
4) We're a Unitarian Universalist church. We already run a tight schedule, because our congregation gets downright cranky if their coffee social hour gets delayed by that silly "sermon" thing.
5) Our board already likes the idea, and we have some influential/generous members who've offered to donate toward equipment and bandwidth.
Biggest roadblock is that nobody (myself included) can honestly say that a live stream is worth the time, effort, and instability it'd take to implement. There are a few technology-inclined people who are fine with managing complex systems, but many of the longtime volunteers who currently help are not. Even minor changes (like moving the mixer board) are met with resistance, because something's different. Live streaming has been discussed and is still an option for the future (and is being considered when other projects are discussed) but it's not likely to happen soon.
That's certainly a silly assumption.
I go to church and do not believe in God. One of our two main ministers is a Buddhist. The other is Christian (of a near-Catholic variety). We publish the sermons weekly as an audio stream, are working on video, and have considered live streaming and tablet-formatted newsletters.
Attending a church, using a given technology, holding a particular belief, and being a member of a website are all independent events, with their own independent causative situations.
We were talking about ethical people. Or are you saying there's no ethical people in reality?
Skimming TFA, I see nothing about surveillance, or reporting someone's location back to any Big Brother entity. It talks about a nice new chip that can use many different resources including GPS, WiFi SSIDs, Bluetooth beacons, and dead reckoning to accurately determine location in adverse circumstances. The only reference to the retail industry at all is this:
"The use case [for Bluetooth beacons] might be malls," says Pomerantz. "It would be a good investment for a mall to put up a deployment—perhaps put them up every 100 yards, and then unlock the ability for people walking around mall to get very precise couponing information."
So I can walk around a mall, and my phone will tell me that the restaurant I just passed is having a special. Wow. I'm terrified by the implications here. I might actually have to exercise some willpower!
The summary is utter sensationalist crap.
Problem: 100 people on a sinking boat, only enough lifeboat space for 50
Ethical solution: Pick 50 people at random for the boats
Politically-correct statement the public wants the captain to say: "Put a few extra people in the boats! We'll save as many as we can!!">
Politically-correct statement the company wants him to say: "We'll make a lottery, remove ourselves, and pick 10 people at random, then we'll let them take their families, and pick more until we run out of space"
Quick statement: "We'll pick 50 people at random. There will be orphans."
Frankly, I'd be pissed if my knee-jerk reaction statements were recorded, too, regardless of whether my behavior is ethical or not. The public at large is so quick to become enraged, and the media is so willing to sensationalize, that anything but silence in a bad situation is a PR mess.
Well, yeah... Bosses are human, too, of course. They don't want to be embarrassed any more than anybody else, but being at a higher position within the company, their reputation is directly tied to many other people's reputations as well. That goes for any other collective entity, too, including churches, charities, sailing crews, police, etc... Nobody wants to have anything recorded, because they know they might make a mistake, and that recording will be used against them, out of context and long after any reasonably limited time. Being nice and friendly regarding recording just isn't worth the risk of having a mistake get blown out of proportion.
This is Slashdot, though, where we love the Average Joe who does whatever he wants with whatever he wants, and damn the corporations that make it happen! Managers are the personification of the corporation, so we hate them, too. Any story that attacks a company or anyone in the company (except the lowest tier, who's always oppressed and overworked by their superiors) is instantly approved and the hivemind lauds its message.
I suppose this will head off into the world of "Flamebait" if I continue ranting... There's no "Annoyed at Slashdot" mod.
Unfortunately, it also stops people like a close relative of mine, who invented a new and useful mechanism for a common device (involving optics and high temperatures), but had no interest in developing the business around it himself, or dealing with the cutthroat competition in that particular industry. He sold licenses to the major manufacturers, recouped what he spent developing the mechanism (because lenses aren't cheap), and went back to his normal life.
A genuine innovator, who advanced technology in a meaningful way, and yet to my knowledge he personally only made a single demonstration device.
Not quite Cornucopian. The point of my post is that having "unlimited economic growth" does not require unlimited natural resources, or an unlimited civilization. Quite the contrary, really: We'd have to have exactly zero population growth (to avoid resources being tied up in bodies), recycling of dead people (to reclaim their elements), and most likely complete integration with technology (to mitigate wasteful decisions). It's nothing that can happen soon, but we may be able to reach equilibrium before dying off.
To adapt Liebig's water-barrel analogy, consider that regardless of the water's level, it can still be stirred, and (except for centrifugal motions) the speed of stirring is irrelevant to how high the walls are. That is the economy. Economic growth is not necessarily attached to the population size.
Labor produces the research in the first place, and gets funded when the troll buys the resulting patent.
With the right technology (and application thereof) to reduce and mitigate human's continued impact on global resources, the economy can indeed grow with practically no limit. It won't grow in industries like oil production, logging, or real estate, but it can in industries like manufacturing, recycling, and clean energy production.
Economic growth means more trade. Exchange more goods, faster, with no physical restraints like "limited natural resources" (because you're using those green technologies extensively), and the only limits you'll hit are due to the trading technology available at the time.
I am strongly in favor of limiting free speech, and opposed to "rampant profanity", but I have my limits. Clearly, the law is intended to stop online bullying and harassment, but the broad ruling leaves a ridiculous amount of power in the hands of any public individual. It reminds me of those "it's not what you intended, but how they felt" lines from every sexual harassment seminar.
Without further ado, I must speak what's really on my mind, as intended for this law's authors and supporters.. Fuck this shitty law, and everything about it. Does it offend your short-sighted sensibilities that someone's fucking language could be used for some fucking emphasis? If you want to curb offensive abuses of free speech, then use your brain and figure out a legal wording that doesn't also cover anything poorly-worded. You've reached a point where, in your cowardly mind, you cannot empathize with someone else's point of view, that might lead them to say the things they say? Must you censor them, not by attacking their methods, but by attacking their very words?
If this obsession with political correctness continues, we, as a society, are fucked. In my ideal world, intent to cause harm would be illegal, but accidental harm is repaired and forgiven. Why the fuck can't we work toward that?
I have also "defaced" many sites on my own. I very recently defaced Slashdot itself, with a silly message mocking a group of hacktivists for contributing approximately nothing to the world but headlines.
My message is subtle enough that it will likely remain on the site for the remainder of its existence. Anonymous can't say the same for their messages.
Not being able to do anything you want like skipping to the end boss with an unworkable build or giving yourself a zillion skill points is not an issue that needs to be fixed.
I didn't ever say it should be fixed, but it does diminish the fun of the game for me, so I simply won't buy it. Less game for me, less money for Blizzard... Too bad.
With a steady income and a shiny new computer, I've grown into playing games. Heck, I bought Portal 2 within the first hour it was available (which was conveniently 7 hours before I left on a long car trip, where I was conveniently a passenger). I'm just not excited about this one, and don't see Blizzard doing anything to make me excited.
I do recall some areas being empty of monsters after the first run, but I may be mistaken. It's been too long.
If I'm already hacking the character, the reward is pointless, but yes, playing the boss battle again was fun, and that couldn't always be done. Yes, it's mucking with the game flow, but it's a game. If I want to make it more entertaining without affecting anyone else, why stop me? If I want to make a character with a single health point and an undead horde take on the final boss, what exactly is the problem?
So only 8 times playing boring parts rather than 1... awesome.
It's more than just skills, though... Resetting skill points will not change my barbarian to a rogue, reopen a particular quest dungeon, or let me play an act backwards.
It's much harder to entertain that asinine entitlement mentality when eating fried chicken means going to the coop and wringing its neck yourself*
Now, I have a few Mennonite friends who've explained this to me, and from my understanding, this is exactly the point. Religion aside, the Amish culture values hard work, cooperation, and human interaction above worldly things like material goods, entertainment, and wealth. Putting in a good day's work to produce something is valued more in their society than coming home to a store-bought meal and the latest TV show.
In that way, Linux fans are much like the Amish. Open-source developers often contribute not for money, but for the pride in having contributed to a larger goal. Sure, there are some who sell their open code to earn money, just as there are Amish who have cars, phones, and radios to interact with the world outside their hometown.
It is the ideals we live by, not the technology we use, that truly defines who we are. Linux embodies a certain set of ideals, that the OP claims to live by.
Hacking my characters was half the fun of D2. I wanted to play different builds, but really wasn't interested in going through the beginning of the game another dozen times.
Diablo 2 was great... good enough graphics for its time, with a challenging skill system and, most importantly to me, a fantastic story. Then it ended on a cliffhanger, with one of the Prime Evils still loose. Then the expansion ended on somewhat less of a cliffhanger: "I'm going to destroy this thing, and I have no idea what's going to happen to the world."
I want to play the next installment, I really do... but I probably won't. I've been hearing about it for two years, and the excitement's gone. Sure, it was neat to read about the new classes and see the new baddies. It was fun to go back and play the first two again to remember the story. Now all I hear about is DRM and auctions.
If I wanted artificial restrictions, I'd go lock myself in a dark room for a few hours. If I wanted an auction, I'd go browse eBay. I don't want those, though. I want a visual interactive story, so I'm going to play a video game. Perhaps someday I'll be able to buy D3 off of GOG to find out the end of the story, or perhaps even get a pirated version (ignoring my usual attitude toward those lazy mooching pirates). Maybe I'll break down and buy the retail version, if I get excited again.
My attitude right now is an utterly non-committal "meh." Sorry, Blizzard, but you've lost my attention, and I doubt you'll get it back again.
Ethics aren't covered in this post. You'll have to move up to "Teach Yourself Free Speech in 24 hours".