I don't know if there is a reason why this doesn't exist, but there really is no way to directly send a message through slashdot to another slashdot user. There are times when this would be useful, say if you get in a meaningful discussion with someone on a topic and then it gets closed (by passing the time threshold) while the discussion is still underway. This could also be useful for reporting bugs, as currently the only way to do that is by email but that has been hit and miss over the years.
That is probably the best explanation I've ever heard for that, thank you. Push the signal-to-noise down so that the people who want to eavesdrop are wasting time decrypting trivial communications that are of no significant value.
When I saw this headline, I figured that the readers here on slashdot would trip over each other to declare this to be an awful idea. They come up with all kinds of contorted excuses, but I would wager that the true underlying reason for their disapproval has nothing to do with anything but the fact that Obama is a democrat. Simply for being a democrat, Obama has only a marginally higher approval rating on slashdot than the Ebola Virus or ISIS.
Spam filters need to go away, as they only pass the buck along in the war on spam. They cost dramatically more than the sticker price (especially when they are "free") as the email is still sent, parsed, and quarantined. After that the filters need their rules updated regularly to catch the latest spammer tricks. Meanwhile as the spammers' botnets get bigger and more sophisticated it just gets that much easier and less expensive to send out spam.
If you want to end spam, you need to acknowledge that spam is an economic problem and spammers send out spam because they make money doing it. There is one and only one way to end spam, and that is to prevent spammers from making money off of it. No legal - or extralegal - action will slow it down by any meaningful amount. Interrupt the money flow and the spammers will find other work.
I've been wondering that myself for a while as well. Google - and others - have been on a campaign for a while now to try to get every web site to move to https. As best I can tell it's just evangelism run amok. This is no different from people who tell us that every phone we buy - and hence every phone call we make - should be encrypted as well, even though they can't give a sane explanation for why my call for a pizza to to ask my wife what we want to do for dinner should be handled with the same stringency as nuclear launch codes from the POTUS.
I'm pretty sure they have spent most of the past couple years looking for new work in the understanding that this site is going to go dark for good soon.
I generally call it "the largest corporate handout in the history of government". That is a bit of a mouthful so sometimes instead I call it "Health Insurance Industry Bailout Act of 2010", or "HIIBA 2010", for short.
Republicans need to stop using the wording Obamacare.
But sticking to that name makes it easier to then say "we replaced Obamacare with Ryancare", and try to convince people that there was an important difference between the two. So far, every "alternative" to the ACA that has been proposed by a sitting congressperson has been >90% similar in action to the ACA; most of them differing only in whose name would be on it. Otherwise if they were honest enough to say that they want to spend billions of dollars to repeal the ACA, then pass the ACA again, people wouldn't get excited about it or vote for them.
1. Use real costs. The fact that there is an "insurance cost" and a "self pay costs" tells us all we need to know about medical bills. They aren't tied to the actual cost of service in any meaningful way.
The problem with that is that a lot of people who end up in bankruptcy over medical costs have insurance. Their rates are already discounted for their insurance, but they can't afford their deductibles, copays, or uncovered expenses. Even if everyone paid the same price, that problem wouldn't go away.
On top of that, as the primary mission of every insurance company in the country is to make money - not to provide coverage for the patient (as that costs money) - the insurance companies are constantly searching for clever new ways to deny claims. Being as the federal government essentially gave the insurance industry a license to print money back in 2010 with the affordable care act, they now have free reign to try whatever they want to "bring costs down".
As in, you believed up to that point (ie, this Tuesday) that the UN was an example of someone who was going to take over ICANN. You only started singing a different song more recently. For that matter on Tuesday you were still trying to claim that your UN argument was somehow valid by making the claim of
not any different from the UN because ultimately that's all the UN is in the first place
In other words, 2 days ago you still thought that your UN claim had some shred of merit. Now you're claiming otherwise, which just makes you look that much less informed. Own what you said, and if you can't handle doing that then don't bother hitting reply.
FUCKING STUPID
That's rather uncalled for, here. Was anyone attacking you personally or shouting at you? No. You don't build a good argument by being the first to stoop to that level.
The one attempting to cover is not me. You indicated your belief that the UN was going to take over. That is actually a pretty solid karma whoring technique here on slashdot as the UN generally gets lower approval ratings here than does the West Nile Virus. The fact remains that you didn't even bother to read the summary in its completion before you put your ignorance of the matter out on display for all to see.
Here's some additional truth for you. Nobody is forcing you to hit reply. You can just walk away and celebrate your good fortune in getting 3 people to up-mod that initial counterfactual comment of yours.
That's a nice attempt at CYA, there. It doesn't work, though. Just admit you didn't know what you were talking about, and move on. Next time try at least reading the full summary before you hit comment. You got lucky this time, a few people who - like you - did not read the summary displayed their own lack of understanding and modded your shitty comment up. Next time you might not be so lucky.
Considering how many comments you crap out in short time here, you seem to have plenty of time on your hands. You might want to consider putting it to better use.
What if all of our personal details were just out in the open? It would reduce the value of it.
Even further back there was a story here about someone who was intentionally putting all his most trivial information into very public websites. I don't recall all the details now, but it may have been something he was doing do counter the fact that he was being targeted for surveillance for no particularly good reason so he figured he could do exactly that - reduce the value of the data.
Being as the slashdot "search" function continues to be the least useful search function anywhere, I have no good way to find it here. Google does a pretty good job indexing this site but that is in spite of slashdot trying to prevent that from happening...
I do not dispute that he has declared victory, I merely dispute any notion that he has said anything that would render such a declaration to be a valid assessment of reality.
Yeah, but it takes time. And time costs money. And the insurance companies are insured against this kind of stupidity by other insurance companies, so they just let the chips fall where they may... and let the party keep rolling. It's not like there will be any consequences for the insurance company, as they now have a guaranteed customer base for the rest of their lives.
Nah, I addressed the the UN issue and you're refusing to acknowledge it.
No, you did not. Addressing it would entail admitting that you were completely disconnected from reality when you claimed that the UN was going to take over management of ICANN. Instead you attempted to dodge it. Your comments are still back there, and they plainly show exactly that.
If you actually said something meaningful that was somehow connected to reality, I would be happy to acknowledge it. You have not done that yet, nor have you shown any reason to expect that you will later.
Position sustained.
What position? The only thing you have been doing consistently is hitting the reply button to then not post anything of substance. Your best move is to not hit reply again, each time you do it you just expose more of how little you know.
There was nothing obtuse about my comment. I quoted you directly and responded directly. I showed specifically where your assumptions lacked merit and were disconnected from reality. If you don't have anything to say, you can feel free to just not hit the reply button, nobody is forcing you to put your lack of understanding on display.
No, I said "the UN?" Notice the question mark... it was an example.
And I reminded you that the UN has nothing to do with it. In other words you fell on your face on that one.
your rebuttal that it would be various governments is not any different from the UN because ultimately that's all the UN is in the first place.
No, it is vastly different. The UN is an intergovernmental agency. If the UN was involved then decisions would be made by committees at the UN. As the UN is not involved, they have nothing to do with it. Just because there could, potentially, be some national governments involved that are also UN member states is nothing at all the same as the UN itself being involved.
Or do you really know that little about how the UN works?
And giving things over to various corporations isn't any better either as I pointed out because corporations will censor people if it is in their financial interests to do it.
Do you understand how ICANN works? It doesn't do anything to censor people. There is no reason for it to ever be able to pick up such abilities, either.
I love your final statement that the US has no control over it
I said
that the US government hasn't had any significant control over ICANN for well over a decade
You really should have tried reading what I wrote before attempting to paraphrase it, you might have been able to demonstrate some basic understanding of what was written.
Seriously, you got lucky with some other people who had as little understanding of ICANN as yourself who decided to up-mod your first comment here. Now it's time for some reality. Your UN conspiracy is crap. The US government handed control over to corporate interests some time ago. Try reading before you post.
I read what you said. Your first comment - which was modded up for no clear reason - you declared that the US government relinquishing control of ICANN would be a bad thing because you believed it would next be taken over by the UN. I then pointed out that even the summary of the article contradicted that claim (which you presumably produced from your own posterior) of yours. Only after that did you acknowledge that indeed it is not a government who will be taking over control of ICANN.
At some point further into the future will you recognize that the US government hasn't had any significant control over ICANN for well over a decade? Once you recognize that, you will realize that this change won't bring about much change at all. Business as usual will continue as usual.
I suspect more people every year will be picking up side work through services like uber, it is the way our economy is going. One thing that a lot of people aren't prepared for in taking on contract work like that though is the taxes. A lot of those companies like to pay the "contractors" directly and make them deal with the taxes. That isn't bad if the contract work is your own job and you're good with estimating taxes and managing your money. However if you have another job (contract or not) and then start doing contract work as well, the taxes can get pretty crazy. If you are in a joint-filing relationship as well, it can get even crazier still.
I don't have all my information to calculate my 2015 taxes yet, but my 2014 were awful and 2013 even worse (2013 included income from multiple states as well as unemployment from one while I was in between jobs). I expect to be punished pretty severely for trying to make money this year, we will see. This isn't "progressive" taxation, either, as the total of my three incomes for 2015 still doesn't put me into the six figure range for pre-tax income.
you think anything you said made any material difference?
Yes, because ICANN will be managed by a lot of non-governmental forces. In fact, national governments will be bit players in the deal at most. You claimed that the UN was going to take over, which is 100% false.
And it gets worse because you also cited corporations which also have bad records. Look at Twitter. Look at Facebook. Look at Reddit.
What are you trying to prove with that list? None of them have had an impact on ICANN so far, and what do any of them have to gain by changing how it operates in the future?
Corporations are just as bad if not worse.
ICANN has been run by corporate / profit interests for some time now.
by the end of September, ICANN could instead be in the hands of businesses, individuals, and multiple global governments.
Your idea of
the alternative here. The United Nations?
Is not supported by anything in the article or summary. The United Nations are vastly different from an idea of "multiple global governments", particularly when those multiple governments are sharing power with businesses and individuals as well.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know if there is a reason why this doesn't exist, but there really is no way to directly send a message through slashdot to another slashdot user. There are times when this would be useful, say if you get in a meaningful discussion with someone on a topic and then it gets closed (by passing the time threshold) while the discussion is still underway. This could also be useful for reporting bugs, as currently the only way to do that is by email but that has been hit and miss over the years.
That is probably the best explanation I've ever heard for that, thank you. Push the signal-to-noise down so that the people who want to eavesdrop are wasting time decrypting trivial communications that are of no significant value.
When I saw this headline, I figured that the readers here on slashdot would trip over each other to declare this to be an awful idea. They come up with all kinds of contorted excuses, but I would wager that the true underlying reason for their disapproval has nothing to do with anything but the fact that Obama is a democrat. Simply for being a democrat, Obama has only a marginally higher approval rating on slashdot than the Ebola Virus or ISIS.
Spam filters need to go away, as they only pass the buck along in the war on spam. They cost dramatically more than the sticker price (especially when they are "free") as the email is still sent, parsed, and quarantined. After that the filters need their rules updated regularly to catch the latest spammer tricks. Meanwhile as the spammers' botnets get bigger and more sophisticated it just gets that much easier and less expensive to send out spam.
If you want to end spam, you need to acknowledge that spam is an economic problem and spammers send out spam because they make money doing it. There is one and only one way to end spam, and that is to prevent spammers from making money off of it. No legal - or extralegal - action will slow it down by any meaningful amount. Interrupt the money flow and the spammers will find other work.
I've been wondering that myself for a while as well. Google - and others - have been on a campaign for a while now to try to get every web site to move to https. As best I can tell it's just evangelism run amok. This is no different from people who tell us that every phone we buy - and hence every phone call we make - should be encrypted as well, even though they can't give a sane explanation for why my call for a pizza to to ask my wife what we want to do for dinner should be handled with the same stringency as nuclear launch codes from the POTUS.
It really should be "don't forget to turn off the lights on your way out the door" dept.
I'm pretty sure they have spent most of the past couple years looking for new work in the understanding that this site is going to go dark for good soon.
There is no remaining evidence of anyone working at slashdot to layoff...
I generally call it "the largest corporate handout in the history of government". That is a bit of a mouthful so sometimes instead I call it "Health Insurance Industry Bailout Act of 2010", or "HIIBA 2010", for short.
Republicans need to stop using the wording Obamacare.
But sticking to that name makes it easier to then say "we replaced Obamacare with Ryancare", and try to convince people that there was an important difference between the two. So far, every "alternative" to the ACA that has been proposed by a sitting congressperson has been >90% similar in action to the ACA; most of them differing only in whose name would be on it. Otherwise if they were honest enough to say that they want to spend billions of dollars to repeal the ACA, then pass the ACA again, people wouldn't get excited about it or vote for them.
1. Use real costs. The fact that there is an "insurance cost" and a "self pay costs" tells us all we need to know about medical bills. They aren't tied to the actual cost of service in any meaningful way.
The problem with that is that a lot of people who end up in bankruptcy over medical costs have insurance. Their rates are already discounted for their insurance, but they can't afford their deductibles, copays, or uncovered expenses. Even if everyone paid the same price, that problem wouldn't go away.
On top of that, as the primary mission of every insurance company in the country is to make money - not to provide coverage for the patient (as that costs money) - the insurance companies are constantly searching for clever new ways to deny claims. Being as the federal government essentially gave the insurance industry a license to print money back in 2010 with the affordable care act, they now have free reign to try whatever they want to "bring costs down".
it was an example
As in, you believed up to that point (ie, this Tuesday) that the UN was an example of someone who was going to take over ICANN. You only started singing a different song more recently. For that matter on Tuesday you were still trying to claim that your UN argument was somehow valid by making the claim of
not any different from the UN because ultimately that's all the UN is in the first place
In other words, 2 days ago you still thought that your UN claim had some shred of merit. Now you're claiming otherwise, which just makes you look that much less informed. Own what you said, and if you can't handle doing that then don't bother hitting reply.
FUCKING STUPID
That's rather uncalled for, here. Was anyone attacking you personally or shouting at you? No. You don't build a good argument by being the first to stoop to that level.
twit
ibid.
The one attempting to cover is not me. You indicated your belief that the UN was going to take over. That is actually a pretty solid karma whoring technique here on slashdot as the UN generally gets lower approval ratings here than does the West Nile Virus. The fact remains that you didn't even bother to read the summary in its completion before you put your ignorance of the matter out on display for all to see.
Here's some additional truth for you. Nobody is forcing you to hit reply. You can just walk away and celebrate your good fortune in getting 3 people to up-mod that initial counterfactual comment of yours.
That's a nice attempt at CYA, there. It doesn't work, though. Just admit you didn't know what you were talking about, and move on. Next time try at least reading the full summary before you hit comment. You got lucky this time, a few people who - like you - did not read the summary displayed their own lack of understanding and modded your shitty comment up. Next time you might not be so lucky.
Considering how many comments you crap out in short time here, you seem to have plenty of time on your hands. You might want to consider putting it to better use.
What if all of our personal details were just out in the open? It would reduce the value of it.
Even further back there was a story here about someone who was intentionally putting all his most trivial information into very public websites. I don't recall all the details now, but it may have been something he was doing do counter the fact that he was being targeted for surveillance for no particularly good reason so he figured he could do exactly that - reduce the value of the data.
Being as the slashdot "search" function continues to be the least useful search function anywhere, I have no good way to find it here. Google does a pretty good job indexing this site but that is in spite of slashdot trying to prevent that from happening...
I do not dispute that he has declared victory, I merely dispute any notion that he has said anything that would render such a declaration to be a valid assessment of reality.
It is easy these days. You just need to do it.
Yeah, but it takes time. And time costs money. And the insurance companies are insured against this kind of stupidity by other insurance companies, so they just let the chips fall where they may ... and let the party keep rolling. It's not like there will be any consequences for the insurance company, as they now have a guaranteed customer base for the rest of their lives.
One of the for-profit health insurance companies who just raked in a huge windfall as a result of the largest government-to-corporate handout in the history of government were too drunk on their power to bother with data security.
Yep, absolutely nobody is surprised by this in the least. Turns out hookers and blow don't manage this stuff very well on their own.
Nah, I addressed the the UN issue and you're refusing to acknowledge it.
No, you did not. Addressing it would entail admitting that you were completely disconnected from reality when you claimed that the UN was going to take over management of ICANN. Instead you attempted to dodge it. Your comments are still back there, and they plainly show exactly that.
If you actually said something meaningful that was somehow connected to reality, I would be happy to acknowledge it. You have not done that yet, nor have you shown any reason to expect that you will later.
Position sustained.
What position? The only thing you have been doing consistently is hitting the reply button to then not post anything of substance. Your best move is to not hit reply again, each time you do it you just expose more of how little you know.
There was nothing obtuse about my comment. I quoted you directly and responded directly. I showed specifically where your assumptions lacked merit and were disconnected from reality. If you don't have anything to say, you can feel free to just not hit the reply button, nobody is forcing you to put your lack of understanding on display.
No, I said "the UN?" Notice the question mark... it was an example.
And I reminded you that the UN has nothing to do with it. In other words you fell on your face on that one.
your rebuttal that it would be various governments is not any different from the UN because ultimately that's all the UN is in the first place.
No, it is vastly different. The UN is an intergovernmental agency. If the UN was involved then decisions would be made by committees at the UN. As the UN is not involved, they have nothing to do with it. Just because there could, potentially, be some national governments involved that are also UN member states is nothing at all the same as the UN itself being involved.
Or do you really know that little about how the UN works?
And giving things over to various corporations isn't any better either as I pointed out because corporations will censor people if it is in their financial interests to do it.
Do you understand how ICANN works? It doesn't do anything to censor people. There is no reason for it to ever be able to pick up such abilities, either.
I love your final statement that the US has no control over it
I said
that the US government hasn't had any significant control over ICANN for well over a decade
You really should have tried reading what I wrote before attempting to paraphrase it, you might have been able to demonstrate some basic understanding of what was written.
Seriously, you got lucky with some other people who had as little understanding of ICANN as yourself who decided to up-mod your first comment here. Now it's time for some reality. Your UN conspiracy is crap. The US government handed control over to corporate interests some time ago. Try reading before you post.
I read what you said. Your first comment - which was modded up for no clear reason - you declared that the US government relinquishing control of ICANN would be a bad thing because you believed it would next be taken over by the UN. I then pointed out that even the summary of the article contradicted that claim (which you presumably produced from your own posterior) of yours. Only after that did you acknowledge that indeed it is not a government who will be taking over control of ICANN.
At some point further into the future will you recognize that the US government hasn't had any significant control over ICANN for well over a decade? Once you recognize that, you will realize that this change won't bring about much change at all. Business as usual will continue as usual.
I suspect more people every year will be picking up side work through services like uber, it is the way our economy is going. One thing that a lot of people aren't prepared for in taking on contract work like that though is the taxes. A lot of those companies like to pay the "contractors" directly and make them deal with the taxes. That isn't bad if the contract work is your own job and you're good with estimating taxes and managing your money. However if you have another job (contract or not) and then start doing contract work as well, the taxes can get pretty crazy. If you are in a joint-filing relationship as well, it can get even crazier still.
I don't have all my information to calculate my 2015 taxes yet, but my 2014 were awful and 2013 even worse (2013 included income from multiple states as well as unemployment from one while I was in between jobs). I expect to be punished pretty severely for trying to make money this year, we will see. This isn't "progressive" taxation, either, as the total of my three incomes for 2015 still doesn't put me into the six figure range for pre-tax income.
you think anything you said made any material difference?
Yes, because ICANN will be managed by a lot of non-governmental forces. In fact, national governments will be bit players in the deal at most. You claimed that the UN was going to take over, which is 100% false.
And it gets worse because you also cited corporations which also have bad records. Look at Twitter. Look at Facebook. Look at Reddit.
What are you trying to prove with that list? None of them have had an impact on ICANN so far, and what do any of them have to gain by changing how it operates in the future?
Corporations are just as bad if not worse.
ICANN has been run by corporate / profit interests for some time now.
by the end of September, ICANN could instead be in the hands of businesses, individuals, and multiple global governments.
Your idea of
the alternative here. The United Nations?
Is not supported by anything in the article or summary. The United Nations are vastly different from an idea of "multiple global governments", particularly when those multiple governments are sharing power with businesses and individuals as well.