Young people do need guidance. Complete freedom can lead nowhere too. The real challenge is to recognise what each person's mind is most talented at, and what they're naturally attracted to. The intersection between talent and enjoyment is a good place to find guidance. We don't do anywhere near enough to recognise kids' individual talents. We go about education *too* uniformly and I think that misses a lot of opportunity.
Either way, don't bring ethics into it. You're talking about taking someone's money for "the greater good".
That makes no sense. The whole idea of taxing income is to subsidise government which is - ideally - there to help everyone. Funding law enforcement, health, education, roads and other infrastructure for everyone to use. If that's not an exercise in ethics, then what is it?
Why is everyone here in the US hooked on the "false dillema" falicy?
Possibly the media. All the time in the news or those morning shows, the headlines are exactly that. "Is there poison in everything we eat, OR are we all just paranoid?" etc etc.
Perhaps, eventually, people just start thinking there is only ever an either-or case to everything. They start to think logical thinking means deciding which of any two propositions is "true".
Same thing in Windows 7. First time I wanted to a grab of a bit of the screen.. I knew there was a "utility" (see I'm an old timer) for capturing the screen, but I didn't know what it was called. Typed "capture", "grab", "screen", etc. Nothing.
Googled it. It's called "Snipping Tool". Why in all the crying fuck is a screen grab/capture/shot app called "snipping tool" in an operating system where you can apparently "find stuff simply by typing it"?
On top of that, navigating the Windows 7 Start Menu is actually *harder* than on XP. On XP you just hover over stuff and a SUB-menu pops up. For some reason Win 8 went collapsible-menus, which require *more* mouse clicks and *more* time to flip through to find things if you don't know where they are.
For gods sake, if they just allowed people to optionally revert back to how things used to work, there wouldn't be such a lot of complaints. Then people would TRY the new way, out of curiosity, and perhaps take it up. We don't like being TOLD "this way is better" when for us it plainly is not.
Same applies to the Ribbon. If they'd just had a simple option to go back to menus, *nobody would have complained about the ribbon* and many people would have used it and loved it. The rest would have turned it off and said "yay Office 2007 is a lovely upgrade, go get it!"
Seriously, whatever happened to giving people flexibility in software? We even used to be able to choose how menus rendered! Sir, would you like Office style menus, XP style menus, sunken buttons or flat buttons? Yes sir, wise choice sir. Now it's "we know best and you will learn to love it." And they think that approach to users is going to be popular?
The advertising reason is false, the market can adjust for fake accounts etc as long as the number if real users does exist.
Disagree. If you're an advertiser, you want to know those accounts are real people. I'm talking *perception* here. Give a list of real names and the perception of validity - ie. the *value* of those accounts - increases, as opposed to a list of nicknames. The *perception* is that nicknames are of limited value, can be discarded easily, multiple accounts made easily, etc.
If you use your real name, your real identity, you are also going to *invest more seriously* in the profile and its content. The QUALITY of the profile, and therefore it's VALUE increases if you use your real name. This is all completely relevant to advertising.
facebook business model hinges on the dact that it is easy to find acquaintances
No, it hinges on both. Both ease of finding and friending people (there's value in the networks themselves) AND that the profiles have real names, for the reasons I described above. The two go hand in hand, it's not either-or.
Personally, I use a pseudonym on Facebook. All my friends know what it is and it's me (it's vaguely related to my real name). Anyone who doesn't know me won't know it's my account, won't be able to search for me by name, and that's how I like it. It's called privacy. No employer, insurance company, whatever, needs to know what I put in my Facebook account. My friends know not to tag me in photos, checkins, etc. as well. Fuck that bollocks.
If everyone did that, and FB folded, that's their problem for not having a sustainable business model. Meetup.com, for example, would make money fine if everyone used nicknames. Real names are commonly used, of course, but Meetup doesn't *require* it to function.
Lastly, when I eat at a restaurant, they don't record my name off the c/card, my friends names and my personality profile. We have a level of privacy in real life, and I don't see any reason to force people into a different paradigm online. Online IS real life.
So fuck FB, there's nothing stopping anyone keeping a level of privacy by using a pseudonym if they do it subtly; ie. "Fabio Fucksocks" is not a great idea.
We should focus on preventing more on the everyday killings, many of which should be preventable
Problem with your theory is that saying "oh this is just an aberration, worry about more common murders" is going to result in this event becoming more common. How often should mass killings happen, exactly, before we think seriously about it? How big should they be - 30 people, 40, 50?
A single lunatic like this, with firearms, can kill tens of people at a time. Unfortunately it's human nature that some people will commit murder. You will never stop that. You will never stop random individual murder. But we sure as hell can help prevent mass killings with semi-automatic weapons, don't you think?
The problems with these drugs are caused by the drug war. They're not inherent to the drug.
For certain, specific values of "these drugs". There are also drugs that are incredibly physically harmful, not just directly, but also to the national budget in terms of health outcomes. Throat cancer, lung cancer, mouth cancer, etc. from smoking, as an example.
Another example: Alcohol is perfectly legal, and quite cheap, but we all know how damaging that can be, in terms of both domestic and random violence.
I suppose, in the end, it all comes down to education, social capital and not putting people in situations where they feel the need to abuse a substance, whatever it may be. It's more complicated that just "legalise it and the problems will go away".
Right, because the illegality of gun ownership is going to stop someone who walks into an elementary school and opens fire on kids.
Your logic is flawed. You are confusing the likelihood of a specific incident with the statistical occurrence of gun crime in general.
If we experimented with tighter gun laws, and you saw the *incidence of gun crime in general* go down, would you change your mind? Or would you stick to your rationale that *it should not matter because you can't blame the tool*?
Face it, access to guns allows *more people to die in any single crime*. Tighter gun laws will not stop gun crime. But it *will* save lives. If people like you are not even willing to allow that premise to be even tested, then I'm sorry but you are a cold-hearted bunch who put "principles" over people's lives.
Gender should play NO role in this discussion whatsoever.
Hi, real world here. Men are stronger, so gender obviously plays a role. A taser is not necessary to physically restrain a woman in most cases. A strong male, yes perhaps so, if police feel significantly threatened.
Hopefully we will invent something better than tasers soon, as they are vile things. If the device wasn't so painful - if it simply relaxed muscles or something, without discomfort, then we may not be having this discussion at all.
Hate to break it to you, but religion, commercialism, democracy, armies, volunteer groups - all social systems - are simply the result of built-in human behaviours. Face it, we're wired that way. Religion, like all the rest, arose out of who we are as human beings.
We're also very good at moderating our own behaviours, so the sooner people stop speaking in absolutes, as you just did, the better for everyone.
There's a great movie about this, called "Seeking Friend for the End of the World". In the film, they only discover the asteroid is going to hit a few days before it happens.
The film was lovely (it's not an action flick, it's very thoughtful) but I thought the premise - discovering an imminent collision so late - was just a ridiculous plot device. Seems I was wrong! Great film now seems even a bit better.:) Highly recommended!
Name me one moral act performed by a religious person that could not have been performed by that person without their religion.
Another approach is simply pointing out that most religious people do not go by the *exact* scripture in their sacred books. No, they pick and choose what is relevant. Thou shalt not kill? Yeah but, you know, it kinda depends on the situation. Etc. etc.
How can people decide on the best way to morally practice their religion, if the religion is the source of morality? Obviously morality and ethics exist outside the religion, even for religious people.
The gmail system is terrible, as anyone can do an automated scan, pick out @gmail.com addresses, strip off anything after the "+" and bingo, they have your real gmail address and you're stuffed. Also, many sites don't allow "+" in email addresses (perhaps simply to discourage use of aliases).
So I use Yahoo disposable addresses. First you select a unique "base name" (eg. blahblah@yahoo.com), then create aliases, like gmail, but using "-" instead of "+" (eg. "randomalias-blahblah@yahoo.com"). It's universally accepted and nobody can *ever* get your real email address from it. Trying to email your base name ("blahblah@yahoo.com") is simply rejected.
I have no idea why people use gmail aliases, they're so obviously flawed. I assume Google, since they live off marketing, isn't too keen on providing a good system to thwart it.
Exactly.. considering murder, like most human activities, aren't performed on a purely random basis - there is usually a reason - then one would expect some sort of pattern. Still, identifying the pattern helps identify the causes I suppose.
But it staggers me that we can study these things till the cows come home and not do anything about simple causes, like poverty and lack of education. Sod these "interesting" studies, those things are no-brainers that we, as a society, fail to provide to our fellow humans.
We should be beyond judging whether someone *deserves* a good education and the basics of life.
Slashdot Mirror
But nobody listens to online ranting from anons much any more. Post on Slashdot as Anonymous Coward and you're lucky to get a rating above 0.
Maybe I have a different picture than you do, of what "anonymous" is... err, Animats. If that is really your name...
let students have free reign
Young people do need guidance. Complete freedom can lead nowhere too. The real challenge is to recognise what each person's mind is most talented at, and what they're naturally attracted to. The intersection between talent and enjoyment is a good place to find guidance. We don't do anywhere near enough to recognise kids' individual talents. We go about education *too* uniformly and I think that misses a lot of opportunity.
Either way, don't bring ethics into it. You're talking about taking someone's money for "the greater good".
That makes no sense. The whole idea of taxing income is to subsidise government which is - ideally - there to help everyone. Funding law enforcement, health, education, roads and other infrastructure for everyone to use. If that's not an exercise in ethics, then what is it?
> 99% effective when used as directed
The problem with contraception is all this having to keep count of how many times you've had sex.
Why is everyone here in the US hooked on the "false dillema" falicy?
Possibly the media. All the time in the news or those morning shows, the headlines are exactly that. "Is there poison in everything we eat, OR are we all just paranoid?" etc etc.
Perhaps, eventually, people just start thinking there is only ever an either-or case to everything. They start to think logical thinking means deciding which of any two propositions is "true".
Apple is already in decline.
By what measurement?
By the fact the only person in Apple's history able to drive the company forward is now gone.
Same thing in Windows 7. First time I wanted to a grab of a bit of the screen.. I knew there was a "utility" (see I'm an old timer) for capturing the screen, but I didn't know what it was called. Typed "capture", "grab", "screen", etc. Nothing.
Googled it. It's called "Snipping Tool". Why in all the crying fuck is a screen grab/capture/shot app called "snipping tool" in an operating system where you can apparently "find stuff simply by typing it"?
On top of that, navigating the Windows 7 Start Menu is actually *harder* than on XP. On XP you just hover over stuff and a SUB-menu pops up. For some reason Win 8 went collapsible-menus, which require *more* mouse clicks and *more* time to flip through to find things if you don't know where they are.
For gods sake, if they just allowed people to optionally revert back to how things used to work, there wouldn't be such a lot of complaints. Then people would TRY the new way, out of curiosity, and perhaps take it up. We don't like being TOLD "this way is better" when for us it plainly is not.
Same applies to the Ribbon. If they'd just had a simple option to go back to menus, *nobody would have complained about the ribbon* and many people would have used it and loved it. The rest would have turned it off and said "yay Office 2007 is a lovely upgrade, go get it!"
Seriously, whatever happened to giving people flexibility in software? We even used to be able to choose how menus rendered! Sir, would you like Office style menus, XP style menus, sunken buttons or flat buttons? Yes sir, wise choice sir. Now it's "we know best and you will learn to love it." And they think that approach to users is going to be popular?
we’ve made it a place where we don’t want to talk about eternity, life, what responsibility means, accountability?
For a moment there I thought he was referring to free-market Capitalism.
The advertising reason is false, the market can adjust for fake accounts etc as long as the number if real users does exist.
Disagree. If you're an advertiser, you want to know those accounts are real people. I'm talking *perception* here. Give a list of real names and the perception of validity - ie. the *value* of those accounts - increases, as opposed to a list of nicknames. The *perception* is that nicknames are of limited value, can be discarded easily, multiple accounts made easily, etc.
If you use your real name, your real identity, you are also going to *invest more seriously* in the profile and its content. The QUALITY of the profile, and therefore it's VALUE increases if you use your real name. This is all completely relevant to advertising.
facebook business model hinges on the dact that it is easy to find acquaintances
No, it hinges on both. Both ease of finding and friending people (there's value in the networks themselves) AND that the profiles have real names, for the reasons I described above. The two go hand in hand, it's not either-or.
Personally, I use a pseudonym on Facebook. All my friends know what it is and it's me (it's vaguely related to my real name). Anyone who doesn't know me won't know it's my account, won't be able to search for me by name, and that's how I like it. It's called privacy. No employer, insurance company, whatever, needs to know what I put in my Facebook account. My friends know not to tag me in photos, checkins, etc. as well. Fuck that bollocks.
If everyone did that, and FB folded, that's their problem for not having a sustainable business model. Meetup.com, for example, would make money fine if everyone used nicknames. Real names are commonly used, of course, but Meetup doesn't *require* it to function.
Lastly, when I eat at a restaurant, they don't record my name off the c/card, my friends names and my personality profile. We have a level of privacy in real life, and I don't see any reason to force people into a different paradigm online. Online IS real life.
So fuck FB, there's nothing stopping anyone keeping a level of privacy by using a pseudonym if they do it subtly; ie. "Fabio Fucksocks" is not a great idea.
allowing nicknames lowers the barriers for spammers and people with sockpuppet accounts
Patent bullshit. Heard of a site called Reddit? Heard of phpBB discussion forums?
Put the right sort of system in place, and the community itself will take care of the trash.
TSA banned liquids and gels in more than small quantities, and since then, there have been no incidents of liquid-based explosions on US aircraft.
Were there any liquid explosive before the ban? If not, then you have no point. I assumed you were being amusingly sarcastic, not Insightful.
I DO want to be able to shoot someone that is trying to rob me.
Holy Jesus. Listen to yourself for a moment. You would *take a life* just because someone is trying to steal your TV.
Yes, that may be a common sentiment in the U.S., but to my ears, it's one step away from sociopathic lunatic.
We should focus on preventing more on the everyday killings, many of which should be preventable
Problem with your theory is that saying "oh this is just an aberration, worry about more common murders" is going to result in this event becoming more common. How often should mass killings happen, exactly, before we think seriously about it? How big should they be - 30 people, 40, 50?
A single lunatic like this, with firearms, can kill tens of people at a time. Unfortunately it's human nature that some people will commit murder. You will never stop that. You will never stop random individual murder. But we sure as hell can help prevent mass killings with semi-automatic weapons, don't you think?
The problems with these drugs are caused by the drug war. They're not inherent to the drug.
For certain, specific values of "these drugs". There are also drugs that are incredibly physically harmful, not just directly, but also to the national budget in terms of health outcomes. Throat cancer, lung cancer, mouth cancer, etc. from smoking, as an example.
Another example: Alcohol is perfectly legal, and quite cheap, but we all know how damaging that can be, in terms of both domestic and random violence.
I suppose, in the end, it all comes down to education, social capital and not putting people in situations where they feel the need to abuse a substance, whatever it may be. It's more complicated that just "legalise it and the problems will go away".
Right, because the illegality of gun ownership is going to stop someone who walks into an elementary school and opens fire on kids.
Your logic is flawed. You are confusing the likelihood of a specific incident with the statistical occurrence of gun crime in general.
If we experimented with tighter gun laws, and you saw the *incidence of gun crime in general* go down, would you change your mind? Or would you stick to your rationale that *it should not matter because you can't blame the tool*?
Face it, access to guns allows *more people to die in any single crime*. Tighter gun laws will not stop gun crime. But it *will* save lives. If people like you are not even willing to allow that premise to be even tested, then I'm sorry but you are a cold-hearted bunch who put "principles" over people's lives.
Gender should play NO role in this discussion whatsoever.
Hi, real world here. Men are stronger, so gender obviously plays a role. A taser is not necessary to physically restrain a woman in most cases. A strong male, yes perhaps so, if police feel significantly threatened.
Hopefully we will invent something better than tasers soon, as they are vile things. If the device wasn't so painful - if it simply relaxed muscles or something, without discomfort, then we may not be having this discussion at all.
If someone was trespassing on your property and refused to leave, you'd be justified in tasering them too.
The willingness to excuse violence with utterly mindless generalisations and absolutism is the most disturbing facet of that comment.
Religion is a disease of the mind
Hate to break it to you, but religion, commercialism, democracy, armies, volunteer groups - all social systems - are simply the result of built-in human behaviours. Face it, we're wired that way. Religion, like all the rest, arose out of who we are as human beings.
We're also very good at moderating our own behaviours, so the sooner people stop speaking in absolutes, as you just did, the better for everyone.
There's a great movie about this, called "Seeking Friend for the End of the World". In the film, they only discover the asteroid is going to hit a few days before it happens.
The film was lovely (it's not an action flick, it's very thoughtful) but I thought the premise - discovering an imminent collision so late - was just a ridiculous plot device. Seems I was wrong! Great film now seems even a bit better. :) Highly recommended!
Name me one moral act performed by a religious person that could not have been performed by that person without their religion.
Another approach is simply pointing out that most religious people do not go by the *exact* scripture in their sacred books. No, they pick and choose what is relevant. Thou shalt not kill? Yeah but, you know, it kinda depends on the situation. Etc. etc.
How can people decide on the best way to morally practice their religion, if the religion is the source of morality? Obviously morality and ethics exist outside the religion, even for religious people.
The gmail system is terrible, as anyone can do an automated scan, pick out @gmail.com addresses, strip off anything after the "+" and bingo, they have your real gmail address and you're stuffed. Also, many sites don't allow "+" in email addresses (perhaps simply to discourage use of aliases).
So I use Yahoo disposable addresses. First you select a unique "base name" (eg. blahblah@yahoo.com), then create aliases, like gmail, but using "-" instead of "+" (eg. "randomalias-blahblah@yahoo.com"). It's universally accepted and nobody can *ever* get your real email address from it. Trying to email your base name ("blahblah@yahoo.com") is simply rejected.
I have no idea why people use gmail aliases, they're so obviously flawed. I assume Google, since they live off marketing, isn't too keen on providing a good system to thwart it.
That won't stop Apple trying to patent it.
go back to doing what made them the company they are now
You mean a barely-profitable niche computer company that became completely dependent on the ideas of one unusual man?
Exactly.. considering murder, like most human activities, aren't performed on a purely random basis - there is usually a reason - then one would expect some sort of pattern. Still, identifying the pattern helps identify the causes I suppose.
But it staggers me that we can study these things till the cows come home and not do anything about simple causes, like poverty and lack of education. Sod these "interesting" studies, those things are no-brainers that we, as a society, fail to provide to our fellow humans.
We should be beyond judging whether someone *deserves* a good education and the basics of life.
This guy was the definition of team player.
And, ironically, despite the brain damage, more interested in science than the average person.