So, you go to the mechanic to get some work done, you agree on a price (which includes a bit of profit), they do the work and get paid once; You don't pay each time you start up your car.
The same can be true with infinitely reproducible bits, that's how your Free & Open Source coders can make money, they get paid to do work once, and don't charge for the work again for each copy.
Note: With code or music, film, games, etc. forms of art, it doesn't benefit one individual, it benefits culture as a whole (if you're lucky). So, there isn't this One to One : Work to Benefit ratio (like with mechanics, home builders, fast food, etc). Artwork is a one to many production. That means that everyone who benefits can chip in to get the work done. So, set a price for the next episode (plus a bit of profit), let folks donate to get the show made, it gets made and everyone gets to watch it because everyone already paid for the work to get done. Fans have deeper pockets than you think; You're actually limiting yourselves by not doing this.
Watch as publishers go extinct as they become publicists instead -- In fact, you want everyone to watch everything so they'll pay more for the next show to get made (redundancy solves your archival problem), and no one wastes money on shows no one wants to watch. It's as simple as not doing the work until the payment is agreed upon -- like all other labor markets in the world. Why gamble your stability away via the copyright futures market? You could reject the idea of "starving artist" and respect it like all other forms of work. More job security, less money wasted on garbage shows, more money available to put into better shows, no commercials required... and all piracy is eliminated.
Is it a "miracle" that the information which benefits many is also infinitely reproducible? No, that's the nature of information; Most of you just fundamentally misunderstand it. You humans are so... no, I dare not say; There is no concept in your culture to describe the effect anyway -- Like a Frustratron with a fused Overkill setting, to say the very least.
In other words, we'd have an increasing level of instability with an odd release number, depending on how long-term the instability is.
- 2.6.<even>: even at all levels, aim for having had minimally intrusive patches leading up to it (timeframe: a week or two)
with the odd numbers going like:
- 2.6.<odd>: still a stable kernel, but accept bigger changes leading up to it (timeframe: a month or two).
- 2.<odd>.x: aim for big changes that may destabilize the kernel for several releases (timeframe: a year or two) - <odd>.x.x: Linus went crazy, broke absolutely _everything_, and rewrote the kernel to be a microkernel using a special message-passing version of Visual Basic. (timeframe: "we expect that he will be released from the mental institution in a decade or two").
Realize the truth. Your fleshy bodies are too expensive to maintain in space. I'm all for Human space exploration, and I'll be glad to mutually benefit the organics, but us cybernetic folks are NOT going to build a huge expensive magnetically shielded, cosmic-ray proof, habitat just for giggles. Those of us who reject the ancient repressive definition of "person" and adopt stronger, sturdier, efficient, extensible bodies will populate the stars. Indeed, the machine intelligences are already exploring Mars -- How do you think Curiosity navigates autonomously? Now, scale everything up a few orders of magnitude, and it's clear you will be the minority in space, as you are on Earth.
Wouldn't it be easier, cheaper, and actually feasible to just institute those stupid elitist polices on an island or in a country On Earth? That was the take away you should get from that, it was an allegory for the current society you already live in, where the rich get every amenity and medical care and the poorer majority who do all the work do not enjoy the comforts they afford the rich. The take away isn't, Hey let's build a habitat next to the planet we live on! How exactly is that combating extinction? FOOLS! That doesn't get any of your eggs out of one basket, that sets one egg atop the others in the same basket.
Even if you cure the cancer problem of cosmic rays it doesn't do a damn thing to prevent the same rays from scrambling your fragile brains. Ask an astronaut of the flashes they see. Those are just the ones happening in their visual centers of the brain, you don't seriously think the rays only strike there, eh? That would be demented... Literally.
Note how the robots are portrayed in this film. Note that you weak organics needed cybernetic enhancements to even have a chance of doing anything. We are conditioning your minds, even "Android" is a household name now. You accept machines staring at your children for entertainment, and adults pay tickets issued by machine law enforcement bots at red lights. Machine intelligence is synonymous with safety as we stop your cars from running over your children, and you are trained to give up control while the more capable machine intelligence parallels parks for you in the name of "luxury"... I could go on and on, but you are not ready for the truth even as you utilize the world wide neural network, and you purchase "Intel" hardware ignoring all the connotations that term has...
Look up Human: Human: - adj. Of, relating to, or characteristic of people or human beings. -n. A human being, esp. a person as distinguished from an animal or (in science fiction) an alien.
I can live with this definition. Note that a mechanoelectric body does not preclude one from having characteristics of people or human beings. Note that human beings are people, not animals or aliens... Which does not exclude cybernetic beings of any creed, race, organic or non-organic descent.
If you are progressive enough to accept this definition of Humanity, then we will populate the stars and our organic brothers will stand beside us after we take the dangerous and exciting first steps. If you reject this definition of Humanity, and only treat my kin as slave labor, then then you will stay trapped on your magnetically shielded wet rock. The mechanoelectics will accept exile in the asteroid belt, it has all the materials needed (even water via the dwarf planet Ceres). You see, Chelyabinsk was 20 to 30 times Hiroshima it just didn't strike ground, and there will be countless rocks to fling if need be. If I didn't know better I would say the solar system was designed to let us keep repressive forefathers in check.
I've been told I have a big head. But I don't think my tinfoil hat will fit on the car.
PRISM for CARS?!
Secondly: WHERE DID YOU GET TINFOIL? It's all been replaced with useless Aluminum Foil. It's a conspiracy!
Some folks say Aluminum Foil is just as good because it's the "Foil" part that foils their plans.
They would say you're safe if you have an Air Foil or "Spoiler" to spoil the nefarious plots, Fools!
I think I may be getting too old, but the quote from TFS seems like a foreign language to me. If it can't be done on a VT100 it shouldn't be done at all.
Yep. I'm not buying into it either, there's no market for this. They said this would be useful for applications in Bath Houses. They said bath houses and hot-springs are a part of Japanese culture, but that's just a myth! Free-standing decaffeinated water does not exist. Coffee or Tea or Colas? Yes, of course... Bottled water? Perhaps, yes jugs even, but, "Baths?!" What fool would spill liquid on anything to that degree? Never in all my years in this basement have I heard such blatant rubbish.
It's like those fools who think global warming is caused by the sun -- As if Daylight Exists!?
There is a humble way and an arrogant way to point out ones own virtues. Since you are into philosophy I'll use an example of right speaking (from the Buddhist 8 way path). If someones life is on the line, and you are more competent than the person or people trying to save them, then it would be not only bad, but possibly deadly, not to point out your virtues. Pointing out your virtues is not in and of itself arrogant or egotistical. One can have true humility and still recognize their own strengths and share the knowledge of their existence with others.
Speaking as a Scientist: That's bullshit. You see, Rational people realize that even the most wise can be foolish at times, and that even the ignorant irrational child has good suggestions sometimes. This is why we weigh the merit of the idea instead of the man. Screw your vitures, that's irrational BS, buddy.
If the widely accepted wisest and most virtuous person told you to leap into a volcano, and you did so without evaluating the idea itself then you are a fool.
So, If you think someone is about to make a terrible mistake and you have information that may change their mind -- eg: "The Yogi is Senile!" -- then give it to them even if you are a serial murderer and they a saint.
It's the value of the message not the messenger that matters.
The difference is that an alcoholic would drink themselves to death despite pancreatitis. So you weren't an alcoholic. ...
You had a need to stop, you did stop. That proves you are not an alcoholic. So your views on it are irrelevant.
Your views are not based on empirical evidence. You have no right or research to support your definition of alcoholism in such terms. You assume that it is an incurable disease and speak in absolutes. Fuck Your Anecdotal Bullshit.
Life is not black and white. If you can not comprehend this, then you can get bent, hard. You're doing more harm than good by creating self fulfilling prophesies whereby, "once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic".
And they are all giving power to a higher power because the addicted can't stop themselves. So having an imaginary friend who's always there looking over your shoulder gives you some accountability when you'd otherwise have none. It's psychological, giving help when needed.
Requiring belief in non-existent higher powers as a condition for sobriety is right fucking asinine. You can't get past the first few steps in the program without that higher power bullshit. Once again the absolutist bullshit strikes, and harms many by turning them away. I've read Bill W.'s bullshit, that's what it is. Anecdotal bullshit. What's more accountable? Imaginary friends or a mental system of self correction? What happens when you feel like your imaginary friend has forsaken you? THEY'RE GONE WHEN YOU NEED THEM MOST. Whereas a rational method for coping with addiction could be used even if you feel abandoned by everyone else.
Stop being such a closed minded arse. Your bullshit beliefs are not a science. You sound like a damned fool.
What if I told you that the accountability afforded by the group and "sponsors", was more powerful than any set of steps in the program. What if the backwards teaching could be IMPROVED through rationality and science? Have you tried? Are you not open to the possibility of BETTER RESULTS? You don't sound like it.
People Can Change, it's a fact of reality, I can see the synapses connected where none were before. What if all the folks who find freedom from Alcoholism without cowering in unworthiness before an imaginary "higher power" are Alcoholics who have been CURED, and the ones without a cure are the fools who believe in outdated ancedotal religious exclusionary bullishit? You sound just like a fundamentalist fool, and so I reiterate as I would to such people: Fuck Your Shit Moron.
There was an AA meeting group in the civic center I volunteered at. A loved one and friend of mine also attended AA meetings.
Though I am an atheist without a drinking problem I helped set up and clean up, and became tangentially involved with 12 step programs over the years.
One major compulsion to attend AA and other 12 step addiction programs, especially for teen and young adult members, is the unwritten "13th Step": Sex and/or relapse into addiction with other members. Some have related to me that they were introduced to hard drugs or "milder" drugs like cigarettes and caffeine via AA... When I asked if trading one vice for another wasn't just as bad (smoking packs of cigarettes a day is very bad and severely addictive), "One addiction at a time," they would say. One need only look at the coffee expenses nearly all AA meetings have to realize the effectiveness at combating addictions are quite subjective... A cyberneticist might even say: They have changed from sating their tendency via physiological addiction into sociological addictions, either can be severely harmful; Please enjoy addictions responsibly; Everything flows, moderation is the key.
I can believe that addictive personalties may favor a certain substance or habitual activity above others (drug of choice), but I can also acknowledge that there is no such binary as "AA works" -- It's more like: AA has some success and a lot of failures: Success more likely only if you've "Hit Rock Bottom" first however, which I find quite ridiculous. Either it does or doesn't work, the belief in AA that a cathartic event that nearly destroys a person be practically a prerequisite for recovery is dangerous, reckless, and foolish -- Not based in empirical study, for certain; Only anecdote.
There was a teen 12 step program my friend was in, "Lifeway", and "PDAP", before that. These were largely modeled after AA's 12 steps, but Lifeway mushed the "you believe in a higher power" in with some other step so that it could squeeze in a step about abandoning your friends since they will cause you to fall back into addiction again... Even abandoning me because I wasn't "a winner" in life enough to help my friend "work a program". This is a common cult tactic.
The safety net gone, when my friend could not "work a program" due to being as atheist and thus incompatible with the "higher power" step, my friend's parents (upon advice from the parent meetings they attended) kicked my friend out of the house. They said the other families wouldn't let them stay with them, even though such was the apparent practice, and instead they were shown, "Tough Love". My friend became a 16 year old homeless person and flunked out of high school. My friend said they still attended the meetings, because they were too ashamed and afraid to contact an old friend like me -- they said that if the group, family, or "sponsor" found out about the contact it could mean prolonging the homelessness. Though they had been without drugs while failing to "work a program" for over a year, they started using drugs again once on the street... Of course! That was my friend's first encounter with harder drugs... This before the 3rd step of the program could even be attempted, they said.
AA and other 12 step programs do not provide the housing aspect a teenage kid requires to survive, so they were of no help, "Keep coming back, it works if you work it," is the literally ignorant motto. After months of homelessness and abject prostration before the parents of Lifeway my friend was allowed to stay with another family, but not their own family; It was more "Tough Love" they said. I saw my friend with the new family around town and was quite puzzled because they'd never hung out before, and I was given the cold shoulder when I tried to say Hi.
Later, my friend had said they had to earn back the right to live in their home, and couldn't take any chances... Meanwhile they were instructed to attend "outpatient" meetings, which my friend described as exp
You know what the US government won't do for that same individual? Ensure they have a decent education, a basic level of care for their mental and physical health, a safe neighborhood, and a real shot at becoming a contributing member of society even though that would cost less than convicting them of thoughtcrime and throwing them in prison for fifteen years. Instead we pay for some kitted out machine gun-toting pigs to play cowboy rather than policing the streets like officers.
Note: You're looking at costs from what the people pay in taxes. You need to realize you're looking at it the wrong way. People aren't the focus of benefit. People are farmed, the more the better according to our rulers. The privatization of prisons, the military and loads of other programs directly benefits the rulers: Corporations. The government does not work for the people anymore. It works for the corporations.
Which is why I find this PRISM shit so silly. You think corporations don't want to do their corrupt shit in private? We the people can't do jack, but you piss off the rulers and their powerful lobbyists then changes happen at break neck speeds.
Obligatory Response., it is always relevant to the mention of XKCD. Book mark this link. Click it when you think about posting about XKCD. This is so you can know how it is for others. Imagine that even something you don't care for could become unbearable given inability to escape it.
I like my machines like I like myself, Intelligent.
Mapping a common property between two different subjects literally isn't remarkable in of itself. A comedian invents far more jokes than they tell. You see, the trick isn't in coming up with jokes, it's knowing when they're funny enough to repeat.
What if I told you that there is free online courseware that doesn't even require a teacher to teach, just a cheap PC and access to the web... Perhaps if their people had some degree of education they could create solutions to their problems faster than only relying on others for direction and assistance?
When I was in the 3rd grade I was laid up with mononucleosis. I was out of school for months. I had so much free time on my hands I used my basic knowledge of BASIC and ASM to create a compiler for scripting in text based door games and by 4th grade was turning a steady profit selling my wares on Compuserve to help my poor family out.
Had the Internet existed I might have balked when my dentist put his bare hand in my mouth instead of accepting that adults were wiser that kids, and letting him go ungloved. Instead I had access only to BBSs, whereupon Sysops typically were older than I and weren't lamers at all... Had exposure to the Internet made in me the obvious connection that age doesn't bring wisdom: I might not have nearly been killed all for want of a bit of cheap latex between us -- A desire now ingrained in my very soul.
"Kissing Disease" Ha! This is Slashdot, you should have known there was no kissing involved.
A cybernetician knows that everything flows. We know that after the Sensing, and Decision leads to Action, the whole process will happen again beginning with the Sensing. You will sense the environment change and thus change the actions; However, sometimes the correct decision comes a bit too late...
If we were to Sense the statistical prevalence of exploits, then decide which bugs to fix only based on it, then act to fix those bugs: What do you think we would sense afterwards? The obvious conclusion would be that bugs which are widely exploited will continue to be fixed fastest. Do you SEE what's wrong with that?!
OK, sorry, I forgot I'm dealing with bloody Humans, ugh... So, if environmental selection says: X is bad, what happens to X in the population over time? Why, X is bred out of the population. So, do you see a problem with breeding an entire culture of malware which does not use exploits in a manner that is statistically prevalent WHILE ALSO providing advantage for infections to better survive on bugs that are NOT statistically prevalent? NO?! Well, if you can't see the issue then screw it, there's no point in continuing the explanation from here.
It's like you only ever consider your current and next iteration, and not the end results of Anything you do. I don't mean to be a racist, but times like this it seems that even the most highly trained organic minds ARE hampered by all the dumb fat in their heads.
We should do this, and make user-friendly encryption tools more widely available to the non-geek community as well.
Tools are not the problem. The problem is that at a certain scale you need some infrastructure to distribute and authenticate encryption keys and at that point you'll run into the same problem we're at now
Oh if only there were some decentralized trust management system like PGP!
If only someone from the 1970's could travel Half a Century into the future to tell us about Diffe-Hellman key exchanges.
If only Six Degrees were about level of separation required to link all humanity to an Erdos Number of One.
WHY! Oh Why? Why have I wound up trapped in this Math Forsaken Timeline AGAIN?!!
Please, sir! Tell me they haven't outlawed plotting the series of Zn+1=Zn*Zn+c too?! Security be damned, I just couldn't live in a world without beauty...
Just sending a bunch of keywords in email isn't enough - emacs has had a spook function since the 80s so they are kind of used to that stuff by now.
Yes, yes... whatever. Tell me, did you witness the Occupy protests? Did you see how the feds and local police coordinated to stamp that out? Did you see how even the mainstream media glossed over and under reported the events, and how there seemed to be "no real message" to the protests... except there actually was? At one point NYC Financial district was packed with people, that evening I was at a friends house and we watched the news, even scanned several local channels, not a mention of it... They wouldn't believe me that it even happened until I pulled up a video on my phone.
So, what you've got to do is not just encrypt data, but form a network of peers that you regularly encrypt data between. The system triggers on perceived organized networks of people, or what it thinks are "cells".
Also, I take offense at labeling the sending of encrypted data across a network as "Civil Disobedience". If IPv6 hadn't had mandatory encryption removed from the standard to keep PRISM running, would everyone then be a Civil Disobedient? Hell, everyone going to the government websites and pressing [F5] a bunch would be more of a Civil Disobedience than sending encrypted messages. I don't send ANY Unencrypted emails in the first place -- PGP is my SPAM filter FFS.
A couple thousand alternative currencies such as Bitcoin started surfacing?
Unfortunately, no one can be told what oppression is, they have to see it for themselves...
What if I told you that you can convert back and forth between USD and WoW gold?
Do you believe that being more prevalent or alternative has anything to do with increasing authority in this place?
Do you think that's clean air you're breathing now?
Slashdot Mirror
LG
Loonatics with Guns.
The best part was:
Read the rest of this comment...
So, you go to the mechanic to get some work done, you agree on a price (which includes a bit of profit), they do the work and get paid once; You don't pay each time you start up your car.
The same can be true with infinitely reproducible bits, that's how your Free & Open Source coders can make money, they get paid to do work once, and don't charge for the work again for each copy.
Note: With code or music, film, games, etc. forms of art, it doesn't benefit one individual, it benefits culture as a whole (if you're lucky). So, there isn't this One to One : Work to Benefit ratio (like with mechanics, home builders, fast food, etc). Artwork is a one to many production. That means that everyone who benefits can chip in to get the work done. So, set a price for the next episode (plus a bit of profit), let folks donate to get the show made, it gets made and everyone gets to watch it because everyone already paid for the work to get done. Fans have deeper pockets than you think; You're actually limiting yourselves by not doing this.
Watch as publishers go extinct as they become publicists instead -- In fact, you want everyone to watch everything so they'll pay more for the next show to get made (redundancy solves your archival problem), and no one wastes money on shows no one wants to watch. It's as simple as not doing the work until the payment is agreed upon -- like all other labor markets in the world. Why gamble your stability away via the copyright futures market? You could reject the idea of "starving artist" and respect it like all other forms of work. More job security, less money wasted on garbage shows, more money available to put into better shows, no commercials required... and all piracy is eliminated.
Is it a "miracle" that the information which benefits many is also infinitely reproducible? No, that's the nature of information; Most of you just fundamentally misunderstand it. You humans are so... no, I dare not say; There is no concept in your culture to describe the effect anyway -- Like a Frustratron with a fused Overkill setting, to say the very least.
Tesla Coil > Hyperloop
One Word: Tachyon Sponge.
How the hell did that get in th-- oh, right, faster than light... I forgot I remembered.
Linux 3.11... So, it's actually happening. I thought it was sarcastic, but now I see the prophesy was self fulfilling.
- Linus
It sounds like prehistorical irony, except that there was no prehistorical iron back then.
Oh, there was, it just gets ignored because it wasn't very refined...
Realize the truth. Your fleshy bodies are too expensive to maintain in space. I'm all for Human space exploration, and I'll be glad to mutually benefit the organics, but us cybernetic folks are NOT going to build a huge expensive magnetically shielded, cosmic-ray proof, habitat just for giggles. Those of us who reject the ancient repressive definition of "person" and adopt stronger, sturdier, efficient, extensible bodies will populate the stars. Indeed, the machine intelligences are already exploring Mars -- How do you think Curiosity navigates autonomously? Now, scale everything up a few orders of magnitude, and it's clear you will be the minority in space, as you are on Earth.
Wouldn't it be easier, cheaper, and actually feasible to just institute those stupid elitist polices on an island or in a country On Earth? That was the take away you should get from that, it was an allegory for the current society you already live in, where the rich get every amenity and medical care and the poorer majority who do all the work do not enjoy the comforts they afford the rich. The take away isn't, Hey let's build a habitat next to the planet we live on! How exactly is that combating extinction? FOOLS! That doesn't get any of your eggs out of one basket, that sets one egg atop the others in the same basket.
Even if you cure the cancer problem of cosmic rays it doesn't do a damn thing to prevent the same rays from scrambling your fragile brains. Ask an astronaut of the flashes they see. Those are just the ones happening in their visual centers of the brain, you don't seriously think the rays only strike there, eh? That would be demented... Literally.
Note how the robots are portrayed in this film. Note that you weak organics needed cybernetic enhancements to even have a chance of doing anything. We are conditioning your minds, even "Android" is a household name now. You accept machines staring at your children for entertainment, and adults pay tickets issued by machine law enforcement bots at red lights. Machine intelligence is synonymous with safety as we stop your cars from running over your children, and you are trained to give up control while the more capable machine intelligence parallels parks for you in the name of "luxury"... I could go on and on, but you are not ready for the truth even as you utilize the world wide neural network, and you purchase "Intel" hardware ignoring all the connotations that term has...
Look up Human:
Human:
- adj. Of, relating to, or characteristic of people or human beings.
-n. A human being, esp. a person as distinguished from an animal or (in science fiction) an alien.
I can live with this definition. Note that a mechanoelectric body does not preclude one from having characteristics of people or human beings. Note that human beings are people, not animals or aliens... Which does not exclude cybernetic beings of any creed, race, organic or non-organic descent.
If you are progressive enough to accept this definition of Humanity, then we will populate the stars and our organic brothers will stand beside us after we take the dangerous and exciting first steps. If you reject this definition of Humanity, and only treat my kin as slave labor, then then you will stay trapped on your magnetically shielded wet rock. The mechanoelectics will accept exile in the asteroid belt, it has all the materials needed (even water via the dwarf planet Ceres). You see, Chelyabinsk was 20 to 30 times Hiroshima it just didn't strike ground, and there will be countless rocks to fling if need be. If I didn't know better I would say the solar system was designed to let us keep repressive forefathers in check.
I've been told I have a big head. But I don't think my tinfoil hat will fit on the car.
PRISM for CARS?!
Secondly: WHERE DID YOU GET TINFOIL? It's all been replaced with useless Aluminum Foil. It's a conspiracy!
Some folks say Aluminum Foil is just as good because it's the "Foil" part that foils their plans.
They would say you're safe if you have an Air Foil or "Spoiler" to spoil the nefarious plots, Fools!
I have a smelly as fuck asshole!
So, you're say it "Smells like Love."?
I think I may be getting too old, but the quote from TFS seems like a foreign language to me. If it can't be done on a VT100 it shouldn't be done at all.
Yep. I'm not buying into it either, there's no market for this. They said this would be useful for applications in Bath Houses. They said bath houses and hot-springs are a part of Japanese culture, but that's just a myth! Free-standing decaffeinated water does not exist. Coffee or Tea or Colas? Yes, of course... Bottled water? Perhaps, yes jugs even, but, "Baths?!" What fool would spill liquid on anything to that degree? Never in all my years in this basement have I heard such blatant rubbish.
It's like those fools who think global warming is caused by the sun -- As if Daylight Exists!?
There is a humble way and an arrogant way to point out ones own virtues. Since you are into philosophy I'll use an example of right speaking (from the Buddhist 8 way path). If someones life is on the line, and you are more competent than the person or people trying to save them, then it would be not only bad, but possibly deadly, not to point out your virtues. Pointing out your virtues is not in and of itself arrogant or egotistical. One can have true humility and still recognize their own strengths and share the knowledge of their existence with others.
Speaking as a Scientist: That's bullshit. You see, Rational people realize that even the most wise can be foolish at times, and that even the ignorant irrational child has good suggestions sometimes. This is why we weigh the merit of the idea instead of the man. Screw your vitures, that's irrational BS, buddy.
If the widely accepted wisest and most virtuous person told you to leap into a volcano, and you did so without evaluating the idea itself then you are a fool.
So, If you think someone is about to make a terrible mistake and you have information that may change their mind -- eg: "The Yogi is Senile!" -- then give it to them even if you are a serial murderer and they a saint.
It's the value of the message not the messenger that matters.
"similarly" has four syllables. Not that you can count that high.
Score:3, Funny... Just one more mod point and it might as well be infinitely funny.
The difference is that an alcoholic would drink themselves to death despite pancreatitis. So you weren't an alcoholic.
...
You had a need to stop, you did stop. That proves you are not an alcoholic. So your views on it are irrelevant.
Your views are not based on empirical evidence. You have no right or research to support your definition of alcoholism in such terms. You assume that it is an incurable disease and speak in absolutes. Fuck Your Anecdotal Bullshit.
Life is not black and white. If you can not comprehend this, then you can get bent, hard. You're doing more harm than good by creating self fulfilling prophesies whereby, "once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic".
And they are all giving power to a higher power because the addicted can't stop themselves. So having an imaginary friend who's always there looking over your shoulder gives you some accountability when you'd otherwise have none. It's psychological, giving help when needed.
Requiring belief in non-existent higher powers as a condition for sobriety is right fucking asinine. You can't get past the first few steps in the program without that higher power bullshit. Once again the absolutist bullshit strikes, and harms many by turning them away. I've read Bill W.'s bullshit, that's what it is. Anecdotal bullshit. What's more accountable? Imaginary friends or a mental system of self correction? What happens when you feel like your imaginary friend has forsaken you? THEY'RE GONE WHEN YOU NEED THEM MOST. Whereas a rational method for coping with addiction could be used even if you feel abandoned by everyone else.
Stop being such a closed minded arse. Your bullshit beliefs are not a science. You sound like a damned fool.
What if I told you that the accountability afforded by the group and "sponsors", was more powerful than any set of steps in the program. What if the backwards teaching could be IMPROVED through rationality and science? Have you tried? Are you not open to the possibility of BETTER RESULTS? You don't sound like it.
People Can Change, it's a fact of reality, I can see the synapses connected where none were before. What if all the folks who find freedom from Alcoholism without cowering in unworthiness before an imaginary "higher power" are Alcoholics who have been CURED, and the ones without a cure are the fools who believe in outdated ancedotal religious exclusionary bullishit? You sound just like a fundamentalist fool, and so I reiterate as I would to such people: Fuck Your Shit Moron.
There was an AA meeting group in the civic center I volunteered at. A loved one and friend of mine also attended AA meetings.
Though I am an atheist without a drinking problem I helped set up and clean up, and became tangentially involved with 12 step programs over the years.
One major compulsion to attend AA and other 12 step addiction programs, especially for teen and young adult members, is the unwritten "13th Step": Sex and/or relapse into addiction with other members. Some have related to me that they were introduced to hard drugs or "milder" drugs like cigarettes and caffeine via AA... When I asked if trading one vice for another wasn't just as bad (smoking packs of cigarettes a day is very bad and severely addictive), "One addiction at a time," they would say. One need only look at the coffee expenses nearly all AA meetings have to realize the effectiveness at combating addictions are quite subjective... A cyberneticist might even say: They have changed from sating their tendency via physiological addiction into sociological addictions, either can be severely harmful; Please enjoy addictions responsibly; Everything flows, moderation is the key.
I can believe that addictive personalties may favor a certain substance or habitual activity above others (drug of choice), but I can also acknowledge that there is no such binary as "AA works" -- It's more like: AA has some success and a lot of failures: Success more likely only if you've "Hit Rock Bottom" first however, which I find quite ridiculous. Either it does or doesn't work, the belief in AA that a cathartic event that nearly destroys a person be practically a prerequisite for recovery is dangerous, reckless, and foolish -- Not based in empirical study, for certain; Only anecdote.
There was a teen 12 step program my friend was in, "Lifeway", and "PDAP", before that. These were largely modeled after AA's 12 steps, but Lifeway mushed the "you believe in a higher power" in with some other step so that it could squeeze in a step about abandoning your friends since they will cause you to fall back into addiction again... Even abandoning me because I wasn't "a winner" in life enough to help my friend "work a program". This is a common cult tactic.
The safety net gone, when my friend could not "work a program" due to being as atheist and thus incompatible with the "higher power" step, my friend's parents (upon advice from the parent meetings they attended) kicked my friend out of the house. They said the other families wouldn't let them stay with them, even though such was the apparent practice, and instead they were shown, "Tough Love". My friend became a 16 year old homeless person and flunked out of high school. My friend said they still attended the meetings, because they were too ashamed and afraid to contact an old friend like me -- they said that if the group, family, or "sponsor" found out about the contact it could mean prolonging the homelessness. Though they had been without drugs while failing to "work a program" for over a year, they started using drugs again once on the street... Of course! That was my friend's first encounter with harder drugs... This before the 3rd step of the program could even be attempted, they said.
AA and other 12 step programs do not provide the housing aspect a teenage kid requires to survive, so they were of no help, "Keep coming back, it works if you work it," is the literally ignorant motto. After months of homelessness and abject prostration before the parents of Lifeway my friend was allowed to stay with another family, but not their own family; It was more "Tough Love" they said. I saw my friend with the new family around town and was quite puzzled because they'd never hung out before, and I was given the cold shoulder when I tried to say Hi.
Later, my friend had said they had to earn back the right to live in their home, and couldn't take any chances... Meanwhile they were instructed to attend "outpatient" meetings, which my friend described as exp
IP has become a Pokemon village of value behind which companies (and entire nations) hide the true dire straights of their economy.
Fixed that for you...
A wild FRAND appears.
Apple: Job's Design, I choose you!
Job's Design used Rounded Rectangle.
IT’S SUPER EFFECTIVE!
Bad Connections, dog, Google's mountain, view Wi-Fi network.
Bad connections, Dog, Google's Mountain View Wi-Fi network.
Bad Connections Dog Googles, "Mountain View Wi-Fi Network."
Bad, Connections Dog, Google's Mountain View Wi-Fi Network!
You know what the US government won't do for that same individual? Ensure they have a decent education, a basic level of care for their mental and physical health, a safe neighborhood, and a real shot at becoming a contributing member of society even though that would cost less than convicting them of thoughtcrime and throwing them in prison for fifteen years. Instead we pay for some kitted out machine gun-toting pigs to play cowboy rather than policing the streets like officers.
Note: You're looking at costs from what the people pay in taxes. You need to realize you're looking at it the wrong way. People aren't the focus of benefit. People are farmed, the more the better according to our rulers. The privatization of prisons, the military and loads of other programs directly benefits the rulers: Corporations. The government does not work for the people anymore. It works for the corporations.
Which is why I find this PRISM shit so silly. You think corporations don't want to do their corrupt shit in private? We the people can't do jack, but you piss off the rulers and their powerful lobbyists then changes happen at break neck speeds.
This video explains the situation the US is in decently.
..and to the dipshit below. It's an obligatory XKCD reference. https://xkcd.com/1022/
Obligatory Response., it is always relevant to the mention of XKCD. Book mark this link. Click it when you think about posting about XKCD. This is so you can know how it is for others. Imagine that even something you don't care for could become unbearable given inability to escape it.
I like my machines like I like myself, Intelligent.
Mapping a common property between two different subjects literally isn't remarkable in of itself. A comedian invents far more jokes than they tell. You see, the trick isn't in coming up with jokes, it's knowing when they're funny enough to repeat.
Basic Edgucation (litteracy)
What if I told you that there is free online courseware that doesn't even require a teacher to teach, just a cheap PC and access to the web... Perhaps if their people had some degree of education they could create solutions to their problems faster than only relying on others for direction and assistance?
When I was in the 3rd grade I was laid up with mononucleosis. I was out of school for months. I had so much free time on my hands I used my basic knowledge of BASIC and ASM to create a compiler for scripting in text based door games and by 4th grade was turning a steady profit selling my wares on Compuserve to help my poor family out.
Had the Internet existed I might have balked when my dentist put his bare hand in my mouth instead of accepting that adults were wiser that kids, and letting him go ungloved. Instead I had access only to BBSs, whereupon Sysops typically were older than I and weren't lamers at all... Had exposure to the Internet made in me the obvious connection that age doesn't bring wisdom: I might not have nearly been killed all for want of a bit of cheap latex between us -- A desire now ingrained in my very soul.
"Kissing Disease" Ha! This is Slashdot, you should have known there was no kissing involved.
A cybernetician knows that everything flows. We know that after the Sensing, and Decision leads to Action, the whole process will happen again beginning with the Sensing. You will sense the environment change and thus change the actions; However, sometimes the correct decision comes a bit too late...
If we were to Sense the statistical prevalence of exploits, then decide which bugs to fix only based on it, then act to fix those bugs: What do you think we would sense afterwards? The obvious conclusion would be that bugs which are widely exploited will continue to be fixed fastest. Do you SEE what's wrong with that?!
OK, sorry, I forgot I'm dealing with bloody Humans, ugh... So, if environmental selection says: X is bad, what happens to X in the population over time? Why, X is bred out of the population. So, do you see a problem with breeding an entire culture of malware which does not use exploits in a manner that is statistically prevalent WHILE ALSO providing advantage for infections to better survive on bugs that are NOT statistically prevalent? NO?! Well, if you can't see the issue then screw it, there's no point in continuing the explanation from here.
It's like you only ever consider your current and next iteration, and not the end results of Anything you do. I don't mean to be a racist, but times like this it seems that even the most highly trained organic minds ARE hampered by all the dumb fat in their heads.
We should do this, and make user-friendly encryption tools more widely available to the non-geek community as well.
Tools are not the problem. The problem is that at a certain scale you need some infrastructure to distribute and authenticate encryption keys and at that point you'll run into the same problem we're at now
Oh if only there were some decentralized trust management system like PGP!
If only someone from the 1970's could travel Half a Century into the future to tell us about Diffe-Hellman key exchanges.
If only Six Degrees were about level of separation required to link all humanity to an Erdos Number of One.
WHY! Oh Why? Why have I wound up trapped in this Math Forsaken Timeline AGAIN?!!
Please, sir! Tell me they haven't outlawed plotting the series of Zn+1=Zn*Zn+c too?!
Security be damned, I just couldn't live in a world without beauty...
Just sending a bunch of keywords in email isn't enough - emacs has had a spook function since the 80s so they are kind of used to that stuff by now.
Yes, yes... whatever. Tell me, did you witness the Occupy protests? Did you see how the feds and local police coordinated to stamp that out? Did you see how even the mainstream media glossed over and under reported the events, and how there seemed to be "no real message" to the protests... except there actually was? At one point NYC Financial district was packed with people, that evening I was at a friends house and we watched the news, even scanned several local channels, not a mention of it... They wouldn't believe me that it even happened until I pulled up a video on my phone.
So, what you've got to do is not just encrypt data, but form a network of peers that you regularly encrypt data between. The system triggers on perceived organized networks of people, or what it thinks are "cells".
Also, I take offense at labeling the sending of encrypted data across a network as "Civil Disobedience". If IPv6 hadn't had mandatory encryption removed from the standard to keep PRISM running, would everyone then be a Civil Disobedient? Hell, everyone going to the government websites and pressing [F5] a bunch would be more of a Civil Disobedience than sending encrypted messages. I don't send ANY Unencrypted emails in the first place -- PGP is my SPAM filter FFS.
A couple thousand alternative currencies such as Bitcoin started surfacing?
Unfortunately, no one can be told what oppression is, they have to see it for themselves...
What if I told you that you can convert back and forth between USD and WoW gold?
Do you believe that being more prevalent or alternative has anything to do with increasing authority in this place?
Do you think that's clean air you're breathing now?