This is a problem best solved with a severe (but non-fatal and non-permanently injurious) beating by one of the family members of the victim. That punishment is both less harsh and likely much more effective than having your activity on the Internet be severely restricted and monitored for years on end.
I've encountered people willing to do this kind of thing before. They seem to think that everything that happens on the Internet is just a harmless game and that anybody who's feelings are hurt is just being overly sensitive and deserves the pain caused. Some in-person exposure to the raw emotions this kind of nastiness creates is probably the surest antidote.
If non-ionizing radiation activated a part of the brain that made that person *think* they were experiencing physical effects, does it matter if the effects are physically happening?
Yes, it does. Because it affects what we should be treating. These people act like it's a problem with the world that there's all of this radio-frequency radiation out there that they are somehow incredibly sensitive to. The problem isn't with the world. It's firmly located right between their ears. If they fixed that problem everybody (including themselves) would be a lot happier.
Any decentralized group is going to have moments where some individuals will have a popular vision or best communicate or best organize RISE TO THE TOP but that does not make them leaders. If everybody was the leader the group wouldn't function; there is no formal leadership just those who take up positions needing to be filled - the highly successful or popular end up becoming leaders but such groups are not built upon those individuals and can sustain the loss. MLK wasn't the leader of the civil rights movement, he didn't start it either; he was just one who rose up above the others because of his communication skills to grab the nation's attention. Useful but non-essential and he himself knew this; despite the warped monument seems to project...(he'd not want it focused so much upon him...again, we repeat the mistake...)
Reading missives from the FBI on Anonymous is like watching those poor people with the loaded for bear spaceship bearing down on The Festival in Singularity Sky by Charles Stross, as if somehow superior weaponry was the answer.
The only clueful thing in that document is when they say that actual deaths resulting from the attacks would likely have a very negative effect on Anonymous, which is likely true. Deaths of Anonymous members may or may not have an effect. If those deaths are caused by the FBI or other agent of a government, I would expect that to have a galvanizing effect.
There are other ways of disrupting Anonymous that I won't go into here. But taking out the 'leaders' isn't likely to accomplish a great deal.
I can't find a reference, but I seem to remember my psychology class covering people that could get skin burns because they were touched with a piece of metal that they *thought* was hot, but really wasn't. If the mind can do that, it seems plausible it could cause other symptoms.
Yes, the brain of someone convinced of a fallacy regarding their health is capable of making them feel all kinds of symptoms. But it wasn't the piece of metal that caused the skin burns.
He's been free for a long time, and I haven't seen any of those products. Near as I can tell he's become a relatively well respected security researcher specializing in pen-testing. And given his history, I expect him to be fairly good at that job.
People who have the attitude you seem to portray confuse me. You believe its your right to purchase a gaming device which happens to be quite capable as a computer with some modifications and hope the company that sold it will support you doing so despite having lost money on the sale?
I believe that it's my right to do whatever I please with the stuff I supposedly own. As soon as that's not the case, corporate power has reached too far into my home.
The PS3 was released, like many gaming consoles, at a loss, because they were sold on the presumption that the consumer would buy games to play on their gaming device, which would compensate for said loss. As someone outside that standard circle of gaming users, I don't see how you believe your specific needs should be met.
Yeah, and when I buy stock I generally hope it goes up in price too. Just because it doesn't doesn't mean I have the right to sue the person I bought the stock from. Sony's desires regarding how people use the hardware that Sony sells them don't require that people use the hardware in that way. Just because I bought a cuecat scanner doesn't mean I have to use their software or scan their little marketing messages.
Besides, that's completely and totally irrelevant to the question of whether or not Sony is customer hostile or not. And has absolutely nothing to do with the original point of my post. I don't understand why you want to bring up irrelevant side discussions as if somehow you've made a telling point when in reality it's like trying to claim that because I think capital punishment is wrong, I have no right to claim that Ted Bundy is a horrible example of humanity.
Go ride your personal little hobby horse somewhere else.
And that is relevant to the discussion in what way? Does the fact I can avoid being their customer make them any less customer hostile than before? You sound like some kind of weird libertarian chatbot who has a set of canned lines they spout off when anyone sounds like they're complaining about something.
I'm not an X-Box fanboy. I refuse to own one, for similar reasons to the reasons I so intensely dislike the PS3.
My PS3 is a full computer. I should be able to treat it as such. The fact that it's so hard means that there is a ridiculous level of DRM attempting to control my behavior. The same goes for the X-Box.
The same goes for the Wii BTW.
I think these game 'appliances' are all about controlling the behavior of the consumer so it maximally profits the corporations who own the hardware. It's wrong. Sony, Ninetendo, and Microsoft are all equally guilty, and I have no sympathy for any of them complaining about the 'anti-competitive practices' of the other. They are all so far in the wrong that it makes not one tiny bit of sense to say that one is more in the right.
Yeah, and then they remove features after they've sold you the hardware, and it's fatally crippled by insane DRM that treats you as if you're a suspect instead of the device's owner.
I can't see this as anything other than one giant who uses customer hostile strategies to profit complaining about another giant using customer hostile strategies to accomplish the same goal. Boo hoo, poor Sony.
Do you think maybe you're taking it a little personally? I mean really, whatever the pluses or minuses or this, it may be a ridiculous bureaucracy or a bit of a hassle or just no fun but Google really aren't 'attacking' your friends for having unusual names.
What else do you call it when you account is suspended (such a punitive word) and you have to go through a whole bunch of rigamarole and backflips in order to prove that your name really is the right name? And even then it might not come back. It certainly feels like an attack to them.
Imagine you were standing around talking in a club with friends, and some bouncer came up to you, separated you from your friends and said "I don't think you gave me your real name at the door, that name sounds funny, I don't think that's the name you go by at all. So prove it to me!". That would certainly feel like an attack to me.
No, no it doesn't help me feel 'safe'. In fact, it does very much the opposite. It makes me feel like my friends are being forcibly outed. It makes me feel like they're being attacked for having unusual names. It makes me feel like they're being attacked for using the name I knew them by because that name is kind of unusual and doesn't show up on their driver's license.
I'm tempted to just drop anybody who signs up for this scheme in protest.
Interestingly, the GPL places no restrictions on reusing and charging; as long as you comply with the requirements to make the source available, you can charge what you want.
I wish more software under the GPL had a pay-for-download option. Especially software in the Android marketplace. I would like to help the authors continue to make improvements and more good software. But almost invariably software that actually complies with the Open Source definition (and especially GPL software) is only available for free.
When I diagnose someone's computer, or a problem they're having, I go out of my way to make sure that they know the knowledge I have doesn't make me more or better than they are. When I hear people complaining that something doesn't work, my reaction isn't "Oh, they just aren't using it right, and if everybody else heard what they said they'd think the software was garbage, and it isn't!", it's to listen to them and try to figure out what their problem is.
I may have a great deal of specialized knowledge and experience, but that doesn't mean I'm any better or more worthy than they are. We are partners, and part of my job is educating them without making them feel like I think they're stupid for not knowing something, because they aren't. No more than I'm stupid for not knowing a piece of medical jargon.
Medicine and IT are different fields in some respects as well. If I'm working with a computer, there is very definite and well-understood reason why something is or isn't working. With medical problems, that luxury doesn't exist. People can and will have strange side effects from a particular drug. They will come up with (on their own) off-label uses. And there is nothing that can be done to prove that they're wrong, or that their off-label use is fallacious. All you can do is point to statistics, and while they're helpful, they don't explain what's going on, they just suggest what outcomes are likely.
I don't know... I don't disagree with you, but I also suspect that I've not explained my point well enough because you've only come at it obliquely. The humanization thing is part of it.
What's going on here is that the medical industry absolutely detests the idea that people might have a better idea about things than doctors. I'm not saying that a doctor's training and knowledge are useless. What I am saying is that people's individual experiences are also very important.
It's high time, in my opinion, that doctors and the medical industry in general got off its high horse and started dealing with people as equals.
In this case significant portions of the converter are written in Python, and it's not clear (from their released bag of garbage masquerading as source code) that they don't 'link' to it (i.e. import the Python modules in their own code). Also, even if they did, they still have to provide the code for the version of the converter they're using, and they haven't even done that.
I investigated, and no, the released 'source code' is not really source code at all, and certainly not what is required to be compliant with the GPLv3.
So lambasting the OP for accepting the original authors word on this is a bit of an exercise in douchebaggery anyway, in this case you're also quite laugh worthy because the original author happens to be absolutely correct.
I'm one of the people who says that. And I agree with you. This isn't theft. It's a copyright violation.
Just because I think calling copyright violation 'theft' is highly misleading doesn't mean that I don't think copyright should exist. And this case, someone repackaging someone else's work in order to make a profit, is a case I think is clearly wrong.
Well, the difference is: people pirating movies aren't trying to make a profit out of it.
(Whereas the GPL basically exists to stop people from making a profit out of something;) )
I wish that misconception would go away. I really wish, for example, that the Android marketplace would tell you when an app met the Open Source definition. I would feel much better about installing it then. And I would even pay for those apps from the Marketplace.
That's a really interesting question. And I think one of the few ways patents could be validly applied to software.
Copyright and patent are supposed to be a trade, the public gives up a right in order to get a public good.
In this case, the public good is the source code. The right we give might be something like copyright or patent. If you want some sort of protection against your software being treated as being in the public domain, then you will put the source code for that software on file, and it will be released in 5 years when your protection expires.
That's a kind of grant of government monopoly I could actually get behind.
Of course, it encourages the creation of trojan horses. Software that you _want_ to have distributed widely and freely so that you can infect as many computers as possible with code that does stuff the owners of those computers would be angry about if they knew before they installed it.
I'm not sure how to protect against that. Maybe that would be a reason people would choose work under copyright or with available source over other stuff? I know that's a big part of the reason I have a huge preference for Open Source software.
I saw that post, and that makes a lot more sense.:-) And while it still seems like it'd be hard to do, it at least does not seem physically impossible.
This is not, strictly speaking, true. If you had a gamma ray laser you might be able to affect how a nucleus decayed. The real issue is that none of the lasers we have have a high enough frequency to affect an atomic nucleus.
And pouring on more light won't help. It needs to be quantized so each little packet that could potentially absorbed has an energy level that allows it to interact with the thing doing the absorbing.
So, in all practicality you are correct, but in theory you are not.
Every home with an atomic pile! Atomic cars! It's the 50's atomic utopia!
So, what's the thorium turn into once it's been used? That's one big question. How much radioactivity does it generate and what kinds when it is being used? And will we ever get over the fright of people having 'nuclear cars'? Will it be much worse for someone to be in possession of 8 grams of thorium than a truckload of fertilizer and some diesel fuel?
Talk about blind faith in a shattered concept. Here's to hoping the depths of Obama's incompetence don't transcend Jimmy Carter's.
I note, with interest, that while you bring up several valid points and things I am very concerned about myself, you are making assumptions that the grandparent's author has stated that (s)he doesn't believe any of those things h(im/er)self.
So, your post is simply a distraction from the actual point, and actually about your own issues, and has nothing to do with the grandparent post at all. This makes you look like a rabid idiot. And so I strongly question a few of the things you talk about and provide no documentation for because the nature of your post destroys your credibility.
And there is no clear way to have 'focus follows mouse' either. I was able to install something before that gave me a config option for that, but no longer.
This is a problem best solved with a severe (but non-fatal and non-permanently injurious) beating by one of the family members of the victim. That punishment is both less harsh and likely much more effective than having your activity on the Internet be severely restricted and monitored for years on end.
I've encountered people willing to do this kind of thing before. They seem to think that everything that happens on the Internet is just a harmless game and that anybody who's feelings are hurt is just being overly sensitive and deserves the pain caused. Some in-person exposure to the raw emotions this kind of nastiness creates is probably the surest antidote.
You are what you experience.
If non-ionizing radiation activated a part of the brain that made that person *think* they were experiencing physical effects, does it matter if the effects are physically happening?
Yes, it does. Because it affects what we should be treating. These people act like it's a problem with the world that there's all of this radio-frequency radiation out there that they are somehow incredibly sensitive to. The problem isn't with the world. It's firmly located right between their ears. If they fixed that problem everybody (including themselves) would be a lot happier.
Any decentralized group is going to have moments where some individuals will have a popular vision or best communicate or best organize RISE TO THE TOP but that does not make them leaders. If everybody was the leader the group wouldn't function; there is no formal leadership just those who take up positions needing to be filled - the highly successful or popular end up becoming leaders but such groups are not built upon those individuals and can sustain the loss. MLK wasn't the leader of the civil rights movement, he didn't start it either; he was just one who rose up above the others because of his communication skills to grab the nation's attention. Useful but non-essential and he himself knew this; despite the warped monument seems to project...(he'd not want it focused so much upon him...again, we repeat the mistake...)
Reading missives from the FBI on Anonymous is like watching those poor people with the loaded for bear spaceship bearing down on The Festival in Singularity Sky by Charles Stross, as if somehow superior weaponry was the answer.
The only clueful thing in that document is when they say that actual deaths resulting from the attacks would likely have a very negative effect on Anonymous, which is likely true. Deaths of Anonymous members may or may not have an effect. If those deaths are caused by the FBI or other agent of a government, I would expect that to have a galvanizing effect.
There are other ways of disrupting Anonymous that I won't go into here. But taking out the 'leaders' isn't likely to accomplish a great deal.
I can't find a reference, but I seem to remember my psychology class covering people that could get skin burns because they were touched with a piece of metal that they *thought* was hot, but really wasn't. If the mind can do that, it seems plausible it could cause other symptoms.
Yes, the brain of someone convinced of a fallacy regarding their health is capable of making them feel all kinds of symptoms. But it wasn't the piece of metal that caused the skin burns.
He's been free for a long time, and I haven't seen any of those products. Near as I can tell he's become a relatively well respected security researcher specializing in pen-testing. And given his history, I expect him to be fairly good at that job.
People who have the attitude you seem to portray confuse me. You believe its your right to purchase a gaming device which happens to be quite capable as a computer with some modifications and hope the company that sold it will support you doing so despite having lost money on the sale?
I believe that it's my right to do whatever I please with the stuff I supposedly own. As soon as that's not the case, corporate power has reached too far into my home.
The PS3 was released, like many gaming consoles, at a loss, because they were sold on the presumption that the consumer would buy games to play on their gaming device, which would compensate for said loss. As someone outside that standard circle of gaming users, I don't see how you believe your specific needs should be met.
Yeah, and when I buy stock I generally hope it goes up in price too. Just because it doesn't doesn't mean I have the right to sue the person I bought the stock from. Sony's desires regarding how people use the hardware that Sony sells them don't require that people use the hardware in that way. Just because I bought a cuecat scanner doesn't mean I have to use their software or scan their little marketing messages.
Besides, that's completely and totally irrelevant to the question of whether or not Sony is customer hostile or not. And has absolutely nothing to do with the original point of my post. I don't understand why you want to bring up irrelevant side discussions as if somehow you've made a telling point when in reality it's like trying to claim that because I think capital punishment is wrong, I have no right to claim that Ted Bundy is a horrible example of humanity.
Go ride your personal little hobby horse somewhere else.
And that is relevant to the discussion in what way? Does the fact I can avoid being their customer make them any less customer hostile than before? You sound like some kind of weird libertarian chatbot who has a set of canned lines they spout off when anyone sounds like they're complaining about something.
I'm not an X-Box fanboy. I refuse to own one, for similar reasons to the reasons I so intensely dislike the PS3.
My PS3 is a full computer. I should be able to treat it as such. The fact that it's so hard means that there is a ridiculous level of DRM attempting to control my behavior. The same goes for the X-Box.
The same goes for the Wii BTW.
I think these game 'appliances' are all about controlling the behavior of the consumer so it maximally profits the corporations who own the hardware. It's wrong. Sony, Ninetendo, and Microsoft are all equally guilty, and I have no sympathy for any of them complaining about the 'anti-competitive practices' of the other. They are all so far in the wrong that it makes not one tiny bit of sense to say that one is more in the right.
Yeah, and then they remove features after they've sold you the hardware, and it's fatally crippled by insane DRM that treats you as if you're a suspect instead of the device's owner.
I can't see this as anything other than one giant who uses customer hostile strategies to profit complaining about another giant using customer hostile strategies to accomplish the same goal. Boo hoo, poor Sony.
Do you think maybe you're taking it a little personally? I mean really, whatever the pluses or minuses or this, it may be a ridiculous bureaucracy or a bit of a hassle or just no fun but Google really aren't 'attacking' your friends for having unusual names.
What else do you call it when you account is suspended (such a punitive word) and you have to go through a whole bunch of rigamarole and backflips in order to prove that your name really is the right name? And even then it might not come back. It certainly feels like an attack to them.
Imagine you were standing around talking in a club with friends, and some bouncer came up to you, separated you from your friends and said "I don't think you gave me your real name at the door, that name sounds funny, I don't think that's the name you go by at all. So prove it to me!". That would certainly feel like an attack to me.
No, no it doesn't help me feel 'safe'. In fact, it does very much the opposite. It makes me feel like my friends are being forcibly outed. It makes me feel like they're being attacked for having unusual names. It makes me feel like they're being attacked for using the name I knew them by because that name is kind of unusual and doesn't show up on their driver's license.
I'm tempted to just drop anybody who signs up for this scheme in protest.
Interestingly, the GPL places no restrictions on reusing and charging; as long as you comply with the requirements to make the source available, you can charge what you want.
I wish more software under the GPL had a pay-for-download option. Especially software in the Android marketplace. I would like to help the authors continue to make improvements and more good software. But almost invariably software that actually complies with the Open Source definition (and especially GPL software) is only available for free.
When I diagnose someone's computer, or a problem they're having, I go out of my way to make sure that they know the knowledge I have doesn't make me more or better than they are. When I hear people complaining that something doesn't work, my reaction isn't "Oh, they just aren't using it right, and if everybody else heard what they said they'd think the software was garbage, and it isn't!", it's to listen to them and try to figure out what their problem is.
I may have a great deal of specialized knowledge and experience, but that doesn't mean I'm any better or more worthy than they are. We are partners, and part of my job is educating them without making them feel like I think they're stupid for not knowing something, because they aren't. No more than I'm stupid for not knowing a piece of medical jargon.
Medicine and IT are different fields in some respects as well. If I'm working with a computer, there is very definite and well-understood reason why something is or isn't working. With medical problems, that luxury doesn't exist. People can and will have strange side effects from a particular drug. They will come up with (on their own) off-label uses. And there is nothing that can be done to prove that they're wrong, or that their off-label use is fallacious. All you can do is point to statistics, and while they're helpful, they don't explain what's going on, they just suggest what outcomes are likely.
I don't know... I don't disagree with you, but I also suspect that I've not explained my point well enough because you've only come at it obliquely. The humanization thing is part of it.
What's going on here is that the medical industry absolutely detests the idea that people might have a better idea about things than doctors. I'm not saying that a doctor's training and knowledge are useless. What I am saying is that people's individual experiences are also very important.
It's high time, in my opinion, that doctors and the medical industry in general got off its high horse and started dealing with people as equals.
In this case significant portions of the converter are written in Python, and it's not clear (from their released bag of garbage masquerading as source code) that they don't 'link' to it (i.e. import the Python modules in their own code). Also, even if they did, they still have to provide the code for the version of the converter they're using, and they haven't even done that.
I investigated, and no, the released 'source code' is not really source code at all, and certainly not what is required to be compliant with the GPLv3.
So lambasting the OP for accepting the original authors word on this is a bit of an exercise in douchebaggery anyway, in this case you're also quite laugh worthy because the original author happens to be absolutely correct.
I'm one of the people who says that. And I agree with you. This isn't theft. It's a copyright violation.
Just because I think calling copyright violation 'theft' is highly misleading doesn't mean that I don't think copyright should exist. And this case, someone repackaging someone else's work in order to make a profit, is a case I think is clearly wrong.
Well, the difference is: people pirating movies aren't trying to make a profit out of it. ;) )
(Whereas the GPL basically exists to stop people from making a profit out of something
I wish that misconception would go away. I really wish, for example, that the Android marketplace would tell you when an app met the Open Source definition. I would feel much better about installing it then. And I would even pay for those apps from the Marketplace.
That's a really interesting question. And I think one of the few ways patents could be validly applied to software.
Copyright and patent are supposed to be a trade, the public gives up a right in order to get a public good.
In this case, the public good is the source code. The right we give might be something like copyright or patent. If you want some sort of protection against your software being treated as being in the public domain, then you will put the source code for that software on file, and it will be released in 5 years when your protection expires.
That's a kind of grant of government monopoly I could actually get behind.
Of course, it encourages the creation of trojan horses. Software that you _want_ to have distributed widely and freely so that you can infect as many computers as possible with code that does stuff the owners of those computers would be angry about if they knew before they installed it.
I'm not sure how to protect against that. Maybe that would be a reason people would choose work under copyright or with available source over other stuff? I know that's a big part of the reason I have a huge preference for Open Source software.
I saw that post, and that makes a lot more sense. :-) And while it still seems like it'd be hard to do, it at least does not seem physically impossible.
Radioactive decay can't be stimulated by lasers.
This is not, strictly speaking, true. If you had a gamma ray laser you might be able to affect how a nucleus decayed. The real issue is that none of the lasers we have have a high enough frequency to affect an atomic nucleus.
And pouring on more light won't help. It needs to be quantized so each little packet that could potentially absorbed has an energy level that allows it to interact with the thing doing the absorbing.
So, in all practicality you are correct, but in theory you are not.
Every home with an atomic pile! Atomic cars! It's the 50's atomic utopia!
So, what's the thorium turn into once it's been used? That's one big question. How much radioactivity does it generate and what kinds when it is being used? And will we ever get over the fright of people having 'nuclear cars'? Will it be much worse for someone to be in possession of 8 grams of thorium than a truckload of fertilizer and some diesel fuel?
Talk about blind faith in a shattered concept. Here's to hoping the depths of Obama's incompetence don't transcend Jimmy Carter's.
I note, with interest, that while you bring up several valid points and things I am very concerned about myself, you are making assumptions that the grandparent's author has stated that (s)he doesn't believe any of those things h(im/er)self.
So, your post is simply a distraction from the actual point, and actually about your own issues, and has nothing to do with the grandparent post at all. This makes you look like a rabid idiot. And so I strongly question a few of the things you talk about and provide no documentation for because the nature of your post destroys your credibility.
And there is no clear way to have 'focus follows mouse' either. I was able to install something before that gave me a config option for that, but no longer.