There is a FF extension called Distrust, which deletes your "Flash Cookies" on exit... I assume they're talking about the same thing here. It works with 3.
I don't think it's about money at all. This is kids we're talking about. It's about popularity. Football players give swirlies to nerdy math-majors in highschool, so they are popular and smart kids are not. Given that information (and keeping in mind that students think with the mind of a child), if you were a freshman in highschool, which option would pick (assuming you had the option)? I know that money can get you friends in school too but that comes from your parents, and "considering your future" doesn't exactly make you popular with the ladies.
I didn't RTFA, but I'm guessing when they attributed the issue to American culture, it wasn't referring to the teachers but to the students, and to a lesser degree, their parents. Paying teachers more probably won't help (though they should get paid more). I think the responsibility falls on the parents, who don't teach their children the importance of an education early enough. I also think parents don't spend enough time with children, which means the children listen to them less and are more likely to be affected by peer mentality, which, if unchecked, reduces children to the level of wild animals.
And I was just thinking how useful this would be on my phone... although it would probably just cause me to end up with more broken phones, which may or may not be worse, depending on who I'm trying to drunk dial.
I don't know about all of those, but some of them were inaccurate enough to cause me to question the rest. For example, the author doesn't seem to know the difference between sleep and hibernation, and claims that when the computer is hibernating, it still draws power causing the AC/DC converter to stay warm, which is simply not true. The computer is completely powered off during hibernation, which I'm sure everyone already knows, and the heat generated in the converter is due to resistance in the converter and will occur as long as it's plugged into the wall, even if the DC side isn't plugged into anything.
I wish I had mod points right now, because this is a very insightful post. However, I, as many others do and you evidently don't, believe in the cultural diffusion that p2p makes possible, but I also find it somewhat depressing that despite this possibility, most people don't use it to actually expand their horizons. I think it's sad that people will use the "cultural expansion" and "give the little guy a shot" arguments to advocate the ability to avoid having to pay for the same crap that Big Media sells, while themselves mostly ignoring the wealth of undiscovered content that is made available to them. And I would even go so far as to say that ideally, the existence of digital piracy would actually do some good in keeping the content distributors (**AA, etc) in check, but realistically, they will fight every step of the way by charging more to "make up for the loss", sueing people, lobbying Congress, etc. Honestly, I wouldn't mind seeing the RIAA, MPAA, and Big Media's monopolies completely dissolved; many starving artists would be much less starving, and although there are plenty of very talented celebrities who would have to deal with losing much of their fame, I believe the celebrity idolatry present in today's society is worthless anyway and does little more than rot the quality of life in this country.
I call bullshit. I bet you just linked the results from a Google search without even reading them, because they are weak and will easily be torn apart by real scientists. I could do it right here and now simply by highlighting how their methodologies are shit, but I don't need to. Anyone who reads them will see. The only point I need to make is that marijuana use is completely harmless; it causes no violent behavior (and government PSAs have even wised up and no longer try to make such associations) and is less destructive to the brain than alcohol. Therefore everyone who is in jail for possession is costing us money that the government could be spending on more important things, like cleaning up the daily destruction caused by alcohol (and how much are the lives that alcohol takes every day worth?). Similarly, digital piracy is also a victimless crime, despite what lobbyists would have you believe. It is obvious that actors, musicians, and the fat fucks who capitalize off of artists' work are not out of jobs, and are in fact as rich as ever. So who then are the victims? Well perhaps they can convince you that regular people just like you (3/4 of a million of them, in fact) are the victims. This is bullshit. If anything, this war on piracy has created jobs. And it certainly hasn't cost anyone important anything. Musicians and actors are paid by contract, so if a record company loses sales, the only people who lose out are the executives who have been stealing from the artists for years anyway. But that doesn't matter because it's been shown time and again that the large majority of pirated contented wouldn't have been bought anyway - in fact, for the most part, sales are actually up. What pirating does that the RIAA, MPAA, and apparently the Chamber of Commerce are so upset about, is take the power away from the **AA, Clear Channel, Comcast, FOX, and other monopolistic media corporations, to decide what entertainment we will consume. They are more upset about the fact that their monopolies are losing market share and that they may actually have to start charging what their material is worth for people to continue buying it than anything else. They don't want to do away with piracy - they want to do away with the entire system that puts them on the same level with all their small-time competition. They want it to go back to the good ol' days when people had only one choice of what entertainment to consume: what they were given, and had to pay whatever the corporate overlords felt like charging. Like all abstract wars, the War on Piracy is failing miserably. The War on Drugs is a failure because people obviously want to do drugs and think it should be their right to do them, the War on Terror is a failure because it's giving the terrorists exactly what they want, and the War on Piracy is a failure because digital piracy is nothing more than a natural and expected consequence of the progression into the information age, where money loses power and intelligence rules, and all persons are truly equal.
I don't see why google doesn't just show a picture out of its index and ask for a word to describe it. The pictures from their index have been tagged by actual humans playing that little game they have, so odds are slim that someone's first and second guesses wouldn't already be tagged to that image. This would be almost impossible to break, because a picture could be anything from a group of words to a picture of a space suit to a painting of Alex Trebek during an earthquake. And they could easily discount images with text and disallow color words (any bot could scan an image and guess "red"). Not only would this deter bots, but it'd probably be easier for someone than trying to decipher a bunch of letters smushed together.
Actually, the computer "recycling" companies just dump it all in Africa, where the computers are stripped of all gold, silver, copper, tantalite, and anything else of value. Hard drives are rarely looked at and straightway sold to the highest bidder, who usually buys bulk quantities of hard drives that may or may not contain valuable information about people. This includes government and hospital computers which are frequently not properly cleaned.
So what you're suggesting basically takes place on a very large scale in Africa. Of course, the HD's aren't bought on eBay, they are dumped there by recycling companies, and then sold on the black market to the highest paying scam artists.
Actually, electronics are pretty expensive in the U.K. About twice as much as they cost in the U.S. For example, a thousand-U.S.-dollar computer costs around 1000 GBP in the U.K.
That NASA is going to the dark side? It's like they're obsessed with all things dark and evil. Dark matter, dark energy, supermassive black holes, heat death, cold death, big freeze, and now the Dark Flow(tm). What's next, they discover some unknown energy emanating from space and call it the Power of Darkness?
They're not trying to cover up a broken transformer - they're trying to cover up the tiny black hole that formed in the transformers, and is growing exponentially.
What are the other countries doing accepting the waste?
I'll tell you what. I read a very long article in a magazine published several months ago about this (sorry, can't remember the name right now). People in those countries (in the case of the article I read, it was a couple of African countries) allow this to happen so they can sift through the junk and melt down the valuable metals. Older computers contain gold, many contain silver, they even melt down and sell the copper. And cellphones have small amounts of columbium and tantalite, rare and expensive minerals. So landfills of technological waste are scattered around Africa, where small children work for pennies a day tearing apart electronics and melting down circuitry to get the raw valuable metals. This process fills the air with lead smoke and the large amounts of mercury in the older CRT monitors eventually find their way into the nearby ocean. The closest beach is known (in whatever language they speak there) as Trash Beach. Seriously, the article had some pictures and they weren't exaggerating. I just wish I could link to it.
There's more. Many of these computers come from hospitals and businesses, and still contain records for hundreds of patients, clients, customers, etc. These hard drives are taken out and sold to whoever will pay for them, and are consequently a major source of fraud from Africa.
Many countries are guilty of dumping this stuff in Africa, although, according to the article I read, the U.S. and U.K. contributed most.
I don't think so... Microsoft is being talked about constantly as it is. I would think once a company gets that big, they don't even have to *think* about advertising anymore. They are basically synonymous with PCs. There are actually MANY people out there who don't even understand that there could be anything else other than Windows on a PC. They have no idea how any of it works, hardware or software, and for some reason, just don't care. I can't see how Microsoft would want to blow all that money on... what? Reminding people that they still exist? I can see how they would want to change people's views on Microsoft, but saying they expected a very expensive campaign to fail, well that just likens them to a 5-year-old:
M$: "I'm gonna use SEINFELD to sell a million billion Windows copies!!!" Seinfeld: "Hey Bill, I didn't know you wore SHOES!?! You're just like me!!! And I'm just like everybody else lol we're all like a big happy family!" The world: "WTF?!? M$ you fail!" M$: "Nuh-uh cuz I did that on purpose! YOU will never understand my amazing brain!!!"
I think, and this is just a simple analysis, I never really had any strong feelings about the show one way or another, but I think one of the reasons so many people liked it is the fact that it had 4 very different main characters who brought 4 different kinds of comedy together. Sort of a "we have something for everyone" deal.
You have Kramer, who brings a sort of slapstick comedy coupled with a lot of weirdness, to the show. George is the awkward-moment guy who consistently lies to almost everyone (usually women and bosses) to cover up something stupid he did. Elaine is just a slut (who can't dance). And Seinfeld is, well, Seinfeld. I actually found him the least interesting part of the show, as most other people I know did. But nevertheless, he brought his own sort of observational humor to the show, which must have appealed to some.
Most other sitcoms seem to use only one style of comedy 90% of the time, which is why I think they appeal to a more narrow audience and hence don't see as much popularity. Other shows that feature several very contrasting characters (the only one I can think of right now is That 70's Show, but there are others) seem to enjoy more success because not only do they reach a broader audience, but the contrast between characters often leads to more interesting, or at least more possibilities for, plots.
I'm sorry but Central America is not a continent. Everything all the way down to Panama is part of North America. If you don't believe me, then go to one of those countries (say, Costa Rica, for example) and ask the people who live there what continent they live on. They won't say "Central America," they will say "North America." Central America is a term invented by people who didn't understand that just because North America has become synonymous with the U.S.A., that doesn't mean they mean the same thing.
"Almost immediately" means it's discarded right after the URL is linked to your profile in their Global Database of Evil and forwarded to hundreds of Cheap Viagra internet companies and the NSA, all of which takes about a second, which IS almost immediately.
For all the people who grew up on McDonald's, a home-cooked meal is a foreign concept. Plus (going along with the metaphor) most people think they need to be some kind of master chef to cook at home, and half of them have been exposed to too much misinformation about cooking your own meals ("Home-cooked meals? Don't terrorists eat those?")
I understand what you're saying about it being dumbed down, but I can't see Linux ever going the way of Microsoft. In an attempt to make something that everyone can use, Microsoft makes something that no one wants to use. I think Ubuntu just wants more people to try Linux, in hopes that once they try it they'll like it. And since the internet is something everyone uses, I think including a familiar browser is a major part of getting people to switch, or at least try Linux.
I also think that having a larger community will only help Linux. There are plenty of good programmers out there who only code for windows because that's what they grew up using. The fact that the Linux community isn't in it for the money is all the reassurance I need that they won't be making shitty Microsoft-esque products in an attempt to appeal to Joe Blow who has nothing to offer other than the contents of his fat wallet.
A larger commmunity of at least semi-intelligent users means more support on the forums and more software being produced. Also, less reliance on Microshaft.
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There is a FF extension called Distrust, which deletes your "Flash Cookies" on exit ... I assume they're talking about the same thing here. It works with 3.
I don't think it's about money at all. This is kids we're talking about. It's about popularity. Football players give swirlies to nerdy math-majors in highschool, so they are popular and smart kids are not. Given that information (and keeping in mind that students think with the mind of a child), if you were a freshman in highschool, which option would pick (assuming you had the option)? I know that money can get you friends in school too but that comes from your parents, and "considering your future" doesn't exactly make you popular with the ladies.
I didn't RTFA, but I'm guessing when they attributed the issue to American culture, it wasn't referring to the teachers but to the students, and to a lesser degree, their parents. Paying teachers more probably won't help (though they should get paid more). I think the responsibility falls on the parents, who don't teach their children the importance of an education early enough. I also think parents don't spend enough time with children, which means the children listen to them less and are more likely to be affected by peer mentality, which, if unchecked, reduces children to the level of wild animals.
Maybe he really is a genius... I think it would take someone very clever to appear that inane and yet still get elected. Twice.
And I was just thinking how useful this would be on my phone... although it would probably just cause me to end up with more broken phones, which may or may not be worse, depending on who I'm trying to drunk dial.
I don't know about all of those, but some of them were inaccurate enough to cause me to question the rest. For example, the author doesn't seem to know the difference between sleep and hibernation, and claims that when the computer is hibernating, it still draws power causing the AC/DC converter to stay warm, which is simply not true. The computer is completely powered off during hibernation, which I'm sure everyone already knows, and the heat generated in the converter is due to resistance in the converter and will occur as long as it's plugged into the wall, even if the DC side isn't plugged into anything.
That explains the "fit of ecstacy"!
How do articles keep getting slashdotted when no one ever reads them? (On that note, here is a shortened version of the article.)
I wish I had mod points right now, because this is a very insightful post. However, I, as many others do and you evidently don't, believe in the cultural diffusion that p2p makes possible, but I also find it somewhat depressing that despite this possibility, most people don't use it to actually expand their horizons. I think it's sad that people will use the "cultural expansion" and "give the little guy a shot" arguments to advocate the ability to avoid having to pay for the same crap that Big Media sells, while themselves mostly ignoring the wealth of undiscovered content that is made available to them. And I would even go so far as to say that ideally, the existence of digital piracy would actually do some good in keeping the content distributors (**AA, etc) in check, but realistically, they will fight every step of the way by charging more to "make up for the loss", sueing people, lobbying Congress, etc. Honestly, I wouldn't mind seeing the RIAA, MPAA, and Big Media's monopolies completely dissolved; many starving artists would be much less starving, and although there are plenty of very talented celebrities who would have to deal with losing much of their fame, I believe the celebrity idolatry present in today's society is worthless anyway and does little more than rot the quality of life in this country.
I call bullshit. I bet you just linked the results from a Google search without even reading them, because they are weak and will easily be torn apart by real scientists. I could do it right here and now simply by highlighting how their methodologies are shit, but I don't need to. Anyone who reads them will see. The only point I need to make is that marijuana use is completely harmless; it causes no violent behavior (and government PSAs have even wised up and no longer try to make such associations) and is less destructive to the brain than alcohol. Therefore everyone who is in jail for possession is costing us money that the government could be spending on more important things, like cleaning up the daily destruction caused by alcohol (and how much are the lives that alcohol takes every day worth?). Similarly, digital piracy is also a victimless crime, despite what lobbyists would have you believe. It is obvious that actors, musicians, and the fat fucks who capitalize off of artists' work are not out of jobs, and are in fact as rich as ever. So who then are the victims? Well perhaps they can convince you that regular people just like you (3/4 of a million of them, in fact) are the victims. This is bullshit. If anything, this war on piracy has created jobs. And it certainly hasn't cost anyone important anything. Musicians and actors are paid by contract, so if a record company loses sales, the only people who lose out are the executives who have been stealing from the artists for years anyway. But that doesn't matter because it's been shown time and again that the large majority of pirated contented wouldn't have been bought anyway - in fact, for the most part, sales are actually up. What pirating does that the RIAA, MPAA, and apparently the Chamber of Commerce are so upset about, is take the power away from the **AA, Clear Channel, Comcast, FOX, and other monopolistic media corporations, to decide what entertainment we will consume. They are more upset about the fact that their monopolies are losing market share and that they may actually have to start charging what their material is worth for people to continue buying it than anything else. They don't want to do away with piracy - they want to do away with the entire system that puts them on the same level with all their small-time competition. They want it to go back to the good ol' days when people had only one choice of what entertainment to consume: what they were given, and had to pay whatever the corporate overlords felt like charging. Like all abstract wars, the War on Piracy is failing miserably. The War on Drugs is a failure because people obviously want to do drugs and think it should be their right to do them, the War on Terror is a failure because it's giving the terrorists exactly what they want, and the War on Piracy is a failure because digital piracy is nothing more than a natural and expected consequence of the progression into the information age, where money loses power and intelligence rules, and all persons are truly equal.
I don't see why google doesn't just show a picture out of its index and ask for a word to describe it. The pictures from their index have been tagged by actual humans playing that little game they have, so odds are slim that someone's first and second guesses wouldn't already be tagged to that image. This would be almost impossible to break, because a picture could be anything from a group of words to a picture of a space suit to a painting of Alex Trebek during an earthquake. And they could easily discount images with text and disallow color words (any bot could scan an image and guess "red"). Not only would this deter bots, but it'd probably be easier for someone than trying to decipher a bunch of letters smushed together.
Now, now, the Canadian government has apologized for Celine Dion on many occasions.
Actually, the computer "recycling" companies just dump it all in Africa, where the computers are stripped of all gold, silver, copper, tantalite, and anything else of value. Hard drives are rarely looked at and straightway sold to the highest bidder, who usually buys bulk quantities of hard drives that may or may not contain valuable information about people. This includes government and hospital computers which are frequently not properly cleaned.
So what you're suggesting basically takes place on a very large scale in Africa. Of course, the HD's aren't bought on eBay, they are dumped there by recycling companies, and then sold on the black market to the highest paying scam artists.
Actually, electronics are pretty expensive in the U.K. About twice as much as they cost in the U.S. For example, a thousand-U.S.-dollar computer costs around 1000 GBP in the U.K.
Didn't Mythbusters bust this one last year?
That NASA is going to the dark side? It's like they're obsessed with all things dark and evil. Dark matter, dark energy, supermassive black holes, heat death, cold death, big freeze, and now the Dark Flow(tm). What's next, they discover some unknown energy emanating from space and call it the Power of Darkness?
Well, duh. You'd have to be infinitely dense to not see that.
If someone really thought that was more informative than it was funny, then I say "Whoosh!"
Obligatory XKCD:
I used to find Slashdot delightful
But my feelings of late are more spiteful
My comments sarcastic
The iconoclastic
Keep modding to +5, Insightful
Informative is the new funny?
They're not trying to cover up a broken transformer - they're trying to cover up the tiny black hole that formed in the transformers, and is growing exponentially.
What are the other countries doing accepting the waste?
I'll tell you what. I read a very long article in a magazine published several months ago about this (sorry, can't remember the name right now). People in those countries (in the case of the article I read, it was a couple of African countries) allow this to happen so they can sift through the junk and melt down the valuable metals. Older computers contain gold, many contain silver, they even melt down and sell the copper. And cellphones have small amounts of columbium and tantalite, rare and expensive minerals. So landfills of technological waste are scattered around Africa, where small children work for pennies a day tearing apart electronics and melting down circuitry to get the raw valuable metals. This process fills the air with lead smoke and the large amounts of mercury in the older CRT monitors eventually find their way into the nearby ocean. The closest beach is known (in whatever language they speak there) as Trash Beach. Seriously, the article had some pictures and they weren't exaggerating. I just wish I could link to it.
There's more. Many of these computers come from hospitals and businesses, and still contain records for hundreds of patients, clients, customers, etc. These hard drives are taken out and sold to whoever will pay for them, and are consequently a major source of fraud from Africa.
Many countries are guilty of dumping this stuff in Africa, although, according to the article I read, the U.S. and U.K. contributed most.
I don't think so... Microsoft is being talked about constantly as it is. I would think once a company gets that big, they don't even have to *think* about advertising anymore. They are basically synonymous with PCs. There are actually MANY people out there who don't even understand that there could be anything else other than Windows on a PC. They have no idea how any of it works, hardware or software, and for some reason, just don't care. I can't see how Microsoft would want to blow all that money on... what? Reminding people that they still exist? I can see how they would want to change people's views on Microsoft, but saying they expected a very expensive campaign to fail, well that just likens them to a 5-year-old:
M$: "I'm gonna use SEINFELD to sell a million billion Windows copies!!!"
Seinfeld: "Hey Bill, I didn't know you wore SHOES!?! You're just like me!!! And I'm just like everybody else lol we're all like a big happy family!"
The world: "WTF?!? M$ you fail!"
M$: "Nuh-uh cuz I did that on purpose! YOU will never understand my amazing brain!!!"
I think, and this is just a simple analysis, I never really had any strong feelings about the show one way or another, but I think one of the reasons so many people liked it is the fact that it had 4 very different main characters who brought 4 different kinds of comedy together. Sort of a "we have something for everyone" deal.
You have Kramer, who brings a sort of slapstick comedy coupled with a lot of weirdness, to the show.
George is the awkward-moment guy who consistently lies to almost everyone (usually women and bosses) to cover up something stupid he did.
Elaine is just a slut (who can't dance).
And Seinfeld is, well, Seinfeld. I actually found him the least interesting part of the show, as most other people I know did. But nevertheless, he brought his own sort of observational humor to the show, which must have appealed to some.
Most other sitcoms seem to use only one style of comedy 90% of the time, which is why I think they appeal to a more narrow audience and hence don't see as much popularity. Other shows that feature several very contrasting characters (the only one I can think of right now is That 70's Show, but there are others) seem to enjoy more success because not only do they reach a broader audience, but the contrast between characters often leads to more interesting, or at least more possibilities for, plots.
I think he means he works for the CIA. Didn't anyone ever teach him the first two rules of being a spy?
I'm sorry but Central America is not a continent. Everything all the way down to Panama is part of North America. If you don't believe me, then go to one of those countries (say, Costa Rica, for example) and ask the people who live there what continent they live on. They won't say "Central America," they will say "North America." Central America is a term invented by people who didn't understand that just because North America has become synonymous with the U.S.A., that doesn't mean they mean the same thing.
"Almost immediately" means it's discarded right after the URL is linked to your profile in their Global Database of Evil and forwarded to hundreds of Cheap Viagra internet companies and the NSA, all of which takes about a second, which IS almost immediately.
For all the people who grew up on McDonald's, a home-cooked meal is a foreign concept. Plus (going along with the metaphor) most people think they need to be some kind of master chef to cook at home, and half of them have been exposed to too much misinformation about cooking your own meals ("Home-cooked meals? Don't terrorists eat those?")
I understand what you're saying about it being dumbed down, but I can't see Linux ever going the way of Microsoft. In an attempt to make something that everyone can use, Microsoft makes something that no one wants to use. I think Ubuntu just wants more people to try Linux, in hopes that once they try it they'll like it. And since the internet is something everyone uses, I think including a familiar browser is a major part of getting people to switch, or at least try Linux.
I also think that having a larger community will only help Linux. There are plenty of good programmers out there who only code for windows because that's what they grew up using. The fact that the Linux community isn't in it for the money is all the reassurance I need that they won't be making shitty Microsoft-esque products in an attempt to appeal to Joe Blow who has nothing to offer other than the contents of his fat wallet.
A larger commmunity of at least semi-intelligent users means more support on the forums and more software being produced. Also, less reliance on Microshaft.