Sorry but there's no way one person should be allowed to acquire so much personal wealth that in the list of the worlds 191 countries by GDP, he individually is the 68th richest.
Using the word "allowed" kind of implies that there should be laws against becoming rich. That's a terrible idea. The real issue is that society has become so tilted in the favor of the rich that individual humans have more wealth than many countries. Don't hate the ultra-rich person, hate the world that created them.
I think it's more that hobby contributors have been replaced by corporate paid, "my way or the highway" contributors. That has had both positive and negative effects but, to me, the most noticeable effect is that projects have formed agendas that in *no way* reflect the actual users of those projects. You see it happening in almost all the big projects now. Users hate Gnome 3? Too fucking bad. Users hate KDE4? Too fucking bad. Users hate the loss of functionality in Wayland? Too fucking bad. Systemd has consumed the userland? Tough shit.
Maybe it's just the changing of the old guard to the new guard but, frankly, I have no desire to live in the world that the new guard is creating. They aren't improving things, they are taking a page out of the Microsoft playbook and trying to co-opt them for personal or corporate gain.
Well, part of what you are describing could be construed as parallel construction. Did the cops have reason to search for that evidence before seeing the illegally obtained video? If not, then obtaining that evidence would be "fruit of the poisoned tree". Though, police frequently use parallel construction in the US to get around that pesky constitution stuff. In this case, it sounds like they tried to play a trump card (No pun intended) and got caught cheating. It's obviously an extremely unfortunate case but, it sounds like the legal system working correctly rather than preferential treatment for the rich.
I would agree with you about the distinction between sentient and technological species. But, in making that distinction, you bring up another point: Energy. A species can become sentient without high energy needs. A species cannot become technological without being able to feed very high energy needs. So, the technological capabilities of a species is somewhat dictated by the natural resources of the planet the species originates from. And, oddly, by the amount of time the planet has existed.
To give an example of what I mean: Imagine humans had evolved 2 billion years ago. And that the Earth had fewer heavy elements like Uranium. The window for that civilization to jump from coal/oil to fusion/solar to fission would be much, much smaller than ours. Possibly small enough that they couldn't do it (and maybe we can't do it).
So, yeah, I agree with you. And that just ads more variables.
Conclusion: Short of managing to destroy all multicellular life forms, planets which evolve advanced life will have advanced civilisations from then on with possible gaps.
Those gaps could be measured in millions or billions of years. Once you've depleted the "low hanging fruit" energy sources, it might prove to be almost impossible to re-bootstrap an advanced civilization. You could probably even compute the percentage of a Kardashev Type 1 civilization where you've reached the point of no return. At that point, your civilization either flourishes or it has consumed too many resources to start again on a reasonable timescale.
I think it's more that the conditions for life become more favorable as the universe becomes more quiescent. So, over time, for many reasons, the universe is becoming less hostile to life. Thus increasing the chances for it to flourish.
I think the first few seasons of Babylon 5 is a better analogy. In fact, the first few seasons of Babylon 5 is basically about the struggle between the older races and the younger races. It's possible that we are one of the "old ones" but an early stage. It's also possible that we are one of the younger races but, to the "old ones" we are nearly indistinguishable from ants (G'Kar gives a nice speech about this).
On a more serious note, anyone who has sat and given some thought to what the TFS talks about has probably realized that we could be one of the earliest sentient races. The universe didn't start with the ingredients of life. It was brewed in stars and then spread by the exploding of stars and the re-coalescence of that material. That shortens the possible time frame for sentient life but, you also need a fairly quiescent part of the galaxy to give sentient life enough time to form. So, really, it's impractical for sentient life to arise until *all* nearby giant stars have gone supernova. Then you have the time it takes for new solar systems to form and stabilize, basic life to come into existence, mass extinctions, the possibility that lifeforms unsuitable for sentience will dominate a planet, etc, etc.
It really takes an extraordinary amount of luck, over an extraordinary amount of time, for sentient life to form. And, as we've seen in the last century, it also takes a lot of luck for a technological society to not destroy itself.
The problem isn't the technology, it's the ramifications of the technology. You want to take devices where security is, at best, an afterthought and allow them to interact with the internet? That's pure insanity. A web browser is already an enormous attack surface and people want to increase that attack surface by adding devices where security is non-existant? No thanks.
I think the Slashdot community as a whole has very little experience in "deciding what to do as a deposed leader of a country". Personally, I'd fly to Buenos Aires and just vanish. Women, wine and great food. They also have a sketchy history of letting "undesirable" people into the country. Though, someone should warn Erdogan that if you overstay your tourist visa for long enough, they will kick you out. Nazis? Sure, no problem. somenickname? NOT WELCOME.
Wasn't there just a big tussle about him taking legal action against a German comedian who made fun of him? After that, I wouldn't even let the guy sleep on my guest bed...
I don't know enough about Erdogan to condemn or condone him. I do know that Turkey plays a vital role in world politics and any kind of chaos there, at this point in time, is going to have very far reaching implications. And probably not positive ones.
At the very least, there is now a German comedian who is breathing a sigh of relief. And maybe Boris can print some t-shirts with his poem about Erdogan fucking a goat without retribution.
If this is a genuine coup, the repercussions are going to be felt across the world. A lot of people might think that Turkey is some backwards country adjacent to Europe but, it's basically the bridge between the Middle East and Europe. It's a modern country with an advanced military and very close ties to almost all western countries. Middle Eastern immigrants almost inevitably travel through Turkey and their policies (for better or worse) play a huge role in determining how that happens. Chaos in Turkey is a BIG FUCKING DEAL. It's practically the worst possible place to have a coup.
Dumb people generally look the same as smart people. There is no press to be gained by strolling in a bunch of morons and saying, "We are proud to announce that we have hired some of the dumbest humans on earth".
I don't have mod points so, I'll symbolically +1 you. The need to "diversify the workforce" basically implies that there was racism/sexism involved in the hiring of the current workforce. That's probably not true. Companies generally hire the applicant most suited to fill the job. If few or no females/minorities apply for the job, should the company withhold hiring an ideally suited white male so that they can meet some diversity requirement? It's insanity.
The other thing I find bizarre about this "diversify the workforce" initiative is that it seems to only apply to tech jobs. I don't see people outraged that white females account for the vast majority of nurses. I don't see people outraged that their car mechanic is almost inevitably male. Both of those professions can be paid as well or better than a tech job. Nobody gives a shit that those workforces aren't diversified. The most qualified candidate got the job and that's the end of it. You can't make your workforce diversity mirror the population because the people going into those professions don't accurately reflect the population.
It's the same in technology. Most of the workforce is pale skinned white people because it's mostly nerdy white people going into that line of work in college. You aren't going to change that with a "diversify the workforce" initiative. There are literally not enough non-white/non-males to meet the requirements. It's like trying to pound a square peg into a round hole.
I don't necessarily agree with your argument but, I do *very* much appreciate the manner in which you have presented it. The tactical use of "fuck" and "shit" is commendable. Just the right amount of grammatical correctness with a healthy dose of genuine anger. We need more... oh, shit... you're a Martian. Nevermind.
No, it's a sign that technology, government and society have collided in such an incompatible way that a technology site has become political. I'm actually kind of shocked that you can claim to be "a very political person" and not be able to understand this. Technology *IS* politics. And vice-a-versa. Putting your head in the sand doesn't change that fact.
20 years ago, your post would have been modded "-10 Conspiracy Theory". Now it's basically fact so, it's kinda hard to know what to do. The majority of the public can't understand the manner in which their rights are being destroyed so, they can't really vote to protect them. I love to blame the government for our unfortunate and deteriorating situation but, really, it's ignorance that has caused it. In democratic societies, we've *always* had the ability to mold our government to do our bidding. We've just lost the will.
When the politicians are no longer beholden to the people, you get the society that we now have. And, it's going to get worse. A lot worse. I don't care if it makes me sound like an insensitive asshole or a conspiracy theorist: I'm stocking up on popcorn.
I think it's interesting to see how many AC posts have been modded up on this article. I'll go ahead and post some inflammatory shit under my normal username:
I think it's utter bullshit that so much of societies time is being wasted on things like gender equality emojis, workplace diversification statistics, LGBT issues, etc (all things posted on Slashdot this week). You are going to have people that are extremely polarized on any of those issues but, those people will not, under *any* circumstances, change their view. NEVER. Really, all this SJW stuff does is alienate the majority of society who are effectively neutral and maybe even mildly supportive to begin with.
If it weren't for SJWs, I don't think I would have ever formed an opinion on anything that they stand for. Because I didn't care. I judge people on their merits and not their gender, race or sexuality. But, with the advent of SJWs, I feel a great resentment towards almost anything they say. I'm a middle aged white man. That doesn't make me guilty.
I'm genuinely interested in understanding this summary but, it's effectively a gigantic wall of text that's almost impossible to understand or follow. Could you please, I dunno, edit...
An interesting experiment would be to make down-voting cost 2 moderator points instead of 1. The idea being that it would make interesting/insightful posts "stickier" by making them harder to down-vote based on agenda. I have no idea whether it would work or not but, at the very least, it might give casual users more expanded comments to read by default.
Having said that, getting rid of moderators is pure insanity. Community moderation is part of what makes slashdot an interesting site.
Slashdot Mirror
Why bother? It has been more than 16 hours so, anyone buried under rubble is sitting and staring at a smart phone that ran out of batteries hours ago.
Sorry but there's no way one person should be allowed to acquire so much personal wealth that in the list of the worlds 191 countries by GDP, he individually is the 68th richest.
http://statisticstimes.com/eco...
Using the word "allowed" kind of implies that there should be laws against becoming rich. That's a terrible idea. The real issue is that society has become so tilted in the favor of the rich that individual humans have more wealth than many countries. Don't hate the ultra-rich person, hate the world that created them.
I think it's more that hobby contributors have been replaced by corporate paid, "my way or the highway" contributors. That has had both positive and negative effects but, to me, the most noticeable effect is that projects have formed agendas that in *no way* reflect the actual users of those projects. You see it happening in almost all the big projects now. Users hate Gnome 3? Too fucking bad. Users hate KDE4? Too fucking bad. Users hate the loss of functionality in Wayland? Too fucking bad. Systemd has consumed the userland? Tough shit.
Maybe it's just the changing of the old guard to the new guard but, frankly, I have no desire to live in the world that the new guard is creating. They aren't improving things, they are taking a page out of the Microsoft playbook and trying to co-opt them for personal or corporate gain.
Apparently you've never used XFCE on a distro that does a good job of supporting it.
Well, part of what you are describing could be construed as parallel construction. Did the cops have reason to search for that evidence before seeing the illegally obtained video? If not, then obtaining that evidence would be "fruit of the poisoned tree". Though, police frequently use parallel construction in the US to get around that pesky constitution stuff. In this case, it sounds like they tried to play a trump card (No pun intended) and got caught cheating. It's obviously an extremely unfortunate case but, it sounds like the legal system working correctly rather than preferential treatment for the rich.
I would agree with you about the distinction between sentient and technological species. But, in making that distinction, you bring up another point: Energy. A species can become sentient without high energy needs. A species cannot become technological without being able to feed very high energy needs. So, the technological capabilities of a species is somewhat dictated by the natural resources of the planet the species originates from. And, oddly, by the amount of time the planet has existed.
To give an example of what I mean: Imagine humans had evolved 2 billion years ago. And that the Earth had fewer heavy elements like Uranium. The window for that civilization to jump from coal/oil to fusion/solar to fission would be much, much smaller than ours. Possibly small enough that they couldn't do it (and maybe we can't do it).
So, yeah, I agree with you. And that just ads more variables.
Awesome. Exactly what I was thinking of and even cut together with the event that triggered the speech.
Conclusion: Short of managing to destroy all multicellular life forms, planets which evolve advanced life will have advanced civilisations from then on with possible gaps.
Those gaps could be measured in millions or billions of years. Once you've depleted the "low hanging fruit" energy sources, it might prove to be almost impossible to re-bootstrap an advanced civilization. You could probably even compute the percentage of a Kardashev Type 1 civilization where you've reached the point of no return. At that point, your civilization either flourishes or it has consumed too many resources to start again on a reasonable timescale.
I think it's more that the conditions for life become more favorable as the universe becomes more quiescent. So, over time, for many reasons, the universe is becoming less hostile to life. Thus increasing the chances for it to flourish.
I think the first few seasons of Babylon 5 is a better analogy. In fact, the first few seasons of Babylon 5 is basically about the struggle between the older races and the younger races. It's possible that we are one of the "old ones" but an early stage. It's also possible that we are one of the younger races but, to the "old ones" we are nearly indistinguishable from ants (G'Kar gives a nice speech about this).
On a more serious note, anyone who has sat and given some thought to what the TFS talks about has probably realized that we could be one of the earliest sentient races. The universe didn't start with the ingredients of life. It was brewed in stars and then spread by the exploding of stars and the re-coalescence of that material. That shortens the possible time frame for sentient life but, you also need a fairly quiescent part of the galaxy to give sentient life enough time to form. So, really, it's impractical for sentient life to arise until *all* nearby giant stars have gone supernova. Then you have the time it takes for new solar systems to form and stabilize, basic life to come into existence, mass extinctions, the possibility that lifeforms unsuitable for sentience will dominate a planet, etc, etc.
It really takes an extraordinary amount of luck, over an extraordinary amount of time, for sentient life to form. And, as we've seen in the last century, it also takes a lot of luck for a technological society to not destroy itself.
The problem isn't the technology, it's the ramifications of the technology. You want to take devices where security is, at best, an afterthought and allow them to interact with the internet? That's pure insanity. A web browser is already an enormous attack surface and people want to increase that attack surface by adding devices where security is non-existant? No thanks.
"Don't look now, but your web browser is about to become aware of the devices around you.".
No, it will not do that and it will never do that. Because that's a terrible fucking idea.
What you are describing is called "investing". What most people want out of the stock market is better described as "gambling".
I think the Slashdot community as a whole has very little experience in "deciding what to do as a deposed leader of a country". Personally, I'd fly to Buenos Aires and just vanish. Women, wine and great food. They also have a sketchy history of letting "undesirable" people into the country. Though, someone should warn Erdogan that if you overstay your tourist visa for long enough, they will kick you out. Nazis? Sure, no problem. somenickname? NOT WELCOME.
Wasn't there just a big tussle about him taking legal action against a German comedian who made fun of him? After that, I wouldn't even let the guy sleep on my guest bed...
I don't know enough about Erdogan to condemn or condone him. I do know that Turkey plays a vital role in world politics and any kind of chaos there, at this point in time, is going to have very far reaching implications. And probably not positive ones.
At the very least, there is now a German comedian who is breathing a sigh of relief. And maybe Boris can print some t-shirts with his poem about Erdogan fucking a goat without retribution.
If this is a genuine coup, the repercussions are going to be felt across the world. A lot of people might think that Turkey is some backwards country adjacent to Europe but, it's basically the bridge between the Middle East and Europe. It's a modern country with an advanced military and very close ties to almost all western countries. Middle Eastern immigrants almost inevitably travel through Turkey and their policies (for better or worse) play a huge role in determining how that happens. Chaos in Turkey is a BIG FUCKING DEAL. It's practically the worst possible place to have a coup.
Dumb people generally look the same as smart people. There is no press to be gained by strolling in a bunch of morons and saying, "We are proud to announce that we have hired some of the dumbest humans on earth".
I don't have mod points so, I'll symbolically +1 you. The need to "diversify the workforce" basically implies that there was racism/sexism involved in the hiring of the current workforce. That's probably not true. Companies generally hire the applicant most suited to fill the job. If few or no females/minorities apply for the job, should the company withhold hiring an ideally suited white male so that they can meet some diversity requirement? It's insanity.
The other thing I find bizarre about this "diversify the workforce" initiative is that it seems to only apply to tech jobs. I don't see people outraged that white females account for the vast majority of nurses. I don't see people outraged that their car mechanic is almost inevitably male. Both of those professions can be paid as well or better than a tech job. Nobody gives a shit that those workforces aren't diversified. The most qualified candidate got the job and that's the end of it. You can't make your workforce diversity mirror the population because the people going into those professions don't accurately reflect the population.
It's the same in technology. Most of the workforce is pale skinned white people because it's mostly nerdy white people going into that line of work in college. You aren't going to change that with a "diversify the workforce" initiative. There are literally not enough non-white/non-males to meet the requirements. It's like trying to pound a square peg into a round hole.
I don't necessarily agree with your argument but, I do *very* much appreciate the manner in which you have presented it. The tactical use of "fuck" and "shit" is commendable. Just the right amount of grammatical correctness with a healthy dose of genuine anger. We need more... oh, shit... you're a Martian. Nevermind.
No, it's a sign that technology, government and society have collided in such an incompatible way that a technology site has become political. I'm actually kind of shocked that you can claim to be "a very political person" and not be able to understand this. Technology *IS* politics. And vice-a-versa. Putting your head in the sand doesn't change that fact.
20 years ago, your post would have been modded "-10 Conspiracy Theory". Now it's basically fact so, it's kinda hard to know what to do. The majority of the public can't understand the manner in which their rights are being destroyed so, they can't really vote to protect them. I love to blame the government for our unfortunate and deteriorating situation but, really, it's ignorance that has caused it. In democratic societies, we've *always* had the ability to mold our government to do our bidding. We've just lost the will.
When the politicians are no longer beholden to the people, you get the society that we now have. And, it's going to get worse. A lot worse. I don't care if it makes me sound like an insensitive asshole or a conspiracy theorist: I'm stocking up on popcorn.
I think it's interesting to see how many AC posts have been modded up on this article. I'll go ahead and post some inflammatory shit under my normal username:
I think it's utter bullshit that so much of societies time is being wasted on things like gender equality emojis, workplace diversification statistics, LGBT issues, etc (all things posted on Slashdot this week). You are going to have people that are extremely polarized on any of those issues but, those people will not, under *any* circumstances, change their view. NEVER. Really, all this SJW stuff does is alienate the majority of society who are effectively neutral and maybe even mildly supportive to begin with.
If it weren't for SJWs, I don't think I would have ever formed an opinion on anything that they stand for. Because I didn't care. I judge people on their merits and not their gender, race or sexuality. But, with the advent of SJWs, I feel a great resentment towards almost anything they say. I'm a middle aged white man. That doesn't make me guilty.
Dear editors,
I'm genuinely interested in understanding this summary but, it's effectively a gigantic wall of text that's almost impossible to understand or follow. Could you please, I dunno, edit...
An interesting experiment would be to make down-voting cost 2 moderator points instead of 1. The idea being that it would make interesting/insightful posts "stickier" by making them harder to down-vote based on agenda. I have no idea whether it would work or not but, at the very least, it might give casual users more expanded comments to read by default.
Having said that, getting rid of moderators is pure insanity. Community moderation is part of what makes slashdot an interesting site.