I refuse to read TFA. After all, the first thing I learned about gravity was that if I don't know anything about it, it can't effect me! Thank you, professor Coyote.
Seriously, do some research into the project I mentioned, and stop accusing me of bigotry when all I'm advocating is a long term solution. A solution to help prevent future tragedies for the people you accuse me of being prejudiced against. Stop looking for reasons to hate me, and actually pay attention to what I'm saying.
The Army Corps of Engineers themselves say they don't know how much longer they can keep the MS River on its current course. That's the unsustainable situation; New Orleans won't be a port for long. The rest of your arguments are just arguments for the sake of arguing, and they're completely irrelevant to my original post. Anyways, any further replies that include random bashing will just mark you as a troll, so I'm out of this conversation.
It seems I was misunderstood. I was trying to point out that all this stuff is wasteful if no long term solution is being looked at. It's like throwing money at treating the symptoms of lung cancer without putting any money or effort into trying to find a cure, as well as paying for cigarettes for the patients. Taxpayer money is going to help people move back into an area that cannot be sustained. Read up on the Old River Control Structure; it won't last, and New Orleans isn't going to last once it fails.
I didn't research the information you posted, because it wasn't relevant to the post I made. None of that information says anything about how much money has been poured into that area, just that the money there is severely mismanaged. A serious problem itself.
Maintaining a dyke may not be expensive, but maintaining and constantly adjusting three dams on the largest river in North America is. I'm just pointing out that everything about this situation is short-sighted.
I'm completely lost on what relevance your psychopath reference has.
I realize that there's a huge economic consideration in the whole mess of the river changing course, but shouldn't we be spending effort and money on finding a long term solution, rather than fighting a losing battle against a force of nature we can only hold back for so long and giving money to people who already received plenty of tax money and charity?
Aren't gun store owners required to have background checks done on customers? I don't know if they're responsible for reporting anything that would effect said background checks, but it's something to consider.
There are always exceptions. Also, some people enjoy seeing other points of view, whether it's to broaden their horizons, just to find places to argue or whatever other reason.
Advertising isn't simply manipulation. Advertising also serves the purpose of distributing information about products, services or ideas that people otherwise wouldn't ever know about. Isn't that one of the big issues people always bring up here? Distribution of information? Sure, it's slanted, but what human-generated information isn't? It's all presented based on our perceptions and intended purposes. At least when the info comes from advertising, we know it's slanted so we know to look into it further.
There are always exceptions to the rule; they don't disprove the general usefulness of paying people to promote products, services or ideas. Even various Linux distros use some forms of marketing, such as selling branded items like hats, shirts, etc. Traditional advertising isn't the only way to market something.
Anyhow, just because some people choose to purposely avoid heavily advertised products, it doesn't mean the advertising is worthless. Those companies that can afford to burn their messages into your head obviously get those billions they spend on advertising from somewhere, and they wouldn't have gotten where they are without it.
I'm not trying to start an argument. Just pointing out that there are different ways of looking at things, there is a valid and important purpose to advertising and marketing, and people in marketing aren't necessarily stupid just because most don't understand "technical stuff".
Marketing is essential to get technical products out to the masses. If the folks who create technical products can't convince anyone to buy or use them, then the creation is a moot point.
Intelligence is needed to market products. It's a different way of thinking, but it's still thinking. Marketing folk may very nearly never understand the technical side of the products they're promoting, but the engineers, programmers and scientists very nearly never understand how humans in general react to various stimuli, how to separate populations into demographics, how to choose which demographics certain products will appeal to, how to increase the appeal of a product within those demographics, how to get across a meaningful message in the time it takes for someone to glance at a billboard, etc. Purposeful social interaction takes quite a bit of thought; persuasion of the masses takes a deep understanding of the human psyche.
Without people capable of successful marketing, scientific advancement would slow to a crawl. Without sales, there's no money. Without money, there's nothing to pay all techie people to invent or improve anything. Even governments need to be sold on paying for R&D. And don't try to convince me that politicians in charge of budgets think logically:-P
In other words, just because you don't understand something, it doesn't make it dumb. Science is only one facet of this "bright new world". Without all the rest of the people doing the things you don't understand, you'd be living in a cave with a spear, but unable to convince anyone to go out, put themselves in danger and use the spear to get some food.
There have been so many references to Coke on this page that I'm thirsty. Do discussions about violence in games count towards effective advertising, too?
FOIA allows for the charging of fees to process requests.
From http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/87466.pdf
"Will I be charged for making a FOIA request?
The Department of State is entitled to charge a fee to recover the costs of document search, duplication and, in commercial cases, review. Under certain conditions, documents may be furnished without charge or at a reduced charge."
This isn't simply about her stealing music. It's about her giving stolen music away to thousands of others. If you want to use a physical comparison, she didn't steal two CD's, she stole thousands and gave them away. Or she stole two and willingly allowed thousands of people to make copies.
Outrage at something you don't bother to learn the basic facts of is impotent. The fact that you were modded "insightful" shows you aren't alone.
Interesting theory. I tend to see it the other way around. Empires are built for power, and connections are built within the empires in order to maintain that power. Roads move armies, trade goods and plunder more efficiently. Communication methods are often developed first for military use, then later converted to public use. That includes the internet. And while printing presses were first used to mass-produce the Bible, even that can be seen as an attempt at a consolidation of power by an expansionist pseudo-government.
Most people have a strong desire to communicate. That desire leads us to utilize whatever we have at our disposal to communicate with as many people as possible. Empires aren't out to increase communication, and often do their best to control and/or stifle it. It's the general populace that takes what the empires build and use it for mass communication, more often than not battling with the governments for freedom from control.
Because when you come to think about it, the Internet is exactly what a lot of people have tried to accomplish throughout the millennia. Nations and empires were forged and razed, people killed and died by the millions to ultimately reach this simple goal: connect everyone.
And here I thought that conquerors wanted to extend their own power, gaining access to more resources, land and people. But now I learn that Napolean, Ghengis Khan and the Ceasars just wanted everyone to be able share silly pictures of their cats!
The problem with this is that not everyone makes enough money to pay for everything in cash. In fact, the vast, vast majority of us don't. I've been saving for two years to have enough money for a down payment on a house. Just the down payment. I wouldn't be living in an apartment right now if I didn't have credit. And living in my parents' basement until I saved up enough wasn't ever an option for me.
SSN's and credit ratings, regardless of how unfair or unintelligently they're maintained, are vital to far more people than can ignore these things. People who say, "LIVE WITHOUT CREDIT!" are just flaunting their ignorance and arrogance.
Since one of those sources in the hydrogen case is electricity, I don't see the number of sources to be fewer than in the case of battery-powered cars.
Please criticize valid points of hydrogen as an energy storage medium instead of making up silly points that can be refuted in an instant.
If you're going to refute points and insult someone in the process, please read over your own first.
The original point is still valid. Though electricity is one part of harvesting hydrogen, it's only one part. This doesn't mean that access to electricity = access to hydrogen. I have access to plenty of electricity, but have no access to hydrogen in any form that can power anything.
Read the story on CNN.com and was floored by the last sentence.
"He was caught in 2002 after some of the software used in the attacks was traced back to his girlfriend's e-mail account." (emphasis added)
A "hacker" with a girlfriend?! Damn, if he only used the argument that he had a girlfriend and therefore couldn't be a hacker, he might be done with this whole mess already.
"Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?"
(Pinky) Whoof, oh, I'd have to say the odds of that are terribly slim Brain.
(Brain) True.
(Pinky) I mean, really, when have I ever been pondering what you've been pondering?
(Brain) To my knowledge, never.
(Pinky) Exactly. So, what are the chances that this time, I'm pondering what you're pondering?
(Brain) Next to nil.
(Pinky) Well, that's exactly what I'm thinking, too.
(Brain) Therefore, you *are* pondering what I'm pondering.
(Pinky) Poit, I guess I am!
I'm in the same situation as Sycraft-fu. I just put in a cancellation to my subscription to WoW about two weeks ago. Though I still have time left before my last renewal expires, I've found other things to occupy my time. While it seems a waste of money to not finish up playing through my subscription, I just plain don't want to play any more. This after getting to level 70, joining a raiding guild and beginning to build up my epic gear. Just got bored. No addiction to "recover" from, no uncontrollable urges to go back and play.
I'll probably go back after the next expansion comes out, since I've loved the Warcraft storyline from the very first game and want to see how it progresses, but the game as it is just got too repetitive. The people I became friends with in game I can keep in touch with in other ways.
Think about the sheer volume of email sent every hour of every day. Who is actually reading it? Likely, governments have automatic searches for certain key words or phrases (perhaps with some sort of algorithm for finding things close to those words or phrases as well), then messages containing those particular things will be flagged and sent into another filter process, then sent to someone to actually read. And email isn't all they'd be monitoring, either. Add to that volume phone calls, internet posts and any other forms of eavesdroppable communication, and you have a completely unmanageable amount of information without some serious filtering going on. All of which means that a small fraction of a percent of communications could ever truly be thoroughly monitored.
Realistically, unless you write anything that you probably shouldn't be writing about in the first place or live in a country that's totalitarian in nature (in which case you're probably not on/.), no government will ever read your emails.
Of course, there's always hackers looking for personal information, business secrets, et cetera. Though if you send anything of that sort in an email, you deserve what you get.
While most people complain about "stealing" bandwidth or "the internet" (probably assuming "internet connection"), there is at least one valid concern. Many countries, states, provinces, etc. have laws that can hold liable the person who's name is on the ISP's contract for that connection if anything illegal is done on that connection, regardless of who actually committed the illegal act.
Er, what law is this that makes other laws illegal? You're arguing that your philosophy is a law that transcends other laws. Sorry, that doesn't work for me, or probably about 6 billion others on the planet.
Those who make the laws and judge cases based on those laws determine what's legal and illegal, not someone who claims some baseless "ancient legal principle" that has no place in any system of laws I ever heard of.
The whole argument seems somewhat arbitrary. Each situation is a bit different. Some people (and businesses) purposely leave their connections open. Others purposely secure them. Yet others have no clue that a network can or needs to be secured to prevent others from using it. They certainly don't understand what bandwidth is. An overreaching law seems unfair, as how can anyone be sure they're connecting to a purposely open network, or, as others have pointed out, their computer just connected to the strongest signal, regardless of whether that person intended to use that network or not.
When people use the sign-on-the-door analogy, it's a false analogy. It's more like saying someone sold a house to a blind person and painted, "FEEL FREE TO COME ON IN!" on the front and left a bunch of keys next to the door. The blind person who bought the house has no idea the painted words or keys are there. Now the person who sold the house included this information in pamphlets, even written in brail, but in a language the person buying the house couldn't understand (most people don't have a clue what WEP, WPA, encryption, etc. are, which is a like another language to them).
Of course, we could all just say anyone who buys a router could just ask someone who is more knowledgeable to secure it for them. The problem is, many people aren't even aware they should be asking.
If router manufacturers would make the default setting to secure the connection, the whole issue would be far less convoluted.
Slashdot Mirror
I refuse to read TFA. After all, the first thing I learned about gravity was that if I don't know anything about it, it can't effect me! Thank you, professor Coyote.
Seriously, do some research into the project I mentioned, and stop accusing me of bigotry when all I'm advocating is a long term solution. A solution to help prevent future tragedies for the people you accuse me of being prejudiced against. Stop looking for reasons to hate me, and actually pay attention to what I'm saying.
The Army Corps of Engineers themselves say they don't know how much longer they can keep the MS River on its current course. That's the unsustainable situation; New Orleans won't be a port for long. The rest of your arguments are just arguments for the sake of arguing, and they're completely irrelevant to my original post. Anyways, any further replies that include random bashing will just mark you as a troll, so I'm out of this conversation.
It seems I was misunderstood. I was trying to point out that all this stuff is wasteful if no long term solution is being looked at. It's like throwing money at treating the symptoms of lung cancer without putting any money or effort into trying to find a cure, as well as paying for cigarettes for the patients. Taxpayer money is going to help people move back into an area that cannot be sustained. Read up on the Old River Control Structure; it won't last, and New Orleans isn't going to last once it fails.
I didn't research the information you posted, because it wasn't relevant to the post I made. None of that information says anything about how much money has been poured into that area, just that the money there is severely mismanaged. A serious problem itself.
Maintaining a dyke may not be expensive, but maintaining and constantly adjusting three dams on the largest river in North America is. I'm just pointing out that everything about this situation is short-sighted.
I'm completely lost on what relevance your psychopath reference has.
We're already spending significant sums of taxpayer money to not only keep those anti-flood measures kept up, but also to continue preventing the Mississippi River from going through its natural course changes (Wikipedia).
I realize that there's a huge economic consideration in the whole mess of the river changing course, but shouldn't we be spending effort and money on finding a long term solution, rather than fighting a losing battle against a force of nature we can only hold back for so long and giving money to people who already received plenty of tax money and charity?
Ok, then I'll agree 69.9999%
Aren't gun store owners required to have background checks done on customers? I don't know if they're responsible for reporting anything that would effect said background checks, but it's something to consider.
There are always exceptions. Also, some people enjoy seeing other points of view, whether it's to broaden their horizons, just to find places to argue or whatever other reason.
Advertising isn't simply manipulation. Advertising also serves the purpose of distributing information about products, services or ideas that people otherwise wouldn't ever know about. Isn't that one of the big issues people always bring up here? Distribution of information? Sure, it's slanted, but what human-generated information isn't? It's all presented based on our perceptions and intended purposes. At least when the info comes from advertising, we know it's slanted so we know to look into it further.
There are always exceptions to the rule; they don't disprove the general usefulness of paying people to promote products, services or ideas. Even various Linux distros use some forms of marketing, such as selling branded items like hats, shirts, etc. Traditional advertising isn't the only way to market something.
Anyhow, just because some people choose to purposely avoid heavily advertised products, it doesn't mean the advertising is worthless. Those companies that can afford to burn their messages into your head obviously get those billions they spend on advertising from somewhere, and they wouldn't have gotten where they are without it.
I'm not trying to start an argument. Just pointing out that there are different ways of looking at things, there is a valid and important purpose to advertising and marketing, and people in marketing aren't necessarily stupid just because most don't understand "technical stuff".
Marketing is essential to get technical products out to the masses. If the folks who create technical products can't convince anyone to buy or use them, then the creation is a moot point.
:-P
Intelligence is needed to market products. It's a different way of thinking, but it's still thinking. Marketing folk may very nearly never understand the technical side of the products they're promoting, but the engineers, programmers and scientists very nearly never understand how humans in general react to various stimuli, how to separate populations into demographics, how to choose which demographics certain products will appeal to, how to increase the appeal of a product within those demographics, how to get across a meaningful message in the time it takes for someone to glance at a billboard, etc. Purposeful social interaction takes quite a bit of thought; persuasion of the masses takes a deep understanding of the human psyche.
Without people capable of successful marketing, scientific advancement would slow to a crawl. Without sales, there's no money. Without money, there's nothing to pay all techie people to invent or improve anything. Even governments need to be sold on paying for R&D. And don't try to convince me that politicians in charge of budgets think logically
In other words, just because you don't understand something, it doesn't make it dumb. Science is only one facet of this "bright new world". Without all the rest of the people doing the things you don't understand, you'd be living in a cave with a spear, but unable to convince anyone to go out, put themselves in danger and use the spear to get some food.
There have been so many references to Coke on this page that I'm thirsty. Do discussions about violence in games count towards effective advertising, too?
FOIA allows for the charging of fees to process requests.
From http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/87466.pdf
"Will I be charged for making a FOIA request?
The Department of State is entitled to charge a fee to recover the costs of document search, duplication and, in commercial cases, review. Under certain conditions, documents may be furnished without charge or at a reduced charge."
This isn't simply about her stealing music. It's about her giving stolen music away to thousands of others. If you want to use a physical comparison, she didn't steal two CD's, she stole thousands and gave them away. Or she stole two and willingly allowed thousands of people to make copies. Outrage at something you don't bother to learn the basic facts of is impotent. The fact that you were modded "insightful" shows you aren't alone.
Agreed.
Most people have a strong desire to communicate. That desire leads us to utilize whatever we have at our disposal to communicate with as many people as possible. Empires aren't out to increase communication, and often do their best to control and/or stifle it. It's the general populace that takes what the empires build and use it for mass communication, more often than not battling with the governments for freedom from control.
Because when you come to think about it, the Internet is exactly what a lot of people have tried to accomplish throughout the millennia. Nations and empires were forged and razed, people killed and died by the millions to ultimately reach this simple goal: connect everyone.
And here I thought that conquerors wanted to extend their own power, gaining access to more resources, land and people. But now I learn that Napolean, Ghengis Khan and the Ceasars just wanted everyone to be able share silly pictures of their cats!
The problem with this is that not everyone makes enough money to pay for everything in cash. In fact, the vast, vast majority of us don't. I've been saving for two years to have enough money for a down payment on a house. Just the down payment. I wouldn't be living in an apartment right now if I didn't have credit. And living in my parents' basement until I saved up enough wasn't ever an option for me. SSN's and credit ratings, regardless of how unfair or unintelligently they're maintained, are vital to far more people than can ignore these things. People who say, "LIVE WITHOUT CREDIT!" are just flaunting their ignorance and arrogance.
Since one of those sources in the hydrogen case is electricity, I don't see the number of sources to be fewer than in the case of battery-powered cars.
Please criticize valid points of hydrogen as an energy storage medium instead of making up silly points that can be refuted in an instant.
If you're going to refute points and insult someone in the process, please read over your own first.
The original point is still valid. Though electricity is one part of harvesting hydrogen, it's only one part. This doesn't mean that access to electricity = access to hydrogen. I have access to plenty of electricity, but have no access to hydrogen in any form that can power anything.
Read the story on CNN.com and was floored by the last sentence.
"He was caught in 2002 after some of the software used in the attacks was traced back to his girlfriend's e-mail account." (emphasis added)
A "hacker" with a girlfriend?! Damn, if he only used the argument that he had a girlfriend and therefore couldn't be a hacker, he might be done with this whole mess already.
"Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?" (Pinky) Whoof, oh, I'd have to say the odds of that are terribly slim Brain. (Brain) True. (Pinky) I mean, really, when have I ever been pondering what you've been pondering? (Brain) To my knowledge, never. (Pinky) Exactly. So, what are the chances that this time, I'm pondering what you're pondering? (Brain) Next to nil. (Pinky) Well, that's exactly what I'm thinking, too. (Brain) Therefore, you *are* pondering what I'm pondering. (Pinky) Poit, I guess I am!
I'm in the same situation as Sycraft-fu. I just put in a cancellation to my subscription to WoW about two weeks ago. Though I still have time left before my last renewal expires, I've found other things to occupy my time. While it seems a waste of money to not finish up playing through my subscription, I just plain don't want to play any more. This after getting to level 70, joining a raiding guild and beginning to build up my epic gear. Just got bored. No addiction to "recover" from, no uncontrollable urges to go back and play. I'll probably go back after the next expansion comes out, since I've loved the Warcraft storyline from the very first game and want to see how it progresses, but the game as it is just got too repetitive. The people I became friends with in game I can keep in touch with in other ways.
Think about the sheer volume of email sent every hour of every day. Who is actually reading it? Likely, governments have automatic searches for certain key words or phrases (perhaps with some sort of algorithm for finding things close to those words or phrases as well), then messages containing those particular things will be flagged and sent into another filter process, then sent to someone to actually read. And email isn't all they'd be monitoring, either. Add to that volume phone calls, internet posts and any other forms of eavesdroppable communication, and you have a completely unmanageable amount of information without some serious filtering going on. All of which means that a small fraction of a percent of communications could ever truly be thoroughly monitored.
/.), no government will ever read your emails.
Realistically, unless you write anything that you probably shouldn't be writing about in the first place or live in a country that's totalitarian in nature (in which case you're probably not on
Of course, there's always hackers looking for personal information, business secrets, et cetera. Though if you send anything of that sort in an email, you deserve what you get.
While most people complain about "stealing" bandwidth or "the internet" (probably assuming "internet connection"), there is at least one valid concern. Many countries, states, provinces, etc. have laws that can hold liable the person who's name is on the ISP's contract for that connection if anything illegal is done on that connection, regardless of who actually committed the illegal act.
Er, what law is this that makes other laws illegal? You're arguing that your philosophy is a law that transcends other laws. Sorry, that doesn't work for me, or probably about 6 billion others on the planet.
Those who make the laws and judge cases based on those laws determine what's legal and illegal, not someone who claims some baseless "ancient legal principle" that has no place in any system of laws I ever heard of.
The whole argument seems somewhat arbitrary. Each situation is a bit different. Some people (and businesses) purposely leave their connections open. Others purposely secure them. Yet others have no clue that a network can or needs to be secured to prevent others from using it. They certainly don't understand what bandwidth is. An overreaching law seems unfair, as how can anyone be sure they're connecting to a purposely open network, or, as others have pointed out, their computer just connected to the strongest signal, regardless of whether that person intended to use that network or not. When people use the sign-on-the-door analogy, it's a false analogy. It's more like saying someone sold a house to a blind person and painted, "FEEL FREE TO COME ON IN!" on the front and left a bunch of keys next to the door. The blind person who bought the house has no idea the painted words or keys are there. Now the person who sold the house included this information in pamphlets, even written in brail, but in a language the person buying the house couldn't understand (most people don't have a clue what WEP, WPA, encryption, etc. are, which is a like another language to them). Of course, we could all just say anyone who buys a router could just ask someone who is more knowledgeable to secure it for them. The problem is, many people aren't even aware they should be asking. If router manufacturers would make the default setting to secure the connection, the whole issue would be far less convoluted.