I remember one woman who managed to lock a prayer into her mind. Long after she had lost all consistences of her environment and should no longer of been able to speak she kept reciting the prayer.
What if her last memory had been... shall we say, less pleasant? Would you think she was as noble and heroic if she was repeating "No, no, stop hurting me" over and over again for months?
Maybe it's just me, but the thought of being "locked in" to one thought for the rest of my days, incapable of breaking out? That's freakin' terrifying.
The reason government is reluctant to legalise it is because they fear a situation where a doctor decides that a patient should die. Switzerland have the same issue, thus the reason they don't allow assisting someone who isn't lucid to take their own life - someone who is in a state of confusion is easier to coerce than a person with a clear mind.
The issue is a muddy one indeed.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but if I'm in critical long-term care, the doctor doesn't think I have a realistic chance of recovery, and I'm not lucid enough to say "screw you"? Probably a good sign that it's time to go.
(This of course predicates on having a doctor you trust - I do, at least enough to not gank me for giggles, and that your family is on-board with this plan.)
However, how would his family (if he has one) feel if he did it, and someone announced a breakthrough in treatment the next day...
Probably relieved that no-one else will have to suffer through what he did.
I'm going to wager a guess that while he's making any arrangements now (while he's still got all his faculties), no-one is going to pull the trigger (pardon the morbid pun) until he's mostly gone. So any breakthrough near that point will likely be too late for him anyways.
Personally, I'm with Pratchett - I'd rather go out while I still know my name, than to linger on for years and cause my family nothing but pain.
The money I have in my wallet is backed by the U.S. government, and all other countries on the planet. Name one country that you can spend this "money" in.
Just how do you figure your money is "backed"?
If you lose your wallet, the government isn't going to replace it.
If prices increase, the government won't give you extra money to compensate for the fact that your wallet has lost half it's value.
The "backing" that the US Gov gives the Dollar is pretty much limited to "we're the only ones the print it, and it's the only currency we use". The *value* of the dollar is determined by the markets.
Nothing has any economic value except what people give it. Bitcoins are no different from gold, from apples, or anything else.
In some theoretical sense true, in the practical sense, hogwash. People have common desires like the need for food and shelter, apples are generally tasty and nutritious, and gold at least makes pretty jewelry and has some industrial usages. Bitcoin just wastes electricity and CPU cycles.
First, you need to compare proper comparisons. Apples are not money (I suppose they could be, but I don't know of anyone selling bananas by the apple).
The proper comparison is dollars to bitcoins: both are, in and of themselves, worthless. Their value is only in what people are willing to trade you for them. Dollars are more valuable than bitcoins right now, simply because more people are willing to accept them. No other reason.
If a substantial number of stores accepted bitcoins, you would see what happens in every other currency in the world - an exchange rate would establish itself, and life would go on.
The uphill battle that bitcoins has is that other currencies have a big advantage - their local governments accept only *their* currencies, which guarantees a certain level of demand. Bitcoins have to create their own demand.
I care. I liked the author's suggestion of creating a Dummy Account, just so you can view yourself and see what's visible to strangers. Ideally nothing but your name, but who knows for sure? What exactly is visible to Google, Bing, and other search engines? I'd like to know.
I think the point was that making a Dummy Facebook Account is against the Terms of Use - so you can either risk your account or find out what Facebook is really sharing about you.
Obvious Solution Is Obvious - Facebook simply needs to supply a simple method for users to see what their "stranger" profile looks like. Tada.
Go on, just try printing your own Fun Bucks and try spending them. Thats more or less what happened with Bitcoin but the guy managed to get other people to buy into it.
It's not entirely out of the realm of possibility - Canadian Tire money, for instance.
In some sort of bizzaro world fashion the movie would probably turn out awesome.
It could, if it was done right. Get Bruce Campbell, infuse Duke with some Army of Darkness style awesome, remember that this is supposed to be funny/campy, and run with it.
This sums it up perfectly. Old Duke was an over-the-top cliche action hero. New Duke is a dick.
Well, let's not delude ourselves - Old Duke was a dick too. But he was a Denis Leary "No Cure For Cancer" dick. The kind of fellow who's a badass, knows he's a badass, acts like a badass, and you put up with it because... well, he's just that badass. A beer-swilling Bond.
Sounds like New Duke has all the dickery, but not enough badassery to justify it.
I wasn't expecting a *fantastic* game, but I was hoping for a solid game with the right attitude. Pity they seem to have missed on both.
"was shocked, humiliated and severely emotionally distressed at what he saw"
Talk about regret.... Maybe they caught photos of him cross dressing or playing with his dolls.... But he must really be embarrassed to sue for the statement above.
Or maybe the kid would like to run for office or be president of a large company, and would rather not have nekkid pictures of himself floating around the internet, waiting for an opportune moment to resurface.
"Lower Merion agreed to pay Blake Robbins $175,000 and cover $425,000 in court costs."
So... an egregious breach of trust has occurred. Who gets paid?
Court costs includes not only the lawyer's fees, but the costs of running the courtroom as well. So in this case, I wouldn't be surprised if a substantial amount of that $425 is the Lower Merion's lawyers (read: the cost of them trying to hide their own stupid actions)
Sure I will. I'm going to fire these people. Oh wait, I can't. And the people who can, won't, because of the Teachers Union. Please explain why we are paying 450k to lawyers who "win" these cases.
Easy - because people like you don't care enough to force the school board to deal with it. Apathy is consent.
The irony is that the government doesn't want us to spy on Their actions (think wikileaks and learning the Mrs. Clinton was stealin credit card numbers), but when the government spies on us then it's okay.
To be fair, the whole "you should spy on all of those other troublemakers" attitude is pretty pervasive these days. I believe every new surveillance law should require a 180-day trial period where the sponsors are subject to it at whim. (You want wireless phone taps without court approval? First, you spend six months with all your phone calls publicly available. Works, home, that cell you don't think we know about, the works. Then you can tell us that it's not an intrusion.)
The story I'd love to read is "what's happening at that school today". I'm sure there's more than one story of enterprising students redirecting the "webcam feed" to all sorts of interesting things.
Unfortunately, they'll be protected as employees. The school board will take the heat for this one, and not without justification, seeing as someone at the very least had their head buried firmly up their asses.
Why should the school board allow this travesty of privacy? Let them suffer or have them recommend the firing of the guilty employees.
Because there is zero chance that the school board will admit fault in this without a court or massive public opinion against them. They will duck, cover, block, evade, minimize, and delay. Admissions will be begrudging, if ever.
Remember, time is on their side here - these kids grow up, leave the school. To pursue this, they have to put their lives on hold while they fight. The school board is forever (and is getting paid to be there).
They took 30,000 pictures of students in their dorm rooms. What are that odds of them NOT having any nude pictures...?
Not their dorm rooms - these students were inside their own homes. Which means (depending on exactly where the laptop was left, and if a family member borrowed it), we could be seeing siblings, parents...
They have a right to say that. It doesn't have to be true, they're just hoping the plaintiff will say "Oh I see, well nevermind then" and back off.
It's like how you see those signs on trucks that say "Not responsible for objects coming off the road." Or signs in parking lots saying "Not responsible for any damage to your vehicle." Or at the park "Not responsible for any missing or stolen items."
They want you to believe that so you don't sue. When honestly it's up to the judge to determine if they are responsible or not. But if they can bluff you into not asking, bravo for them.
I don't mind the ones that are variations of "we don't supervise here - do stuff at your own risk". If I leave my book on a park bench, I don't reasonably expect the city to keep it safe for me. If my kid falls down and scrapes her knee at the playground, that's not the school's fault.
Where I get amused are the ones where they try to disclaim liability even if it's their fault. The local amusement park's sign translates roughly to "It's not our fault, even if it is our fault. Even if we club you over the head with a bat and steal your money while you're on the premises, it's not our fault."
My answer to "this is a waste of the taxpayer's money" is "then stop doing dumb-ass things that cost us money, dumbass."
If I remember the original articles last year, some people did notice the light blinking, brought it up with the school, and the school told them it was a glitch and that they should ignore it.
Same here, but that doesn't explain the massive boom in the overall number of people playing games. Gaming is now socially acceptable, even just 10-15 years ago you were viewed as a total nerd if you played games. That either means there's some other explanation for this trend or all those people who laughed at us for gaming were secretly jealous.
If I had to guess, it's that there's a newer generation of games that are a bit more accessible. My mother's not a "gamer", but she'll play Ticket to Ride, Zombie Dice, Wits & Wagers, Mario Party (and is absolutely mean at Mario Kart of any generation).
Casual gaming, DS/iPhone games... these are all good things - they let people try out the culture in smaller bites before we throw three hardcover books at them and say "build a character":)
Sorry but playing Farmville or Bejeweled doesn't make you a gamer by any reasonable definition anymore than playing a little soccer with my nieces and nephews makes me an athlete. This is no different than the recent popularization of some facets of geek culture which leads to hipsters in box frames talking about how they're so glad they can come out about how they read The Hobbit at thirteen and once saw the inside of their old iMac.
Why wouldn't Farmville count as a game? It's not a good game, but neither is Candyland or Monopoly.
We do ourselves a disservice when we try to draw that us/them line too close to ourselves. Shouldn't we be trying to draw them in rather than shut them out?
On the original topic, the average gamer age getting older should be filed with "water is wet". Let me know when the younger folks *stop* playing video games, and then we have a problem.
I can't find a list of cutoffs - just that 1700 kids get Magic Tickets. So I'll concede one point, but still wonder if the voucher is enough to cover all the costs.
As for why it's disliked, this couldn't have anything to do with it...
A report by the General Accounting Office, Congress’s watchdog agency, found numerous accountability problems, including federal taxpayer dollars paying tuition at private schools that do not even charge tuition, schools that lacked a legally-required city occupancy permit, and schools employing teachers without bachelor’s degrees and/or certification. That report also noted that children with physical or learning disabilities were underrepresented compared to public schools.
Slashdot Mirror
Not a good example - that episode deals with government-mandated suicide, not personal choice.
I remember one woman who managed to lock a prayer into her mind. Long after she had lost all consistences of her environment and should no longer of been able to speak she kept reciting the prayer.
What if her last memory had been... shall we say, less pleasant? Would you think she was as noble and heroic if she was repeating "No, no, stop hurting me" over and over again for months?
Maybe it's just me, but the thought of being "locked in" to one thought for the rest of my days, incapable of breaking out? That's freakin' terrifying.
The reason government is reluctant to legalise it is because they fear a situation where a doctor decides that a patient should die. Switzerland have the same issue, thus the reason they don't allow assisting someone who isn't lucid to take their own life - someone who is in a state of confusion is easier to coerce than a person with a clear mind.
The issue is a muddy one indeed.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but if I'm in critical long-term care, the doctor doesn't think I have a realistic chance of recovery, and I'm not lucid enough to say "screw you"? Probably a good sign that it's time to go.
(This of course predicates on having a doctor you trust - I do, at least enough to not gank me for giggles, and that your family is on-board with this plan.)
What do you do when healthcare insurance will pay for an assisted suicide, but will no longer pay for ongoing therapy and care?
What do you do when they stop paying for ongoing care anyway? Healthcare insurance doesn't really have a stellar reputation to begin with.
a common way for gangsters, thugs, criminals, and various corrupt officials to 'do away' with those who get in their way.
if suicide is not, at some level, regulated, then every murder will overnight become a 'suicide'.
Because we have no way to tell a murder and a suicide apart today...
However, how would his family (if he has one) feel if he did it, and someone announced a breakthrough in treatment the next day...
Probably relieved that no-one else will have to suffer through what he did.
I'm going to wager a guess that while he's making any arrangements now (while he's still got all his faculties), no-one is going to pull the trigger (pardon the morbid pun) until he's mostly gone. So any breakthrough near that point will likely be too late for him anyways.
Personally, I'm with Pratchett - I'd rather go out while I still know my name, than to linger on for years and cause my family nothing but pain.
The money I have in my wallet is backed by the U.S. government, and all other countries on the planet. Name one country that you can spend this "money" in.
Just how do you figure your money is "backed"?
If you lose your wallet, the government isn't going to replace it.
If prices increase, the government won't give you extra money to compensate for the fact that your wallet has lost half it's value.
The "backing" that the US Gov gives the Dollar is pretty much limited to "we're the only ones the print it, and it's the only currency we use". The *value* of the dollar is determined by the markets.
Nothing has any economic value except what people give it. Bitcoins are no different from gold, from apples, or anything else.
In some theoretical sense true, in the practical sense, hogwash. People have common desires like the need for food and shelter, apples are generally tasty and nutritious, and gold at least makes pretty jewelry and has some industrial usages. Bitcoin just wastes electricity and CPU cycles.
First, you need to compare proper comparisons. Apples are not money (I suppose they could be, but I don't know of anyone selling bananas by the apple).
The proper comparison is dollars to bitcoins: both are, in and of themselves, worthless. Their value is only in what people are willing to trade you for them. Dollars are more valuable than bitcoins right now, simply because more people are willing to accept them. No other reason.
If a substantial number of stores accepted bitcoins, you would see what happens in every other currency in the world - an exchange rate would establish itself, and life would go on.
The uphill battle that bitcoins has is that other currencies have a big advantage - their local governments accept only *their* currencies, which guarantees a certain level of demand. Bitcoins have to create their own demand.
>>>Who the fuck cares...
I care. I liked the author's suggestion of creating a Dummy Account, just so you can view yourself and see what's visible to strangers. Ideally nothing but your name, but who knows for sure? What exactly is visible to Google, Bing, and other search engines? I'd like to know.
I think the point was that making a Dummy Facebook Account is against the Terms of Use - so you can either risk your account or find out what Facebook is really sharing about you.
Obvious Solution Is Obvious - Facebook simply needs to supply a simple method for users to see what their "stranger" profile looks like. Tada.
Go on, just try printing your own Fun Bucks and try spending them. Thats more or less what happened with Bitcoin but the guy managed to get other people to buy into it.
It's not entirely out of the realm of possibility - Canadian Tire money, for instance.
In some sort of bizzaro world fashion the movie would probably turn out awesome.
It could, if it was done right. Get Bruce Campbell, infuse Duke with some Army of Darkness style awesome, remember that this is supposed to be funny/campy, and run with it.
This sums it up perfectly. Old Duke was an over-the-top cliche action hero. New Duke is a dick.
Well, let's not delude ourselves - Old Duke was a dick too. But he was a Denis Leary "No Cure For Cancer" dick. The kind of fellow who's a badass, knows he's a badass, acts like a badass, and you put up with it because... well, he's just that badass. A beer-swilling Bond.
Sounds like New Duke has all the dickery, but not enough badassery to justify it.
I wasn't expecting a *fantastic* game, but I was hoping for a solid game with the right attitude. Pity they seem to have missed on both.
"was shocked, humiliated and severely emotionally distressed at what he saw"
Talk about regret.... Maybe they caught photos of him cross dressing or playing with his dolls.... But he must really be embarrassed to sue for the statement above.
Or maybe the kid would like to run for office or be president of a large company, and would rather not have nekkid pictures of himself floating around the internet, waiting for an opportune moment to resurface.
From the blurb:
"Lower Merion agreed to pay Blake Robbins $175,000 and cover $425,000 in court costs."
So... an egregious breach of trust has occurred. Who gets paid?
Court costs includes not only the lawyer's fees, but the costs of running the courtroom as well. So in this case, I wouldn't be surprised if a substantial amount of that $425 is the Lower Merion's lawyers (read: the cost of them trying to hide their own stupid actions)
Sure I will. I'm going to fire these people. Oh wait, I can't. And the people who can, won't, because of the Teachers Union. Please explain why we are paying 450k to lawyers who "win" these cases.
Easy - because people like you don't care enough to force the school board to deal with it. Apathy is consent.
The irony is that the government doesn't want us to spy on Their actions (think wikileaks and learning the Mrs. Clinton was stealin credit card numbers), but when the government spies on us then it's okay.
To be fair, the whole "you should spy on all of those other troublemakers" attitude is pretty pervasive these days. I believe every new surveillance law should require a 180-day trial period where the sponsors are subject to it at whim. (You want wireless phone taps without court approval? First, you spend six months with all your phone calls publicly available. Works, home, that cell you don't think we know about, the works. Then you can tell us that it's not an intrusion.)
Whoa! That's the best idea I've read today.
The story I'd love to read is "what's happening at that school today". I'm sure there's more than one story of enterprising students redirecting the "webcam feed" to all sorts of interesting things.
Every built in and external webcam I've seen has an LED that show if it's working.
Not all of them - my Eyeball webcam doesn't have any indicator at all.
On the other hand, it's big, obvious, and the camera retracts into the microphone, so turning the webcam "off" is pretty trivial
Unfortunately, they'll be protected as employees. The school board will take the heat for this one, and not without justification, seeing as someone at the very least had their head buried firmly up their asses.
Why should the school board allow this travesty of privacy? Let them suffer or have them recommend the firing of the guilty employees.
Because there is zero chance that the school board will admit fault in this without a court or massive public opinion against them. They will duck, cover, block, evade, minimize, and delay. Admissions will be begrudging, if ever.
Remember, time is on their side here - these kids grow up, leave the school. To pursue this, they have to put their lives on hold while they fight. The school board is forever (and is getting paid to be there).
They took 30,000 pictures of students in their dorm rooms. What are that odds of them NOT having any nude pictures...?
Not their dorm rooms - these students were inside their own homes. Which means (depending on exactly where the laptop was left, and if a family member borrowed it), we could be seeing siblings, parents...
They have a right to say that. It doesn't have to be true, they're just hoping the plaintiff will say "Oh I see, well nevermind then" and back off.
It's like how you see those signs on trucks that say "Not responsible for objects coming off the road." Or signs in parking lots saying "Not responsible for any damage to your vehicle." Or at the park "Not responsible for any missing or stolen items."
They want you to believe that so you don't sue. When honestly it's up to the judge to determine if they are responsible or not. But if they can bluff you into not asking, bravo for them.
I don't mind the ones that are variations of "we don't supervise here - do stuff at your own risk". If I leave my book on a park bench, I don't reasonably expect the city to keep it safe for me. If my kid falls down and scrapes her knee at the playground, that's not the school's fault.
Where I get amused are the ones where they try to disclaim liability even if it's their fault. The local amusement park's sign translates roughly to "It's not our fault, even if it is our fault. Even if we club you over the head with a bat and steal your money while you're on the premises, it's not our fault."
My answer to "this is a waste of the taxpayer's money" is "then stop doing dumb-ass things that cost us money, dumbass."
If I remember the original articles last year, some people did notice the light blinking, brought it up with the school, and the school told them it was a glitch and that they should ignore it.
Same here, but that doesn't explain the massive boom in the overall number of people playing games. Gaming is now socially acceptable, even just 10-15 years ago you were viewed as a total nerd if you played games. That either means there's some other explanation for this trend or all those people who laughed at us for gaming were secretly jealous.
If I had to guess, it's that there's a newer generation of games that are a bit more accessible. My mother's not a "gamer", but she'll play Ticket to Ride, Zombie Dice, Wits & Wagers, Mario Party (and is absolutely mean at Mario Kart of any generation).
Casual gaming, DS/iPhone games... these are all good things - they let people try out the culture in smaller bites before we throw three hardcover books at them and say "build a character" :)
Sorry but playing Farmville or Bejeweled doesn't make you a gamer by any reasonable definition anymore than playing a little soccer with my nieces and nephews makes me an athlete. This is no different than the recent popularization of some facets of geek culture which leads to hipsters in box frames talking about how they're so glad they can come out about how they read The Hobbit at thirteen and once saw the inside of their old iMac.
Why wouldn't Farmville count as a game? It's not a good game, but neither is Candyland or Monopoly.
We do ourselves a disservice when we try to draw that us/them line too close to ourselves. Shouldn't we be trying to draw them in rather than shut them out?
On the original topic, the average gamer age getting older should be filed with "water is wet". Let me know when the younger folks *stop* playing video games, and then we have a problem.
I can't find a list of cutoffs - just that 1700 kids get Magic Tickets. So I'll concede one point, but still wonder if the voucher is enough to cover all the costs.
As for why it's disliked, this couldn't have anything to do with it...
A report by the General Accounting Office, Congress’s watchdog agency, found numerous accountability problems, including federal taxpayer dollars paying tuition at private schools that do not even charge tuition, schools that lacked a legally-required city occupancy permit, and schools employing teachers without bachelor’s degrees and/or certification. That report also noted that children with physical or learning disabilities were underrepresented compared to public schools.