You will rarely if ever hear one of those outlets cast a critical eye towards liberal policies. They are are just as biased left as fox is biased right.
You might try looking at the networks' coverage of Snowden to see how wrong this is. "Liberal" MSNBC and NPR (can't speak for the others) have actually been mostly neutral, sometimes supportive, toward him; Fox is the one insisting he's a traitor or bringing on Washington talking heads who do.
But no, don't do anything drastic like examine your beliefs. Just keep it up with the "both sides are equally bad" meme, but actually requires no critical thought whatsoever.
Person A: The government ought to regulate [X], because [reason]. Person B: You idiot, do you also want the government to regulate [something completely unrelated to X where [reason] does not apply]?
Is there a name for this specific argument? It's straw-manning I guess, but I see it often enough that it deserves to have its own name.
It brings encryption keys to pretty much the same status as locked safes. The government can't just order you to open it on a whim, but they can if they have reasonable prior evidence that there is illegal material contained within. To illustrate:
Scenario 1: As a citizen, I step off the plane after getting back from a foreign country. Not knowing who I am, ICE goons randomly pull me aside and order me to give up the encryption key to my laptop. They have NO reasonable suspicion that doing so will yield illicit material or evidence of wrongdoing, so the Fifth Amendment applies.
Scenario 2: I'm a corporate officer cooking my books, and I brag to my friend that the feds will never catch me because all the incriminating evidence is encrypted. Unfortunately my friend has agreed to cooperate in a plea deal, and relays the details of this conversation. Now the government has reasonable suspicion (actually, at this point I think it's probable cause) that my encryption key is concealing material evidence, and they can probably force me to reveal it.
/. probably won't be happy with that last sentence, but IMO as long as judges interpret "reasonable suspicion" correctly (which is usually the case), it's probably the right call. The government always has been able to force you to open your safe deposit box if they have a warrant, after all. This is nothing new.
No, idiot, they're asking people who were in Boston on Monday taking pictures with their smartphones to look through their photos again. Chances are lots of people inadvertently got photos of the guys, and some of those might be clear enough for identification (as opposed to the crummy security cam footage).
We really need a corollary for Godwin's Law adapted specifically to Bitcoin discussions: as soon as you say, "The US dollar doesn't have any intrinsic value either!", you lose.
No, there is a very good reason for this law: if you can show which way you voted to third parties, then it's possible for you to sell your vote to those third parties. As it stands, it's not possible to "sell votes" (at least, not in the direct sense), because you could just take the money and say you voted a certain way, when you didn't.
(Incidentally, I see a lot of people proposing reformed voting systems that include a hard confirmation that your vote for X was counted. Voting reform is good, but that particular idea is bad, for this exact reason. Cut it out).
If someone tried to defend their right to post a picture of their ballot on First Amendment grounds, I'd be willing to bet that a court would rule that a fair election represents the overriding concern and would still prosecute.
Just a quick FYI: for those of you still assuming that D-Wave is a bunch of snake-oil salesman (like I did for a long time), take a look at this bit from Ars Technica. Basically what they've built is not a genuine quantum computer, but a sort of "quantum optimizer" that delivers speedups for some kinds of problems. Their crime might be that they just use too much marketing hyperbole, instead of being complete frauds.
Zimmerman's claim of being badly beaten up before he shot the kid doesn't hold up either: there's some footage taken at the police station the night of his arrest, and he looks totally unharmed. No cuts to the back of the head, no broken nose, nothing. Guy's story has more holes than... eh, I'm on my eighteenth hour without sleep due to a project and can't come up with an apt metaphor, but something with a lot of holes.
A few months ago a friend and I went to Japan for a week and a half of tourist-ing it up. I had been before, he hadn't. When we got off the plane and he had to go the bathroom, I made sure to follow him in and stand outside the stalls so I could hear the scream as he used a Japanese toilet for the first time. That alone was worth the price of my plane ticket.
What about all the companies that use older versions of IE because of compatibility with their own proprietary web applications?
Simple: they'll disable the automatic update, by force if necessary.
Realistically, though, these users tend to be behind corporate firewalls with lots of antivirus protection and a forced patch schedule, so I doubt Microsoft is too worried about them contributing significantly to continued security holes thanks to IE6. This is an update to save the clueless from themselves.
Want to know something amazing? You can find out! You can click that link up in the summary, read the full text of the decision, and find out! Isn't technology amazing?
For what it's worth, the judge ruled that because Sony had not actually removed the functionality- what they had done instead was ban unmodified PS3s from accessing their service- what they were doing was legal. You may not agree with the decision, at least try to get a grasp on the logic behind it before you start yelling.
I know we're supposed to look down on Reddit as Slashdot-lite, but someone posted an interesting question there yesterday:
The ghost of Plato offers you one of two pills. If you take the blue pill, from now on your government will precisely represent the will of its people. If you take the red pill, your country will be seized by an intelligent dictator whose political views are identical to yours. Which will it be?
It's almost a difficult choice until you read things like "I assume it's part of the Patriot Act and I really don't mind", and then you realize you'd grab the red pill so fast you'd yank Plato's arm off. Participatory government is dead.
Then would you care to enlighten us, O Wise and Powerful AC? Zynga's quarterly profits went from $22m to $1m in a quarter, and thanks to the SEC we've discovered Groupon has never made a profit at all. But please, tell us why these metrics are worthless and these companies are still hot stock picks.
There's nothing really wrong with TFA, but there's nothing there either. It's so bland. The questions are just "Why did you create Ruby? What's next for Ruby?" I mean, seriously? If you were interviewing someone for a high school newspaper that might be OK, but they really can't do anything better? There's nothing more interesting you could ask Matz?
As the inaugural copy of the reference manual for the new standard was being printed and bound, it underwent gravitational collapse due to its enormous mass and became a black hole, killing all the committee members. Stroustrup was quoted as saying that despite the misfortune, he still has confidence that the C++0x standard will help programmers be more productive and efficient.
Slashdot Mirror
You will rarely if ever hear one of those outlets cast a critical eye towards liberal policies. They are are just as biased left as fox is biased right.
You might try looking at the networks' coverage of Snowden to see how wrong this is. "Liberal" MSNBC and NPR (can't speak for the others) have actually been mostly neutral, sometimes supportive, toward him; Fox is the one insisting he's a traitor or bringing on Washington talking heads who do.
But no, don't do anything drastic like examine your beliefs. Just keep it up with the "both sides are equally bad" meme, but actually requires no critical thought whatsoever.
wooooooooosh
Person A: The government ought to regulate [X], because [reason].
Person B: You idiot, do you also want the government to regulate [something completely unrelated to X where [reason] does not apply]?
Is there a name for this specific argument? It's straw-manning I guess, but I see it often enough that it deserves to have its own name.
It brings encryption keys to pretty much the same status as locked safes. The government can't just order you to open it on a whim, but they can if they have reasonable prior evidence that there is illegal material contained within. To illustrate:
/. probably won't be happy with that last sentence, but IMO as long as judges interpret "reasonable suspicion" correctly (which is usually the case), it's probably the right call. The government always has been able to force you to open your safe deposit box if they have a warrant, after all. This is nothing new.
Scenario 1: As a citizen, I step off the plane after getting back from a foreign country. Not knowing who I am, ICE goons randomly pull me aside and order me to give up the encryption key to my laptop. They have NO reasonable suspicion that doing so will yield illicit material or evidence of wrongdoing, so the Fifth Amendment applies.
Scenario 2: I'm a corporate officer cooking my books, and I brag to my friend that the feds will never catch me because all the incriminating evidence is encrypted. Unfortunately my friend has agreed to cooperate in a plea deal, and relays the details of this conversation. Now the government has reasonable suspicion (actually, at this point I think it's probable cause) that my encryption key is concealing material evidence, and they can probably force me to reveal it.
No, idiot, they're asking people who were in Boston on Monday taking pictures with their smartphones to look through their photos again. Chances are lots of people inadvertently got photos of the guys, and some of those might be clear enough for identification (as opposed to the crummy security cam footage).
We really need a corollary for Godwin's Law adapted specifically to Bitcoin discussions: as soon as you say, "The US dollar doesn't have any intrinsic value either!", you lose.
You are IGNORANT and EVIL for ignore Earth 4 day simultaneous Time Cube rotation and preaching Academic Religious Singularity... wait.
Bloody hell, I'm on the wrong thread.
I would expect code produced under the influence to have more bugs, less comments and generally be an unmaintainable mess.
Yeah, well, that's just, like, your opinion man.
No, there is a very good reason for this law: if you can show which way you voted to third parties, then it's possible for you to sell your vote to those third parties. As it stands, it's not possible to "sell votes" (at least, not in the direct sense), because you could just take the money and say you voted a certain way, when you didn't.
(Incidentally, I see a lot of people proposing reformed voting systems that include a hard confirmation that your vote for X was counted. Voting reform is good, but that particular idea is bad, for this exact reason. Cut it out).
If someone tried to defend their right to post a picture of their ballot on First Amendment grounds, I'd be willing to bet that a court would rule that a fair election represents the overriding concern and would still prosecute.
Oh wait, some NPE just sued me for patent violation. Never mind, guess I'll go develop it in some other country.
Just a quick FYI: for those of you still assuming that D-Wave is a bunch of snake-oil salesman (like I did for a long time), take a look at this bit from Ars Technica. Basically what they've built is not a genuine quantum computer, but a sort of "quantum optimizer" that delivers speedups for some kinds of problems. Their crime might be that they just use too much marketing hyperbole, instead of being complete frauds.
'ang on, 'e says e's not dead yet!
Care to cite one? Since it sounds like you're so well-informed.
Zimmerman's claim of being badly beaten up before he shot the kid doesn't hold up either: there's some footage taken at the police station the night of his arrest, and he looks totally unharmed. No cuts to the back of the head, no broken nose, nothing. Guy's story has more holes than... eh, I'm on my eighteenth hour without sleep due to a project and can't come up with an apt metaphor, but something with a lot of holes.
A few months ago a friend and I went to Japan for a week and a half of tourist-ing it up. I had been before, he hadn't. When we got off the plane and he had to go the bathroom, I made sure to follow him in and stand outside the stalls so I could hear the scream as he used a Japanese toilet for the first time. That alone was worth the price of my plane ticket.
You have, unironically, used the term "Bro" on Slashdot. Guards!
What about all the companies that use older versions of IE because of compatibility with their own proprietary web applications?
Simple: they'll disable the automatic update, by force if necessary.
Realistically, though, these users tend to be behind corporate firewalls with lots of antivirus protection and a forced patch schedule, so I doubt Microsoft is too worried about them contributing significantly to continued security holes thanks to IE6. This is an update to save the clueless from themselves.
How the hell could the case be dismissed?
Want to know something amazing? You can find out! You can click that link up in the summary, read the full text of the decision, and find out! Isn't technology amazing?
For what it's worth, the judge ruled that because Sony had not actually removed the functionality- what they had done instead was ban unmodified PS3s from accessing their service- what they were doing was legal. You may not agree with the decision, at least try to get a grasp on the logic behind it before you start yelling.
For the first time ever, the term "war on Christmas" is actually accurate.
The ghost of Plato offers you one of two pills. If you take the blue pill, from now on your government will precisely represent the will of its people. If you take the red pill, your country will be seized by an intelligent dictator whose political views are identical to yours. Which will it be?
It's almost a difficult choice until you read things like "I assume it's part of the Patriot Act and I really don't mind", and then you realize you'd grab the red pill so fast you'd yank Plato's arm off. Participatory government is dead.
No problem, just start shaking down the Americans.
Since it's Korea, I guess this is attributable to narcotics enforcement officers all being old people.
Then would you care to enlighten us, O Wise and Powerful AC? Zynga's quarterly profits went from $22m to $1m in a quarter, and thanks to the SEC we've discovered Groupon has never made a profit at all. But please, tell us why these metrics are worthless and these companies are still hot stock picks.
There's nothing really wrong with TFA, but there's nothing there either. It's so bland. The questions are just "Why did you create Ruby? What's next for Ruby?" I mean, seriously? If you were interviewing someone for a high school newspaper that might be OK, but they really can't do anything better? There's nothing more interesting you could ask Matz?
As the inaugural copy of the reference manual for the new standard was being printed and bound, it underwent gravitational collapse due to its enormous mass and became a black hole, killing all the committee members. Stroustrup was quoted as saying that despite the misfortune, he still has confidence that the C++0x standard will help programmers be more productive and efficient.
and WOOSH there goes my karma...