Read it and weep. TTIP and TISA yet to go. This was all planned back in 1985 when the Masters of the Universe began the Narrative and implemented several measures to discourage women from tech careers.
I don't know about you, but I don't think He-Man and his crew sought to discourage women from employment in certain fields. His actions appeared to be fairly progressive for the mid-80's. After all, his twin sister had basically the same job in a male-dominated career of villain foiling and he seemed perfectly fine with that.
No, YOU are talking about harassment. Harassment != Offense. Comments or actions that aren't directed towards specific individuals or organizations don't qualify as harassment. Read the link here; this isn't about harassment. Colleges and campuses are classifying statements like "I believe the most qualified individual should get the job" as offensive microaggressions. As soon as anyone becomes offended by a statement, then it's censored.
That's the issue we are talking about here. Harassment still isn't tolerated on campuses, and it's not the topic of conversation here.
You're right in that air conditioning is technically a subset of refrigeration, but I don't think that air conditioning really revolutionized society (or disrupted) in the same sense here, so that's why it's not included or mentioned here. Having air conditioning is more of a luxury, being able to enjoy a slightly cooler room in the heat. Having a small compartment between -20 and 5 degrees radically altered socialization, commerce, food preparation, etc..
My thoughts are that, the "Ban all the guns" group is wishful thinking. That ship has sailed, and if you try to ban guns, then only outlaws will have guns, and I don't think that's any good.
I like your points here, and i generally agree here with your stance here for toddlers (or basically, someone acquiring a gun that's not qualified to handle one). But I can't really agree with that stance on "only outlaws will have guns", especially when it comes to school shootings or a rampage of a similar nature. Yes, your criminal organizations and inner city gangs will still have their guns, but we could still reduce the number of mass shooting instances by making it more difficult to acquire them in the first place. Or alternatively, make it more difficult to acquire more powerful guns; semi-automatic weapons, assault rifles, etc...
The people involved in these mass shootings aren't exactly the most socially proficient - if they couldn't just run to a gun store or pawn shop and pick something up easily, how else would they acquire one? They don't exactly have connections to the black market. They couldn't just order one online (with restrictions in place on these types of weapons). Are they going to ask their classmates, hoping they don't rat them out? Making guns more difficult to own could result in higher instances of potential shooters getting caught before the shit goes down, or discouraging them from trying in the first place.
Are games art? Well they definitely contain art and require some creative input and material. So maybe Zork or other text-based games might technically not count as art; call it adventuring or role playing or something? It's like asking if an art gallery itself, is technically "art" (Not really? Sort of? Maybe? but it contains artworks).
The most important question is, who cares whether video games technically count as art or not? I could take a dump in a styrofoam container, cover it in rainbow sprinkles, put some edgy label on there like "GMO free" or "Monsanto", and sneak it into an art gallery - and people would be convinced it's technically "art". The existing definition is so vague, that's it's practically meaningless.
What I learned from this article, was that the metre was the initial arbitrary unit that formed the basis of the metric system (I think). The relationship is that 1kg of water = 1 liter = 1 cubic decimeter. But one of these had to come first, and as a result of an arbitrary unit. If a kilogram was slightly heavier or lighter, then that would have altered our metric measurements of volume and weight by a slight amount too
Another poster here mentioned that the meter was originally intended to be 1/10,000,000th of the distance from the pole to the equator, but it's been redefined twice, and now it's supposed to be X number of wavelengths of an line of krypton-86 . And then finally, this was redefined again in 1983 as the distance light travels in 1/299792458 of a second.
What I don't get it, shouldn't the kilogram have been defined and redefined then as the weight of a cubic dm of water each of these times then too? Why is there an attempt to base this on Avogadro's or Plank's constant?
No, they won't all bow down to banks and corporate interests. This isn't Republicans vs Democrats in the US.
The Conservatives support the TPP, that's obvious. The NDP does NOT - not sure where you get the idea they're bought by corporations. In the recent provincial election in Alberta, the top 70 corporate donations went to one of the two right wing parties (PC, Wildrose). NDP was the only party to claim they'd raise corporate taxes. Granted, that's at the provincial level but the party ideology doesn't differ that much at the federal level.
It's unlikely that the Conservatives or NDP will win a majority government at the federal level, so the TPP being enforced will mostly depend on the stance the liberal party takes. Right now, Trudeau's not giving a solid answer on the TPP, just stating "will need to evaluate it". The pessimist in me thinks they're probably going to support it (but they don't want to publicly take a stance yet - and to be fair the dealings are highly secretive so that's a fair statement to make). But it's really up in the air as to whether it'll be passed.
Maybe because iPads and Surface Pros have just a wee bit more to do with current tech than a Hoover? Of course, maybe you don't realize that an article about tablet branding might be more appealing than vacuum cleaner branding on a site attempting to display "News for Nerds"
This is an unbelievably stupid analogy. NSA and government data is accessible by a handful of people. People that can make your life miserable, because now they can blackmail you, or a politician, or just about anyone with that content. But if your misdeeds of the past are available via a quick google search, then anyone can find out that information and no one has power over you.
Try to imagine what would happen if a few corrupt government or NSA individuals had exclusive access to the Ashely Madison leaked info, instead of it being splattered all over the internet. And for the sake of argument, we have a lot more high ranking senators, governors and congresscritters with that information on that list. The NSA would fucking own them, and none of them would dare speak out against mass surveillance for the rest of their term. Maybe they're blackmailed into payment by some underlings working there. Powerful govt organization gets even more powerful. Hell, they're probably doing this now.
Really? If I buy a Turbo Supra Mach 6 Extreme cartridge pack from Europe, and try to place a razor on a handle I bought in North America, then not only does it not fit (for the intended, actual model), but it bricks/disables the handle until I hire a certified technician to fix my handle for $600 / hr?
That's an excellent point that I failed to identify, thank you for bringing that up. While the analogy doesn't account for the fact that it's possible people could use the Popcorn Time for a legitimate purposes, the argument at this point is what threshold of legitimate use would you consider this legal or legitimate? If the primary use of a feature is for illegal purposes (like bitcoin, silk road, TPB) then it's reasonable to expect law enforcement to shut down those avenues of business for the greater good. So while only a trivial percentage of book owners of The Anarchist Cookbook (as another commenter mentioned) may actually build a bomb, that percentage is significantly higher for torrent sites (which are almost universally designed for illegal files, like 95% or more).
If a road was being used to smuggle good and law enforcement determined that 90% of the vehicles using the road were for crime-related purposes, they'd barricade that road up. The 10% that legitimately used the road would have to suffer as a result of the road closure, and while that might inconvenience them - it has to go for the greater good. Now if you're looking at Popcorn Time, that appears to have a similar use rate for pirated content - if 95% of Popcorn Time use is for pirated material, then it's hard to justify its existence as a legal means of finding a tracker for legit videos. Sort of like Silk Road. Anyway, the original point was that there's a distinct difference between teaching the English language and specifically providing step by step instructions on how to use software with a high likeliness of use for illegal material, and somehow that gets a +5 insightful
In order to kill some civilians / infidels, follow these steps...
1. Combine (insert materials here) to make an effective bomb
2. Transport bomb via (specific technique) as to not arouse suspicions
3. Have an alibi of some sorts, (this) is a good one
4. Pick (specific day/time) for maximum effectiveness
5. Detonate bomb!
Hey, don't arrest me, I'm just exercising my free speech here! There's nothing legally or morally wrong about the information my website has to offer, so fuck off you socialist bastards! Also, maybe your analogy fails because while everyone that knows how to drive knows how to speed, not everyone necessarily knows how to bomb a marketplace, download illegal material, or do anything else illegal and thanks to you and you're "information wants to be free" mantra, you've just made the world a worse place?
You may recall Murder Time, the software that allows users to input data / variables and suggests the best way to murder someone without getting caught. It fell afoul of the law quite quickly, but survived and stabilized. Now, out of Denmark comes news that two men operating websites related to Murder Time have been arrested, and their sites have been shut down. It's notable because the sites were informational resources, explaining how to use the software. They did not actually murder anyone themselves, they were not involved with development of Murder Time or any of its forks, and they didn't host the software. "Both men stand accused of distributing knowledge and guides on how to murder people and are reported to have confessed."
Can we stop acting surprised or outraged when law enforcement officials make arrests based on people hosting "informational resources", when said "informational resources" are specific instructions on how to break the law or commit a crime? Seriously. If I host some "information" site on how to plan a proper kidnapping, build and plan a bombing, transport slaves, hire a hit man, purchase some CP, or even something as relatively insignificant as pirate/play music or movies - do you honestly believe you should be legally exempt from such "informational resources"? The crime of distributing knowledge and guides on how to obtain illegal content online seems reasonable for any of those other horrid crimes I mentioned - if you can't discern between doing what these two did and simply teaching someone else the English language, maybe your moral compass needs some alignment.
Slashdot has an unhealthy number of libertarian-leaning individuals who tend to think they should be able to say or post whatever the hell they want, but as long as they're not actually committing a crime themselves, they should be absolved from all responsibility (legal or moral). That's fairly evident any time Silk Road or TPB comes up, always people there to rush to their defense of their existence with a "but we didn't actually do any bad stuff!" excuse. If that's you, chances are you've probably never been financially, emotionally or physically hurt by someone else's "informational resources" that were specifically targeted at you. Maybe it's time to re-think your principles and realize that "information" that supports or promotes illegal activity should be taken down, regardless of how severe the crime is. Having said that, this is fairly petty in terms of severity of their information, and I hope they don't get more than a slap on the wrist for hosting that information.
If you want to cook for the public for free or for a massively reduced, (But still reasonable) rate, you are more then welcome to, just don't poison or harm them.
No, you can't do that! You're still missing the point! If you want to cook for the public - you still need to follow regulations! You need to follow health codes and have sanitary conditions. You are certainly most NOT "more than welcome to" start cooking for the public without following the regulations. If I started a restaurant that didn't follow health codes, then other restaurant owners would certainly be upset about that (as I'd likely be able to undercut the competition by skimping out on sanitation costs, or serving somewhat rotten food).
There's no GLOBAL race to the bottom for uber's business. There's no way to outsource the jobs for 1/10 of the price elsewhere. Every region will have its own pricing scheme, where customers and drivers generally agree on the worthiness of a fare to be worthwhile
Yeah, there's problems with uber in other areas that need to be addressed with their slimy business practices. Claiming not to be employers, so they don't have to pay benefits. Claiming they're "ride sharing" so their drivers don't have to be insured, or follow other regulations. But this is certainly isn't some race to the bottom like you're describing. If they're a better alternative to cabs, that goes to show their prices / fares were artificially high (i.e. to make up for medallions, which is basically because of an artificial scarcity for drivers)
There was no such claim in anything that I said. There were three points being made here:
1) The fact that you're pooh-poohing what appears to be a legitimate study (what you called "rubbish research") shows you're already biased and not going to take any study legitimately. Given that scientific research is really the only way to move anything in the realm of "alternative medicine" to actual medicine, that's a rather incredulous attitude.
2) The "sham acupuncture" scenario appears to have been considered in the experiment, as there was a group of rats that received the sham acupuncture, which I indicated with the quote & bolding. This was the only factor of the study that you used to support the idea that this study is BS; yet it was actually considered in the study
3) The concept of acupuncture isn't that far fetched; at least not in the same realm of homeopathy or astrology; which contradicts our current understanding of physics and biology.
None of what I said has anything to do with EA vs A. In fact, it really doesn't matter since you seem to discount both versions. If the study was done with just needles and no electricity, would you have thought the study was any more legitimate or believed acupuncture works any more or less than you did before reading this? Of course not, this is just some weird strawman you're injecting here. The whole point of a scientific study is to move us closer to the truth, so studies on homeopathy or astrology or acupuncture aren't worthless in that sense, even if you know or feel the practice is bogus. The results of these studies help to greater understanding of the area (whether they show a correlation or not), and help sway public opinion. Your original comment is neither insightful nor informative.
The study, reported in the journal Endocrinology, compared stressed rats given electroacupuncture, [with?] a sham therapy in which needles were not inserted in a meridian point, or no treatment. A fourth group of rats were not exposed to stress and did not receive acupuncture.
Except that this study seems to have accounted for that. There's a specific mention of one group having sham therapy where needles were inserted into the rats, but NOT into the meridian points described. At least that's what I understand from the quoted statement there (there seems to be a minor grammatical error there and the word [with] or [to] may be missing, hence the paraphrasing).
"There's no scientific proof that acupuncture actually works, the whole idea is rubbish!"
*Study is done, finds correlation between acupuncture and hormones / stress*
"What is this shit study? We all know acupuncture doesn't work, why waste time studying this rubbish"?
That's a nice no-win situation there for anyone trying to discover validity in acupuncture.
"The real test, if these woo believers wanted to test the magic scientific meridian whacko superpoint stomach meridian point 36 (St36) [help me stop laughing], is to do the magic at various points on the poor bloody rats and see what happens (including the little itty bitty points close to the magic St36)."
If you real the actual article (I know, crazy request for a slashdotter!) you'll see that "The study, reported in the journal Endocrinology, compared stressed rats given electroacupuncture,[to] a sham therapy in which needles were not inserted in a meridian point, or no treatment. A fourth group of rats were not exposed to stress and did not receive acupuncture. ". Hey look, they actually did that thing you said they would have to to be considered *real* science. And they still found a correlation. The whole purpose of the sham acupuncture was to eliminate the possibility of the placebo effect (which apparently can be seen in animals too) or to eliminate the possibility that random needling produces the same results
Acupuncture isn't homeopathy or healing crystals (concepts that contradict our entire understanding of physics and biology). I'm no medical expert, but the basic concepts are at least believable. You stick some needles in you, get relief from physical pain in the area. What's so "mystical" or "voodoo-like" about that? Nothing. Maybe the neurons from the specific area of pain can't transmit that information properly to the brain if there's pain from a meridian point (or elsewhere) that jams that connection. Or the scraping ("Gua-sha" or something) practice doesn't seem so far fetched either, and quite medically plausible. You move waste material from deep inside your body towards the skin, and you end up sweating it out faster. Nothing quacky about that, at least from an initial perspective. Now if your acupuncturist can claim to cure cancer or other nonsense like that, then I might have a hard time believing that crap. But some of these specific techniques don't seem so far fetched, and may be plausible.
This assumes that the people posting the ad are fully in control of the demographics they want to target. We don't know if the people that posted or created the ad specifically dictates in the terms something like "out of the 100000 times this ad pops up, make sure that 80000 are specifically targeted to men". That's the (incorrect?) assumption being made here I think. While this might seem understandable for certain types of targeted ads (don't display feminine hygiene products to men) - i seriously doubt this is the case here. It could be that the ad is targeted to people with "IT" in their work experience, and men are more likely to see the ads because more men are in IT.
Now, you do mention that the profiles used were identical in all cases - which is a good point. However, that doesn't account for all the data that's been collected on the same advertisement for all the people outside of this study. Maybe when this ad was originally posted, it was randomly displayed to people for the first hour or day (not accounting for any demographics). But the purpose of ads is to get clicks, so the algorithm for these ads are going to look at the demographics of the people that clicked these ads (all demographics, not just gender) and then favor people matching those demographics. These is the whole concept behind trends and targeted advertising. People in the 25-40 age range might be more likely to see these ads too, simply because more of them are clicking the ads and the algorithm adjusts the information. It doesn't mean they're age discriminating against those 13-18 or 65 and older.
Look Cletus, we get it. Your sister is hot. You want to take her pants off and do the hanky-panky. We understand ya. We totally do. That's part of the reason why I married yer ma. Best part was, we didn't have to go to the DMV to change her last name after the weddin'.
But the fact is, you and Brandine are as dumb as mules and thrice as ugly. If you two are gunn' have kids, they can't be any dumber or uglier than the two of ya are already. You be needing some of that generic adversity that the therapist mentioned back in those sessions. And besides, we can't afford a wedding without some other family chipping in. Go out there and find a nice purty, rich girl out there and make poppa proud instead, hmmkay?
Analogy fail. You should have used the pirate bay for a better example.
Try making some bomb threats or death threats, or perhaps make some offers to buy or sell drugs using one of those service providers and see how well that turns out for you. Silk Road was designed specifically for black market / illegal transactions. Ulbricht even called himself "Dread Pirate Roberts". If you can't tell the difference between eBay and Silk Road - well then I suppose these words are lost on you.
Yeah, what's wrong with transactions among consenting adults!?!
- I mean, if some corrupt African dictator wants to buy some weapons to wipe out the rioters, that's not my fault - all I did was facilitate the chemical weapons transaction.
- If someone wanted to buy some slaves, and all I did was facilitate the transaction; not my fault.
- CP getting bought and sold on my trading network? Whoa, not my fault, all i did was provide a medium for two consenting adults to make a transaction (involving non-consenting children).
- Someone hired a hitman to kill a journalist that exposed your corruption using my transaction network? Look pal, it's not like I pulled the trigger. All I did was provide a medium/platform that made it much easier for you to complete your transaction. I'm sure that even without my transaction network around, the hitman would have been hired in the black market yellow pages.
Ah, the old 'turn a blind eye' argument. Libertarianism at it's finest. Now it might be nice to be able to buy some drugs that the government says I shouldn't have. But I'd also like to not get murdered by posting dissenting opinions or becoming a whistleblower. And since you can't really have one without the other (don't get to choose what goes on your black market if you turn a blind eye), then I think I'll stick with not having this transaction platform exist at all for the betterment of humanity.
Of course that tells us something. GP posted that the normal lifespan of a bee colony is measured in decades or in rare cases even centuries. That's a vague timespan of course, but that's maybe roughly on par with a human lifespan (30 to >100). Even if we assume the low end of that is 30 years, if 40% of them died within a 12 month period that's a massive indicator of some of sort of problem. A 30 year lifespan (again, LOW end guesstimate based on GP comments) means that on average, 3% of colonies should die off each year (12 month span). A 40% mortality rate would only be normal if colonies lived an average of 2.5 years.
Cmon man, at least try and math a little before posting a response
I would generally disagree with that sentiment as well (from GP), though generally agreeing with the rest of the comments. If your religion will reward you for killing infidels and grant you passage to eternal paradise for doing so (Islam), then their followers are more likely to be murderers than if they weren't religious. If your religion is all forgiving (Christianity), well you can do just about whatever you want during your time on earth (rape, kill, steal) but you've got your get-into-heaven free card! In general, people tend to do whatever benefits them and pick and select whatever lines of text from their holy books that suit their agenda (i.e. gay bashing) and ignore the rest.
I think the concept of an invisible santa claus watching out on you might apply for some select religions and their beliefs (i.e. Karma), but I think the sheer number of people in the Abrahamic religious outweighs those that aren't in there.
Assuming that segregation actually works out to favor an overall academic improvement for the students, isn't this creating an even bigger problem by removing social interaction between kids of the opposite gender? School isn't just purely for academic purposes, kids actually learn other life skills there like how to make friends, or how to interact with people of the opposite sex. Maybe there's a perceived benefit that teen pregnancy goes down (or some other nonsense), but now we've got a bunch of kids more likely to be misandrists or misogynists, because they're only used to interacting with their own gender.
Perhaps we can have some insight from a gender-segregated boarding school or something, and how that's affected your life (or how some of your classmates behave now when compared to others in society)
Slashdot Mirror
Read it and weep. TTIP and TISA yet to go. This was all planned back in 1985 when the Masters of the Universe began the Narrative and implemented several measures to discourage women from tech careers.
I don't know about you, but I don't think He-Man and his crew sought to discourage women from employment in certain fields. His actions appeared to be fairly progressive for the mid-80's. After all, his twin sister had basically the same job in a male-dominated career of villain foiling and he seemed perfectly fine with that.
No, YOU are talking about harassment. Harassment != Offense. Comments or actions that aren't directed towards specific individuals or organizations don't qualify as harassment. Read the link here; this isn't about harassment. Colleges and campuses are classifying statements like "I believe the most qualified individual should get the job" as offensive microaggressions. As soon as anyone becomes offended by a statement, then it's censored.
That's the issue we are talking about here. Harassment still isn't tolerated on campuses, and it's not the topic of conversation here.
You're right in that air conditioning is technically a subset of refrigeration, but I don't think that air conditioning really revolutionized society (or disrupted) in the same sense here, so that's why it's not included or mentioned here. Having air conditioning is more of a luxury, being able to enjoy a slightly cooler room in the heat. Having a small compartment between -20 and 5 degrees radically altered socialization, commerce, food preparation, etc..
My thoughts are that, the "Ban all the guns" group is wishful thinking. That ship has sailed, and if you try to ban guns, then only outlaws will have guns, and I don't think that's any good.
I like your points here, and i generally agree here with your stance here for toddlers (or basically, someone acquiring a gun that's not qualified to handle one). But I can't really agree with that stance on "only outlaws will have guns", especially when it comes to school shootings or a rampage of a similar nature. Yes, your criminal organizations and inner city gangs will still have their guns, but we could still reduce the number of mass shooting instances by making it more difficult to acquire them in the first place. Or alternatively, make it more difficult to acquire more powerful guns; semi-automatic weapons, assault rifles, etc...
The people involved in these mass shootings aren't exactly the most socially proficient - if they couldn't just run to a gun store or pawn shop and pick something up easily, how else would they acquire one? They don't exactly have connections to the black market. They couldn't just order one online (with restrictions in place on these types of weapons). Are they going to ask their classmates, hoping they don't rat them out? Making guns more difficult to own could result in higher instances of potential shooters getting caught before the shit goes down, or discouraging them from trying in the first place.
Are games art? Well they definitely contain art and require some creative input and material. So maybe Zork or other text-based games might technically not count as art; call it adventuring or role playing or something? It's like asking if an art gallery itself, is technically "art" (Not really? Sort of? Maybe? but it contains artworks).
The most important question is, who cares whether video games technically count as art or not? I could take a dump in a styrofoam container, cover it in rainbow sprinkles, put some edgy label on there like "GMO free" or "Monsanto", and sneak it into an art gallery - and people would be convinced it's technically "art". The existing definition is so vague, that's it's practically meaningless.
What I learned from this article, was that the metre was the initial arbitrary unit that formed the basis of the metric system (I think). The relationship is that 1kg of water = 1 liter = 1 cubic decimeter. But one of these had to come first, and as a result of an arbitrary unit. If a kilogram was slightly heavier or lighter, then that would have altered our metric measurements of volume and weight by a slight amount too
Another poster here mentioned that the meter was originally intended to be 1/10,000,000th of the distance from the pole to the equator, but it's been redefined twice, and now it's supposed to be X number of wavelengths of an line of krypton-86 . And then finally, this was redefined again in 1983 as the distance light travels in 1/299792458 of a second.
What I don't get it, shouldn't the kilogram have been defined and redefined then as the weight of a cubic dm of water each of these times then too? Why is there an attempt to base this on Avogadro's or Plank's constant?
No, they won't all bow down to banks and corporate interests. This isn't Republicans vs Democrats in the US.
The Conservatives support the TPP, that's obvious. The NDP does NOT - not sure where you get the idea they're bought by corporations. In the recent provincial election in Alberta, the top 70 corporate donations went to one of the two right wing parties (PC, Wildrose). NDP was the only party to claim they'd raise corporate taxes. Granted, that's at the provincial level but the party ideology doesn't differ that much at the federal level.
It's unlikely that the Conservatives or NDP will win a majority government at the federal level, so the TPP being enforced will mostly depend on the stance the liberal party takes. Right now, Trudeau's not giving a solid answer on the TPP, just stating "will need to evaluate it". The pessimist in me thinks they're probably going to support it (but they don't want to publicly take a stance yet - and to be fair the dealings are highly secretive so that's a fair statement to make). But it's really up in the air as to whether it'll be passed.
Maybe because iPads and Surface Pros have just a wee bit more to do with current tech than a Hoover? Of course, maybe you don't realize that an article about tablet branding might be more appealing than vacuum cleaner branding on a site attempting to display "News for Nerds"
This is an unbelievably stupid analogy. NSA and government data is accessible by a handful of people. People that can make your life miserable, because now they can blackmail you, or a politician, or just about anyone with that content. But if your misdeeds of the past are available via a quick google search, then anyone can find out that information and no one has power over you.
Try to imagine what would happen if a few corrupt government or NSA individuals had exclusive access to the Ashely Madison leaked info, instead of it being splattered all over the internet. And for the sake of argument, we have a lot more high ranking senators, governors and congresscritters with that information on that list. The NSA would fucking own them, and none of them would dare speak out against mass surveillance for the rest of their term. Maybe they're blackmailed into payment by some underlings working there. Powerful govt organization gets even more powerful. Hell, they're probably doing this now.
Really? If I buy a Turbo Supra Mach 6 Extreme cartridge pack from Europe, and try to place a razor on a handle I bought in North America, then not only does it not fit (for the intended, actual model), but it bricks/disables the handle until I hire a certified technician to fix my handle for $600 / hr?
That's an excellent point that I failed to identify, thank you for bringing that up. While the analogy doesn't account for the fact that it's possible people could use the Popcorn Time for a legitimate purposes, the argument at this point is what threshold of legitimate use would you consider this legal or legitimate? If the primary use of a feature is for illegal purposes (like bitcoin, silk road, TPB) then it's reasonable to expect law enforcement to shut down those avenues of business for the greater good. So while only a trivial percentage of book owners of The Anarchist Cookbook (as another commenter mentioned) may actually build a bomb, that percentage is significantly higher for torrent sites (which are almost universally designed for illegal files, like 95% or more).
If a road was being used to smuggle good and law enforcement determined that 90% of the vehicles using the road were for crime-related purposes, they'd barricade that road up. The 10% that legitimately used the road would have to suffer as a result of the road closure, and while that might inconvenience them - it has to go for the greater good. Now if you're looking at Popcorn Time, that appears to have a similar use rate for pirated content - if 95% of Popcorn Time use is for pirated material, then it's hard to justify its existence as a legal means of finding a tracker for legit videos. Sort of like Silk Road. Anyway, the original point was that there's a distinct difference between teaching the English language and specifically providing step by step instructions on how to use software with a high likeliness of use for illegal material, and somehow that gets a +5 insightful
In order to kill some civilians / infidels, follow these steps...
1. Combine (insert materials here) to make an effective bomb
2. Transport bomb via (specific technique) as to not arouse suspicions
3. Have an alibi of some sorts, (this) is a good one
4. Pick (specific day/time) for maximum effectiveness
5. Detonate bomb!
Hey, don't arrest me, I'm just exercising my free speech here! There's nothing legally or morally wrong about the information my website has to offer, so fuck off you socialist bastards! Also, maybe your analogy fails because while everyone that knows how to drive knows how to speed, not everyone necessarily knows how to bomb a marketplace, download illegal material, or do anything else illegal and thanks to you and you're "information wants to be free" mantra, you've just made the world a worse place?
You may recall Murder Time, the software that allows users to input data / variables and suggests the best way to murder someone without getting caught. It fell afoul of the law quite quickly, but survived and stabilized. Now, out of Denmark comes news that two men operating websites related to Murder Time have been arrested, and their sites have been shut down. It's notable because the sites were informational resources, explaining how to use the software. They did not actually murder anyone themselves, they were not involved with development of Murder Time or any of its forks, and they didn't host the software. "Both men stand accused of distributing knowledge and guides on how to murder people and are reported to have confessed."
Can we stop acting surprised or outraged when law enforcement officials make arrests based on people hosting "informational resources", when said "informational resources" are specific instructions on how to break the law or commit a crime? Seriously. If I host some "information" site on how to plan a proper kidnapping, build and plan a bombing, transport slaves, hire a hit man, purchase some CP, or even something as relatively insignificant as pirate/play music or movies - do you honestly believe you should be legally exempt from such "informational resources"? The crime of distributing knowledge and guides on how to obtain illegal content online seems reasonable for any of those other horrid crimes I mentioned - if you can't discern between doing what these two did and simply teaching someone else the English language, maybe your moral compass needs some alignment.
Slashdot has an unhealthy number of libertarian-leaning individuals who tend to think they should be able to say or post whatever the hell they want, but as long as they're not actually committing a crime themselves, they should be absolved from all responsibility (legal or moral). That's fairly evident any time Silk Road or TPB comes up, always people there to rush to their defense of their existence with a "but we didn't actually do any bad stuff!" excuse. If that's you, chances are you've probably never been financially, emotionally or physically hurt by someone else's "informational resources" that were specifically targeted at you. Maybe it's time to re-think your principles and realize that "information" that supports or promotes illegal activity should be taken down, regardless of how severe the crime is. Having said that, this is fairly petty in terms of severity of their information, and I hope they don't get more than a slap on the wrist for hosting that information.
If you want to cook for the public for free or for a massively reduced, (But still reasonable) rate, you are more then welcome to, just don't poison or harm them.
No, you can't do that! You're still missing the point! If you want to cook for the public - you still need to follow regulations! You need to follow health codes and have sanitary conditions. You are certainly most NOT "more than welcome to" start cooking for the public without following the regulations. If I started a restaurant that didn't follow health codes, then other restaurant owners would certainly be upset about that (as I'd likely be able to undercut the competition by skimping out on sanitation costs, or serving somewhat rotten food).
There's no GLOBAL race to the bottom for uber's business. There's no way to outsource the jobs for 1/10 of the price elsewhere. Every region will have its own pricing scheme, where customers and drivers generally agree on the worthiness of a fare to be worthwhile
Yeah, there's problems with uber in other areas that need to be addressed with their slimy business practices. Claiming not to be employers, so they don't have to pay benefits. Claiming they're "ride sharing" so their drivers don't have to be insured, or follow other regulations. But this is certainly isn't some race to the bottom like you're describing. If they're a better alternative to cabs, that goes to show their prices / fares were artificially high (i.e. to make up for medallions, which is basically because of an artificial scarcity for drivers)
There was no such claim in anything that I said. There were three points being made here:
1) The fact that you're pooh-poohing what appears to be a legitimate study (what you called "rubbish research") shows you're already biased and not going to take any study legitimately. Given that scientific research is really the only way to move anything in the realm of "alternative medicine" to actual medicine, that's a rather incredulous attitude.
2) The "sham acupuncture" scenario appears to have been considered in the experiment, as there was a group of rats that received the sham acupuncture, which I indicated with the quote & bolding. This was the only factor of the study that you used to support the idea that this study is BS; yet it was actually considered in the study
3) The concept of acupuncture isn't that far fetched; at least not in the same realm of homeopathy or astrology; which contradicts our current understanding of physics and biology.
None of what I said has anything to do with EA vs A. In fact, it really doesn't matter since you seem to discount both versions. If the study was done with just needles and no electricity, would you have thought the study was any more legitimate or believed acupuncture works any more or less than you did before reading this? Of course not, this is just some weird strawman you're injecting here. The whole point of a scientific study is to move us closer to the truth, so studies on homeopathy or astrology or acupuncture aren't worthless in that sense, even if you know or feel the practice is bogus. The results of these studies help to greater understanding of the area (whether they show a correlation or not), and help sway public opinion. Your original comment is neither insightful nor informative.
The study, reported in the journal Endocrinology, compared stressed rats given electroacupuncture, [with?] a sham therapy in which needles were not inserted in a meridian point, or no treatment. A fourth group of rats were not exposed to stress and did not receive acupuncture.
Except that this study seems to have accounted for that. There's a specific mention of one group having sham therapy where needles were inserted into the rats, but NOT into the meridian points described. At least that's what I understand from the quoted statement there (there seems to be a minor grammatical error there and the word [with] or [to] may be missing, hence the paraphrasing).
*Study is done, finds correlation between acupuncture and hormones / stress*
"What is this shit study? We all know acupuncture doesn't work, why waste time studying this rubbish"?
That's a nice no-win situation there for anyone trying to discover validity in acupuncture.
"The real test, if these woo believers wanted to test the magic scientific meridian whacko superpoint stomach meridian point 36 (St36) [help me stop laughing], is to do the magic at various points on the poor bloody rats and see what happens (including the little itty bitty points close to the magic St36)."
If you real the actual article (I know, crazy request for a slashdotter!) you'll see that "The study, reported in the journal Endocrinology, compared stressed rats given electroacupuncture,[to] a sham therapy in which needles were not inserted in a meridian point, or no treatment. A fourth group of rats were not exposed to stress and did not receive acupuncture. ". Hey look, they actually did that thing you said they would have to to be considered *real* science. And they still found a correlation. The whole purpose of the sham acupuncture was to eliminate the possibility of the placebo effect (which apparently can be seen in animals too) or to eliminate the possibility that random needling produces the same results
Acupuncture isn't homeopathy or healing crystals (concepts that contradict our entire understanding of physics and biology). I'm no medical expert, but the basic concepts are at least believable. You stick some needles in you, get relief from physical pain in the area. What's so "mystical" or "voodoo-like" about that? Nothing. Maybe the neurons from the specific area of pain can't transmit that information properly to the brain if there's pain from a meridian point (or elsewhere) that jams that connection. Or the scraping ("Gua-sha" or something) practice doesn't seem so far fetched either, and quite medically plausible. You move waste material from deep inside your body towards the skin, and you end up sweating it out faster. Nothing quacky about that, at least from an initial perspective. Now if your acupuncturist can claim to cure cancer or other nonsense like that, then I might have a hard time believing that crap. But some of these specific techniques don't seem so far fetched, and may be plausible.
This assumes that the people posting the ad are fully in control of the demographics they want to target. We don't know if the people that posted or created the ad specifically dictates in the terms something like "out of the 100000 times this ad pops up, make sure that 80000 are specifically targeted to men". That's the (incorrect?) assumption being made here I think. While this might seem understandable for certain types of targeted ads (don't display feminine hygiene products to men) - i seriously doubt this is the case here. It could be that the ad is targeted to people with "IT" in their work experience, and men are more likely to see the ads because more men are in IT.
Now, you do mention that the profiles used were identical in all cases - which is a good point. However, that doesn't account for all the data that's been collected on the same advertisement for all the people outside of this study. Maybe when this ad was originally posted, it was randomly displayed to people for the first hour or day (not accounting for any demographics). But the purpose of ads is to get clicks, so the algorithm for these ads are going to look at the demographics of the people that clicked these ads (all demographics, not just gender) and then favor people matching those demographics. These is the whole concept behind trends and targeted advertising. People in the 25-40 age range might be more likely to see these ads too, simply because more of them are clicking the ads and the algorithm adjusts the information. It doesn't mean they're age discriminating against those 13-18 or 65 and older.
Look Cletus, we get it. Your sister is hot. You want to take her pants off and do the hanky-panky. We understand ya. We totally do. That's part of the reason why I married yer ma. Best part was, we didn't have to go to the DMV to change her last name after the weddin'.
But the fact is, you and Brandine are as dumb as mules and thrice as ugly. If you two are gunn' have kids, they can't be any dumber or uglier than the two of ya are already. You be needing some of that generic adversity that the therapist mentioned back in those sessions. And besides, we can't afford a wedding without some other family chipping in. Go out there and find a nice purty, rich girl out there and make poppa proud instead, hmmkay?
Analogy fail. You should have used the pirate bay for a better example.
Try making some bomb threats or death threats, or perhaps make some offers to buy or sell drugs using one of those service providers and see how well that turns out for you. Silk Road was designed specifically for black market / illegal transactions. Ulbricht even called himself "Dread Pirate Roberts". If you can't tell the difference between eBay and Silk Road - well then I suppose these words are lost on you.
Yeah, what's wrong with transactions among consenting adults!?!
- I mean, if some corrupt African dictator wants to buy some weapons to wipe out the rioters, that's not my fault - all I did was facilitate the chemical weapons transaction.
- If someone wanted to buy some slaves, and all I did was facilitate the transaction; not my fault.
- CP getting bought and sold on my trading network? Whoa, not my fault, all i did was provide a medium for two consenting adults to make a transaction (involving non-consenting children).
- Someone hired a hitman to kill a journalist that exposed your corruption using my transaction network? Look pal, it's not like I pulled the trigger. All I did was provide a medium/platform that made it much easier for you to complete your transaction. I'm sure that even without my transaction network around, the hitman would have been hired in the black market yellow pages.
Ah, the old 'turn a blind eye' argument. Libertarianism at it's finest. Now it might be nice to be able to buy some drugs that the government says I shouldn't have. But I'd also like to not get murdered by posting dissenting opinions or becoming a whistleblower. And since you can't really have one without the other (don't get to choose what goes on your black market if you turn a blind eye), then I think I'll stick with not having this transaction platform exist at all for the betterment of humanity.
Of course that tells us something. GP posted that the normal lifespan of a bee colony is measured in decades or in rare cases even centuries. That's a vague timespan of course, but that's maybe roughly on par with a human lifespan (30 to >100). Even if we assume the low end of that is 30 years, if 40% of them died within a 12 month period that's a massive indicator of some of sort of problem. A 30 year lifespan (again, LOW end guesstimate based on GP comments) means that on average, 3% of colonies should die off each year (12 month span). A 40% mortality rate would only be normal if colonies lived an average of 2.5 years.
Cmon man, at least try and math a little before posting a response
I would generally disagree with that sentiment as well (from GP), though generally agreeing with the rest of the comments. If your religion will reward you for killing infidels and grant you passage to eternal paradise for doing so (Islam), then their followers are more likely to be murderers than if they weren't religious. If your religion is all forgiving (Christianity), well you can do just about whatever you want during your time on earth (rape, kill, steal) but you've got your get-into-heaven free card! In general, people tend to do whatever benefits them and pick and select whatever lines of text from their holy books that suit their agenda (i.e. gay bashing) and ignore the rest.
I think the concept of an invisible santa claus watching out on you might apply for some select religions and their beliefs (i.e. Karma), but I think the sheer number of people in the Abrahamic religious outweighs those that aren't in there.
Assuming that segregation actually works out to favor an overall academic improvement for the students, isn't this creating an even bigger problem by removing social interaction between kids of the opposite gender? School isn't just purely for academic purposes, kids actually learn other life skills there like how to make friends, or how to interact with people of the opposite sex. Maybe there's a perceived benefit that teen pregnancy goes down (or some other nonsense), but now we've got a bunch of kids more likely to be misandrists or misogynists, because they're only used to interacting with their own gender.
Perhaps we can have some insight from a gender-segregated boarding school or something, and how that's affected your life (or how some of your classmates behave now when compared to others in society)