I think the whole point of "discussions" on the internet is to break down our will to engage in meaningful debate.
Why do you think that is? It's a question I've been trying to answer for a long time now. Do these people feel so irrelevant and powerless in real life that trolling is the only way they get relief from those feelings? Is it just rank, garden-variety bullying, finding it's avenue for expression on the internet because their behavior isn't acceptable in the real world? Or is it something else I'm not seeing?
In a similar vein, wouldn't it have been perfectly reasonable to ask someone for a clarification rather than making assumptions? Or is it just easier to make an assumption about someone's intent when you're looking to start trouble in the first place? Aside from being more or less useless, trying to have any sort of real conversation on the Internet is like getting three wishes from a genie; no matter how carefully you think though how to word it, the genie always finds a way to twist it into something you didn't mean and didn't want. Frankly I don't know why I even bother trying anymore. I may as well just post here as AC and forget about any sort of conversation.
Notice how it doesn't matter what I say or do, what the intent is, or anything else, fucking pieces of shit like you and the others will just continue being pieces of shit regardless? Notice how there is no such thing as 'defending yourself' when trolls and other pieces of shit decide to be trolls and pieces of shit? Shove it up your ass. Nothing I say or do, online or in real life, matters one whit's worth to people like that, so what's it matter? Eat shit, die, go to hell, fuck off, etc etc etc. Nothing you say or do changes anything about me or my real life, my status, NOTHING at all. How does that make you feel? As powerless and irrelevant as you actually are? Thought so. Now, where was I? Oh yea: shove it up your ass.
Is it possible that the wireless companies are playing a complex psychological game here, trying to turn public sentiment away from net neutrality, by first offering to not (in essence) charge for certain services, secretly expecting someone to raise complaints against the practice because it violates net neutrality, so they can then throw up their hands and say "Sorry, the FCC won't allow us to give this to you for free, so now we're forced to count it against your data cap"?
There is also a safer alternative to the current types and designs of nuclear reactors. Liquid Flouride Thorium Reactor (LFTR) designs don't need high pressure cooling and are more or less immune to catastrophic meltdowns, at least if what I've learned about them is correct, and additionally thorium is an abundant resource right here in the continental United States, and you have to go to a major amount of trouble to breed thorium into a nuclear material suitable for bombs. Unfortunately the inertia of people's opinions is very high when it comes to nuclear power of any sort, it would likely take decades and decades of campaigning and educating before opinion would come back around to people accepting the idea on it's own merits.
I know.. Maybe if we set a million monkeys down in front of a million typewriters, eventually they'll come up with the location of Shakespeares' skull!
Seriously, though, the wording (and bolding) of your last sentence was extremely indicative of a loaded question.
Oh for fuck's sake.. think like a politician for a moment; THAT was what the intent was: What arguments would an opposing politician raise against legislation like this? Stop jumping to building strawmen out of everyone, will you?
You and the rest of the asshole agitators can SHUT THE FUCK UP, I value the basic RIGHT TO PRIVACY likely more than all of you combined, and anyone who wants to question my posession of a 'backbone' are welcome to meet me in person to have direct experience of my 'backbone' -- assuming they have one themselves. Now how about all you fuckers stop putting words in my mouth that didn't originate there and FUCK OFF?
You and three guys (at least) above you are making the TOTALLY INVALID ASSUMPTION that I was EXCLUDING BASIC PRIVACY as a 'valid' reason! Stop doing that!
I'd also like to add, that legislation like this may not end up solving the problem it's designed to solve; it may just create a new Black Market for cellphones, or increase the size of it if one already exists. Purchases from shady sellers, and thefts of cellphones might well increase.
Just off the top of my head the only problem I can see with this is it also precludes the possibility of someone being able to make an anonymous call. It's no longer the case that there are payphones everywhere, that you can call 911 for free from, or drop coins into the slot and make an anonymous call that way. If ID is required for a burn phone then for all intents and purposes all calls made can be traced back to the individual.
Can anyone else come up with valid reasons why a non-criminal, non-terrorist would need to make an anonymous phone call?
Yeah no kidding. They're not even allowed in most places to ride their bikes to school anymore, the schools will specifically not allow it. And they wonder why there's a growing childhood obesity problem: anti-physical exercise culture.
I'm all against the 'anti-bullying' in theory (I was very much subjected to it as a kid myself), but on the other hand bullies (both kid and adult!) are a fact of life, and not learning how to deal with them as a kid means you're less likely to know how to deal with them as an adult.
On top of the anti-physical culture problem, there's this 'anti-competition' thing, where kids are playing sports but nobody keeps score? No winners, no losers? Losing makes you 'feel' bad, so we can't have that? No wonder there's such a thing as 'quarter-life crisis' (look it up).
Between all that and 'helicopter parenting', it's no big mystery to me why kids are growing up to be screwed-up and totally unprepared for adulthood.
Did you know I have terrible allergies? They're so bad it's easier to list the things I'm NOT allergic to: Bird feathers and animal dander. I'm allergic to everything else. So rather than stay inside all the time, running air filters in every room, I get allergy shots every week. Most people's maintenance dose is every 2-4 weeks, but I need to get them every week so I can be outside as much as I want to be, and still be able to breathe and not feel like I'm on the edge of anaphylaxis like I used to feel.
Being avoidant of your problems isn't solving them, it's just running away from them. I don't like getting nasty painful shots in each arm every week, and paying for the privilege, but it's worth it if it means my quality of life is overall better.
Also, did you know that inside I'm was a painfully shy kid who, if I allowed myself to now, would spend all his time away from people, because it's just that much less stressful for me? But I decided at one point that having social interactions with other people, and friendships, and social time, and enjoying the benefits of social occasions, was so much better in the long run than hiding all the time. It's not anywhere near as hard as it used to be when I was a kid. People are better off getting the social antigen shots in both arms every week, so they can go out in public, meet and connect with people, and enjoy the benefits of it.
And you would be better off without that "fuck you" attitude if you expect anyone to take you seriously.
It's not a 'fuck you' attitude, it's just a 'fuck you' to snooty people like you with a victim mentality. Bugger off.
So-called 'social media' is no substitute for actual interaction, preferably face-to-face, and is just enabling socially avoidant people from getting over their awkwardness and anxiety of social situations. Also, your ten-thousand 'friends' on Facebook? They are not your friends. Do yourself a favor and get some real, living, breathing, live-in-person friends that you actually connect with on a personal level.
Be sure to read my sigline before commenting, you'll save you and me both time and energy better spent doing something else.
Let's get the usual questions and comments out of the way, shall we? (Note: anyone else should read this before commenting, too, OK?) Let's save everyone some of their precious time, shall we?
WHO I AM NOT VOTING FOR: I'm not voting for Hillary. I'm not voting for Trump. I'm not voting for Sanders. I'm not voting for Cruz. I'm not voting for ANY Democrat. I'm not voting for ANY Republican. WHO I AM VOTING FOR: Some 3rd-party candidate, likely Libertarian. Why, you ask? As a form of protest against how broken our electoral (and political system in general) has become. In protest of there not being a 'NONE OF THE ABOVE' on any ballot. Aren't you throwing away your vote? {unnamed person} has no chance of winning! I am TIRED of not voting my conscience, and instead having to pick the 'LEAST BAD' of what the two-party system trots out every 4 years. Why bother voting at all? Because if I don't vote then I'm not participating in the system, and my voice is no longer heard. But that's stupid! You should vote for someone who has a chance of winning! SEE ABOVE, 'voting my conscience'. Or do you not bother reading every single word? 'You're retarded!' (and other name-calling or trolling all-too-prevalent on the Internet) If you resort to that, then I'm not having a conversation with a member of an intellgent species anymore, I'm having a shouting match with some retarded primate who managed to get out it's cage and access a computer; in other words: fuck off.
Now, then: If the above doesn't cover whatever else you were going to say, then please do make whatever comments or ask whatever questions you will of me. Otherwise, I'll assume we're done here.
Someday, it might help governments with a variety of undesirables including protestors, or others critical of the government, to keep the populace under control remotely, though a lot more research is needed to be done on neurotransmitter levels in order to reach that point.
I have no idea if it's 'racist or sexist' and really don't care, but I do know this: Trump doesn't give a damn about these IT workers, he's just doing this as a publicity stunt. Trump is part of the 1% one way or another, and as such he'll look out for the rest of the 1%, and to hell with the 99% (which includes these displaced IT workers). It's all smoke and mirrors and bullshit.
Yahoo seems like it's in the same category as AOL: Irrelevant. Does Yahoo even offer anything of value anymore? Or does it hang on in the same way that AOL hangs on: An aging userbase that doesn't know about anything else and/or just isn't willing to change until forced to do so? Maybe it's better off being broken up into bite-size pieces and sold off, maybe the new owners of said component pieces will do something relevant and useful with them.
My kids won't need to code because soon computers will just code for them
My kids won't need to know how to do {insert skill here} because soon computers will just do it for them
My kids won't need to learn {insert knowledge here} because soon computers will know everything
This is one of the stupidest frames of mind I could possibly imagine, and it's also one of the most dangerous trends I've been seeing lately. 'Convenience' is all well and good, but am I the only person looking forward far enough into the future to see that this kind of thinking will lead to a dystopian future like in the movie Idiocracy, where nobody knows how anything works anymore, or knows how to do anything themselves, so everything just starts falling apart, and being dumb is the rule rather than the exception?
People need knowledge. People need to learn skills. People need to know how to take care of themselves. People need to not be idle, people need a purpose!
This 'Jason Bradbury' is an idiot, and he needs to shut the hell up, he has no idea what he's talking about.
How come I get modded down as a goddamned troll when all I'm doing is expressing my actual opinion and analysis of things as I see them, but this obvious muck-sucking troll doesn't get modded down? I call bullshit on the entire moderation system on Slashdot. Does Mister Anonymous Coward Troll have multiple accounts he uses for the moderation points? Go to hell, fuck you, eat shit and die.
Not agreeing with what I post does not make me a troll!
How about YOU shut the fuck up? You're no better than a tinfoil hat-wearing conspiracy theorist; you represent the other end of the same gods-be-damned scale, and as such is equally elligible to be ignored.
The real problem? An ages-old human tendency: Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Knowledge is power. Also, power seeks more power. These are no-brainers; no tinfoil hat required; everyone knows this. The NSA (and pretty much every other 'intellgence' organization) always wants more, more, more information, even if they can't use it -- but still they want more. They're like a little kid who discovered sugary candy; it's up to the parents to tell them no. Here in the U.S., citizens must play the role of Parents -- but we haven't been doing our job. The NSA/CIA/FBI/{insert government agency here} has been holding their breath until they turn blue, pitching fits, and throwing their dinner on the floor (read as: doing everything and anything they can to keep us in a constant state of terror) so we'll just give them the candy they want (read as: ability to surveil anyone and everyone) to keep them quiet. What they need at this point is a good spanking on their spoiled little bottoms (read as: U.S. citizens speak the hell up to their representatives and tell them in no uncertain terms that mass surveillance has to stop!) and send them to their room for a good long spell without dessert (no more data for you!). It needed to be done years ago but we've been neglectful, overly-permissive parents. Time to fix that!
Slashdot Mirror
I think the whole point of "discussions" on the internet is to break down our will to engage in meaningful debate.
Why do you think that is? It's a question I've been trying to answer for a long time now. Do these people feel so irrelevant and powerless in real life that trolling is the only way they get relief from those feelings? Is it just rank, garden-variety bullying, finding it's avenue for expression on the internet because their behavior isn't acceptable in the real world? Or is it something else I'm not seeing?
Just another dumb idea in what seems lately like a long string of dumb ideas.
In a similar vein, wouldn't it have been perfectly reasonable to ask someone for a clarification rather than making assumptions? Or is it just easier to make an assumption about someone's intent when you're looking to start trouble in the first place? Aside from being more or less useless, trying to have any sort of real conversation on the Internet is like getting three wishes from a genie; no matter how carefully you think though how to word it, the genie always finds a way to twist it into something you didn't mean and didn't want. Frankly I don't know why I even bother trying anymore. I may as well just post here as AC and forget about any sort of conversation.
Notice how it doesn't matter what I say or do, what the intent is, or anything else, fucking pieces of shit like you and the others will just continue being pieces of shit regardless? Notice how there is no such thing as 'defending yourself' when trolls and other pieces of shit decide to be trolls and pieces of shit? Shove it up your ass. Nothing I say or do, online or in real life, matters one whit's worth to people like that, so what's it matter? Eat shit, die, go to hell, fuck off, etc etc etc. Nothing you say or do changes anything about me or my real life, my status, NOTHING at all. How does that make you feel? As powerless and irrelevant as you actually are? Thought so. Now, where was I? Oh yea: shove it up your ass.
Is it possible that the wireless companies are playing a complex psychological game here, trying to turn public sentiment away from net neutrality, by first offering to not (in essence) charge for certain services, secretly expecting someone to raise complaints against the practice because it violates net neutrality, so they can then throw up their hands and say "Sorry, the FCC won't allow us to give this to you for free, so now we're forced to count it against your data cap"?
There is also a safer alternative to the current types and designs of nuclear reactors. Liquid Flouride Thorium Reactor (LFTR) designs don't need high pressure cooling and are more or less immune to catastrophic meltdowns, at least if what I've learned about them is correct, and additionally thorium is an abundant resource right here in the continental United States, and you have to go to a major amount of trouble to breed thorium into a nuclear material suitable for bombs. Unfortunately the inertia of people's opinions is very high when it comes to nuclear power of any sort, it would likely take decades and decades of campaigning and educating before opinion would come back around to people accepting the idea on it's own merits.
I know.. Maybe if we set a million monkeys down in front of a million typewriters, eventually they'll come up with the location of Shakespeares' skull!
Seriously, though, the wording (and bolding) of your last sentence was extremely indicative of a loaded question.
Oh for fuck's sake.. think like a politician for a moment; THAT was what the intent was: What arguments would an opposing politician raise against legislation like this? Stop jumping to building strawmen out of everyone, will you?
You and the rest of the asshole agitators can SHUT THE FUCK UP, I value the basic RIGHT TO PRIVACY likely more than all of you combined, and anyone who wants to question my posession of a 'backbone' are welcome to meet me in person to have direct experience of my 'backbone' -- assuming they have one themselves. Now how about all you fuckers stop putting words in my mouth that didn't originate there and FUCK OFF?
You and three guys (at least) above you are making the TOTALLY INVALID ASSUMPTION that I was EXCLUDING BASIC PRIVACY as a 'valid' reason! Stop doing that!
I'd also like to add, that legislation like this may not end up solving the problem it's designed to solve; it may just create a new Black Market for cellphones, or increase the size of it if one already exists. Purchases from shady sellers, and thefts of cellphones might well increase.
Just off the top of my head the only problem I can see with this is it also precludes the possibility of someone being able to make an anonymous call. It's no longer the case that there are payphones everywhere, that you can call 911 for free from, or drop coins into the slot and make an anonymous call that way. If ID is required for a burn phone then for all intents and purposes all calls made can be traced back to the individual.
Can anyone else come up with valid reasons why a non-criminal, non-terrorist would need to make an anonymous phone call?
Yeah no kidding. They're not even allowed in most places to ride their bikes to school anymore, the schools will specifically not allow it. And they wonder why there's a growing childhood obesity problem: anti-physical exercise culture.
I'm all against the 'anti-bullying' in theory (I was very much subjected to it as a kid myself), but on the other hand bullies (both kid and adult!) are a fact of life, and not learning how to deal with them as a kid means you're less likely to know how to deal with them as an adult.
On top of the anti-physical culture problem, there's this 'anti-competition' thing, where kids are playing sports but nobody keeps score? No winners, no losers? Losing makes you 'feel' bad, so we can't have that? No wonder there's such a thing as 'quarter-life crisis' (look it up).
Between all that and 'helicopter parenting', it's no big mystery to me why kids are growing up to be screwed-up and totally unprepared for adulthood.
Being avoidant of your problems isn't solving them, it's just running away from them. I don't like getting nasty painful shots in each arm every week, and paying for the privilege, but it's worth it if it means my quality of life is overall better.
Also, did you know that inside I'm was a painfully shy kid who, if I allowed myself to now, would spend all his time away from people, because it's just that much less stressful for me? But I decided at one point that having social interactions with other people, and friendships, and social time, and enjoying the benefits of social occasions, was so much better in the long run than hiding all the time. It's not anywhere near as hard as it used to be when I was a kid. People are better off getting the social antigen shots in both arms every week, so they can go out in public, meet and connect with people, and enjoy the benefits of it.
And you would be better off without that "fuck you" attitude if you expect anyone to take you seriously.
It's not a 'fuck you' attitude, it's just a 'fuck you' to snooty people like you with a victim mentality. Bugger off.
So-called 'social media' is no substitute for actual interaction, preferably face-to-face, and is just enabling socially avoidant people from getting over their awkwardness and anxiety of social situations. Also, your ten-thousand 'friends' on Facebook? They are not your friends. Do yourself a favor and get some real, living, breathing, live-in-person friends that you actually connect with on a personal level.
Be sure to read my sigline before commenting, you'll save you and me both time and energy better spent doing something else.
Let's get the usual questions and comments out of the way, shall we? (Note: anyone else should read this before commenting, too, OK?) Let's save everyone some of their precious time, shall we?
WHO I AM NOT VOTING FOR:
I'm not voting for Hillary.
I'm not voting for Trump.
I'm not voting for Sanders.
I'm not voting for Cruz.
I'm not voting for ANY Democrat.
I'm not voting for ANY Republican.
WHO I AM VOTING FOR:
Some 3rd-party candidate, likely Libertarian.
Why, you ask?
As a form of protest against how broken our electoral (and political system in general) has become. In protest of there not being a 'NONE OF THE ABOVE' on any ballot.
Aren't you throwing away your vote? {unnamed person} has no chance of winning! I am TIRED of not voting my conscience, and instead having to pick the 'LEAST BAD' of what the two-party system trots out every 4 years.
Why bother voting at all? Because if I don't vote then I'm not participating in the system, and my voice is no longer heard.
But that's stupid! You should vote for someone who has a chance of winning! SEE ABOVE, 'voting my conscience'. Or do you not bother reading every single word?
'You're retarded!' (and other name-calling or trolling all-too-prevalent on the Internet) If you resort to that, then I'm not having a conversation with a member of an intellgent species anymore, I'm having a shouting match with some retarded primate who managed to get out it's cage and access a computer; in other words: fuck off.
Now, then: If the above doesn't cover whatever else you were going to say, then please do make whatever comments or ask whatever questions you will of me. Otherwise, I'll assume we're done here.
Someday, it might help governments with a variety of undesirables including protestors, or others critical of the government, to keep the populace under control remotely, though a lot more research is needed to be done on neurotransmitter levels in order to reach that point.
Fuck you, leave our gods-be-damned neurotransmitters alone!
I have no idea if it's 'racist or sexist' and really don't care, but I do know this: Trump doesn't give a damn about these IT workers, he's just doing this as a publicity stunt. Trump is part of the 1% one way or another, and as such he'll look out for the rest of the 1%, and to hell with the 99% (which includes these displaced IT workers). It's all smoke and mirrors and bullshit.
I'd like Failbook to become irrelevant, but we're not quite there yet. Give it time.
Yahoo seems like it's in the same category as AOL: Irrelevant. Does Yahoo even offer anything of value anymore? Or does it hang on in the same way that AOL hangs on: An aging userbase that doesn't know about anything else and/or just isn't willing to change until forced to do so? Maybe it's better off being broken up into bite-size pieces and sold off, maybe the new owners of said component pieces will do something relevant and useful with them.
Maybe the bot was victim of a 4chan trolling attack?
That was my initial thought, kind of like what was done with Cleverbot.
My kids won't need to code because soon computers will just code for them
My kids won't need to know how to do {insert skill here} because soon computers will just do it for them
My kids won't need to learn {insert knowledge here} because soon computers will know everything
This is one of the stupidest frames of mind I could possibly imagine, and it's also one of the most dangerous trends I've been seeing lately. 'Convenience' is all well and good, but am I the only person looking forward far enough into the future to see that this kind of thinking will lead to a dystopian future like in the movie Idiocracy, where nobody knows how anything works anymore, or knows how to do anything themselves, so everything just starts falling apart, and being dumb is the rule rather than the exception?
People need knowledge. People need to learn skills. People need to know how to take care of themselves. People need to not be idle, people need a purpose!
This 'Jason Bradbury' is an idiot, and he needs to shut the hell up, he has no idea what he's talking about.
So we're talking about maybe one gram of difference in mass? How is this considered significant and not just a measurement error?
How come I get modded down as a goddamned troll when all I'm doing is expressing my actual opinion and analysis of things as I see them, but this obvious muck-sucking troll doesn't get modded down? I call bullshit on the entire moderation system on Slashdot. Does Mister Anonymous Coward Troll have multiple accounts he uses for the moderation points? Go to hell, fuck you, eat shit and die.
Not agreeing with what I post does not make me a troll!
How about YOU shut the fuck up? You're no better than a tinfoil hat-wearing conspiracy theorist; you represent the other end of the same gods-be-damned scale, and as such is equally elligible to be ignored.
The real problem? An ages-old human tendency: Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Knowledge is power. Also, power seeks more power. These are no-brainers; no tinfoil hat required; everyone knows this. The NSA (and pretty much every other 'intellgence' organization) always wants more, more, more information, even if they can't use it -- but still they want more. They're like a little kid who discovered sugary candy; it's up to the parents to tell them no. Here in the U.S., citizens must play the role of Parents -- but we haven't been doing our job. The NSA/CIA/FBI/{insert government agency here} has been holding their breath until they turn blue, pitching fits, and throwing their dinner on the floor (read as: doing everything and anything they can to keep us in a constant state of terror) so we'll just give them the candy they want (read as: ability to surveil anyone and everyone) to keep them quiet. What they need at this point is a good spanking on their spoiled little bottoms (read as: U.S. citizens speak the hell up to their representatives and tell them in no uncertain terms that mass surveillance has to stop!) and send them to their room for a good long spell without dessert (no more data for you!). It needed to be done years ago but we've been neglectful, overly-permissive parents. Time to fix that!