Friend, with respect: Please take off the blinders, OK? One of my personal philosophies is 'If what you're doing isn't working, then try something else, repeat the process until success', and it's worked pretty darned good for me so far; I see no reason why this philosophy can't be applied to everything else, but people need to open their minds to it. I'm not concerned with any current proposals, I'm concerned with the bigger, long-term picture, and I see nuclear power in the form of thorium-based reactors in that picture. If nothing else it'll give Humanity some much-needed breathing room while physicists and engineers work on creating even better solutions to the world's energy problems.
It's not the 'least worst option', it's the best option. Thorium is plentiful compared to uranium, and more to the point it's plentiful here in North America (no need to buy it from someone else), thorium reactors don't need the complicated high-pressure reactors that uranium-fueled reactors need, thus lower construction costs, easier and cheaper management, they can't 'melt down', and the list of problems solved goes on and on. People need to get over their paranoia about anything with the word 'nuclear' in it and allow themselves to be saved by LFT reactor technology.
Nope, I only called people racist who were calling Obama a nigger, there were plenty of them, and there are more of them now. Truth be told I didn't have that sparkling of an opinion of the man back in 2008, either, but it's not like we were given any other viable choice; was I supposed to vote for yet another Republican, after we'd be fucked in the ass by the Bush family of traitors for so many years? Of course back then I still felt that voting for a 3rd-party candidate was a waste of a perfectly good vote -- but I don't feel that way now. I'll gladly vote for a non-GOP, non-Democrat this year, and IDGAF if they win or not, and I also DGAF if I get on yet another FBI watchlist because of it, at least I won't have voted for some nutjob Republican piece of shit, or some lying piece of shit Democrat, so nobody can blame me for what comes afterwards; my hands, for once, will be clean.
Oh and by the way neither you nor anybody else is entitled to an explanation of my past actions, I'm speaking for the record, and if you thought you were entitled to and explanation, you can go fuck yourself sideways with a rusty chainsaw, just like Obama and every single GOP or Democrat presidential candidate, the FBI, NSA, HLS, CIA, and whoever the fuck else can, too.
Is that really true, or are you making it up? Please, provide a link if it's real, I need to know this, and if it's real: I officially want my votes back, for both elections.
Obama is a TRAITOR, no better than the Bush family of traitors. He does not and in retrospect did not deserve to be POTUS. Someone please remove him from Office as soon as possible, today if possible. Where's a time machine when you need one?
**********
Now, on to more productive subjects: How to counter online propaganda? Here's my idea: The Internet is full of trolls as we all well know. Why not PAY them to troll the potential terrorists? Make them look stupid and annoy them into making mistakes, like only trolls can. Only the best trolls, mind you, not the garden-variety ones; 4channers need not apply. The more of a laughing stock we can make the online propagandists, the less credible they'll be, and ideally their 'message' will fade into the background noise. Note that I am describing just one prong of a multi-pronged counter-attack on the online propagandists.
I think it all depends on how you're looking at it. I'm looking at it as them trying to create a Proof of Concept for their ideas, which are not in the mainstream, therefore don't ever get the chance to be tested out in real-world, full-scale conditions. Rather than do like some militia groups might dream of doing, which is to enforce their ideals with guns and violence (or at least the threat of it), which ironically would prove nothing whatsoever because force is involved, this group of people are working within the current system to create an atmosphere where their ideas are adopted by consensus. I'm not even necessarily agreeing or disagreeing with what they'll do with their consensus, but I approve of the way they're going about it and will be interested in where they go with it.
That'll all work to a certain extent -- but there are always going to be people who are predisposed to criminal activity, and while I'm willing to admit that in some cases that's due to a mental health problem, it's an extremely slippery slope to start thinking that way, because of the potential for abuse by 'conformist' type people.
A firearm is, at it's heart, a mechanical device; there is no way around that, so no electronic means of preventing a gun from firing can be devised that someone else isn't going to find a way to defeat. A firearm has to be reliable, and the best way to accomplish that is to keep it as simple as possible. Adding a bunch of electronics to it that get in the way of the firearms' primary function is the antithesis of all that, and in the end will just make them less useful and less reliable for the law-abiding and law-enforcing people who need to use them. Also, do they really think that all this high-concept crap is going to prevent anyone outside the U.S. from producing 'traditional' firearms? Also, 3D printing technology is ramping up quickly, now with the capability of printing in metals; how long do you think it'll be before a 3D-printed handgun is equivalent to and virtually indistinguishable from a traditionally manufactured handgun?
I'm not even a gun owner, and even I say that all this that Obama and others are trying to do to further limit firearm ownership and to create more roadblocks to firearm ownership will do nothing but make life more difficult (and dangerous) for peaceful, law-abiding people. Enforce the current set of laws better, and do a better job identifying people with mental illnesses and criminal intent before they get their hands on weapons and go around shooting people.
No worries, I wasn't taking anything you were saying as a criticism, but as stated I have been noticing a pattern, and I decided to stop ignoring it and explore whether or not it was a Real Thing or just somethign random/my imagination.
Don't bother responding to the previous comment or this one, because I see you live in Iceland, therefore nothing you have to say about politics here in the U.S. is worth $0.02 and I'm not even interested in what your opinion -- so don't even bother.
..and again, I say: If that's so true then why are they trying to work for change from within the system, instead of just becoming another militia group bent on secessionism? Are you engaging in yet another stereotype? Need I remind you that there are in fact more than just two political parties in this country, and that furthermore it's not illegal or treason to be something other than republican or democrat? Are you really so thrilled with who the GOP and Democrats are trotting out for us to vote for? Oh and if you're one of those people who say 'it doesn't matter we're screwed no matter who is POTUS' or one of those people who just don't vote at all, then you can shut the hell up because you have no right to complain.
But, I'm not reading them as 'anti-government', which sure sounds to me like about the same thing as saying 'anarchist', I'm reading them as 'working within the system to make changes in our Country they believe should happen' (as I previously stated).
At first, when I saw this, I thought to myself, "Huh, secessionists? Didn't Utah try that some years back, and got smacked down hard by the Fed for it?" But then I took a look at what they're doing and realized that they may be geniuses, assuming they keep things on track: They're working from within the system to change the system, which, by the way, is the way the United States is supposed to work in the first place. They're just going about it in a different way than we're used to seeing, and they're doing it one State at a time, starting with New Hampshire. I'd say that the biggest roadblock they'll come up against is their own people, because as I like to say, "The best way to ruin a good thing is to get a bunch of people involved with it"; if they can't keep an entire State full of people on track with their original concept, then it'll fall apart and become a gigantic mess. Will be interesting to see how this works out for them and I'll be watching. Something like this might just turn the entire Country from some of the bad directions it's going.
Ignoring for the moment how long it'll take them to develop this.. I am reminded of the farce that went on for years for me with backup tapes. I'd buy a tape drive and tapes, back stuff up. The tapes would either degrade, or the drive would degrade, and all the above would be useless; I'd buy a new drive, not be able to read the old tapes even if they appeared to be good, so I'd buy new tapes, start all over again. Rinse, repeat; eventually I gave up and chucked the whole mess and didn't bother anymore. Are these discs going to be a redux of that experience? Become unusable by the time I find a need to read something off them? Or use some proprietary format that no one else supports, or that they claim to support, only to find that it's not reliable enough to be practical, and I lose everything on them anyway? Honestly, is this going to be any better than just buying a few extra hard disks, connecting them to use as backups, then stuffing them into antistatic bags and storing them somewhere safe until I need them? Once bitten, twice shy, as they say.
If by 'you don't allow it', you mean 'reject the so-called Internet-of-Things', then I agree with you wholeheartedly. It's an out-of-control joke so far as I'm concerned. Are there a few devices that benefit from being capable of control over a TCP/IP network? Yes. Should every damn electronic (or electric) device on the planet need that sort of connectivity? I say "hell, no!". As we all can see, it's more security holes for potential attackers to use. It's a first-world-problem that marketing people are creating and inflicting on us, and I think we just don't need any of this headache.
I think in part that's because Google isn't the binary code that's turning that pile of hardware in front of you into a usable tool instead of just so much metals and polymers; you don't have to use Google or any of it's products, there are other search engines out there, and other providers of the services that Google offers. On the other hand, for most people, it's Windows or nothing. I hate to make an analogy like this (as poor as it may be), but it's like your local water utility deciding to add things to the water piped into your house that you didn't ask for and can't filter out; you don't have much choice, and the alternatives are problematic at best. Personally I'm in the process of trying to transition away from any version of Windows and use some flavor of Linux, but so far I can't even get the 'Live' version of Ubuntu to run on the old Dell laptop I've got that I wanted to use as a 'trainer' for myself, before planning out the switch-over on my desktop machine; it's stalling the whole process out.
You know, I've been noticing, more and more, that I get that sort of reaction out of people online; telling me to 'calm down' when I'm not even close to 'not calm', accusing me of being 'angry' or 'upset' when neither is the case. It's really making me wonder: is it my writing style, or, sociologically-speaking, has everything become such and emotional flatline in the post-2000 era, that expressing yourself in a no-nonsense, forthright manner now considered 'extreme'? I hate 'beating around the bush' so-to-speak, if for no other reason than it takes considerably longer to create text than it does to just speak. What do you think, do you have an insight?
Apparently these guys were too busy creating replicators to have watched Stargate SG1, because if they had they'd know that creating replicators was a seriously bad idea; now the sons-of-bitches have doomed us all.
Other than that, you have any strong feelings on the matter?
Sarcasm noted.:-)
Why should I be lukewarm about my opinions? XD
I'm just glad that I like driving a small pickup truck. You can always get those with a 5-speed stickshift and pretty much bare-bones so far as accessories go, because they're working vehicles. All I ask for is air conditioning, maybe cruise control, and a decently-working, decent-sounding AM/FM stereo. When the day comes that I can get one in a plug-in electric version with decent range on a full charge, I'll do the Snoopy happy-dance.
Perhaps the atomic weapon program people are sabotaging their own program.
You know, I'd like to believe that; I'd like to believe that anyone educated enough to design and construct such devices would be resistant to such insanity.
Never mind jamming anything. Do they really think that anything like this is going to prevent criminals from firing stolen guns? Bet you that within a month or less there'd be a hack to disable the lock and make the gun fire for anybody. Stupid, stupid, stupid! What's wrong with trigger locks? Just make tougher trigger locks!
This has got to be the most rediculous thing I've heard recently. As if people aren't stupid enough about playing with their phones while driving and getting distracted by that, now they want to put a full Windows OS in your car, too? Oh and by the way, the full-on dystopian 1984 future will then be here: you'll be spied on in your home, on your phone, at work, and in your car, all by Windows 10.
FUCK THAT SHIT!
Listen carefully, people: It's a car, not a lifestyle! It's transportation. You do not need Windows 10 in your gods-be-damned car; you need to forget all that, and put away your gods-be-damned phone, too, and PAY ATTENTION TO THE ROAD!
Slashdot Mirror
Friend, with respect: Please take off the blinders, OK? One of my personal philosophies is 'If what you're doing isn't working, then try something else, repeat the process until success', and it's worked pretty darned good for me so far; I see no reason why this philosophy can't be applied to everything else, but people need to open their minds to it. I'm not concerned with any current proposals, I'm concerned with the bigger, long-term picture, and I see nuclear power in the form of thorium-based reactors in that picture. If nothing else it'll give Humanity some much-needed breathing room while physicists and engineers work on creating even better solutions to the world's energy problems.
It's not the 'least worst option', it's the best option. Thorium is plentiful compared to uranium, and more to the point it's plentiful here in North America (no need to buy it from someone else), thorium reactors don't need the complicated high-pressure reactors that uranium-fueled reactors need, thus lower construction costs, easier and cheaper management, they can't 'melt down', and the list of problems solved goes on and on. People need to get over their paranoia about anything with the word 'nuclear' in it and allow themselves to be saved by LFT reactor technology.
Nuclear powers' 'various nagging problems' won't be an issue if we started using thorium-based reactors.
*Shrug* once I make up my mind, I make up my mind. There comes a time when you either draw a line in the sand, or just give up and bend over.
I am still waiting for some link authenticating your quote, or are you just trolling?
Nope, I only called people racist who were calling Obama a nigger, there were plenty of them, and there are more of them now. Truth be told I didn't have that sparkling of an opinion of the man back in 2008, either, but it's not like we were given any other viable choice; was I supposed to vote for yet another Republican, after we'd be fucked in the ass by the Bush family of traitors for so many years? Of course back then I still felt that voting for a 3rd-party candidate was a waste of a perfectly good vote -- but I don't feel that way now. I'll gladly vote for a non-GOP, non-Democrat this year, and IDGAF if they win or not, and I also DGAF if I get on yet another FBI watchlist because of it, at least I won't have voted for some nutjob Republican piece of shit, or some lying piece of shit Democrat, so nobody can blame me for what comes afterwards; my hands, for once, will be clean.
Oh and by the way neither you nor anybody else is entitled to an explanation of my past actions, I'm speaking for the record, and if you thought you were entitled to and explanation, you can go fuck yourself sideways with a rusty chainsaw, just like Obama and every single GOP or Democrat presidential candidate, the FBI, NSA, HLS, CIA, and whoever the fuck else can, too.
Obama's opening line of the meeting
Is that really true, or are you making it up? Please, provide a link if it's real, I need to know this, and if it's real: I officially want my votes back, for both elections.
Obama is a TRAITOR, no better than the Bush family of traitors. He does not and in retrospect did not deserve to be POTUS. Someone please remove him from Office as soon as possible, today if possible. Where's a time machine when you need one?
**********
Now, on to more productive subjects: How to counter online propaganda? Here's my idea: The Internet is full of trolls as we all well know. Why not PAY them to troll the potential terrorists? Make them look stupid and annoy them into making mistakes, like only trolls can. Only the best trolls, mind you, not the garden-variety ones; 4channers need not apply. The more of a laughing stock we can make the online propagandists, the less credible they'll be, and ideally their 'message' will fade into the background noise. Note that I am describing just one prong of a multi-pronged counter-attack on the online propagandists.
I think it all depends on how you're looking at it. I'm looking at it as them trying to create a Proof of Concept for their ideas, which are not in the mainstream, therefore don't ever get the chance to be tested out in real-world, full-scale conditions. Rather than do like some militia groups might dream of doing, which is to enforce their ideals with guns and violence (or at least the threat of it), which ironically would prove nothing whatsoever because force is involved, this group of people are working within the current system to create an atmosphere where their ideas are adopted by consensus. I'm not even necessarily agreeing or disagreeing with what they'll do with their consensus, but I approve of the way they're going about it and will be interested in where they go with it.
But we can't get to that point because "Guns r bad mmmkay"
Yep, nope, people are bad, guns are completely neutral.
That'll all work to a certain extent -- but there are always going to be people who are predisposed to criminal activity, and while I'm willing to admit that in some cases that's due to a mental health problem, it's an extremely slippery slope to start thinking that way, because of the potential for abuse by 'conformist' type people.
A firearm is, at it's heart, a mechanical device; there is no way around that, so no electronic means of preventing a gun from firing can be devised that someone else isn't going to find a way to defeat. A firearm has to be reliable, and the best way to accomplish that is to keep it as simple as possible. Adding a bunch of electronics to it that get in the way of the firearms' primary function is the antithesis of all that, and in the end will just make them less useful and less reliable for the law-abiding and law-enforcing people who need to use them. Also, do they really think that all this high-concept crap is going to prevent anyone outside the U.S. from producing 'traditional' firearms? Also, 3D printing technology is ramping up quickly, now with the capability of printing in metals; how long do you think it'll be before a 3D-printed handgun is equivalent to and virtually indistinguishable from a traditionally manufactured handgun?
I'm not even a gun owner, and even I say that all this that Obama and others are trying to do to further limit firearm ownership and to create more roadblocks to firearm ownership will do nothing but make life more difficult (and dangerous) for peaceful, law-abiding people. Enforce the current set of laws better, and do a better job identifying people with mental illnesses and criminal intent before they get their hands on weapons and go around shooting people.
No worries, I wasn't taking anything you were saying as a criticism, but as stated I have been noticing a pattern, and I decided to stop ignoring it and explore whether or not it was a Real Thing or just somethign random/my imagination.
Don't bother responding to the previous comment or this one, because I see you live in Iceland, therefore nothing you have to say about politics here in the U.S. is worth $0.02 and I'm not even interested in what your opinion -- so don't even bother.
..and again, I say: If that's so true then why are they trying to work for change from within the system, instead of just becoming another militia group bent on secessionism? Are you engaging in yet another stereotype? Need I remind you that there are in fact more than just two political parties in this country, and that furthermore it's not illegal or treason to be something other than republican or democrat? Are you really so thrilled with who the GOP and Democrats are trotting out for us to vote for? Oh and if you're one of those people who say 'it doesn't matter we're screwed no matter who is POTUS' or one of those people who just don't vote at all, then you can shut the hell up because you have no right to complain.
But, I'm not reading them as 'anti-government', which sure sounds to me like about the same thing as saying 'anarchist', I'm reading them as 'working within the system to make changes in our Country they believe should happen' (as I previously stated).
At first, when I saw this, I thought to myself, "Huh, secessionists? Didn't Utah try that some years back, and got smacked down hard by the Fed for it?" But then I took a look at what they're doing and realized that they may be geniuses, assuming they keep things on track: They're working from within the system to change the system, which, by the way, is the way the United States is supposed to work in the first place. They're just going about it in a different way than we're used to seeing, and they're doing it one State at a time, starting with New Hampshire. I'd say that the biggest roadblock they'll come up against is their own people, because as I like to say, "The best way to ruin a good thing is to get a bunch of people involved with it"; if they can't keep an entire State full of people on track with their original concept, then it'll fall apart and become a gigantic mess. Will be interesting to see how this works out for them and I'll be watching. Something like this might just turn the entire Country from some of the bad directions it's going.
Ignoring for the moment how long it'll take them to develop this.. I am reminded of the farce that went on for years for me with backup tapes. I'd buy a tape drive and tapes, back stuff up. The tapes would either degrade, or the drive would degrade, and all the above would be useless; I'd buy a new drive, not be able to read the old tapes even if they appeared to be good, so I'd buy new tapes, start all over again. Rinse, repeat; eventually I gave up and chucked the whole mess and didn't bother anymore. Are these discs going to be a redux of that experience? Become unusable by the time I find a need to read something off them? Or use some proprietary format that no one else supports, or that they claim to support, only to find that it's not reliable enough to be practical, and I lose everything on them anyway? Honestly, is this going to be any better than just buying a few extra hard disks, connecting them to use as backups, then stuffing them into antistatic bags and storing them somewhere safe until I need them? Once bitten, twice shy, as they say.
If by 'you don't allow it', you mean 'reject the so-called Internet-of-Things', then I agree with you wholeheartedly. It's an out-of-control joke so far as I'm concerned. Are there a few devices that benefit from being capable of control over a TCP/IP network? Yes. Should every damn electronic (or electric) device on the planet need that sort of connectivity? I say "hell, no!". As we all can see, it's more security holes for potential attackers to use. It's a first-world-problem that marketing people are creating and inflicting on us, and I think we just don't need any of this headache.
I think in part that's because Google isn't the binary code that's turning that pile of hardware in front of you into a usable tool instead of just so much metals and polymers; you don't have to use Google or any of it's products, there are other search engines out there, and other providers of the services that Google offers. On the other hand, for most people, it's Windows or nothing. I hate to make an analogy like this (as poor as it may be), but it's like your local water utility deciding to add things to the water piped into your house that you didn't ask for and can't filter out; you don't have much choice, and the alternatives are problematic at best. Personally I'm in the process of trying to transition away from any version of Windows and use some flavor of Linux, but so far I can't even get the 'Live' version of Ubuntu to run on the old Dell laptop I've got that I wanted to use as a 'trainer' for myself, before planning out the switch-over on my desktop machine; it's stalling the whole process out.
It was just your post was so BOOM!
You know, I've been noticing, more and more, that I get that sort of reaction out of people online; telling me to 'calm down' when I'm not even close to 'not calm', accusing me of being 'angry' or 'upset' when neither is the case. It's really making me wonder: is it my writing style, or, sociologically-speaking, has everything become such and emotional flatline in the post-2000 era, that expressing yourself in a no-nonsense, forthright manner now considered 'extreme'? I hate 'beating around the bush' so-to-speak, if for no other reason than it takes considerably longer to create text than it does to just speak. What do you think, do you have an insight?
Apparently these guys were too busy creating replicators to have watched Stargate SG1, because if they had they'd know that creating replicators was a seriously bad idea; now the sons-of-bitches have doomed us all.
Other than that, you have any strong feelings on the matter?
Sarcasm noted. :-)
Why should I be lukewarm about my opinions? XD
I'm just glad that I like driving a small pickup truck. You can always get those with a 5-speed stickshift and pretty much bare-bones so far as accessories go, because they're working vehicles. All I ask for is air conditioning, maybe cruise control, and a decently-working, decent-sounding AM/FM stereo. When the day comes that I can get one in a plug-in electric version with decent range on a full charge, I'll do the Snoopy happy-dance.
Perhaps the atomic weapon program people are sabotaging their own program.
You know, I'd like to believe that; I'd like to believe that anyone educated enough to design and construct such devices would be resistant to such insanity.
Never mind jamming anything. Do they really think that anything like this is going to prevent criminals from firing stolen guns? Bet you that within a month or less there'd be a hack to disable the lock and make the gun fire for anybody. Stupid, stupid, stupid! What's wrong with trigger locks? Just make tougher trigger locks!
This has got to be the most rediculous thing I've heard recently. As if people aren't stupid enough about playing with their phones while driving and getting distracted by that, now they want to put a full Windows OS in your car, too? Oh and by the way, the full-on dystopian 1984 future will then be here: you'll be spied on in your home, on your phone, at work, and in your car, all by Windows 10.
FUCK THAT SHIT!
Listen carefully, people: It's a car, not a lifestyle! It's transportation. You do not need Windows 10 in your gods-be-damned car; you need to forget all that, and put away your gods-be-damned phone, too, and PAY ATTENTION TO THE ROAD!