Just think of the possibilities if they had used all those resources for something useful instead of poking their noses into things that were none of their business in the first place!
In my opinion, use of so-called 'social media' itself very often shows a lack of emotional maturity in the first place, and perhaps more than a little narcissism; it's all about look at me, look at me, look at me!
Furthermore, if 'unfriending' someone could be considered bullying, then sending someone a friend request could also be considered bullying, because you're putting that person on the spot to accept the request; the reciprocal of this would also be true: failure to graciously accept any and all 'friend' requests could be considered bullying.
Considering that the whole 'friend' concept is central to to all 'social media' platforms, one would almost have to conclude that 'social media' in and of itself is a mechanism that exists solely for bullying people. Since bullying is bad, social media needs to be eliminated. Facebook in particular is triggering me; anyone else care to join me in a class-action lawsuit against Facebook for it's enabling of bullies? {/sarcasm}
As someone else pointed out: Your theoretical scenario outlines things that your ficitonal character actually did, therefore rightly caught. Not a great example against the surveillance state.
What we REALLY have to worry about in the Surveillance State, is incorrect connections and assumptions being made. Then it starts resembling the movie Minority Report, where you have people being arrested for things they haven't even done yet. Then everything goes to hell in a handbasket, everyone is literally chasing ghosts, and anyone can be arrested for any reason at any time and have NO defense against it legally.
Your Mexican hookers with organized crime ties? They kissed you without your permission. But it doesn't look that way and you get flagged for it anyway. Your wife believes the feds without question especially after they show her the 'evidence', and she turns against you, making matters worse now that her own insecurities have found something to validate them. This makes the case the State is building against you even more damning, as she brings up 'suspicious' behavior of yours from the past (working late all the time, 'mysterious' phone calls you claim were telemarketers, etc). Feds start questioning your social media friends; they come up with all sorts of insane crap that has nothing to do with reality, or even better: something innocent they say is taken out of context by an over-zealous district attorney, and suddenly you're a criminal mastermind who has been in deep cover for decades.
Of course shit like this has been happening for decades and decades before the Surveillance State, but now it's just getting worse by an order of magnitude. THAT is why we have to keep fighting back; otherwise it just spirals out of control even worse than it already is, with nothing to check it's progress.
Bullshit. Just because you don't want to work in Starbucks doesn't meant that the job isn't available.
Spoken like someone who has never had to make that decision. Do you even have a professional career? Do you have any idea what it does to your professional reputation when a prospective employer sees that you resorted to working a low-paying service job like Starbucks? Also apparently your math is poor, since you don't seem to realize that Starbucks would pay less than unemployment would pay, so why would you waste your time working there when you can get paid to be looking for work in your field? Even the EDD will tell you NOT to take 'any job' unless it's in your field.
The so-called 'internet of things' is just as likely being used currently as a means of surveilling people in their homes as not, and since the potetial for abuse is there in abundance, there needs to be tight regulation to ensure that it is not being used in that way, and that furthermore it is not possible to use in that way. Of course I think the 'IoT' is a stupid fad anyway. I don't need my appliances connected to the Internet, why would you?
If all you need is a simple PCB (even 2-layer with plated-through holes is not that difficult) with no silkscreen or soldermask, and you're willing to have the chemicals and a PCB drill press with appropriate PCB drills on hand to do it, then it's very convenient. If you want silkscreen and soldermask, then it's going to be fairly time consuming and require quite a bit more equipment. If you need more than 2 layers, you're having a fab house do it for you, unless your need is so frequent and regularly urgent that you can justify the huge expense; at this point you are a fab house. Of course in this day and age, you can build almost anything you want and never have a single through-hole on a PCB (with the exception of vias); if it's a single-layer board then you don't even need vias in the first place and are just etching; if you're willing to put up with the relatively low-quality results, there's the toner-transfer method. As with most things it all should be dictated by need. Unfortunately governments would just as soon take everything that's not a common household chemical out of the hands of common citizens, so I'm not very surprised that there's someone trying to discourage people from manufacturing their own PCBs.
All-or-nothing thinking from anonymous bench-warmers on an Internet discussion forum
Unless you were there, in the room, preferably involved in the situation, nothing you or anyone else says (myself included) really means much of anything. The truth (such as it is) is still forthcoming, I am speculating, everyone speculating, and that and $5 will get you a cup of coffee at Starbucks, so you (and everyone else!) can stop acting like we're the ones 'deciding' anything here.
Listen, buddy: Neither I nor anyone else knows precisely who ordered this thing be done. All I'm pointing out is that blaming the author of the code in question may be incorrect. Could it be an entire group responsible? Yes. But if you're saying that being coerced or plain-old bullied into doing something you don't want to do makes you just as guilty as if you willingly chose to do it, then I'll have to disagree with you.
$120MUSD is about one one-thousandth of the 2015 net worth of the Coca-Cola Corporation. They probably spend at least that much stocking toilet paper in their restrooms. They spent $3.3BUSD on advertising alone in 2013.
Exactly. There are commonalities all over the world: Your boss tells you to do something, you refuse to do it, you get fired and they get someone else to do what they want anyway. In this case they weren't being told to do something that would (directly, or in the near term) endanger human lives, just to pollute the environment. If they were unwilling to write the code that did what the suits demanded, they'd fire them and get someone else to do it. These guys have families like most people that they have to provide for, and 'honey, I got fired because I told my boss I wouldn't do what he asked me to do' doesn't play well. Of course I'm not saying I know the engineers involved actually had objections, it's entirely possible they didn't even care one way or another, but like what the OP is saying, it was the decision of someone in a suit, not the author(s) of the code in question.
Additionally, to be fair about it: There might not be a 'proper engineering' solution to the emissions problem. Face it: We're nearing end-of-life for internal combustion engines, due to their exhaust emissions and their impact on the environment. That plus the eventual exhaustion of fossil fuel means we should be moving away from internal combustion engines anyway. But of course your average business animal doesn't give a rats' ass about any of that, all they care about is their near-term bottom line, and how much of it they can put in their own pockets.
That's not going far enough. I want to put cameras and microphones in every room of their homes, that they aren't legally entitled to switch off, tamper with, or defeat in any way, and I want the feeds from them broadcast over the public Internet for the world to see. I mean the researchers, and the government officials involved in this. Now we're approaching parity.
Calling these fucking assholes 'scum of the Earth' is giving an unnecessarily bad rep to actual scum of the Earth, who comparatively speaking are saints compared to these motherfucking piece of shit assholes; Islamic State assholes, running around cutting of peoples' goddamned heads are not as bad as these fuckers. If there is an actual Hell, they need to make a new, special Plane of it just for dickheads that do shit like this. Back in the Real World, this sort of bullshit needs to be made illegal; close the gods-be-damned 'loophole', already!
YES, damnit, let's go back to the Moon first, build (a) base(s) there, colonize it, establish a permanent presence there. Build a space-oriented infrastructure and industry. Wouldn't it be cheaper to launch from the Moon rather than the Earth? 0.167G and all that? Maybe even build linear accelerator(s) to do part or all of the initial boost (yes, I've read The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress)?
Having been over 300 pounds at one point in my life, with ruined knees, weak, sickly, depressed, and neurotic as hell, to now, having low bodyfat (~10%), strong, healthy, extremely active, and happier overall than I've ever been? Couldn't ever go back to being what I was. Can't fathom why anyone would want to, either. I'd rather drop dead than become what I used to be again.
Sure. Being in disagreement with someone is not a requisite for posting a comment.
I sometimes find it disturbing how many people will avoid any number of things because there's any kind of risk to their safety in engaging in it. Honestly, if people avoided all risk, however small, nobody would ever do anything other than sit quietly in a room with no sharp angles on anything, surrounded by nothing but soft pillows, scared to death of every little noise. You can get killed crossing the street, for cryin' out loud. Living involves taking chances. If you're not willing to take chances then you're not living. The only thing you can be 100% sure about is that you're going to die at some point. Dying full of regret for all the things you were never brave enough to try is a pretty poor epitaph for a life if you ask me. Let me tell you: there are plenty of road races I've participated in where someone crashed, often times taking others down with them. I have crashed, and been unable to ride for weeks afterwards, the worst of which messed with my head for about a year afterwards, even if the actual injury was relatively minor. But I got past it and continued to train and race. The rewards outweigh the risks so far as I'm concerned. The average cyclist, if they learn situational awareness (which is a survival skill everyone should have anyway) and purposefully work to become competent riders, will probably never be involved in any sort of major crash or sustain any sort of major injury, and in the process they'll experience vastly improved health and fitness and a longer, possibly happier life overall. Benefits outweigh the risks. People spreading FUD about cycling need to be quiet IMHO.
Sure, anybody can get a one-day Cat-5 authorization for a few bucks. But if you've done zero training of any kind, the vast majority of riders are going to be off the back in short order, riding alone or with a few other stragglers, and therefore not even racing anymore -- at which point it becomes more like a small group ride than an actual race. Guys who actually get an annual license, starting out as Category 5 (Category 4 if you're female) may then be 'racing', but under USA Cycling rules there is no prize money to win, which is done to discourage new racers from being more competitive than their skill-set provides for. After 10 mass-start races you get an automatic upgrade to Cat-4, then the 'kid gloves' come off. And I never said that racing is 'safe'; far from it, in fact, but you also have no reasonable expectation of it being safe, either, and anyone you train or race with, or any mentors at clinics, or coaches you might employ the services of, will tell you that over and over again, so you will work to be as safe as possible. The average recreational rider doesn't really think that anything bad is going to happen to them, of course until it does. The reality is that if you ride long enough, something is eventually going to happen, and if you're careful and lucky it'll be minor and you'll learn from the experience. In my opinion if you're not willing to acknowledge and accept the risk then you shouldn't be riding in the first place, you're just a hazard to yourself and others. But I ride 200-300 miles a week, in all sorts of weather, 4 nights and 2 days a week, on all sorts of roads, have been for years and years and years, and haven't (knock on wood!) been hit by a car, run over a cliff, or anything really major. I've crashed a couple times at races, and avoided a few more crashes, but it doesn't deter me either, I get over it and move on. Of course I've also been riding motorcycles for decades as well, and learned to stay out of harms' way doing that, too (even had nothing but a motorcycle for 10 years) and those 'survival skills' serve me well on a bike, too.
I should clarify: keep your digital footprint of your real name and information as small as possible, preferably invisible. By all means, make any pseudonyms as detailed as you like. Personally speaking, there are some sites that think I live in Barrow, Alaska, and that I'm 101 years old.;-)
Since you're not quoting anything I'm not exactly sure if you're responding to me or to some other commenter in this thread, but I'll say this: It isn't exactly unheard-of for a 14-year-old boy to exaggerate, any more than it is for them to not think things through thoroughly before acting. Also, you sound like you're being a bit pedantic about this; please stop that.
Slashdot Mirror
Just think of the possibilities if they had used all those resources for something useful instead of poking their noses into things that were none of their business in the first place!
A sad but true commentary that unfortunately I agree with; it's the 'provide an example of what NOT to be' philosophy.
Sure, because Facebook and other so-called 'social media' platforms have done so much to advance human society and civilization.
In my opinion, use of so-called 'social media' itself very often shows a lack of emotional maturity in the first place, and perhaps more than a little narcissism; it's all about look at me, look at me, look at me!
Furthermore, if 'unfriending' someone could be considered bullying, then sending someone a friend request could also be considered bullying, because you're putting that person on the spot to accept the request; the reciprocal of this would also be true: failure to graciously accept any and all 'friend' requests could be considered bullying.
Considering that the whole 'friend' concept is central to to all 'social media' platforms, one would almost have to conclude that 'social media' in and of itself is a mechanism that exists solely for bullying people. Since bullying is bad, social media needs to be eliminated. Facebook in particular is triggering me; anyone else care to join me in a class-action lawsuit against Facebook for it's enabling of bullies? {/sarcasm}
Sarcasm
If that's the way they want to do things, then they're basically creating malware and nobody should use their app.
..and at that point it's useless. By all means, try to break it; if you can then that means it needs to be improved.
As someone else pointed out: Your theoretical scenario outlines things that your ficitonal character actually did, therefore rightly caught. Not a great example against the surveillance state.
What we REALLY have to worry about in the Surveillance State, is incorrect connections and assumptions being made. Then it starts resembling the movie Minority Report, where you have people being arrested for things they haven't even done yet. Then everything goes to hell in a handbasket, everyone is literally chasing ghosts, and anyone can be arrested for any reason at any time and have NO defense against it legally.
Your Mexican hookers with organized crime ties? They kissed you without your permission. But it doesn't look that way and you get flagged for it anyway. Your wife believes the feds without question especially after they show her the 'evidence', and she turns against you, making matters worse now that her own insecurities have found something to validate them. This makes the case the State is building against you even more damning, as she brings up 'suspicious' behavior of yours from the past (working late all the time, 'mysterious' phone calls you claim were telemarketers, etc). Feds start questioning your social media friends; they come up with all sorts of insane crap that has nothing to do with reality, or even better: something innocent they say is taken out of context by an over-zealous district attorney, and suddenly you're a criminal mastermind who has been in deep cover for decades.
Of course shit like this has been happening for decades and decades before the Surveillance State, but now it's just getting worse by an order of magnitude. THAT is why we have to keep fighting back; otherwise it just spirals out of control even worse than it already is, with nothing to check it's progress.
NO. Bending over and taking it is not the answer. We fight back and continue fighting back for as long as it takes.
Bullshit. Just because you don't want to work in Starbucks doesn't meant that the job isn't available.
Spoken like someone who has never had to make that decision. Do you even have a professional career? Do you have any idea what it does to your professional reputation when a prospective employer sees that you resorted to working a low-paying service job like Starbucks? Also apparently your math is poor, since you don't seem to realize that Starbucks would pay less than unemployment would pay, so why would you waste your time working there when you can get paid to be looking for work in your field? Even the EDD will tell you NOT to take 'any job' unless it's in your field.
The so-called 'internet of things' is just as likely being used currently as a means of surveilling people in their homes as not, and since the potetial for abuse is there in abundance, there needs to be tight regulation to ensure that it is not being used in that way, and that furthermore it is not possible to use in that way. Of course I think the 'IoT' is a stupid fad anyway. I don't need my appliances connected to the Internet, why would you?
Been working in electronics for >30 years.
If all you need is a simple PCB (even 2-layer with plated-through holes is not that difficult) with no silkscreen or soldermask, and you're willing to have the chemicals and a PCB drill press with appropriate PCB drills on hand to do it, then it's very convenient. If you want silkscreen and soldermask, then it's going to be fairly time consuming and require quite a bit more equipment. If you need more than 2 layers, you're having a fab house do it for you, unless your need is so frequent and regularly urgent that you can justify the huge expense; at this point you are a fab house. Of course in this day and age, you can build almost anything you want and never have a single through-hole on a PCB (with the exception of vias); if it's a single-layer board then you don't even need vias in the first place and are just etching; if you're willing to put up with the relatively low-quality results, there's the toner-transfer method. As with most things it all should be dictated by need. Unfortunately governments would just as soon take everything that's not a common household chemical out of the hands of common citizens, so I'm not very surprised that there's someone trying to discourage people from manufacturing their own PCBs.
All-or-nothing thinking from anonymous bench-warmers on an Internet discussion forum
Unless you were there, in the room, preferably involved in the situation, nothing you or anyone else says (myself included) really means much of anything. The truth (such as it is) is still forthcoming, I am speculating, everyone speculating, and that and $5 will get you a cup of coffee at Starbucks, so you (and everyone else!) can stop acting like we're the ones 'deciding' anything here.
Listen, buddy: Neither I nor anyone else knows precisely who ordered this thing be done. All I'm pointing out is that blaming the author of the code in question may be incorrect. Could it be an entire group responsible? Yes. But if you're saying that being coerced or plain-old bullied into doing something you don't want to do makes you just as guilty as if you willingly chose to do it, then I'll have to disagree with you.
$120MUSD is about one one-thousandth of the 2015 net worth of the Coca-Cola Corporation. They probably spend at least that much stocking toilet paper in their restrooms. They spent $3.3BUSD on advertising alone in 2013.
Exactly. There are commonalities all over the world: Your boss tells you to do something, you refuse to do it, you get fired and they get someone else to do what they want anyway. In this case they weren't being told to do something that would (directly, or in the near term) endanger human lives, just to pollute the environment. If they were unwilling to write the code that did what the suits demanded, they'd fire them and get someone else to do it. These guys have families like most people that they have to provide for, and 'honey, I got fired because I told my boss I wouldn't do what he asked me to do' doesn't play well. Of course I'm not saying I know the engineers involved actually had objections, it's entirely possible they didn't even care one way or another, but like what the OP is saying, it was the decision of someone in a suit, not the author(s) of the code in question.
Additionally, to be fair about it: There might not be a 'proper engineering' solution to the emissions problem. Face it: We're nearing end-of-life for internal combustion engines, due to their exhaust emissions and their impact on the environment. That plus the eventual exhaustion of fossil fuel means we should be moving away from internal combustion engines anyway. But of course your average business animal doesn't give a rats' ass about any of that, all they care about is their near-term bottom line, and how much of it they can put in their own pockets.
That's not going far enough. I want to put cameras and microphones in every room of their homes, that they aren't legally entitled to switch off, tamper with, or defeat in any way, and I want the feeds from them broadcast over the public Internet for the world to see. I mean the researchers, and the government officials involved in this. Now we're approaching parity.
Calling these fucking assholes 'scum of the Earth' is giving an unnecessarily bad rep to actual scum of the Earth, who comparatively speaking are saints compared to these motherfucking piece of shit assholes; Islamic State assholes, running around cutting of peoples' goddamned heads are not as bad as these fuckers. If there is an actual Hell, they need to make a new, special Plane of it just for dickheads that do shit like this. Back in the Real World, this sort of bullshit needs to be made illegal; close the gods-be-damned 'loophole', already!
YES, damnit, let's go back to the Moon first, build (a) base(s) there, colonize it, establish a permanent presence there. Build a space-oriented infrastructure and industry. Wouldn't it be cheaper to launch from the Moon rather than the Earth? 0.167G and all that? Maybe even build linear accelerator(s) to do part or all of the initial boost (yes, I've read The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress)?
4 Chan is gonna be destroyed. You guys don't know wha he did to 2 Chan
Having been over 300 pounds at one point in my life, with ruined knees, weak, sickly, depressed, and neurotic as hell, to now, having low bodyfat (~10%), strong, healthy, extremely active, and happier overall than I've ever been? Couldn't ever go back to being what I was. Can't fathom why anyone would want to, either. I'd rather drop dead than become what I used to be again.
I think we're mostly saying the same thing?
Sure. Being in disagreement with someone is not a requisite for posting a comment.
I sometimes find it disturbing how many people will avoid any number of things because there's any kind of risk to their safety in engaging in it. Honestly, if people avoided all risk, however small, nobody would ever do anything other than sit quietly in a room with no sharp angles on anything, surrounded by nothing but soft pillows, scared to death of every little noise. You can get killed crossing the street, for cryin' out loud. Living involves taking chances. If you're not willing to take chances then you're not living. The only thing you can be 100% sure about is that you're going to die at some point. Dying full of regret for all the things you were never brave enough to try is a pretty poor epitaph for a life if you ask me. Let me tell you: there are plenty of road races I've participated in where someone crashed, often times taking others down with them. I have crashed, and been unable to ride for weeks afterwards, the worst of which messed with my head for about a year afterwards, even if the actual injury was relatively minor. But I got past it and continued to train and race. The rewards outweigh the risks so far as I'm concerned. The average cyclist, if they learn situational awareness (which is a survival skill everyone should have anyway) and purposefully work to become competent riders, will probably never be involved in any sort of major crash or sustain any sort of major injury, and in the process they'll experience vastly improved health and fitness and a longer, possibly happier life overall. Benefits outweigh the risks. People spreading FUD about cycling need to be quiet IMHO.
Sure, anybody can get a one-day Cat-5 authorization for a few bucks. But if you've done zero training of any kind, the vast majority of riders are going to be off the back in short order, riding alone or with a few other stragglers, and therefore not even racing anymore -- at which point it becomes more like a small group ride than an actual race. Guys who actually get an annual license, starting out as Category 5 (Category 4 if you're female) may then be 'racing', but under USA Cycling rules there is no prize money to win, which is done to discourage new racers from being more competitive than their skill-set provides for. After 10 mass-start races you get an automatic upgrade to Cat-4, then the 'kid gloves' come off. And I never said that racing is 'safe'; far from it, in fact, but you also have no reasonable expectation of it being safe, either, and anyone you train or race with, or any mentors at clinics, or coaches you might employ the services of, will tell you that over and over again, so you will work to be as safe as possible. The average recreational rider doesn't really think that anything bad is going to happen to them, of course until it does. The reality is that if you ride long enough, something is eventually going to happen, and if you're careful and lucky it'll be minor and you'll learn from the experience. In my opinion if you're not willing to acknowledge and accept the risk then you shouldn't be riding in the first place, you're just a hazard to yourself and others. But I ride 200-300 miles a week, in all sorts of weather, 4 nights and 2 days a week, on all sorts of roads, have been for years and years and years, and haven't (knock on wood!) been hit by a car, run over a cliff, or anything really major. I've crashed a couple times at races, and avoided a few more crashes, but it doesn't deter me either, I get over it and move on. Of course I've also been riding motorcycles for decades as well, and learned to stay out of harms' way doing that, too (even had nothing but a motorcycle for 10 years) and those 'survival skills' serve me well on a bike, too.
I should clarify: keep your digital footprint of your real name and information as small as possible, preferably invisible. By all means, make any pseudonyms as detailed as you like. Personally speaking, there are some sites that think I live in Barrow, Alaska, and that I'm 101 years old. ;-)
Since you're not quoting anything I'm not exactly sure if you're responding to me or to some other commenter in this thread, but I'll say this: It isn't exactly unheard-of for a 14-year-old boy to exaggerate, any more than it is for them to not think things through thoroughly before acting. Also, you sound like you're being a bit pedantic about this; please stop that.
No rational person could anticipate that level of irrational response
Sure; but you have to admit, 14-year-old boys aren't exactly noted for thinking things through thoroughly.