I think you missed the last line there, about how both were trivial concerns. And government officials are trying to construct -foreign- terrorism as the big threat precisely because it's so much less real than domestic. A domestic terror attack is more likely. Happens on politician X's watch? No big deal, after all, he's keeping you safe from the the threat he was telling you he was protecting you from.
I thought eternal september referred more to ignorance: "noobs" who didn't know what they were doing or how to behave on the internet. This is a more general "People wearing masks act worse" applied specifically to online. The general principle was noticed -long- before 1993, and was probably noticed before 1993 in online interactions too.
"You are using ARPANET chat room. The current time is 23:30, October 29, 1969.
Anonymous user: "HOW IS BABBY FORMED1!"
You: "Dr. Kleinrock? What are you doing?"
Anonymous user: "I'M NOT Kleinrock! I am anonymous!!! TROLOLOLOLOL!"
You: "Yes you are, there's only two computers on the internet at this time."
-Anonymous user has disconnected-"
For what it's worth, I'm far more terrified of domestic terrorism than Islamic terrorists. The KKK, neo-nazis, "Christian"groups like "Hutaree," various well-armed militias, animal rights psychos, pro-lifers who seem to think life is worth less outside the womb, and random nuts with guns... There are more home-grown terrorists than there are foreign terrorists, they generally know their targets better and raise less suspicion, and there have been more domestic terrorist acts than foreign terrorist attacks.
Neither are likely enough to lose any sleep over or vote for someone to protect me from those evildoers of course. Fox news scares me even more than any type of terrorist combined.
I've never taken a business or economics class in my life, so maybe this is a dumb question, but why isn't DirectTV just spinning off the streaming portion of Blockbuster and letting the dead weight die, or at least changing the name? Are there really people who think "Ooh, blockbuster, now there's a name I know and DON'T associate with bad selection, higher than reasonable prices, and terrible service! Sign me up!"
(Full disclosure: Long ago, I worked at a Blockbuster. We did have a bad selection, the prices were higher than the mom-and-pop stores they were shutting down, and I did my part to ensure they had terrible service. I'm sure there were stores where the workers -didn't- hate their manager and -weren't- trying to sink the store out there somewhere, but I never saw them.)
You want to build a tower that's 2600 ft tall (that's about 1/2 a mile up in the air) when the tallest skyscraper comes in at a whopping 2700 ft tall (by comparison the empire state building is 1250ft tall). You want to then put a few hundred tons of turbine equipment on top of this tower and probably several tons insulation (1/2 a mile ride up a tower and the air will surely cool down, not to mention the increases pressure of the air). Sounds like a great idea!
You know what they should do? They should hire some people who specialize in designing stuff to take a look at those plans, see if they're reasonable. I typically call them engineers and/or architects. That ought to set them straight and show them it's completely impossible to build a tall building and put stuff at the top.
It's kind of like these Wright brother idiots. Can you believe they actually think people would be able to fly in the air? Not only that, but with heavy motors and stuff! I tell you, they ought to at least test some of that first, maybe build some type of thing that could test whether or not their wing cross section would actually lift, and then maybe ask some specialists in light mechanical structures if it's feasible. Like maybe some people who build bicycles...
(/s) I know it's fun to sum something up and say it can't possibly work before it works, but even in Arizona, they've got to have, you know, done some homework on this. Simply saying "Can't be done" is not insightful in any way.
If you're going to discount a source, do it right. The article you cited just says they were employing faulty math when reporting one bit of information. I guess 34 knots is ridiculously fast for a naval group? I'll take your word for it, but it doesn't seem like a smoking gun for "This is a biased source." It's from 2008, maybe they learned what a reasonable speed for a naval group is since then?
The wiki page is somewhat more damning. The -real- reason to reject this specific article as pure rumor is the unnamed sources bit.
This just in: unnamed sources revealed to me that Iran's secret Death Star is not actually behind schedule for completion, it's actually fully functional!
The whole state is deranged by some kind of progressive-ism mind virus.
I think you're probably exaggerating. Either about what constitutes "progressive," about how much of the state is affected, or about it being due to a "mind virus."
You know the bit which talked about exactly that point and how you can't compare them because not everybody cares about the same things equally.
I'm not getting how that dictates you can't generalize the prevailing opinion on a subject. Some people care more and some less about the RIAA, but most people are opposed to it.
Most slashdotters are opposed to the RIAA's crackdown on music sharing
Please show the evidence for that. All I see is that "most slashdotters who comment on articles about the RIAA's craskdown on music sharing are opposed to it", which is a very different claim.
I'm afraid I don't see much distinction. Those that comment on articles about the RIAA crackdown would be a sample of slashdotters at large. It's going to be skewed towards people with strong opinions either way, yes, but I think it's a safe assumption that the lurkers on such stories are not significantly different from the commenters in terms of pro RIAA or anti RIAA. If 80% of the comments are opposed to the RIAA, I'm guessing the percentage of slashdotters opposed to the RIAA is going to be closer to 80% than 50%.
Getting back to the original point, I do think it's likely that a significant portion of slashdotters do think that violating copyright and downloading music is not theft while downloading someone's browser history is an invasion of privacy. I do not think that OP's point was absurd per se for the reasons you brought up.
The problem isn't Texas laws, it's the judges in the Federal Courthouse of the Eastern District of Texas and their interpretation of Federal laws.
This article suggests that they are part of the problem: the jurors are predisposed to award big settlements to the plaintiffs. I would guess that with so many lawyers setting up shop there, and the area getting plenty of cash from this industry that some locals with economic interests at stake would do their best to ensure it doesn't change. I'd be surprised if those patent attorneys didn't hire lobbyists, for example.
I have heard from somewhere that for the defendants there is at least one advantage: that the court system there can handle patent lawsuits quickly. Less billable hours means cheaper. Probably not worth the downsides.
Lets not get into hyperbole here, lest people take us all for nutters and disregard our warnings that this is an invasion of privacy.. Government-mandated propaganda and webcams in every home is more 1984 than cars being tracked, but this is pretty horrible.
Slashdot is not an individual. Slashdot is a collection of people of differing views and opinions. Thus you can't expect to get a consistent opinion.
You can't get a consensus opinion. The slashdot crowd does have consistent opinions on things, despite the dynamic nature of the population. It is not nonsense to talk about usual slasdotter opinions. Nearly any parameter you can measure of nearly any natural population has a distribution, but you can still make statements about the mean. Most clovers in a field have 3 leaves. Yes, some have 4 and some have less, but 3 is the usual number. Most slashdotters are opposed to the RIAA's crackdown on music sharing. Yes, some people probably really like the RIAA, but most don't.
there are stories of their employees going thru peoples emails and histories and pasting them to when IM'ing with them
Stories? Anecdotal evidence?!? Good god, THE HUMANITY!!! That's it, I'm calling my senator right now and demanding that he introduce harsh legislation to keep google employees from looking at e-mail and.or from going on IM!
They arguably have a monopoly on -advertising-. Information in general? No, that's absurd. There are dozens of competitors in search engines and in web mail.
There is a clear end in sight if you're concerned about google knowing too much about your browsing history: QUIT USING GOOGLE. Don't search using google, don't use gmail, don't use google+, run noscript and don't allow google analytics. It really is that simple, no legislation needed.
As far as the monopoly on advertising, the end in sight would be competitors, you know, COMPETING. Is google doing something shady to keep competitors down? Because if no, and they just happen to be worlds more effective then their competitors, that's not a "scary monopoly" that requires legislation. Monopolies created by one competitor dominating everyone on a fair playing field are not monopolies that need slapping down.
I'm surprised that someone with a 6 digit UID on slashdot could fail to recognize a troll when they see one, or conversely, would not know that giving one attention only encourages it...
When will people stop to act as if Anonymous is a hierarchic group of people, organized like an average crime syndicate or nation?
Probably if it ever becomes important. Whether it is truly an every-changing group, or whether it's the same core of individual people over and over again doesn't really matter when discussing what they've done or whether their actions are irresponsible. As you pointed out "The point is, yes, they have a more or less common definition of what's right or wrong..." Like Al Qaida, there is some consistency to their actions. The structure really doesn't matter to such discussions. "Voters" are an anonymous group of individuals who are not arranged in a hierarchy (decision making hierarchy anyway, the electoral college does mean that some voters are more equal than others in some elections), but you can of course talk about them as a group with certain characteristics. And I daresay that voters as a group are more complex than Anonymous.
The specific question of "Since when does the Anonymous care if something they do is irresponsible?" is not nonsense as you seem to think it is (even if there's an unnecessary "the" in there). When was the last time their twitter account reflected any sense of responsibility, if that way of phrasing it makes the question clearer?
Interesting, though I would have respected them more for "Guitar Hero: We are contractually obligated to release another one" and it be songs like "We're not gonna take it" and the all new track "Don't buy this game!"
I think people were saying that about the videogame crash of 1983. Thing gets overhyped, everyone hears everyone talking about it, tries it. Product is soulless and crappy, people take one look and then don't want anymore.
That's guitar hero after harmonix got taken off of it. Maybe a little bit before actually, guitar hero rocks the 80s was pretty awful. Had the series been managed well, it may not have dried up like it did.
If they had said, "Our licensing fees are going through the roof, and this new pricing scheme will help us build an even better collection of streaming content," I would have been happy to pay a little more.
Me too. Unfortunately, you and I are not most people. Positive marketing often works better than the truth. I think it's reasonable to predict that approach would lose them more customers than sugarcoating it. The concept of "Netflix doesn't MAKE the movies, they only bring it to you" is over many people's heads. Saying "It's a -good- thing!" when it's not, on the other hand, is a time-tested marketing technique. You can catch more flies with honey (even if that isn't literally true) and all...
I wonder why schools can't take a permission slip approach to recess. "I agree my child can participate in recess. In exchange, I agree not to sue the school if my child sustains injury or death during recess."
Slashdot Mirror
I think you missed the last line there, about how both were trivial concerns. And government officials are trying to construct -foreign- terrorism as the big threat precisely because it's so much less real than domestic. A domestic terror attack is more likely. Happens on politician X's watch? No big deal, after all, he's keeping you safe from the the threat he was telling you he was protecting you from.
I thought eternal september referred more to ignorance: "noobs" who didn't know what they were doing or how to behave on the internet. This is a more general "People wearing masks act worse" applied specifically to online. The general principle was noticed -long- before 1993, and was probably noticed before 1993 in online interactions too.
"You are using ARPANET chat room. The current time is 23:30, October 29, 1969.
Anonymous user: "HOW IS BABBY FORMED1!"
You: "Dr. Kleinrock? What are you doing?"
Anonymous user: "I'M NOT Kleinrock! I am anonymous!!! TROLOLOLOLOL!"
You: "Yes you are, there's only two computers on the internet at this time."
-Anonymous user has disconnected-"
For what it's worth, I'm far more terrified of domestic terrorism than Islamic terrorists. The KKK, neo-nazis, "Christian"groups like "Hutaree," various well-armed militias, animal rights psychos, pro-lifers who seem to think life is worth less outside the womb, and random nuts with guns... There are more home-grown terrorists than there are foreign terrorists, they generally know their targets better and raise less suspicion, and there have been more domestic terrorist acts than foreign terrorist attacks.
Neither are likely enough to lose any sleep over or vote for someone to protect me from those evildoers of course. Fox news scares me even more than any type of terrorist combined.
I've never taken a business or economics class in my life, so maybe this is a dumb question, but why isn't DirectTV just spinning off the streaming portion of Blockbuster and letting the dead weight die, or at least changing the name? Are there really people who think "Ooh, blockbuster, now there's a name I know and DON'T associate with bad selection, higher than reasonable prices, and terrible service! Sign me up!"
(Full disclosure: Long ago, I worked at a Blockbuster. We did have a bad selection, the prices were higher than the mom-and-pop stores they were shutting down, and I did my part to ensure they had terrible service. I'm sure there were stores where the workers -didn't- hate their manager and -weren't- trying to sink the store out there somewhere, but I never saw them.)
You want to build a tower that's 2600 ft tall (that's about 1/2 a mile up in the air) when the tallest skyscraper comes in at a whopping 2700 ft tall (by comparison the empire state building is 1250ft tall). You want to then put a few hundred tons of turbine equipment on top of this tower and probably several tons insulation (1/2 a mile ride up a tower and the air will surely cool down, not to mention the increases pressure of the air). Sounds like a great idea!
You know what they should do? They should hire some people who specialize in designing stuff to take a look at those plans, see if they're reasonable. I typically call them engineers and/or architects. That ought to set them straight and show them it's completely impossible to build a tall building and put stuff at the top.
It's kind of like these Wright brother idiots. Can you believe they actually think people would be able to fly in the air? Not only that, but with heavy motors and stuff! I tell you, they ought to at least test some of that first, maybe build some type of thing that could test whether or not their wing cross section would actually lift, and then maybe ask some specialists in light mechanical structures if it's feasible. Like maybe some people who build bicycles...
(/s) I know it's fun to sum something up and say it can't possibly work before it works, but even in Arizona, they've got to have, you know, done some homework on this. Simply saying "Can't be done" is not insightful in any way.
If you're going to discount a source, do it right. The article you cited just says they were employing faulty math when reporting one bit of information. I guess 34 knots is ridiculously fast for a naval group? I'll take your word for it, but it doesn't seem like a smoking gun for "This is a biased source." It's from 2008, maybe they learned what a reasonable speed for a naval group is since then?
The wiki page is somewhat more damning. The -real- reason to reject this specific article as pure rumor is the unnamed sources bit.
This just in: unnamed sources revealed to me that Iran's secret Death Star is not actually behind schedule for completion, it's actually fully functional!
If there really is a mind virus going around, I definitely won't be now...
The whole state is deranged by some kind of progressive-ism mind virus.
I think you're probably exaggerating. Either about what constitutes "progressive," about how much of the state is affected, or about it being due to a "mind virus."
I hope they didn't catch them doin the nasty.... *shudders*
Wait... what? I'm missing something. Is there another use for a webcam I'm not familiar with?
This could be the most significant portmanteau word added to English this Summer.
No, it's the most significant language-nazi trolling I've done this summer.
One hypenated word: anti-biofouling.
You may have heard of it, it's the second section on that wiki page you cited. I skimmed it. It does not say "Impossible, abandon all hope."
You know the bit which talked about exactly that point and how you can't compare them because not everybody cares about the same things equally.
I'm not getting how that dictates you can't generalize the prevailing opinion on a subject. Some people care more and some less about the RIAA, but most people are opposed to it.
Most slashdotters are opposed to the RIAA's crackdown on music sharing
Please show the evidence for that. All I see is that "most slashdotters who comment on articles about the RIAA's craskdown on music sharing are opposed to it", which is a very different claim.
I'm afraid I don't see much distinction. Those that comment on articles about the RIAA crackdown would be a sample of slashdotters at large. It's going to be skewed towards people with strong opinions either way, yes, but I think it's a safe assumption that the lurkers on such stories are not significantly different from the commenters in terms of pro RIAA or anti RIAA. If 80% of the comments are opposed to the RIAA, I'm guessing the percentage of slashdotters opposed to the RIAA is going to be closer to 80% than 50%.
Getting back to the original point, I do think it's likely that a significant portion of slashdotters do think that violating copyright and downloading music is not theft while downloading someone's browser history is an invasion of privacy. I do not think that OP's point was absurd per se for the reasons you brought up.
The problem isn't Texas laws, it's the judges in the Federal Courthouse of the Eastern District of Texas and their interpretation of Federal laws.
This article suggests that they are part of the problem: the jurors are predisposed to award big settlements to the plaintiffs. I would guess that with so many lawyers setting up shop there, and the area getting plenty of cash from this industry that some locals with economic interests at stake would do their best to ensure it doesn't change. I'd be surprised if those patent attorneys didn't hire lobbyists, for example.
I have heard from somewhere that for the defendants there is at least one advantage: that the court system there can handle patent lawsuits quickly. Less billable hours means cheaper. Probably not worth the downsides.
They're already safer than they've ever been. I prefer my freedoms and privacy to a vain pursuit of taking all possible danger out of life.
This is about as 1984 as it gets.
Lets not get into hyperbole here, lest people take us all for nutters and disregard our warnings that this is an invasion of privacy.. Government-mandated propaganda and webcams in every home is more 1984 than cars being tracked, but this is pretty horrible.
Slashdot is not an individual. Slashdot is a collection of people of differing views and opinions. Thus you can't expect to get a consistent opinion.
You can't get a consensus opinion. The slashdot crowd does have consistent opinions on things, despite the dynamic nature of the population. It is not nonsense to talk about usual slasdotter opinions. Nearly any parameter you can measure of nearly any natural population has a distribution, but you can still make statements about the mean. Most clovers in a field have 3 leaves. Yes, some have 4 and some have less, but 3 is the usual number. Most slashdotters are opposed to the RIAA's crackdown on music sharing. Yes, some people probably really like the RIAA, but most don't.
This is closer to the category of filming someone in a shower, then stealing their wallets.
Incidentally, that's my favorite type of voyeur porn...
there are stories of their employees going thru peoples emails and histories and pasting them to when IM'ing with them
Stories? Anecdotal evidence?!? Good god, THE HUMANITY!!! That's it, I'm calling my senator right now and demanding that he introduce harsh legislation to keep google employees from looking at e-mail and.or from going on IM!
They arguably have a monopoly on -advertising-. Information in general? No, that's absurd. There are dozens of competitors in search engines and in web mail.
There is a clear end in sight if you're concerned about google knowing too much about your browsing history: QUIT USING GOOGLE. Don't search using google, don't use gmail, don't use google+, run noscript and don't allow google analytics. It really is that simple, no legislation needed.
As far as the monopoly on advertising, the end in sight would be competitors, you know, COMPETING. Is google doing something shady to keep competitors down? Because if no, and they just happen to be worlds more effective then their competitors, that's not a "scary monopoly" that requires legislation. Monopolies created by one competitor dominating everyone on a fair playing field are not monopolies that need slapping down.
I'm surprised that someone with a 6 digit UID on slashdot could fail to recognize a troll when they see one, or conversely, would not know that giving one attention only encourages it...
When will people stop to act as if Anonymous is a hierarchic group of people, organized like an average crime syndicate or nation?
Probably if it ever becomes important. Whether it is truly an every-changing group, or whether it's the same core of individual people over and over again doesn't really matter when discussing what they've done or whether their actions are irresponsible. As you pointed out "The point is, yes, they have a more or less common definition of what's right or wrong..." Like Al Qaida, there is some consistency to their actions. The structure really doesn't matter to such discussions. "Voters" are an anonymous group of individuals who are not arranged in a hierarchy (decision making hierarchy anyway, the electoral college does mean that some voters are more equal than others in some elections), but you can of course talk about them as a group with certain characteristics. And I daresay that voters as a group are more complex than Anonymous.
The specific question of "Since when does the Anonymous care if something they do is irresponsible?" is not nonsense as you seem to think it is (even if there's an unnecessary "the" in there). When was the last time their twitter account reflected any sense of responsibility, if that way of phrasing it makes the question clearer?
Interesting, though I would have respected them more for "Guitar Hero: We are contractually obligated to release another one" and it be songs like "We're not gonna take it" and the all new track "Don't buy this game!"
I think people were saying that about the videogame crash of 1983. Thing gets overhyped, everyone hears everyone talking about it, tries it. Product is soulless and crappy, people take one look and then don't want anymore.
That's guitar hero after harmonix got taken off of it. Maybe a little bit before actually, guitar hero rocks the 80s was pretty awful. Had the series been managed well, it may not have dried up like it did.
If they had said, "Our licensing fees are going through the roof, and this new pricing scheme will help us build an even better collection of streaming content," I would have been happy to pay a little more.
Me too. Unfortunately, you and I are not most people. Positive marketing often works better than the truth. I think it's reasonable to predict that approach would lose them more customers than sugarcoating it. The concept of "Netflix doesn't MAKE the movies, they only bring it to you" is over many people's heads. Saying "It's a -good- thing!" when it's not, on the other hand, is a time-tested marketing technique. You can catch more flies with honey (even if that isn't literally true) and all...
I wonder why schools can't take a permission slip approach to recess. "I agree my child can participate in recess. In exchange, I agree not to sue the school if my child sustains injury or death during recess."