While I hate the security theater industry, that's not quite a fair criticism. They get a lot of noise, and his name was misspelled.
Infinitely more important though, lets not fall into the trap of using their logic. No government agency can protect against any possible psycho wanting to kill people. We should reject the premise that homeland security CAN protect us against such people if we just allow them to keep secret watchlists and give up our rights.
Instead I'd frame it as "Homeland security did the best job they possibly could, which was pathetically short of the job we give them billions of dollars and our rights to do, thus we should scrap the whole department and the approach. Instead just close security holes where they don't interfere with rights. For instance: locking cockpit doors and having bomb-sniffing dogs good, secret no fly lists bad."
Yes, but most people don't use Bank of America to send nude pictures of themselves or set up questionably legal deals. They DO use snapchat for that *, and they do it because they think it's safe, confidential, and self-erasing. Thus the EFF is quite right to highlight that. Plus it does say "web services" which banks aren't really.
* Or so I have read. No one sends me nude pictures or drug deals.
I'd guess it is, especially when "using Creative Cloud professionally" means "twiddling your thumbs waiting for Creative Cloud to start working again" and using GIMP means "double clicking GIMP and it works as long as your computer has power and a monitor."
Do you have a point? TFS mentioned several specific advantages sacramento had going for it, not just "It's hip."
Furthermore, no, check your stats. Detroit is the top in terms of violent crime, murder, and assault. It's fourth highest in robbery, second highest in vehicle theft. San Francisco is about in the middle of the list, with Sacramento being slightly ahead of it (just beneath Wichita KS, oddly.)
Don't act as if the war is over just because this battle is lost. This wasn't a resolution "Forever and ever for the rest of time the end." It wasn't even a real fight anyway, the outcome was already known. The "chairman" of the FCC is a lobbyist for the cable industry remember. This was just a show to make it seem like the issue was considered fairly and openly. The first real chance at correcting this is congressional action.
And before any other cynics pipe up, cram that defeatist talk about lobbyists and partisan politics up your ass. Yes, that will add to the difficulty, it might delay it, but no, that will not forestall any possible action on it. The real barrier is public apathy. Your mother doesn't know what net neutrality is or how it will affect her. And cynically telling yourself it's an impossible fight is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Have you called your congressman? Don't say it's a lost cause just as an excuse not to try to win.
You don't seem to understand what worms are useful for. They have specific uses, you're knocking them for not being useful for all types of research. That's like saying a hammer is useless because it can't fuse fiber optic cables very well.
Studies in worms don't DIRECTLY translate to humans, which is why medicine doesn't attempt to do so. You find something basic in worms, you next see if it is true for mice. Then finally you see if it's true in humans.
Incredibly, this is directly stated in TFA:
There’s no guarantee that -KG will have the same effects on aging in people as it has in worms. And before researchers can even address that issue, they’ll have to figure out if the compound also extends the lives of laboratory organisms such as flies and mice.
The reason why worms are an awesome model for certain things is it costs pennies to grow thousands of them. I had a professor who calculated that doing a mutagenesis screen in mice (that is, get a mouse with a mutation in every gene) would cost as much money as 20 minutes of the Iraq war, which is of course an unfathomable amount of money for something silly like biomedical research that doesn't kill people. A mutagenesis screen in worms on the other hand might cost closer to 20 minutes of undergraduate tuition.
The same thing goes for drug screens like the one discussed. Mice have a lifespan of about 2 years. Worms have a lifespan of two to three weeks. You'd identify drugs that keep worms alive longer in a month, and you'd only need plates full of bacteria (the worms eat bacteria) to do so. Mice require food, water, cages, climate control, dedicated staff to clean the cages, and a 24/7 monitoring system. You'd need multiple mice for each drug you're testing, so if you test a thousand compounds, you'd need several thousand mice. And if you want to do a longevity screen, you'd need to keep those mice alive for years. That would be an idiotic waste of time and money.
Any researcher who should be trusted with a pipette would quickly determine that the correct way to identify drugs that could increase longevity would be to first identify drugs using worms, then test whether those drugs have the same effect in mice or higher more expensive vertebrates, then finally see if there's a way you could show that same effect in humans without waiting 100 years. This is exactly what they appear to be doing.
Trying to select text and it grabs the whole word, or worse, some programs grab the whole word plus a space. Why do I want trailing spaces with everything I paste?
Every time I get annoyed by this, then I think "Oh, I'm probably REALLY close to getting used to it, just give it a little more time rather than looking into how to change it, besides, I'm currently writing something."
I realize now that it's been decades and it still annoys me. Time to change right now. Any suggestions for getting "Select only what I actually select" in windows 7? And any tips for the ipad aside from "break the damn thing over my knee"?
They didn't say that would be the ONLY thing preventing upgrades! Other things that make upgrades and innovation unaffordable include:
- It's wednesday
- But... MONEY!
- The old infrastructure isn't currently on fire
- All the engineers and accountants got super-fast internet first and they starved to death looking at high-def porn
- Still mad that they sent you all those AOL discs and you're not still using AOL. They worked really hard on that.
- You spend most of your time and bandwidth looking for something to watch on Netflix. Providing you faster internet would just make that worse
- The executive board REALLY likes cocaine and boats.
- Do you KNOW how hard it is digging in the dirt to put in fiber?!? You try it sometime! It's like digging through concrete!
- The rules of Monopoly the board game don't say anything about reducing rent just because people really don't want to pay if they land on Boardwalk. Everyone insists ISPs are a monopoly but don't want to play by the simple instructions. That's just hypocrisy.
I think people are actually reacting with skepticism based on a long history of huge military orders which clearly are not the best value for taxpayer dollar.
Why is terrorism seen as such a threat in the US? According to this, 2600 americans were injured by air fresheners in 1996. Here's a list of injuries and deaths due to terrorism. If 96 was a good indication, it looks like air fresheners are BY FAR the bigger threat.
Politicians, law enforcement, and media sell fear. That's the real reason why NZ is ramping up anti-terrorism.
I'd really like to see a law requiring citizens to take a low dose of anti-anxiety medication. Everyone over the age of 16. We'd colonize mars by 2030, cure cancer, solve climate change, prevent overpopulation, and end most violent crime if we would just stop wasting so much fucking time, energy, and tax dollars in stupid illogical fear.
And yes, I have seen "Serenity" and I'm willing to risk it.
That specific scenario seems unlikely. Stolen guns being "unlocked" by professional gun traffickers on the other hand seems much more likely.
To me, the big potential advantage of smart gun technology would be to decrease the black market for guns. If you have a gun and in a confrontation, it gets taken from you and you get shot, I don't really care to be honest. That's your problem. The societal problem I care about is criminals buying guns on the black market. If smart gun technology could make stolen guns useless, I'm all for it. It seems like guns used in crimes are generally stolen (judging from a google search, there's far more bullshit and propaganda than there is hard studies on the subject, and I'm not willing to spend time getting to the bottom of it to be sure).
To me, it seems pretty unlikely that smart gun locks will do much of anything with the black market. Screen locks haven't really prevented a thriving black market for stolen smartphones. So I suspect that smart gun technology is pretty dumb for everyone but the patent holders and their lobbyists, and maybe REALLY incompetent gun owners.
Aside from "That less than 1% of players then MIGHT NOT BUY NEW GAMES!!" are there any actual downsides to EA to do that? Would they have to spend time and money updating the code, bug checking it, making sure it wouldn't create big security holes for EA or anyone running their own server?
While EA does plenty of stupid things that don't even seem to be attributable to greed, I'd be a bit skeptical that even they are dumb enough to slap their customers in the face like this without any reason whatsoever. Seems like the good PR generated by allowing people to run their own servers would more than make up for potential lost sales due to people playing 15 year old games. I mean, it's been 8 years since neverwinter nights 2 came out, is there even talk of a third?
For anyone wondering, that's not much of a hyperbole:
...one-third of the human diet comes from insect-pollinated plants, and the honeybee is responsible for 80 percent of that pollination, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Even cattle, which feed on alfalfa, depend on bees. So if the collapse worsens, we could end up being "stuck with grains and water," said Kevin Hackett, the national program leader for USDA's bee and pollination program.
"This is the biggest general threat to our food supply," Hackett said.
I'd argue a better outlook is "This is a positive response: it shows that pressure being put on the FCC is working, they're not invulnerable to criticism, so double down on whatever efforts you are taking. If you aren't calling your washington representatives, do so."
Wheeler didn't issue this statement because he was simply concerned that the american people were unhappy. This is basic PR: "I have a real problem, so throw the critics a bone, make it look like I'm open minded, and hope that calms them down enough to just do what it was I wanted to do." If there had been no response, then that would be an indication that Wheeler, the FCC, and the Obama administration were unconcerned about the feedback they were getting and we would be wasting our time.
I mean what did you expect? That the FCC would jump right to "Oops, we were completely wrong about what you wanted and will do a complete 180, thank you for your feedback, no need to fire me for being so very very wrong, please!"
I don't know how much harder people will have to push to force a complete reversal, but this is a positive sign. Your cynicism is justified, but lets not be so cynical as to conclude that the battle is lost; I see this as quite the opposite.
What DOESN'T have pros and cons? Even vaccinations hurt a bit for a split second, and they're the closest thing to "something that is completely devoid of cons" that I can think of.
With unions, I think history has shown they are good medicine for when the labor force is being abused by employers with government's blessing.
Unfortunately, with both vaccinations and unions, after living with them for too long, people forget what life was like before they were around, and only notice the cons, and then listen to assholes telling them they're nothing but trouble. We then have to do a mini cycle where the old problems come back a little before people realize there are plenty of good reasons for unions or vaccines.
I always thought of it as referencing the fact that in the original, Han only appears to be talking to buy time to shoot Greedo, his first instinct is "Murder my way out of this problem." IE "Han shoots first, [asks questions later.]"
For my money, the Jabba palace CGI song and dance number is really the only unwatchable edit though. The Han shooting first thing is just funny (though not in a good way.) The dialogue was always ridiculous.
But that fucking dancing singing alien... Jesus... Someone should have really called Lucas out on that.
You imply this is obvious? The general theory of "competition is better" is sound, but the specifics of ISPs have usually defeated the general principle. ISPs managed to establish near monopolies first off. Even where there IS already competition, there's usually shitty service due to collusion. When communities have tried to come together to make an alternative, the ISPs have immediately set about undermining them. The towns I've heard of that have tried to setup their own ISP have been sued into submission by big telecos rather than out-competed.
So I'd say this is actually one of the rare times that, yes, competition in ISPs does actually work as it's supposed to.
Hopefully this is the start of a new trend and not just a blip. No matter how secure an industry or company seems, if it abuses it's customers enough for long enough, it will fall one way or another.
Gas prices are artificially low due to tax breaks and externalized costs at a minimum. CO2 is harder to deal with and presents greater problems globally than fire or oil spills. Thank you.
Just so we're all clear about what is bullshit and what is actually the concern: some environmentalists such as myself don't care about safety of moving the stuff around. If you manage to make a new carbon sink that can eat up all the carbon being pumped out by the gas, you could deliver it across the country by strapping tanks to the back of baby seals and throwing them via catapult towards crowded cities for all I care. But you won't, and if gas prices stay artificially low, we won't stop driving for any trip longer than a half a block, which is why I'd prefer to stop the pipeline AND see the rails stopped.
so you would have to win the auction, pay up and only then get the parking spots actual exact location.
That's a good point, but that sounds like a reason why the thing would fail even if no one tried to cheat it and even if the city doesn't block it: for most places most of the time, that sounds more complicated than simply finding an open spot the old fashioned way.
The few places and times it's not, I expect you'll bid on the spot, go to it, only to find someone with their hazard lights on who had no idea the spot was available online.
And that would happen at most once for me before I no longer needed a parking service due to being in jail for vehicular manslaughter.
Slashdot Mirror
While I hate the security theater industry, that's not quite a fair criticism. They get a lot of noise, and his name was misspelled.
Infinitely more important though, lets not fall into the trap of using their logic. No government agency can protect against any possible psycho wanting to kill people. We should reject the premise that homeland security CAN protect us against such people if we just allow them to keep secret watchlists and give up our rights.
Instead I'd frame it as "Homeland security did the best job they possibly could, which was pathetically short of the job we give them billions of dollars and our rights to do, thus we should scrap the whole department and the approach. Instead just close security holes where they don't interfere with rights. For instance: locking cockpit doors and having bomb-sniffing dogs good, secret no fly lists bad."
Yes, but most people don't use Bank of America to send nude pictures of themselves or set up questionably legal deals. They DO use snapchat for that *, and they do it because they think it's safe, confidential, and self-erasing. Thus the EFF is quite right to highlight that. Plus it does say "web services" which banks aren't really.
* Or so I have read. No one sends me nude pictures or drug deals.
I'd guess it is, especially when "using Creative Cloud professionally" means "twiddling your thumbs waiting for Creative Cloud to start working again" and using GIMP means "double clicking GIMP and it works as long as your computer has power and a monitor."
Do you have a point? TFS mentioned several specific advantages sacramento had going for it, not just "It's hip."
Furthermore, no, check your stats. Detroit is the top in terms of violent crime, murder, and assault. It's fourth highest in robbery, second highest in vehicle theft. San Francisco is about in the middle of the list, with Sacramento being slightly ahead of it (just beneath Wichita KS, oddly.)
(If anyone is wondering why Minneapolis is so high in rape, evidently Minneapolis is just more proactive about defining it.)
Can we safely assume he has been bought...
No, because you got it backwards: he's a telecom exec and lobbyist who bought his way into a government position to regulate his own industry. And it matters because, no this isn't ignorance and it won't just die off.
Don't act as if the war is over just because this battle is lost. This wasn't a resolution "Forever and ever for the rest of time the end." It wasn't even a real fight anyway, the outcome was already known. The "chairman" of the FCC is a lobbyist for the cable industry remember. This was just a show to make it seem like the issue was considered fairly and openly. The first real chance at correcting this is congressional action.
And before any other cynics pipe up, cram that defeatist talk about lobbyists and partisan politics up your ass. Yes, that will add to the difficulty, it might delay it, but no, that will not forestall any possible action on it. The real barrier is public apathy. Your mother doesn't know what net neutrality is or how it will affect her. And cynically telling yourself it's an impossible fight is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Have you called your congressman? Don't say it's a lost cause just as an excuse not to try to win.
Studies in worms don't DIRECTLY translate to humans, which is why medicine doesn't attempt to do so. You find something basic in worms, you next see if it is true for mice. Then finally you see if it's true in humans.
Incredibly, this is directly stated in TFA:
There’s no guarantee that -KG will have the same effects on aging in people as it has in worms. And before researchers can even address that issue, they’ll have to figure out if the compound also extends the lives of laboratory organisms such as flies and mice.
The reason why worms are an awesome model for certain things is it costs pennies to grow thousands of them. I had a professor who calculated that doing a mutagenesis screen in mice (that is, get a mouse with a mutation in every gene) would cost as much money as 20 minutes of the Iraq war, which is of course an unfathomable amount of money for something silly like biomedical research that doesn't kill people. A mutagenesis screen in worms on the other hand might cost closer to 20 minutes of undergraduate tuition.
The same thing goes for drug screens like the one discussed. Mice have a lifespan of about 2 years. Worms have a lifespan of two to three weeks. You'd identify drugs that keep worms alive longer in a month, and you'd only need plates full of bacteria (the worms eat bacteria) to do so. Mice require food, water, cages, climate control, dedicated staff to clean the cages, and a 24/7 monitoring system. You'd need multiple mice for each drug you're testing, so if you test a thousand compounds, you'd need several thousand mice. And if you want to do a longevity screen, you'd need to keep those mice alive for years. That would be an idiotic waste of time and money.
Any researcher who should be trusted with a pipette would quickly determine that the correct way to identify drugs that could increase longevity would be to first identify drugs using worms, then test whether those drugs have the same effect in mice or higher more expensive vertebrates, then finally see if there's a way you could show that same effect in humans without waiting 100 years. This is exactly what they appear to be doing.
Trying to select text and it grabs the whole word, or worse, some programs grab the whole word plus a space. Why do I want trailing spaces with everything I paste?
Every time I get annoyed by this, then I think "Oh, I'm probably REALLY close to getting used to it, just give it a little more time rather than looking into how to change it, besides, I'm currently writing something."
I realize now that it's been decades and it still annoys me. Time to change right now. Any suggestions for getting "Select only what I actually select" in windows 7? And any tips for the ipad aside from "break the damn thing over my knee"?
Given the recent update, I suspect the answer will be the same for both.
(I feel like this joke is nerdy even by slashdot standards.)
They didn't say that would be the ONLY thing preventing upgrades! Other things that make upgrades and innovation unaffordable include:
- It's wednesday
- But... MONEY!
- The old infrastructure isn't currently on fire
- All the engineers and accountants got super-fast internet first and they starved to death looking at high-def porn
- Still mad that they sent you all those AOL discs and you're not still using AOL. They worked really hard on that.
- You spend most of your time and bandwidth looking for something to watch on Netflix. Providing you faster internet would just make that worse
- The executive board REALLY likes cocaine and boats.
- Do you KNOW how hard it is digging in the dirt to put in fiber?!? You try it sometime! It's like digging through concrete!
- The rules of Monopoly the board game don't say anything about reducing rent just because people really don't want to pay if they land on Boardwalk. Everyone insists ISPs are a monopoly but don't want to play by the simple instructions. That's just hypocrisy.
I think people are actually reacting with skepticism based on a long history of huge military orders which clearly are not the best value for taxpayer dollar.
Why is terrorism seen as such a threat in the US? According to this, 2600 americans were injured by air fresheners in 1996. Here's a list of injuries and deaths due to terrorism. If 96 was a good indication, it looks like air fresheners are BY FAR the bigger threat.
Politicians, law enforcement, and media sell fear. That's the real reason why NZ is ramping up anti-terrorism.
I'd really like to see a law requiring citizens to take a low dose of anti-anxiety medication. Everyone over the age of 16. We'd colonize mars by 2030, cure cancer, solve climate change, prevent overpopulation, and end most violent crime if we would just stop wasting so much fucking time, energy, and tax dollars in stupid illogical fear.
And yes, I have seen "Serenity" and I'm willing to risk it.
That specific scenario seems unlikely. Stolen guns being "unlocked" by professional gun traffickers on the other hand seems much more likely.
To me, the big potential advantage of smart gun technology would be to decrease the black market for guns. If you have a gun and in a confrontation, it gets taken from you and you get shot, I don't really care to be honest. That's your problem. The societal problem I care about is criminals buying guns on the black market. If smart gun technology could make stolen guns useless, I'm all for it. It seems like guns used in crimes are generally stolen (judging from a google search, there's far more bullshit and propaganda than there is hard studies on the subject, and I'm not willing to spend time getting to the bottom of it to be sure).
To me, it seems pretty unlikely that smart gun locks will do much of anything with the black market. Screen locks haven't really prevented a thriving black market for stolen smartphones. So I suspect that smart gun technology is pretty dumb for everyone but the patent holders and their lobbyists, and maybe REALLY incompetent gun owners.
Aside from "That less than 1% of players then MIGHT NOT BUY NEW GAMES!!" are there any actual downsides to EA to do that? Would they have to spend time and money updating the code, bug checking it, making sure it wouldn't create big security holes for EA or anyone running their own server?
While EA does plenty of stupid things that don't even seem to be attributable to greed, I'd be a bit skeptical that even they are dumb enough to slap their customers in the face like this without any reason whatsoever. Seems like the good PR generated by allowing people to run their own servers would more than make up for potential lost sales due to people playing 15 year old games. I mean, it's been 8 years since neverwinter nights 2 came out, is there even talk of a third?
...one-third of the human diet comes from insect-pollinated plants, and the honeybee is responsible for 80 percent of that pollination, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Even cattle, which feed on alfalfa, depend on bees. So if the collapse worsens, we could end up being "stuck with grains and water," said Kevin Hackett, the national program leader for USDA's bee and pollination program. "This is the biggest general threat to our food supply," Hackett said.
source
I'd argue a better outlook is "This is a positive response: it shows that pressure being put on the FCC is working, they're not invulnerable to criticism, so double down on whatever efforts you are taking. If you aren't calling your washington representatives, do so."
Wheeler didn't issue this statement because he was simply concerned that the american people were unhappy. This is basic PR: "I have a real problem, so throw the critics a bone, make it look like I'm open minded, and hope that calms them down enough to just do what it was I wanted to do." If there had been no response, then that would be an indication that Wheeler, the FCC, and the Obama administration were unconcerned about the feedback they were getting and we would be wasting our time.
I mean what did you expect? That the FCC would jump right to "Oops, we were completely wrong about what you wanted and will do a complete 180, thank you for your feedback, no need to fire me for being so very very wrong, please!"
I don't know how much harder people will have to push to force a complete reversal, but this is a positive sign. Your cynicism is justified, but lets not be so cynical as to conclude that the battle is lost; I see this as quite the opposite.
What DOESN'T have pros and cons? Even vaccinations hurt a bit for a split second, and they're the closest thing to "something that is completely devoid of cons" that I can think of.
With unions, I think history has shown they are good medicine for when the labor force is being abused by employers with government's blessing.
Unfortunately, with both vaccinations and unions, after living with them for too long, people forget what life was like before they were around, and only notice the cons, and then listen to assholes telling them they're nothing but trouble. We then have to do a mini cycle where the old problems come back a little before people realize there are plenty of good reasons for unions or vaccines.
I always thought of it as referencing the fact that in the original, Han only appears to be talking to buy time to shoot Greedo, his first instinct is "Murder my way out of this problem." IE "Han shoots first, [asks questions later.]"
For my money, the Jabba palace CGI song and dance number is really the only unwatchable edit though. The Han shooting first thing is just funny (though not in a good way.) The dialogue was always ridiculous.
But that fucking dancing singing alien... Jesus... Someone should have really called Lucas out on that.
You imply this is obvious? The general theory of "competition is better" is sound, but the specifics of ISPs have usually defeated the general principle. ISPs managed to establish near monopolies first off. Even where there IS already competition, there's usually shitty service due to collusion. When communities have tried to come together to make an alternative, the ISPs have immediately set about undermining them. The towns I've heard of that have tried to setup their own ISP have been sued into submission by big telecos rather than out-competed.
So I'd say this is actually one of the rare times that, yes, competition in ISPs does actually work as it's supposed to.
Hopefully this is the start of a new trend and not just a blip. No matter how secure an industry or company seems, if it abuses it's customers enough for long enough, it will fall one way or another.
Citation needed. As for gas prices, tax breaks and externalized costs: the cost is artificially low.
I don't even know where you're trying to go with that one. The seal thing was a hyperbole, you realize.
Gas prices are artificially low due to tax breaks and externalized costs at a minimum. CO2 is harder to deal with and presents greater problems globally than fire or oil spills. Thank you.
Just so we're all clear about what is bullshit and what is actually the concern: some environmentalists such as myself don't care about safety of moving the stuff around. If you manage to make a new carbon sink that can eat up all the carbon being pumped out by the gas, you could deliver it across the country by strapping tanks to the back of baby seals and throwing them via catapult towards crowded cities for all I care. But you won't, and if gas prices stay artificially low, we won't stop driving for any trip longer than a half a block, which is why I'd prefer to stop the pipeline AND see the rails stopped.
so you would have to win the auction, pay up and only then get the parking spots actual exact location.
That's a good point, but that sounds like a reason why the thing would fail even if no one tried to cheat it and even if the city doesn't block it: for most places most of the time, that sounds more complicated than simply finding an open spot the old fashioned way.
The few places and times it's not, I expect you'll bid on the spot, go to it, only to find someone with their hazard lights on who had no idea the spot was available online.
And that would happen at most once for me before I no longer needed a parking service due to being in jail for vehicular manslaughter.