I'd argue you're oversimplifying it dramatically. R and D does not mean bad, and I does not mean good. Furthermore, we've had a two party system since right after Washington. I'd argue that what has changed, and what is the problem with the system now, is voter apathy and ignorance, which is in turn caused by TV news. We watch a half hour of cable news propaganda and consider ourselves sufficiently informed to vote. OR we tell ourselves that we DIDN'T watch cable news, so we're much smarter, but who has the time to vote? That allows shitty people to run the show.
I don't think the problem or solution lies with the two party system, I think the problem is the voters. But I'm optimistic: I think there's a natural solution arising. People aren't going to be watching CNN or Fox to get their news. We might not develop the same ignorance and apathy when the news isn't controlled exclusively by large corporations.
"Dominating" strain of feminism? Anecdotal evidence is all fine and good to talk about injustice, but if you're going to make such a sweeping statement, do it with numbers. Citation please?
I haven't worked at a large enough number of companies to claim I have a good sample size going, but I've worked at a few that were good despite shitty shitty HR departments. I've also worked at one that seemed to have a really nice HR process and staff, and the job itself was shitty. It should have been obvious from the start, but I was younger and am dumb.
You went off on a strawman there. I wasn't saying in general that people everywhere will have heard everything I believe to be self-evident. I'm saying that Ham specifically, as the leader of a creationist movement, would have heard arguments in favor of evolution that would be convincing. Preparing for this debate at a minimum would require him to be familiar with the arguments.
There could be a silver lining: you don't really have much privacy right now already, what with facebook, the NSA, and cameras on buildings already. If google glass annoys everyone, privacy could be an issue that people start caring about.
My definition of a good debate involves people who are open-minded to the opposing viewpoint. If you have one or more sides that aren't listening, that's not a debate, that's a cable news segment. Or at best, it's entertainment.
Lets say hypothetically, there was a really good argument in favor of creationism that somehow had not come up in the hundred plus years that creationists have been denying science. It's possible that Bill McNye is open-minded enough to accept the possibility that creationism is valid. I doubt I could, but McNye is pretty awesome.
Ham, on the other hand, has undoubtedly been exposed to numerous arguments in favor of evolution that convince virtually everyone who doesn't have a religious bias. And he hasn't been convinced. He's not open to the possibility that his religion is wrong.
It's not going to be a productive debate: one side can't possibly win in the "convince the other side" way. The other side can't win in the sense of "being right."
I don't know anything about physics, but I have heard this quote:
When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong. - Arthur C Clarke
I'm addicted to porn. It's other people's fault: they rarely have orgies with me, so I have to settle for virtual!
Bonus: the methodology here is asking teens why they're doing something "wrong." The answer is "Because my parents won't let me do what I want." Shock.
I'd argue what's getting old is NOT hearing the story of "Top NSA brass arrested, tried as enemies of the state."
There's a game which must be played. Expecting people to focus on the message without paying attention to the messsenger is unrealistic and stupid. Snowden as a face for the NSA revelations is a good move. I can't fathom why you would object to Snowden being on the front pages rather than something of less importance, which is pretty much anything else for the US.
Torrenting predated netflix, so I'm skeptical that torrenting is going to be very disruptive to netflix.
Hulu seems like it would have a better shot. And interestingly, Hulu has a better rating by glassdoor, of 4.1. That said, I'm keeping my netflix account and not getting hulu because 1. I don't work at either place 2. I think Hulu's allies are more damaging to the larger society than netflix and 3. I'm willing to settle for the lesser of two evils to be entertained.
I read it as desperation, or possibly being used to giving people bribes to make problems go away, not an insult. And perhaps $10K goes a lot further wherever the person offering the bribe is from than wherever Krebbs is from.
MORE secure, not just secure. Thieves won't commit suicide in frustration: there will still be thefts. They'll evolve. It's pedantic, but I think we all know the dangers of giving a false sense of security, even accidentally through word choices.
Do "legitimate" businesses like piping companies or wire companies buy copper wholesale from scrapyards which are clearly dealing in stolen copper? I'm just confused as to how there is a market for stolen copper. I understand that it is easier to rip it out of an air conditioning unit than it is to dig it out of the ground, but I'd think it would be easy to reduce demand for stolen copper and kill the market for it by penalizing companies who accept stolen goods, same as any other goods. I'd expect that the companies who are buying copper wouldn't be buying in such small quantities that it would be hard to identify where it was coming from.
I haven't ever heard of fiber cable thieves, whereas people regularly steal copper out of walls of buildings. If there were a big market for fiber cable, probably assuming they got what they meant to would make sense, but assuming that these people went to all this trouble to steal glass doesn't.
To add to that, while they would be able to scare the bejeebus out of a lot of people with the ensuing media storm, they could do the same thing without bothering with radioactive material extremely easy. Make a specific threat, even one that's absurd, and send some idiot with instructions to do it, and you'll terrify the sheep people for months. "OMG! Al qaeda is trying to bomb the US using the moon by hijacking the space shuttle!!!"
There's no level of profit which is ever "good enough" to any company, or even most people. Human nature, or maybe just nature, is to grow accustomed to what one has and then immediately seek to gain more. Cancer cells or really any other living thing will consume food until it reaches starvation. With monopolies or in other profitable times, companies don't just stockpile money usually, they spend it trying to grow bigger. Those that do are rare, and dumb things often happen when they do stockpile
Granted, investors, shareholders, and executive boards should ideally be able to have better foresight than cancer cells, but in reality they don't.
Only virtually all the time! IN THEORY it could!!! I'm not being facetious. With more money AND voters potentially being on their side, google could have enough power to use it against AT&T.
Because it's not set up for the benefit of the researchers or the research. It's set up to benefit the people handing out the grants or hiring researchers, to determine who is good and who is bad. Number of publications in the top journals. It's a terrible metric, but the other ones also have problems.
You can't really determine who is the best researcher by understanding the quality of the research. If you have 50 grant applications and 10 grants to award, how do you decide who to give it to? Are you going to read through the entire research of all 50 to determine who is the best researcher in the weekend you're given to determine who gets funded?
An adjusted citation index would probably be the best option, but that gets back to the top journals, which are more likely to be read and cited than lesser impact journals, so you arrive back at comparing where one has published. Perhaps citation indexes should be adjusted to factor out the journal brand name effect, but that won't ever happen since it would be penalizing the current top researchers who have the reigns. And it's probably a stupid idea anyway.
Cronyism is the preferred alternative to looking at where one has published, but obviously that has it's problems and is worse than simply looking at journal brand name. Although whether you get published in a great journal often depends on cronyism as well.
"The so-called "Internet of Things" has rapidly become a buzzword du jour, with everyone from tech-giant CEOs to analysts rhapsodizing about the benefits of connecting everyday objects and appliances to the Web.
Putting stuff on the internet besides computers is a popular idea today among people selling things you can put on the internet. They say those things will be good for you.
"The internet of things" is such a fucking stupid phrase, but what's worse is that people seem to be talking more about the idea in vague terms. The summary doesn't list one single actual thing that will go on the internet. Are we talking tracking chips for people's kids? Coffee makers that you can turn on remotely so that you don't have to waste minutes upon getting to the office in the morning pressing a button and waiting?
I realize that the specific summary here is focusing on a group that wants to open source the software, but in any article, when "internet of things" is used, there are no examples. The plan always seems to be
1. Say you will put more things on the internet
2.???
3.???
4. PROFIT!!!!
I've often thought it would be amusing to let them pass school prayer. Make their kids pray to satan once and they'll never mention school prayer again.
That depends more on the specific battles. We're making general statements here, and in general yes, an enemy of an enemy is a friend. The specific question here though is pruning the NSA, then yes, they definitely can be allies.
That said, I'm not sure what the point of declaring allies and enemies is: MS et al are going to do what they want to do regardless of whether I am optimistic or skeptical about their intentions.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd argue you're oversimplifying it dramatically. R and D does not mean bad, and I does not mean good. Furthermore, we've had a two party system since right after Washington. I'd argue that what has changed, and what is the problem with the system now, is voter apathy and ignorance, which is in turn caused by TV news. We watch a half hour of cable news propaganda and consider ourselves sufficiently informed to vote. OR we tell ourselves that we DIDN'T watch cable news, so we're much smarter, but who has the time to vote? That allows shitty people to run the show.
I don't think the problem or solution lies with the two party system, I think the problem is the voters. But I'm optimistic: I think there's a natural solution arising. People aren't going to be watching CNN or Fox to get their news. We might not develop the same ignorance and apathy when the news isn't controlled exclusively by large corporations.
"Dominating" strain of feminism? Anecdotal evidence is all fine and good to talk about injustice, but if you're going to make such a sweeping statement, do it with numbers. Citation please?
I haven't worked at a large enough number of companies to claim I have a good sample size going, but I've worked at a few that were good despite shitty shitty HR departments. I've also worked at one that seemed to have a really nice HR process and staff, and the job itself was shitty. It should have been obvious from the start, but I was younger and am dumb.
You went off on a strawman there. I wasn't saying in general that people everywhere will have heard everything I believe to be self-evident. I'm saying that Ham specifically, as the leader of a creationist movement, would have heard arguments in favor of evolution that would be convincing. Preparing for this debate at a minimum would require him to be familiar with the arguments.
There could be a silver lining: you don't really have much privacy right now already, what with facebook, the NSA, and cameras on buildings already. If google glass annoys everyone, privacy could be an issue that people start caring about.
My definition of a good debate involves people who are open-minded to the opposing viewpoint. If you have one or more sides that aren't listening, that's not a debate, that's a cable news segment. Or at best, it's entertainment.
Lets say hypothetically, there was a really good argument in favor of creationism that somehow had not come up in the hundred plus years that creationists have been denying science. It's possible that Bill McNye is open-minded enough to accept the possibility that creationism is valid. I doubt I could, but McNye is pretty awesome.
Ham, on the other hand, has undoubtedly been exposed to numerous arguments in favor of evolution that convince virtually everyone who doesn't have a religious bias. And he hasn't been convinced. He's not open to the possibility that his religion is wrong.
It's not going to be a productive debate: one side can't possibly win in the "convince the other side" way. The other side can't win in the sense of "being right."
I don't know anything about physics, but I have heard this quote:
When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong. - Arthur C Clarke
I'm addicted to porn. It's other people's fault: they rarely have orgies with me, so I have to settle for virtual!
Bonus: the methodology here is asking teens why they're doing something "wrong." The answer is "Because my parents won't let me do what I want." Shock.
I'd argue what's getting old is NOT hearing the story of "Top NSA brass arrested, tried as enemies of the state."
There's a game which must be played. Expecting people to focus on the message without paying attention to the messsenger is unrealistic and stupid. Snowden as a face for the NSA revelations is a good move. I can't fathom why you would object to Snowden being on the front pages rather than something of less importance, which is pretty much anything else for the US.
Torrenting predated netflix, so I'm skeptical that torrenting is going to be very disruptive to netflix.
Hulu seems like it would have a better shot. And interestingly, Hulu has a better rating by glassdoor, of 4.1. That said, I'm keeping my netflix account and not getting hulu because 1. I don't work at either place 2. I think Hulu's allies are more damaging to the larger society than netflix and 3. I'm willing to settle for the lesser of two evils to be entertained.
I read it as desperation, or possibly being used to giving people bribes to make problems go away, not an insult. And perhaps $10K goes a lot further wherever the person offering the bribe is from than wherever Krebbs is from.
MORE secure, not just secure. Thieves won't commit suicide in frustration: there will still be thefts. They'll evolve. It's pedantic, but I think we all know the dangers of giving a false sense of security, even accidentally through word choices.
Do "legitimate" businesses like piping companies or wire companies buy copper wholesale from scrapyards which are clearly dealing in stolen copper? I'm just confused as to how there is a market for stolen copper. I understand that it is easier to rip it out of an air conditioning unit than it is to dig it out of the ground, but I'd think it would be easy to reduce demand for stolen copper and kill the market for it by penalizing companies who accept stolen goods, same as any other goods. I'd expect that the companies who are buying copper wouldn't be buying in such small quantities that it would be hard to identify where it was coming from.
I haven't ever heard of fiber cable thieves, whereas people regularly steal copper out of walls of buildings. If there were a big market for fiber cable, probably assuming they got what they meant to would make sense, but assuming that these people went to all this trouble to steal glass doesn't.
To add to that, while they would be able to scare the bejeebus out of a lot of people with the ensuing media storm, they could do the same thing without bothering with radioactive material extremely easy. Make a specific threat, even one that's absurd, and send some idiot with instructions to do it, and you'll terrify the sheep people for months. "OMG! Al qaeda is trying to bomb the US using the moon by hijacking the space shuttle!!!"
There's no level of profit which is ever "good enough" to any company, or even most people. Human nature, or maybe just nature, is to grow accustomed to what one has and then immediately seek to gain more. Cancer cells or really any other living thing will consume food until it reaches starvation. With monopolies or in other profitable times, companies don't just stockpile money usually, they spend it trying to grow bigger. Those that do are rare, and dumb things often happen when they do stockpile
Granted, investors, shareholders, and executive boards should ideally be able to have better foresight than cancer cells, but in reality they don't.
Only virtually all the time! IN THEORY it could!!! I'm not being facetious. With more money AND voters potentially being on their side, google could have enough power to use it against AT&T.
I agree! Wait... are you talking to high frequency traders, advertisers, both, or is this just a random, off topic, troll post?
Is there someone else who DOES have a trust value that is a positive number? If not, then can trust really be an issue worth discussing?
Because it's not set up for the benefit of the researchers or the research. It's set up to benefit the people handing out the grants or hiring researchers, to determine who is good and who is bad. Number of publications in the top journals. It's a terrible metric, but the other ones also have problems.
You can't really determine who is the best researcher by understanding the quality of the research. If you have 50 grant applications and 10 grants to award, how do you decide who to give it to? Are you going to read through the entire research of all 50 to determine who is the best researcher in the weekend you're given to determine who gets funded?
An adjusted citation index would probably be the best option, but that gets back to the top journals, which are more likely to be read and cited than lesser impact journals, so you arrive back at comparing where one has published. Perhaps citation indexes should be adjusted to factor out the journal brand name effect, but that won't ever happen since it would be penalizing the current top researchers who have the reigns. And it's probably a stupid idea anyway.
Cronyism is the preferred alternative to looking at where one has published, but obviously that has it's problems and is worse than simply looking at journal brand name. Although whether you get published in a great journal often depends on cronyism as well.
So all the realistic options are shitty.
"The so-called "Internet of Things" has rapidly become a buzzword du jour, with everyone from tech-giant CEOs to analysts rhapsodizing about the benefits of connecting everyday objects and appliances to the Web.
Putting stuff on the internet besides computers is a popular idea today among people selling things you can put on the internet. They say those things will be good for you.
"The internet of things" is such a fucking stupid phrase, but what's worse is that people seem to be talking more about the idea in vague terms. The summary doesn't list one single actual thing that will go on the internet. Are we talking tracking chips for people's kids? Coffee makers that you can turn on remotely so that you don't have to waste minutes upon getting to the office in the morning pressing a button and waiting?
I realize that the specific summary here is focusing on a group that wants to open source the software, but in any article, when "internet of things" is used, there are no examples. The plan always seems to be
1. Say you will put more things on the internet
2.???
3.???
4. PROFIT!!!!
I've often thought it would be amusing to let them pass school prayer. Make their kids pray to satan once and they'll never mention school prayer again.
Another way of spinning that would be "Raising the minimum wage will lead to advances in robotic technology." What the fuck are we waiting for?
That depends more on the specific battles. We're making general statements here, and in general yes, an enemy of an enemy is a friend. The specific question here though is pruning the NSA, then yes, they definitely can be allies.
That said, I'm not sure what the point of declaring allies and enemies is: MS et al are going to do what they want to do regardless of whether I am optimistic or skeptical about their intentions.
No, I think they also want the NSA to keep it a secret this time, as people finding out about it causes headaches.