Try explaining to your girlfriend why you won't set your profile to read "in a relationship" with her. I'll give you a hint: as much sense as your argument makes, all she is going to hear is "I'm not that important to you."
Do you really want to be with some ditz that is always reading between the lines? I wouldn't.
basically free tends to be a far better source of truthiness.
But since truthiness means "truthy not facty" truthiness != accuracy. sadly this appears to be indeed the case in free publications. People are more free to speak their "truth" but don't necessarily check their facts.
In other words, once a machine is patented to pick cotton, coming up with another machine with a different gear layout isn't good enough: you shouldn't get a patent, and others can copy your concepts freely. You've got to add something truly unique to it to qualify for another patent and collect your own license payments.
Actually, they cannot copy your concept freely without violating the original patent. To get around a patent you have to do something truly novel and in itself patentable. This is a secondary reason so many patents get filed. Companies are hoping that by filing patents for obvious things they can't get sued by someone else that patented that same obvious thing before they did. It's an arms race that no one will win, but we are the victims of the collateral damage.
What's funny about this is that we have the technology to truly gauge who is watching, but we are not using it. To a certain extent cable companies will use the ability to determine what channel you are watching at vairous times and for how long to catch cable "thieves" but they do not regularly gather that data for less nefarious purposes, like ratings. It would be nice if the cable companies gathered that data and then were able to send it to be aggregated by the networks to determine true viewership. It would be dead simple for them to do this in a way that did not identify the viewers, though experience shows that companies will go out of their way to misappropriate and misuse data like this. Either way privacy enthusiasts would be annoyed and slashdot would demonize the cable companies, but it would be a solution that provides better data.
I'm not sure going from 40% to 65% is a stunning recommendation of how you never need to attend lectures, because you know it all already.
In a british-style system (as used in the UK, India, and a few other places) 65% is a pretty good score. Supposedly it is far harder to get that kind of score in such a system than it is to get the same score in the US, where 65% is a D (or F if D's don't exist).
If that is the case then it makes sense that in the US where 70% or more is a C and in some cases the lowest passing grade, things will get skewed to produce higher grades. For instance grading on a curve, or just using simpler questions and subject matter in order to produce higher grades. Which leads to some really odd results. It does seem to me that grade averages don't accurately reflect a percentile of understanding in a given subject. When a class is graded on a curve and the average score is 80% do the students really understand 80% of the material? It doesn't seem to me that most people who regularly score 70-80% actually understand 70% of anything at all.
One other thing. A major factor in this "not letting felons vote" business is the war on drugs. Most of the prisoners in this country are drug offenders, most of those are caught for simple possession, and most of that is for marijuana. Making sure felons cannot vote decreases the chance of legalizing Marijuana and other drugs again (their legal status has come and gone depending on the state) which insures the continuation of the war.
IIRC the US is not a signatory to that declaration. Generally speaking, if it involves human rights or the environment, we aren't involved in it. It's probably one of many factors that led to the bizzarro world where Syria and Libya head up the UN human rights council of which we are no longer a member.
the authorities can always arrest you for SOMETHING, and hence they have immense power over the *cough* voters *cough*.
If you are a felon you cannot vote. More and more crimes are being made felonies, including the crime of having too many misdemeanors. Misdemeanors can often be prosecuted without trial or at least without legal representation being made available. And of course in some states it is reported that even having unpaid speeding tickets can prevent you from voting because the police are waiting at the voting booth to take people to jail. If you want power in a Democracy you can either convince the majority of your view or prevent the majority of your opposition from voting. Guess which one our rulers have decided is easier to do.
How can they say it leaves no trail when it's based on IE? As far as I know, IE still keeps the browsing history in index.dat which cannot be deleted because it is locked by Windows. I doubt that has changed.
IE also puts all kinds of browsing history in your registry which is not erased when you erase history. Windows keeps a trail in 5000 places on your computer that, unless you manually attack all 5000 places, will ultimately betray you to someone who knows where to look.
The guy in the truck can be prosecuted and put away. The man with the HIV can't.
Not strictly true. There have been attempts to put people in jail for attempted murder for knowingly and with malice aforethought infecting others with STDs including AIDS. I'm not sure how successful that has been but it is true that laws specifically prohibiting people who know they have AIDS from having unprotected sex (the Nevada law pertaining to sex workers comes to mind) have resulted in successful prosecutions.
This business of making blanket laws in the name of "putting tools in the hands of law enforcement" makes more problems than it solves. If you want something to be a prosecutable offense, if you want a crime to be punished, then make a law specifically pertaining to that act with an appropriate punishment prescribed. And if there's already a law on the books for an offense (which in this day and age is likely given every action including breathing is illegal in some context) then try enforcing the law properly rather than just passing 500 laws so you can prosecute/punish someone 500 times for the same act.
And if you want to punish someone using law you have to follow the rules. This business of "it's too hard to prove someone is doing something" or "We have *no* evidence but we are just so sure they did it" is getting out of hand too. It's human nature and that's why the Constitution specifically forbids it. Guilty until proven innocent. Prove them guilty through full due process of law in an even adversarial system or not at all. If we do anything else we have basically thrown the law and the constitution into the toilet and we may as well just devolve into gangster vendetta/ vigilante justice to settle all disputes. Bill Gates' boys throwing grenades into RMS's house after the slashdot crowd burned the local Best Buy for selling Windows instead of Linux. Great.
In Dekalb County, Georgia, the sheriff said that there are no locations in the county where someone on the registry can legally reside... so those people have to move to the more rural areas. Hope the country-folk like having child molesters next door.
Nah, they'll just lynch 'em. Or they'll die mysteriously and by the time they're found there will be little evidence of their true cause of death, even if the coroner wasn't already inclined to mark anything as "natural causes."
Re:Honestly, this was a long time coming
on
Steve Irwin Dead
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Speaking of which, who was watching the kids anyway?
They were probably with her. They took the kids with them on their trips. One thing Steve and Terry had in common was that their own childhoods were spent trekking through wilderness with their parents learning about wildlife. Steve often recounted how he had learned to handle reptiles while following in his father's footsteps as a young boy.
Just pick a god damm definition. I'm starting to think astronomers are doing this on purpose to get themselves alot of free press and airtime. Professors everywhere are making 6 minutes TV and radio spots to explain this stupid "controversy". It's semantics. Nothing more, nothing less.
I guess that means they are smarter than us after all. Why haven't we been able to get the same thing to happen with "hacker?":D
The term "dwarf planet"is sorta funny, because it acknowledges that Pluto can still be called a planet, but with a qualifier saying that it's significantly smaller than a real planet. This goes along with the phrase "minor planet" for objects like Ceres, Juno and Vesta, which astronomers usually call "asteroids".
But that's the problem. "dwarf planets" aren't planets. Which to me just reveals how unscientific this is. Dwarf stars are still stars, but "dwarf planets" are not planets? WTF?! Do they hate Pluto so much that they can't even let it be a "dwarf planet" in a paradigm that allows dwarf planets to be a subset of planets? Why use the word in a way that runs counter to a logical sense and common grammar with such a guarantee of confusion? "Pluton" made more sense, but they showed their hand with that gem as well.
'I think "Xena" should definitely become the official name of this planet-destroying roundish body that orbits about the Sun and is bigger than a breadbox but apparently is pretty friendly with its neighbors.'
Xena (Lucy Lawless) is a lesbian warrior princess. Get your facts straight:-P
Are you saying that lesbian warrior princesses are not friendly to their neighbours? Especially if they have binoculars -- hello friends!
Or just like Al Gore's 'information' about man creating global warming and we have 10 years left. Back in the 1970's we were heading for an ice age. Where did that go?
Well, duh... we were heading for an ice age but we filled the atmosphere with greenhouse gasses and started global warming. Now it's starting to get too hot, so we need to figure out how to turn down the heat and turn on the air conditioner! Perhaps filling the air with freon will help?:D
If people still want to call Pluto a planet, more power to them. But it's silly to not acknowledge the legitimitacy of many of the complaints of calling Pluto a planet.
Whatever. In my eyes this whole fiasco has been one big troll designed to get people to pay attention to obscrure astronomers by pissing them off. It's chic to claim Pluto is not a planet. It makes them feel cool. There have always been Pluto-haters who just want to advocate a contrarian view in a field where there's just not nearly enough controversy to get people interested. And then like another poster pointed out there are the people that want to take a jab at America for whatever reason by reducing the number of "accepted" discoveries and inventions we have, even if it means transplanting Bell to Canada and Einstein back to Germany - or France.
What they did was inflammatory, they knew it, and their methods seem far from scientific. It would be simple enough to define a planet in such a way that the "previously accepted" planets were included. But they wanted to mess with Pluto again. And look how they build the suspense -- "Pluto's not a Planet" -- "No it's a planet and we have 12 planets now" -- "No that means we have thousands of planets -- Pluto's not a planet." How long has it been since an astronomical convention, or just about anything astronomers have to say, has made it to the front page, much less been burning up the front page for weeks on end? It's blatant manipulation. Screw 'em.
and run an x server (like what comes for free with cygwin, or be a man and install linux) so you can just use the graphical browser on your home machine (like firefox)? That's basically what I usually do.
It's bad because there's no way to tell if he's pulling our leg or not. Based on his past performances, I'd guess he's being serious and just mocking Colbert. At least with Colbert there's a 99.9999% chance that he's being sarcastic.
I didn't catch John Gibson's performance, but what you just described is part of the essence of Colbert's unique style. So I'd say it must have been at least some kind of homage. Unless Gibson doesn't get it and thinks Colbert really is a conservative, which is possible. Anything is possible on Fox.:D
That's what I like the most about Stephen Colbert. He has pioneered a unique flavour of deadpan sarcasm.. well.. what he does is really hard to describe. I think eventually when people imitate him it will be called Colbertesque. Other comedians do deadpan humour and sarcasm, but with what Colbert does, espousing outrageous viewpoints that are the opposite of what he probably really thinks as though they were his actual thoughts and stretching them to hyperbole in order to mock them.. he pulls things off I don't think many other comedians, maybe no other comedian, could. And the whole idea of stretching it into a whole show based on the idea that he's an ultraconservative that makes any talking head on Fox look like a left wing Commie Pinko.. pure brilliance. What's interesting is how even though he is mocking the far right on his show he has used it as a vehicle to open more of a dialogue between the left and the right. That's pretty cool. Maybe we'll make up for not giving him the Field's Medal this year by giving him the Nobel prize! Watch out for bears!
"Its more like a concerned stock holder voicing a concern. I own a good chunck of the company I work for and if they were to screw up I'd get on them to fix things too. Its not uncommon to see stake holders do this sort of thing because it protects your bottomline."
How dumb are you? If you can't say it on the job, why do you think it's any safer at a stockholder meeting?
It's just like the meetings they held where I once worked. We were supposed to be free to say anything we wanted. So they sent me to a session where I got to sit next to my supervisor. Fine fucking freedom. And if it hadn't been him, there were plenty of his peers in the room.
If you have valid concerns that you are able to voice in a professional manner, and are afraid to do so you are working in the wrong place. If you are afraid to voice concerns to or within hearing of your supervisor you are either paranoid or you have a bad manager, in which case you are working in the wrong place. Any system that does not allow legitemate feedback or criticism is doomed to sicken and/or die. The only reason for the "or" in that sentence is the fact large organizations seem able to continue on in a zombie-like existence, or like a bear that keeps going not knowing it's already dead. even so, it's unhealthy, and it's a good idea (and good for your own sanity, health and career) to aim for a healthy work environment.
Slashdot Mirror
How about this. People should use good passwords. Do I get informative too? =P
No, your post is redundant and mine is offtopic.
"I know I'll get modded down for this, but..." :D
September 4th? Thats 2 days ago. That's definitely old news. We're on Internet 2.0 time! Get with the program (Program 2.0, that is :-)
The Internet is going down the tubes. Where's my truck?!
Try explaining to your girlfriend why you won't set your profile to read "in a relationship" with her. I'll give you a hint: as much sense as your argument makes, all she is going to hear is "I'm not that important to you."
Do you really want to be with some ditz that is always reading between the lines? I wouldn't.
Spoken like a true confirmed bachelor.
Yup. I don't act like an ass in public.
I've been trying to sludge through this little flamewar of yours, and if there's anything you've said I disagree with it is that statement.
basically free tends to be a far better source of truthiness.
But since truthiness means "truthy not facty" truthiness != accuracy. sadly this appears to be indeed the case in free publications. People are more free to speak their "truth" but don't necessarily check their facts.
In other words, once a machine is patented to pick cotton, coming up with another machine with a different gear layout isn't good enough: you shouldn't get a patent, and others can copy your concepts freely. You've got to add something truly unique to it to qualify for another patent and collect your own license payments.
Actually, they cannot copy your concept freely without violating the original patent. To get around a patent you have to do something truly novel and in itself patentable. This is a secondary reason so many patents get filed. Companies are hoping that by filing patents for obvious things they can't get sued by someone else that patented that same obvious thing before they did. It's an arms race that no one will win, but we are the victims of the collateral damage.
What's funny about this is that we have the technology to truly gauge who is watching, but we are not using it. To a certain extent cable companies will use the ability to determine what channel you are watching at vairous times and for how long to catch cable "thieves" but they do not regularly gather that data for less nefarious purposes, like ratings.
It would be nice if the cable companies gathered that data and then were able to send it to be aggregated by the networks to determine true viewership. It would be dead simple for them to do this in a way that did not identify the viewers, though experience shows that companies will go out of their way to misappropriate and misuse data like this. Either way privacy enthusiasts would be annoyed and slashdot would demonize the cable companies, but it would be a solution that provides better data.
I'm not sure going from 40% to 65% is a stunning recommendation of how you never need to attend lectures, because you know it all already.
In a british-style system (as used in the UK, India, and a few other places) 65% is a pretty good score. Supposedly it is far harder to get that kind of score in such a system than it is to get the same score in the US, where 65% is a D (or F if D's don't exist).
If that is the case then it makes sense that in the US where 70% or more is a C and in some cases the lowest passing grade, things will get skewed to produce higher grades. For instance grading on a curve, or just using simpler questions and subject matter in order to produce higher grades. Which leads to some really odd results. It does seem to me that grade averages don't accurately reflect a percentile of understanding in a given subject. When a class is graded on a curve and the average score is 80% do the students really understand 80% of the material? It doesn't seem to me that most people who regularly score 70-80% actually understand 70% of anything at all.
One other thing.
A major factor in this "not letting felons vote" business is the war on drugs. Most of the prisoners in this country are drug offenders, most of those are caught for simple possession, and most of that is for marijuana. Making sure felons cannot vote decreases the chance of legalizing Marijuana and other drugs again (their legal status has come and gone depending on the state) which insures the continuation of the war.
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UN)
IIRC the US is not a signatory to that declaration. Generally speaking, if it involves human rights or the environment, we aren't involved in it. It's probably one of many factors that led to the bizzarro world where Syria and Libya head up the UN human rights council of which we are no longer a member.
the authorities can always arrest you for SOMETHING, and hence they have immense power over the *cough* voters *cough*.
If you are a felon you cannot vote. More and more crimes are being made felonies, including the crime of having too many misdemeanors. Misdemeanors can often be prosecuted without trial or at least without legal representation being made available. And of course in some states it is reported that even having unpaid speeding tickets can prevent you from voting because the police are waiting at the voting booth to take people to jail. If you want power in a Democracy you can either convince the majority of your view or prevent the majority of your opposition from voting. Guess which one our rulers have decided is easier to do.
How can they say it leaves no trail when it's based on IE? As far as I know, IE still keeps the browsing history in index.dat which cannot be deleted because it is locked by Windows. I doubt that has changed.
IE also puts all kinds of browsing history in your registry which is not erased when you erase history. Windows keeps a trail in 5000 places on your computer that, unless you manually attack all 5000 places, will ultimately betray you to someone who knows where to look.
The guy in the truck can be prosecuted and put away. The man with the HIV can't.
Not strictly true. There have been attempts to put people in jail for attempted murder for knowingly and with malice aforethought infecting others with STDs including AIDS. I'm not sure how successful that has been but it is true that laws specifically prohibiting people who know they have AIDS from having unprotected sex (the Nevada law pertaining to sex workers comes to mind) have resulted in successful prosecutions.
This business of making blanket laws in the name of "putting tools in the hands of law enforcement" makes more problems than it solves. If you want something to be a prosecutable offense, if you want a crime to be punished, then make a law specifically pertaining to that act with an appropriate punishment prescribed. And if there's already a law on the books for an offense (which in this day and age is likely given every action including breathing is illegal in some context) then try enforcing the law properly rather than just passing 500 laws so you can prosecute/punish someone 500 times for the same act.
And if you want to punish someone using law you have to follow the rules. This business of "it's too hard to prove someone is doing something" or "We have *no* evidence but we are just so sure they did it" is getting out of hand too. It's human nature and that's why the Constitution specifically forbids it. Guilty until proven innocent. Prove them guilty through full due process of law in an even adversarial system or not at all. If we do anything else we have basically thrown the law and the constitution into the toilet and we may as well just devolve into gangster vendetta/ vigilante justice to settle all disputes. Bill Gates' boys throwing grenades into RMS's house after the slashdot crowd burned the local Best Buy for selling Windows instead of Linux. Great.
"I can see where this law could be useful in cases where we know someone has committed a heinous act but the state can't punish him."
Anyone who says this isn't a incredibly stupid idea is delusional. I pray I never have you as a lawyer.
You won't. The poster is clearly aiming to be a prosecutor. :D
In Dekalb County, Georgia, the sheriff said that there are no locations in the county where someone on the registry can legally reside... so those people have to move to the more rural areas. Hope the country-folk like having child molesters next door.
Nah, they'll just lynch 'em. Or they'll die mysteriously and by the time they're found there will be little evidence of their true cause of death, even if the coroner wasn't already inclined to mark anything as "natural causes."
Speaking of which, who was watching the kids anyway?
They were probably with her. They took the kids with them on their trips. One thing Steve and Terry had in common was that their own childhoods were spent trekking through wilderness with their parents learning about wildlife. Steve often recounted how he had learned to handle reptiles while following in his father's footsteps as a young boy.
that ball of rock will be there wether we care or not
It's ice, man... which makes me wonder when the Tanqueray dude is going to make a trip out there.. B)
Just pick a god damm definition. I'm starting to think astronomers are doing this on purpose to get themselves alot of free press and airtime. Professors everywhere are making 6 minutes TV and radio spots to explain this stupid "controversy". It's semantics. Nothing more, nothing less.
I guess that means they are smarter than us after all. Why haven't we been able to get the same thing to happen with "hacker?" :D
The term "dwarf planet"is sorta funny, because it acknowledges that Pluto can still be called a planet, but with a qualifier saying that it's significantly smaller than a real planet. This goes along with the phrase "minor planet" for objects like Ceres, Juno and Vesta, which astronomers usually call "asteroids".
But that's the problem. "dwarf planets" aren't planets. Which to me just reveals how unscientific this is. Dwarf stars are still stars, but "dwarf planets" are not planets? WTF?! Do they hate Pluto so much that they can't even let it be a "dwarf planet" in a paradigm that allows dwarf planets to be a subset of planets? Why use the word in a way that runs counter to a logical sense and common grammar with such a guarantee of confusion? "Pluton" made more sense, but they showed their hand with that gem as well.
'I think "Xena" should definitely become the official name of this planet-destroying roundish body that orbits about the Sun and is bigger than a breadbox but apparently is pretty friendly with its neighbors.'
Xena (Lucy Lawless) is a lesbian warrior princess. Get your facts straight :-P
Are you saying that lesbian warrior princesses are not friendly to their neighbours? Especially if they have binoculars -- hello friends!
Or just like Al Gore's 'information' about man creating global warming and we have 10 years left. Back in the 1970's we were heading for an ice age. Where did that go?
Well, duh ... we were heading for an ice age but we filled the atmosphere with greenhouse gasses and started global warming. Now it's starting to get too hot, so we need to figure out how to turn down the heat and turn on the air conditioner! Perhaps filling the air with freon will help? :D
If people still want to call Pluto a planet, more power to them. But it's silly to not acknowledge the legitimitacy of many of the complaints of calling Pluto a planet.
Whatever. In my eyes this whole fiasco has been one big troll designed to get people to pay attention to obscrure astronomers by pissing them off. It's chic to claim Pluto is not a planet. It makes them feel cool. There have always been Pluto-haters who just want to advocate a contrarian view in a field where there's just not nearly enough controversy to get people interested. And then like another poster pointed out there are the people that want to take a jab at America for whatever reason by reducing the number of "accepted" discoveries and inventions we have, even if it means transplanting Bell to Canada and Einstein back to Germany - or France.
What they did was inflammatory, they knew it, and their methods seem far from scientific. It would be simple enough to define a planet in such a way that the "previously accepted" planets were included. But they wanted to mess with Pluto again. And look how they build the suspense -- "Pluto's not a Planet" -- "No it's a planet and we have 12 planets now" -- "No that means we have thousands of planets -- Pluto's not a planet." How long has it been since an astronomical convention, or just about anything astronomers have to say, has made it to the front page, much less been burning up the front page for weeks on end? It's blatant manipulation. Screw 'em.
Why not just use
...
ssh -X
and run an x server (like what comes for free with cygwin, or be a man and install linux) so you can just use the graphical browser on your home machine (like firefox)? That's basically what I usually do.
It's bad because there's no way to tell if he's pulling our leg or not. Based on his past performances, I'd guess he's being serious and just mocking Colbert. At least with Colbert there's a 99.9999% chance that he's being sarcastic.
I didn't catch John Gibson's performance, but what you just described is part of the essence of Colbert's unique style. So I'd say it must have been at least some kind of homage. Unless Gibson doesn't get it and thinks Colbert really is a conservative, which is possible. Anything is possible on Fox. :D
That's what I like the most about Stephen Colbert. He has pioneered a unique flavour of deadpan sarcasm .. well .. what he does is really hard to describe. I think eventually when people imitate him it will be called Colbertesque. Other comedians do deadpan humour and sarcasm, but with what Colbert does, espousing outrageous viewpoints that are the opposite of what he probably really thinks as though they were his actual thoughts and stretching them to hyperbole in order to mock them .. he pulls things off I don't think many other comedians, maybe no other comedian, could. And the whole idea of stretching it into a whole show based on the idea that he's an ultraconservative that makes any talking head on Fox look like a left wing Commie Pinko .. pure brilliance. What's interesting is how even though he is mocking the far right on his show he has used it as a vehicle to open more of a dialogue between the left and the right. That's pretty cool. Maybe we'll make up for not giving him the Field's Medal this year by giving him the Nobel prize! Watch out for bears!
"Its more like a concerned stock holder voicing a concern. I own a good chunck of the company I work for and if they were to screw up I'd get on them to fix things too. Its not uncommon to see stake holders do this sort of thing because it protects your bottomline."
How dumb are you? If you can't say it on the job, why do you think it's any safer at a stockholder meeting?
It's just like the meetings they held where I once worked. We were supposed to be free to say anything we wanted. So they sent me to a session where I got to sit next to my supervisor. Fine fucking freedom. And if it hadn't been him, there were plenty of his peers in the room.
If you have valid concerns that you are able to voice in a professional manner, and are afraid to do so you are working in the wrong place. If you are afraid to voice concerns to or within hearing of your supervisor you are either paranoid or you have a bad manager, in which case you are working in the wrong place. Any system that does not allow legitemate feedback or criticism is doomed to sicken and/or die. The only reason for the "or" in that sentence is the fact large organizations seem able to continue on in a zombie-like existence, or like a bear that keeps going not knowing it's already dead. even so, it's unhealthy, and it's a good idea (and good for your own sanity, health and career) to aim for a healthy work environment.