I think the submitter had that point in mind. The author of the TFA happened to have a Kindle, so that's what he showed off. I imagine that any charity organization that would send e-readers would be sending an open format.
But language is a very flexible and adaptive thing. The meaning of words is no more than a shared understanding of what an abstract utterance represents. Try making your point in any bar in Boston, and you'll get a bunch of (drunk) people telling you that if everyone knows that the word means, then that's what that word means.
You're right that it is slang. But the author had already established an informal tone to his missive by using incomplete sentences and "/" for hyphenation.
Perhaps his usage was satirical. After quoting a passage that could be considered verbose and pretentious, he qualifies his preference for a run of the mill "first-rate spy story / political thriller" with a tongue-in-cheek attempt at verbosity.
throwing minority Americans into death camps for the crime of having german/japanese grandparents.
It's untrue as it is offensive. My grandfather, an off the boat German immigrant from the early 30's, joined the US Marines and fought during the war. His family was not rounded up into camps.
And death camps? Seriously? While the Japanese internment camps were indeed an atrocious violation of basic civil rights, they were limited to the West coast, and had living conditions a fair sight better than some other contemporary 'death' camps.
I get your point, soldiers on both sides did some pretty horrible things. But implying that we were not better than governments engaged in active genocide is inflammatory. And as an American, incredibly offensive.
Also, they buried him. If the crash or the harpooning didn't immediately do him in, I'm pretty sure the lack of oxygen or prompt medical attention probably took care of it.
Yep, those. Because children being used as human shields does not make them ethical targets to shoot at. It is considered bad practice to shoot hostages down to kill the terrorists.
Neither side comes out clean when you start talking about using kids as shields. Both sides have blood on their hands, but one side is clearly more responsible for putting those kids in harms way.
We've all seen Speed. Shooting the hostage sucks, but sometimes completely necessary. The terrorists are the ones that put them there in the first place.
Not if he kills her with the specific intent of preventing her from testifying at his rape trial. Prosecutors really try to discourage that kind of thing.
My individual case certainly may not be representative of most of/., but I would classify myself as one of those Libertarian Atheists (maybe more of an extremely skeptical agnostic). And I've always found that my Libertarianism and my Atheism to complement each other nicely.
I don't believe in a fundamental universal morality, so my perspective on government is that it should be nothing more than an organization of convenience that is a necessary to organize large societies (not to enforce a code of morality). Naturally I find myself being: pro-choice, pro-gay marriage (more precisely against government intrusion into the private lives of consenting adults), while still being financially conservative and disliking welfare spending.
Naturally, I am egocentric about this and believe that if anyone thought rationally about the role of government they would of course agree.
Boom, right there. Glenn Beck plays a character on TV, named Glenn Beck. Glenn Beck's character is a huge douchebag. And I presume that if Glenn Beck the actor can play as ridiculous a character as Glenn Beck on TV, he must also be a fairly big douche himself.
But his character is fabulously successful. So maybe he's got some things figured out.
This means I should be able to do whatever I want with the console,
You can. Sony is trying to prevent people from distributing modified versions of their software, for which you received only a limited license when you purchased the PS3.
I get you, I really do. But your anger is directed at the wrong point. If you want to be able to receive or redistribute Sony's code than you ought to be seeking changes to IP law & practices.
Sure, let's give every crackpot dictator the means to destroy the Earth on a whim. I mean, it's only fair right? If the US and Russia were able to make it through their Cold War intact, I'm totally sure that means that every country is mature and stable enough to handle it.
So unilateral action and nation-building is ok when we use it to benefit the 'right' people?
Throwing Mubarek under the bus and openly supporting a revolution would have been disastrous for US relations with the middle east. It would have been perceived as yet another example of the US overthrowing an uncooperative government because that government was no longer convenient for us.
An act of war against a falling dictator that very well might have had a huge amount of pull with his very powerful military would have been extremely risky.
I've got a legit unlimited plan from T-Mobile that includes tethering (at least they've never told me I can't). I have been absolutely pillaging my data plan over the last 18 months.
When I hear people complain about tethering charges and data caps I can't help but feel like I'm cheating somehow. Like you say I ought to be paying more than the typical user, but I've never been asked to.
I wonder if there are inexpensive ways to change the albedo of snow, like sprinkling soot on the snow that would help in addition to salting it to lower the melting point.
On a small scale, yes. My parents (living in Maine) use a woodstove to heat the house. They use the ashes to melt the ice at the base of the front steps.
You would need a lot of ash to make a dent on a snowbank though. And that much ash is a huge mess in the springtime.
Hey, there's also a great deal of entertainment value to playing the lottery.
Once as a kid during a summer job I made that joke when I saw a truck driver playing a lotto ticket. The response he gave me was that it was only costing him $2-$3 dollars a week, and in exchange he had a plausible hope that he might someday win millions of dollars and never have to work again. To him, that was worth the couple of bucks a week.
Also, there is a lot more to gambling than mathematical ignorance. I'll hit a casino once in a while and I almost certainly drink enough free booze to cover my losses.
So your argument is that if AT&T builds in an app that checks with AT&T for updates, and can't be disabled, AT&T should be able to bill customers for the privilege of having that update checker? Because the phone in question was running no applications whatsoever.
Only if the customer was informed that the phone contained such a "feature". A full disclosure of the device's data usage and appropriate billing for that usage ought to be required. Unfortunately in my experience the carrier will tell you generally that the device will use some data to check for updates, but nobody can actually tell you how much data, when it's used, what it's used for, or how to disable it.
But if the speed limit isn't posted you can employ an 'improper posting' defense. You also have a defense if the new car you just bought had a faulty odometer that wasn't properly calibrated.
To bring the analogy back on topic, the claim is that the iPhone on AT&T's network uses data in ways that aren't clear to the customer and the customer has no ability to identify/terminate the usage. Seems to me that this is a legitimate cause for concern when they are billed for data usage that they legitimately did not initiate.
Good news! You do own the hardware you purchased. If you don't like the content of this firmware update then don't take it.
Sony isn't interested in pleasing the small segment of users that do want to hack their units. They're far more interested in ensuring a smooth (and profitable) experience for the vast majority of their user base that doesn't feel like messing around with their units. If you don't like that business model then you shouldn't be buying a Sony product, because this recent update is certainly consistent with their past actions.
I think an organization making a sustained and coordinated attack against financial infrastructure comes close enough. Sure they attacked only the customer facing facets of those organizations while the critical stuff chugged along just fine, but it's still pretty alarming that they really even tried.
Also, I think their well documented history of targeting strangers with harassment and death threats (just for the lulz) qualifies.
The sorts of people that are typically recruited as suicide bombers are what you might call "unstable". There's no guarantee that they would detonate at the right moment, or at all.
Having the handler control the detonation also takes a lot of the responsibility off of the mule (in their own eyes). All they have to do is walk into a crowd, the handler will be the one actually pulling the 'trigger'.
Man, there is so much unprotected border with Canada they don't need anything crazy to cross. They can just pack it onto ATV's and drive it across at night.
I grew up in Maine and we used to joke that getting drugs across the border was the easy part. The only problem is that once you get into Maine it's still hundreds of miles to get the drugs to anybody that wants it and isn't already growing their own.
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I think the submitter had that point in mind. The author of the TFA happened to have a Kindle, so that's what he showed off. I imagine that any charity organization that would send e-readers would be sending an open format.
But language is a very flexible and adaptive thing. The meaning of words is no more than a shared understanding of what an abstract utterance represents. Try making your point in any bar in Boston, and you'll get a bunch of (drunk) people telling you that if everyone knows that the word means, then that's what that word means.
You're right that it is slang. But the author had already established an informal tone to his missive by using incomplete sentences and "/" for hyphenation.
Perhaps his usage was satirical. After quoting a passage that could be considered verbose and pretentious, he qualifies his preference for a run of the mill "first-rate spy story / political thriller" with a tongue-in-cheek attempt at verbosity.
You're about to be modded troll for this bit:
throwing minority Americans into death camps for the crime of having german/japanese grandparents.
It's untrue as it is offensive. My grandfather, an off the boat German immigrant from the early 30's, joined the US Marines and fought during the war. His family was not rounded up into camps.
And death camps? Seriously? While the Japanese internment camps were indeed an atrocious violation of basic civil rights, they were limited to the West coast, and had living conditions a fair sight better than some other contemporary 'death' camps.
I get your point, soldiers on both sides did some pretty horrible things. But implying that we were not better than governments engaged in active genocide is inflammatory. And as an American, incredibly offensive.
Also, they buried him. If the crash or the harpooning didn't immediately do him in, I'm pretty sure the lack of oxygen or prompt medical attention probably took care of it.
...so it's not a bug, it's a feature?
Yep, those. Because children being used as human shields does not make them ethical targets to shoot at. It is considered bad practice to shoot hostages down to kill the terrorists.
Neither side comes out clean when you start talking about using kids as shields. Both sides have blood on their hands, but one side is clearly more responsible for putting those kids in harms way.
We've all seen Speed. Shooting the hostage sucks, but sometimes completely necessary. The terrorists are the ones that put them there in the first place.
That's a very rational and objective point. Hopefully the Iranian military sees that as well.
Not if he kills her with the specific intent of preventing her from testifying at his rape trial. Prosecutors really try to discourage that kind of thing.
My individual case certainly may not be representative of most of /., but I would classify myself as one of those Libertarian Atheists (maybe more of an extremely skeptical agnostic). And I've always found that my Libertarianism and my Atheism to complement each other nicely.
I don't believe in a fundamental universal morality, so my perspective on government is that it should be nothing more than an organization of convenience that is a necessary to organize large societies (not to enforce a code of morality). Naturally I find myself being: pro-choice, pro-gay marriage (more precisely against government intrusion into the private lives of consenting adults), while still being financially conservative and disliking welfare spending.
Naturally, I am egocentric about this and believe that if anyone thought rationally about the role of government they would of course agree.
Well its all an act / business to him.
Boom, right there. Glenn Beck plays a character on TV, named Glenn Beck. Glenn Beck's character is a huge douchebag. And I presume that if Glenn Beck the actor can play as ridiculous a character as Glenn Beck on TV, he must also be a fairly big douche himself.
But his character is fabulously successful. So maybe he's got some things figured out.
Loose women with tightly fitting hoop skirts made God angry.
This means I should be able to do whatever I want with the console,
You can. Sony is trying to prevent people from distributing modified versions of their software, for which you received only a limited license when you purchased the PS3.
I get you, I really do. But your anger is directed at the wrong point. If you want to be able to receive or redistribute Sony's code than you ought to be seeking changes to IP law & practices.
Sure, let's give every crackpot dictator the means to destroy the Earth on a whim. I mean, it's only fair right? If the US and Russia were able to make it through their Cold War intact, I'm totally sure that means that every country is mature and stable enough to handle it.
What's the worst that could happen?
So unilateral action and nation-building is ok when we use it to benefit the 'right' people?
Throwing Mubarek under the bus and openly supporting a revolution would have been disastrous for US relations with the middle east. It would have been perceived as yet another example of the US overthrowing an uncooperative government because that government was no longer convenient for us.
An act of war against a falling dictator that very well might have had a huge amount of pull with his very powerful military would have been extremely risky.
I don't know exactly how the businesses are structured, but it seems totally possible that NFL teams could have 500 employees.
And I'm sure Apple would bend the rules just a little bit for the publicity associated with putting their toys on the sidelines of every NFL game.
I've got a legit unlimited plan from T-Mobile that includes tethering (at least they've never told me I can't). I have been absolutely pillaging my data plan over the last 18 months.
When I hear people complain about tethering charges and data caps I can't help but feel like I'm cheating somehow. Like you say I ought to be paying more than the typical user, but I've never been asked to.
I wonder if there are inexpensive ways to change the albedo of snow, like sprinkling soot on the snow that would help in addition to salting it to lower the melting point.
On a small scale, yes. My parents (living in Maine) use a woodstove to heat the house. They use the ashes to melt the ice at the base of the front steps.
You would need a lot of ash to make a dent on a snowbank though. And that much ash is a huge mess in the springtime.
Hey, there's also a great deal of entertainment value to playing the lottery.
Once as a kid during a summer job I made that joke when I saw a truck driver playing a lotto ticket. The response he gave me was that it was only costing him $2-$3 dollars a week, and in exchange he had a plausible hope that he might someday win millions of dollars and never have to work again. To him, that was worth the couple of bucks a week.
Also, there is a lot more to gambling than mathematical ignorance. I'll hit a casino once in a while and I almost certainly drink enough free booze to cover my losses.
So your argument is that if AT&T builds in an app that checks with AT&T for updates, and can't be disabled, AT&T should be able to bill customers for the privilege of having that update checker? Because the phone in question was running no applications whatsoever.
Only if the customer was informed that the phone contained such a "feature". A full disclosure of the device's data usage and appropriate billing for that usage ought to be required. Unfortunately in my experience the carrier will tell you generally that the device will use some data to check for updates, but nobody can actually tell you how much data, when it's used, what it's used for, or how to disable it.
But if the speed limit isn't posted you can employ an 'improper posting' defense. You also have a defense if the new car you just bought had a faulty odometer that wasn't properly calibrated.
To bring the analogy back on topic, the claim is that the iPhone on AT&T's network uses data in ways that aren't clear to the customer and the customer has no ability to identify/terminate the usage. Seems to me that this is a legitimate cause for concern when they are billed for data usage that they legitimately did not initiate.
Good news! You do own the hardware you purchased. If you don't like the content of this firmware update then don't take it.
Sony isn't interested in pleasing the small segment of users that do want to hack their units. They're far more interested in ensuring a smooth (and profitable) experience for the vast majority of their user base that doesn't feel like messing around with their units. If you don't like that business model then you shouldn't be buying a Sony product, because this recent update is certainly consistent with their past actions.
But since nobody is in the room, that room is both empty and not empty until someone enters to observe it.
I think an organization making a sustained and coordinated attack against financial infrastructure comes close enough. Sure they attacked only the customer facing facets of those organizations while the critical stuff chugged along just fine, but it's still pretty alarming that they really even tried.
Also, I think their well documented history of targeting strangers with harassment and death threats (just for the lulz) qualifies.
The sorts of people that are typically recruited as suicide bombers are what you might call "unstable". There's no guarantee that they would detonate at the right moment, or at all.
Having the handler control the detonation also takes a lot of the responsibility off of the mule (in their own eyes). All they have to do is walk into a crowd, the handler will be the one actually pulling the 'trigger'.
Man, there is so much unprotected border with Canada they don't need anything crazy to cross. They can just pack it onto ATV's and drive it across at night.
I grew up in Maine and we used to joke that getting drugs across the border was the easy part. The only problem is that once you get into Maine it's still hundreds of miles to get the drugs to anybody that wants it and isn't already growing their own.