Just to wax meta for a minute... what, exactly, do the 'overrated'/'underrated' mods mean, anyways? The faq touches on them, but it seems like they work differently in M2 and have a different effect on one's karma score.
People enjoy hurting other people. It makes them feel, as you said, superior.
And you can say "That's just sick and wrong" all you want, but ask yourself, first: What can you do to stop it?
And if you can't do anything to stop it, what possible difference does how you feel about it make?
And if you CAN do something to stop it, and you DO something to stop it, you're just propogating "might makes right" - after all, you just used your power to stop it (might) to enforce your belief that it should be stopped (right).
And then they would need to promise never to take that park over and nationalize it when it became convenient to, and promise that they weren't crossing their fingers behind their back when they made that promise, and promise that anyone who replaces them in a bloody junta will honor that same agreement.
You want your own country? You're going to need to defend it. Viciously. With bigger guns than the other side can EVER hope to bring to bear against you.
That means being a military power. If you become a military power big enough to challenge your neighbors, and the USA doesn't like what you're doing with it, they WILL fuck you over but good - just look at Afghanistan, Iraq, the Balkans, or Cuba.
For menschen like us, there is nowhere free on this planet, buddy. Sorry.
This is the USA. This is how it thinks. If we CAN blow it up, and blowing it up serves our immediate short-term interests, you can damn well expect a huge honkin' fireball.
And you think for ONE SECOND the US military will allow this?
Think about it - the whole reason they turn down accuracy is to keep their enemies from accessing the technology. If the US military doesn't CONTROL the technology, how will they keep their enemies from accessing it?
At the point the enemy starts using an open GPS, it becomes, de facto, an enemy asset, and thus targetable. I give it six weeks into the first engagement after a EU GPS becomes reality before the US gives the EU an ultimatum: Shut them down or we'll blow them out of the sky.
You know, if it only blocks results to certain regions, what's to keep someone from making a 'region-free' Google proxy and piping results to anyone who wants it?
Only because those who have, aren't talking about it.
Re:But...
on
Google Hacks
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
How is this offtopic? This is exactly what tends to happen with these sorts of 'tricks' - although, admittedly, Google's "don't be evil" policy will probably mitigate this somewhat.
The point is, whenever you utilize these tricks, remember the 'Tragedy of the Commons' lesson, and think Kantian - "What would happen if EVERYBODY did this? Would the system still support us?"
If the answer is "no", realize that you're shitting where you eat, and find a more sustainable endeavor.
Given our understanding of matter, energy, and the Planck constant, for any given amount of energy E, and any amount of time T that that energy has existed, what is the maximum amount of information encodable within that energy matrix?
Plug in the total amount of energy believed in the universe, and you've got the number of bits necessary to accurately encode this universe.
Except that frequency isn't what we measure information in. You extract information from an energy wave by measuring changes in that energy wave over time.
Umm... if you turn a 50Hz wave on and off more than 25 times a second, it's no longer a 50Hz wave. It becomes a modulated wave at double whatever frequency you're transmitting at.
There's no such thing as infinitely seperable sub-quark particles, and postulating "imaginary" ones does NOTHING for the sake of the analogy. The point is that EVERYTHING is quantized, and therefore, information - and thus bandwidth - is INHERENTLY limited by the laws of physics. There is a theoretical maximum amount of information that may be transmitted via any means; once this is reached, splitting the transmission signal will lower the bandwidth. Period.
It ceases to be 'sand' once you start cutting at the molecular level.
There *IS* a finite number of divisions, below which you can no longer honestly call it 'sand'. Thus, even if you broke it up into matrices of silicon oxide JUST BIG ENOUGH to define some sort of crystaline structure (and therefore be considered 'solid'), there's still a finite (though ridiculously huge) number of those that could fit into the 40 billion light-year sphere we call 'home'.
I suspect those activities back then weren't large-scale enough to have significant (global) climactic effects, but for the sake of discussion, I should note that the world climate has warmed considerably in the last 100,000 years...
Here's a fun little fact: We created the Sahara Desert several thousand years ago. Go find a map of the world and look at the size of the Sahara, and tell me if that isn't "global" enough for you - especially when you consider the effect a desert THAT SIZE is going to have on the world's weather systems. And it took NO major industrialization to do it, WHATSOEVER.
We also managed to rather thoroughly screw the Fertile Crescent well before the advent of modern farming.
I'm against the NEA myself, as it stands, but honestly - good luck shutting it down. At least THIS way, the NEA ould only be funded by the very artistic endeavors it's supposed to be fostering - which usually works rather nicely for setting up reinforcing feedback loops.
It's too bad companies don't have an incentive to release their copyrighted works into the public domain.
Hrm. Here's a thought on copyright reform:
Make all copyrights viable for 100 years from the date of the creation, period. The first year, the author is capable of receiving full royalties on their works. The next year, a 1% "copyright tax" is levied, to help administrate the copyright system, and as a sort of "copyright social security". Each year thereafter, that tax is increased by 1% - so you receive 100% of your revenue the first year, 99% the second, 98% the third, and so on. Make it a special 'income tax' for copyright holders.
Now, here's the cinch: As copyright holder, you can choose to release your work into the public domain at any time. By doing so, you get back a percentage of the money you paid into the system in taxes, based on the number of years left (i.e., if you had 19 years left until the copyright expired, releasing it into the public domain 19 years early would give you 19% of the total taxes you paid in over the last 81 years).
Any remaining money can be thrown at whatever bullshit "arts endowment" projects Congress seems to hold so dear, so long as the law stipulates that ONLY that money can go into the NEA. I.e., let the system feed back into itself.
Yes, absolutely. If you have a means of exercizing your right to view the content, then you are expressly allowed to utilize that means (even if that means is DeCSS), if the only other alternative is to pay extra money for a DVD player.
The idea is, if you want to, you could build your own DVD player from scrap, and the law must allow you to circumvent the copy protection inherent in the DVD so that your player can give you access to the media you rightfully paid for.
If the copyright holder doesn't want you doing that, they are obligated to provide you with a free DVD player, or the equivalent.
Sorry, overgeneralized without intending to. I didn't mean to imply that economics, in general, is a negative-sum game, and it was quite disingenious of me to phrase it so. I DO believe that the modern socioeconomic system in America is a negative-sum game.
And, to be fair, I'm not even QUITE a "die-hard capitalist" - although that was the closest definition I could find given the (limited, in my opinion) linear spectrum presented to me. I don't know what I'd call myself, really... I'm sort-of a fan of a cross between 'Brave New World' and 'Machines of Loving Grace'.
Another thing - just because we're ostensibly capitalist doesn't mean we're doing capitalism the RIGHT way. There's as many ways of running a capitalist nation as there are ways of running a communist nation - and just look at the Vatican.
GAH... hit 'submit' too soon. Append:... when you don't even have a permanent address, as I'm sure you're quite aware.
But imagine if you have one to help you out AT ALL. Considering yourself fully self-made belies the help that others offered to keep you alive and afloat. (Not to belie your perserverence through a much more difficult path than *I* ever had to walk, but we must all acknowledge the importance of the community that supports us, for good or ill.)
What if none of your friends were willing to put you up for the night?
What if the first night locked out, on the street, you had been picked up for vagrancy and jailed for 30 days?
How would you have continued your classes?
You ARE the exception to the rule, sadly. I am duly impressed - partially by your luck, but much more by your perserverance. And you're right, many people WOULDN'T have tried that hard, and would have just settled for being poor and destitute. But many other people have tried JUST AS HARD as you have, and been knocked back down by further injustices.
It's a lot harder to deal with those injustices when you don't even have a permanent address.
There are some people in this situation, but to get put in this situation requires a certain amount of ignorance and idiocy. How did they get those enourmous credit card bills and crippling overdraft in the first place?
It doesn't have to be because of anything YOU did. Just ask Harry Buttle.
Acts of God can ROYALLY screw you. What happens if a computer glitch cancels your medical insurance, and before the notice comes in the mail so you can handle it, you slice your hand and have to go to the hospital? There's a few thousand dollars down the hole that, if you aren't reasonably well-off, WILL sink you. Worse - now your hand's all fucked, so good luck typing.
Call in sick for six weeks while it heals. Go ahead. I dare you.
Slashdot Mirror
Just to wax meta for a minute... what, exactly, do the 'overrated'/'underrated' mods mean, anyways? The faq touches on them, but it seems like they work differently in M2 and have a different effect on one's karma score.
How does this work?
Lots, actually.
People enjoy hurting other people. It makes them feel, as you said, superior.
And you can say "That's just sick and wrong" all you want, but ask yourself, first: What can you do to stop it?
And if you can't do anything to stop it, what possible difference does how you feel about it make?
And if you CAN do something to stop it, and you DO something to stop it, you're just propogating "might makes right" - after all, you just used your power to stop it (might) to enforce your belief that it should be stopped (right).
I'm waiting for the year that April 1st is nothing but the SAME POST, duped 300 times in a row, and the post itself isn't even April Fools-related.
And then they would need to promise never to take that park over and nationalize it when it became convenient to, and promise that they weren't crossing their fingers behind their back when they made that promise, and promise that anyone who replaces them in a bloody junta will honor that same agreement.
You want your own country? You're going to need to defend it. Viciously. With bigger guns than the other side can EVER hope to bring to bear against you.
That means being a military power. If you become a military power big enough to challenge your neighbors, and the USA doesn't like what you're doing with it, they WILL fuck you over but good - just look at Afghanistan, Iraq, the Balkans, or Cuba.
For menschen like us, there is nowhere free on this planet, buddy. Sorry.
or the future Mitsubishi Heavy Industries' Wakamaru, a home caretaker for the elderly ... None of these people have seen Roujin Z, have they?
Rights don't even enter into it.
This is the USA. This is how it thinks. If we CAN blow it up, and blowing it up serves our immediate short-term interests, you can damn well expect a huge honkin' fireball.
I didn't say it was RIGHT, I just said it WAS.
And you think for ONE SECOND the US military will allow this?
Think about it - the whole reason they turn down accuracy is to keep their enemies from accessing the technology. If the US military doesn't CONTROL the technology, how will they keep their enemies from accessing it?
At the point the enemy starts using an open GPS, it becomes, de facto, an enemy asset, and thus targetable. I give it six weeks into the first engagement after a EU GPS becomes reality before the US gives the EU an ultimatum: Shut them down or we'll blow them out of the sky.
And don't think we won't.
You do when the Windows OS uses those exploits to perform its routine file-sharing tasks.
You know, if it only blocks results to certain regions, what's to keep someone from making a 'region-free' Google proxy and piping results to anyone who wants it?
Only because those who have, aren't talking about it.
How is this offtopic? This is exactly what tends to happen with these sorts of 'tricks' - although, admittedly, Google's "don't be evil" policy will probably mitigate this somewhat.
The point is, whenever you utilize these tricks, remember the 'Tragedy of the Commons' lesson, and think Kantian - "What would happen if EVERYBODY did this? Would the system still support us?"
If the answer is "no", realize that you're shitting where you eat, and find a more sustainable endeavor.
Heh. Actually, that's a fun thought experiment:
Given our understanding of matter, energy, and the Planck constant, for any given amount of energy E, and any amount of time T that that energy has existed, what is the maximum amount of information encodable within that energy matrix?
Plug in the total amount of energy believed in the universe, and you've got the number of bits necessary to accurately encode this universe.
Except that frequency isn't what we measure information in. You extract information from an energy wave by measuring changes in that energy wave over time.
E*t is limited by the Planck constant.
Look it up.
Umm... if you turn a 50Hz wave on and off more than 25 times a second, it's no longer a 50Hz wave. It becomes a modulated wave at double whatever frequency you're transmitting at.
That's just it.
There's no such thing as infinitely seperable sub-quark particles, and postulating "imaginary" ones does NOTHING for the sake of the analogy. The point is that EVERYTHING is quantized, and therefore, information - and thus bandwidth - is INHERENTLY limited by the laws of physics. There is a theoretical maximum amount of information that may be transmitted via any means; once this is reached, splitting the transmission signal will lower the bandwidth. Period.
It ceases to be 'sand' once you start cutting at the molecular level.
There *IS* a finite number of divisions, below which you can no longer honestly call it 'sand'. Thus, even if you broke it up into matrices of silicon oxide JUST BIG ENOUGH to define some sort of crystaline structure (and therefore be considered 'solid'), there's still a finite (though ridiculously huge) number of those that could fit into the 40 billion light-year sphere we call 'home'.
I suspect those activities back then weren't large-scale enough to have significant (global) climactic effects, but for the sake of discussion, I should note that the world climate has warmed considerably in the last 100,000 years...
Here's a fun little fact: We created the Sahara Desert several thousand years ago. Go find a map of the world and look at the size of the Sahara, and tell me if that isn't "global" enough for you - especially when you consider the effect a desert THAT SIZE is going to have on the world's weather systems. And it took NO major industrialization to do it, WHATSOEVER.
We also managed to rather thoroughly screw the Fertile Crescent well before the advent of modern farming.
I'm against the NEA myself, as it stands, but honestly - good luck shutting it down. At least THIS way, the NEA ould only be funded by the very artistic endeavors it's supposed to be fostering - which usually works rather nicely for setting up reinforcing feedback loops.
It's too bad companies don't have an incentive to release their copyrighted works into the public domain.
Hrm. Here's a thought on copyright reform:
Make all copyrights viable for 100 years from the date of the creation, period. The first year, the author is capable of receiving full royalties on their works. The next year, a 1% "copyright tax" is levied, to help administrate the copyright system, and as a sort of "copyright social security". Each year thereafter, that tax is increased by 1% - so you receive 100% of your revenue the first year, 99% the second, 98% the third, and so on. Make it a special 'income tax' for copyright holders.
Now, here's the cinch: As copyright holder, you can choose to release your work into the public domain at any time. By doing so, you get back a percentage of the money you paid into the system in taxes, based on the number of years left (i.e., if you had 19 years left until the copyright expired, releasing it into the public domain 19 years early would give you 19% of the total taxes you paid in over the last 81 years).
Any remaining money can be thrown at whatever bullshit "arts endowment" projects Congress seems to hold so dear, so long as the law stipulates that ONLY that money can go into the NEA. I.e., let the system feed back into itself.
What do you think, Sirs?
Yes, absolutely. If you have a means of exercizing your right to view the content, then you are expressly allowed to utilize that means (even if that means is DeCSS), if the only other alternative is to pay extra money for a DVD player.
The idea is, if you want to, you could build your own DVD player from scrap, and the law must allow you to circumvent the copy protection inherent in the DVD so that your player can give you access to the media you rightfully paid for.
If the copyright holder doesn't want you doing that, they are obligated to provide you with a free DVD player, or the equivalent.
... until you catch the flu.
Sorry, overgeneralized without intending to. I didn't mean to imply that economics, in general, is a negative-sum game, and it was quite disingenious of me to phrase it so. I DO believe that the modern socioeconomic system in America is a negative-sum game.
And, to be fair, I'm not even QUITE a "die-hard capitalist" - although that was the closest definition I could find given the (limited, in my opinion) linear spectrum presented to me. I don't know what I'd call myself, really... I'm sort-of a fan of a cross between 'Brave New World' and 'Machines of Loving Grace'.
Another thing - just because we're ostensibly capitalist doesn't mean we're doing capitalism the RIGHT way. There's as many ways of running a capitalist nation as there are ways of running a communist nation - and just look at the Vatican.
GAH... hit 'submit' too soon. Append: ... when you don't even have a permanent address, as I'm sure you're quite aware.
But imagine if you have one to help you out AT ALL. Considering yourself fully self-made belies the help that others offered to keep you alive and afloat. (Not to belie your perserverence through a much more difficult path than *I* ever had to walk, but we must all acknowledge the importance of the community that supports us, for good or ill.)
Okay, a few theoreticals then:
What if none of your friends were willing to put you up for the night?
What if the first night locked out, on the street, you had been picked up for vagrancy and jailed for 30 days?
How would you have continued your classes?
You ARE the exception to the rule, sadly. I am duly impressed - partially by your luck, but much more by your perserverance. And you're right, many people WOULDN'T have tried that hard, and would have just settled for being poor and destitute. But many other people have tried JUST AS HARD as you have, and been knocked back down by further injustices.
It's a lot harder to deal with those injustices when you don't even have a permanent address.
There are some people in this situation, but to get put in this situation requires a certain amount of ignorance and idiocy. How did they get those enourmous credit card bills and crippling overdraft in the first place?
It doesn't have to be because of anything YOU did. Just ask Harry Buttle.
Acts of God can ROYALLY screw you. What happens if a computer glitch cancels your medical insurance, and before the notice comes in the mail so you can handle it, you slice your hand and have to go to the hospital? There's a few thousand dollars down the hole that, if you aren't reasonably well-off, WILL sink you. Worse - now your hand's all fucked, so good luck typing.
Call in sick for six weeks while it heals. Go ahead. I dare you.