Whilst for the average slashdotter knows how to play the PVR game, most people do. Also a lot of people have TV on as wallpaper rather than actually engaging with it. Given these premises, it's hardly a surprise if the quality of TV is and remains awful.
Almost by definition if you are a slashdot reader, you are likely to be of significantly above average intelligence AND a geek. It's not therefore a great surprise if there's not a lot that appeals to us. Add in the fact that we're more like to be playing games than watching TV, and it's not a surprise that there's very little out there that works for us. Which means that the audience figures for the shows that we like will be in the pits, and so they will get cancelled. Which means we don't bother to check for new shows etc...
Whilst in some controversial areas this may be true, in the corners of Wikipedia that are of interest to specialists in proper subjects (i.e. not media studies;) we see some very good work. Don't discourage right use because of some abuse.
Wikipedia is at its best when its articles are properly referenced to decent published sources. That way in the humanities, it can be a starting point for further research or a quick guide to someone you've just come across for the first time. In STEM it can be a source for basic data. Where the model works badly is if people are undisciplined about providing good sources, or only present one side of a debate. It should be a term paper for undergraduates to write a decent Wikipedia article on a topic in their subject that is at the moment a mess, and having done that, they may begin to engage with it in an appropriate fashion. OTOH anyone who quotes Wikipedia as a source should lose a grade point...
True, there is a history of legislation introduced in a rush going horribly wrong. OTOH, unless an incident occurs, legislators are unlikely EVER to act. Actually the prospect of a successful group litigation might concentrate a few minds as much as legislation; a few shareholders asking 'Is the CEO confident that the cyber security of your firm is adequate' might then concentrate minds. Certainly it's got the subject publicity!
With the exception of a few horrendous examples of gay people fearing for their lives, I'm not aware of danger of PHYSICAL attack as a result of this fiasco. And if you were in the slightest hearing me as suggesting that would be good thing, then I've got it badly wrong.
But suppose this hack had been of the identities of people watching child pornography? Wouldn't the reaction from the majority have been far more negative? Instead of a mixture of embarrassment and tittering, the people exposed would have excoriated by wider society. And yet, it is arguable, that a WATCHER of child porn is less destructive to real children - especially if that porn is CGI generated - than an adulterer who destroys a family.
To my mind it is appropriate to challenge BOTH these behaviours to a substantial extent. Yet in practice the adulterer tends to be easily forgiven, whilst the child porn viewer is held up to public rejection for ever more. How would you react if a friend of yours got sent to prison for watching child porn? And how would you react if she got caught in flagrante delicto with another person?
Ultimately it's all about WHERE we draw the line, and why. Everyone draws the line somewhere: Overt racism will probably get you booted out of most circles etc etc. I think the adulterer deserves the same treatment as a racist. YMMV. But to dismiss my treatment of an adulterer as the behaviour of a lynch mob but condone similar treatment for an overt racist shows a failure to think. Adults are expected to think - that's why they let us vote...
"Does an anecdote prove a thesis? No, but it can disprove one."
Whilst a persistently recreatable test tube based experiment will disprove a thesis in 'hard' sciences, in the social sciences, the best that is on offer is a degree of correlation: this pattern of behaviour is associated with more positive outcomes than this pattern. It's on this basis that the claim that marriage acts as a bulwark for family stability is made - there is a marked propensity for married people to stay together, thus providing kids with the stability they need - whereas there's a propensity for the unmarried to split up. Now there will be exceptions - and the fact that you can show an example of an unmarried couple staying together is good to hear - but it doesn't disprove the thesis.
The bible records a lot of things. That it's 'in the bible' doesn't prove that it's OK. The story of Lot being got drunk by his daughters and then seduced by them (Genesis 19) doesn't give a commendation for their behaviour. There are passages that you can argue endorse behaviour that we can't accept - but this isn't one of them.
Underlying society is a set of implicit and sometimes explicit contracts that make the place operate. One of the explicit ones is the terms on which a marriage is entered. Historically there was also an implicit understanding that children would only be born within marriage.
Modern rebelliousness has resulted in marriages becoming less worked at, and the need to get married before children are born has disappeared. The result is a lot of messed up kids. It's also led to an epidemic of loneliness.
We've now arrived at a society where 'personal fulfilment' has become the ultimate good, to the de facto exclusion of all other considerations. A society will fall apart if there is that freedom to do whatever you want without regard to your responsibilities. Bread and circuses may get us through a few more years, but Islam will be along shortly to appeal to those who have had enough. I assure you that that won't be fun...
A stable environment is the best basis to bring up children - that's as clear cut a conclusion of social science as I know of. Marriage should provide a bulwark in achieving that stability. That you seem unwilling to accept the value of stability or the value of marriage towards that stability, I find perverse. That your perception of human nature is so pessimistic, I just find sad.
One of the fun bits of life on the internet is that you encounter people who have such radically different view points from yourself that you go: 'You what?'
The general conclusion of modern society is that 'open marriages' don't work; there really is something about sex that is fundamental to a marriage in a way that can't be proved, but is the general experience, and does tend to lead to early divorce. Certainly one of the problems of the open marriage model is that it tends to be imposed on the weaker partner by the stronger, and is part of their dominance of the other. Beyond that? Living by a radically different moral code is interesting, and may make you some remarkable friendships. However given the complexities of your situation, for the sake of your possible partners, you have a duty to declare this belief of yours very very early in any relationship.
Thanks for making me think. I tend to agree that this case isn't the best one to provide a clear model of financial liability, because as you eloquently point out, the damage here isn't the sort that gets a sympathetic hearing for financial liability. However there is an expectation of privacy, and that has been violated because the AM site didn't make a decent attempt at security, and for that it deserves to be punished.
A more general case arises over medical data, or data that would enable identity theft. In the case of medical - or indeed legal - data, there is a very strong presumption of confidentiality because that is at the heart of what those professions are about. I need to be able to trust those professionals in order to enable me to benefit from their services. If I'm not confident what I tell my doctor will stay private, I'm liable to edit what I tell him - and end up with the wrong diagnosis. Whilst it may be difficult to identify specific damage from a particular data loss, the overall effect of destroying confidentiality would be very serious. To the extent that this fiasco chips away at that real trust, it has a far wider significance than a 'financial' calculation points to.
It should be mandated that public companies get an audit statement that the system is adequately secure. OK - weasel words, but provides external oversight and an evidence trail. Good point though!
A US Appeals court has rejected a corporate's appeal against being prosecuted by the FTC for failing to ensure its security was up to what it had promised https://www.washingtonpost.com...
The idea that it might possibly be appropriate to challenge behaviour that is objectively damaging to society and especially its most vulnerable members, children, is ultimately what it means to be a society. That we have chosen to stop treating adultery as a crime doesn't mean that it's not a bad thing. We DO punish child cruelty...
Your claim that it is 'puritan' to challenge promise breakers is pure labelling to avoid the issue. Whilst politicians are accepted to lie, there's no reason for the rest of the community to descend to such a level. If a couple makes promises to each other in marriage, it is reasonable to expect them to live by those promises. It is reasonable for society - attempting to encourage couples to stay together so that children get to benefit from a stable background in which to grow up - to challenge behaviour that damages children, and therefore society.
This should create the head of steam required to get some legislation passed to make companies and specific executives SUFFER if they screw up their data security. Ultimately that means if an executive is advised that a system is insecure, fails to act and it gets hacked, the executive needs to personally liable, with a small taste of prison. It happening once is all that is required....
When people first get married, they are very committed to each other. Then, as with so much else in life, the grass on the other side starts to look greener. All that proves is that people change - but it doesn't mean that we need to abandon the concept of lifelong, committed marriages, just that people need be marriage preparation so the cooling of the first ardour isn't such a shock. And given that marriage is by far the best environment to bring up children, anything that destroys that environment is a BAD THING. There is something deeply perverse about the massive reaction to child abuse allegations, but generally relaxed attitude to divorce where there are kids. They are both catastrophic for the kids involved...
Some 5 years ago at a Christmas sale I picked up a basic Epson printer / scanner / fax for this silly amount of money. I don't use it much, but it has successfully printed my academic essays over the years. It accepts non-Epson cartridges bought off the internet for less than $7. What's not to like?
As someone who has been playing board games more than 40 years, the present generation are brilliant compared with the old ones. Having spend many an interesting evening 30 years ago over what are now obsolete ones, I can promise you that the new generation ones are worth finding out about; we got a taste of the good stuff in the past - but now the same things that took 10 hours are packed into 2 without ANY loss of interest.
Iron is the element with the lowest potential nuclear energy - it's the end point of fusion as a result Therefore there is no prospect of using the iron for such a process; the best you could hope for is some of the other elements in the planet. However getting them to react at the nuclear level would be very ambitious - and the iron would keep on getting in the way.
One of the possibilities that I've not seen seriously discussed is the way that academic libraries can be largely virtualised.
1) New books should be bought as an electronic copy and made available for temporary download as required by students. My uni has started to offer that; you get to hold it for only 24 hours
2) ALL books out of copyright should be digitised, packed up and stored securely off site. There is no need - apart from the aesthetics and wow factor - to have old books filling up space. OK - so wandering the publicly available bit of the library and seeing a book dated 1540 IS impressive... but most of them should go to a better place. There's a large room in the City Library filled with Parliamentary Reports. These are online... Meanwhile old stuff isn't available; I tracked down one British document I wanted from 1795; the AUSTRALIAN national library would let me have an electronic copy if I could offer an Australian address. The British Library would allow me electronic access if I went to their physical location. In the end I bought a physical copy online...
3) The remaining group are the books that are still in copyright and where a digitised version isn't legitimate. We're probably stuck with this for a period
but it will be a declining problem - although in non-science subjects one that will probably persist longer than in sciences, where text books go out of date fairly rapidly.
For copyright libraries, digitisation should resolve their problem of an ever increasing volume of books; digitise and store in a salt mine. Everyone's a winner; far greater accessibility of the actual data and no problem of needing to recover them 99.999% of the time.
"U.S. Code, Title 18, Part I, Chapter 101, Section 2071, Paragraph a: “Whoever willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, or destroys, or attempts to do so, or, with intent to do so takes and carries away any record, proceeding, map, book, paper, document, or other thing, filed or deposited with any clerk or officer of any court of the United States, or in any public office, or with any judicial or public officer of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.”
Paragraph b: Whoever, having the custody of any such record, proceeding, map, book, document, paper, or other thing, willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, falsifies, or destroys the same, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both; and shall forfeit his office and be disqualified from holding any office under the United States."
Slashdot Mirror
Whilst for the average slashdotter knows how to play the PVR game, most people do. Also a lot of people have TV on as wallpaper rather than actually engaging with it. Given these premises, it's hardly a surprise if the quality of TV is and remains awful.
Almost by definition if you are a slashdot reader, you are likely to be of significantly above average intelligence AND a geek. It's not therefore a great surprise if there's not a lot that appeals to us. Add in the fact that we're more like to be playing games than watching TV, and it's not a surprise that there's very little out there that works for us. Which means that the audience figures for the shows that we like will be in the pits, and so they will get cancelled. Which means we don't bother to check for new shows etc...
or at least the FSB - the renamed KGB http://intelnews.org/2013/07/1...
I think associating well organised and genuinely entertaining people with the present shower of politicians is deeply unfair...
Whilst in some controversial areas this may be true, in the corners of Wikipedia that are of interest to specialists in proper subjects (i.e. not media studies ;) we see some very good work. Don't discourage right use because of some abuse.
Wikipedia is at its best when its articles are properly referenced to decent published sources. That way in the humanities, it can be a starting point for further research or a quick guide to someone you've just come across for the first time. In STEM it can be a source for basic data. Where the model works badly is if people are undisciplined about providing good sources, or only present one side of a debate. It should be a term paper for undergraduates to write a decent Wikipedia article on a topic in their subject that is at the moment a mess, and having done that, they may begin to engage with it in an appropriate fashion. OTOH anyone who quotes Wikipedia as a source should lose a grade point...
True, there is a history of legislation introduced in a rush going horribly wrong. OTOH, unless an incident occurs, legislators are unlikely EVER to act. Actually the prospect of a successful group litigation might concentrate a few minds as much as legislation; a few shareholders asking 'Is the CEO confident that the cyber security of your firm is adequate' might then concentrate minds. Certainly it's got the subject publicity!
With the exception of a few horrendous examples of gay people fearing for their lives, I'm not aware of danger of PHYSICAL attack as a result of this fiasco. And if you were in the slightest hearing me as suggesting that would be good thing, then I've got it badly wrong.
But suppose this hack had been of the identities of people watching child pornography? Wouldn't the reaction from the majority have been far more negative? Instead of a mixture of embarrassment and tittering, the people exposed would have excoriated by wider society. And yet, it is arguable, that a WATCHER of child porn is less destructive to real children - especially if that porn is CGI generated - than an adulterer who destroys a family.
To my mind it is appropriate to challenge BOTH these behaviours to a substantial extent. Yet in practice the adulterer tends to be easily forgiven, whilst the child porn viewer is held up to public rejection for ever more. How would you react if a friend of yours got sent to prison for watching child porn? And how would you react if she got caught in flagrante delicto with another person?
Ultimately it's all about WHERE we draw the line, and why. Everyone draws the line somewhere: Overt racism will probably get you booted out of most circles etc etc. I think the adulterer deserves the same treatment as a racist. YMMV. But to dismiss my treatment of an adulterer as the behaviour of a lynch mob but condone similar treatment for an overt racist shows a failure to think. Adults are expected to think - that's why they let us vote...
"Does an anecdote prove a thesis? No, but it can disprove one."
Whilst a persistently recreatable test tube based experiment will disprove a thesis in 'hard' sciences, in the social sciences, the best that is on offer is a degree of correlation: this pattern of behaviour is associated with more positive outcomes than this pattern. It's on this basis that the claim that marriage acts as a bulwark for family stability is made - there is a marked propensity for married people to stay together, thus providing kids with the stability they need - whereas there's a propensity for the unmarried to split up. Now there will be exceptions - and the fact that you can show an example of an unmarried couple staying together is good to hear - but it doesn't disprove the thesis.
The bible records a lot of things. That it's 'in the bible' doesn't prove that it's OK. The story of Lot being got drunk by his daughters and then seduced by them (Genesis 19) doesn't give a commendation for their behaviour. There are passages that you can argue endorse behaviour that we can't accept - but this isn't one of them.
Underlying society is a set of implicit and sometimes explicit contracts that make the place operate. One of the explicit ones is the terms on which a marriage is entered. Historically there was also an implicit understanding that children would only be born within marriage.
Modern rebelliousness has resulted in marriages becoming less worked at, and the need to get married before children are born has disappeared. The result is a lot of messed up kids. It's also led to an epidemic of loneliness.
We've now arrived at a society where 'personal fulfilment' has become the ultimate good, to the de facto exclusion of all other considerations. A society will fall apart if there is that freedom to do whatever you want without regard to your responsibilities. Bread and circuses may get us through a few more years, but Islam will be along shortly to appeal to those who have had enough. I assure you that that won't be fun...
A stable environment is the best basis to bring up children - that's as clear cut a conclusion of social science as I know of. Marriage should provide a bulwark in achieving that stability. That you seem unwilling to accept the value of stability or the value of marriage towards that stability, I find perverse. That your perception of human nature is so pessimistic, I just find sad.
One of the fun bits of life on the internet is that you encounter people who have such radically different view points from yourself that you go: 'You what?'
The general conclusion of modern society is that 'open marriages' don't work; there really is something about sex that is fundamental to a marriage in a way that can't be proved, but is the general experience, and does tend to lead to early divorce. Certainly one of the problems of the open marriage model is that it tends to be imposed on the weaker partner by the stronger, and is part of their dominance of the other. Beyond that? Living by a radically different moral code is interesting, and may make you some remarkable friendships. However given the complexities of your situation, for the sake of your possible partners, you have a duty to declare this belief of yours very very early in any relationship.
Thanks for making me think. I tend to agree that this case isn't the best one to provide a clear model of financial liability, because as you eloquently point out, the damage here isn't the sort that gets a sympathetic hearing for financial liability. However there is an expectation of privacy, and that has been violated because the AM site didn't make a decent attempt at security, and for that it deserves to be punished.
A more general case arises over medical data, or data that would enable identity theft. In the case of medical - or indeed legal - data, there is a very strong presumption of confidentiality because that is at the heart of what those professions are about. I need to be able to trust those professionals in order to enable me to benefit from their services. If I'm not confident what I tell my doctor will stay private, I'm liable to edit what I tell him - and end up with the wrong diagnosis. Whilst it may be difficult to identify specific damage from a particular data loss, the overall effect of destroying confidentiality would be very serious. To the extent that this fiasco chips away at that real trust, it has a far wider significance than a 'financial' calculation points to.
It should be mandated that public companies get an audit statement that the system is adequately secure. OK - weasel words, but provides external oversight and an evidence trail. Good point though!
A US Appeals court has rejected a corporate's appeal against being prosecuted by the FTC for failing to ensure its security was up to what it had promised https://www.washingtonpost.com...
Ah - the joys of straw man argumentation.
The idea that it might possibly be appropriate to challenge behaviour that is objectively damaging to society and especially its most vulnerable members, children, is ultimately what it means to be a society. That we have chosen to stop treating adultery as a crime doesn't mean that it's not a bad thing. We DO punish child cruelty...
Your claim that it is 'puritan' to challenge promise breakers is pure labelling to avoid the issue. Whilst politicians are accepted to lie, there's no reason for the rest of the community to descend to such a level. If a couple makes promises to each other in marriage, it is reasonable to expect them to live by those promises. It is reasonable for society - attempting to encourage couples to stay together so that children get to benefit from a stable background in which to grow up - to challenge behaviour that damages children, and therefore society.
This should create the head of steam required to get some legislation passed to make companies and specific executives SUFFER if they screw up their data security. Ultimately that means if an executive is advised that a system is insecure, fails to act and it gets hacked, the executive needs to personally liable, with a small taste of prison. It happening once is all that is required....
When people first get married, they are very committed to each other. Then, as with so much else in life, the grass on the other side starts to look greener. All that proves is that people change - but it doesn't mean that we need to abandon the concept of lifelong, committed marriages, just that people need be marriage preparation so the cooling of the first ardour isn't such a shock. And given that marriage is by far the best environment to bring up children, anything that destroys that environment is a BAD THING. There is something deeply perverse about the massive reaction to child abuse allegations, but generally relaxed attitude to divorce where there are kids. They are both catastrophic for the kids involved...
Some 5 years ago at a Christmas sale I picked up a basic Epson printer / scanner / fax for this silly amount of money. I don't use it much, but it has successfully printed my academic essays over the years. It accepts non-Epson cartridges bought off the internet for less than $7. What's not to like?
As someone who has been playing board games more than 40 years, the present generation are brilliant compared with the old ones. Having spend many an interesting evening 30 years ago over what are now obsolete ones, I can promise you that the new generation ones are worth finding out about; we got a taste of the good stuff in the past - but now the same things that took 10 hours are packed into 2 without ANY loss of interest.
Iron is the element with the lowest potential nuclear energy - it's the end point of fusion as a result Therefore there is no prospect of using the iron for such a process; the best you could hope for is some of the other elements in the planet. However getting them to react at the nuclear level would be very ambitious - and the iron would keep on getting in the way.
One of the possibilities that I've not seen seriously discussed is the way that academic libraries can be largely virtualised.
1) New books should be bought as an electronic copy and made available for temporary download as required by students. My uni has started to offer that; you get to hold it for only 24 hours
2) ALL books out of copyright should be digitised, packed up and stored securely off site. There is no need - apart from the aesthetics and wow factor - to have old books filling up space. OK - so wandering the publicly available bit of the library and seeing a book dated 1540 IS impressive... but most of them should go to a better place. There's a large room in the City Library filled with Parliamentary Reports. These are online... Meanwhile old stuff isn't available; I tracked down one British document I wanted from 1795; the AUSTRALIAN national library would let me have an electronic copy if I could offer an Australian address. The British Library would allow me electronic access if I went to their physical location. In the end I bought a physical copy online...
3) The remaining group are the books that are still in copyright and where a digitised version isn't legitimate. We're probably stuck with this for a period but it will be a declining problem - although in non-science subjects one that will probably persist longer than in sciences, where text books go out of date fairly rapidly.
For copyright libraries, digitisation should resolve their problem of an ever increasing volume of books; digitise and store in a salt mine. Everyone's a winner; far greater accessibility of the actual data and no problem of needing to recover them 99.999% of the time.
"U.S. Code, Title 18, Part I, Chapter 101, Section 2071, Paragraph a: “Whoever willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, or destroys, or attempts to do so, or, with intent to do so takes and carries away any record, proceeding, map, book, paper, document, or other thing, filed or deposited with any clerk or officer of any court of the United States, or in any public office, or with any judicial or public officer of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.”
Paragraph b: Whoever, having the custody of any such record, proceeding, map, book, document, paper, or other thing, willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, falsifies, or destroys the same, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both; and shall forfeit his office and be disqualified from holding any office under the United States."
Seems to be an offence right there