Well, for example, some of the victims may become traumatized enough to seek revenge against his/her offenders and do something really nasty... like, say, become a head of NSA or GCHQ and bring demise to the society that allowed said offence in the first place? Hmm...
We all know how this ends - one small boy in a damaged starfighter or one billionaire in high-tech suit with a nuke on his back and this mighty army of yours suddenly turns into a mound of scrap metal. Not to say that an army of machines is often considered evil - in itself or as a tool of some bad guys.
Nope, there's a big difference between "can't" and "don't want to until there is no other option". It's just a path of the least resistance - why spend hours or even days on decrypting some messages when you can just write one letter, receive the keys and read everything anytime you want? But that doesn't mean that they don't have the means of breaking encryption if they really want to.
Yes, maybe it was a poor choice of words on my part - of course you have to take threats to commit suicide (or homicide) at least somewhat seriously and not dismiss them outright. But my point was that often the opposite happens - there are no obvious signs of real treat of suicide until it suddenly happens. It takes special training or personal experience (not of the pleasant kind) to notice some subtle hints of this and take action in time. And in this case parents even took some measures to protect their child - only it was not enough. And that, for me, is the saddest part of this whole story.
Well, there is still such thing as "parallel construction" (if I remember the term correctly), and it is much easier to present a solid case against you if said agency already have all details about your personal life in the first place - less work needed to invent something up. Government efficiency at its best, ain't it?
Your cellmates would be really interested in your stories. And you would have plenty of time to tell them, being in prison for the possession of child pornography. Maybe somebody there would even believe that "it was planted".
Oh, please, many kids (especially teenagers) would not even answer the direct questions from their parents about bullying and similar stuff. It is normal to just say "It's nothing, it's okay" and go cry in your room (and maybe even try to kill yourself), rather than sit and tell your story to your parents - even if they are truly caring and compassionate.
People who are prone to the real suicide are much more quiet about it than some drama queens who are shouting "I'm going to kill myself!" several times a day. Well, the same thing with the real homicide, too - even as adults we are prone to exclamations like "I swear, I'm going to kill that guy!", but these exclamations do not correlate with the real murders so often, right?
It is truly a challenge for any parent to admit that there is something wrong with their kid (not mentioning some crazy hypochondriacs and the like), be it a suicidal or sociopathical motives. In this particular case I personally would put more blame on the parents of the bullies, than on the parents of the victim. At least with sociopathy there are often other signs that are hard to miss, and often there is something wrong with the whole family - abusive or neglectful parents, for example, or some other emotional disfunction.
"That terminator is out there. It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead."
Simple logic of a typical sociopath: make more armed drones on your shiny automated factories and blow all these pesky demanding peons to bits! And there's always a fresh list of (potential) dissenters thanks to NSA and other similar structures. It's a cost effective, permanent solution, and it's really fun to watch with your family!
Or even more simple solution - provide them with cheap weapons and ammo and spend a small fraction of your fortune to let them kill each other for the scarce remaining resources. Of course, you'll have to make sure that their inferior weapons present no danger to your automated and absolutely loyal forces, but it's a trivial task, truly.
"A man from some small town comes to Moscow for the holidays. When he gets back, neighbors and family are asking him about his trip to the capital. The man answers:
- Oh, I loved Moscow, such a big and beautiful city! I've seen a May Day celebration, and some big placards, saying "All for the Man! All in the name of the Man!". And I've even briefly saw the Man himself!"
So in theory you are right, but in practice the denominator of your equation raises serious doubts.
But think how much it would cost to try to create and implement such system? It's a logical step - if Google can't do it, let's find some contractor company who will do it for us. Oh, the owner of this company is a nephew of a said MP? Well, it's a strange coincidence, of course!
And, after all, we can always change law back after several years of abusing this broken system.
I actually do on my workstation - starting from KDE 3.10. In times of godawful 4.0-4.1 I considered changing DE, but starting with 4.2 it was somewhat usable, so I finally upgraded to 4.3, and starting from 4.5 I rarely encounter any problems. Of course, many of KDE components are disabled on my system, and DE is customized to my needs pretty hard (plus I am one lazy guy, and much of my work tools are scripts of some sort, so I don't use many of KDE's native programs). But once in a while I like to rearrange my desktop - it doesn't affect my workflow, but brings some sense of refreshment. So, long story short, it's usable and fast enough for my needs - when I tried to work in Gnome (version 2 at the time) and XFCE I was somewhat disappointed by lack of customization in them.
Still, I like that diversity - some of my friends use Gnome or Unity and are pretty happy with them, some are Mac users, some are still using Windows 7 (I use it at home for gaming). I don't personally know anyone who would like Windows 8, but I don't mind this system too. Anyone can find something to their tastes, and I can only approve of that.
Bingo! Most of these "poor oppressed academicians" are quite rich people, even by European/USA standards. Of course they don't want to lose their income.
Really biased summary and somewhat biased article. RAS is simply afraid of losing their luxurous "recreational complexes" - private villas of said academicians and "research institutes", which are mostly just "cheap offices for rent" right now. Our science is going down the drain for the last... 30-40 years, or even more, and all these old soviet-era "academicians" are much more old-school bureaucrats than scientists. Truly clever and talented people all left Russia in 90-s, leaving mostly conservative old-timers and not-so-bright yesterday students. One of the vice-presidents of RAS is known to support some absolutely fraudulent projects, like "Petrik's water filters" - and these people are saying something about liquidation of science?
I am not a supporter of Putin and his little auto-/pluto-cratic system of government, but this reform is something long-needed, almost essential for our science. With the 40-50 years old mindset you cannot innovate, you cannot truly create something new, perform some cutting-edge experiments and achieve true breakthroughs. Only with adaptation of new policies, with adequate pay and real prospects of work for the young scientists we can hope to see our science pull itself out of its current horrible state. And this time, as preposterous as it sounds, Putin is on the side of progress. Of course there is no clearly defined "good guy" in this whole situation, but RAS in its modern form is much worse than almost anything that can replace it.
Slashdot Mirror
...not that there's much difference sometimes.
Let's nuke it all from the orbit, it's the only way to be sure.
Sorry for the overused quote, but it just had to be here.
Well, for example, some of the victims may become traumatized enough to seek revenge against his/her offenders and do something really nasty... like, say, become a head of NSA or GCHQ and bring demise to the society that allowed said offence in the first place? Hmm...
We all know how this ends - one small boy in a damaged starfighter or one billionaire in high-tech suit with a nuke on his back and this mighty army of yours suddenly turns into a mound of scrap metal. Not to say that an army of machines is often considered evil - in itself or as a tool of some bad guys.
Nope, there's a big difference between "can't" and "don't want to until there is no other option". It's just a path of the least resistance - why spend hours or even days on decrypting some messages when you can just write one letter, receive the keys and read everything anytime you want? But that doesn't mean that they don't have the means of breaking encryption if they really want to.
Probably somewhat around two football fields.
Yes, maybe it was a poor choice of words on my part - of course you have to take threats to commit suicide (or homicide) at least somewhat seriously and not dismiss them outright. But my point was that often the opposite happens - there are no obvious signs of real treat of suicide until it suddenly happens. It takes special training or personal experience (not of the pleasant kind) to notice some subtle hints of this and take action in time. And in this case parents even took some measures to protect their child - only it was not enough. And that, for me, is the saddest part of this whole story.
...a lot of people are like you and seem to romanticize the suicidal while aiming to punish perfectly normal adolescent behaviour.
Oh, man, I'd hate to live in the world you consider normal. Luckily it exists only in your imagination.
A lot of good points to think about, thanks.
Well, there is still such thing as "parallel construction" (if I remember the term correctly), and it is much easier to present a solid case against you if said agency already have all details about your personal life in the first place - less work needed to invent something up. Government efficiency at its best, ain't it?
Your cellmates would be really interested in your stories. And you would have plenty of time to tell them, being in prison for the possession of child pornography. Maybe somebody there would even believe that "it was planted".
Oh, please, many kids (especially teenagers) would not even answer the direct questions from their parents about bullying and similar stuff. It is normal to just say "It's nothing, it's okay" and go cry in your room (and maybe even try to kill yourself), rather than sit and tell your story to your parents - even if they are truly caring and compassionate.
People who are prone to the real suicide are much more quiet about it than some drama queens who are shouting "I'm going to kill myself!" several times a day. Well, the same thing with the real homicide, too - even as adults we are prone to exclamations like "I swear, I'm going to kill that guy!", but these exclamations do not correlate with the real murders so often, right?
It is truly a challenge for any parent to admit that there is something wrong with their kid (not mentioning some crazy hypochondriacs and the like), be it a suicidal or sociopathical motives. In this particular case I personally would put more blame on the parents of the bullies, than on the parents of the victim. At least with sociopathy there are often other signs that are hard to miss, and often there is something wrong with the whole family - abusive or neglectful parents, for example, or some other emotional disfunction.
Ugh... how rude! Such particle would lie on a whole new, previously unattainable profanity level!
"That terminator is out there. It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead."
Horse? Not even close.
Simple logic of a typical sociopath: make more armed drones on your shiny automated factories and blow all these pesky demanding peons to bits! And there's always a fresh list of (potential) dissenters thanks to NSA and other similar structures. It's a cost effective, permanent solution, and it's really fun to watch with your family!
Or even more simple solution - provide them with cheap weapons and ammo and spend a small fraction of your fortune to let them kill each other for the scarce remaining resources. Of course, you'll have to make sure that their inferior weapons present no danger to your automated and absolutely loyal forces, but it's a trivial task, truly.
There's an old Soviet joke:
"A man from some small town comes to Moscow for the holidays. When he gets back, neighbors and family are asking him about his trip to the capital. The man answers:
- Oh, I loved Moscow, such a big and beautiful city! I've seen a May Day celebration, and some big placards, saying "All for the Man! All in the name of the Man!". And I've even briefly saw the Man himself!"
So in theory you are right, but in practice the denominator of your equation raises serious doubts.
Its ingrained for sure!
So if we, say, point a Hubble telescope at it, will it collapse into one of these states?
Witty retort with a thinly veiled strawman.
But think how much it would cost to try to create and implement such system? It's a logical step - if Google can't do it, let's find some contractor company who will do it for us. Oh, the owner of this company is a nephew of a said MP? Well, it's a strange coincidence, of course!
And, after all, we can always change law back after several years of abusing this broken system.
I actually do on my workstation - starting from KDE 3.10. In times of godawful 4.0-4.1 I considered changing DE, but starting with 4.2 it was somewhat usable, so I finally upgraded to 4.3, and starting from 4.5 I rarely encounter any problems. Of course, many of KDE components are disabled on my system, and DE is customized to my needs pretty hard (plus I am one lazy guy, and much of my work tools are scripts of some sort, so I don't use many of KDE's native programs). But once in a while I like to rearrange my desktop - it doesn't affect my workflow, but brings some sense of refreshment. So, long story short, it's usable and fast enough for my needs - when I tried to work in Gnome (version 2 at the time) and XFCE I was somewhat disappointed by lack of customization in them.
Still, I like that diversity - some of my friends use Gnome or Unity and are pretty happy with them, some are Mac users, some are still using Windows 7 (I use it at home for gaming). I don't personally know anyone who would like Windows 8, but I don't mind this system too. Anyone can find something to their tastes, and I can only approve of that.
Sorry, maybe my selection of words was incorrect - "40-50 years old" should mean "40-50 years ago old".
Bingo! Most of these "poor oppressed academicians" are quite rich people, even by European/USA standards. Of course they don't want to lose their income.
Hahahaha... no.
Please, read something about sharaga's, and think about reconsidering your statement.
Really biased summary and somewhat biased article. RAS is simply afraid of losing their luxurous "recreational complexes" - private villas of said academicians and "research institutes", which are mostly just "cheap offices for rent" right now. Our science is going down the drain for the last... 30-40 years, or even more, and all these old soviet-era "academicians" are much more old-school bureaucrats than scientists. Truly clever and talented people all left Russia in 90-s, leaving mostly conservative old-timers and not-so-bright yesterday students. One of the vice-presidents of RAS is known to support some absolutely fraudulent projects, like "Petrik's water filters" - and these people are saying something about liquidation of science?
I am not a supporter of Putin and his little auto-/pluto-cratic system of government, but this reform is something long-needed, almost essential for our science. With the 40-50 years old mindset you cannot innovate, you cannot truly create something new, perform some cutting-edge experiments and achieve true breakthroughs. Only with adaptation of new policies, with adequate pay and real prospects of work for the young scientists we can hope to see our science pull itself out of its current horrible state. And this time, as preposterous as it sounds, Putin is on the side of progress. Of course there is no clearly defined "good guy" in this whole situation, but RAS in its modern form is much worse than almost anything that can replace it.