Perhaps you're not directly susceptible, but someone had to choose which product to buy in the first place (so that there are reviews for you to base your decision on). Those people, the initial buyers, were influenced by advertising; there won't be many reviews for a product which wasn't advertised somewhere. Not only that, but you'll probably trust the reviews more if there are many of them, rather than just a few. A product will be more likely to have many reviews if it has more extensive advertising.
I'll give you that I'm somewhat new, I've only been reading since 2006. I'm also critical of government spying, and many of the government's policies in general; I don't think anyone in their right mind would say that I blindly trust the government.
All I'm saying is that in my opinion, in the time I've been reading, the comments have progressively gotten more radical. Maybe it's not that there are crazies arriving, but rather that many of the normal geeks have moved on to greener pastures.
This is certainly the case based on my personal experience; all the "normal" geeks I know have stopped reading Slashdot, while many of the more radical ones have remained.
Minor style differences, but the train is on rails and always goes to the same station eventually, no matter who the conductor is.
That's because the whole system is set up so that the centrists always dominate; the US government is set up primarily to be as stable as possible, which means that making radical changes is very difficult.
Also, I get that I'm somewhat biased, but I think it's pretty clear that the right is more radical than the left in the US. Just compare it to any other Western democracy; the right of the USA is just as radical as (if not more than) a far right party in Europe (such as the Front-Nationale. On the other hand, there is no party in the USA which is anywhere close to the far left that exists in Europe, such as the Communist party in France.
If the American right is as radical as the European far right, but the American left isn't as radical as the European far left, well... there you go.
Actually, from what I understand, greenhouses work because glass is transparent to short-wavelength IR (close to the visible spectrum), but reflects long-wavelength IR (close to microwave). When the short wave IR hits the plants and ground, it gets absorbed and emitted as longer wavelength, which is then trapped inside by the glass.
That's why you can control temp by covering the ground with a white reflective surface; the absorption and re-emission doesn't happen - the short wavelength IR is simply reflected back out.
Point is, if you remove the short wavelength IR by converting it to electricity, I imagine the whole thing won't work nearly as well.
Anyways, what you said proved my point as well:
The glass reflects most of it back again. Some of that reflected IR will hit the plants, some will hit the plastic/earth and warm it, and so on.
If you replace the glass with a plastic that absorbs the IR, then it won't bounce around inside the greenhouse... and the whole thing won't work.
It shouldn't be puzzling to you; Slashdot has really been derailed by certain types who are ready, no, eager, to buy into any bit of "information" which reinforces their belief that the government is spying on them, destroying society, or generally out to "get" its own citizens.
Being "aware enough" to see the "merit" in conspiracy theories has always been a badge of shame, on the internet or otherwise. That sort of "awareness" is called paranoia.
I'll agree that there's very little difference between the centrists in both parties, but there are certainly substantial differences between the far right and the centrists.
There may be very few politicians further than a few inches left of center in the US, but there are certainly many who are miles to the right.
I don't think a greenhouse would work very well if you stripped out most of the IR from the incoming solar radiation. I think your plants would complain... those leaves love them some IR.
I think you're overselling how often windows in a house get broken. I haven't had a window break in any house I've lived in for at least 10, if not 20 years. Not to mention, these are plastic, so they are probably harder to break than glass.
around the time massive mineral resources are discovered in the mountains of Afghanistan, suddenly he is public enemy #1!?
Maybe, but it's also around the time he orchestrated a plot which ended in planes flying into the WTC and killing almost 4,000 people. I mean, if you're going to create some massive conspiracy to facilitate an invasion of a country, why would you choose the landlocked shithole with a long history of successfully resisting foreign occupations that is Afghanistan?
He can't sell it if everyone just steals it. The problem with this "but they still have it" line of reasoning is that while it may work on an individual basis, it doesn't work in the aggregate. If everyone steals the app, then the developer's time is indeed being stolen, since they are getting paid nothing for their work. Just like the hooker.
This isn't a modern thing, as much as we like to make it out to be one. People have been selling intangibles for a long time and "theft" has applied to non-physical goods for just as long.
Then how come I keep reading articles about flash drives dying after only 2-3 years of use
"of use" is the key part. Flash memory, specifically their NAND gates, have a limited number of program-erase cycles before they fail. There's no reason a gate will lose it's data while sitting in a storage container, except due to the occasional gamma ray, or other background radiation (ie, don't leave it sitting on a block of granite).
As for why you might hear of cases where you have a sudden loss of all data, that could be due to wear leveling causing simultaneous failure, some sort of static shock/power surge, or simply that the number of failed gates passed the threshold of what Hamming error correcting codes are able to overcome.
Give me what was spent on Stuxnet and I could do far more damage to infrastructure than that ever did.
Woh there, cowboy... put your gun back in its holster. The reason for the expense is that Stuxnet was a subtle, precise strike. The main advantage of which is that it didn't give Iran a clear Casus Belli against Israel. No kidding it would have been cheaper and far less complicated to just drop some bombs on Iran's centrifuges... but that could have led to pretty brutal regional conflict. Why use a baseball bat when you can use a scalpel?
when they speak better English than most Americans - or even English people.
It's funny that you think English people speak "better" English than Americans. I've heard some pretty horrid gobbledygook coming out of the mouths of Englishmen (just as I've heard it coming out of Americans).
I'll agree that politicians are corrupt, but I don't believe for a second that you can bribe a US senator for "a few thousand".
Senators are, generally speaking, fairly wealthy. There's no way they're going to risk their careers for a few thousand dollars.
Now, if you make a nice donation to their campaign fund, they might listen to you for a few minutes... but even then, a few thousand won't get you far. Look at the prices of a plate at one of their fundraiser dinners. Also, campaign contributions aren't classified as bribes. They basically are, but the way the laws are currently, there's nothing wrong with them.
Socialism != Death Camps. That's Fascism or Dictatorships you're thinking of. There are many mildly socialist countries on the planet today, and none of them have death camps - not even mild ones.
2) Social engineer the car to be a part of this "rental agreement".
If you can do that, you can probably just find a way to use the on-star system directly to unlock/start the car. If you are able to submit a valid rental agreement, why wouldn't you be able to get a "I lost my keys" request through?
It could also be that this is a net neutrality / common carrier type issue, or a contractual issue. Or they could just not give a damn, since they're making money. Spam doesn't really hurt them.
And since that means the US Navy has to skirt waaaay around NZ to get to their Australian naval bases
Actually, they don't, territorial waters only extend to 12 nautical miles offshore.
They just decided that if the kiwis didn't want the US Navy there, they wouldn't bother going near NZ. Not much of interest in them waters anyways.
Software, music, movies, vegetables, beef, chicken, fruit, grains, milk, lots of different types of guns,Boeing airplanes, fighter jets, bombs, radars, ships and on and on.
Lots of things are made in America.
The average person actually believes that information is property (which is insane).
So you don't own your personal information (since that would be insane), but you believe that there should be laws that prevent other from acquiring it and distributing it without your permission.
But that same logic shouldn't apply to music (or software), because it's better for society if those forms of information can be freely distributed.
I have no problem with that. All I am saying is that you can't say you have a "right" to keep your personal information secure, and at the same time say others don't have a "right" to keep the information they produce (such as music) secure.
Your argument for sharing music is a purely Utilitarian one (which is fine). You have to make the same argument for personal information, ie, society will be better if we can keep our private data private BECAUSE...
You also have to accept that others can use the same argument against you. For instance, sharing of purchasing data could be used to improve society because it would help to allocate scare resources better.
Gold is a fixed supply. They can't just suddenly create 1 trillion gold bars out of thin air (as they routinely do with paper). Number 3 is the key reason why it's a superior way to store wealth.
Gold is not a fixed supply by any means. It can be both "destroyed" and "created" (in fact the current rate of production is 2750 metric tons per annum, more than double what it was in 1980). What happens to your gold economy if they discover 30000 tons of easily mined gold in Antarctica, or the Canadian wilderness? Why tie the value of your money to something you have absolutely no control over (gold production), when you can tie it to something you CAN (in theory) control - the Fed ??
I'm fine with you arguing against the fed devaluing the dollar. Thing is, there's absolutely no reason to bring gold into the discussion. Simply have the Fed stop increasing the money supply, or have it increase at a fixed rate (maybe based on population growth or something). I'm not sure if doing that would be a good thing, but that's the discussion people should be having. Gold has nothing to do with it, and just distracts people from the real issues.
If you want gold so badly, just buy goddamn gold already, and stop bothering the rest of us who understand that there is way too much money circulating (or way too little gold) to move away from fiat money. There's absolutely no reason to back things with gold. If you're so set on a fixed amount of currency, just argue for a fixed amount of currency. There's no need to get some metal involved who's only real values are 1. Shiny and 2. Doesn't corrode.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps you're not directly susceptible, but someone had to choose which product to buy in the first place (so that there are reviews for you to base your decision on). Those people, the initial buyers, were influenced by advertising; there won't be many reviews for a product which wasn't advertised somewhere. Not only that, but you'll probably trust the reviews more if there are many of them, rather than just a few. A product will be more likely to have many reviews if it has more extensive advertising.
All I'm saying is that in my opinion, in the time I've been reading, the comments have progressively gotten more radical. Maybe it's not that there are crazies arriving, but rather that many of the normal geeks have moved on to greener pastures.
This is certainly the case based on my personal experience; all the "normal" geeks I know have stopped reading Slashdot, while many of the more radical ones have remained.
Minor style differences, but the train is on rails and always goes to the same station eventually, no matter who the conductor is.
That's because the whole system is set up so that the centrists always dominate; the US government is set up primarily to be as stable as possible, which means that making radical changes is very difficult.
Also, I get that I'm somewhat biased, but I think it's pretty clear that the right is more radical than the left in the US. Just compare it to any other Western democracy; the right of the USA is just as radical as (if not more than) a far right party in Europe (such as the Front-Nationale. On the other hand, there is no party in the USA which is anywhere close to the far left that exists in Europe, such as the Communist party in France.
If the American right is as radical as the European far right, but the American left isn't as radical as the European far left, well... there you go.
That's why you can control temp by covering the ground with a white reflective surface; the absorption and re-emission doesn't happen - the short wavelength IR is simply reflected back out.
Point is, if you remove the short wavelength IR by converting it to electricity, I imagine the whole thing won't work nearly as well.
Anyways, what you said proved my point as well:
The glass reflects most of it back again. Some of that reflected IR will hit the plants, some will hit the plastic/earth and warm it, and so on.
If you replace the glass with a plastic that absorbs the IR, then it won't bounce around inside the greenhouse... and the whole thing won't work.
It shouldn't be puzzling to you; Slashdot has really been derailed by certain types who are ready, no, eager, to buy into any bit of "information" which reinforces their belief that the government is spying on them, destroying society, or generally out to "get" its own citizens.
Being "aware enough" to see the "merit" in conspiracy theories has always been a badge of shame, on the internet or otherwise. That sort of "awareness" is called paranoia.
There may be very few politicians further than a few inches left of center in the US, but there are certainly many who are miles to the right.
I don't think a greenhouse would work very well if you stripped out most of the IR from the incoming solar radiation. I think your plants would complain... those leaves love them some IR.
I think you're overselling how often windows in a house get broken. I haven't had a window break in any house I've lived in for at least 10, if not 20 years. Not to mention, these are plastic, so they are probably harder to break than glass.
around the time massive mineral resources are discovered in the mountains of Afghanistan, suddenly he is public enemy #1!?
Maybe, but it's also around the time he orchestrated a plot which ended in planes flying into the WTC and killing almost 4,000 people. I mean, if you're going to create some massive conspiracy to facilitate an invasion of a country, why would you choose the landlocked shithole with a long history of successfully resisting foreign occupations that is Afghanistan?
This isn't a modern thing, as much as we like to make it out to be one. People have been selling intangibles for a long time and "theft" has applied to non-physical goods for just as long.
Then how come I keep reading articles about flash drives dying after only 2-3 years of use
"of use" is the key part. Flash memory, specifically their NAND gates, have a limited number of program-erase cycles before they fail. There's no reason a gate will lose it's data while sitting in a storage container, except due to the occasional gamma ray, or other background radiation (ie, don't leave it sitting on a block of granite).
As for why you might hear of cases where you have a sudden loss of all data, that could be due to wear leveling causing simultaneous failure, some sort of static shock/power surge, or simply that the number of failed gates passed the threshold of what Hamming error correcting codes are able to overcome.
Give me what was spent on Stuxnet and I could do far more damage to infrastructure than that ever did.
Woh there, cowboy... put your gun back in its holster. The reason for the expense is that Stuxnet was a subtle, precise strike. The main advantage of which is that it didn't give Iran a clear Casus Belli against Israel. No kidding it would have been cheaper and far less complicated to just drop some bombs on Iran's centrifuges... but that could have led to pretty brutal regional conflict. Why use a baseball bat when you can use a scalpel?
when they speak better English than most Americans - or even English people.
It's funny that you think English people speak "better" English than Americans. I've heard some pretty horrid gobbledygook coming out of the mouths of Englishmen (just as I've heard it coming out of Americans).
Senators are, generally speaking, fairly wealthy. There's no way they're going to risk their careers for a few thousand dollars.
Now, if you make a nice donation to their campaign fund, they might listen to you for a few minutes... but even then, a few thousand won't get you far. Look at the prices of a plate at one of their fundraiser dinners. Also, campaign contributions aren't classified as bribes. They basically are, but the way the laws are currently, there's nothing wrong with them.
Socialism != Death Camps. That's Fascism or Dictatorships you're thinking of. There are many mildly socialist countries on the planet today, and none of them have death camps - not even mild ones.
I'd imagine you'd have a different opinion on knives and your eyes if you were blind.
That means they've stolen anywhere from half of a South Park season to several millions of pages of plain text!
What a useful measure!
2) Social engineer the car to be a part of this "rental agreement".
If you can do that, you can probably just find a way to use the on-star system directly to unlock/start the car. If you are able to submit a valid rental agreement, why wouldn't you be able to get a "I lost my keys" request through?
It could also be that this is a net neutrality / common carrier type issue, or a contractual issue. Or they could just not give a damn, since they're making money. Spam doesn't really hurt them.
And since that means the US Navy has to skirt waaaay around NZ to get to their Australian naval bases
Actually, they don't, territorial waters only extend to 12 nautical miles offshore. They just decided that if the kiwis didn't want the US Navy there, they wouldn't bother going near NZ. Not much of interest in them waters anyways.
Software, music, movies, vegetables, beef, chicken, fruit, grains, milk, lots of different types of guns,Boeing airplanes, fighter jets, bombs, radars, ships and on and on. Lots of things are made in America.
The average person actually believes that information is property (which is insane).
So you don't own your personal information (since that would be insane), but you believe that there should be laws that prevent other from acquiring it and distributing it without your permission.
But that same logic shouldn't apply to music (or software), because it's better for society if those forms of information can be freely distributed.
I have no problem with that. All I am saying is that you can't say you have a "right" to keep your personal information secure, and at the same time say others don't have a "right" to keep the information they produce (such as music) secure.
Your argument for sharing music is a purely Utilitarian one (which is fine). You have to make the same argument for personal information, ie, society will be better if we can keep our private data private BECAUSE ...
You also have to accept that others can use the same argument against you. For instance, sharing of purchasing data could be used to improve society because it would help to allocate scare resources better.
Gold is a fixed supply. They can't just suddenly create 1 trillion gold bars out of thin air (as they routinely do with paper). Number 3 is the key reason why it's a superior way to store wealth.
Gold is not a fixed supply by any means. It can be both "destroyed" and "created" (in fact the current rate of production is 2750 metric tons per annum, more than double what it was in 1980). What happens to your gold economy if they discover 30000 tons of easily mined gold in Antarctica, or the Canadian wilderness? Why tie the value of your money to something you have absolutely no control over (gold production), when you can tie it to something you CAN (in theory) control - the Fed ??
I'm fine with you arguing against the fed devaluing the dollar. Thing is, there's absolutely no reason to bring gold into the discussion. Simply have the Fed stop increasing the money supply, or have it increase at a fixed rate (maybe based on population growth or something). I'm not sure if doing that would be a good thing, but that's the discussion people should be having. Gold has nothing to do with it, and just distracts people from the real issues.
If you want gold so badly, just buy goddamn gold already, and stop bothering the rest of us who understand that there is way too much money circulating (or way too little gold) to move away from fiat money. There's absolutely no reason to back things with gold. If you're so set on a fixed amount of currency, just argue for a fixed amount of currency. There's no need to get some metal involved who's only real values are 1. Shiny and 2. Doesn't corrode.