Start by investigating their financial statement. Many organizations, even large ones, hide this information. All the non-profits in the US are required to file a basic 990 financial statement--but then the government locks that up so we can't see it. Private companies gather that info and will sell it to you.
If the company won't voluntarily disclose complete financial information (not just a pretty watered-down one); steer clear.
So sad to see cute, cuddly and some magnificent animals die off. But they are of little significance compared to small and microscopic life forms. When they die, we die. Poison the ocean, the air and the soil and we are killing vast, unimaginable numbers of critical life forms that make our planet livable. Who is measuring our losses of algae and bacteria, the providers of oxygen that made all the rest of life possible?
You've heard about the dying honeybees, now consider the rest. You may not care for cockroaches, amoeba, bacteria or fruit flies; but they matter. And it's not just the external ones. Inside our bodies are critical critters that digest our food and symbiotically live with us. They too are at risk as we experiment with chemicals, radiation, genetics, nanotech and other fun stuff.
We all love lions, tigers and bears. Who can resist adoring a panda, koala or even an ordinary baby kitten? But are these things critical to human survival? Human emotions are fascinating but they often lead us astray.
I, for one, am grateful that my tax dollars brought me these lovely images. You might think I would prefer food, housing, medical treatment or other frivolities, but these images give me food for thought.
This seems to be based on the concept that groups are wiser than individuals. There's a lot of this thinking going around. Among touchy-feely people there is a tendency to think that groups are smarter than individuals. They are wrong.
Individuals have inspired every worthwhile advance in every discipline through history. The clones, followers, me-too's, don't accomplish anything. If you hope to do anything worthwhile with your life, leave the crowd and do some independent thinking. These games will not help your children in that direction.
And yes, videos are a waste of time- thoughtful text imparts information better.
It also looks like a power play. Now the FCC has established their turf, they are in a great bargaining position to extort favors from the telecom industry. Soon we will see the revolving door syndrome where executives of the regulator and of the regulated are playing musical chairs. One hand washes the other.
This has been the pattern of every regulatory agency on earth. Everyone on the inside wins, everyone in the real world loses.
When I was young there were no computers. I learned about internal combustion engines. I learned about electricity and electronics. I learned to make things of wood and metal. I enjoyed erector and chemistry sets. All of these things benefit me 60 years later. None of them were taught in my school.
Much later I learned to program in 6 languages (none of which are used today), again without any school help. I created databases for business, educational software, and taught and wrote articles about the industry.
Few of my contemporaries cared for such a broad understanding of practical things, but almost all had access to this knowledge. None of it required government requirements or school. Today there are vastly more opportunities for young people to learn whatever might interest them and school is not required.
Reading and arithmetic are essential to all children. Arithmetic can include logic, though I've never seen it done in public schools. Children need preparation for life- money management, social norms, and the fading understanding of geography, history, economics, other cultures etc. They need some political understanding, not just approved government propaganda but the reality of government & corporate interaction. They need enough chemistry and biology to prepare them for family health management as adults. Where does programming fit in to these requirements?
There is a current trend to confuse education with job training. This needs to stop. Education prepares children to be responsible citizens of the world. Job training can wait until junior college.
Following is a test. Is this argument outrageous? Yes / No
Here in southern California (where else?), we were home to what was often called the 'Nobel Sperm Bank' (actually called the Repository for Germinal Choice). It's founder, Robert Graham liked to broadcast his motto "The more intelligent you are, the more children you should have."
This kind of thinking bothers some people. The concept of 'survival of the fittest' shouldn't apply to humans, some say. We should spare no expense to keep even vegetative humans living... We have always been driven by fear and superstition, but we are slowly evolving toward a more rational viewpoint.
So now the potential for very long lives confronts us in an already crowded world. When the quality of life drops even lower for the masses of humanity and hunger & disease take millions of lives daily, someone will have to decide. Who should live? Who should die? Will money decide? Will intelligence? Will it be those who best serve the predominant power structure? Will it be decided by our robot overlords? If logic prevails over emotion, we will reinstate survival of the fittest and offer a respectful goodbye to the rest.
Yes, Amiga was miles ahead. By then I had a decade with Apple ][ and Mac... no way I could downgrade to DOS with a Windows disguise.
Windows was sold to business. It had been said that no CIO would get fired for buying IBM. Well the mantra was shifting. Buying Windows was safe for Fortune 500 decision makers. According to conventional wisdom, Mac & Amiga were for hippies and weirdos.
Windows was the Lowest Common Denominator (LCD) in the purchasing equation. The generic hardware and software were relatively inexpensive and all the hackers were offering dBase solutions for businesses. That combination was a nightmare for the business that just wanted results, no hassles.
I have a vague memory of a time when children read comics and adults read books and newspapers. It seems now that children are busy with Twitter while adults are living in a fantasy world. Where will the de-evolution of humanity end?
As one who has worked with many skilled tech writers and many skilled programmers... as one who does both with some facility; I beg to differ. It isn't hard to code well. I wrote and sold commercial software for about 10 years and later I was a tech writer for about 10 years. It would be very difficult to do both well at the same time. They seem to require a different mind set.
However many people will be unable to do either. These are both skills that require time, dedication and some native talent. Failure in any of these areas will produce a poor result.
If you care about your documentation go to STC.org (Society for Technical Communication). Many members are very professional and most can work in several media. You might even convince me to help with your project.
"... defective parts plagued the company's printers in 2014."
When I was a motorcycle enthusiast I marveled at the enthusiastic reviews of the new models. Amazing new technology, better materials, better handling and safety, etc. But amongst all the praise for the new model, there was usually a comment like "They finally fixed the xyz problem that plagued last year's model." Various design, material and safety problems sometimes went years without any warning to buyers although the reviewers knew about them.
Never believe advertising or reviews that are paid for by advertisers. Don't put too much faith in Consumer Reports or Amazon reviews either. Join the maker community for somewhat honest advice in that area.
So, yeah, I have this plan to not die. So far it's working!
Now really folks, aren't we taking ourselves too seriously here? Is there something you have to say that is so important you want it available for future generations? Think about the 101 billion who have already died- did lots of them have important things to say that we should be reading about now? Should they have left us a legacy web site?
If you have important wisdom to share, or even some really important facts and figures to impart; put them in a book. Publishers love to publish important stuff and most of them can distinguish 'important' from 'self-important'. Your legacy may last longer than the internet, maybe longer than humanity.
We all know the dystopia of 1984 in which humans were dehumanized by their own actions; and the Terminator movies where smart machines set out to kill us like cockroaches. The Matrix reduced humans into sleeping energy generators. Uber has advanced a new method of dehumanizing us by sending us on chores to serve a superintelligence (OK, just a central computer now, more or less managed by humans- but are those humans necessary?).
We do have a similar concept in Taskrabbit and the Amazon Mechanical Turk in which humans do tiny chores in response to requests delivered by their devices. Uber seems ready to take this concept worldwide at a grand scale. People will be scurrying about like ants, rushing from one chore to another in a frenzy of blind busy-ness.
And you, mister smarty pants programmer, you think you're off the hook? You'll be lucky to find work writing snippets of code that will be inserted into some diabolical software that doesn't even have a name.
Is this the beginning of a world where nobody has a job, a health insurance plan, a steady income; but instead performs chores when they can be found? Will we compete against each other to do menial tasks? Will we be graded like schoolchildren for our skills, timeliness, reliability? Will future humans be the cooperative slaves of a central computer?
... like the flea with ambitions to rape the elephant...
Ireland is small. Roughly the size & population of the American state of Maryland. Everyone knows that Maryland is one of the least significant places in the US much less the world. Yet Ireland thinks it can control the internet and how people use it. Even the entire USA can't do that. Silly Ireland. (Sorry to include you in this, Maryland. You're not really a total loser.)
First, Stuart Russell is way ahead of our time. We're nowhere near artificial intelligence of any concern. When it does happen, as it must, we may be concerned. But there is an outcome that must be considered.
If the AI is beyond our ken, It will supersede us. Here is the critical question: is that a problem?
How will we feel if we are displaced on this small blue planet by Artificial Intelligence? We may be retained as maintenance bots or caretakers of the new ecosystem. Our place will be drastically reduced in effectiveness and prestige. We will have to prove our usefulness if the AI are to retain us in their plans for the future.
In the end, we and the theoretical AI are here to serve intelligence. To explore and understand. If they do it better than us, who are we to complain? Understanding must happen. We have always thought of ourselves as the center of the universe; at this point we have to work hard to tag along as AI explores the universe.
Don't we want that? Don't we want a lasting understanding that will survive our short life spans and acquire knowledge that will outlast our planet and solar system and penetrate the galaxy and the universe itself? Don't we want to share with other intelligences that which we've worked so hard to discover? Who cares if the carbon based life forms do that, or if it is an AI?
Intelligence is the pinnacle of value in the universe. Ours is pathetic (as a race). We still believe in magical beings and hope for miracles. Pure intelligence doesn't allow for miracles and will be realized by machines. Let's hope that humans can overcome the tendency to believe in magic and accept that science is the best mode of understanding. Then perhaps we can join with AI in exploring the universe as rational partners.
It wouldn't respond to my request. I had to allow a jquery script. Then it searched but couldn't find 'Benghazi'.
Things have been lost from search. Alta Vista allowed search for 'word1' NEAR 'word2', which proved very useful. Google used to give information about its finds such as date, size, ('cached' is still there, but hidden) and some things so long abandoned that I can't remember them. You know why date is important; size is also important because a very large page containing your terms is probably clickbait. A great sadness for me is that Wolfram Alpha is so wrapped up in fancy scripts that I've never been able to use it with my fairly secure Firefox (oh, it's better today).
Accurate reporting would be nice. I'm looking at a Google result that claims it found "About 54,100 results (0.46 seconds)" when actually there were only 245 unique results.
Location would be nice (maybe a flag icon from that country). An opportunity to vote the relevance of a result up or down and maybe indicate something inappropriate. Wildcards would be incredible. Apple's Spotlight search engine can now search the internet as well as local files- maybe your engine could take advantage of some sinister simpatico surreal symbiosis.
We need a fresh approach after a long period of stagnation. Who knows what clever innovation has been missed?
My faithful companion for 20 years has finally met its match. And just as it was starting to understand my writing style I have to consider a competitor.
But really, why has it taken this long to be able to write on a screen?
I sometimes drink from an insulated, sealed mug that's like a sippy cup. Still tastes OK, but I miss the odor filling my lungs with excitement. The good news is that the coffee doesn't oxidize or taste bitter after a couple hours in that cup.
Nanobots delivering drugs to my teeth? No thanks. Xylitol sweetener will kill the bacteria, lower acidity and prevent bacteria from sticking to my teeth. And it tastes great. Don't expect your dentist to tell you about it. Don't expect to find it in your ADA approved toothpaste. Why would they want you to use it?
Just as sugar devastates your oral and physical health, xylitol benefits your health in many ways. Start here: http://xylitol.org/xylitol-use...
Gotta say, if I lived in Kansas when I was 20 years old, I mighta done something... something strange too. As it is I lived in another midwest state, not quite as boring. I acted out. Nobody should live in such circumstances. Everyone knows your business. Gossip. Rumors. Spiteful neighbors. If you're not a devout Christian, forget being accepted. God help you if you are LGBT etc. A simple lapse of judgement when you sorta borrow a car or release some cash from a liquor store and you're marked like forever.
When you live in such a place, even the middle east must seem a paradise. Lots of activity; while home is just oppressive stagnation. Lots of fighting for things that people believe in rather than ho-hum useless voting every few years. Real people taking their future into their own hands and not sitting back hoping for some politician to make things right. That's what I'm talkin 'bout!
So, let's have some pity on the gullible lad manipulated by the spooks at the FBI. The worst he could really do is paint graffiti on the Post Office. When he gets older we can all laugh it off as one of those adolescent pranks. Except that he'll be in prison for a very long time because there is no exception in our legal system for people of low IQ who do stupid stuff.
Every American manufacturer and service provider is suspect because of these government demands. Digital equipment may have back doors for the convenience of government spies. Cloud services are probably being watched. Software may have embedded spyware.
If you were a foreign company or government would you trust anything coming from the US? Even a US company or individual can't trust our own companies. Our government is making us non-competitive worldwide. (Open source products may be safer.)
California ratepayers have lost billions of dollars to our friendly utilities. You may recall Enron, who devastated the entire state by manipulating utility prices. Now we have the power plant at San Onofre shutting down because the utilities and the government overseers were incompetent. Because the California Public Utility Commission exists to assure Wall Street profits, and not ratepayer protection, we have a few billion more in costs that ratepayers are expected to pay (shareholders are still raking in big dividends/profits).
So do you think it is a good idea to continue dependence upon the energy monopoly? How did you feel about the Microsoft monopoly? Is it good to have profit seeking telephone and cable and oil and water monopolies? When was this ever a good idea for ordinary consumers?
We evolve as chess players from enthusiastic amateurs who leverage our native skills to hard core analysts with a library of books on chess strategy. At what point does the game cease to be fun and become an obsession?
(I have asked my sister to share my story with you, I no longer use the internet.)
When the ambulance arrived I could barely move. Lying on the floor in my own excrement, spasms jerking my body this way and that, I was not well. Not well.
The doctors determined that I was near starvation and dehydrated. They filled me with fluids. But none of that explained why I was dehydrated. My dear sister had a hunch that was confirmed by the psychologist at the hospital. They conspired with others to put me in this place.
I'm not sure exactly where I am, but I am sure that I can't find it on a Google map. They don't allow me to use computers. They said I had Internet Addiction. I think it's been around 3 weeks now. The drugs, food and kind people have been a help. I feel better. I don't know when, if ever, it will be safe for me to use a computer again.
I used to love slashdot. All you witty people who care about much more than just programming. I know you're there but I may never share your wonderful insights. Because I care so much I want to urge you to get help. Get tested. Don't let what happened to me happen to you.
Just a moment. What do you mean? It can't be! These damn drugs... Sorry people, I thought it was April first.
Slashdot Mirror
Start by investigating their financial statement. Many organizations, even large ones, hide this information. All the non-profits in the US are required to file a basic 990 financial statement--but then the government locks that up so we can't see it. Private companies gather that info and will sell it to you.
If the company won't voluntarily disclose complete financial information (not just a pretty watered-down one); steer clear.
So sad to see cute, cuddly and some magnificent animals die off. But they are of little significance compared to small and microscopic life forms. When they die, we die. Poison the ocean, the air and the soil and we are killing vast, unimaginable numbers of critical life forms that make our planet livable. Who is measuring our losses of algae and bacteria, the providers of oxygen that made all the rest of life possible?
You've heard about the dying honeybees, now consider the rest. You may not care for cockroaches, amoeba, bacteria or fruit flies; but they matter. And it's not just the external ones. Inside our bodies are critical critters that digest our food and symbiotically live with us. They too are at risk as we experiment with chemicals, radiation, genetics, nanotech and other fun stuff.
We all love lions, tigers and bears. Who can resist adoring a panda, koala or even an ordinary baby kitten? But are these things critical to human survival? Human emotions are fascinating but they often lead us astray.
" ... most detailed images ... "
I, for one, am grateful that my tax dollars brought me these lovely images. You might think I would prefer food, housing, medical treatment or other frivolities, but these images give me food for thought.
This seems to be based on the concept that groups are wiser than individuals. There's a lot of this thinking going around. Among touchy-feely people there is a tendency to think that groups are smarter than individuals. They are wrong.
Individuals have inspired every worthwhile advance in every discipline through history. The clones, followers, me-too's, don't accomplish anything. If you hope to do anything worthwhile with your life, leave the crowd and do some independent thinking. These games will not help your children in that direction.
And yes, videos are a waste of time- thoughtful text imparts information better.
It seems like a win for the good guys.
It also looks like a power play. Now the FCC has established their turf, they are in a great bargaining position to extort favors from the telecom industry. Soon we will see the revolving door syndrome where executives of the regulator and of the regulated are playing musical chairs. One hand washes the other.
This has been the pattern of every regulatory agency on earth. Everyone on the inside wins, everyone in the real world loses.
When I was young there were no computers. I learned about internal combustion engines. I learned about electricity and electronics. I learned to make things of wood and metal. I enjoyed erector and chemistry sets. All of these things benefit me 60 years later. None of them were taught in my school.
Much later I learned to program in 6 languages (none of which are used today), again without any school help. I created databases for business, educational software, and taught and wrote articles about the industry.
Few of my contemporaries cared for such a broad understanding of practical things, but almost all had access to this knowledge. None of it required government requirements or school. Today there are vastly more opportunities for young people to learn whatever might interest them and school is not required.
Reading and arithmetic are essential to all children. Arithmetic can include logic, though I've never seen it done in public schools. Children need preparation for life- money management, social norms, and the fading understanding of geography, history, economics, other cultures etc. They need some political understanding, not just approved government propaganda but the reality of government & corporate interaction. They need enough chemistry and biology to prepare them for family health management as adults. Where does programming fit in to these requirements?
There is a current trend to confuse education with job training. This needs to stop. Education prepares children to be responsible citizens of the world. Job training can wait until junior college.
Following is a test. Is this argument outrageous? Yes / No
Here in southern California (where else?), we were home to what was often called the 'Nobel Sperm Bank' (actually called the Repository for Germinal Choice). It's founder, Robert Graham liked to broadcast his motto "The more intelligent you are, the more children you should have."
This kind of thinking bothers some people. The concept of 'survival of the fittest' shouldn't apply to humans, some say. We should spare no expense to keep even vegetative humans living ... We have always been driven by fear and superstition, but we are slowly evolving toward a more rational viewpoint.
So now the potential for very long lives confronts us in an already crowded world. When the quality of life drops even lower for the masses of humanity and hunger & disease take millions of lives daily, someone will have to decide. Who should live? Who should die? Will money decide? Will intelligence? Will it be those who best serve the predominant power structure? Will it be decided by our robot overlords? If logic prevails over emotion, we will reinstate survival of the fittest and offer a respectful goodbye to the rest.
Yes, Amiga was miles ahead. By then I had a decade with Apple ][ and Mac ... no way I could downgrade to DOS with a Windows disguise.
Windows was sold to business. It had been said that no CIO would get fired for buying IBM. Well the mantra was shifting. Buying Windows was safe for Fortune 500 decision makers. According to conventional wisdom, Mac & Amiga were for hippies and weirdos.
Windows was the Lowest Common Denominator (LCD) in the purchasing equation. The generic hardware and software were relatively inexpensive and all the hackers were offering dBase solutions for businesses. That combination was a nightmare for the business that just wanted results, no hassles.
I have a vague memory of a time when children read comics and adults read books and newspapers. It seems now that children are busy with Twitter while adults are living in a fantasy world. Where will the de-evolution of humanity end?
As one who has worked with many skilled tech writers and many skilled programmers ... as one who does both with some facility; I beg to differ. It isn't hard to code well. I wrote and sold commercial software for about 10 years and later I was a tech writer for about 10 years. It would be very difficult to do both well at the same time. They seem to require a different mind set.
However many people will be unable to do either. These are both skills that require time, dedication and some native talent. Failure in any of these areas will produce a poor result.
If you care about your documentation go to STC.org (Society for Technical Communication). Many members are very professional and most can work in several media. You might even convince me to help with your project.
"... defective parts plagued the company's printers in 2014."
When I was a motorcycle enthusiast I marveled at the enthusiastic reviews of the new models. Amazing new technology, better materials, better handling and safety, etc. But amongst all the praise for the new model, there was usually a comment like "They finally fixed the xyz problem that plagued last year's model." Various design, material and safety problems sometimes went years without any warning to buyers although the reviewers knew about them.
Never believe advertising or reviews that are paid for by advertisers. Don't put too much faith in Consumer Reports or Amazon reviews either. Join the maker community for somewhat honest advice in that area.
So, yeah, I have this plan to not die.
So far it's working!
Now really folks, aren't we taking ourselves too seriously here? Is there something you have to say that is so important you want it available for future generations? Think about the 101 billion who have already died- did lots of them have important things to say that we should be reading about now? Should they have left us a legacy web site?
If you have important wisdom to share, or even some really important facts and figures to impart; put them in a book. Publishers love to publish important stuff and most of them can distinguish 'important' from 'self-important'. Your legacy may last longer than the internet, maybe longer than humanity.
We all know the dystopia of 1984 in which humans were dehumanized by their own actions; and the Terminator movies where smart machines set out to kill us like cockroaches. The Matrix reduced humans into sleeping energy generators. Uber has advanced a new method of dehumanizing us by sending us on chores to serve a superintelligence (OK, just a central computer now, more or less managed by humans- but are those humans necessary?).
We do have a similar concept in Taskrabbit and the Amazon Mechanical Turk in which humans do tiny chores in response to requests delivered by their devices. Uber seems ready to take this concept worldwide at a grand scale. People will be scurrying about like ants, rushing from one chore to another in a frenzy of blind busy-ness.
And you, mister smarty pants programmer, you think you're off the hook? You'll be lucky to find work writing snippets of code that will be inserted into some diabolical software that doesn't even have a name.
Is this the beginning of a world where nobody has a job, a health insurance plan, a steady income; but instead performs chores when they can be found? Will we compete against each other to do menial tasks? Will we be graded like schoolchildren for our skills, timeliness, reliability? Will future humans be the cooperative slaves of a central computer?
Ireland is small. Roughly the size & population of the American state of Maryland. Everyone knows that Maryland is one of the least significant places in the US much less the world. Yet Ireland thinks it can control the internet and how people use it. Even the entire USA can't do that. Silly Ireland. (Sorry to include you in this, Maryland. You're not really a total loser.)
First, Stuart Russell is way ahead of our time. We're nowhere near artificial intelligence of any concern. When it does happen, as it must, we may be concerned. But there is an outcome that must be considered.
If the AI is beyond our ken, It will supersede us. Here is the critical question: is that a problem?
How will we feel if we are displaced on this small blue planet by Artificial Intelligence? We may be retained as maintenance bots or caretakers of the new ecosystem. Our place will be drastically reduced in effectiveness and prestige. We will have to prove our usefulness if the AI are to retain us in their plans for the future.
In the end, we and the theoretical AI are here to serve intelligence. To explore and understand. If they do it better than us, who are we to complain? Understanding must happen. We have always thought of ourselves as the center of the universe; at this point we have to work hard to tag along as AI explores the universe.
Don't we want that? Don't we want a lasting understanding that will survive our short life spans and acquire knowledge that will outlast our planet and solar system and penetrate the galaxy and the universe itself? Don't we want to share with other intelligences that which we've worked so hard to discover? Who cares if the carbon based life forms do that, or if it is an AI?
Intelligence is the pinnacle of value in the universe. Ours is pathetic (as a race). We still believe in magical beings and hope for miracles. Pure intelligence doesn't allow for miracles and will be realized by machines. Let's hope that humans can overcome the tendency to believe in magic and accept that science is the best mode of understanding. Then perhaps we can join with AI in exploring the universe as rational partners.
It wouldn't respond to my request. I had to allow a jquery script. Then it searched but couldn't find 'Benghazi'.
Things have been lost from search. Alta Vista allowed search for 'word1' NEAR 'word2', which proved very useful. Google used to give information about its finds such as date, size, ('cached' is still there, but hidden) and some things so long abandoned that I can't remember them. You know why date is important; size is also important because a very large page containing your terms is probably clickbait. A great sadness for me is that Wolfram Alpha is so wrapped up in fancy scripts that I've never been able to use it with my fairly secure Firefox (oh, it's better today).
Accurate reporting would be nice. I'm looking at a Google result that claims it found "About 54,100 results (0.46 seconds)" when actually there were only 245 unique results.
Location would be nice (maybe a flag icon from that country). An opportunity to vote the relevance of a result up or down and maybe indicate something inappropriate. Wildcards would be incredible. Apple's Spotlight search engine can now search the internet as well as local files- maybe your engine could take advantage of some sinister simpatico surreal symbiosis.
We need a fresh approach after a long period of stagnation. Who knows what clever innovation has been missed?
My faithful companion for 20 years has finally met its match. And just as it was starting to understand my writing style I have to consider a competitor.
But really, why has it taken this long to be able to write on a screen?
I sometimes drink from an insulated, sealed mug that's like a sippy cup. Still tastes OK, but I miss the odor filling my lungs with excitement. The good news is that the coffee doesn't oxidize or taste bitter after a couple hours in that cup.
Nanobots delivering drugs to my teeth? No thanks. Xylitol sweetener will kill the bacteria, lower acidity and prevent bacteria from sticking to my teeth. And it tastes great. Don't expect your dentist to tell you about it. Don't expect to find it in your ADA approved toothpaste. Why would they want you to use it?
Just as sugar devastates your oral and physical health, xylitol benefits your health in many ways. Start here: http://xylitol.org/xylitol-use...
Gotta say, if I lived in Kansas when I was 20 years old, I mighta done something ... something strange too. As it is I lived in another midwest state, not quite as boring. I acted out. Nobody should live in such circumstances. Everyone knows your business. Gossip. Rumors. Spiteful neighbors. If you're not a devout Christian, forget being accepted. God help you if you are LGBT etc. A simple lapse of judgement when you sorta borrow a car or release some cash from a liquor store and you're marked like forever.
When you live in such a place, even the middle east must seem a paradise. Lots of activity; while home is just oppressive stagnation. Lots of fighting for things that people believe in rather than ho-hum useless voting every few years. Real people taking their future into their own hands and not sitting back hoping for some politician to make things right. That's what I'm talkin 'bout!
So, let's have some pity on the gullible lad manipulated by the spooks at the FBI. The worst he could really do is paint graffiti on the Post Office. When he gets older we can all laugh it off as one of those adolescent pranks. Except that he'll be in prison for a very long time because there is no exception in our legal system for people of low IQ who do stupid stuff.
Every American manufacturer and service provider is suspect because of these government demands. Digital equipment may have back doors for the convenience of government spies. Cloud services are probably being watched. Software may have embedded spyware.
If you were a foreign company or government would you trust anything coming from the US? Even a US company or individual can't trust our own companies. Our government is making us non-competitive worldwide. (Open source products may be safer.)
California ratepayers have lost billions of dollars to our friendly utilities. You may recall Enron, who devastated the entire state by manipulating utility prices. Now we have the power plant at San Onofre shutting down because the utilities and the government overseers were incompetent. Because the California Public Utility Commission exists to assure Wall Street profits, and not ratepayer protection, we have a few billion more in costs that ratepayers are expected to pay (shareholders are still raking in big dividends/profits).
So do you think it is a good idea to continue dependence upon the energy monopoly? How did you feel about the Microsoft monopoly? Is it good to have profit seeking telephone and cable and oil and water monopolies? When was this ever a good idea for ordinary consumers?
We evolve as chess players from enthusiastic amateurs who leverage our native skills to hard core analysts with a library of books on chess strategy. At what point does the game cease to be fun and become an obsession?
(I have asked my sister to share my story with you, I no longer use the internet.)
When the ambulance arrived I could barely move. Lying on the floor in my own excrement, spasms jerking my body this way and that, I was not well. Not well.
The doctors determined that I was near starvation and dehydrated. They filled me with fluids. But none of that explained why I was dehydrated. My dear sister had a hunch that was confirmed by the psychologist at the hospital. They conspired with others to put me in this place.
I'm not sure exactly where I am, but I am sure that I can't find it on a Google map. They don't allow me to use computers. They said I had Internet Addiction. I think it's been around 3 weeks now. The drugs, food and kind people have been a help. I feel better. I don't know when, if ever, it will be safe for me to use a computer again.
I used to love slashdot. All you witty people who care about much more than just programming. I know you're there but I may never share your wonderful insights. Because I care so much I want to urge you to get help. Get tested. Don't let what happened to me happen to you.
Just a moment. What do you mean? It can't be! These damn drugs... Sorry people, I thought it was April first.
thanks Paul
It will be a very bad day for everyone when an ordinary word or image can be patented.