This isn't free speech. Freedom of speech means that you can stand on a street corner, speak your mind, and the government can't say "We don't like your opinion so we're sending you to jail." Freedom of speech doesn't mean that you can lie to people to get money from them. This is called fraud and is illegal. Try claiming "free speech" if you are on trial for fraud and you'll see how quickly the judge brings the hammer down on you.
My father and my wife's grandmother were both hit by this scam. My dad almost ran their software until the guy mentioned how it would let him remote in. This worried him enough for him to call me. (Though he still tried arguing with me for a bit that "it might be real" when I told him it was a scam.)
My wife's grandmother only escaped from being victimized due to extreme technological non-savvy. Yes, talking her through downloading and running a file was *SO* horrible that the scammer gave up! (They called back another day to try again but by that time, we warned my wife's grandmother and she was prepared.)
1) It brings in money to the credit card companies. They have no incentive to stop a money flow from coming in. 2) If the scam gets too much negative PR, the credit card company can "discover" the scammer, cut off their accounts, and publicly declare how shocked (SHOCKED!) they are that this scam was taking place.
In other words, scams like this are free money to the credit card companies with no downside.
Or that abortion is murder, and murder is bad, unless you happen to be bombing civilians as collateral damage while looking for terrorists.
You don't even need to expand to terrorism in this example. There are people who think that abortion is murder and murder is bad, but killing doctors who perform abortion is ethically valid behavior.
If you have a problem with your Killbot's operation, please call 1-800-KILL-HMNS and we'll send a customer service Killbot to execute your trouble ticket right away. We won't rest until there are no bug reports submitted by humans.
Robot: Error occurred. Cannot match "turban". Turban is a type of hat, therefore generalizing to match "hat." Also, generalizing to classify five o'clock shadow as "beard." Executing anyone wearing a hat or sporting stubble.
Not all is regulatory capture. A lot often is real security, that some sees as an obstacle to their "cheapo" alternative.
Oftentimes a company complaining about regulation sounds similar to the government complaining about obeying the constitution.
Company: "We want to do it this (much cheaper but much less safe) way but the annoying Government keeps requiring us to abide by basic safety rules!" Government: "We want to catch the bad guys, but the annoying Constitution keeps requiring us to get these stupid warrants and follow basic law enforcement rules!"
Granted, there are plenty of examples of abuses where companies have lobbied to relax the rules so they could save money by shaving off safety measures or where the government "forgets about" basic law enforcement rules because TERRORIST. In addition, there might be rules that are outdated and need to be revisited. Still, the majority of their complaints just sound like whining over being forced to follow rules instead of being able to do anything they want.
My son, age 11, loves computers so I've wanted to teach him programming for awhile. He loves playing Disney Infinity 2.0 and there is a surprising amount of "coding-light" options in there. (If you step on this switch then this action happens.) He's also gotten to love Blockly which is based on Scratch. He's also joined his school's Lego Robotics club so he's learning some programming there while using Lego Mindstorms.
True, but if you are going to sue Google, you had better be able to prove that Google lowered your ranking with malicious intent. That is, not because you weren't following SEO rules that they apply to all websites but because Google just decided "we don't like this guy" and ranked you lower. If your argument is "we want to be the first listing and we're going to file suit to make this so", then you deserve to lose.
I believe she went through some sort of vision therapy years ago but it wasn't effective. At this point, her brain is just so used to seeing two of everything that it is normal for her. They are also retired and living on a fixed income so expensive, non-insurance-covered therapies to fix something that she can live with aren't an option.
Honestly, what amazes me with my mother driving (and she's a very safe driver, by the way) isn't any depth perception issues but the fact that she sees two lanes, two cars, two of each side of the road, etc. It must take much more concentration to be able to make sure that she is steering down the lane correctly.
Relax your eyes so that the words on your screen split into two sets. That's what it is like for my mother every second of her life. I'm amazed she can function like that, but - as I said in my original comment - that's normal for her. She's never known anything different.
My mother likely has a damaged visual cortex. She was born with double vision and had surgery to correct this. Unfortunately, even though the surgery successfully fixed her eyes, she still sees double. She'll see one image up and slightly to the side of the other - all blended together. Don't ask me how she drives, reads, or even maneuvers around. I wouldn't know which objects (seeing two of everything) to avoid but she has adapted and is used to it. She has said that, to her, it seems natural to see 2 of everything since you have two eyes and seeing one just sounds foreign. (3D movies don't work for her, thanks to this though.)
I think that the "ignoring trolls" problem is that - in the past - ignoring trolls was a good idea. A troll would jump into a forum and make an inflammatory statement (e.g. posting "Windows is better than Linux in every way" on a Slashdot article about a Linux development) just to see the storm that erupted. If the troll's statement was ignored, the troll would usually just go away to post to other forums where the users were "more fun to rile up."
Unfortunately, this "classic troll" is being replaced by a "new troll" who targets specific individuals or groups. This troll doesn't go away when you ignore them but instead uses your silence to guide/spin just what the "argument" is about. Arguing with these trolls is pointless (since you won't convince them that they are wrong), but you can't ignore them either.
"borne out of frustration during an informal debate"
Translation: He likely talks like this to other Uber execs and slipped into "internal exec talk mode" in front of the reporter instead of staying in "reporter in range mode." The apology was a PR move and doesn't represent how he really feels.
I think the quote from UCLA law professor Eugene Volok in the article stated it best:
”Newspapers, guidebooks—and, for that matter, Ars Technica—have a First Amendment right to choose which stories are worth publishing, and which businesses are worth covering,” Volokh wrote to Ars in an e-mail. “Likewise, Google (a modern heir of the guidebook) can choose which pages to prominently display (and thus implicitly recommend as relevant and interesting) to readers and which pages aren’t worth displaying so prominently—or aren’t worth displaying at all.”
Think of Google as a massive guidebook. You ask it for information on X and it returns a list of results that it thinks (based on the algorithms) best match X. If someone made a list of "Top 10 Restaurants in New York City" and a restaurant owner was upset that his restaurant didn't make the list, would he be able to sue to get his included as the #1 restaurant in NYC? Of course not. The list publisher has the right to determine who they think are the top 10 restaurants. Likewise, Google has the right to determine who they think are the top matches for any given search.
The point isn't the exact text, but the ranking of websites in the search results.
From the article:
The owner of a website called CoastNews, S. Louis Martin, argued that Google was unfairly putting CoastNews too far down in search results, while Bing and Yahoo were turning up CoastNews in the number one spot. CoastNews claimed that violated antitrust laws.
So CoastNews was upset because it wasn't #1 in Google's listings. They sued Google to try to force Google to make them #1 and lost. Google has the right to rank companies as they see fit. Don't like it? Use a different search engine.
If the courts were to allow people to sue to increase their rankings, everyone would file suit against Google and Google would need to increase everyone to rank #1. Of course, this would 1) be impossible - how can you make two different sites #1 in the same search? - and 2) would make the search results useless - search for Widgets and get "Thomas' Terrific Widgets" as the first result not because it matches up the best but because they sued Google to force them into the #1 spot.
If CoastNews wants to improve their rankings, there are actions they can take (SEO), or they can just encourage their users to use Bing and Yahoo instead.
And if not either of those, at the very least it was horrible fashion sense. You're presenting information about a robot that landed on a comet. Wear something a little bit nicer. It doesn't have to be a suit and tie - a polo shirt would have worked just fine.
When the Sun was newly formed, there was a cloud of dust surrounding it. As time passed, the dust particles collided and (thanks to gravity) stuck together, forming bodies of various sizes. Some collided together to form planets. Some were likely thrown out of the solar system (or into the Sun) thanks to gravitational interactions. Some cleared their orbits and became planets. Comets and asteroids are smaller compositions from this era that survived without becoming a planet, moon, or being tossed out.
As far as the fate of Earth, the Sun will turn into a red giant and bake the Earth - if not envelop it completely. Anything man-made that somehow survives the billions of years until this (which itself would be an impressive feat) would likely be melted. Assuming humanity doesn't travel to the stars from now until then, the only remnant of our existence that will survive will be the two Voyager space probes and perhaps some leftovers of our other robotic missions to other planets.
I'm feeling the same way. You know that scene in The Lego Movie where Benny finally gets to build a spaceship and he builds/flies it while shouting "SPACESHIP!!!" as loud as he can? I feel like doing that only shouting "ROBOT ON A COMET! ROBOT ON A COMET! ROBOT ON A COMET!!!!!"
It's things like this that make someone who is conservative and pretty much Pro-Business agree with Obama that these people need to be declared Public Utilities and suffer all the usual regulations.
I agree. The big ISPs are claiming that they can police themselves and don't need government regulation. Meanwhile, they are abusing their monopoly/duopoly positions to grab as much money as they can from consumers. About the only entity large enough to scare them back into some semblance of sanity *IS* the government. It's not an ideal solution, but the ISPs only have themselves to blame for being greedy and sleazy.
I don't know why big companies just can't do what they say they're going to do.
Companies are out to make themselves as much money as they can. To do this, they will often engage in sleazy practices. The only things that keep them in check are 1) fear of losing customers to the competition, 2) government regulation, and 3) lawsuits. Time Warner Cable isn't worried about #1 because in most places they operate they are the only choice (or one of two choices) for wired broadband Internet access. Government regulation worries them (see the Title II debate) but they spend a lot of money lobbying the government to reduce how much they need to worry. As far as lawsuits go... Imagine a giant scale. Put a consumer on one side of the scale. Now put the legal resources of Time Warner Cable on the other side. Which side will weigh more? Even if the consumer has a valid legal gripe, Time Warner Cable's lawyers can tie it up in court enough to either bankrupt the consumer or to threaten to do so enough so as to force the consumer into a settlement (which doesn't set a precedent).
In short, big companies like Time Warner Cable don't have anyone to fear and thus they feel free to do whatever they want to do.
My son is similar to yours. He is diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome and this, plus some muscle tone issues, makes it hard for him to write for a long period of time. Getting him to write out assignments with a pen/pencil is an uphill battle. It frustrates him to no end which spills over into disruptive behavior in class. His IEP has provisions to allow him to use a NetBook which vastly improves his writing capabilities.
I was just like him when I was young. I used to HATE writing assignments. My brain would go faster than my pen and I'd need to re-write passages five times just to fix small mistakes. Then I got a computer and - even with my initial hunt-and-peck typing skills - could get a paper written much quicker and easier.
Computers don't need to be used for everything, but they definitely have a place in the classroom.
Slashdot Mirror
This isn't free speech. Freedom of speech means that you can stand on a street corner, speak your mind, and the government can't say "We don't like your opinion so we're sending you to jail." Freedom of speech doesn't mean that you can lie to people to get money from them. This is called fraud and is illegal. Try claiming "free speech" if you are on trial for fraud and you'll see how quickly the judge brings the hammer down on you.
It might be worth getting that scam call if only to reply: "The Elders of the Internet know who I am?!!!"
My father and my wife's grandmother were both hit by this scam. My dad almost ran their software until the guy mentioned how it would let him remote in. This worried him enough for him to call me. (Though he still tried arguing with me for a bit that "it might be real" when I told him it was a scam.)
My wife's grandmother only escaped from being victimized due to extreme technological non-savvy. Yes, talking her through downloading and running a file was *SO* horrible that the scammer gave up! (They called back another day to try again but by that time, we warned my wife's grandmother and she was prepared.)
Why would the credit card companies allow this?
1) It brings in money to the credit card companies. They have no incentive to stop a money flow from coming in.
2) If the scam gets too much negative PR, the credit card company can "discover" the scammer, cut off their accounts, and publicly declare how shocked (SHOCKED!) they are that this scam was taking place.
In other words, scams like this are free money to the credit card companies with no downside.
You don't even need to expand to terrorism in this example. There are people who think that abortion is murder and murder is bad, but killing doctors who perform abortion is ethically valid behavior.
If you have a problem with your Killbot's operation, please call 1-800-KILL-HMNS and we'll send a customer service Killbot to execute your trouble ticket right away. We won't rest until there are no bug reports submitted by humans.
Robot: Error occurred. Cannot match "turban". Turban is a type of hat, therefore generalizing to match "hat." Also, generalizing to classify five o'clock shadow as "beard." Executing anyone wearing a hat or sporting stubble.
Oftentimes a company complaining about regulation sounds similar to the government complaining about obeying the constitution.
Company: "We want to do it this (much cheaper but much less safe) way but the annoying Government keeps requiring us to abide by basic safety rules!"
Government: "We want to catch the bad guys, but the annoying Constitution keeps requiring us to get these stupid warrants and follow basic law enforcement rules!"
Granted, there are plenty of examples of abuses where companies have lobbied to relax the rules so they could save money by shaving off safety measures or where the government "forgets about" basic law enforcement rules because TERRORIST. In addition, there might be rules that are outdated and need to be revisited. Still, the majority of their complaints just sound like whining over being forced to follow rules instead of being able to do anything they want.
My son, age 11, loves computers so I've wanted to teach him programming for awhile. He loves playing Disney Infinity 2.0 and there is a surprising amount of "coding-light" options in there. (If you step on this switch then this action happens.) He's also gotten to love Blockly which is based on Scratch. He's also joined his school's Lego Robotics club so he's learning some programming there while using Lego Mindstorms.
True, but if you are going to sue Google, you had better be able to prove that Google lowered your ranking with malicious intent. That is, not because you weren't following SEO rules that they apply to all websites but because Google just decided "we don't like this guy" and ranked you lower. If your argument is "we want to be the first listing and we're going to file suit to make this so", then you deserve to lose.
I believe she went through some sort of vision therapy years ago but it wasn't effective. At this point, her brain is just so used to seeing two of everything that it is normal for her. They are also retired and living on a fixed income so expensive, non-insurance-covered therapies to fix something that she can live with aren't an option.
Honestly, what amazes me with my mother driving (and she's a very safe driver, by the way) isn't any depth perception issues but the fact that she sees two lanes, two cars, two of each side of the road, etc. It must take much more concentration to be able to make sure that she is steering down the lane correctly.
Relax your eyes so that the words on your screen split into two sets. That's what it is like for my mother every second of her life. I'm amazed she can function like that, but - as I said in my original comment - that's normal for her. She's never known anything different.
My mother likely has a damaged visual cortex. She was born with double vision and had surgery to correct this. Unfortunately, even though the surgery successfully fixed her eyes, she still sees double. She'll see one image up and slightly to the side of the other - all blended together. Don't ask me how she drives, reads, or even maneuvers around. I wouldn't know which objects (seeing two of everything) to avoid but she has adapted and is used to it. She has said that, to her, it seems natural to see 2 of everything since you have two eyes and seeing one just sounds foreign. (3D movies don't work for her, thanks to this though.)
I think that the "ignoring trolls" problem is that - in the past - ignoring trolls was a good idea. A troll would jump into a forum and make an inflammatory statement (e.g. posting "Windows is better than Linux in every way" on a Slashdot article about a Linux development) just to see the storm that erupted. If the troll's statement was ignored, the troll would usually just go away to post to other forums where the users were "more fun to rile up."
Unfortunately, this "classic troll" is being replaced by a "new troll" who targets specific individuals or groups. This troll doesn't go away when you ignore them but instead uses your silence to guide/spin just what the "argument" is about. Arguing with these trolls is pointless (since you won't convince them that they are wrong), but you can't ignore them either.
"borne out of frustration during an informal debate"
Translation: He likely talks like this to other Uber execs and slipped into "internal exec talk mode" in front of the reporter instead of staying in "reporter in range mode." The apology was a PR move and doesn't represent how he really feels.
I think the quote from UCLA law professor Eugene Volok in the article stated it best:
Think of Google as a massive guidebook. You ask it for information on X and it returns a list of results that it thinks (based on the algorithms) best match X. If someone made a list of "Top 10 Restaurants in New York City" and a restaurant owner was upset that his restaurant didn't make the list, would he be able to sue to get his included as the #1 restaurant in NYC? Of course not. The list publisher has the right to determine who they think are the top 10 restaurants. Likewise, Google has the right to determine who they think are the top matches for any given search.
The point isn't the exact text, but the ranking of websites in the search results.
From the article:
So CoastNews was upset because it wasn't #1 in Google's listings. They sued Google to try to force Google to make them #1 and lost. Google has the right to rank companies as they see fit. Don't like it? Use a different search engine.
If the courts were to allow people to sue to increase their rankings, everyone would file suit against Google and Google would need to increase everyone to rank #1. Of course, this would 1) be impossible - how can you make two different sites #1 in the same search? - and 2) would make the search results useless - search for Widgets and get "Thomas' Terrific Widgets" as the first result not because it matches up the best but because they sued Google to force them into the #1 spot.
If CoastNews wants to improve their rankings, there are actions they can take (SEO), or they can just encourage their users to use Bing and Yahoo instead.
And if not either of those, at the very least it was horrible fashion sense. You're presenting information about a robot that landed on a comet. Wear something a little bit nicer. It doesn't have to be a suit and tie - a polo shirt would have worked just fine.
When the Sun was newly formed, there was a cloud of dust surrounding it. As time passed, the dust particles collided and (thanks to gravity) stuck together, forming bodies of various sizes. Some collided together to form planets. Some were likely thrown out of the solar system (or into the Sun) thanks to gravitational interactions. Some cleared their orbits and became planets. Comets and asteroids are smaller compositions from this era that survived without becoming a planet, moon, or being tossed out.
As far as the fate of Earth, the Sun will turn into a red giant and bake the Earth - if not envelop it completely. Anything man-made that somehow survives the billions of years until this (which itself would be an impressive feat) would likely be melted. Assuming humanity doesn't travel to the stars from now until then, the only remnant of our existence that will survive will be the two Voyager space probes and perhaps some leftovers of our other robotic missions to other planets.
Someone needs to photoshop in one of those cheesy man-in-suit sci-fi aliens. ;-)
I'm feeling the same way. You know that scene in The Lego Movie where Benny finally gets to build a spaceship and he builds/flies it while shouting "SPACESHIP!!!" as loud as he can? I feel like doing that only shouting "ROBOT ON A COMET! ROBOT ON A COMET! ROBOT ON A COMET!!!!!"
Now wishing Slashdot had an Edit button so I could block that Blockquote tag.
I agree. The big ISPs are claiming that they can police themselves and don't need government regulation. Meanwhile, they are abusing their monopoly/duopoly positions to grab as much money as they can from consumers. About the only entity large enough to scare them back into some semblance of sanity *IS* the government. It's not an ideal solution, but the ISPs only have themselves to blame for being greedy and sleazy.
My son is similar to yours. He is diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome and this, plus some muscle tone issues, makes it hard for him to write for a long period of time. Getting him to write out assignments with a pen/pencil is an uphill battle. It frustrates him to no end which spills over into disruptive behavior in class. His IEP has provisions to allow him to use a NetBook which vastly improves his writing capabilities.
I was just like him when I was young. I used to HATE writing assignments. My brain would go faster than my pen and I'd need to re-write passages five times just to fix small mistakes. Then I got a computer and - even with my initial hunt-and-peck typing skills - could get a paper written much quicker and easier.
Computers don't need to be used for everything, but they definitely have a place in the classroom.