Sadly, "perceived slights" can spill over into the real world. For example, there are plenty of stories where people freaked out because a dad was taking photos of his children. Why? Because "man taking photos of child" = pervert! Call the cops!!!!
If you disagree with someone's position, by all means, argue with it (as you appear to be doing), however lobbing death threats and revealing personal information about the person isn't debating their position. It's committing illegal acts in order to scare your opponent into submission.
As a dad, I've noticed the "dumb dad" stereotype. However, I wouldn't say "I'm ok with it so long as men aren't badly stereotyped in this other medium." Instead, I'd be working to get rid of all stereotypes be they "dumb sitcom dad" or "helpless video game female."
This sounds very similar to comic book covers where the women are invariably drawn in highly suggestive poses while the men aren't. (As if women could twist their spines just right so as to best highlight their rear and chest areas.) Somewhere, someone draw an alternative poster for The Avengers movie where Black Widow was drawn in a normal post and the rest of the cast drawn in the kinds of poses women typically get. It looked utterly ridiculous, yet the "normal" version looked fine because we've been conditioned to expect this sort of thing.
Now, if someone calls attention to it and someone else happens to disagree with them, pointing out the flaws in their argument is fine. Calling them names isn't helping their case at all. And threatening them with real physical violence is showing that the criticism is but the tip of an iceberg sized problem.
Side note: Some are claiming that the threats probably weren't credible. However, her address was posted online by some of the people. If someone insults me online, I shrug it off and continue with what I was doing. If someone said "I'm going to kill you" and then posted my address online, though, I'd take that threat seriously. I wouldn't just say "Internet Trolls are going to be Internet Trolls."
Except that this COULD help a police officer who has been wrongly accused. Take the Ferguson case, for example. Let's suppose that the officer had a body camera and it clearly showed the kid doing what the officer claimed he did. Perhaps people would agree with the officer and not be calling for his arrest. However, if the officer had a body camera and it showed the kid standing with his arms up while the cop opened fire, it would provide hard evidence of wrong doing. In other words, this could help exonerate good cops whose actions are misrepresented and bad cops whose actions might otherwise go unpunished thanks to them lying about the circumstances.
The camera video doesn't mean a constant audit. If a cop pulls you over for speeding and lets you go with a warning, his supervisor isn't going to be viewing that recording. If the cop pulls you over for speeding, drags you out of the car, beats you, and then claims that you pulled a gun on him, the supervisor (and possibly jury too) will view the recording and be able to tell whether the officer was correct in his actions.
People behave better when they know they are being filmed.
Not always otherwise the old TV show COPS wouldn't have had any footage to use.
Come to think of it, though, perhaps the local departments could sell some footage to TV "reality" shows in exchange for funding to use the cameras. This arrest brought to you by NBC's new fall lineup!
Also, I'm sure that equipment doesn't just get shoved into a box and forgotten about. There are likely maintenance costs involved. Even if it just shoved into a box until needed, there are likely storage costs. Do away with the tanks for local police and they might find they have some money for cameras.
Even in this extreme case, it would be useful. Obviously, the police often arrive mid-situation. They need to use their judgement based on what they see at the time. The cameras will help by showing us just what they saw and how that led to their actions. In the case of Good Cops, it can exonerate them if the "victims" were shown to be ignoring the police and getting aggressive. In the case of Bad Cops, it can show the the victims weren't getting aggressive like the police claimed and actually were trying to comply. It wouldn't be perfect, but it would be better than "Person A says this happened but the cop says that happened."
Or a "religious interpretation" as creationists are fond of claiming that Evolution (or, to use the more religion-sounding name they call it: Darwinism) is a religious belief.
It isn't, of course, but if they can claim it to be so, and if they can get some politicians to agree, then perhaps they can get Evolution banned as a "religion."
Not only that, but without the "why", the facts can be easily undermined.
Teacher to kids: "Evolution is the process by which species change over time to better suit their environment."
ID Advocate: "See? There's no evidence for it and the so-called scientists are just making things up as they go along. It's not like they have some 'process' they follow. If they did, wouldn't you have been taught that in school?"
Specifically, they want to keep people from using too much Internet video as this competes with their cable TV service. If you could watch as much Internet video as you wanted, you might be able to get all of your video entertainment needs online and thus would be able to cut the cord. With caps... oops, "thresholds", you have a choice of either limiting your Internet video usage and possibly needing to keep cable TV, or using Internet video and paying extra. (Bonus for Comcast: That "extra" goes to them instead of to Netflix, Amazon, Google, or any other Internet Video provider.)
congresscritters receive compensation from corporations in the form of "after public service" appointments
Some of those "after public service" appointments are for lobbying firms, lobbying for the very corporations that the politician so effectively represented in Congress. They then lobby the current Congressfolk, including promises of "after public service" appointments. Thus completes the circle is complete.
Well, yes and no. The aliens did build it, but they used cheap human labor for the grunt work. Sure, they could have just moved the giant blocks with their minds, but aliens are so lazy.
And let's not forget Google's habit of suddenly canceling projects. "I'm sorry, but starting next week the GoogleCar will be shutting down and your automobile will no longer be functional. We apologize for any inconvenience. By the way, have you heard of our new and completely unrelated AndroidMobile service? Perhaps you'd like to purchase a car from us that uses this service."
I know that was a joke, but at the time the cheap labor and no worker safety was right there. Why outsource when slaves will do anything you tell them to do? (Or else!) As for worker safety? Who cares if a few dozen slaves get worked to death? They're cheap enough to replace.
"Completely unsafe?" How many humans drive every day with no incident vs. how many accidents occur? I drive to work every day and don't wind up crashing into a car each time. In my entire driving career (about 20 years), I've been in 4 accidents. (Only 1 of those my fault - though the insurance company disputed the fault of a second one.) I couldn't tell you how many miles I've logged that resulted in me getting to my destination without any harm to me or my passengers. Going by days driven vs. accidents, though, I have about a 0.05% chance of getting into an accident when I set out on the road. Put another way, I'm a 99.95% safe driver.
What's the track record for a theoretical Consumer GoogleCar? It hasn't been released yet, so it's completely unproven. It might be 100% safe. It might only be 75% safe. If it is 90% safe, it will be less safe than me. If it is 99.99% safe, it will be a safer driver than me. The point is that I don't know. Why should I put complete trust in something, eliminating any backup system, when that thing has no track record? Because the company assures me it is safe?
Keep the manual controls so people have that manual backup. If the automated cars are as good as they say, people won't use the steering wheels and the need for them will go away. However, ripping out all backup systems and putting your trust in something with little to no real world experience is short sighted. I'm all for embracing new technology, but bleeding edge shouldn't be referring to possible automated car glitches.
You can have self-driving cars with licensed drivers behind the wheel ready to take over just in case. Trust, but verify. Glitches are bound to occur with any new technology. Saying that you shouldn't have a backup system ready (in this case, a human driver), isn't hobbling the technology, it's verifying it. As the technology proves itself, it will be freed up to do more and more without a driver.
Eventually, we might get to the point where you put your baby in a car seat and tell GoogleCar to drive the baby to Grandma's house. However, I wouldn't trust Version 1.0 of a technology with a task like that right off the bat.
(Before someone points out that Google's been testing these cars; they have, but I'd still consider a consumer release version to be "Version 1.0.")
The scammers wanted my father to run a remote access tool. My assumption at the time was that they were then going to load some trojan or something to take control of the PC (likely silently to harvest as much data as possible). Going by the TechCentral article, they have you enter Paypal and/or Credit card information on a page (while watching what you are typing) to pay them a "PC cleaning fee." If you don't pay them, they start rooting through your PC for valuable documents and/or delete any documents they don't care about. The scam is definitely slick enough that the elderly (or anyone who doesn't know a lot about computers) would get hit hard by it.
I agree that an automated car will need a steering wheel in the immediate future. Once their track record has been proven and people are comfortable with them, however, cars will gradually lose manual controls. We'll likely be telling our grandkids with stories of hundreds of non-automated cars screaming down the highway piloted by fallible humans. Of course, they'll just roll their eyes at us, make an "uphill both ways in the snow" comment, and tell their RobotCar to take them to the mall.
I was taking my boys out bowling last summer when I got a call from my father telling me that "Windows" had called him and told him his computer was infected with a virus. I immediately told him it was a scam and to just hang up. At first, he didn't want to "just in case they were telling the truth", but he eventually hung up on them. They had gotten him to go to a website but not run a program. I told him that even opening a website could infect him and to treat his computer as if it was infected. Later, when I examined the website and his computer, I concluded that the website was a simple page that linked to remote access tools. These were perfectly valid tools (e.g. TeamViewer) from the company's own servers, but obviously being used for nefarious purposes. Running these tools themselves wouldn't have been a problem - except for the scammer on the other end of the connection. The fact that he stopped short of running their tool saved him.
The same scammers (or others running the same scam) called him back a few times since. My dad might not be the most computer savvy, but he does learn. He's not going to fall for the same thing twice and now that he knows it's a scam he berates the person for a few seconds before hanging up on them.
For example, this week I saw a video of a beheading. Now after watching it I probably wish that somebody had filtered that for me.
I haven't seen a video of a beheading because someone filtered it for me. "Someone" being myself. I'm not going to purposefully watch a beheading video. So unless someone tricks me into watching one, I'm not going to see it.
The whole country is a secret: the government of the day suffered a hostile takeover by space aliens masquerading a toupees. Just have a look at any picture of the PM (;-))
Just don't look at Rob Ford. He's not even trying to disguise himself.
Slashdot Mirror
Sadly, "perceived slights" can spill over into the real world. For example, there are plenty of stories where people freaked out because a dad was taking photos of his children. Why? Because "man taking photos of child" = pervert! Call the cops!!!!
If you disagree with someone's position, by all means, argue with it (as you appear to be doing), however lobbing death threats and revealing personal information about the person isn't debating their position. It's committing illegal acts in order to scare your opponent into submission.
As a dad, I've noticed the "dumb dad" stereotype. However, I wouldn't say "I'm ok with it so long as men aren't badly stereotyped in this other medium." Instead, I'd be working to get rid of all stereotypes be they "dumb sitcom dad" or "helpless video game female."
This sounds very similar to comic book covers where the women are invariably drawn in highly suggestive poses while the men aren't. (As if women could twist their spines just right so as to best highlight their rear and chest areas.) Somewhere, someone draw an alternative poster for The Avengers movie where Black Widow was drawn in a normal post and the rest of the cast drawn in the kinds of poses women typically get. It looked utterly ridiculous, yet the "normal" version looked fine because we've been conditioned to expect this sort of thing.
Now, if someone calls attention to it and someone else happens to disagree with them, pointing out the flaws in their argument is fine. Calling them names isn't helping their case at all. And threatening them with real physical violence is showing that the criticism is but the tip of an iceberg sized problem.
Side note: Some are claiming that the threats probably weren't credible. However, her address was posted online by some of the people. If someone insults me online, I shrug it off and continue with what I was doing. If someone said "I'm going to kill you" and then posted my address online, though, I'd take that threat seriously. I wouldn't just say "Internet Trolls are going to be Internet Trolls."
Except that this COULD help a police officer who has been wrongly accused. Take the Ferguson case, for example. Let's suppose that the officer had a body camera and it clearly showed the kid doing what the officer claimed he did. Perhaps people would agree with the officer and not be calling for his arrest. However, if the officer had a body camera and it showed the kid standing with his arms up while the cop opened fire, it would provide hard evidence of wrong doing. In other words, this could help exonerate good cops whose actions are misrepresented and bad cops whose actions might otherwise go unpunished thanks to them lying about the circumstances.
The camera video doesn't mean a constant audit. If a cop pulls you over for speeding and lets you go with a warning, his supervisor isn't going to be viewing that recording. If the cop pulls you over for speeding, drags you out of the car, beats you, and then claims that you pulled a gun on him, the supervisor (and possibly jury too) will view the recording and be able to tell whether the officer was correct in his actions.
Not always otherwise the old TV show COPS wouldn't have had any footage to use.
Come to think of it, though, perhaps the local departments could sell some footage to TV "reality" shows in exchange for funding to use the cameras. This arrest brought to you by NBC's new fall lineup!
Also, I'm sure that equipment doesn't just get shoved into a box and forgotten about. There are likely maintenance costs involved. Even if it just shoved into a box until needed, there are likely storage costs. Do away with the tanks for local police and they might find they have some money for cameras.
Even in this extreme case, it would be useful. Obviously, the police often arrive mid-situation. They need to use their judgement based on what they see at the time. The cameras will help by showing us just what they saw and how that led to their actions. In the case of Good Cops, it can exonerate them if the "victims" were shown to be ignoring the police and getting aggressive. In the case of Bad Cops, it can show the the victims weren't getting aggressive like the police claimed and actually were trying to comply. It wouldn't be perfect, but it would be better than "Person A says this happened but the cop says that happened."
Or a "religious interpretation" as creationists are fond of claiming that Evolution (or, to use the more religion-sounding name they call it: Darwinism) is a religious belief.
It isn't, of course, but if they can claim it to be so, and if they can get some politicians to agree, then perhaps they can get Evolution banned as a "religion."
Not only that, but without the "why", the facts can be easily undermined.
Teacher to kids: "Evolution is the process by which species change over time to better suit their environment."
ID Advocate: "See? There's no evidence for it and the so-called scientists are just making things up as they go along. It's not like they have some 'process' they follow. If they did, wouldn't you have been taught that in school?"
Specifically, they want to keep people from using too much Internet video as this competes with their cable TV service. If you could watch as much Internet video as you wanted, you might be able to get all of your video entertainment needs online and thus would be able to cut the cord. With caps... oops, "thresholds", you have a choice of either limiting your Internet video usage and possibly needing to keep cable TV, or using Internet video and paying extra. (Bonus for Comcast: That "extra" goes to them instead of to Netflix, Amazon, Google, or any other Internet Video provider.)
Some of those "after public service" appointments are for lobbying firms, lobbying for the very corporations that the politician so effectively represented in Congress. They then lobby the current Congressfolk, including promises of "after public service" appointments. Thus completes the circle is complete.
Obligatory Pearls Before Swine.
Money doesn't influence anyone! Also the gumdrop trees in Candy Land are great! ;-)
Well, yes and no. The aliens did build it, but they used cheap human labor for the grunt work. Sure, they could have just moved the giant blocks with their minds, but aliens are so lazy.
And let's not forget Google's habit of suddenly canceling projects. "I'm sorry, but starting next week the GoogleCar will be shutting down and your automobile will no longer be functional. We apologize for any inconvenience. By the way, have you heard of our new and completely unrelated AndroidMobile service? Perhaps you'd like to purchase a car from us that uses this service."
I know that was a joke, but at the time the cheap labor and no worker safety was right there. Why outsource when slaves will do anything you tell them to do? (Or else!) As for worker safety? Who cares if a few dozen slaves get worked to death? They're cheap enough to replace.
Obviously, they had their slaves roll for initiative. The ones who didn't have good initiative were stationed in FRONT of the giant stone dice.
"Completely unsafe?" How many humans drive every day with no incident vs. how many accidents occur? I drive to work every day and don't wind up crashing into a car each time. In my entire driving career (about 20 years), I've been in 4 accidents. (Only 1 of those my fault - though the insurance company disputed the fault of a second one.) I couldn't tell you how many miles I've logged that resulted in me getting to my destination without any harm to me or my passengers. Going by days driven vs. accidents, though, I have about a 0.05% chance of getting into an accident when I set out on the road. Put another way, I'm a 99.95% safe driver.
What's the track record for a theoretical Consumer GoogleCar? It hasn't been released yet, so it's completely unproven. It might be 100% safe. It might only be 75% safe. If it is 90% safe, it will be less safe than me. If it is 99.99% safe, it will be a safer driver than me. The point is that I don't know. Why should I put complete trust in something, eliminating any backup system, when that thing has no track record? Because the company assures me it is safe?
Keep the manual controls so people have that manual backup. If the automated cars are as good as they say, people won't use the steering wheels and the need for them will go away. However, ripping out all backup systems and putting your trust in something with little to no real world experience is short sighted. I'm all for embracing new technology, but bleeding edge shouldn't be referring to possible automated car glitches.
You can have self-driving cars with licensed drivers behind the wheel ready to take over just in case. Trust, but verify. Glitches are bound to occur with any new technology. Saying that you shouldn't have a backup system ready (in this case, a human driver), isn't hobbling the technology, it's verifying it. As the technology proves itself, it will be freed up to do more and more without a driver.
Eventually, we might get to the point where you put your baby in a car seat and tell GoogleCar to drive the baby to Grandma's house. However, I wouldn't trust Version 1.0 of a technology with a task like that right off the bat.
(Before someone points out that Google's been testing these cars; they have, but I'd still consider a consumer release version to be "Version 1.0.")
I come from the future. Just look at my posting date/time. See? Future!
The scammers wanted my father to run a remote access tool. My assumption at the time was that they were then going to load some trojan or something to take control of the PC (likely silently to harvest as much data as possible). Going by the TechCentral article, they have you enter Paypal and/or Credit card information on a page (while watching what you are typing) to pay them a "PC cleaning fee." If you don't pay them, they start rooting through your PC for valuable documents and/or delete any documents they don't care about. The scam is definitely slick enough that the elderly (or anyone who doesn't know a lot about computers) would get hit hard by it.
I agree that an automated car will need a steering wheel in the immediate future. Once their track record has been proven and people are comfortable with them, however, cars will gradually lose manual controls. We'll likely be telling our grandkids with stories of hundreds of non-automated cars screaming down the highway piloted by fallible humans. Of course, they'll just roll their eyes at us, make an "uphill both ways in the snow" comment, and tell their RobotCar to take them to the mall.
I was taking my boys out bowling last summer when I got a call from my father telling me that "Windows" had called him and told him his computer was infected with a virus. I immediately told him it was a scam and to just hang up. At first, he didn't want to "just in case they were telling the truth", but he eventually hung up on them. They had gotten him to go to a website but not run a program. I told him that even opening a website could infect him and to treat his computer as if it was infected. Later, when I examined the website and his computer, I concluded that the website was a simple page that linked to remote access tools. These were perfectly valid tools (e.g. TeamViewer) from the company's own servers, but obviously being used for nefarious purposes. Running these tools themselves wouldn't have been a problem - except for the scammer on the other end of the connection. The fact that he stopped short of running their tool saved him.
The same scammers (or others running the same scam) called him back a few times since. My dad might not be the most computer savvy, but he does learn. He's not going to fall for the same thing twice and now that he knows it's a scam he berates the person for a few seconds before hanging up on them.
I haven't seen a video of a beheading because someone filtered it for me. "Someone" being myself. I'm not going to purposefully watch a beheading video. So unless someone tricks me into watching one, I'm not going to see it.
Just don't look at Rob Ford. He's not even trying to disguise himself.
THE HORROR! THE HORROR!