Slashdot is one of the few places where I post with my real name. (I created this account when I was much younger and don't feel like switching to a new account.) For everything else, I don't want people to know who I am because of the possibility that you could track me down. Sure, there are a lot of Jason Levine's (138 according to HowManyOfMe.com), but a read through my comment history on Reddit or other sites could easily narrow that down.
A few years ago, I attracted the attention of a cyber-stalker. She was convinced that I was the same person as someone she had a beef with (because we both enjoy photography - apparently anyone who likes taking pictures are just one guy). This woman was off her rocker. She literally believed that god spoke to her and she was a prophetess. Needless to say, arguments weren't effective against her. (How do you argue with "God told me this"?!!!) She knew one of her targets' name and location so she reported him to his employer (a school) for crimes that "God" told her he did. It's a good thing he warned his employer first because the crimes (inappropriate contact with children to put it mildly) would get any teacher fired. She also had a habit of reporting her targets to the police for their "crimes." Since she didn't know my exact name/location, she couldn't do this to me. (She's still mucking around but luckily moved on from me.)
Slashdot trolls can be hidden at -1. Reddit trolls will often be right there in the middle of the comments. For example, I was reading a Reddit thread where someone began saying that (paraphrasing) "Jews aren't people because only those who believe in Jesus Christ are people." I've seen anti-Semitic comments like this on Slashdot before but I need to go to -1 to spot them usually. On Reddit, the comment is right there.
Now, this could be a good thing in some instances, sparking conversation and bringing unpopular ideas up for debate instead of moderating them to oblivion. In other instances, though, the commenter isn't looking for an exchange of ideas. They just want to say "Jews aren't people" (or something else) to spark outrage and then laugh as people get upset.
Until recently, it was thought that planets were rare outside our solar system. We didn't have the ability to detect them and thus didn't "see" them. Then we developed the ability to detect super-Jupiter type planets and found a bunch. As our detection methods improved, we were able to see smaller and smaller planets. We still don't have the technology to see Earth sized worlds (though we're getting close). Something the size of a rocket would be invisible to us. In fact, recently we didn't even see an asteroid until it had entered our atmosphere. If a spaceship was parked outside of Pluto's orbit, we likely wouldn't be able to see it.
Communication signals/radio waves are easy to explain away: If your civilization is travelling between star systems, you'll need a better communication system than radio waves provide. The closest star to Earth is over 4 light years away. Imagine sending a ship there and needing to wait 8 years for every reply to your message to them.
There's also the question of whether we would know an alien signal if we saw it. First of all, we're only scanning a tiny portion of the sky. There could easily be signals in areas we're not looking at. Secondly, signals would be in an alien language and might be encoded. If you were given five data files and one might be in a language you've never seen before, encoded in a format you've never seen before, and compressed using a system you've never seen before, would you be able to tell it apart from the garbage files?
Finally, maybe the answer to the Fermi Paradox is that advanced civilizations are common, but space flight between stars is near-impossible. There could be hundreds or thousands of civilizations out there all wondering if they were alone in the Universe. Space is huge. There could easily be a civilization "close" to us (in space terms) that we'll never be able to reach.
I've always hated the Fermi Paradox . "If there's intelligent life in the Universe, why haven't they come here?" There are a ton of possibilities that don't involve no other intelligent life in the Universe. Perhaps interstellar space travel isn't possible so all of the civilizations are stuck on their own planets. Perhaps they have expanded but simply haven't found Earth yet. (Space is huge, after all.) Perhaps they did find Earth and are purposefully not visiting the planet out of some kind of Prime Directive or "Nature Preserve" scenario. Perhaps they found Earth and visited it, but centuries/millennia ago. If alien spacecraft landed here during the stone age, they could have moved on and we'd never know they were here. There are so many more possibilities than "I don't see them right now so therefore they don't exist."
Also, if your civilization has gotten to the point that you can travel between the stars, you might not be communicating in a way that Earthlings can pick up on. Imagine a group of people from the 21st century hiding in various locations and communicating using tools they have available (e.g. smartphones). Now have people from the 18th century try to detect said communications and see if these 21st century people are there and, if so, where they are. I doubt the 18th century people would have any luck detecting communications from the 21st century people.
You can have a computer without having any local storage. I could rip the hard drive out of my laptop, put a LiveCD of a Linux distribution in my CD/DVD drive, and boot it up. Everything will be reset any time I power down, but I doubt anyone would look at that and say "this isn't a computer." Yes, storage is a nice feature of a general purpose computer (and pretty much a requirement for any laptop/desktop/tablet computer), but it doesn't mean that storage-less computers don't have a purpose or that computers without storage aren't computers.
That's what I was wondering about too. Awhile back, we ditched our landline and only kept our cell phones. Our biggest worry, since we had small children, was 911 access but we were assured that it would work fine. After a week, we needed to call 911 for our youngest child (we thought he was choking but it turned out to be a febrile seizure). I called 911 on my cell phone and they immediately knew where we were. This was almost a decade ago.
Dogs can add to a security mix (with locks and other measures) in that they can make a house undesirable to rob. If you're a thief and you are presented with two houses - one with a deadbolt, security cameras, and a large dog, and the other with no deadbolt, cameras, or dog - then everything else being equal you'll go for the easier house. No security measure is 100% guaranteed. You just need to make yourself a less desirable target than everyone else.
Resisting Arrest should be a "modifier charge", meaning that it affects the sentencing of other charges but isn't a crime in and of itself. If you are being arrested for robbery and you resist arrest, it might add time to your sentence. However, if the police are arresting you just because they don't like what you are doing, slapping a "resisting arrest" charge on you should do nothing. If there's no reason behind the arrest, why would resisting arrest be a crime?
I use reusable bags whenever I remember them, but when I get plastic bags I try to reuse them. My problem has been that plastic bags have been getting flimsier and flimsier. Many come with holes in the bottom from the outset - making them horrible to store any kind of trash that could leak out. It really hampers the "reuse" component of "reduce, reuse, recycle."
My wife's grandmother recently passed away due to ALS. It attacked her throat and severely impaired her ability to eat or drink. Towards the end, she was getting all of her "nutrients" via a sponge squeezed in her mouth, hoping that enough went down her throat and not out of her mouth or into her lungs. On the speech front, her voice went from a slight slur (which might have made you think she had a stroke) to full fledged "mumble talking." If she was trying to tell you "It's on the top shelf", all that would come out of her mouth would be "iiiii ooooo eeeee fffffff." Needless to say, this was very stressful for both her and us. She knew was she was trying to say but couldn't express it and we couldn't understand her. She would use a writing pad to write down what she wanted, but it wasn't perfect either.
ALS is a horrible disease. You slowly lose control over your body while your mind continues to function. Eventually, you become trapped in your own body. I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy.
I run a forum as well. The penalties for violating copyright are $200 to $150,000 per work infringed. Even if one item slipped by me and I was hit with a $200 penalty, that would be devastating. That's essentially half of my small forum's yearly budget. And that's if they go on the low end. If the copyright owner went for what seems to be the standard RIAA amount of around $2,000, my forum would permanently be shut down and I'd be in bad financial shape. If they went for the maximum, I'd need to personally declare bankruptcy. All because someone uploaded a screenshot from a movie without getting express permission for that one still. Meanwhile, the financial cost of using one still from a movie without the company's permission is literally $0. (Who looks at a meme image and then decides "Well, guess I don't need to buy THAT movie now!")
Saying "I would hate for lawyers to have to get involved in this" is the non-mafia way of saying "this is a nice place you've got here, it'd be a shame if something HAPPENED to it."
This isn't intended to get to the discovery process. They want to silence any criticism by calling it "libelous." If anyone challenges them, the company will either a) not sue at all, b) sue for a lot of money and then try to settle out of court, or c) sue for a lot of money and then drop the case when the person doesn't back down. They intend this to threaten and intimidate people, not to actually win a lawsuit.
There's nothing wrong with Client Side validation. It lets you prompt the user to correct their mistakes. Of course, this client side validation shouldn't be trusted when the data gets to the server-side. You need to check it on the server side also. Client Side verification has it's place in any good web application.
Terms and conditions are everywhere - not just in applications. Do you have a cell phone? You've agreed to your carrier's terms and conditions. Did you go to the movies? You've agreed to their terms and conditions. Did you attend a concert or sporting event? More terms and conditions. In fact, the terms and conditions for these likely make the ones for a phone app seem like plain, easily understood English.
So people can't avoid terms and conditions unless they stay in their house all day and never venture outside.
The government is (at least in theory) accountable to the people. If the people don't like the actions of members of the government, those government officials can lose their jobs. Companies aren't accountable to people in general - only to those who pay them money. If your information is being sold by company A to companies B, C, D, and E, then you're not their customer - you're their product. They won't care if you don't like your information being sold because you have no say in what they do and likely don't have the legal muscle to stop them. (Especially if they're a big company like Equifax.) However, the government can stop them.
This isn't to say that government regulations are always the solution. Just that they are a useful tool to give people power over companies that wouldn't otherwise be beholden to anyone.
And even if I had the time to spend reading all of that legalese, I might not understand it all or the implications of it. Some privacy policies (as well as Terms & Conditions and EULAs) are written in such a way that you'd need a legal degree to understand them. It doesn't help if you spend hours reading a privacy policy before agreeing to it if the company can slip some verbiage in there that is complicated legalese for "we can do whatever we want to do with your information."
Last year I went to a local Racino and they had these video blackjack tables. You (and a group of other people) would sit in front of an image of a scantily dressed woman. She would "deal" you cards, which would show up on a screen by your seat. You'd place your betting and interact with the cards right there. I'm sure Vegas casinos would love to implement this. They could switch up the women as often as possible - without paying wages or benefits for the virtual women or having them need to take breaks. Plus, the games could ensure as little cheating as possible happened (and might even be able to be tilted in the house's favor).
The ruling was that Trump can't block because he's a government official. Anyone else is free to block without raising First Amendment concerns. Trump could also block if he used his Twitter account for personal updates and the @POTUS account for official updates. When he uses his @realDonaldTrump for government-related updates, though, he (as a member of the government, and a powerful one at that) can't pick and choose who gets to "talk" to him based on political views. When the government stops people from talking to them based on opposing political views, that's the very definition of First Amendment violations.
No, this is saying that a government official can't allow some citizens to comment but block others - especially if the reason behind the blocking is because of their political views.
To use your example, if I go walking in a park and see a politician talking to some citizens, he can't refuse to talk to me because he knows that my views run counter to his. If he's talking to people in the park, he can't make a rule that "Only people with political views X, Y, or Z can talk to me" when he is representing people with political views "A, B, and C" as well.
The FBI was, when it was introuduced, [IIUC] the only agency with the authority to pursue a crime [and criminals] across state borders.
I've seen the importance of this first hand. A few years back, my identity was stolen and a credit card was opened in my name. Due to dumb luck, the card arrived at my house instead of being routed to the address of the identity thief. The local police began investigating but I was quickly told that it likely wouldn't go anywhere because "chances are they're in another state and we're going to do a lot of work only for someone else to get the arrest." Yes, the officer considered it a waste of his time to investigate the case simply because he wouldn't likely be the one whose name would be listed under "arrested by." Sure enough, we hit roadblock after roadblock and only me annoying them pushed the case forward. Finally, it turned out that the thieves really were out of state and the investigation fizzled out. (By that point, I was tired and gave in to the inevitable.)
Granted, the FBI didn't care about my case because there was no monetary loss, but if we only relied on local police then crimes that crossed state lines would rarely, if ever, get prosecuted.
Slashdot Mirror
Slashdot is one of the few places where I post with my real name. (I created this account when I was much younger and don't feel like switching to a new account.) For everything else, I don't want people to know who I am because of the possibility that you could track me down. Sure, there are a lot of Jason Levine's (138 according to HowManyOfMe.com), but a read through my comment history on Reddit or other sites could easily narrow that down.
A few years ago, I attracted the attention of a cyber-stalker. She was convinced that I was the same person as someone she had a beef with (because we both enjoy photography - apparently anyone who likes taking pictures are just one guy). This woman was off her rocker. She literally believed that god spoke to her and she was a prophetess. Needless to say, arguments weren't effective against her. (How do you argue with "God told me this"?!!!) She knew one of her targets' name and location so she reported him to his employer (a school) for crimes that "God" told her he did. It's a good thing he warned his employer first because the crimes (inappropriate contact with children to put it mildly) would get any teacher fired. She also had a habit of reporting her targets to the police for their "crimes." Since she didn't know my exact name/location, she couldn't do this to me. (She's still mucking around but luckily moved on from me.)
Slashdot trolls can be hidden at -1. Reddit trolls will often be right there in the middle of the comments. For example, I was reading a Reddit thread where someone began saying that (paraphrasing) "Jews aren't people because only those who believe in Jesus Christ are people." I've seen anti-Semitic comments like this on Slashdot before but I need to go to -1 to spot them usually. On Reddit, the comment is right there.
Now, this could be a good thing in some instances, sparking conversation and bringing unpopular ideas up for debate instead of moderating them to oblivion. In other instances, though, the commenter isn't looking for an exchange of ideas. They just want to say "Jews aren't people" (or something else) to spark outrage and then laugh as people get upset.
Until recently, it was thought that planets were rare outside our solar system. We didn't have the ability to detect them and thus didn't "see" them. Then we developed the ability to detect super-Jupiter type planets and found a bunch. As our detection methods improved, we were able to see smaller and smaller planets. We still don't have the technology to see Earth sized worlds (though we're getting close). Something the size of a rocket would be invisible to us. In fact, recently we didn't even see an asteroid until it had entered our atmosphere. If a spaceship was parked outside of Pluto's orbit, we likely wouldn't be able to see it.
Communication signals/radio waves are easy to explain away: If your civilization is travelling between star systems, you'll need a better communication system than radio waves provide. The closest star to Earth is over 4 light years away. Imagine sending a ship there and needing to wait 8 years for every reply to your message to them.
There's also the question of whether we would know an alien signal if we saw it. First of all, we're only scanning a tiny portion of the sky. There could easily be signals in areas we're not looking at. Secondly, signals would be in an alien language and might be encoded. If you were given five data files and one might be in a language you've never seen before, encoded in a format you've never seen before, and compressed using a system you've never seen before, would you be able to tell it apart from the garbage files?
Finally, maybe the answer to the Fermi Paradox is that advanced civilizations are common, but space flight between stars is near-impossible. There could be hundreds or thousands of civilizations out there all wondering if they were alone in the Universe. Space is huge. There could easily be a civilization "close" to us (in space terms) that we'll never be able to reach.
I've always hated the Fermi Paradox . "If there's intelligent life in the Universe, why haven't they come here?" There are a ton of possibilities that don't involve no other intelligent life in the Universe. Perhaps interstellar space travel isn't possible so all of the civilizations are stuck on their own planets. Perhaps they have expanded but simply haven't found Earth yet. (Space is huge, after all.) Perhaps they did find Earth and are purposefully not visiting the planet out of some kind of Prime Directive or "Nature Preserve" scenario. Perhaps they found Earth and visited it, but centuries/millennia ago. If alien spacecraft landed here during the stone age, they could have moved on and we'd never know they were here. There are so many more possibilities than "I don't see them right now so therefore they don't exist."
Also, if your civilization has gotten to the point that you can travel between the stars, you might not be communicating in a way that Earthlings can pick up on. Imagine a group of people from the 21st century hiding in various locations and communicating using tools they have available (e.g. smartphones). Now have people from the 18th century try to detect said communications and see if these 21st century people are there and, if so, where they are. I doubt the 18th century people would have any luck detecting communications from the 21st century people.
You can have a computer without having any local storage. I could rip the hard drive out of my laptop, put a LiveCD of a Linux distribution in my CD/DVD drive, and boot it up. Everything will be reset any time I power down, but I doubt anyone would look at that and say "this isn't a computer." Yes, storage is a nice feature of a general purpose computer (and pretty much a requirement for any laptop/desktop/tablet computer), but it doesn't mean that storage-less computers don't have a purpose or that computers without storage aren't computers.
That's what I was wondering about too. Awhile back, we ditched our landline and only kept our cell phones. Our biggest worry, since we had small children, was 911 access but we were assured that it would work fine. After a week, we needed to call 911 for our youngest child (we thought he was choking but it turned out to be a febrile seizure). I called 911 on my cell phone and they immediately knew where we were. This was almost a decade ago.
Dogs can add to a security mix (with locks and other measures) in that they can make a house undesirable to rob. If you're a thief and you are presented with two houses - one with a deadbolt, security cameras, and a large dog, and the other with no deadbolt, cameras, or dog - then everything else being equal you'll go for the easier house. No security measure is 100% guaranteed. You just need to make yourself a less desirable target than everyone else.
Resisting Arrest should be a "modifier charge", meaning that it affects the sentencing of other charges but isn't a crime in and of itself. If you are being arrested for robbery and you resist arrest, it might add time to your sentence. However, if the police are arresting you just because they don't like what you are doing, slapping a "resisting arrest" charge on you should do nothing. If there's no reason behind the arrest, why would resisting arrest be a crime?
He also appeared in Star Trek: The Next Generation and multiple times on The Big Bang Theory, though I love his Futurama work the most.
Hawking: I call it a "Hawking Hole".
Fry: No fair! I saw it first!
Hawking: Who is The Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?
I use reusable bags whenever I remember them, but when I get plastic bags I try to reuse them. My problem has been that plastic bags have been getting flimsier and flimsier. Many come with holes in the bottom from the outset - making them horrible to store any kind of trash that could leak out. It really hampers the "reuse" component of "reduce, reuse, recycle."
My wife's grandmother recently passed away due to ALS. It attacked her throat and severely impaired her ability to eat or drink. Towards the end, she was getting all of her "nutrients" via a sponge squeezed in her mouth, hoping that enough went down her throat and not out of her mouth or into her lungs. On the speech front, her voice went from a slight slur (which might have made you think she had a stroke) to full fledged "mumble talking." If she was trying to tell you "It's on the top shelf", all that would come out of her mouth would be "iiiii ooooo eeeee fffffff." Needless to say, this was very stressful for both her and us. She knew was she was trying to say but couldn't express it and we couldn't understand her. She would use a writing pad to write down what she wanted, but it wasn't perfect either.
ALS is a horrible disease. You slowly lose control over your body while your mind continues to function. Eventually, you become trapped in your own body. I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy.
They're coming for our memes?
Finally, something that might unite the right and left against overbearing copyright laws!
I run a forum as well. The penalties for violating copyright are $200 to $150,000 per work infringed. Even if one item slipped by me and I was hit with a $200 penalty, that would be devastating. That's essentially half of my small forum's yearly budget. And that's if they go on the low end. If the copyright owner went for what seems to be the standard RIAA amount of around $2,000, my forum would permanently be shut down and I'd be in bad financial shape. If they went for the maximum, I'd need to personally declare bankruptcy. All because someone uploaded a screenshot from a movie without getting express permission for that one still. Meanwhile, the financial cost of using one still from a movie without the company's permission is literally $0. (Who looks at a meme image and then decides "Well, guess I don't need to buy THAT movie now!")
Saying "I would hate for lawyers to have to get involved in this" is the non-mafia way of saying "this is a nice place you've got here, it'd be a shame if something HAPPENED to it."
This isn't intended to get to the discovery process. They want to silence any criticism by calling it "libelous." If anyone challenges them, the company will either a) not sue at all, b) sue for a lot of money and then try to settle out of court, or c) sue for a lot of money and then drop the case when the person doesn't back down. They intend this to threaten and intimidate people, not to actually win a lawsuit.
There's nothing wrong with Client Side validation. It lets you prompt the user to correct their mistakes. Of course, this client side validation shouldn't be trusted when the data gets to the server-side. You need to check it on the server side also. Client Side verification has it's place in any good web application.
Terms and conditions are everywhere - not just in applications. Do you have a cell phone? You've agreed to your carrier's terms and conditions. Did you go to the movies? You've agreed to their terms and conditions. Did you attend a concert or sporting event? More terms and conditions. In fact, the terms and conditions for these likely make the ones for a phone app seem like plain, easily understood English.
So people can't avoid terms and conditions unless they stay in their house all day and never venture outside.
The government is (at least in theory) accountable to the people. If the people don't like the actions of members of the government, those government officials can lose their jobs. Companies aren't accountable to people in general - only to those who pay them money. If your information is being sold by company A to companies B, C, D, and E, then you're not their customer - you're their product. They won't care if you don't like your information being sold because you have no say in what they do and likely don't have the legal muscle to stop them. (Especially if they're a big company like Equifax.) However, the government can stop them.
This isn't to say that government regulations are always the solution. Just that they are a useful tool to give people power over companies that wouldn't otherwise be beholden to anyone.
And even if I had the time to spend reading all of that legalese, I might not understand it all or the implications of it. Some privacy policies (as well as Terms & Conditions and EULAs) are written in such a way that you'd need a legal degree to understand them. It doesn't help if you spend hours reading a privacy policy before agreeing to it if the company can slip some verbiage in there that is complicated legalese for "we can do whatever we want to do with your information."
"Those girls don't wear cases. You can see their bare circuits!"
Last year I went to a local Racino and they had these video blackjack tables. You (and a group of other people) would sit in front of an image of a scantily dressed woman. She would "deal" you cards, which would show up on a screen by your seat. You'd place your betting and interact with the cards right there. I'm sure Vegas casinos would love to implement this. They could switch up the women as often as possible - without paying wages or benefits for the virtual women or having them need to take breaks. Plus, the games could ensure as little cheating as possible happened (and might even be able to be tilted in the house's favor).
The ruling was that Trump can't block because he's a government official. Anyone else is free to block without raising First Amendment concerns. Trump could also block if he used his Twitter account for personal updates and the @POTUS account for official updates. When he uses his @realDonaldTrump for government-related updates, though, he (as a member of the government, and a powerful one at that) can't pick and choose who gets to "talk" to him based on political views. When the government stops people from talking to them based on opposing political views, that's the very definition of First Amendment violations.
No, this is saying that a government official can't allow some citizens to comment but block others - especially if the reason behind the blocking is because of their political views.
To use your example, if I go walking in a park and see a politician talking to some citizens, he can't refuse to talk to me because he knows that my views run counter to his. If he's talking to people in the park, he can't make a rule that "Only people with political views X, Y, or Z can talk to me" when he is representing people with political views "A, B, and C" as well.
I've seen the importance of this first hand. A few years back, my identity was stolen and a credit card was opened in my name. Due to dumb luck, the card arrived at my house instead of being routed to the address of the identity thief. The local police began investigating but I was quickly told that it likely wouldn't go anywhere because "chances are they're in another state and we're going to do a lot of work only for someone else to get the arrest." Yes, the officer considered it a waste of his time to investigate the case simply because he wouldn't likely be the one whose name would be listed under "arrested by." Sure enough, we hit roadblock after roadblock and only me annoying them pushed the case forward. Finally, it turned out that the thieves really were out of state and the investigation fizzled out. (By that point, I was tired and gave in to the inevitable.)
Granted, the FBI didn't care about my case because there was no monetary loss, but if we only relied on local police then crimes that crossed state lines would rarely, if ever, get prosecuted.