No, forget it. Christopher Columbus went with destruction, and we all know that intelligent beings from more advanced civilisations would do the same dumb things as people 5 centuries ago.
Five centuries or five years, human behavior has only changed shape to suit the available technologies and accommodate much larger population bases. Other than that, everything is the same, or perhaps even worse since psychopaths have multiplied in the capitalist environment.
Slavery, which was one of the top destructive forces in Columbus' day, remains alive and well today, the difference being that we keep our slaves in factories in other nations rather than on plantations in our backyards.
Whereas resource rape is relatively new; there was no strip mining in Columbus' day, but if they could have they would have, no doubt.
The way we treat the cattle and various livestock industries should offer an indication as to how we might find ourselves treated by an alien presence. Life eats life and we are not the top of the food chain, but human egotism is such that we think aliens would want to parlay with us rather than just treat us like a resource.
Aliens have been here since the dawn of history and simply remain hidden because they exist in a higher energetic state. We are trees to their people, and with our vastly limited perceptive abilities as compared to theirs, we are nothing more than a crop awaiting harvest.
Why do you think we built all those hundreds of empty concentration camps. . ?
Seriously, what would any civilization want from a messed up, polluted tiny little planet like Earth? Any resource we have, except our own stupidity, is more abundant elsewhere.
Life eats life. The food chain is self-evident at every level. If an alien civilization is operating at a level higher than us, (and it is), then it will eat us. And don't attempt to use your out-moded filtered thinking to analyze that statement. You need to consider the problem in altogether the opposite direction from Ridley Scott and similar.
It's partly about Energy, or Chi, or whatever you want to call it. -You know; that stuff we're not allowed to believe in but which is the fundamental construct around which everything revolves. The farmers wouldn't want the 6 billion head of livestock putting two and two together. . .
So you are saying as long as you get rid of the psychopaths, there will be no problems? I've known too many people to believe that, sorry.
No that's not what I'm saying, and you know it.
Humans are always going to have challenges and they are always going to be have to struggle to learn compassion. The difference, however, between a human and a psychopath is that humans CAN learn compassion while psychopaths cannot. A shark can't stop being a shark.
All I'm saying is that it makes sense to stop pretending that sharks don't exist and to do something about them. Because right now, we are allowing them to hold the most powerful offices in the world and we are allowing them to send us into endless wars and economic disasters.
Are you saying that we should continue to do this?
I've known far too many people who don't want to face reality to believe that I should go along with them, sorry.
That's how it starts....then you start rounding up other people who interfere with your plans, and people who just don't want to go along with your idea of communism. Most dictators start with good intentions......
I disagree. I think the myth is that it starts this way when in reality it is simply that the nastiest street thug most committed to evil is the one which rises to the top.
Understanding of psychopathy in medical terms is very new. To my knowledge, the only organizations even starting to deal with the problem are a few corporations which have hired specialists in the field to sift through employee rosters in problem areas in order to root out dangerous individuals. Why not within the halls of government?
We have the tools. It should be a requirement that anybody in any government position be certified sane and human. The problem is that most of the key figures in government would come up positive for the condition. It would rock the world.
So some blogger says something stupid, and it's suddenly worthy of FOX News coverage?
Gee. THAT's not indicative of anything.
Here's the scoop: Anybody who reacts with indignation against Islam as a result of this story is jumping exactly the way the propagandist sell-outs over at FOX want you to jump. If this describes you, then you are a complete tool. Nice job.
I think it depends on how it is implemented. Google is run almost exclusively on ad revenue. Economy of scale; the size of the user base, the size of the employee roster and the size of the ads themselves. There are obviously magic ratios which if are not adhered to are bound to fail.
But I still agree with you. That magic ratio shouldn't be as it is. It should be much more forgiving.
I think a much better way to make things work is to reduce the amount of money a person needs to survive in the real world. If we take some of the larger living expenses, like house payments, for instance, and slash those by a huge percentage, then people would be able to engage in activities with lower financial reward but higher spiritual gain. The world wasn't always as difficult to live in. Only twenty years ago, it was possible to rent whole houses in my area for $300. Now you're lucky if you can get a single room with shared facilities for that much.
This rise in cost is NOT solely a function of inflation. If basic inflation were entirely to blame for the rise in such costs, then it wouldn't matter because people's income would rise in kind, but there is a total non-parity between the two. When I was a kid, only my father worked, and he was able to raise three kids and pay for our entire house by his mid-30's on a mid-level engineer's salary. That was a very common story back then, but today most 35 year-olds are in debt up to their ears and hardly anybody can afford to be full-time stay at home parents. There are clearly other factors at work.
If we can address these factors, then the world will become much, much better and silly stories like this one about ad-blocking would become totally unnecessary.
That's hardly original. Why do you think you felt the need to point out that argument which has been used a few hundred million times. What motivated you?
Because any oft-repeated mantra is usually a thought-program designed to control a population; designed to groove a population into one set of ideas.
What that old argument describes isn't Communism. It describes a dictatorship run by a psychopath which took control of a budding system which was never allowed to flourish. Hardly ideal. It's basically a non-argument designed to keep people divided and conquered. What is more curious, however, is that you probably know that already.
I think well-educated community co-operatives without usury and which are disconnected from dictatorial federal oversight are a better plan. And when I say "well-educated", I don't mean propagandized. In particular, people need to be taught how to teach themselves, how to learn without bias and how to accept pure knowledge without knee-jerking. Only in this way can truly sensible systems be implemented without blind spots. Any system of thought which evolves around knee-jerks is going to have weak areas because people who refuse to think about certain ideas and simply pretend they don't exist are going to fall prey to them. In particular, the nature of the sociopathic individual needs to be understood.
I think the way to solve many of the world's problems is simply to weed out all the psychopaths, or to at least recognize their existence and learn how to route around their inherent damage effectively. Until that happens, no system has a chance of flourishing in a manner which leads to the overall health and happiness of a populace.
One thought, (applicable if we lived an animated story-book universe), is that upon purchasing the technology and the people behind it, I would also be sure to purchase a team of people to make the invention disappear from public awareness. Then I would pay them extra to make themselves disappear as well. (The greatest victory of advertisers was making people believe that advertising doesn't work.)
But that's only if we lived in an animated story-book universe.
In the real universe, this technology was probably developed a long time ago, then ignored because it's clunky and stupid. When you can simply instruct people to not see what you don't want them to see, then who needs a cloak of invisibility? Controlling the minds of those doing the perceiving is infinitely more powerful, -and dastardly. There's something somewhat sporting about using an invisibility cloak, whereas mind control is just plain creepy, largely because after a certain point, it's puts the choice in the lap of the victim. Making your victim choose to be a victim is downright insidious.
I'd liken it more to the whole "Swine Flu Epidemic". People were getting sick, but it was largely a combination of regular flu season mixed with "Cure worse than the disease" with the final payoff being that everybody was so uniformly terrified that it was easy to manipulate whole populations into doing stupid things. (In that case, giving billions of dollars to the pharmaceutical industry and keeping fear at a high).
Sure, China has corruption. But so does every country. However it is being spun deliberately, I suspect, in order to create the new Red Menace in order to maintain the divided (and conquered) state of the Human race.
Post-doc biologists at Harvard have to publish 70 papers in 7 years (if memory serves) to even qualify for a junior faculty position. There's no way that a scientist can publish ten papers per year that are worth jack squat, and the result is that most of the papers coming out of Harvard are garbage that get published because of where they come from. This isn't a China-only problem.
Thank-you for pointing this out.
In reading this whole thread, I am getting a MASSIVE propaganda vibe off the entire thing.
Basically, the stress test of truth I sometimes use around here works like this. . .
"If 98% of Slashdot is united in praise or condemnation on any subject, then somebody somewhere is playing the social-engineering violin extremely well, because this bunch can't even agree on the direction of gravity's pull. -Nor should they, which means something is wrong."
I guess it's true; if you sustain a BS message for long enough, it becomes self-referential and emotionally true. How can we have come so far, learned so much and still fall for the same old and tired psychological ploys?
It's important to remember that UFO means "Unidentified Flying Object." That can be anything: A bird, a plane, or debris of various sorts.
If you're still stuck on that, then you've been arguing with idiots and you are miles behind the educated. So, yes, thank-you. The adults have figured out what the acronym "UFO" means. Now perhaps you might want to ask why people are rolling their eyes at you and what they might know which you haven't worked out yet.
Dolan is a nutjob entertainer? Sorry, but he doesn't write with the kind of adolescent vitriol your silly post is ringing with, so I'm inclined to take an academic of his caliber rather more seriously than you. Your canned examples function on the FOX News talking point level of intelligence, and utterly fail upon close examination. -Which, if you recall from your reading of Dolan's two books on the subject, were all in fact thoughtfully deconstructed with citations and disciplined logic which must have dazzled and amazed you to such a degree that you completely forgot about them when typing out your little post. Do you also demand, "If God exists then how can there be war?".
Grow up and do some reading beyond your comfort zone, because frankly, it is very clear that you haven't the foggiest notion of what you are talking about.
He has to *resubmit* it? What, do they delete them after they reject them? That seems odd.
It's all about control. He must respect their little system, whereby he asks them for permission and they get to exercise total arbitrary power over him. Even in fault, the plaintiff must do the grovelling and play his part as head-bowing subject.
I think around Apple, the 'Submit' button means something far yuckier than it does, say, when posting on Slashdot.
you have a strange definition of a perfect world. the security of a schools computer system was compromised from a remote location, and you'd prefer to keep the police out of it? somehow they were to psychically know that the perpetrator was a 9 year old with minimal malicious intent and thus shouldn't bother to investigate?
Yeah, that's a fair cop on your part. I didn't read the article and assumed that the hack was done on school grounds and thus lay withing the boundaries and resources of the school admin staff to remedy through basic disciplinary measures.
Still. . . As others have pointed out, the Blackboard software sounds like a security hazard waiting to happen. A perfect world would presumably not invite such trouble. It's an interesting problem; when the school is accessible from home through the internet, how do you track student behavior without the need for calling on outside resources like the police, who presumably have better things to do?
I simply do not care about any UFO report from the past decade that does not meet that standard. Find multiple, independent surveillance camera or other video views of it, and I am interested. If you don't have that then you are wasting your time and breath IMHO.
And I'm just pointing out that this exists, with the one simple proviso that it is not being placed conveniently in your lap for review with the shining stamp of social approval. Do you always let other people's fear levels determine what is "real" for you? If so, then that's actually quite normal. I just find it limiting, and prefer to think for myself since most people are frightened, delicate creatures all too ready to behave in a manner rationally counter to the demands of reality in order to stay in the good books with the herd.
I am sure many on/. regard me as an ultra-conservative, reactionary, revolutionary, communist maniac - which is true - so perhaps I am not in the best position to teach people about open-mindedness, respect for the right of other people (and businesses) to choose for themselves etc.
Ha ha! You're sure of that, are you? Let me be the first to inform you that nobody regards you as anything at all.
Here's a piece of news I find very comforting; there is so much signal on Slashdot that even the most malignant and delusional egos are drowned out and promptly forgotten by the crowd. And that is definitely for the best. So don't worry. You're not in danger of teaching anybody anything.
We all have temperamental egos, and they must all be brought under whip if any positive growth is to happen. But you're not even trying.
Now, why do we never get such multiple confirmations of UFOs ?
Well, we certainly have multiple-witness sightings. Lots of them, in fact. Hundreds involving pilots, police, military personnel as well as countless regular civilians, but the media is loathe to cover such stories, probably because biased, timid and over-ridden people are working the various editorial desks.
Read Richard M. Dolan if you want to know the actual state of things.
While there are going to be exceptions, (ie, geeks excited about trying new technological solutions), most iPad/Pod/Phone users I've met typify AOL customers of old.
With one significant added dimension. . .
There's a weird Christian-ness about them which is hard to put my finger on. Clean-shaven, pleasant-but-fake facade which feels cultish. They make my stomach squelch nervously when I'm around one of them. -Which either means I'm the anti-Christ, or something deep in my DNA is reacting with fight/flight chemistry to the smiling pod people.
Your points are all very valid. People must be allowed to choose to be retarded if they wish it.
But it's still retarded, and worth making noise about. That's how the opposite choice is made clear. We're just coloring the two jars you can throw your chit into.
-Because, with the amount of media support Job's is getting, (essentially billions in free advertising), complaining and guffawing now is probably what will make the difference between a world where Apple exercises far too much power over the internet and one where Apple remains just a big patch of retarded I can still circumvent with a minimum fuss.
Such people all seem to have the same brain-workings and general issues with reality. -They all tend to write with the outward fire of social rebellion, and yet despite this public display, never fail to subtly align themselves with one manner of corporate/government propaganda or another.
Seriously; Read this guy's post and then compare with the posting patterns of similar people. They're like a species of weed or fungus or something. Usually it's best to avoid such sorts because they are incapable of learning or advancing, (though they can adapt in the same manner that a weed will adapt to environmental conditions, but they will never be able to separate themselves from their essential 'weedness'. -Or at least, I've never seen it happen yet). Thus, as far as I can tell, parlay with such types is largely a pointless exercise. But in this case, I'll make an exception because his (its) post is destructively false. (Which is always the case with noxious organisms, I suppose.)
Basically, there have been many accusations leveled at nicotine, but a perusal of the Wikipedia article on nicotine toxicology will highlight the phrase, "remains to be proven".
Nicotine is an exceptional drug with numerous very useful qualities, one of which is that it has the singular effect of quieting and sharpening the mind without affecting judgment. It is no wonder to me at all that governments are loath to encourage its use, particularly as it counters the effect of FUD; one of the primary tools used to control populations.
I've heard this nonsense argument before, and explained why it was silly then. I wonder if you're the same guy? If so, then it means you are practicing what is known as "Mechanical Thinking" where regardless of having your argument dismantled without adequate rebuttal, you simply reboot and repeat the same broken argument as though you were deaf and blind.
If you're not the same guy, then please do a little research. Essentially, what you will discover is that most drugs in sufficient quantity will cause harm. Even water will kill you if you drink enough of it too quickly. The point of medicines is that in small quantities, a beneficial narcotic effect is present.
If you can't grasp that, then by all means, just reboot, but don't be surprised if nobody takes you seriously.
First of all, while checking to see if this thing is basically an avatar, I ran across this incredibly stupid image.
Somebody, somewhere was given the task of making NASA appeal to the youth of today. By giving space robots Boba Fett heads. I cringe. I am cringing right this moment. And I am thrown into a confused state. Are people REALLY REALLY this stupid? Or was this deliberately made stupid for some other manipulative reason? I can't really tell. Or. . , (and this one is the worst possibility of the lot), am I going to be the only one who thinks this is stupid while the rest of the general population says, "Oooh, cool!"
Please do not let it be the last. Please. No really. Please.
Okay. Now where was I. . ?
Right. I already know the answers to the above. . .
We've been hit with "Avatar" and "Dollhouse" and that Bruce Willis film, "Surrogates" and that really bad film, "Gamer" (I think it was called that), and the military is using drone hunter/killer flying machines, and now this. And there's got to be a couple I missed, all within the last couple of years.
My guess is that somebody, somewhere is trying to groove human awareness on the idea that people and creatures can be thought of as simply suits of muscle and nerves. That people are machines which can host different operators. (Which is easy enough to achieve; I doubt the yo-yo's who built these things had any idea what they were doing, needing whispers from beyond to get them working; stuff I'm sure they thought were their own minds talking to them. Avatars building avatars. Ha ha!)
Which is a good message, because it's true. -With the soul in many cases being the operator, but that it can be tinkered with, interrupted, removed, replaced, and that you can have empty shells walking around on automatic. But apparently the resistance to this notion is such that it takes a whole slow-burning ga-zillion dollar media blitz to warm the Normals into accepting such basic stuff.
But Jeez. Those robots look stupid. So yeah. This one must be for the Normals.
Deliberate lies in print, even on web-pages is Libel.
Well now, that's your opinion, isn't it? Everything else you wrote was dictionary-form accurate, but if web-pages and print were commonly agreed to be identical forms in a legal sense, then this story wouldn't have made it to Slashdot.
The reason stories of this nature are interesting is that their outcomes are currently up in the air and the rules (and fate) of the internet is still being decided.
I certainly hope that anonymity is maintained on the web, because the people who decide these things are corruptible humans unworthy of the public trust they currently hold as it is.
People should instead be taught that information offered up by an anonymous source is of less value than that which comes attached to a real name. Read at your own risk and don't get your knickers in a twist. Anyway, forums should self-regulate. I notice that around here hate-speach people tend to get side-lined. The Mod system, for all its warts, is actually pretty amazing.
In a film, you re-tell the myth of the hero. Superman, (from the 70's) did this really well; the origin story for Superman is wonderful! Doing sequels at two-year intervals, however, are little hard to get into because it's really the same story; "Bad guys try, but Superman is unstoppable. And he's lonely. The end." The second Superman movie managed to be a lot of fun by side-stepping this limitation, but still, there's only a limited number of times you can run through the basic myth. Though, as a long-running set of episodic stories. . . Superman gets interesting when you start to explore his personal relationships over many episodes. I remember "Lois & Clark" was really quite solid. Joss Whedon could have a field day with that!
Batman is also a great myth we like to hear told over and over. Though the latest film turned me right off. It was just too violent; it made me feel sick. Either I'm growing more empathic in my old age, or Hollywood is regressing further into savagery. Some of both, I suspect.
I liked the first X-Men film, and even enjoyed the cinematic travesty which was the third one, probably because it felt exactly like reading a bunch of random comics about the X-Men. Jumbled, but contained somehow by the larger idea.
Joss Whedon's X-Men comic was pretty awesome, though it was written in movie-format rather than as a long-running story. It was even drawn like a story-boarded screen play, which I thought really hurt it. The artwork, while technically gorgeous, was far too static. It felt like I was looking at series of paintings rather than a comic book. I missed the awesome dynamism of the Chris Claremont/John Byrne days. But the writing was fantastic! What a story!
Though, it would have been a rotten read for anybody coming to the X-Men fresh. It's only when you are already immersed in the X-Men universe, when all the characters are already well-established in the reader's mind that Joss's writing on that book worked.
I think Joss Whedon is at his best in TV when he can develop characters over a long period. But then. . , I suppose, everybody knows who the characters are in the Avengers, so maybe he can pull it off. Still. . , I'd be much happier renting a DVD set with a season of Joss Whedon's Avengers.
Oh, and I thought Ironman was very well-produced and technically well-written formula crap. Which shouldn't bother me, because the whole idea with a comic-book movie is that we already know the story going in. Maybe it's because Robert Downey Jr. puts me to sleep. I don't know why that is, exactly. Maybe because he mumbles too much? Maybe because he looks kind of stoned on anti-depressants all the time? Whatever the case, I can't relate to that shell of a man at all.
Why does everybody like that guy so much? Maybe because half of America is on Paxol or some other lithium drug themselves and they CAN relate to him. Whatever.
Slashdot Mirror
No, forget it. Christopher Columbus went with destruction, and we all know that intelligent beings from more advanced civilisations would do the same dumb things as people 5 centuries ago.
Five centuries or five years, human behavior has only changed shape to suit the available technologies and accommodate much larger population bases. Other than that, everything is the same, or perhaps even worse since psychopaths have multiplied in the capitalist environment.
Slavery, which was one of the top destructive forces in Columbus' day, remains alive and well today, the difference being that we keep our slaves in factories in other nations rather than on plantations in our backyards.
Whereas resource rape is relatively new; there was no strip mining in Columbus' day, but if they could have they would have, no doubt.
The way we treat the cattle and various livestock industries should offer an indication as to how we might find ourselves treated by an alien presence. Life eats life and we are not the top of the food chain, but human egotism is such that we think aliens would want to parlay with us rather than just treat us like a resource.
Aliens have been here since the dawn of history and simply remain hidden because they exist in a higher energetic state. We are trees to their people, and with our vastly limited perceptive abilities as compared to theirs, we are nothing more than a crop awaiting harvest.
Why do you think we built all those hundreds of empty concentration camps. . ?
-FL
Seriously, what would any civilization want from a messed up, polluted tiny little planet like Earth? Any resource we have, except our own stupidity, is more abundant elsewhere.
Life eats life. The food chain is self-evident at every level. If an alien civilization is operating at a level higher than us, (and it is), then it will eat us. And don't attempt to use your out-moded filtered thinking to analyze that statement. You need to consider the problem in altogether the opposite direction from Ridley Scott and similar.
It's partly about Energy, or Chi, or whatever you want to call it. -You know; that stuff we're not allowed to believe in but which is the fundamental construct around which everything revolves. The farmers wouldn't want the 6 billion head of livestock putting two and two together. . .
-FL
So you are saying as long as you get rid of the psychopaths, there will be no problems? I've known too many people to believe that, sorry.
No that's not what I'm saying, and you know it.
Humans are always going to have challenges and they are always going to be have to struggle to learn compassion. The difference, however, between a human and a psychopath is that humans CAN learn compassion while psychopaths cannot. A shark can't stop being a shark.
All I'm saying is that it makes sense to stop pretending that sharks don't exist and to do something about them. Because right now, we are allowing them to hold the most powerful offices in the world and we are allowing them to send us into endless wars and economic disasters.
Are you saying that we should continue to do this?
I've known far too many people who don't want to face reality to believe that I should go along with them, sorry.
-FL
That's how it starts....then you start rounding up other people who interfere with your plans, and people who just don't want to go along with your idea of communism. Most dictators start with good intentions......
I disagree. I think the myth is that it starts this way when in reality it is simply that the nastiest street thug most committed to evil is the one which rises to the top.
Understanding of psychopathy in medical terms is very new. To my knowledge, the only organizations even starting to deal with the problem are a few corporations which have hired specialists in the field to sift through employee rosters in problem areas in order to root out dangerous individuals. Why not within the halls of government?
We have the tools. It should be a requirement that anybody in any government position be certified sane and human. The problem is that most of the key figures in government would come up positive for the condition. It would rock the world.
-FL
So some blogger says something stupid, and it's suddenly worthy of FOX News coverage?
Gee. THAT's not indicative of anything.
Here's the scoop: Anybody who reacts with indignation against Islam as a result of this story is jumping exactly the way the propagandist sell-outs over at FOX want you to jump. If this describes you, then you are a complete tool. Nice job.
-FL
I think it depends on how it is implemented. Google is run almost exclusively on ad revenue. Economy of scale; the size of the user base, the size of the employee roster and the size of the ads themselves. There are obviously magic ratios which if are not adhered to are bound to fail.
But I still agree with you. That magic ratio shouldn't be as it is. It should be much more forgiving.
I think a much better way to make things work is to reduce the amount of money a person needs to survive in the real world. If we take some of the larger living expenses, like house payments, for instance, and slash those by a huge percentage, then people would be able to engage in activities with lower financial reward but higher spiritual gain. The world wasn't always as difficult to live in. Only twenty years ago, it was possible to rent whole houses in my area for $300. Now you're lucky if you can get a single room with shared facilities for that much.
This rise in cost is NOT solely a function of inflation. If basic inflation were entirely to blame for the rise in such costs, then it wouldn't matter because people's income would rise in kind, but there is a total non-parity between the two. When I was a kid, only my father worked, and he was able to raise three kids and pay for our entire house by his mid-30's on a mid-level engineer's salary. That was a very common story back then, but today most 35 year-olds are in debt up to their ears and hardly anybody can afford to be full-time stay at home parents. There are clearly other factors at work.
If we can address these factors, then the world will become much, much better and silly stories like this one about ad-blocking would become totally unnecessary.
-FL
That's hardly original. Why do you think you felt the need to point out that argument which has been used a few hundred million times. What motivated you?
Because any oft-repeated mantra is usually a thought-program designed to control a population; designed to groove a population into one set of ideas.
What that old argument describes isn't Communism. It describes a dictatorship run by a psychopath which took control of a budding system which was never allowed to flourish. Hardly ideal. It's basically a non-argument designed to keep people divided and conquered. What is more curious, however, is that you probably know that already.
I think well-educated community co-operatives without usury and which are disconnected from dictatorial federal oversight are a better plan. And when I say "well-educated", I don't mean propagandized. In particular, people need to be taught how to teach themselves, how to learn without bias and how to accept pure knowledge without knee-jerking. Only in this way can truly sensible systems be implemented without blind spots. Any system of thought which evolves around knee-jerks is going to have weak areas because people who refuse to think about certain ideas and simply pretend they don't exist are going to fall prey to them. In particular, the nature of the sociopathic individual needs to be understood.
I think the way to solve many of the world's problems is simply to weed out all the psychopaths, or to at least recognize their existence and learn how to route around their inherent damage effectively. Until that happens, no system has a chance of flourishing in a manner which leads to the overall health and happiness of a populace.
-FL
Yeah, this is just weird.
One thought, (applicable if we lived an animated story-book universe), is that upon purchasing the technology and the people behind it, I would also be sure to purchase a team of people to make the invention disappear from public awareness. Then I would pay them extra to make themselves disappear as well. (The greatest victory of advertisers was making people believe that advertising doesn't work.)
But that's only if we lived in an animated story-book universe.
In the real universe, this technology was probably developed a long time ago, then ignored because it's clunky and stupid. When you can simply instruct people to not see what you don't want them to see, then who needs a cloak of invisibility? Controlling the minds of those doing the perceiving is infinitely more powerful, -and dastardly. There's something somewhat sporting about using an invisibility cloak, whereas mind control is just plain creepy, largely because after a certain point, it's puts the choice in the lap of the victim. Making your victim choose to be a victim is downright insidious.
-FL
I'd liken it more to the whole "Swine Flu Epidemic". People were getting sick, but it was largely a combination of regular flu season mixed with "Cure worse than the disease" with the final payoff being that everybody was so uniformly terrified that it was easy to manipulate whole populations into doing stupid things. (In that case, giving billions of dollars to the pharmaceutical industry and keeping fear at a high).
Sure, China has corruption. But so does every country. However it is being spun deliberately, I suspect, in order to create the new Red Menace in order to maintain the divided (and conquered) state of the Human race.
-FL
Post-doc biologists at Harvard have to publish 70 papers in 7 years (if memory serves) to even qualify for a junior faculty position. There's no way that a scientist can publish ten papers per year that are worth jack squat, and the result is that most of the papers coming out of Harvard are garbage that get published because of where they come from. This isn't a China-only problem.
Thank-you for pointing this out.
In reading this whole thread, I am getting a MASSIVE propaganda vibe off the entire thing.
Basically, the stress test of truth I sometimes use around here works like this. . .
"If 98% of Slashdot is united in praise or condemnation on any subject, then somebody somewhere is playing the social-engineering violin extremely well, because this bunch can't even agree on the direction of gravity's pull. -Nor should they, which means something is wrong."
I guess it's true; if you sustain a BS message for long enough, it becomes self-referential and emotionally true. How can we have come so far, learned so much and still fall for the same old and tired psychological ploys?
-FL
It's important to remember that UFO means "Unidentified Flying Object." That can be anything: A bird, a plane, or debris of various sorts.
If you're still stuck on that, then you've been arguing with idiots and you are miles behind the educated. So, yes, thank-you. The adults have figured out what the acronym "UFO" means. Now perhaps you might want to ask why people are rolling their eyes at you and what they might know which you haven't worked out yet.
Dolan is a nutjob entertainer? Sorry, but he doesn't write with the kind of adolescent vitriol your silly post is ringing with, so I'm inclined to take an academic of his caliber rather more seriously than you. Your canned examples function on the FOX News talking point level of intelligence, and utterly fail upon close examination. -Which, if you recall from your reading of Dolan's two books on the subject, were all in fact thoughtfully deconstructed with citations and disciplined logic which must have dazzled and amazed you to such a degree that you completely forgot about them when typing out your little post. Do you also demand, "If God exists then how can there be war?".
Grow up and do some reading beyond your comfort zone, because frankly, it is very clear that you haven't the foggiest notion of what you are talking about.
Bye now.
-FL
He has to *resubmit* it? What, do they delete them after they reject them? That seems odd.
It's all about control. He must respect their little system, whereby he asks them for permission and they get to exercise total arbitrary power over him. Even in fault, the plaintiff must do the grovelling and play his part as head-bowing subject.
I think around Apple, the 'Submit' button means something far yuckier than it does, say, when posting on Slashdot.
-FL
you have a strange definition of a perfect world. the security of a schools computer system was compromised from a remote location, and you'd prefer to keep the police out of it? somehow they were to psychically know that the perpetrator was a 9 year old with minimal malicious intent and thus shouldn't bother to investigate?
Yeah, that's a fair cop on your part. I didn't read the article and assumed that the hack was done on school grounds and thus lay withing the boundaries and resources of the school admin staff to remedy through basic disciplinary measures.
Still. . . As others have pointed out, the Blackboard software sounds like a security hazard waiting to happen. A perfect world would presumably not invite such trouble. It's an interesting problem; when the school is accessible from home through the internet, how do you track student behavior without the need for calling on outside resources like the police, who presumably have better things to do?
-FL
No kidding!
That brightened my day considerably. Though in a perfectly sane world, the police would never have become involved in the first place.
-FL
I simply do not care about any UFO report from the past decade that does not meet that standard. Find multiple, independent surveillance camera or other video views of it, and I am interested. If you don't have that then you are wasting your time and breath IMHO.
And I'm just pointing out that this exists, with the one simple proviso that it is not being placed conveniently in your lap for review with the shining stamp of social approval. Do you always let other people's fear levels determine what is "real" for you? If so, then that's actually quite normal. I just find it limiting, and prefer to think for myself since most people are frightened, delicate creatures all too ready to behave in a manner rationally counter to the demands of reality in order to stay in the good books with the herd.
-FL
I am sure many on /. regard me as an ultra-conservative, reactionary, revolutionary, communist maniac - which is true - so perhaps I am not in the best position to teach people about open-mindedness, respect for the right of other people (and businesses) to choose for themselves etc.
Ha ha! You're sure of that, are you? Let me be the first to inform you that nobody regards you as anything at all.
Here's a piece of news I find very comforting; there is so much signal on Slashdot that even the most malignant and delusional egos are drowned out and promptly forgotten by the crowd. And that is definitely for the best. So don't worry. You're not in danger of teaching anybody anything.
We all have temperamental egos, and they must all be brought under whip if any positive growth is to happen. But you're not even trying.
-FL
Now, why do we never get such multiple confirmations of UFOs ?
Well, we certainly have multiple-witness sightings. Lots of them, in fact. Hundreds involving pilots, police, military personnel as well as countless regular civilians, but the media is loathe to cover such stories, probably because biased, timid and over-ridden people are working the various editorial desks.
Read Richard M. Dolan if you want to know the actual state of things.
-FL
While there are going to be exceptions, (ie, geeks excited about trying new technological solutions), most iPad/Pod/Phone users I've met typify AOL customers of old.
With one significant added dimension. . .
There's a weird Christian-ness about them which is hard to put my finger on. Clean-shaven, pleasant-but-fake facade which feels cultish. They make my stomach squelch nervously when I'm around one of them. -Which either means I'm the anti-Christ, or something deep in my DNA is reacting with fight/flight chemistry to the smiling pod people.
-FL
Your points are all very valid. People must be allowed to choose to be retarded if they wish it.
But it's still retarded, and worth making noise about. That's how the opposite choice is made clear. We're just coloring the two jars you can throw your chit into.
-Because, with the amount of media support Job's is getting, (essentially billions in free advertising), complaining and guffawing now is probably what will make the difference between a world where Apple exercises far too much power over the internet and one where Apple remains just a big patch of retarded I can still circumvent with a minimum fuss.
Apple is the new AOL.
-FL
I typically ignore "people" who don't capitalize.
Such people all seem to have the same brain-workings and general issues with reality. -They all tend to write with the outward fire of social rebellion, and yet despite this public display, never fail to subtly align themselves with one manner of corporate/government propaganda or another.
Seriously; Read this guy's post and then compare with the posting patterns of similar people. They're like a species of weed or fungus or something. Usually it's best to avoid such sorts because they are incapable of learning or advancing, (though they can adapt in the same manner that a weed will adapt to environmental conditions, but they will never be able to separate themselves from their essential 'weedness'. -Or at least, I've never seen it happen yet). Thus, as far as I can tell, parlay with such types is largely a pointless exercise. But in this case, I'll make an exception because his (its) post is destructively false. (Which is always the case with noxious organisms, I suppose.)
Basically, there have been many accusations leveled at nicotine, but a perusal of the Wikipedia article on nicotine toxicology will highlight the phrase, "remains to be proven".
Nicotine is an exceptional drug with numerous very useful qualities, one of which is that it has the singular effect of quieting and sharpening the mind without affecting judgment. It is no wonder to me at all that governments are loath to encourage its use, particularly as it counters the effect of FUD; one of the primary tools used to control populations.
-FL
I've heard this nonsense argument before, and explained why it was silly then. I wonder if you're the same guy? If so, then it means you are practicing what is known as "Mechanical Thinking" where regardless of having your argument dismantled without adequate rebuttal, you simply reboot and repeat the same broken argument as though you were deaf and blind.
If you're not the same guy, then please do a little research. Essentially, what you will discover is that most drugs in sufficient quantity will cause harm. Even water will kill you if you drink enough of it too quickly. The point of medicines is that in small quantities, a beneficial narcotic effect is present.
If you can't grasp that, then by all means, just reboot, but don't be surprised if nobody takes you seriously.
-FL
First of all, while checking to see if this thing is basically an avatar, I ran across this incredibly stupid image.
Somebody, somewhere was given the task of making NASA appeal to the youth of today. By giving space robots Boba Fett heads. I cringe. I am cringing right this moment. And I am thrown into a confused state. Are people REALLY REALLY this stupid? Or was this deliberately made stupid for some other manipulative reason? I can't really tell. Or. . , (and this one is the worst possibility of the lot), am I going to be the only one who thinks this is stupid while the rest of the general population says, "Oooh, cool!"
Please do not let it be the last. Please. No really. Please.
Okay. Now where was I. . ?
Right. I already know the answers to the above. . .
We've been hit with "Avatar" and "Dollhouse" and that Bruce Willis film, "Surrogates" and that really bad film, "Gamer" (I think it was called that), and the military is using drone hunter/killer flying machines, and now this. And there's got to be a couple I missed, all within the last couple of years.
My guess is that somebody, somewhere is trying to groove human awareness on the idea that people and creatures can be thought of as simply suits of muscle and nerves. That people are machines which can host different operators. (Which is easy enough to achieve; I doubt the yo-yo's who built these things had any idea what they were doing, needing whispers from beyond to get them working; stuff I'm sure they thought were their own minds talking to them. Avatars building avatars. Ha ha!)
Which is a good message, because it's true. -With the soul in many cases being the operator, but that it can be tinkered with, interrupted, removed, replaced, and that you can have empty shells walking around on automatic. But apparently the resistance to this notion is such that it takes a whole slow-burning ga-zillion dollar media blitz to warm the Normals into accepting such basic stuff.
But Jeez. Those robots look stupid. So yeah. This one must be for the Normals.
-FL
Basically. . , when the Fox News talking heads are arrested and locked away for libel, then Americans can talk.
Or should only millionaires be allowed to Troll?
Basically, anonymous posting is necessary in the same kinds of ways as anonymous voting.
-FL
Deliberate lies in print, even on web-pages is Libel.
Well now, that's your opinion, isn't it? Everything else you wrote was dictionary-form accurate, but if web-pages and print were commonly agreed to be identical forms in a legal sense, then this story wouldn't have made it to Slashdot.
The reason stories of this nature are interesting is that their outcomes are currently up in the air and the rules (and fate) of the internet is still being decided.
I certainly hope that anonymity is maintained on the web, because the people who decide these things are corruptible humans unworthy of the public trust they currently hold as it is.
People should instead be taught that information offered up by an anonymous source is of less value than that which comes attached to a real name. Read at your own risk and don't get your knickers in a twist. Anyway, forums should self-regulate. I notice that around here hate-speach people tend to get side-lined. The Mod system, for all its warts, is actually pretty amazing.
-FL
In a film, you re-tell the myth of the hero. Superman, (from the 70's) did this really well; the origin story for Superman is wonderful! Doing sequels at two-year intervals, however, are little hard to get into because it's really the same story; "Bad guys try, but Superman is unstoppable. And he's lonely. The end." The second Superman movie managed to be a lot of fun by side-stepping this limitation, but still, there's only a limited number of times you can run through the basic myth. Though, as a long-running set of episodic stories. . . Superman gets interesting when you start to explore his personal relationships over many episodes. I remember "Lois & Clark" was really quite solid. Joss Whedon could have a field day with that!
Batman is also a great myth we like to hear told over and over. Though the latest film turned me right off. It was just too violent; it made me feel sick. Either I'm growing more empathic in my old age, or Hollywood is regressing further into savagery. Some of both, I suspect.
I liked the first X-Men film, and even enjoyed the cinematic travesty which was the third one, probably because it felt exactly like reading a bunch of random comics about the X-Men. Jumbled, but contained somehow by the larger idea.
Joss Whedon's X-Men comic was pretty awesome, though it was written in movie-format rather than as a long-running story. It was even drawn like a story-boarded screen play, which I thought really hurt it. The artwork, while technically gorgeous, was far too static. It felt like I was looking at series of paintings rather than a comic book. I missed the awesome dynamism of the Chris Claremont/John Byrne days. But the writing was fantastic! What a story!
Though, it would have been a rotten read for anybody coming to the X-Men fresh. It's only when you are already immersed in the X-Men universe, when all the characters are already well-established in the reader's mind that Joss's writing on that book worked.
I think Joss Whedon is at his best in TV when he can develop characters over a long period. But then. . , I suppose, everybody knows who the characters are in the Avengers, so maybe he can pull it off. Still. . , I'd be much happier renting a DVD set with a season of Joss Whedon's Avengers.
Oh, and I thought Ironman was very well-produced and technically well-written formula crap. Which shouldn't bother me, because the whole idea with a comic-book movie is that we already know the story going in. Maybe it's because Robert Downey Jr. puts me to sleep. I don't know why that is, exactly. Maybe because he mumbles too much? Maybe because he looks kind of stoned on anti-depressants all the time? Whatever the case, I can't relate to that shell of a man at all.
Why does everybody like that guy so much? Maybe because half of America is on Paxol or some other lithium drug themselves and they CAN relate to him. Whatever.
-FL