The whole farming industry would disappear overnight if they would just sell gold as part of the game. They can't get rid of it, they can't even really make a dent in it, so why not control it? In one fell swoop you rid the game of thousands of non-players AND open a huge stream of revenue for the company. Know why they won't do it? Farmers pay for accounts and it lets Blizzard pad out the numbers.
Um, in other words they don't see it as a legitimate problem. Those gold farmers pay for their accounts the same as everyone else. If all they want to do is farm gold and sell it to other players, why should Blizzard care? Oh yeah others hate it that their are those that can pay money and get gold. You advise that it would be best if Blizzard just sold gold. That wouldn't kill off the industry as long as they allow for player to player gold or item transfers, but if it did dent the industry then they'd see alot of paying accounts close out and that's bad from their POV.
I don't see it as much of a problem. If you don't like that game, you don't have to play it.
The whole "denial" tag for skeptics is a bit silly... I think it was initially used to evoke imagery of holocaust deniers - suggesting skeptics were in the same class - but it's become something of a mantra to automatically dismiss skeptical opinion. When that happens, it starts to sounds more like religion.
That's exactly how the environmental appears to me. It looks like a mother earth/goddess type religion that has gotten into the public schools and taught to kids. I don't want to sound like a nut case, but my kids did this silly school play thing and it looked exactly like a religious ritual to the whole mother earth thing to me. I was raised Christian, but don't really go or do much with it. I find it sick that a new religion is trying to establish itself and get passed on to my kids and everyone without many really being openly aware of it. I hate the climate change high priests and the thou shall not use these holy resources people. They already are a religion and should be treated just like the rest. The problem is that they are pushing their version of ten commandments out to everyone and it's simpler and makes sense. I mean how can you argue with recycle, reduce, and reuse? Most people like most of the ten commandments, but they are still too religion centric to hide in plain sight like that environmental movement/climate change religion. Oh, well someone will combine the two and natural selection/ID and the next big modern religion will be born.
If you want the truly lazy evil solution, the government could reclassify all the data that it collects on people open public documents and try to post it publicly ASAP. This everyone would believe would be the lazy incompetent solution, but on the bright side its actually easy to implement though it might not currently be legal. The big benefit to the government is that they can then say that have no farther problems with data breaches since its all open public data any way.;)
For even your most evil governments, that'd work great for everything except military R&D/production type data. Heck, you might as well make all your military personnel records open public documents as well.
You'd then have the problem of trying to hide people/data in plain sight/seas of data.
Powderly regularly protests all kinds of oppression, both at home and abroad. When he protests in the US, people say that there are much worse things going on elsewhere (usually citing China). When he protests in China, the same people say he should to mind his own business. At least he's doing something, and his sudden disappearance for throwing up a banner with a few lights on it certainly highlights the oppression that we all know exists in China.
I'm kinda cynical and think the guy deserves whatever happens to him. If you have a single thing you are protesting with lots of groups, then I could see the government leaving you alone and letting you go. If there is a single nut case anywhere protesting anything by themselves, the local police ought to just throw them in jail for disturbing the peace and/or littering. If you are alone, you are a nut case. If you have a following and can get others to protest with you, then you have a political party that should be able to make changes.
He's an American citizen being detained during the Olympic Games. He's not going to disappear. They'll question him for several hours, probably including sleep deprivation and a lot of yelling, and then kick him out of the country. There was another guy earlier on in the Olympics that got detained for trying to protest, and that's pretty much what happened to him.
The Chinese are trying to look good in front of the world, "disappearing" a foreign national, especially an American, during the Olympics would not be in line with that goal.
They could just punish them by peacefully holding them until the event is over, then forcing them to clean the event up, and then kicking them out of the country. And let the various media see that in action. Let it be known we sentenced them all to community service and they are cleaning up a global community event before returning to their national community so its all good.;)
If California wanted to go back to Mexico, what right would we have to stop them?
Well, I'm mixed on wanting California in with the rest of the US, but when it comes down to it; we fought a freaking civil war that basically says that states have the rights to join the union, but they can't leave it. Many people are confused about the civil war and think it was about slavery. It was actually about states rights and what states could do. It turns out that the US doesn't allow its member states to leave regardless of their wishes.
I can't really fault China applying the same logic to Tibet. Why isn't Texas its own republic? I've often wondered that of all the states in the civil war that they had the most political leverage to peacefully leave the Union and have their own republic. You find the occasional nut case that would like them to leave the US, but mostly they like the benefits of being a part of the US. I'm sure that China applies the same logic to Tibet as the US does to those that wants Texas to be its own republic.
But here's the problem: what do you, as The State, do, when a group of people are raising their children and educating them that the way they live is the Right Way -- when that Right Way may seem harmful to people who aren't in that culture?
All cultures are preprogrammed to teach their young that their way is The Right Way and the Best way and Most/All Other Ways are Wrong. Why do you even think that it's a decent idea to send kids to school? Actually, I'm very mixed about the entire concept. It basically gives some one else time to mind control your offspring. All education is mind control. Hey, you are required by law to send your kids to school or to treat them certain ways. Why?
You could keep your kids at home and teach them to believe/do anything. If this were a survival advantage, we'd be doing it. We generally think its better for "teachers/elders" to take groups of similar aged young and teach them roughly the same thing. This would mean that your kids that were raised to believe you were god or your own mini slaves wouldn't have a long term survival advantage over others. I think the problem quickly self corrects.
You know its odd how we've divided up sex and work and said that kids aren't allowed to this that adults are. In many cultures, kids are doing the same things as "adults" are. How can you draw a line at 12, 16, 18, or 21 and say before hand this person wasn't an adult, but now they are? The main way we can control it is public education and labor laws. I really believe modern working standards are such that it would be safe to have kids do most of the same work as adults. Why haven't we changed society back to were kids earned just less than adults doing the same thing? We think it magically better that all those kids are taken out of the productive labor force for many years and put into the mythical educational system and its better for our society. Maybe. We've all grown up in it so we automatically think that version is the Best Possible Way and other Ways are Wrong.
I wonder at the concept of foreign sweat shops and if they are actually morally wrong. With modern working conditions, it should be perfectly safe for younger workers to do the same tasks as adult workers and earn a decent local living from it. We define that as wrong because we want/demand our kids to be in that mythical education system until they are 18 or 22 or maybe even into their mid 20s. If they are happy and earning decent wages, are we morally wrong for not doing the same for our kids? Are we wrong demanding that our kids live decades with their parents before being allowed to be an income earner?
You know we've kept kids ignorant, poor and powerless without voting rights. Its no wonder the elder are so powerful a voting block while kids aren't.
Oh please. Until evolution cooks up chicks that are turned on by Starfleet Away-Team gear, we all know there is only going to be one generation of Slashdotters.
Sounds like a worthy project for slashdot to find the girls/women that are turned on by that fetish and make sure that they breed!
If you have a venue with a parking lot, notify everyone that there will be videotaping of the parking lot, and again, do it. If you have the budget, hire a professional to do the ID checking. This should pretty much make any theft a non issue to prosecute. Be sure to post a disclaimer that you're not responsible for items lost/stolen though.
I'm mixed. I'd think some place that had tons of video recording would be held by the courts to a higher standard of being responsible for items lost/stolen than a place that only had a sign up that said "no security not responsible for lost/stolen items." They should both be legally expected to require the same amount of security/safety and the bar is most likely pretty low. I've seen those not responsible signs up every where esp stores. I don't know if that's actually true though. They may get you to think that way and not take action after the fact, but taken actions against the place that allowed the lost/stolen items is your only option of raising what ever that min. bar that everyone is expected to live by.
Personally, I wouldn't throw a party/invite people over that I didn't trust in my home. If you think that they'll walk off with something of yours, then do you really want them at your event? If I was going to be held responsible by my guests for their equipment, I'd ban them bringing equipment and provide it all myself. That way I'd know that all the computer equipment was mine and that they shouldn't be walking out with any of it.
The chief threats to the US global hegemony are the Chinese government, the Russian gas firms, the European Central Bank, and peak oil. A bunch of fuckwits in suicide vests shouldn't even be on the radar.
I giggle wildly at that. It is all interdependent. The folks in the top of the Chinese gov got there with the existing US gov. They want the US to stay roughly the same. The Russian gas firms are interested in soaking there customers for as much as they can. That we are resource hungry and will pay alot for there resources. Well, they have no reason to want to change the US. Now the European Central Bank could be a problem. The weakening US dollar is actually a good thing for the EU and China buying up alot of US economic debts. They don't want the US to fall, but they want enough control/ownership of our assets that the US could never economically fight either of them. I think the potential fall of the US economy scares the hell out of the EU bank and Chinese top officals far more than the US going military happy on third world countries that others don't care shit about. It's that interdependent thing.
Peak oil is a global problem. Everyone will spend the last of the oil building all those "renewable" energy sources, which would be mostly foreign owned or financed. Of course, it could also be said that the global rich will find a stable long term way to profit from the "renewable" energy sources and quickly scrabble to build them to soak the poor. It'll all work out. No one wants a war among the US, EU, Russia, or China so they'll try not to let one happen. No one really cares if those entities pick the shit out of the rest of the world though as long as they play by there own rules and don't fall. (Falling implies collapse and that would mean the possibility of war due to change. No one wants that.)
But the government is not immune to being sued. Suing the government is a Constitutional right and a favorite American pastime! Furthermore, any creation of 'No Sue' list as mentioned would be a violation of your Constitutional right to petition the government for a redress of issues.
Like that actually would stop them. It would may slow them, but it wouldn't stop them from doing it. Heck, they'd do it until called on it and by that time they'd have most of their citizens convinced that this is just the way its always been so it can't ever be changed for the better. There are days that I really hate the US attitude of we are the most best of everything on Earth. That just encourages people to think that our government is the best and can't be changed to do better.
Heck, China has nothing on the mind/population control that goes on in the US. The Chinese citizens know that there are sometimes good/bad things about government and that every once in awhile you need a peasant revolution to change things. In the US, we are convinced that we are the best of all possible governments/cultures so any attempt of a political party or extremist group trying to reform or start a revolution will be quickly labeled as fringe terrorists and stamped out like the plague by the government and the citizens.
It's called disqualifying the cheating gymnastics team and revoking their medals. Or do you also believe the IOC lacks the authority to disqualify athletes who break anti-doping rules too?
Actually, yes I do believe that don't have that authority. The IOC should only be involved with setting up the events and making sure no one cheats during the event. You could just as easily say having the athletes train for years is cheating. (Or picking out the best athletes in your country is cheating.) Why shouldn't an average slashdotter be able to enter and win? It's all slanted for those that spend their lives training for sports events. So lets make a rule against that and ban those that actually train. That sounds silly and stupid doesn't it?
Well, the same applies to drug banning and age banning rules. As far as I'm concerned, its not cheating at all.
A 14 year old is a little more fearless than a 16 year old... in a very bad way. One bad decision could cause severe injury, and pushing a girl that young will have lasting effects on her life, mostly bad. I would not put it past communist regimes like China to have a state run program where they don't care about their girls and create a program which churns out 12-14 year old world class gymnasts who in turn are discarded with severe emotional and physical problems later in life.
What does being a communist regime have to do with it? We've got the same attitudes in the US.
So in short, it's their to protect the girls from themselves and everyone else who would push them too hard to early. Personally, I'd want the limit higher, because calling those gymnasts "women" is downright upsetting to me, and they still start incredibly young for a fleeting chance at a bit of stardom.
Um, are you kidding? We'd just people trying since they were 12 and they could tell you that they've become much worse over the years. We could have a 30-40 year old age limit, but come on. How about a 60 or 70 year old age limit in all sports to give the elderly a chance?
And their stance is about as ridiculous as it gets. They've stated that the girls passports are sufficient proof of their age. (Well, there's slightly more to it than that, but that's what it boils down to.)
Great idea, accept documents created by the very people accused of cheating as proof that they didn't cheat.
Um, well what documents would you want for proof? Birth cert, marriage lic, passports, and DL are all issued by the country that they live in. Are wanting folks to register with the IOC at birth so that they can insure that if you are ever competing in their events that you meet their age requirements?
The IOC has little choice but to accept the national passports as sufficient proof of their age. If a national government wants to fudge some one's age on their passport that's their issue and not IOCs. IOC just accepts the document as presented. It isn't world gov or world cop. If the national govs want to bend/break their own rules, then IOC has to live with it. IOC doesn't have an teeth to beat a national government with and no one really would want it to have any either.
Art, knowledge, and culture - the REAL stuff, as opposed to, say, Brittany Spears and the line, are produced by volunteers in their spare time. They do it because they have a burning passion to do so, and financial considerations tend to be secondary, if not tertiary.
I call straw man. First you describe dressing up specifically for the purpose of looking the part in a photo. Then you defend yourself by stating that we've all dressed up for special occasions. Photos are often taken at a special occasion, but that's generally not the primary reason for dressing formally or in costume. I mean, c'mon... Halloween? Weddings? Get real!
I guess my family is the only ones that dress up and take pictures before the event and only rarely at or after the event. Most event pictures are rarely looked at, but kept somewhere. The same can be said of any clothing related to said event. Sure the family might not throw the clothes way, but we might as well. I've never seen any past Halloween clothes or wedding clothes, but they may still exist some where. I didn't think that I was describing dressing up specifically for the purpose of looking the part in a photo, but it seems that every photo that I was even advance warning and not just taken, I've been able to pick what I think is my best for said photo. I generally don't go out purchasing clothes for single shot photos, but its something I remember my mom doing when we were kids. Do I dress up for every instance of when I might get recorded or a photo taken? No that'd be insane today. You can't buy stuff in stores without being recorded. If you live in a city or at "events," you are liable get photographed. Photography has changed to where now you can have tons of recorded images easily/cheaply. That doesn't mean that they'd be decent good quality that you'd want to share.
I was trying to come up with examples that others may choose to dress up for. My mom had this thing of every year dragging the family to get a family picture taken. We always dressed up in clothes that were purchased just for that. I've never worn any of the clothes that I was photographed in if I had any choice in the matter at all. (Actually, if I had my choice, the clothes, negatives, and photographer would all be gathered and burned, but its something my mom paid for and thought looked cute, which some how excuses it. I'm almost certain that mom has those clothes somewhere in an attic.) Strangely, my kids might as well not exist out side of school pictures. We just don't seem to take pictures. We get copies other family members made, but we don't really go out of our way to do it to ourselves.
Didn't George Orwell warn us about trying to change our history? I'll keep my photographs as they are, thanks.
Yeah, but no one cares about what that hack wrote. The example that we take much more seriously is the Harry Potter reference where the Black Family momma burned off several names from the family tree. That's the example that we all really know and have relatives that we could see doing that esp. with removing other branches from the family tree that they don't approve of or like for various reasons. No one thinks that the government will ever have the power to do change history without everyone knowing and agreeing to it.
Most history books are censored to put their nation in a good light. Some times its only a slight bias; sometimes its not anything we'd ever recognize as history. In all cases, you can make sure that the writers, publishers, and school districts all know about the hidden bias and wouldn't even think of switching out a history book from a different culture/region into another's. It just wouldn't sell well.
Umm... You seem to live a very different life to me. Never in my life have I even considered dressing up specifically for a photo in clothes that I will wear once and then throw away, or even just clothes I wouldn't normally wear.
Admittedly, I am a bit of a trollface, and I always look awful in photos, so maybe there is something to this whole 'shallowness' angle you're pushing.
I was thinking of crap my mom made us dress up in growing up mostly. But haven't you been in a wedding party, funeral, high school/college graduation, or heck baby shower? O.k. baby showers don't require new clothes, but the clothes that the baby gets are of the let's dress 'em up cute and take pics variety. Didn't you have a year book where you had 2-3 pictures? Didn't you have "picture day"? O.k. Picture Day you'd wear what you'd normally wear, but in high school we had glamor shots. Trust me there were lots of one time or limited time outfits there. How about prom?
I've only had to wear a suit for a job interviews and getting married in. (Which was a different fancier rental suit.) Did your wife buy, borrow, or rent her wedding dress or how about bridesmaids dresses?
How about Halloween or Christmas? I bet you've bot something or see people go out to buy something just to where for that holiday. Now a days, there are several one day use reasons for clothing. O.k. if you wanna be cheap or don't do that holiday/event than you can skip out on the expense.
If it's your event though, you'll be expected to dress the part though rather or not you really want to. If you doubt me, try to get married in what you'd wear to work every day. You'd be vetoed by your future wife, your mother, your future mother-in-law, and then various guests that are in on the planning.
Now no one says that you have to dress up for something, but if you throw some event/party then some forms of dressing up may be required and expected of the hosts and the guests. No one says that your guests have to attend your event, but some things they'll have to go to if they are really socially tied to you or you happen to be their boss.
You know all those ancient statues and such and sculptures made or those paintings by artists? Do you honestly think that everyone generally looked as good as the painting/statues? We've always done this. If anything because, I as the king/rich person would lop off some artist/sculpture's head if they didn't make me look good.
Move forward a few centuries and you've got household publishing with the internet/office apps. I wouldn't lop off the wife's or the kids' heads if they didn't make me look good in the family website or photo album, but we'd all pick the shots and photoshop what we can get away with to look our best. (The wife and kids have been taught what we think is decent taste in picking out photos and better pictures from a set so they should know better than posting poor pics.)
It's sort of like the concept of dressing up for photos. No one ever actually wears that sort of crap. It's only used to make you look as what the current culture set thinks presentable for art/photos/pictures is and that's it. (It's all rented or thrown away after that single use because you'd never wear it again.)
Its going to break a lot of records. But i think that the original article and the OP here missed the point totally. If an event of this magnitude can go off with hardly a hitch, then why is it exactly that we need (the ISPs need) traffic shaping, bandwidth caps, and throttling? The ISPs among others have been saying for years that the internet is going to melt under the load of video, and using it as an excuse to add these technologies. The article on ZDnet asks the question.. is it really and we will find out in a few days (article was prior to the olympics). The real question remains that if 22 million videos at an average of 20 minutes per video and an average bitrate of 700kb weren't enough (3.5Million hours of content) in ADDITION to whatever people are doing everyday then 'why do we need traffic shaping and bandwidth management?'
It was planned for and prepared alot by the major players to make it happen right. On I side note, I haven't really run into any Olympic videos, though I don't really care much one way or another. I think that the real test would be if say any half dozen cities throwing their version of a major event with say a handful of weeks notice to the local ISPs, then how will the "local" internet handle it. The difference between things like the SuperBowl and Olympics vs my local cities numerous little festival things or high school sports is that tons of planning goes into pulling the big league crap off right. If my local high school tried putting all their sporting/school events on youtube or something similar, they "might" be able to do or they could be trying to host it locally until the locals fry their server. Not to mention if their is anything slashdot worthy in the hypothetical site, then folks that would normally not even bother to look at the site would slashdot it.
Now, I think the net or youtube could handle my local highschool throwing their events up fine onto a youtube like site. Now the big will it take it will be can the net or youtube take everyone's local highschool or organization posting all their crap? Maybe. We will find out the hard way.
I can see linux being on a 2-4 GB flash card and the "computer" being the same size and the entire device running inside your tv, LCD picture frames, microwave oven, toaster, refrigator, dishwasher, washing machine, dryer, or your air conditioner. The price for the computer and storage will be like $2-5 on the bulk side so that cost has to be able to be hidden in the products. Linux'll be running all sorts of things that you never really figured even needed a computer per se or even 2-4 GB of storage. What the heck does my dishwasher or toaster need 2 Gb of storage for? Well, we'd find out when it's "cheap enough" to through in everything. Licensing and cost is what'll get Linux in the door and keep MS out. MS just can't afford to give away MS embedded edition.
Of course Linux will run on things like cell phones and DVRs as well, but you'll shortly find it running things like McDonalds' toys as well. What could a McDonalds' Toy use Linux for? I haven't a clue, but, once the hardware is cheap enough, we'll find out.
For that matter, even simpler things like exceptions to wearing a seatbelt exist for people who got to get in and out of cars a lot. WE ARE NOT ALL EQUAL!
Um, we were equal until some guild groups decided to keep certain toys/tech to themselves and make them illegal for everyone else to obtain/use. There ain't much different between cops, doctors, or lawyers. The difference is that cops, doctors, or lawyers have made sure that the tools of their trades are only legal for them to possess and use.
Here is something to think about. It's mostly legal for a cop to shoot someone as long as they thought that person was doing something wrong. Is it legal for you to shoot a cop that was doing something that you thought was wrong? Nope. Then most cops shouldn't be allowed to carry guns around. Ticket books and flashy lights sure, but guns no.
No if a private citizen does it they go to jail. If it is known to be illegal will any police officers go to jail for doing this? Of course not. Will their commanding officers be removed from police force for negligence of duty in allowing those under them to use illegal tactics? Of course not. Do the police give a shit if this is illegal, if they only get caught occasionally and when they do the suffer no personal penalties? Of course not.
You know it always ticks me off how third worldish the US is. Our police force actually needs to be more like the Chinese one. Why is that? You'd instantly take way all the average police officers guns, and if they felt that they needed one then they'd have to call SWAT. This is much safer for both your average police officer and citizens. Police are always trained in hand to hand combat against citizens. Why do they need and use guns? Because they can. If a cop is shot by a citizen, you know that that regardless if he was armed or not then his fellows will be aggressively going after the shooter.
With that time free you could help with Big Brothers / Big Sisters, Boy Scouts, or any other non-profit and make a world of difference.
Volunteer to be a week long guide at any of the various boy scout camps. If you're not the outdoorsy type they even have specialized camps for those who are after the technology, rocketry, etc badges. Helping bring out the inner geek of the next generation is a great way to spend some free time.
Don't like kids? Help out at a local zoo, they're always desperate for more hands. It's not hard to find something to do that's fun, but also positive, if you have free time to kill.
Sounds like you'd like me to take a "week vacation" and do 10x the work at the hobby of your interest.;) I like family and kids, but I don't really have a thing for just helping random stranger kids. Um, on the zoo note. I could careless if we had a single zoo in this country. I'm not an animal person. I really hate pets with a passion. My mom is an animal person and I see her and a few of her friends lavish more attention onto their pets than they do their kids. There is a part of me that thinks pets should be outlawed for the harm they do to kids. (O.k. just outlaw 'em for families with kids. Then I'd be happy.)
I like to have my fun. Your fun sounds like that mandatory volunteer work that some of my college professors liked to try to assign. I call it forced slave labor for their pet project. (It is indeed forced if your grade is held ransom for your "work" at "volunteering.") It's crap like that makes me always not give money or time to certain organizations. Red Cross and United Way were the to big offenders. I'm sure they do some decent work somewhere. Let the locals there volunteer for them. Don't force me to work there, and then call it unpaid volunteer work that I "have to do" on my vacation time. Nothing makes me angrier than that.;)
Their is a big part of me that says let 'em figure out something to do. I did before video games. I didn't have strict adult supervision on my play time. Why should their kids need me? Also why should they trust random people like me with their kids? On the flip side, I wouldn't want the liability of being around kids that could easily get me in jail for ganging up and agreeing to slant a story against me. True most people don't belong in jail, but its just that paranoid part of me that says its easier if I don't automatically trust any random strange kids.
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The whole farming industry would disappear overnight if they would just sell gold as part of the game. They can't get rid of it, they can't even really make a dent in it, so why not control it? In one fell swoop you rid the game of thousands of non-players AND open a huge stream of revenue for the company. Know why they won't do it? Farmers pay for accounts and it lets Blizzard pad out the numbers.
Um, in other words they don't see it as a legitimate problem. Those gold farmers pay for their accounts the same as everyone else. If all they want to do is farm gold and sell it to other players, why should Blizzard care? Oh yeah others hate it that their are those that can pay money and get gold. You advise that it would be best if Blizzard just sold gold. That wouldn't kill off the industry as long as they allow for player to player gold or item transfers, but if it did dent the industry then they'd see alot of paying accounts close out and that's bad from their POV.
I don't see it as much of a problem. If you don't like that game, you don't have to play it.
The whole "denial" tag for skeptics is a bit silly... I think it was initially used to evoke imagery of holocaust deniers - suggesting skeptics were in the same class - but it's become something of a mantra to automatically dismiss skeptical opinion. When that happens, it starts to sounds more like religion.
That's exactly how the environmental appears to me. It looks like a mother earth/goddess type religion that has gotten into the public schools and taught to kids. I don't want to sound like a nut case, but my kids did this silly school play thing and it looked exactly like a religious ritual to the whole mother earth thing to me. I was raised Christian, but don't really go or do much with it. I find it sick that a new religion is trying to establish itself and get passed on to my kids and everyone without many really being openly aware of it. I hate the climate change high priests and the thou shall not use these holy resources people. They already are a religion and should be treated just like the rest. The problem is that they are pushing their version of ten commandments out to everyone and it's simpler and makes sense. I mean how can you argue with recycle, reduce, and reuse? Most people like most of the ten commandments, but they are still too religion centric to hide in plain sight like that environmental movement/climate change religion. Oh, well someone will combine the two and natural selection/ID and the next big modern religion will be born.
If you want the truly lazy evil solution, the government could reclassify all the data that it collects on people open public documents and try to post it publicly ASAP. This everyone would believe would be the lazy incompetent solution, but on the bright side its actually easy to implement though it might not currently be legal. The big benefit to the government is that they can then say that have no farther problems with data breaches since its all open public data any way. ;)
For even your most evil governments, that'd work great for everything except military R&D/production type data. Heck, you might as well make all your military personnel records open public documents as well.
You'd then have the problem of trying to hide people/data in plain sight/seas of data.
Powderly regularly protests all kinds of oppression, both at home and abroad.
When he protests in the US, people say that there are much worse things going on elsewhere (usually citing China). When he protests in China, the same people say he should to mind his own business.
At least he's doing something, and his sudden disappearance for throwing up a banner with a few lights on it certainly highlights the oppression that we all know exists in China.
I'm kinda cynical and think the guy deserves whatever happens to him. If you have a single thing you are protesting with lots of groups, then I could see the government leaving you alone and letting you go. If there is a single nut case anywhere protesting anything by themselves, the local police ought to just throw them in jail for disturbing the peace and/or littering. If you are alone, you are a nut case. If you have a following and can get others to protest with you, then you have a political party that should be able to make changes.
He's an American citizen being detained during the Olympic Games. He's not going to disappear. They'll question him for several hours, probably including sleep deprivation and a lot of yelling, and then kick him out of the country. There was another guy earlier on in the Olympics that got detained for trying to protest, and that's pretty much what happened to him.
The Chinese are trying to look good in front of the world, "disappearing" a foreign national, especially an American, during the Olympics would not be in line with that goal.
They could just punish them by peacefully holding them until the event is over, then forcing them to clean the event up, and then kicking them out of the country. And let the various media see that in action. Let it be known we sentenced them all to community service and they are cleaning up a global community event before returning to their national community so its all good. ;)
If California wanted to go back to Mexico, what right would we have to stop them?
Well, I'm mixed on wanting California in with the rest of the US, but when it comes down to it; we fought a freaking civil war that basically says that states have the rights to join the union, but they can't leave it. Many people are confused about the civil war and think it was about slavery. It was actually about states rights and what states could do. It turns out that the US doesn't allow its member states to leave regardless of their wishes.
I can't really fault China applying the same logic to Tibet. Why isn't Texas its own republic? I've often wondered that of all the states in the civil war that they had the most political leverage to peacefully leave the Union and have their own republic. You find the occasional nut case that would like them to leave the US, but mostly they like the benefits of being a part of the US. I'm sure that China applies the same logic to Tibet as the US does to those that wants Texas to be its own republic.
But here's the problem: what do you, as The State, do, when a group of people are raising their children and educating them that the way they live is the Right Way -- when that Right Way may seem harmful to people who aren't in that culture?
All cultures are preprogrammed to teach their young that their way is The Right Way and the Best way and Most/All Other Ways are Wrong. Why do you even think that it's a decent idea to send kids to school? Actually, I'm very mixed about the entire concept. It basically gives some one else time to mind control your offspring. All education is mind control. Hey, you are required by law to send your kids to school or to treat them certain ways. Why?
You could keep your kids at home and teach them to believe/do anything. If this were a survival advantage, we'd be doing it. We generally think its better for "teachers/elders" to take groups of similar aged young and teach them roughly the same thing. This would mean that your kids that were raised to believe you were god or your own mini slaves wouldn't have a long term survival advantage over others. I think the problem quickly self corrects.
You know its odd how we've divided up sex and work and said that kids aren't allowed to this that adults are. In many cultures, kids are doing the same things as "adults" are. How can you draw a line at 12, 16, 18, or 21 and say before hand this person wasn't an adult, but now they are? The main way we can control it is public education and labor laws. I really believe modern working standards are such that it would be safe to have kids do most of the same work as adults. Why haven't we changed society back to were kids earned just less than adults doing the same thing? We think it magically better that all those kids are taken out of the productive labor force for many years and put into the mythical educational system and its better for our society. Maybe. We've all grown up in it so we automatically think that version is the Best Possible Way and other Ways are Wrong.
I wonder at the concept of foreign sweat shops and if they are actually morally wrong. With modern working conditions, it should be perfectly safe for younger workers to do the same tasks as adult workers and earn a decent local living from it. We define that as wrong because we want/demand our kids to be in that mythical education system until they are 18 or 22 or maybe even into their mid 20s. If they are happy and earning decent wages, are we morally wrong for not doing the same for our kids? Are we wrong demanding that our kids live decades with their parents before being allowed to be an income earner?
You know we've kept kids ignorant, poor and powerless without voting rights. Its no wonder the elder are so powerful a voting block while kids aren't.
Oh please. Until evolution cooks up chicks that are turned on by Starfleet Away-Team gear, we all know there is only going to be one generation of Slashdotters.
Sounds like a worthy project for slashdot to find the girls/women that are turned on by that fetish and make sure that they breed!
If you have a venue with a parking lot, notify everyone that there will be videotaping of the parking lot, and again, do it. If you have the budget, hire a professional to do the ID checking. This should pretty much make any theft a non issue to prosecute. Be sure to post a disclaimer that you're not responsible for items lost/stolen though.
I'm mixed. I'd think some place that had tons of video recording would be held by the courts to a higher standard of being responsible for items lost/stolen than a place that only had a sign up that said "no security not responsible for lost/stolen items." They should both be legally expected to require the same amount of security/safety and the bar is most likely pretty low. I've seen those not responsible signs up every where esp stores. I don't know if that's actually true though. They may get you to think that way and not take action after the fact, but taken actions against the place that allowed the lost/stolen items is your only option of raising what ever that min. bar that everyone is expected to live by.
Personally, I wouldn't throw a party/invite people over that I didn't trust in my home. If you think that they'll walk off with something of yours, then do you really want them at your event? If I was going to be held responsible by my guests for their equipment, I'd ban them bringing equipment and provide it all myself. That way I'd know that all the computer equipment was mine and that they shouldn't be walking out with any of it.
The chief threats to the US global hegemony are the Chinese government, the Russian gas firms, the European Central Bank, and peak oil. A bunch of fuckwits in suicide vests shouldn't even be on the radar.
I giggle wildly at that. It is all interdependent. The folks in the top of the Chinese gov got there with the existing US gov. They want the US to stay roughly the same. The Russian gas firms are interested in soaking there customers for as much as they can. That we are resource hungry and will pay alot for there resources. Well, they have no reason to want to change the US. Now the European Central Bank could be a problem. The weakening US dollar is actually a good thing for the EU and China buying up alot of US economic debts. They don't want the US to fall, but they want enough control/ownership of our assets that the US could never economically fight either of them. I think the potential fall of the US economy scares the hell out of the EU bank and Chinese top officals far more than the US going military happy on third world countries that others don't care shit about. It's that interdependent thing.
Peak oil is a global problem. Everyone will spend the last of the oil building all those "renewable" energy sources, which would be mostly foreign owned or financed. Of course, it could also be said that the global rich will find a stable long term way to profit from the "renewable" energy sources and quickly scrabble to build them to soak the poor. It'll all work out. No one wants a war among the US, EU, Russia, or China so they'll try not to let one happen. No one really cares if those entities pick the shit out of the rest of the world though as long as they play by there own rules and don't fall. (Falling implies collapse and that would mean the possibility of war due to change. No one wants that.)
But the government is not immune to being sued. Suing the government is a Constitutional right and a favorite American pastime! Furthermore, any creation of 'No Sue' list as mentioned would be a violation of your Constitutional right to petition the government for a redress of issues.
Like that actually would stop them. It would may slow them, but it wouldn't stop them from doing it. Heck, they'd do it until called on it and by that time they'd have most of their citizens convinced that this is just the way its always been so it can't ever be changed for the better. There are days that I really hate the US attitude of we are the most best of everything on Earth. That just encourages people to think that our government is the best and can't be changed to do better.
Heck, China has nothing on the mind/population control that goes on in the US. The Chinese citizens know that there are sometimes good/bad things about government and that every once in awhile you need a peasant revolution to change things. In the US, we are convinced that we are the best of all possible governments/cultures so any attempt of a political party or extremist group trying to reform or start a revolution will be quickly labeled as fringe terrorists and stamped out like the plague by the government and the citizens.
It's called disqualifying the cheating gymnastics team and revoking their medals. Or do you also believe the IOC lacks the authority to disqualify athletes who break anti-doping rules too?
Actually, yes I do believe that don't have that authority. The IOC should only be involved with setting up the events and making sure no one cheats during the event. You could just as easily say having the athletes train for years is cheating. (Or picking out the best athletes in your country is cheating.) Why shouldn't an average slashdotter be able to enter and win? It's all slanted for those that spend their lives training for sports events. So lets make a rule against that and ban those that actually train. That sounds silly and stupid doesn't it?
Well, the same applies to drug banning and age banning rules. As far as I'm concerned, its not cheating at all.
A 14 year old is a little more fearless than a 16 year old... in a very bad way. One bad decision could cause severe injury, and pushing a girl that young will have lasting effects on her life, mostly bad. I would not put it past communist regimes like China to have a state run program where they don't care about their girls and create a program which churns out 12-14 year old world class gymnasts who in turn are discarded with severe emotional and physical problems later in life.
What does being a communist regime have to do with it? We've got the same attitudes in the US.
So in short, it's their to protect the girls from themselves and everyone else who would push them too hard to early. Personally, I'd want the limit higher, because calling those gymnasts "women" is downright upsetting to me, and they still start incredibly young for a fleeting chance at a bit of stardom.
Um, are you kidding? We'd just people trying since they were 12 and they could tell you that they've become much worse over the years. We could have a 30-40 year old age limit, but come on. How about a 60 or 70 year old age limit in all sports to give the elderly a chance?
And their stance is about as ridiculous as it gets. They've stated that the girls passports are sufficient proof of their age. (Well, there's slightly more to it than that, but that's what it boils down to.)
Great idea, accept documents created by the very people accused of cheating as proof that they didn't cheat.
Um, well what documents would you want for proof? Birth cert, marriage lic, passports, and DL are all issued by the country that they live in. Are wanting folks to register with the IOC at birth so that they can insure that if you are ever competing in their events that you meet their age requirements?
The IOC has little choice but to accept the national passports as sufficient proof of their age. If a national government wants to fudge some one's age on their passport that's their issue and not IOCs. IOC just accepts the document as presented. It isn't world gov or world cop. If the national govs want to bend/break their own rules, then IOC has to live with it. IOC doesn't have an teeth to beat a national government with and no one really would want it to have any either.
Is a Turing test valid if the human is an idiot?
It's ridiculously clear from the video that the face was the "animated" bit.
From the AI's point of view, all humans are idiots so of course it counts. ;)
Art, knowledge, and culture - the REAL stuff, as opposed to, say, Brittany Spears and the line, are produced by volunteers in their spare time. They do it because they have a burning passion to do so, and financial considerations tend to be secondary, if not tertiary.
For some reason, I don't think the guy that did this worked for free.
http://www.italianfrescoes.com/sistinechapel.asp
I call straw man. First you describe dressing up specifically for the purpose of looking the part in a photo. Then you defend yourself by stating that we've all dressed up for special occasions. Photos are often taken at a special occasion, but that's generally not the primary reason for dressing formally or in costume. I mean, c'mon... Halloween? Weddings? Get real!
I guess my family is the only ones that dress up and take pictures before the event and only rarely at or after the event. Most event pictures are rarely looked at, but kept somewhere. The same can be said of any clothing related to said event. Sure the family might not throw the clothes way, but we might as well. I've never seen any past Halloween clothes or wedding clothes, but they may still exist some where. I didn't think that I was describing dressing up specifically for the purpose of looking the part in a photo, but it seems that every photo that I was even advance warning and not just taken, I've been able to pick what I think is my best for said photo. I generally don't go out purchasing clothes for single shot photos, but its something I remember my mom doing when we were kids. Do I dress up for every instance of when I might get recorded or a photo taken? No that'd be insane today. You can't buy stuff in stores without being recorded. If you live in a city or at "events," you are liable get photographed. Photography has changed to where now you can have tons of recorded images easily/cheaply. That doesn't mean that they'd be decent good quality that you'd want to share.
I was trying to come up with examples that others may choose to dress up for. My mom had this thing of every year dragging the family to get a family picture taken. We always dressed up in clothes that were purchased just for that. I've never worn any of the clothes that I was photographed in if I had any choice in the matter at all. (Actually, if I had my choice, the clothes, negatives, and photographer would all be gathered and burned, but its something my mom paid for and thought looked cute, which some how excuses it. I'm almost certain that mom has those clothes somewhere in an attic.) Strangely, my kids might as well not exist out side of school pictures. We just don't seem to take pictures. We get copies other family members made, but we don't really go out of our way to do it to ourselves.
Didn't George Orwell warn us about trying to change our history? I'll keep my photographs as they are, thanks.
Yeah, but no one cares about what that hack wrote. The example that we take much more seriously is the Harry Potter reference where the Black Family momma burned off several names from the family tree. That's the example that we all really know and have relatives that we could see doing that esp. with removing other branches from the family tree that they don't approve of or like for various reasons. No one thinks that the government will ever have the power to do change history without everyone knowing and agreeing to it.
Most history books are censored to put their nation in a good light. Some times its only a slight bias; sometimes its not anything we'd ever recognize as history. In all cases, you can make sure that the writers, publishers, and school districts all know about the hidden bias and wouldn't even think of switching out a history book from a different culture/region into another's. It just wouldn't sell well.
Umm... You seem to live a very different life to me. Never in my life have I even considered dressing up specifically for a photo in clothes that I will wear once and then throw away, or even just clothes I wouldn't normally wear.
Admittedly, I am a bit of a trollface, and I always look awful in photos, so maybe there is something to this whole 'shallowness' angle you're pushing.
I was thinking of crap my mom made us dress up in growing up mostly. But haven't you been in a wedding party, funeral, high school/college graduation, or heck baby shower? O.k. baby showers don't require new clothes, but the clothes that the baby gets are of the let's dress 'em up cute and take pics variety. Didn't you have a year book where you had 2-3 pictures? Didn't you have "picture day"? O.k. Picture Day you'd wear what you'd normally wear, but in high school we had glamor shots. Trust me there were lots of one time or limited time outfits there. How about prom?
I've only had to wear a suit for a job interviews and getting married in. (Which was a different fancier rental suit.) Did your wife buy, borrow, or rent her wedding dress or how about bridesmaids dresses?
How about Halloween or Christmas? I bet you've bot something or see people go out to buy something just to where for that holiday. Now a days, there are several one day use reasons for clothing. O.k. if you wanna be cheap or don't do that holiday/event than you can skip out on the expense.
If it's your event though, you'll be expected to dress the part though rather or not you really want to. If you doubt me, try to get married in what you'd wear to work every day. You'd be vetoed by your future wife, your mother, your future mother-in-law, and then various guests that are in on the planning.
Now no one says that you have to dress up for something, but if you throw some event/party then some forms of dressing up may be required and expected of the hosts and the guests. No one says that your guests have to attend your event, but some things they'll have to go to if they are really socially tied to you or you happen to be their boss.
You know all those ancient statues and such and sculptures made or those paintings by artists? Do you honestly think that everyone generally looked as good as the painting/statues? We've always done this. If anything because, I as the king/rich person would lop off some artist/sculpture's head if they didn't make me look good.
Move forward a few centuries and you've got household publishing with the internet/office apps. I wouldn't lop off the wife's or the kids' heads if they didn't make me look good in the family website or photo album, but we'd all pick the shots and photoshop what we can get away with to look our best. (The wife and kids have been taught what we think is decent taste in picking out photos and better pictures from a set so they should know better than posting poor pics.)
It's sort of like the concept of dressing up for photos. No one ever actually wears that sort of crap. It's only used to make you look as what the current culture set thinks presentable for art/photos/pictures is and that's it. (It's all rented or thrown away after that single use because you'd never wear it again.)
Its going to break a lot of records. But i think that the original article and the OP here missed the point totally. If an event of this magnitude can go off with hardly a hitch, then why is it exactly that we need (the ISPs need) traffic shaping, bandwidth caps, and throttling? The ISPs among others have been saying for years that the internet is going to melt under the load of video, and using it as an excuse to add these technologies. The article on ZDnet asks the question.. is it really and we will find out in a few days (article was prior to the olympics). The real question remains that if 22 million videos at an average of 20 minutes per video and an average bitrate of 700kb weren't enough (3.5Million hours of content) in ADDITION to whatever people are doing everyday then 'why do we need traffic shaping and bandwidth management?'
It was planned for and prepared alot by the major players to make it happen right. On I side note, I haven't really run into any Olympic videos, though I don't really care much one way or another. I think that the real test would be if say any half dozen cities throwing their version of a major event with say a handful of weeks notice to the local ISPs, then how will the "local" internet handle it. The difference between things like the SuperBowl and Olympics vs my local cities numerous little festival things or high school sports is that tons of planning goes into pulling the big league crap off right. If my local high school tried putting all their sporting/school events on youtube or something similar, they "might" be able to do or they could be trying to host it locally until the locals fry their server. Not to mention if their is anything slashdot worthy in the hypothetical site, then folks that would normally not even bother to look at the site would slashdot it.
Now, I think the net or youtube could handle my local highschool throwing their events up fine onto a youtube like site. Now the big will it take it will be can the net or youtube take everyone's local highschool or organization posting all their crap? Maybe. We will find out the hard way.
I can see linux being on a 2-4 GB flash card and the "computer" being the same size and the entire device running inside your tv, LCD picture frames, microwave oven, toaster, refrigator, dishwasher, washing machine, dryer, or your air conditioner. The price for the computer and storage will be like $2-5 on the bulk side so that cost has to be able to be hidden in the products. Linux'll be running all sorts of things that you never really figured even needed a computer per se or even 2-4 GB of storage. What the heck does my dishwasher or toaster need 2 Gb of storage for? Well, we'd find out when it's "cheap enough" to through in everything. Licensing and cost is what'll get Linux in the door and keep MS out. MS just can't afford to give away MS embedded edition.
Of course Linux will run on things like cell phones and DVRs as well, but you'll shortly find it running things like McDonalds' toys as well. What could a McDonalds' Toy use Linux for? I haven't a clue, but, once the hardware is cheap enough, we'll find out.
For that matter, even simpler things like exceptions to wearing a seatbelt exist for people who got to get in and out of cars a lot. WE ARE NOT ALL EQUAL!
Um, we were equal until some guild groups decided to keep certain toys/tech to themselves and make them illegal for everyone else to obtain/use. There ain't much different between cops, doctors, or lawyers. The difference is that cops, doctors, or lawyers have made sure that the tools of their trades are only legal for them to possess and use.
Here is something to think about. It's mostly legal for a cop to shoot someone as long as they thought that person was doing something wrong. Is it legal for you to shoot a cop that was doing something that you thought was wrong? Nope. Then most cops shouldn't be allowed to carry guns around. Ticket books and flashy lights sure, but guns no.
No if a private citizen does it they go to jail. If it is known to be illegal will any police officers go to jail for doing this? Of course not. Will their commanding officers be removed from police force for negligence of duty in allowing those under them to use illegal tactics? Of course not. Do the police give a shit if this is illegal, if they only get caught occasionally and when they do the suffer no personal penalties? Of course not.
You know it always ticks me off how third worldish the US is. Our police force actually needs to be more like the Chinese one. Why is that? You'd instantly take way all the average police officers guns, and if they felt that they needed one then they'd have to call SWAT. This is much safer for both your average police officer and citizens. Police are always trained in hand to hand combat against citizens. Why do they need and use guns? Because they can. If a cop is shot by a citizen, you know that that regardless if he was armed or not then his fellows will be aggressively going after the shooter.
With that time free you could help with Big Brothers / Big Sisters, Boy Scouts, or any other non-profit and make a world of difference.
Volunteer to be a week long guide at any of the various boy scout camps. If you're not the outdoorsy type they even have specialized camps for those who are after the technology, rocketry, etc badges. Helping bring out the inner geek of the next generation is a great way to spend some free time.
Don't like kids? Help out at a local zoo, they're always desperate for more hands. It's not hard to find something to do that's fun, but also positive, if you have free time to kill.
Sounds like you'd like me to take a "week vacation" and do 10x the work at the hobby of your interest. ;) I like family and kids, but I don't really have a thing for just helping random stranger kids. Um, on the zoo note. I could careless if we had a single zoo in this country. I'm not an animal person. I really hate pets with a passion. My mom is an animal person and I see her and a few of her friends lavish more attention onto their pets than they do their kids. There is a part of me that thinks pets should be outlawed for the harm they do to kids. (O.k. just outlaw 'em for families with kids. Then I'd be happy.)
I like to have my fun. Your fun sounds like that mandatory volunteer work that some of my college professors liked to try to assign. I call it forced slave labor for their pet project. (It is indeed forced if your grade is held ransom for your "work" at "volunteering.") It's crap like that makes me always not give money or time to certain organizations. Red Cross and United Way were the to big offenders. I'm sure they do some decent work somewhere. Let the locals there volunteer for them. Don't force me to work there, and then call it unpaid volunteer work that I "have to do" on my vacation time. Nothing makes me angrier than that. ;)
Their is a big part of me that says let 'em figure out something to do. I did before video games. I didn't have strict adult supervision on my play time. Why should their kids need me? Also why should they trust random people like me with their kids? On the flip side, I wouldn't want the liability of being around kids that could easily get me in jail for ganging up and agreeing to slant a story against me. True most people don't belong in jail, but its just that paranoid part of me that says its easier if I don't automatically trust any random strange kids.