Slashdot is about discussing the stories. Most of the discussions and stories carry a bias that most either love or hate. Most are wildly inaccurate... to the point some of them come off like total lies.
Slashdot really isn't a news site. It's not the best place for news from any genre of news. The opinions of those who discuss the news are often narrow minded and wrong.
I think the article gets one important point rather wrong. Those who take risks tend to be those coming out of the most secure backgrounds. This is pretty much the core observation leading to Plato's Republic. If you grow up at risk, you are less likely to chose risk than if you grow up secure. Now, our response to 9-11 might be too large, but it is not owing to being risk adverse. It is more a function of having a privileged and sheltered decider ready to risk a lot, even our civil liberties, to carry out a family vendetta.
Obama has a family vendetta? Which he can solve by bombing Syria and persecuting Snowden?
Only 50%? Jewellery, money and electronics are screened for in the x-rays.
I have have the true ridiculous tale of my father luggage being held for 40 minutes more in Maputos airport just they could cut out the toy compass it had.
On the other hand, once I flew a notebook to HP for Germany for assistance under their warranty period, and did the mistake of leaving there the operating system, fully bootable with automatic login (it was Windows 98 days), fully customised with Office, etc etc, and a RAM expansion fitted in. The notebook was fully and dully registered and insured by HP, never arrived to the destination. Luckily they gave me a new one. However without first calling me a liar about the RAM expansion. Between that, and having to flown it, it was my first and last Compaq/HP notebook.
I also had a mobile taken from me from the x-ray of the hand luggage, under the pretence it got a malfunction and they were "fixing" it (i.e. they saw it in the x-ray, and grabbed it).
I ship electronics all the time in the hold. Most recently took some laptops to India, some hard drives to Kenya, and they all made it fine. If the USA has a bigger problem with corruption than those countries, you've got serious problems, and need to seriously rebuild your country from the ground up.
Dozens of schools are shot up wry [every] year in the u.s.
Citation needed; AFAIK, that actually only happens once every decade or so, it's not the norm by any measure.
Wikipedia lists 14 school shootings so far this year.
In the last 12 months, 7 incidents where people died:
September 26, 2012 Stillwater, Oklahoma (suicide) December 14, 2012 Newtown, Connecticut (major news incident, highest number of deaths since 2007) January 15, 2013 Hazard, Kentucky (college parking lot) January 16, 2013 Chicago, Illinois (university parking lot) January 29, 2013 Midland City, Alabama (ok, a school bus, not a school) March 18, 2013 Orlando, Florida (university, killer was ready but changed his mind, suicide) June 7, 2013 Santa Monica, California (college)
Even if you just limit it to "major" events with 5+ homicides
Red Lake massacre, 2005 Amish school shooting, 2006 Virginia Tech massacre, 2007 Northern Illinois University shooting, 2008 Oikos University shooting, 2012 Newtown, 2012 Santa Monica shooting, 2013
It's easy to take this as an opportunity to denigrate the US. The level of corruption is far worse in Russia and the civil rights protections a fraction of what US citizens enjoy.
If Snowdon has been Russian and escaped with FSB documents, he wouldn't be alive right now. In case nobody noticed, Russia assassinates inconvenient people.
It's just a shame that the U.S. with it's anti-freedom policies is no longer the obvious opposite to the dictatorship. There's enough doubt in the mind of U.S. supporters to subconsciously equate both countries as being against the people, despite the fact Russia is so much worse.
America used to be land of the free, home of the brave. A place to aspire to, a place to look up to.
That all changed because of an old man living in a cave who killed fewer people in September 2001 (3000) than died on america's roads in that same month (3500).
Eh, never having a need to enter a URL manually is not really a badge of pride on a technical website. Maybe it is an indication of the type of people reading Slashdot these days, though!
Slashdot, the site that tells us Ctrl-alt-t is a miraculous newsworthy item
And editors that think Ctrl-z is undo, not suspend.
Dozens of schools are shot up wry year in the u.s., death on the roads is in the thousands, and you're all running scared of a couple of twats that could have killed an order of magnitude more people by buying a rifle and shooting up a mall or cinema.
Betteridge's Law of Headlines: "Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."
It's more a guideline than a law - exceptions exist, but are rare. It holds true because the question-mark-headline is a sign of a story where the author has had to resort to speculation in order to make up for a rather uninteresting set of facts.
How about this following headline:
"Does Betteridge's Law of Headlines apply to this article?"
because European countries don't export their culture (e.g., TV and movies) the same way as the US.
They should. British TV shows are far superior to the total ADD-addled dreck that American TV shows. (I say that as an American.)
because European countries don't export their culture (e.g., TV and movies) the same way as the US.
They should. British TV shows are far superior to the total ADD-addled dreck that American TV shows. (I say that as an American.)
Presentation is better (thanks to the bbc we're not slaves to adverts), but we have our fair share of crap.
Obviously there are good shows, dr who, Sherlock, downton, alphablocks, red dwarf, the office, etc. not all my cup of tea, but I appreciate they are legitimate entertainment.
However the airwaves are filled with celebrity reality tv. I'm a celebrity, xfactor, come dine with me, etc. Same applies in the u.s. a lot of great long lasting shows, not just scifi, but things like how I met your mother, friends, the Simpsons
U.s. documentaries have fallen recently, compared to the bbc stuff, but even the beeb cant afford to produce the big ones on its own. I do enjoy the Brian Cox and Simon Reeve series's though.
Australia and the UK have never really had free speech provisions. If Her Majesty so requests, she is more than capable of instructing her secret agents to trample on anyone at any time for saying anything.
(Not saying that she did, or anything....but if she did, she sure as hell wouldn't want anyone to find out!)
This is the price we pay for having a benevolent dictator who allows us a democracy.
Ahh, you're not worried about safety, you're scared of the bogeyman. Go hide under your bed until you grow up.
9/11, the Boston bombers. To return your gratuitous insult you've been living under a rock, turn on the news.
Boston?! Hah. They killed what, 3 people?
I'm far more scared of Batman shooter copycats in the U.S. He killed 12 people randomly, 4 times deadlier than Boston. Or the Newtown shooting (since then there have been 14 people killed in school shootings)
Why do you think Boston counts as something to be scared about, but other criminal actions aren't?
As for 9/11, that was 12 years ago. Since then people have tried to do all sorts of nasty things which the media has listed as "terrorism" -- and failed every time. Get over it.
My bet is that what will make this project useless will be the stops. To get the votes and the money the project will have to bend to the power of every state that's crossed.
Forgive me for my lack of knowledge of american political geography, but Aren't San Francisco and LA in the same state?
That way land is free and the tube can be made totally standard and mass produced. Anchor it to the sea floor at a depth of 50 meters. That would make it easy to run between LA and SF, and many other routes would become easy too.
Like London to NY, in 5 hours, or LA-Tokyo in under 8.
Your argument would carry a lot more weight if the executives were let go. But no, management is untouchable. It's always the people who do the actual work that pay the price when those sociopathic assholes get put in charge of companies. They can fuck up royal on their job, tank the company, and still get a generous severance package and another gig at some other place where they can do it all over again.
Slashdot Mirror
Slashdot is about discussing the stories. Most of the discussions and stories carry a bias that most either love or hate. Most are wildly inaccurate... to the point some of them come off like total lies.
Slashdot really isn't a news site. It's not the best place for news from any genre of news. The opinions of those who discuss the news are often narrow minded and wrong.
Welcome to Slashdot.
You're thinking of Fox News
I think the article gets one important point rather wrong. Those who take risks tend to be those coming out of the most secure backgrounds. This is pretty much the core observation leading to Plato's Republic. If you grow up at risk, you are less likely to chose risk than if you grow up secure. Now, our response to 9-11 might be too large, but it is not owing to being risk adverse. It is more a function of having a privileged and sheltered decider ready to risk a lot, even our civil liberties, to carry out a family vendetta.
Obama has a family vendetta? Which he can solve by bombing Syria and persecuting Snowden?
Bush was bad. Obama is bad.
Only 50%? Jewellery, money and electronics are screened for in the x-rays.
I have have the true ridiculous tale of my father luggage being held for 40 minutes more in Maputos airport just they could cut out the toy compass it had.
On the other hand, once I flew a notebook to HP for Germany for assistance under their warranty period, and did the mistake of leaving there the operating system, fully bootable with automatic login (it was Windows 98 days), fully customised with Office, etc etc, and a RAM expansion fitted in. The notebook was fully and dully registered and insured by HP, never arrived to the destination. Luckily they gave me a new one. However without first calling me a liar about the RAM expansion. Between that, and having to flown it, it was my first and last Compaq/HP notebook.
I also had a mobile taken from me from the x-ray of the hand luggage, under the pretence it got a malfunction and they were "fixing" it (i.e. they saw it in the x-ray, and grabbed it).
I ship electronics all the time in the hold. Most recently took some laptops to India, some hard drives to Kenya, and they all made it fine. If the USA has a bigger problem with corruption than those countries, you've got serious problems, and need to seriously rebuild your country from the ground up.
In all honesty, having crossed the atlantic with BA, AirFrance, KLM and American Airlines, BA is by far the best of those 4, shorty followed by AA.
Air France isn't an airline. It's a part of France in the air, so is hideous.
AA's new 773 I believe is ahead of even BA's 773s, but if you're on an older AA flight there's no comparrison. BA you get a bed, AA you get a seat.
Dozens of schools are shot up wry [every] year in the u.s.
Citation needed; AFAIK, that actually only happens once every decade or so, it's not the norm by any measure.
Wikipedia lists 14 school shootings so far this year.
In the last 12 months, 7 incidents where people died:
September 26, 2012 Stillwater, Oklahoma (suicide)
December 14, 2012 Newtown, Connecticut (major news incident, highest number of deaths since 2007)
January 15, 2013 Hazard, Kentucky (college parking lot)
January 16, 2013 Chicago, Illinois (university parking lot)
January 29, 2013 Midland City, Alabama (ok, a school bus, not a school)
March 18, 2013 Orlando, Florida (university, killer was ready but changed his mind, suicide)
June 7, 2013 Santa Monica, California (college)
Even if you just limit it to "major" events with 5+ homicides
Red Lake massacre, 2005
Amish school shooting, 2006
Virginia Tech massacre, 2007
Northern Illinois University shooting, 2008
Oikos University shooting, 2012
Newtown, 2012
Santa Monica shooting, 2013
7 in the last 8 years.
I think we're pretty much past that joke by now.
This is slashdot. Think again.
In Soviet Slashdot, joke is past you!
...they arrest gay people simply for being gay, and have threatened to arrest gay athletes.
This man fled Russia because of the reaction to his paintings of Putin in lingerie: http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/08/fearing-retribution-artist-behind-putin-lingerie-painting-leaves-russia/279181/
It's easy to take this as an opportunity to denigrate the US. The level of corruption is far worse in Russia and the civil rights protections a fraction of what US citizens enjoy.
If Snowdon has been Russian and escaped with FSB documents, he wouldn't be alive right now. In case nobody noticed, Russia assassinates inconvenient people.
It's just a shame that the U.S. with it's anti-freedom policies is no longer the obvious opposite to the dictatorship. There's enough doubt in the mind of U.S. supporters to subconsciously equate both countries as being against the people, despite the fact Russia is so much worse.
America used to be land of the free, home of the brave. A place to aspire to, a place to look up to.
That all changed because of an old man living in a cave who killed fewer people in September 2001 (3000) than died on america's roads in that same month (3500).
He went to work putting his people in as many positions of power as he could even down to local level.
I love the fact that the guy from the group who caused the Luxor massacre in 1997 was put in charge of Luxor.
That's good for tourism. But then Egypt never really relied on tourism.
Eh, never having a need to enter a URL manually is not really a badge of pride on a technical website. Maybe it is an indication of the type of people reading Slashdot these days, though!
Slashdot, the site that tells us Ctrl-alt-t is a miraculous newsworthy item
And editors that think Ctrl-z is undo, not suspend.
New technologies always bring new jobs. Maybe self-driving cars will be the same. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ÃX-Driver
Talking of new technologies, I hear there's something called UTF, slashdot is at the forefront of its support
Dozens of schools are shot up wry year in the u.s., death on the roads is in the thousands, and you're all running scared of a couple of twats that could have killed an order of magnitude more people by buying a rifle and shooting up a mall or cinema.
Betteridge's Law of Headlines: "Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."
It's more a guideline than a law - exceptions exist, but are rare. It holds true because the question-mark-headline is a sign of a story where the author has had to resort to speculation in order to make up for a rather uninteresting set of facts.
How about this following headline:
"Does Betteridge's Law of Headlines apply to this article?"
because European countries don't export their culture (e.g., TV and movies) the same way as the US.
They should. British TV shows are far superior to the total ADD-addled dreck that American TV shows. (I say that as an American.)
because European countries don't export their culture (e.g., TV and movies) the same way as the US.
They should. British TV shows are far superior to the total ADD-addled dreck that American TV shows. (I say that as an American.)
Presentation is better (thanks to the bbc we're not slaves to adverts), but we have our fair share of crap.
Obviously there are good shows, dr who, Sherlock, downton, alphablocks, red dwarf, the office, etc. not all my cup of tea, but I appreciate they are legitimate entertainment.
However the airwaves are filled with celebrity reality tv. I'm a celebrity, xfactor, come dine with me, etc.
Same applies in the u.s. a lot of great long lasting shows, not just scifi, but things like how I met your mother, friends, the Simpsons
U.s. documentaries have fallen recently, compared to the bbc stuff, but even the beeb cant afford to produce the big ones on its own. I do enjoy the Brian Cox and Simon Reeve series's though.
"They" being Hollywood?
What makes you think that modern day Scotland is particularly similar to Scotland in the 14th century, anyway?
Same thing that makes them think England (with a queen descended from king James vi of Scotland) occupies Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Australia and the UK have never really had free speech provisions.
If Her Majesty so requests, she is more than capable of instructing her secret agents to trample on anyone at any time for saying anything.
(Not saying that she did, or anything....but if she did, she sure as hell wouldn't want anyone to find out!)
This is the price we pay for having a benevolent dictator who allows us a democracy.
How's that u.s constitution working out?
Ahh, you're not worried about safety, you're scared of the bogeyman. Go hide under your bed until you grow up.
9/11, the Boston bombers. To return your gratuitous insult you've been living under a rock, turn on the news.
Boston?! Hah. They killed what, 3 people?
I'm far more scared of Batman shooter copycats in the U.S. He killed 12 people randomly, 4 times deadlier than Boston. Or the Newtown shooting (since then there have been 14 people killed in school shootings)
Why do you think Boston counts as something to be scared about, but other criminal actions aren't?
As for 9/11, that was 12 years ago. Since then people have tried to do all sorts of nasty things which the media has listed as "terrorism" -- and failed every time. Get over it.
You could go faster in a wheelchair, too, if you were going downhill and never ran into stairs.
ELEVATE!!
So what are you willing to do about it, other than complain on slashdot?
Complain on facebook too!
I take it seriously enough to be concerned about safety.
Me too. I'm worried about things like crashes. Crashes happen a lot on the existing route.
32,000 people died on US roads in 2011. That's coming down, it was 42,196 10 years earlier in 2001.
Terrorists like to pick high profile targets
Ahh, you're not worried about safety, you're scared of the bogeyman. Go hide under your bed until you grow up.
My bet is that what will make this project useless will be the stops. To get the votes and the money the project will have to bend to the power of every state that's crossed.
Forgive me for my lack of knowledge of american political geography, but Aren't San Francisco and LA in the same state?
ummm.... ever consider underground?
354 miles underground, that's 4 times the length of the longest tunnel in the world (Thirlmere aqueduct), which itself was mainly cut-and-cover.
That way land is free and the tube can be made totally standard and mass produced. Anchor it to the sea floor at a depth of 50 meters. That would make it easy to run between LA and SF, and many other routes would become easy too.
Like London to NY, in 5 hours, or LA-Tokyo in under 8.
Your argument would carry a lot more weight if the executives were let go. But no, management is untouchable. It's always the people who do the actual work that pay the price when those sociopathic assholes get put in charge of companies. They can fuck up royal on their job, tank the company, and still get a generous severance package and another gig at some other place where they can do it all over again.
Shareholders pay the price too. Eventually.
People that can change things will notice if http://www.parliament.uk/ is blocked.
The "solution" that the legislators will come up with will be a whitelist of sites. Parliament, bbc, facebook, twitter, etc.
Basically enough sites to keep the masses from revolting.
And my appendices were taken out within 3 hours of diagnosis.
How many did you have?
He's Dave Lister AICMFP