What if it were a real teenaged boy who used his real name and information and he harassed the girl and drove her to suicide? To me, the falsification of information seems irrelevant.
I don't think it's completely irrelevant.
If it were a real boy who really felt that way then his motivation may be expressing his feelings rather than (just) hurting the girl. It's not pretty but telling someone you don't like them anymore is something a lot of people would have done at one time or another.
With an invented boy it's pretty clear that the only motivation was to cause distress.
Re:Harry Potter and Ann Rice got wordy too
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Anathem
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Alternately authors get big enough that they don't have to bend to editors worried about commercial success.
I for one am glad Anathem exists as it is. I don't feel that the author is self-indulgent. I feel that he's indulging me.
Re:I haven't read the book
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Anathem
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· Score: 1
cumbersome literary devices
They're called books.
Re:My wife had an interesting observation
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Anathem
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· Score: 1
I dunno, from reading Mostly Harmless I get the feeling that Adam's process involved a lot of individual clever ideas somehow being shoehorned into a story.
With Adams (and probably with Pratchett too) you're having such a good time you just don't care and enjoy it for what it is.
With Stephenson, especially in his later books, I think you spend a reasonable amount of time not really sure what "it" is. It's a different sort of journey but still a thoroughly enjoyable one as far as I'm concerned.
which makes a reasonable argument against doing something morally questionable and that upsets lots of people, if you can get the same or better resaults without it.
For specific areas where adult stem cells make sense and indeed have advantages that hardly needs saying.
Of course you have to acknowledge that embryonic stem cells are different and may provide viable treatments in areas where adult stem cells won't work for some reason.
The vast majority of Australians think the Internet needs filtering
Complete bollocks. The vast majority of Australians couldn't give a flying fuck about internet filtering.
A vocal minority might be lobbying for filtering. The government probably knows it's an ineffectual waste of time but has a go anyway so that minority sees it as "doing something".
The whole premise of your thought is that others have the right to order you around and to make you work for their causes, and not the ones you personally chose to work for.
How did you arrive at that thought? I didn't see anything suggesting that the person doing the community service didn't get to choose what they did.
I am confused about this shaping speed. It says in the fine print that 70% of customers achieve 10Mbps or faster. So is that off-peak? Does that mean during peak hours, you go down to 64k a second?
The "shaping speed" is what you get limited to if you have reached your cap. As off-peak and on-peak typically have their own caps you may find yourself shaped in one but not in the other until your next month starts.
The "70% of customers achieve 10Mbps or faster" refers to the maximum speed obtained on a customers (unshaped) ADSL2 connection. ADSL2 is limited by line quality so anything that effects that (distance from the exchange, crappy phone wires) will reduce the maximum speed achived. This FAQ has a pretty graph of the sort of averages you get based on distance and my ISP has a great Google Maps thingo that shows actual speeds people are getting at their locations.
This sounds a bit crazy to me, the whole idea of download caps. They should cap on speed.
I think bandwidth caps make more sense. From an ISPs perspective they are a cap on average speed, which is what they are interested in. From a customers perspective they have the fastest connection possible and can manage their cap as they see fit. It fulfills the ISPs needs while giving the customer as much functionality and flexibility as possible.
And a typical cap is around 5gb over here - Far less than the 250 Gb mentioned... Not enough to watch online movies even casually. 20Gb is considered a "Big" plan over here and pretty much no one can afford 250Gb for non professional (commercial) use.
What "Australia" are you living in? 5gig would be an entry level account, not a "typical" one. 20 gig would be a low end one.
I have a 50 gig plan from TPG. I haven't paid more for internet for as long as I can remember and year after year my bandwidth cap has increased in a way that has been more than sufficient for increased usage.
Youtube? Myspace? Never would have happened in Australia.
Of course, but it's largely a factor of our geography. Data doesn't magically get from A to B and when you are as far away from pretty much everything (including the other side of the same country) the economics are inevitably different to places that are more centrally located and/or have high population densities of their own.
It isn't (entirely) a lack of imagination or drive to find a better alternative to "models that were in place when modems were the dominant technology." It's a reflection of physical reality.
Because the caps are so small, there is no business driver to keep upgrading infrastructure...
I think that is fundamentally incorrect. The tiered cap approach means that demand increases justify infrastructure purchases with extra income.
Poll of only 550 voters? That's a pretty small sample to draw such a cruel conclusion about a large group of people.
The size of the total population isn't relevant statistically. 550 people isn't a great sample size but it isn't a bad one either. The margin of error would be roughly 4%
Assuming the survey questions were phrased reasonably neither the article nor the polling display bigotry. The stats are the stats.
It let us down by not 'punishing' in an efficient and timely manner. If the market makes a massive correction its an obvious sign that the market hasn't been working properly.
If the original vendors had been stuck with the dubious loans then they'd have stopped issuing them and the bad debt wouldn't have spread.
Instead the market operated under some sort of collective delusion as these bad debts were sold on (and on) like a pig in a poke.
The 700-billion being handed out is the result of the market failing to take care of itself and the knock on effects of such a massive failure hurting too much to be left on it's own.
Capitalism and "The Market" are just tools. They are normally very good ones (by far the best we have) but they are not perfect.
Slashdot Mirror
Is there anything they can't do?
Again, I don't think it's irrelevant in that it speaks to intent.
Perhaps in your boys case the real intent is also purely to harass. Can you reasonably infer that intent though?
In a moral sense you are right, the significantly objectional part of the action wasn't the falsification of information.
In a legal sense it is relevant though as someones actions speak to their intent.
I don't think it's completely irrelevant.
If it were a real boy who really felt that way then his motivation may be expressing his feelings rather than (just) hurting the girl. It's not pretty but telling someone you don't like them anymore is something a lot of people would have done at one time or another.
With an invented boy it's pretty clear that the only motivation was to cause distress.
a good use of otherwise dead space.
Alternately authors get big enough that they don't have to bend to editors worried about commercial success.
I for one am glad Anathem exists as it is. I don't feel that the author is self-indulgent. I feel that he's indulging me.
They're called books.
I dunno, from reading Mostly Harmless I get the feeling that Adam's process involved a lot of individual clever ideas somehow being shoehorned into a story.
With Adams (and probably with Pratchett too) you're having such a good time you just don't care and enjoy it for what it is.
With Stephenson, especially in his later books, I think you spend a reasonable amount of time not really sure what "it" is. It's a different sort of journey but still a thoroughly enjoyable one as far as I'm concerned.
No
That and moronic, pointless posts that don't contribute anything to the area under discussion..
For specific areas where adult stem cells make sense and indeed have advantages that hardly needs saying.
Of course you have to acknowledge that embryonic stem cells are different and may provide viable treatments in areas where adult stem cells won't work for some reason.
Complete bollocks. The vast majority of Australians couldn't give a flying fuck about internet filtering.
A vocal minority might be lobbying for filtering. The government probably knows it's an ineffectual waste of time but has a go anyway so that minority sees it as "doing something".
Is there anything they can't do?
That makes me *frumple* so much.
It must be true then.
Wouldn't I have to allege that such a thing had happened first?
One sentence before some rant about a capitalist business enterprise?
Let me get this straight, when Microsoft embraces and extends something (lets says html or Java) that's part of Microsoft's strategy?
And when the opposite happens, ie free/open software embraces and extends something (let's say .Net) that's part of the same Microsoft strategy too?
My phone has a silent mode and it doesn't go to an answering service if I don't pick it up, it just gets recorded as a missed call.
If you have a problem with cell phones it's because you let it control you rather than vice-versa.
I can't see how the AI on the model would have fooled anybody.
How did you arrive at that thought? I didn't see anything suggesting that the person doing the community service didn't get to choose what they did.
The "shaping speed" is what you get limited to if you have reached your cap. As off-peak and on-peak typically have their own caps you may find yourself shaped in one but not in the other until your next month starts.
The "70% of customers achieve 10Mbps or faster" refers to the maximum speed obtained on a customers (unshaped) ADSL2 connection. ADSL2 is limited by line quality so anything that effects that (distance from the exchange, crappy phone wires) will reduce the maximum speed achived. This FAQ has a pretty graph of the sort of averages you get based on distance and my ISP has a great Google Maps thingo that shows actual speeds people are getting at their locations.
I think bandwidth caps make more sense. From an ISPs perspective they are a cap on average speed, which is what they are interested in. From a customers perspective they have the fastest connection possible and can manage their cap as they see fit. It fulfills the ISPs needs while giving the customer as much functionality and flexibility as possible.
What "Australia" are you living in?
5gig would be an entry level account, not a "typical" one. 20 gig would be a low end one.
I have a 50 gig plan from TPG. I haven't paid more for internet for as long as I can remember and year after year my bandwidth cap has increased in a way that has been more than sufficient for increased usage.
Of course, but it's largely a factor of our geography. Data doesn't magically get from A to B and when you are as far away from pretty much everything (including the other side of the same country) the economics are inevitably different to places that are more centrally located and/or have high population densities of their own.
It isn't (entirely) a lack of imagination or drive to find a better alternative to "models that were in place when modems were the dominant technology." It's a reflection of physical reality.
I think that is fundamentally incorrect. The tiered cap approach means that demand increases justify infrastructure purchases with extra income.
The size of the total population isn't relevant statistically. 550 people isn't a great sample size but it isn't a bad one either. The margin of error would be roughly 4%
Assuming the survey questions were phrased reasonably neither the article nor the polling display bigotry. The stats are the stats.
It let us down by not 'punishing' in an efficient and timely manner. If the market makes a massive correction its an obvious sign that the market hasn't been working properly.
If the original vendors had been stuck with the dubious loans then they'd have stopped issuing them and the bad debt wouldn't have spread.
Instead the market operated under some sort of collective delusion as these bad debts were sold on (and on) like a pig in a poke.
The 700-billion being handed out is the result of the market failing to take care of itself and the knock on effects of such a massive failure hurting too much to be left on it's own.
Capitalism and "The Market" are just tools. They are normally very good ones (by far the best we have) but they are not perfect.
Yeah, the last thing you want is someone who changes their mind in the light of new information.
I think the world got dumber the day the term "flip-flopper" began being used in public discourse.