I don't disagree with your analysis except on one point. "Concurrence does not imply causation" and I don't see a direct link between Facebook and what seems to be an accelerated fraying of our society. Yes they seem to have happened at the same time, but I don't think Facebook caused it, if anything it was that the fraying caused Facebook to be a thing.
If one looks to the underlying cause by pealing off the various layers of garbage we've stacked on the corpse, you will have to pull things like Facebook, Twitter, Politics of personal destruction, lack of personal responsibility and entitlement. I think if you dig deep enough, you will finally arrive at a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of man and why the balance between culture, government and morals matter. We've basically lost sight of what's really important, lost centuries of collective experience, forgotten what really matters and why we can know it to be true. The seeds of this where growing long before Facebook was even a dream.
So I see your "I don't care about you" because I sit here where you cannot reach or see me so I'm free to be abusive that Facebook is rife with as but another manifestation of the sickness, one that's deeper and predates Facebook by decades. I remember watching folks abuse others on the forums of my BBS two decades ago, before the internet was a even a thing.
Facebook may make it easier, may make it more common, but it was happening back on FIDONET a long time before Facebook or it's founder was even a dream. It's not new.
You know, I think I agree with you. Twitter is the lazy reporter's go to when you don't feel like pounding the pavement looking for interesting stuff to report on.
Case in point... Trump's incessant Tweeting.... The lazy reporters get all a twitter every time he calls them (rightly or wrongly) out or says something crazy. They go nuts. Remember the "coffeve" thing? We got at least two days of breathless reporting on what amounted to a troll tweet. It's like Trump's tweets are a laser pointer and the media are a group of cats chasing it. Remember the "wires tapped" tweet? How many days was that one? Surely it's obvious how Trump is using this to control the subject of the day to one he wants, yet they keep jumping at them like catnip.
If Facebook is the cause, who thinks censorship on Facebook is somehow the cure? Yea, I don't think so.
The problem here is cultural. What's on Facebook is just one symptom of many issues in the culture today.
The concept that Facebook is at fault is as absurd as is Facebook's purported "fix". Anyway, I don't believe Facebook really cares about anything but avoiding bad PR. They are on a quest for profit, any profit, and good PR is but one of the means to get there.
The artists picked a visual style to convey the esthetic impact they are trying to achieve and use it in their drawn backgrounds. Apparently this includes power lines.
Where I get where this basic artistic concept might be lost on a lot of folks reading Slashdot because we tend to be thinking about the technical nature of things, it's not that hard to understand.
BONUS: They pick the music in the background to drive an emotional impact of a movie, not just the visual images used. Try not to get lost in the enormity of the thought..
Double Bonus: Annime is NOT reality, regardless of how much you think it so. It's an animated cartoon and the stories are not real life.
Yes, this post should be read to be dripping with sarcasm.
Like a 2 year old I-Device is going to have performance... If you want performance you need the latest device, brand new and clean to get it. Anything else is going to be less performance.
What? And miss the opportunity to sell a new I-Device?
Apple is a lot of things, but stupid isn't among them. Some of their customers however....
Personally, I figured this was the case anyway. That old I-Device gets slower for two reasons though. 1. The battery has less capacity so they try to keep he device running longer by scaling back power consumption. 2. IOS is getting bigger and slower as more capabilities are added and because apple has this "Unified user interface" concept to keep up they have to back port a lot of the new stuff to their old devices, making IOS bigger and slower.
Again, this is a cultural problem. Folks have been raised to not engage in critical thinking, I can teach myself efforts to understand a topic. They have not been educated in politics or civil debate. We as a culture are stuck on the 30 min sitcom quick fix, the one line joke and the belief that OUR cultural views are the only ones out there. We've also mistakenly equated what "sounds good" with "being right" because that's how our schools teach ethics and morals.
Yes, there is a grey area here, but the idea here is mutual respect. I respect you enough to leave you to make your choices unmolested by my views, you respect me enough to not be obnoxious about the exercise of your freedoms. Keep it appropriate for public in public and your private life private. I'll do the same. If you think somebody might find your discussion inappropriate in a public place, have it someplace else. I'll do the same.
If you don't respect me enough to not be obnoxious in public, that's on you. However, I'm likely to just walk away. People being obnoxious in public are usually looking for attention and I don't give them what they want and eventually they will try someplace else and the problem goes away.
Of course, we see the exact same thing on the evening news, where cleverly edited, parsed and presented, you can make it look anyway you want, not confirmation bias required.
The real threat will be fabricated "video surveillance" footage and other "proof" used to "prove" or "disprove" anything the editor wants. What do you believe when everything you see can plausibly be called "fake news"?
Are we not ALREADY living in the age where you cannot trust video, audio or photographic evidence as proof of anything? I think we do.
It's not Facebook.... Facebook is but one of the current tools being used and abused for this.
Oh good grief.
Facebook is the liquid metal 800-lb unsamarium-alloy gorilla in the social media space, whose very existence dictates the strategy of every other player whose business interests even vaguely impinge upon this niche.
In related news, humans are but one apex predator on planet earth (although this gasp-worthy aphorism elicited less of an eye roll after the mass synthesis of self-assembling unsamarium).
[*] Unsamarium is the name given to the element with atomic number 162—from an island of nucleic stability obtainable only with unsuspected technology of the distant future.
Still, I think the problem is a cultural one and social media is not responsible for it. Social media may make it more noticeable and encourage such cultural rot, but I seriously doubt it's the source of that foul odor being complained about..
Ah, but the post I was responding to said "traceable". BTC is the definition of online traceability because we have a list of *every* transaction ever made in the public domain.. If I *ever* discover your wallet ID and tie it to you, I can go into the block chain and trace EVERY transaction that wallet has ever made and know it was you. It's like a bank that publishes every transaction in every account by account number on the web for all to see and verify. It would be totally traceable... All you need to do is associate an account number with an individual and volia, you know every transaction made on the account they own.
You run the risk of exposing your relationship to that wallet ID with every transaction you make that converts BTC into something else. Eventually, somebody will want something with real value for that BTC and THAT is where the risk is. Such transactions are NOT anonymous. If you want to buy something you need to have it delivered someplace right? Convert it to cash and you will have to some how physically get the cash into your hand. All these activities are where your true identity could come to light and your whole transaction history laid bare for some criminal investigation or some thing.
You can bet that if BTC became illegal to trade in the USA (unlikely I know, but follow me) that the perceived value would crash, mining would stop and the currency would choke and die. BTC mining has to be profitable, or transaction fees enough to make BTC transactions happen fast enough to be reasonable. Right now, we are barely keeping transaction confirmation times short enough. There are too many other currencies that are more profitable to mine, sucking up all the hashing hardware.
Problem for BTC is that as we keep raising transaction fees and confirmation times, it's going to become unusable. The "make work" that is the mining operation, that keeps getting more expensive and time consuming to do will eventually snuff out BTC. More's law won't be able to save it.
BTC may rise and fall between now and when the general public realizes what it actually is, but eventually, it will either crash under it's own weight slowly or a government or two will mortally wound it and it will die quickly.
So... probably not a bubble, unless the desire to move money around with no traceability ceases to be desireable
Seriously? Not traceable?
You just *might* want to take a look at how a bitcoin changes hands and how long the block chain exists. EVERY bitcoin transaction from the beginning of time is traceable and will be as long as it remains a "thing".
What BitCoin allows you to do is to remain anonymous, if you are careful, and if you never try to convert your BitCoin into something else that can be traced, and what's a BitCoin worth if you cannot convert it to something else?
So, the traceability idea is a misstatement and the anonymous ownership is not guaranteed. BitCoin may not be what you want to hold as a criminal or you don't want traceability for what you are doing. Cash might be better for you. Cash IS untraceable (assuming nobody knows the serial numbers in question), nearly universal and anonymous if you are careful.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't disagree with your analysis except on one point. "Concurrence does not imply causation" and I don't see a direct link between Facebook and what seems to be an accelerated fraying of our society. Yes they seem to have happened at the same time, but I don't think Facebook caused it, if anything it was that the fraying caused Facebook to be a thing.
If one looks to the underlying cause by pealing off the various layers of garbage we've stacked on the corpse, you will have to pull things like Facebook, Twitter, Politics of personal destruction, lack of personal responsibility and entitlement. I think if you dig deep enough, you will finally arrive at a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of man and why the balance between culture, government and morals matter. We've basically lost sight of what's really important, lost centuries of collective experience, forgotten what really matters and why we can know it to be true. The seeds of this where growing long before Facebook was even a dream.
So I see your "I don't care about you" because I sit here where you cannot reach or see me so I'm free to be abusive that Facebook is rife with as but another manifestation of the sickness, one that's deeper and predates Facebook by decades. I remember watching folks abuse others on the forums of my BBS two decades ago, before the internet was a even a thing.
Facebook may make it easier, may make it more common, but it was happening back on FIDONET a long time before Facebook or it's founder was even a dream. It's not new.
You know, I think I agree with you. Twitter is the lazy reporter's go to when you don't feel like pounding the pavement looking for interesting stuff to report on.
Case in point... Trump's incessant Tweeting.... The lazy reporters get all a twitter every time he calls them (rightly or wrongly) out or says something crazy. They go nuts. Remember the "coffeve" thing? We got at least two days of breathless reporting on what amounted to a troll tweet. It's like Trump's tweets are a laser pointer and the media are a group of cats chasing it. Remember the "wires tapped" tweet? How many days was that one? Surely it's obvious how Trump is using this to control the subject of the day to one he wants, yet they keep jumping at them like catnip.
If Facebook is the cause, who thinks censorship on Facebook is somehow the cure? Yea, I don't think so.
The problem here is cultural. What's on Facebook is just one symptom of many issues in the culture today.
The concept that Facebook is at fault is as absurd as is Facebook's purported "fix". Anyway, I don't believe Facebook really cares about anything but avoiding bad PR. They are on a quest for profit, any profit, and good PR is but one of the means to get there.
The artists picked a visual style to convey the esthetic impact they are trying to achieve and use it in their drawn backgrounds. Apparently this includes power lines.
Where I get where this basic artistic concept might be lost on a lot of folks reading Slashdot because we tend to be thinking about the technical nature of things, it's not that hard to understand.
BONUS: They pick the music in the background to drive an emotional impact of a movie, not just the visual images used. Try not to get lost in the enormity of the thought..
Double Bonus: Annime is NOT reality, regardless of how much you think it so. It's an animated cartoon and the stories are not real life.
Yes, this post should be read to be dripping with sarcasm.
I suppose there is that bit of fun to look forward to.... That and being able to gloat over all the money they *used* to think they had...
Though here in the USA, the socialist utopia pushers do try.
Folks don't seem to realize what the 2000 and 2009 crashes were about or what caused them.
Students of history are condemned to watch while the ignorant repeat it.
You don't actually make a profit until you sell the asset.... I suggest you do that NOW!
Crowd sourced information.... As accurate as the crowd usually is. Now let's get on with the mob hangin'
Like a 2 year old I-Device is going to have performance... If you want performance you need the latest device, brand new and clean to get it. Anything else is going to be less performance.
What? And miss the opportunity to sell a new I-Device?
Apple is a lot of things, but stupid isn't among them. Some of their customers however....
Personally, I figured this was the case anyway. That old I-Device gets slower for two reasons though. 1. The battery has less capacity so they try to keep he device running longer by scaling back power consumption. 2. IOS is getting bigger and slower as more capabilities are added and because apple has this "Unified user interface" concept to keep up they have to back port a lot of the new stuff to their old devices, making IOS bigger and slower.
Who makes their phones BLAZING fast
Seriously, all you folks are missing the joke here.. Think Samsung Note being a smoking hot phone and try again.
Off topic? Maybe, But this is kind of funny..
Again, this is a cultural problem. Folks have been raised to not engage in critical thinking, I can teach myself efforts to understand a topic. They have not been educated in politics or civil debate. We as a culture are stuck on the 30 min sitcom quick fix, the one line joke and the belief that OUR cultural views are the only ones out there. We've also mistakenly equated what "sounds good" with "being right" because that's how our schools teach ethics and morals.
Ah, but actually it goes both ways...
Yes, there is a grey area here, but the idea here is mutual respect. I respect you enough to leave you to make your choices unmolested by my views, you respect me enough to not be obnoxious about the exercise of your freedoms. Keep it appropriate for public in public and your private life private. I'll do the same. If you think somebody might find your discussion inappropriate in a public place, have it someplace else. I'll do the same.
If you don't respect me enough to not be obnoxious in public, that's on you. However, I'm likely to just walk away. People being obnoxious in public are usually looking for attention and I don't give them what they want and eventually they will try someplace else and the problem goes away.
Confirmation Bias
Of course, we see the exact same thing on the evening news, where cleverly edited, parsed and presented, you can make it look anyway you want, not confirmation bias required.
Your poor son...
Come on .. Don't get red in the face over this...
The real threat will be fabricated "video surveillance" footage and other "proof" used to "prove" or "disprove" anything the editor wants. What do you believe when everything you see can plausibly be called "fake news"?
Are we not ALREADY living in the age where you cannot trust video, audio or photographic evidence as proof of anything? I think we do.
Let people act out their fantasies in VR rather than have them do it in real life. If it doesn't hurt anyone, then why is it anyone's business?
Well.. This confirmed prude doesn't care as long as:
1. The only person possibly hurt is you.
2. I don't have to know about it... AND...
3. You don't make me approve of your choices.
If you can live within those limits, do what you want, just leave me out of it...
Oh good grief.
Facebook is the liquid metal 800-lb unsamarium-alloy gorilla in the social media space, whose very existence dictates the strategy of every other player whose business interests even vaguely impinge upon this niche.
In related news, humans are but one apex predator on planet earth (although this gasp-worthy aphorism elicited less of an eye roll after the mass synthesis of self-assembling unsamarium).
[*] Unsamarium is the name given to the element with atomic number 162—from an island of nucleic stability obtainable only with unsuspected technology of the distant future.
Still, I think the problem is a cultural one and social media is not responsible for it. Social media may make it more noticeable and encourage such cultural rot, but I seriously doubt it's the source of that foul odor being complained about..
Ah, but the post I was responding to said "traceable". BTC is the definition of online traceability because we have a list of *every* transaction ever made in the public domain.. If I *ever* discover your wallet ID and tie it to you, I can go into the block chain and trace EVERY transaction that wallet has ever made and know it was you. It's like a bank that publishes every transaction in every account by account number on the web for all to see and verify. It would be totally traceable... All you need to do is associate an account number with an individual and volia, you know every transaction made on the account they own.
You run the risk of exposing your relationship to that wallet ID with every transaction you make that converts BTC into something else. Eventually, somebody will want something with real value for that BTC and THAT is where the risk is. Such transactions are NOT anonymous. If you want to buy something you need to have it delivered someplace right? Convert it to cash and you will have to some how physically get the cash into your hand. All these activities are where your true identity could come to light and your whole transaction history laid bare for some criminal investigation or some thing.
You can bet that if BTC became illegal to trade in the USA (unlikely I know, but follow me) that the perceived value would crash, mining would stop and the currency would choke and die. BTC mining has to be profitable, or transaction fees enough to make BTC transactions happen fast enough to be reasonable. Right now, we are barely keeping transaction confirmation times short enough. There are too many other currencies that are more profitable to mine, sucking up all the hashing hardware.
Problem for BTC is that as we keep raising transaction fees and confirmation times, it's going to become unusable. The "make work" that is the mining operation, that keeps getting more expensive and time consuming to do will eventually snuff out BTC. More's law won't be able to save it.
BTC may rise and fall between now and when the general public realizes what it actually is, but eventually, it will either crash under it's own weight slowly or a government or two will mortally wound it and it will die quickly.
Buy a time share instead... At least you will have a pace to take that yearly vacation when it's all over but the crying..
So... probably not a bubble, unless the desire to move money around with no traceability ceases to be desireable
Seriously? Not traceable?
You just *might* want to take a look at how a bitcoin changes hands and how long the block chain exists. EVERY bitcoin transaction from the beginning of time is traceable and will be as long as it remains a "thing".
What BitCoin allows you to do is to remain anonymous, if you are careful, and if you never try to convert your BitCoin into something else that can be traced, and what's a BitCoin worth if you cannot convert it to something else?
So, the traceability idea is a misstatement and the anonymous ownership is not guaranteed. BitCoin may not be what you want to hold as a criminal or you don't want traceability for what you are doing. Cash might be better for you. Cash IS untraceable (assuming nobody knows the serial numbers in question), nearly universal and anonymous if you are careful.
History Class
Ok.. Just don't expect any sympathy from me then, cause I'm going to gloat...