I wish people would stop trying to infer that somehow equipment, technology or something A, B or C is somehow responsible or justifies the actions of criminals.
The person you're responding to didn't do that. They merely made a statement that is, to the best of my ability to judge, a 100% correct assessment of what events would have transpired under the hypothetical situation proposed. What conclusion you draw from it are your own responsibility. OP certainly didn't say anything like what you just said.
You should be supporting your neighborhood grocer... People like you that shop at mega-chain grocery stores are putting butchers and bakers out of business!
My neighborhood grocer? A place to buy meat and bread that's not part of a mega-chain?
I'm not sure where you live, but it's simply not possible to do what you suggest for most of us who don't own time machines.
I never use the self check line. Never. The reason is that it is a small contribution of me keeping people at work and not have them replaced by machines.
I'd rather see people working at jobs that require people, rather than wasting time doing tasks to mindless they can be done (and frankly done better) by a machine. And, gods help me, I seem to get the "chatty" ones far too often. I need some polite way of letting people know their incessant chatter is making it really hard for me to pretend they don't exist.
For some reason, my friends think I'm antisocial...;)
I don't know the cost of the item in question as you didn't mention it, but it should be noted that employee's time is frequently the most expensive thing on a company's books. It's frequently the case that it's cheaper for them to just let you have it at the obviously wrong price than to try to correct the issue immediately. The correcting of the price can wait until the next time they can conveniently update prices in the system (when the right person comes in or whatever), and they'll just eat the loss from now 'til then as it'll cost less than fixing it right now would. The clerk, though, should probably (definitely) have noted the item in question to pass the information on to the appropriate person -- sounds like this one may have just been clueless. Kudos for taking time to try to point it out, though...
A moral compass isn't binary. It happens in degrees, and I don't think it's a stretch to say that with little chance of consequences people will do the right thing, but only if it's convenient and easy.
This hits the nail right on the head. The fact of the matter is, more people are lazy than greedy, to a degree that they'll be honest, even if it costs, unless you make it too damned inconvenient. They'll be dishonest if you make honesty too much work...
Really? You don't see a connection between socioeconomic condition and the relative value of food?
I see that someone might try to make such a connection. I don't see a valid connnection, no. But then again, I'm someone who's done the exact same thing, and at the time, I qualified for food-stamps.
I was surprised to see 'dickhead' in an official response. Is it a less vulgar term in NZ than in the US?
Excluding hardcore Islamic nations, everything in less vulgar to the rest of the world than it is in the US, which remains, at its core, a nation of Puritans, culturally at least.
People are actually, by and large, a pretty decent lot. And that's true pretty much anywhere you go, I suspect.
Indeed. Unfortunately, the vast majority who are kind and decent in the world get little press and make little noise. The crooks get all the headlines, and the a-hats make all the noise. People who aren't very observant will tend to think they are the majority.
It very well may be. The fact that you think it isn't based on what you quoted, which does not have sufficient information to determine that, shows you suffer from the same logical fallacy that the military apparently does.
Here's a fact to consider: 100% of known terrorists breath oxygen. Therefore, if you find someone breathing oxygen, it's an extremely strong indicator that they're a terrorist, no? Well, no, it isn't, because there's no less strong an association between oxygen-breathing and non-terrorists. Having a high incidence among terrorists only makes it an indicator if it has a low incidence among the general population.
The watch in question is consistently one of the cheapest reliable watches you can buy (anything cheaper is essentially a child's toy). Oddly enough, these things sell by the millions to non-terrorists around the world...
Actually it's much more simple and innocent than than. The LHC was built to find the Higgs Boson. It's the biggest, most powerful, fastest, and most costly physics experiment EVAR! We (popular culture) love a success story.
This isn't true, except for the part about popular culture. The rest is a reflection of how popular culture builds myths around science. The LHC wasn't "built to find the Higgs Boson", and indeed would go down in history as a much more spectacularly successful experiment if it in fact falsified the theory of the Higgs. Finding the Higgs exactly where we expected it, with nothing else interesting about it, would be the worst possible result. Not that that would be bad, mind you -- anything that expands our knowledge and understanding is good. It's just, from the point of view of a scientist, the least good result, and would be a bit of a disappointment when you consider the much more exciting possible results.
We built accelerators because they have, in the past, revealed new particles and things about the way the universe works. The most spectacularly successful experiments of this sort have been the ones that found things we weren't even looking for. If you really think the LHC was built to find the Higgs, you have a heck of a lot to learn about experimental physics. As Isaac Asimov once noted, the most exciting phrase to hear in science is not "Eureka!" (I found it!) but "Huh... that's funny..."
If the LHC finds the Higgs, exactly as predicted, and nothing else, it'll have been one of the most spectacularly lame experiments in history... not entirely useless, but... very disappointing in any case.
You may be on to something. Howver, you need to put a roof over it, and walls to keep the bugs and stuff out, and install air conditioning. Then it becomes habitable!
Yes, I'm sure the Xbox PR person is paid to play with it all day. Are the summaries written and then edited by children?
No, they're just written with a tongue-in-cheek style that is apparently unrecognizable to people with no sense of humor. Many of them can and do piss off a lot of people with no sense of humor. Luckily, the rest of us can just laugh at them for taking an obviously farcical comment too seriously.
But given the fact that most people don't get paid for dumping their aluminum in the recycle bin, this could be a good invention. You get to extract energy from the aluminum in your cans and use it yourself, rather than give it away to someone else for free.
Is it really costing you that much to power all your RC toys? Or are you taking an article about a toy car way too seriously? (Granted, so was Mr. Perens...)
For those who don't recognize it, sodium hydroxide is more commonly known as lye. Not sure I would want to be in an accident in a full size vehicle powered by lye.
Yeah... most children's toys would not make good full size vehicles.
... I'm assuming South Africa does, but who cares about them - their biggest contributor to the world economy is a diamond monopoly that artificially inflates diamond prices.
lol... that's pretty funny if you meant it as a joke. It's pretty pathetic if you believe it. The US government wasn't so reluctant to piss of the South African government during apartheid because we needed their diamonds to keep our military-industrial complex going. There are far more important minerals we get from them (and for many years, exclusively from them, although these days China has eclipsed South Africa in the rare minerals area).
lol... I'm not sure which is more amusing, your ridiculously over-simplified analysis of the financial crisis, or the fact that you call someone else's understanding shallow while relating it.
And I'm laughing my ass off. I knew/. "readers" rarely RTFA, but I always assumed they were just too lazy to follow the links. I never realized they actually click the links, but only to look at the pretty pictures. xD
Not that the situation isn't bad, just that, if you read the original article, you'll see the crashing will be easy to fix compared to all the other, far more serious problems with the new UI.
Yes, unfortunately. I remain convinced that safe nuclear power is possible and a wonderful idea. However, I am now thoroughly convinced that human beings are too greedy and stupid to actually implement nuclear power safely, despite it being perfectly possible to do. I'm reminded about the old adage about "If men were angels, there would be no need for government." If men were angels, we could deploy and benefit from safe nuclear power. Meanwhile, back in the real world, trusting actual human beings to build nuclear power plants is bloody stupid...
Nothing in the memo asserts that the informant was an eyewitness. It doesn't even say he actually investigated this particular incident in any official capacity, or at all, really.
Slashdot Mirror
I wish people would stop trying to infer that somehow equipment, technology or something A, B or C is somehow responsible or justifies the actions of criminals.
The person you're responding to didn't do that. They merely made a statement that is, to the best of my ability to judge, a 100% correct assessment of what events would have transpired under the hypothetical situation proposed. What conclusion you draw from it are your own responsibility. OP certainly didn't say anything like what you just said.
You should be supporting your neighborhood grocer... People like you that shop at mega-chain grocery stores are putting butchers and bakers out of business!
My neighborhood grocer? A place to buy meat and bread that's not part of a mega-chain?
I'm not sure where you live, but it's simply not possible to do what you suggest for most of us who don't own time machines.
I never use the self check line. Never. The reason is that it is a small contribution of me keeping people at work and not have them replaced by machines.
I'd rather see people working at jobs that require people, rather than wasting time doing tasks to mindless they can be done (and frankly done better) by a machine. And, gods help me, I seem to get the "chatty" ones far too often. I need some polite way of letting people know their incessant chatter is making it really hard for me to pretend they don't exist.
For some reason, my friends think I'm antisocial... ;)
I don't know the cost of the item in question as you didn't mention it, but it should be noted that employee's time is frequently the most expensive thing on a company's books. It's frequently the case that it's cheaper for them to just let you have it at the obviously wrong price than to try to correct the issue immediately. The correcting of the price can wait until the next time they can conveniently update prices in the system (when the right person comes in or whatever), and they'll just eat the loss from now 'til then as it'll cost less than fixing it right now would. The clerk, though, should probably (definitely) have noted the item in question to pass the information on to the appropriate person -- sounds like this one may have just been clueless. Kudos for taking time to try to point it out, though...
A moral compass isn't binary. It happens in degrees, and I don't think it's a stretch to say that with little chance of consequences people will do the right thing, but only if it's convenient and easy.
This hits the nail right on the head. The fact of the matter is, more people are lazy than greedy, to a degree that they'll be honest, even if it costs, unless you make it too damned inconvenient. They'll be dishonest if you make honesty too much work...
Really? You don't see a connection between socioeconomic condition and the relative value of food?
I see that someone might try to make such a connection. I don't see a valid connnection, no. But then again, I'm someone who's done the exact same thing, and at the time, I qualified for food-stamps.
I was surprised to see 'dickhead' in an official response. Is it a less vulgar term in NZ than in the US?
Excluding hardcore Islamic nations, everything in less vulgar to the rest of the world than it is in the US, which remains, at its core, a nation of Puritans, culturally at least.
People are actually, by and large, a pretty decent lot. And that's true pretty much anywhere you go, I suspect.
Indeed. Unfortunately, the vast majority who are kind and decent in the world get little press and make little noise. The crooks get all the headlines, and the a-hats make all the noise. People who aren't very observant will tend to think they are the majority.
When we run out of helium, we can manufacture anti-helium to replace it! ;)
It's not silly at all.
It very well may be. The fact that you think it isn't based on what you quoted, which does not have sufficient information to determine that, shows you suffer from the same logical fallacy that the military apparently does.
Here's a fact to consider: 100% of known terrorists breath oxygen. Therefore, if you find someone breathing oxygen, it's an extremely strong indicator that they're a terrorist, no? Well, no, it isn't, because there's no less strong an association between oxygen-breathing and non-terrorists. Having a high incidence among terrorists only makes it an indicator if it has a low incidence among the general population.
The watch in question is consistently one of the cheapest reliable watches you can buy (anything cheaper is essentially a child's toy). Oddly enough, these things sell by the millions to non-terrorists around the world...
Actually it's much more simple and innocent than than. The LHC was built to find the Higgs Boson. It's the biggest, most powerful, fastest, and most costly physics experiment EVAR! We (popular culture) love a success story.
This isn't true, except for the part about popular culture. The rest is a reflection of how popular culture builds myths around science. The LHC wasn't "built to find the Higgs Boson", and indeed would go down in history as a much more spectacularly successful experiment if it in fact falsified the theory of the Higgs. Finding the Higgs exactly where we expected it, with nothing else interesting about it, would be the worst possible result. Not that that would be bad, mind you -- anything that expands our knowledge and understanding is good. It's just, from the point of view of a scientist, the least good result, and would be a bit of a disappointment when you consider the much more exciting possible results.
We built accelerators because they have, in the past, revealed new particles and things about the way the universe works. The most spectacularly successful experiments of this sort have been the ones that found things we weren't even looking for. If you really think the LHC was built to find the Higgs, you have a heck of a lot to learn about experimental physics. As Isaac Asimov once noted, the most exciting phrase to hear in science is not "Eureka!" (I found it!) but "Huh... that's funny..."
If the LHC finds the Higgs, exactly as predicted, and nothing else, it'll have been one of the most spectacularly lame experiments in history... not entirely useless, but... very disappointing in any case.
There's always the 3D alternative of "outside".
You may be on to something. Howver, you need to put a roof over it, and walls to keep the bugs and stuff out, and install air conditioning. Then it becomes habitable!
Yes, I'm sure the Xbox PR person is paid to play with it all day. Are the summaries written and then edited by children?
No, they're just written with a tongue-in-cheek style that is apparently unrecognizable to people with no sense of humor. Many of them can and do piss off a lot of people with no sense of humor. Luckily, the rest of us can just laugh at them for taking an obviously farcical comment too seriously.
I'm a bit shocked that she died so young (63!!)...
Cancer sucks...
But given the fact that most people don't get paid for dumping their aluminum in the recycle bin, this could be a good invention. You get to extract energy from the aluminum in your cans and use it yourself, rather than give it away to someone else for free.
Is it really costing you that much to power all your RC toys? Or are you taking an article about a toy car way too seriously? (Granted, so was Mr. Perens...)
For those who don't recognize it, sodium hydroxide is more commonly known as lye. Not sure I would want to be in an accident in a full size vehicle powered by lye.
Yeah... most children's toys would not make good full size vehicles.
... I'm assuming South Africa does, but who cares about them - their biggest contributor to the world economy is a diamond monopoly that artificially inflates diamond prices.
lol... that's pretty funny if you meant it as a joke. It's pretty pathetic if you believe it. The US government wasn't so reluctant to piss of the South African government during apartheid because we needed their diamonds to keep our military-industrial complex going. There are far more important minerals we get from them (and for many years, exclusively from them, although these days China has eclipsed South Africa in the rare minerals area).
lol... I'm not sure which is more amusing, your ridiculously over-simplified analysis of the financial crisis, or the fact that you call someone else's understanding shallow while relating it.
... This is all explained in the caption.
And I'm laughing my ass off. I knew /. "readers" rarely RTFA, but I always assumed they were just too lazy to follow the links. I never realized they actually click the links, but only to look at the pretty pictures. xD
Har har. But honestly, the most unrealistic part of Firefly is not that everyone spoke some Chinese, but that everyone spoke some English.
Not that the situation isn't bad, just that, if you read the original article, you'll see the crashing will be easy to fix compared to all the other, far more serious problems with the new UI.
Yes, unfortunately. I remain convinced that safe nuclear power is possible and a wonderful idea. However, I am now thoroughly convinced that human beings are too greedy and stupid to actually implement nuclear power safely, despite it being perfectly possible to do. I'm reminded about the old adage about "If men were angels, there would be no need for government." If men were angels, we could deploy and benefit from safe nuclear power. Meanwhile, back in the real world, trusting actual human beings to build nuclear power plants is bloody stupid...
Hmm. You should read /. more often, then. :p
That's the point! Nature barcodes them for us, we just need to use a barcode reader to identify them as individuals. It's brilliant!
Nothing in the memo asserts that the informant was an eyewitness. It doesn't even say he actually investigated this particular incident in any official capacity, or at all, really.