Unfortunately, while the barkers on the right (and to some extent the left, as they tend to exaggerate the right's messages as they beat it down) must bear responsibility, in all likelihood they will hide behind the cloak of "I'm an Entertainer, nyah! *raspberries*".
If anything, a culture of unbridled selfishness may be far more responsible than any partisan zeal.
True, and I think that would be fairly trivial should it come to that stage, because they were able to convince a judge that there is probable cause to arrest the person with the cell phone. Unless they're incredibly sloppy policemen, they should have no problem getting a search warrant for stuff stored in the arrestee's name in a datacenter.
Not necessarily-- they could tell their clients "Hey, we've got this new BitTorrent technology to make content distribution faster and more reliable", and charge a premium for the service contract.
I've heard rumours that he was involved in funding for Al Quaeda back in the 90's. Not saying that he did of course, but it's interesting that he hasn't denied it so far.
That puts the statutory rape allegation into a very interesting context...
Not to mention a deflationary spiral (one that's probably fatal) and sovereign debt default if the CFL candidate moves too quickly to dismantle the Fed. Other than that (and the general predilection of libertarians to rip out laws and regulations they don't fully understand), things should be just peachy if a CFL candidate gets elected.
The same can be said about a lot of Presidents, including greats like Abraham Lincoln. For that matter, some of our worst Presidents were also the most experienced-- Nixon and W Bush come to mind.
You can post "the truth" all you want, but without context, even "the truth" is highly misleading. Moreover, you and AC have conflated "knowledge and responsibility" with "experience".
What the OP probably meant was that Palin demonstrated none of the temperament that one would expect in the leader of a big nation (intellectual curiosity, good judgment), whereas Obama showed that he was far ahead of his GOP rivals in this area. Did you hear Obama call his opponents "fascists" after Palin called him a "socialist", for example?
1. If the government got out of regulating copyright (it does a pretty crummy job of it at the moment), what makes you think the music industry wouldn't use their legal goons aggressively in this fashion? 2. What competition? The music industry is a gaggle of cartels, each making damned sure that the consumer pays only them in their respective markets. 3. By telling the government to get out of copyright, you're chucking the baby out with the bathwater. Suppose an indie artist makes a cool and popular song? What's going to happen is that an RIAA artist will proceed to steal it and make his label very wealthy. Of course, I would not be surprised in the slightest if this happens anyway, but by putting the government out of the picture, the indie now has near-zero recourse.
If the answer is not more laws, fewer laws doesn't seem to be very sensible either. What must happen is that better law, without the undue influence of interested parties, should replace what we have and be enforced consistently. That's a far cry from what we see in governments today, many of which are set up to extract power and wealth from their respective countries.
You: *hand wave* You do not wish to see my papers. iPad: I, uh... I don't wish to see your papers. You: These aren't the Droids you're looking for. iPad: These aren't the Droids I'm looking for. You: Move along. iPad: Move along.
Have you ever tried to read The Tale of Genji in its original form (hiragana)? It may be because it's written in centuries-old Japanese, but it's a bitch to read even when translated to the modern equivalent. Try parsing a modern Japanese article from kanji/kana to all-hiragana and you'll start to see parsing issues because now you can't distinguish words from particles. For that matter, fire up your IME and put in a commonly-used word, like seishiki or kenshou-- you'll see several possible distinct words in kanji, so right there you've got another problem.
I take it you haven't lived very much in Japan-- if you try to change the society there to excise kanji from the language, I guarantee you that nothing will change for generations, even if the government mandates it; the best you'll see is a few puzzled looks, and at worst you'll be treated like a lunatic. There's simply too much invested in kanji, and the creative use of kanji is only increasing. Take, for example, Bleach-- the word bankai as written in the manga exists nowhere else in Japanese, cannot be understood without the context of the manga or the accompanying kanji, and represents a newly invented word that is starting to see common use. Heck, many manga are pairing kanji with unusual or ironic readings to enrich the meaning of the dialogue. One can call that abuse of kanji, or artistic discretion, but either way, killing off kanji would force the manga writers to abandon that route of expression or ignore the mandate. Guess which one they'll pick?
I submit that (1) your conclusion is flawed because human language (context-sensitive) is inherently poorly-compatible with machine language (context-free), (2) you are imposing an unrealistic expectation on a language that is far more complex than its syllabary, and (3) the half-assed "script reform" that was done because of a stupid panic attack when typewriters (and American occupation) were introduced is far more responsible for the mess than any traditionalist influences in that culture.
Now, the apparent inability of the Japanese to learn proper English decades after its educational ministry imposed a requirement from primary school is another can of whup-ass that both of us would doubtless love to dish out to the language council... Even though it's a fully-operational part of the world society, they are still way too insular in this respect.
Corn ethanol diverts field corn from the already-mammoth agribusiness industry that pumps field corn into just about every foodstuff in the country-- everything from livestock to all processed foods and fast foods (corn oil, high fructose corn syrup). It thus encourages the expansion of that industry, which uses vast amounts of fossil fuel and its derivatives to grow corn-- that's why many experts say that you don't get nearly as much bang for the buck as you do when you process sugar cane into ethanol. And that doesn't even account for the fertilizer and pesticides/herbicides that end up in the Gulf of Mexico due to runoff (not that it will matter much for the foreseeable future).
It would be a lot more worthwhile for the government to reduce corn subsidies and use that savings to either cut the deficit or invest in things like renewable energy infrastructure or non-corn biofuel research or even tax breaks for efficiency upgrades. Alas, ADM and Monsanto contribute hugely to PACs of Congressmen who vote to continue the subsidies (and no doubt hire them as lobbyists when they retire), therefore we do not see any change in this regard.
Remember this every time a Republican or conservative Democrat says "we need less government intrusion" (other than the fact that they're also RWA Christians who want to control people's bedrooms, but I digress):
They will only say that because they stand to benefit from a corporation or industry siphoning money from your pocket-- and it's not through tax dollars.
This is the new feudalism, or what's becoming the new feudalism. Unless the people realize that "deregulation" and "tax cuts for everyone" are buzzwords designed to fool the simple, the executive culture of this nation will have us all back into indentured servitude. At the rate we're going, it won't take more than a couple of generations.
Other reason: Dogs and their handlers are not cheap labor. Sure, they're cheaper than the scanners in the short term, but if you keep them on extended contract they'll demand better pay and benefits because they're skilled labor-- unlike the monkeys operating the scanner.
So, if they go with something tried and true, they'll be accused of frivolous government spending. If they cut costs in labor and trump up security theater, they're accused of incompetence. IMO they should fire their monkeys and hire a bunch of trained pros with bomb-sniffing dogs, but the Feds have already jumped into bed with the security theater corporations years ago.
That reminds me of a Dilbert strip from a while back--
PHB: "You'll need to come up with an acronym (codename?) for your project, but all the other departments took the good ones. You can choose between 'phlegm' and 'placenta'."
If you mean in courts of law, then sure, your point stands fine.
But suppose the officer is exonerated in a court of law, and the person with the recording decides to get the officer in trouble in the court of public opinion by releasing the tape to the press? (For that matter, isn't this a much more plausible venue for such a recording than using it as evidence in a brutality charge?)
Now we have a situation where the officer probably didn't do anything wrong in the eyes of the law or of basic procedure, and yet every business in his area refuses to serve him, and every citizen treats him like a dirty cop because of the media coverage.
Clearly, citizens should be able to (and should be encouraged to) take recordings of police abuse. But just as clearly, citizens must be aware of the responsibility they bear in doing so. We have to be sure it's abuse, lest we remove a good cop from doing a good job.
I doubt it would be limited to that-- Chinese-own'zd corporations can perform DoS-type sabotage on American servers right when there's a crucial moment like a Senate vote, for example.
One gripe I have about the IUPAC's insistence on -ium for aluminium is that they break that convention for elements like tantalum, platinum, molybdenum, and lanthanum. Y'know, if they really, REALLY wanted to be consistent, they'd rename those tantalium, platinium, molybdenium, and lanthanium.
Of course, I can't complain too hard, as the ACS used "aluminium" until they changed their minds...
Why the hell does everything need to be TV centric anymore?
You do realize just how obscenely lucrative advertiser-sponsored television is, yes?
In a few years companies will no doubt shell out billions of bucks to advertise during the Super Bowl. Television and cinema are starting to face the fact that the Internet will drastically alter their media as it did to music-- and given the behavior of the media cartels, they don't like to lose a business model. That's why they cut costs again and again, and allowed advertisers to jack up the volume on their commercials (until the Senate put the kibosh on the idea). And that's also why they want to make it really painful for anyone to stream video online and make a buck off of it.
They used to care about entertaining people, because that meant people will transfer the positive feedback to their sponsors-- that, and being an asshole to your customers was universally recognized as anathema to business no matter how profitable it was. Now, just about every fucking business is running on the idea that they can piss off their customers all they want by being cheap bastards, because there's always a thousand goddamned suckers willing to buy. Meanwhile they present rosy earnings reports to their shareholders and skirt any form of accountability.
Oh, I can take my eyeballs elsewhere? Sure, if I give Apple or Netflix money, and guess what, as soon as they own bigger chunks of the market, they will do the exact same thing. And if I'm not willing to pay out the nose in the USA for hefty Internet access, I'm stuck with the aforementioned fucking businesses dominating the digital TV broadcast market.
If we as consumers want real change, the corporation itself must be changed. Too bad the fucking businesses figured that out to begin with and decided to buy off Congressmen and pour cash into think tanks that train judges. Yeah, yeah, they're not being directly paid, they're getting campaign contributions and lobbying jobs after public service-- same fucking thing.
Makes me want to get rich by investing in bastard companies and retire somewhere secluded.
If Comcast doesn't address this and tries to squeeze competing content providers seeking access to Comcast's customers, they could face anything from a stiff Sherman Act suit (barrier to entry) to RICO (extortion).
IANAL, of course. An actual legal professional can probably see the problems with my take on it.
Who or what dictates what words mean? I think you're severely underestimating the number of words in any language that change over time.
It wasn't too long ago (2-3 generations) when "gay" didn't mean "homosexual", for example. If you want a technical example other than "broadband", how about "bandwidth" (communications/physics) or "yam" (botany/culinary)? How about "calculus", which differs according to context? In math it means one thing, in dentistry another, in politics another, and in internal medicine yet another.
You can insist on strict pedantry with technical terms in stuff like documentation or academic publications, but beyond that, I don't see how one should expect people to be so strict with their use of terms-- especially marketing folks or middle managers who love to sound technical but have no clue what they're talking about.
Or, perhaps ranting about this on Slashdot isn't very effective, and we technical-oriented people should focus on educating our coworkers and managers (within reason) of the importance of using accurate words.
Slashdot Mirror
Unfortunately, while the barkers on the right (and to some extent the left, as they tend to exaggerate the right's messages as they beat it down) must bear responsibility, in all likelihood they will hide behind the cloak of "I'm an Entertainer, nyah! *raspberries*".
If anything, a culture of unbridled selfishness may be far more responsible than any partisan zeal.
True, and I think that would be fairly trivial should it come to that stage, because they were able to convince a judge that there is probable cause to arrest the person with the cell phone. Unless they're incredibly sloppy policemen, they should have no problem getting a search warrant for stuff stored in the arrestee's name in a datacenter.
Not necessarily-- they could tell their clients "Hey, we've got this new BitTorrent technology to make content distribution faster and more reliable", and charge a premium for the service contract.
That puts the statutory rape allegation into a very interesting context...
Not to mention a deflationary spiral (one that's probably fatal) and sovereign debt default if the CFL candidate moves too quickly to dismantle the Fed. Other than that (and the general predilection of libertarians to rip out laws and regulations they don't fully understand), things should be just peachy if a CFL candidate gets elected.
The simple fact is that the editors very likely do not verify many articles.
Unfortunately, there are no moderators in the submission process (to my knowledge, at least), only editors.
It is, however, a damn good way to get a good old-fashioned ideological brawl on this site and thus draw some more hits before 2010 ends.
The same can be said about a lot of Presidents, including greats like Abraham Lincoln. For that matter, some of our worst Presidents were also the most experienced-- Nixon and W Bush come to mind.
You can post "the truth" all you want, but without context, even "the truth" is highly misleading. Moreover, you and AC have conflated "knowledge and responsibility" with "experience".
What the OP probably meant was that Palin demonstrated none of the temperament that one would expect in the leader of a big nation (intellectual curiosity, good judgment), whereas Obama showed that he was far ahead of his GOP rivals in this area. Did you hear Obama call his opponents "fascists" after Palin called him a "socialist", for example?
1. If the government got out of regulating copyright (it does a pretty crummy job of it at the moment), what makes you think the music industry wouldn't use their legal goons aggressively in this fashion?
2. What competition? The music industry is a gaggle of cartels, each making damned sure that the consumer pays only them in their respective markets.
3. By telling the government to get out of copyright, you're chucking the baby out with the bathwater. Suppose an indie artist makes a cool and popular song? What's going to happen is that an RIAA artist will proceed to steal it and make his label very wealthy. Of course, I would not be surprised in the slightest if this happens anyway, but by putting the government out of the picture, the indie now has near-zero recourse.
If the answer is not more laws, fewer laws doesn't seem to be very sensible either. What must happen is that better law, without the undue influence of interested parties, should replace what we have and be enforced consistently. That's a far cry from what we see in governments today, many of which are set up to extract power and wealth from their respective countries.
You: *hand wave* You do not wish to see my papers.
iPad: I, uh... I don't wish to see your papers.
You: These aren't the Droids you're looking for.
iPad: These aren't the Droids I'm looking for.
You: Move along.
iPad: Move along.
Have you ever tried to read The Tale of Genji in its original form (hiragana)? It may be because it's written in centuries-old Japanese, but it's a bitch to read even when translated to the modern equivalent. Try parsing a modern Japanese article from kanji/kana to all-hiragana and you'll start to see parsing issues because now you can't distinguish words from particles. For that matter, fire up your IME and put in a commonly-used word, like seishiki or kenshou-- you'll see several possible distinct words in kanji, so right there you've got another problem.
I take it you haven't lived very much in Japan-- if you try to change the society there to excise kanji from the language, I guarantee you that nothing will change for generations, even if the government mandates it; the best you'll see is a few puzzled looks, and at worst you'll be treated like a lunatic. There's simply too much invested in kanji, and the creative use of kanji is only increasing. Take, for example, Bleach-- the word bankai as written in the manga exists nowhere else in Japanese, cannot be understood without the context of the manga or the accompanying kanji, and represents a newly invented word that is starting to see common use. Heck, many manga are pairing kanji with unusual or ironic readings to enrich the meaning of the dialogue. One can call that abuse of kanji, or artistic discretion, but either way, killing off kanji would force the manga writers to abandon that route of expression or ignore the mandate. Guess which one they'll pick?
I submit that (1) your conclusion is flawed because human language (context-sensitive) is inherently poorly-compatible with machine language (context-free), (2) you are imposing an unrealistic expectation on a language that is far more complex than its syllabary, and (3) the half-assed "script reform" that was done because of a stupid panic attack when typewriters (and American occupation) were introduced is far more responsible for the mess than any traditionalist influences in that culture.
Now, the apparent inability of the Japanese to learn proper English decades after its educational ministry imposed a requirement from primary school is another can of whup-ass that both of us would doubtless love to dish out to the language council... Even though it's a fully-operational part of the world society, they are still way too insular in this respect.
Tonality does not exist in Japanese.
I call bullshit. Tonality is not used in all Japanese syllables, but it is used to distinguish homophones.
That's not quite what the title implies, is it? One could cheaply achieve the same effect of the title by disabling ad blockers.
I will say that the guy's idea is novel, and perhaps crazy enough to work.
Corn ethanol diverts field corn from the already-mammoth agribusiness industry that pumps field corn into just about every foodstuff in the country-- everything from livestock to all processed foods and fast foods (corn oil, high fructose corn syrup). It thus encourages the expansion of that industry, which uses vast amounts of fossil fuel and its derivatives to grow corn-- that's why many experts say that you don't get nearly as much bang for the buck as you do when you process sugar cane into ethanol. And that doesn't even account for the fertilizer and pesticides/herbicides that end up in the Gulf of Mexico due to runoff (not that it will matter much for the foreseeable future).
It would be a lot more worthwhile for the government to reduce corn subsidies and use that savings to either cut the deficit or invest in things like renewable energy infrastructure or non-corn biofuel research or even tax breaks for efficiency upgrades. Alas, ADM and Monsanto contribute hugely to PACs of Congressmen who vote to continue the subsidies (and no doubt hire them as lobbyists when they retire), therefore we do not see any change in this regard.
Remember this every time a Republican or conservative Democrat says "we need less government intrusion" (other than the fact that they're also RWA Christians who want to control people's bedrooms, but I digress):
They will only say that because they stand to benefit from a corporation or industry siphoning money from your pocket-- and it's not through tax dollars.
This is the new feudalism, or what's becoming the new feudalism. Unless the people realize that "deregulation" and "tax cuts for everyone" are buzzwords designed to fool the simple, the executive culture of this nation will have us all back into indentured servitude. At the rate we're going, it won't take more than a couple of generations.
What makes you think they're not the ones positioning themselves to get filthy rich from deregulation?
Other reason: Dogs and their handlers are not cheap labor. Sure, they're cheaper than the scanners in the short term, but if you keep them on extended contract they'll demand better pay and benefits because they're skilled labor-- unlike the monkeys operating the scanner.
So, if they go with something tried and true, they'll be accused of frivolous government spending. If they cut costs in labor and trump up security theater, they're accused of incompetence. IMO they should fire their monkeys and hire a bunch of trained pros with bomb-sniffing dogs, but the Feds have already jumped into bed with the security theater corporations years ago.
That reminds me of a Dilbert strip from a while back--
PHB: "You'll need to come up with an acronym (codename?) for your project, but all the other departments took the good ones. You can choose between 'phlegm' and 'placenta'."
You know, we may not need to-- we can influence publicly-traded corporations if we become their shareholders.
That won't solve problems caused by private companies like Xe and Koch Industries, but it will marginalize them.
If you mean in courts of law, then sure, your point stands fine.
But suppose the officer is exonerated in a court of law, and the person with the recording decides to get the officer in trouble in the court of public opinion by releasing the tape to the press? (For that matter, isn't this a much more plausible venue for such a recording than using it as evidence in a brutality charge?)
Now we have a situation where the officer probably didn't do anything wrong in the eyes of the law or of basic procedure, and yet every business in his area refuses to serve him, and every citizen treats him like a dirty cop because of the media coverage.
Clearly, citizens should be able to (and should be encouraged to) take recordings of police abuse. But just as clearly, citizens must be aware of the responsibility they bear in doing so. We have to be sure it's abuse, lest we remove a good cop from doing a good job.
I doubt it would be limited to that-- Chinese-own'zd corporations can perform DoS-type sabotage on American servers right when there's a crucial moment like a Senate vote, for example.
Yes, well, every government fears a coup d'etat. And may I add that citizens would do well to use it as the last of all resorts.
One gripe I have about the IUPAC's insistence on -ium for aluminium is that they break that convention for elements like tantalum, platinum, molybdenum, and lanthanum. Y'know, if they really, REALLY wanted to be consistent, they'd rename those tantalium, platinium, molybdenium, and lanthanium.
Of course, I can't complain too hard, as the ACS used "aluminium" until they changed their minds...
You do realize just how obscenely lucrative advertiser-sponsored television is, yes?
In a few years companies will no doubt shell out billions of bucks to advertise during the Super Bowl. Television and cinema are starting to face the fact that the Internet will drastically alter their media as it did to music-- and given the behavior of the media cartels, they don't like to lose a business model. That's why they cut costs again and again, and allowed advertisers to jack up the volume on their commercials (until the Senate put the kibosh on the idea). And that's also why they want to make it really painful for anyone to stream video online and make a buck off of it.
They used to care about entertaining people, because that meant people will transfer the positive feedback to their sponsors-- that, and being an asshole to your customers was universally recognized as anathema to business no matter how profitable it was. Now, just about every fucking business is running on the idea that they can piss off their customers all they want by being cheap bastards, because there's always a thousand goddamned suckers willing to buy. Meanwhile they present rosy earnings reports to their shareholders and skirt any form of accountability.
Oh, I can take my eyeballs elsewhere? Sure, if I give Apple or Netflix money, and guess what, as soon as they own bigger chunks of the market, they will do the exact same thing. And if I'm not willing to pay out the nose in the USA for hefty Internet access, I'm stuck with the aforementioned fucking businesses dominating the digital TV broadcast market.
If we as consumers want real change, the corporation itself must be changed. Too bad the fucking businesses figured that out to begin with and decided to buy off Congressmen and pour cash into think tanks that train judges. Yeah, yeah, they're not being directly paid, they're getting campaign contributions and lobbying jobs after public service-- same fucking thing.
Makes me want to get rich by investing in bastard companies and retire somewhere secluded.
(end rant)
If Comcast doesn't address this and tries to squeeze competing content providers seeking access to Comcast's customers, they could face anything from a stiff Sherman Act suit (barrier to entry) to RICO (extortion).
IANAL, of course. An actual legal professional can probably see the problems with my take on it.
Who or what dictates what words mean? I think you're severely underestimating the number of words in any language that change over time.
It wasn't too long ago (2-3 generations) when "gay" didn't mean "homosexual", for example. If you want a technical example other than "broadband", how about "bandwidth" (communications/physics) or "yam" (botany/culinary)? How about "calculus", which differs according to context? In math it means one thing, in dentistry another, in politics another, and in internal medicine yet another.
You can insist on strict pedantry with technical terms in stuff like documentation or academic publications, but beyond that, I don't see how one should expect people to be so strict with their use of terms-- especially marketing folks or middle managers who love to sound technical but have no clue what they're talking about.
Or, perhaps ranting about this on Slashdot isn't very effective, and we technical-oriented people should focus on educating our coworkers and managers (within reason) of the importance of using accurate words.