Pretty soon the word "racism" will be devoid of all meaning, due to being constantly diluted and trivialized by constantly being used where it does not apply.
What makes you think we haven't actually gotten there already?
Is this anything like the game of Rouge, where you've been miniaturized and have to descend the layers of a woman's handbag? Watch out for things wrapped in tissue, they're deadly.
That's if the SMS can actually be sent to Google Voice. I've run into situations where SMSs can't be sent to Google Voice. Just today, I was using a web site that wants to verify your account by sending you an SMS. If I put in my Google Voice number, the site came back with an error. And this is not the first time I've run into this.
Good luck getting an evidence-based culture developed in the face of the entrenched Bulverism of modern political discourse. Even more generally, we don't argue over the issues at hand, we argue over why the other side shouldn't be listened to (and Bulverism is just one tool in that arsenal). Not even the geeks or the scientists are immune. If you really want to move to an evidence-based culture, you're going to first have to pull people's focus off of defeating the opposition, and onto actually investigating the truth or falsity of particular issues. As C. S. Lewis put it "Until Bulverism is crushed, reason can play no effective part in human affairs". There's your assignment. Get to it.
The Democrats are just as much in the pockets of Big Media as the Republicans. Blame this on the corruption of politicians in general, not just those of one party.
President John Adams was just one of many who noted that unless the citizens themselves prize virtue, government will be corrupt and ineffective.
Which doesn't hold out much hope for a culture that denigrates virtue, does it?
We all complain about various political policies on both sides of the ideological spectrum, but at the core of our most important problems lies a big heapin' helping of hypocrisy... on our part. There's no conspiracy about that. We have to look in the mirror.
Our representatives are much more representative than we'd like to admit
A critical detail absent from the summary is that these tweets took place weeks before their trip -- they weren't done at the airport.
This itself I find interesting. This isn't just the TSA involved here, you have to have some of the U.S.'s intelligence apparatus involved, possibly including the NSA(for capture of communications). This essentially exposes the fact that U.S. intelligence has the capability of taking minor tweets (and no doubt other forms of internet communications), correlating them with the real-life identities of their authors, and matching them to people entering the U.S. These statements weren't made where TSA statements could hear them. That the TSA agents knew about them at all implies some sort of ECHELONish mechanism for collecting even minor tweets such as this and matching them to people entering the U.S.
To some degree, this isn't surprising. Give a government organization the task of keeping terrorists out, and this is the type of capability you would expect them to develop. But why 'spend' this kind of capability on such a minor, harmless target? This implies to me a couple of things:
Over reliance on technology vs use of actual human analysis or review. An actual human analyst might well have spotted the cultural references and noted that they were harmless. The implication seems to be that intelligence collected via technical means are presented directly to minor TSA agents who don't have the training or analysis skills to correctly understand them. This is likely done to speed up 'getting the information to where it needs to be used', but increases the risk of failure due to poor quality of information or interpretation..
Is it possible to go from a tweet to the real-life identity of the sender in this kind of time-frame (hooking up a tweet to the identity of a person entering the country within a week or two) without the cooperation of Twitter? Note that there's no questioning if they got it right - the couple in question acknowledge they actually sent the tweets.
Finally, does anyone else get the feel of something out of Person of Interest, except that the computer isn't actually capable of spotting malicious intent?
It might not have been matched on the phone number. If you're both on Facebook and friended, it might have pulled the information from Facebook (assuming your friend has also set up the Facebook app (which comes by default in some Android phones)).
Perhaps, but man of us who work with computers (where words do have rather rigid meanings,) do so because we are not really very good at dealing with ambiguous wording.
And yet, the computer industry seems to be one of those who tend to produce conflicting uses of words (I have long maintained that to keep up with computers, you have to have the ability to keep multiple sets of conflicting vocabulary in your head, and keep them straight). You even see conflicting uses within the same company (e.g. two different lines of Burroughs minicomputers had conflicting semantics for the terms 'Cold Start' and 'Warm Start: on one line, Cold Start meant to bring the computer up from a power off condition and Warm Start was essentially what we now call a reboot; on the other line, Cold Start meant to erase the disk drive and load the operating system, and Warm Start meant to replace the operating system without erasing the disk. Failing to disambiguate this terminology properly could have disastrous results.).
In the computer language arena, it's not at all uncommon for identical concepts to be expressed in different terminology in different languages, and at the same time seemingly identical terminology in different lanaguages refer to slightly different concepts.
I begin to understand why Platonism developed. It almost seems like you've got an arena of rigidly defined concepts out there 'somewhere' that we can only access through terminology that is constantly changing and at times in conflict.
Well, given that Microsoft currently has a marketing campaign that seems to be trying to communicate "We designed our phones to be so boring that you don't pay as much attention to it as you would pay attention to other smartphones", and is trying to present this as a good thing, it's hard to dispute that Microsoft has a marketing problem. I'm just not sure that that's their only problem.
The only morally correct way to convince someone of your position is to present the evidence (and the rationale).
Note that in general, public discourse hasn't actually engaged in this for ages. We're awash in waves of Bulverism, where the object is not to prove your position and disprove your opponent's position through rational argument, but to have your opponent's arguments dismissed on the basis of an assertion about their motives or background.
That's the problem right there: many people believe that The Daily Show is actually a legitimate news show.
I see it as more a commentary on the 'quality' (or lack thereof) of 'legitimate' news shows.
The real problem with news today (biases aside) I see as a variant of the 'confidence in your ability to listen well undermines your ability to listen well' meme. When listening, you are going to misunderstand some things. If you accept that, you'll be on the lookout for it and be ready to acknowledge your mistakes and correct your misunderstanding. Confidence that you won't misunderstand just means that you won't be on the lookout for it and will be less likely to acknowledge and correct your mistake.
I think something similar to the latter is going on with a lot of news reporting today, compounded by marketing and legal justifications for not admitting your mistakes (admitting mistakes undermines the marketing department's portrayal of your news organizations as 'reliable' and 'dependable', and the lawyers seem to have this idea that if you don't admit to error, you'll be less likely to be sued - probably self-defeating, as it will push people who would have accepted an honest apology into suing 'just to put them in their place').
With the power levels being used, interference to ham operation isn't likely to be a problem. What's likely to be more of a problem is - how RFI-susceptible are the receivers going to be? They appear to be targeting the upper short-wave and lower VHF region (10-40Mhz). These receivers need to be pretty sensitive to pick up the low-level signals being sent by the sensors. If a neighbor (or the occupant) fires up a legal-limit ham transmitter (or a CB with an illegal amplifier), will they be selective enough to remain operational in the presence of that strong signal?
The devices they built run in the 27Mhz area. I wonder if they've tested how they work if a nearby CB transmitter is operating, or if a a ham transmitter is operating on 10 meters?
As always, the short-term bottom line is the only thing that really matters.
There, fixed that for you. The long-term bottom line will suffer for throwing away experience, but too often, management doesn't care as long as it looks good in the short term.
Agreed. The real issue isn't profit in itself, it's are those pursuing profit willing to allow what they do for profit to be limited by appropriate morals and ethics? The profit motive is good in a context where other influences keep people from crossing moral and ethical lines in the pursuit of profit. Make the profit motive the 'only' good, and it can't help but turn corrupt, as there's nothing to limit what's done for profit. The problem isn't the profit motive itself, it's the lack of belief in sufficient moral and ethical codes with enough authority to keep people from going over the lines.
The ironic thing is that there are two groups that tend to conflate the profit motive and greed, and they're on the opposite ends of the economic political spectrum. The economic far left conflates them because they erroneously see the profit motive as an intrinsic evil, and the economic far right conflates them because they erroneously see the profit motive as an independent and non-overrideable good.
G. K. Chesterton nailed it when he observed that when a moral scheme (he actually said religious scheme) is shattered, the problem isn't only that the vices are let loose, the problem is even more that the virtues are let loose and run around independently, and a virtue separated from the other virtues that balance it wreaks havoc, not good.
Slashdot Mirror
What makes you think we haven't actually gotten there already?
The badge access was probably run by a Windows computer.
Wow. A message from an alternate universe.
Well, not for long, no.
But we weren't trying to prevent other people from standing on the same shoulders.
Well, it looks like Lee has already gotten at least one offer from a lawyer to handle this pro-bono.
Is this anything like the game of Rouge, where you've been miniaturized and have to descend the layers of a woman's handbag? Watch out for things wrapped in tissue, they're deadly.
That's if the SMS can actually be sent to Google Voice. I've run into situations where SMSs can't be sent to Google Voice. Just today, I was using a web site that wants to verify your account by sending you an SMS. If I put in my Google Voice number, the site came back with an error. And this is not the first time I've run into this.
Good luck getting an evidence-based culture developed in the face of the entrenched Bulverism of modern political discourse. Even more generally, we don't argue over the issues at hand, we argue over why the other side shouldn't be listened to (and Bulverism is just one tool in that arsenal). Not even the geeks or the scientists are immune. If you really want to move to an evidence-based culture, you're going to first have to pull people's focus off of defeating the opposition, and onto actually investigating the truth or falsity of particular issues. As C. S. Lewis put it "Until Bulverism is crushed, reason can play no effective part in human affairs". There's your assignment. Get to it.
The Democrats are just as much in the pockets of Big Media as the Republicans. Blame this on the corruption of politicians in general, not just those of one party.
Which doesn't hold out much hope for a culture that denigrates virtue, does it?
Our representatives are much more representative than we'd like to admit
This itself I find interesting. This isn't just the TSA involved here, you have to have some of the U.S.'s intelligence apparatus involved, possibly including the NSA(for capture of communications). This essentially exposes the fact that U.S. intelligence has the capability of taking minor tweets (and no doubt other forms of internet communications), correlating them with the real-life identities of their authors, and matching them to people entering the U.S. These statements weren't made where TSA statements could hear them. That the TSA agents knew about them at all implies some sort of ECHELONish mechanism for collecting even minor tweets such as this and matching them to people entering the U.S.
To some degree, this isn't surprising. Give a government organization the task of keeping terrorists out, and this is the type of capability you would expect them to develop. But why 'spend' this kind of capability on such a minor, harmless target? This implies to me a couple of things:
Finally, does anyone else get the feel of something out of Person of Interest, except that the computer isn't actually capable of spotting malicious intent?
It might not have been matched on the phone number. If you're both on Facebook and friended, it might have pulled the information from Facebook (assuming your friend has also set up the Facebook app (which comes by default in some Android phones)).
Perhaps, but man of us who work with computers (where words do have rather rigid meanings,) do so because we are not really very good at dealing with ambiguous wording.
And yet, the computer industry seems to be one of those who tend to produce conflicting uses of words (I have long maintained that to keep up with computers, you have to have the ability to keep multiple sets of conflicting vocabulary in your head, and keep them straight). You even see conflicting uses within the same company (e.g. two different lines of Burroughs minicomputers had conflicting semantics for the terms 'Cold Start' and 'Warm Start: on one line, Cold Start meant to bring the computer up from a power off condition and Warm Start was essentially what we now call a reboot; on the other line, Cold Start meant to erase the disk drive and load the operating system, and Warm Start meant to replace the operating system without erasing the disk. Failing to disambiguate this terminology properly could have disastrous results.). In the computer language arena, it's not at all uncommon for identical concepts to be expressed in different terminology in different languages, and at the same time seemingly identical terminology in different lanaguages refer to slightly different concepts. I begin to understand why Platonism developed. It almost seems like you've got an arena of rigidly defined concepts out there 'somewhere' that we can only access through terminology that is constantly changing and at times in conflict.
Indeed, being hunted down by a secretive, rogue, covert action group can just ruin your whole day.
Well, given that Microsoft currently has a marketing campaign that seems to be trying to communicate "We designed our phones to be so boring that you don't pay as much attention to it as you would pay attention to other smartphones", and is trying to present this as a good thing, it's hard to dispute that Microsoft has a marketing problem. I'm just not sure that that's their only problem.
Looks to me like it's an example of Bulverism in action.
Note that in general, public discourse hasn't actually engaged in this for ages. We're awash in waves of Bulverism, where the object is not to prove your position and disprove your opponent's position through rational argument, but to have your opponent's arguments dismissed on the basis of an assertion about their motives or background.
and a wooden snake?
Is it April already?
I see it as more a commentary on the 'quality' (or lack thereof) of 'legitimate' news shows.
The real problem with news today (biases aside) I see as a variant of the 'confidence in your ability to listen well undermines your ability to listen well' meme. When listening, you are going to misunderstand some things. If you accept that, you'll be on the lookout for it and be ready to acknowledge your mistakes and correct your misunderstanding. Confidence that you won't misunderstand just means that you won't be on the lookout for it and will be less likely to acknowledge and correct your mistake.
I think something similar to the latter is going on with a lot of news reporting today, compounded by marketing and legal justifications for not admitting your mistakes (admitting mistakes undermines the marketing department's portrayal of your news organizations as 'reliable' and 'dependable', and the lawyers seem to have this idea that if you don't admit to error, you'll be less likely to be sued - probably self-defeating, as it will push people who would have accepted an honest apology into suing 'just to put them in their place').
Google's version of Clippy?
With the power levels being used, interference to ham operation isn't likely to be a problem. What's likely to be more of a problem is - how RFI-susceptible are the receivers going to be? They appear to be targeting the upper short-wave and lower VHF region (10-40Mhz). These receivers need to be pretty sensitive to pick up the low-level signals being sent by the sensors. If a neighbor (or the occupant) fires up a legal-limit ham transmitter (or a CB with an illegal amplifier), will they be selective enough to remain operational in the presence of that strong signal? The devices they built run in the 27Mhz area. I wonder if they've tested how they work if a nearby CB transmitter is operating, or if a a ham transmitter is operating on 10 meters?
There, fixed that for you. The long-term bottom line will suffer for throwing away experience, but too often, management doesn't care as long as it looks good in the short term.
Agreed. The real issue isn't profit in itself, it's are those pursuing profit willing to allow what they do for profit to be limited by appropriate morals and ethics? The profit motive is good in a context where other influences keep people from crossing moral and ethical lines in the pursuit of profit. Make the profit motive the 'only' good, and it can't help but turn corrupt, as there's nothing to limit what's done for profit. The problem isn't the profit motive itself, it's the lack of belief in sufficient moral and ethical codes with enough authority to keep people from going over the lines.
The ironic thing is that there are two groups that tend to conflate the profit motive and greed, and they're on the opposite ends of the economic political spectrum. The economic far left conflates them because they erroneously see the profit motive as an intrinsic evil, and the economic far right conflates them because they erroneously see the profit motive as an independent and non-overrideable good.
G. K. Chesterton nailed it when he observed that when a moral scheme (he actually said religious scheme) is shattered, the problem isn't only that the vices are let loose, the problem is even more that the virtues are let loose and run around independently, and a virtue separated from the other virtues that balance it wreaks havoc, not good.