Lynx? Seriously? Lynx is like the ed of web browsers. I honestly can't imagine why anyone would used lynx outside of situations in which you have no alternative, though I imagine such masochists do exist -- like ed users.
It ain't the spam that clogs my mailbox (and no, spam is no longer text. It's effing HUGE pics!)
Are you sure those pics are being emailed to you or are they hosted on a web server somewhere? While I used to get spam with attached images, I haven't seen those in a while. In my spam folder, I have 691 messages, only 2 of which have attachments, which are both ZIP files probably containing some sort of awful trojan.
I don't know if my ISP is now filtering image-based spam, but if so, the method is now ineffective, and I suspect spammers have moved on. The last news stories I can find on the subject via Google are from 2006. An audit of my mailboxes reveals that I only got a few MBs of email last month, whereas I easily did several GB of P2P traffic.
While I am certainly not a good statistical representative of the internet as a whole, I would not be surprised if people transferring movies, music, software, etc. via P2P took up significantly more traffic than people transferring text, HTML, and rich text via email -- even spam. It takes a whole lot heck of a lot of spam to equal one episode of a TV show via BT or YouTube.
(P.S. If you're seeing images in your spam email, FOR THE LOVE OF MIKE TURN OFF IMAGES IN YOUR CLIENT! Have you never head of web bugs? You may be verifying the existence of your address to spammers.)
What happens if your box becomes a zombie and you aren't aware and it sends out millions of e-mails as part of a botnet? Face it, the majority of users DON'T know how to protect themselves online.
Well, the obvious line of reasoning for why the above poster thought that metering might do something about viruses and spam is that it would provide an incentive for people to learn to protect themselves as well as to fix things when they went wrong (as most of those same users don't even know how to check to see if they are infected).
Sure, this will hurt some people at first, but it's the same kind of reasoning for why cops pull people over for having brake-lights that are out. Without the stick of a ticket, people have no motive to check something that they wouldn't normally notice was a problem in day-to-day use, or they'll pay professionals to check for them, and the end result is that more people have working brake-lights to keep them safe. It will serve to educate people.
(That said, I honestly can't imagine viruses and spam botnets generating THAT much traffic compared to normal use. I doubt people would even notice unless their machine was part of a DoS attack.)
So, in other words, people complaining about BitTorrent users overutilizing the network should read their contract, see there's no minimum guarantee of service or line speed, and get stuffed instead of trying to bully other people into using the network in ways that would make life more convenient for them?
Despite being a heavy BT user, I can't feel anything but horror at that line of thought because that line of thinking is behind every single tragedy of the commons situation EVER.
"There's no law saying that I can't." "It's my land, so I'll do what I want with it! Don't you tell me what to do with it." "I don't care about people downstream; I'll do what I see fit to do with MY water."
Et cetera. I mean, that's the situation as stands, but actually encouraging that line of thinking only encourages those on the short end of the stick to consume as much as possible to "get theirs." Pretty soon, it sucks for everybody.
How *dare* you attempt to impugn the liberal practice of "shoot the messenger"!? He *allowed* the Messiah an opportunity to say something that revealed his true thoughts and beliefs!! Burning at the stake is too good for such a heretic!!
I'm so torn! I could go one of two ways...
The High Road Reply: "You know, you'd be a bit more credible if you simply noted that partisans of all stripes play the 'shoot the messenger' game, and portraying it as a 'liberal practice' only reveals your own short-sighted, partisan bias. You could have pointed out that the whole 'is he or is he not a plumber because of a union-backed licensing program' was a silly argument to begin with by people desperately grasping at straws to discredit and already non-credible messenger that the McCain camp looked silly embracing in the first place when they could have just let the guy flame out on his own."
The Low Road Reply: "At least his wife's cover wasn't blown, severely damaging her career, (arguably treasonously) endangering undercover agents, and destroying our line of info on Iran's nuclear program over an article calling BS on an obvious lie. 'Cause that's the kind of stupid thing you'd never expect security-conscious conservatives to do!"
Everyone here seems to work under the assumption that heavy bittorrent users would be worse off in a world with download caps or metered bandwidth. I don't think so. It would force companies to compete to give good service with clear contracts where they actually tell you what they are really selling. This is bound to increase, not decrease, the availability of real bandwidth per dollar for most users, included us computer geeks.
How?
Is this some sort of strange free market fundamentalist idea that the market will provide solutions that make everyone happy, or do you have a good clear model by which free riders on the system stand to benefit under a system that holds them accountable and is explicitly designed to discourage their behavior?
I mean, I have to accept that what I am, from the view of lying "We sell unlimited bandwidth and are happy to serve customers of all stripes!" ISPs -- a "free rider" of sorts. I pay for the absolute cheapest DSL package available in my area, and I use about a third of its maximum capacity (upstream) every month. I probably transfer 10-100x the data of the average user of their *most expensive* package, and my ISP probably sees me as someone using "more than their fair share."
What ISPs want to do by metering connection is to create a world that provides a financial disincentive to heavy users. This gives them more breathing room to slow down upgrades, lets them attract more customers (who can't afford current rates), and lets them gouge the living heck out of the those who have high demands (restoring the usual "supply v. demand" pricing curve you get elsewhere) and turn high bandwidth into a premium luxury good that you can charge increasing rates for (like they do for business customers).
In a world priced to suit low bandwidth users and to dig more money out of high bandwidth users, how do high bandwidth users benefit more? Right now I pay less than average for my connection and use far more than average. I can see policy reasons for the public as a whole maybe benefiting from such a move, but how on earth does flipping the cost equation benefit me at all?
Guess who has a lower tolerance for BS?..."Lynette" whose children are screaming at her because their Wbox 3 is 'broken'?
The developers of the next generation of consoles and game software will do so in the environment created by the ISPs.
Give me one good reason why a console game *needs* the ability to send out multiple streams of UDP data at the same time. 'Cause that's what ISPs will look for -- not individual protocols. You just look for an app that *looks like* a badly behaving P2P app and throttle the entire user's stream. Well-behaved P2P apps, like Steam, will be whitelisted.
And I don't see very many mothers continuing to scream when the service rep looks at why the connection is throttled and asks if their family is using any file-sharing apps and strongly hints that the ISP doesn't support piracy of movies and music and that they should either shut off their filesharing or upgrade to a package that supports it or be faced with possible termination if they're caught violating their ToS. Little "Lynette" here isn't likely to even be AWARE of most legitimate uses for P2P, and frankly most big ISPs (the ones making the filtering decisions for the little ones that sublease their lines too) don't have to give a damn about customer service because they're one of the only two providers in town....And the other guys are doing the same thing.
Game, set, match for the ISPs. It's cheaper to hire low-skilled workers in India to listen to screaming moms than it is to upgrade backbone bandwidth. You don't honestly think whining to the outsourced customer support rep of the local duopoly actually *means* anything, do you?
From page 11: "Acorn production by the red oak [turkey oak] had the greatest [correlation] with precipitation. Numbers of acorns per ramet were negatively associated with wet season (July) rainfall two years previous and with rainfall during the dry season (October through May) three years previous in each association where this oak occurred. Similarly, the combined acorn crops of [turkey oaks] from all associations correlated negatively with wet season (July) rainfall two years previous... and with dry season rain three years previous."
"Acorn production of the white oak [Chapman oak] was positively correlated in at least one association with rainfall during the preceding late dry season (March) and negatively with rainfall during the preceding July. Acorn production by this oak in all associations combined was positively correlated with precipitation during the preceding dry season... Similar to [Chapman oak], the other white oak [sand live oak] showed a negative relationship with the previous year's July rainfall in scrub and a positive correlation with September rainfall one year previous... when all associations were combined."
However, the paper found that sandhill oak and myrtle oak has a positive correlation between rainfall and acorn production. Even so, in the article they talk about strong rains this year in Washington, and there is a possibility that that might be related to the problem there. Who knows?
The AC is right. In grad school, my wife studied population genetics of coast live oak (quercus agrifolia), and she saw the same boom-and-bust cycles of acorn production. The boom years are known as "mast" years--not sure what the bust years are called.
This is just a normal cycle, and, as usual, the media's reporting of science is atrocious.
It's a shame, frankly, that this discussion got hijacked early on by a global warming denier, because the story itself is the real story here.
If you look at the linked discussion group, what you have is a bunch of people posting in a thread about how they see something happening local to them, and the same event happens across the nation. While a few other people chime in with the evidence that it's not happening near them, the conclusion is drawn that this is a "wide spread problem."
However, this is really just like support groups for bulimics, white power groups, child porn perverts, crazy people who think that fibers are growing under their skin, etc. (if you'll forgive the almost Godwin-invoking list of examples here).
What you have is a bunch of people who are experiencing something abnormal who, in the absence of the internet, would be forced to normally conclude that what they are experiencing isn't typical and go on about their lives. With advent of the internet, however, these people are able to cobble together into groups to share their experiences and convince each other that what's going on really IS a big deal. In the case of the above groups, they all convince each other that their deviant behavior or insanity is *normal*, and they all reinforce their normally marginal beliefs with references to other people experiencing the same thing.
You see this also with partisan politics or alternative medicine, where people create entire net *communities* of alternative reality where "mainstream" facts are replaced with an underground information economy of half-truths and self-deceptions. "Homeopathy cured me where modern medicine couldn't!" "Barack Obama is a secret Muslim!" "Bush and Cheney have set up a shadow government to take over if they lose the election!" (ca. 2004) "Aspartame causes toxic formaldehyde buildup!" (And yes, "Global warming is caused by the sun!" I can't resist getting *that* dig in.) Instead of true facts from science and history, you have entire alternative webs of "facts" that allow people to reinforce delusional beliefs.
The failure of the media here is kind of a side effect of the legitimization of bloggers who often eat up this kind of stuff. This is totally a blogger-type story. Some guy reads something on the internet and says, "zomg! did u here that? i gotta lj bout it!" and then brain-dumps some vapid rumor-mongering about how people are seeing starving squirrels and empty trees across the nation (as if it's the *entire* nation). Add an interview with a token local sciency-type person, and you've ratcheted up the "journalistic credibility" to bona fide newspaper levels -- at least for "science" "journalism," anyway.
Bah. This is a non-story. The story here is the story itself and how sad it is that this is getting reported.
How do they feel about people outside their "tribe" knowing this stuff? I know a lot of people who share pretty personal stuff on LJ but locked to friends, but I wouldn't claim to know them that well.
People have a very different emotional reaction between, "Oh, all my friends found out about it," and "Oh, everyone in town found out about it," and "Oh, crap, it's all over the internet and the news now. I will forever be known as 'the Noodle Guy'" (to quasi-steal from Calvin & Hobbes).
Some things you can live down because everybody knows you. Other things you can't because that's all most people know about you. It's the difference between having no privacy between peers and being infamous in the community.
Also, privacy gives people a chance to redeem themselves or start their lives over if things get really bad. When some incident becomes enshrined on the internet or in the news for all to find when searching for your name, your job prospects and love life can be ruined forever in a way that wasn't possible when you could just pack up and leave for somewhere where people didn't know all your past sins.
As for who controls things I invite you to stop and take a look around sometime.
Sure. Let's do that.
Let's look into the halls of power in Washington. Look at the House, the Senate, the Presidency, the heads of executive agencies, and the Federal Courts. Look at the biggest lobbyists, the head partners at the big law firms, and the leaders of the biggest political think tanks. Let's look into the halls of industry. Look at the CEOs, the CFOs, the Presidents, and all the members of the boards of the companies of the nation.
What do you see? Mostly, rich white men. Men. Unfortunately, our society still has a strong gender bias towards giving men positions of power. What the wives of wealthy men do in their twilight years after their husbands have transferred much of their wealth to the next generation pales in comparison to what rich men do with it.
And again, your entire argument is ridiculous in a thread about the effects of immortality on the distribution of power because your entire argument for women holding the real power is their greater longevity. Immortality makes that irrelevant.
As for insults merely saying "Bah" in response to something is just silly. I took him to task for it. Lucky he has you to protect him.
Honestly, it just makes you look foolish to make half your post a whine about a three-letter, dismissive exclamation instead of the arguments that followed, and if that show of petulance was "taking to task" in your mind, then I feel sad for you.
Once again - in a couple who does the dying and who does the inheriting?
Bah. You're talking consumption, and I'm talking the use of wealth. These are not the same thing. Who invests? Who runs industry? Who donates the most to political causes? Who exercises power? High-income family are far more likely than middle class families to be single-breadwinner families, and take one guess which gender has the most high end jobs and which one stays at home.
The consumption habits of the wealthy are the tip of the iceberg. Look into what they do with their wills and trusts and how they exercise their power well before their twilight years. Also your entire argument for women holding the real wealth is based on the fact that women live longer than men, and the issue of immortality takes that away, putting the man back in charge.
Most advertising does not cater to the top 20% which make up the executive and investor class that controls 80% of the wealth. That's a very male-dominated demographic, as well -- especially the top 1% that controls 33% of the wealth.
Do not confuse mass advertising that *you* see day to day with the kind of targeted advertising directed at the very wealthy. The things the truly wealthy spend most of their money on -- investments -- aren't advertised on TV or in catalogs.
I'm honestly scared of the day that they do figure out how to cure aging, because it will lead to an even greater stratification of social status and class.
Forget money for a second -- think of civil rights. Do you think that we would have equal racial rights nowadays if 100 years ago we had developed this technology, and no one of middle class or better means alive in 1900 had died of natural causes since then?
Right now the gay rights movement is in a situation that might be telling. In age groups under the 35, support for & opposition to gay marriage is 50-50. Opposition slowly climbs until it reaches a peak of 90% opposed around age 70. (Above that age support climbs a bit, but so does "don't know.")
If everyone alive today was alive 100 years from now (and not senile), then chances are that the gay rights movement would never gain any traction. New births might tilt the demographic, but we have a lot more to worry about than civil rights & economic strati if we find immortality without controlling population growth strictly.
Putting aside any feelings you might have for / against gay marriage, can you see how immortality may close of future rights battles? Who knows what we may have to encounter in the future of civil rights -- artificial organisms, hybrid life forms, AI, or even simple human issues like transgender rights or immigrant rights. The broad historical march of American society towards greater freedom and greater recognition of those different from us as still people may grind to a crawl or even a halt.
And the same goes for scientific progress as well. As Max Planck once said, "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."
Giant squids use ammonia salts to provide buoyancy. I can't imagine just how awful that must taste.
At least, Architeuthis species do. I know nothing about whether this kind of squid does, but it wouldn't surprise me since several other, smaller, deep sea squids use ammonia for buoyancy as well.
By launching criminal charges against anyone who posts on 4chan's/b/ board for using the pseudonym "Anonymous" on their posts, and sending us all to jail?
Seems part of the way there, but you haven't advocated the abolition of private property, completely bottom up ownership of industry, or really any of the extreme ideology associated with full-on socialism and the ending of capitalism.
All of the things you mention are compatible with a mixed-model economy that still embraces capitalism wherever it's practical.
When's the last time you've seen an actual socialist post on Slashdot, and how often do you see that compared to libertarian ones?
I think you're using that word without knowing what it means. Most people who oppose libertarians on Slashdot are fans of a balanced approach to economics, but it's not atypical for fanatics who follow an extreme philosophy to paint all the people who disagree with them as belonging to the other extreme pole. The debate here isn't Black v. White so much as Fanatics v. Moderates.
(That said, I find it equally funny that every single thread where you find one side dominating the positive moderation will include several posts whining about how people with the same viewpoint get modded down. The real trend on Slashdot is that several high level libertarian posts get modded up, and then 5x as many rebuttals get modded up, and then petty little jerks from both sides go back days later and mod down people of the opposing side. Ah, politics on Slashdot!)
It depends on your regulatory framework. If net neutrality laws come down to, "Don't discriminate traffic based on who the parties are, what the protocol is, or what the content of the traffic is," then any regulatory capture that happens is hamstrung in what it can accomplish.
If the agency promulgates regulations that undermine their statutory mandate, you go after them with an APA claim, arguing that the agency's decisions were "arbitrary and capricious." If they engage in selective enforcement, go with a 14th Amendment claim. Etc.
Honestly, I have a hard time seeing how regulatory capture could really happen with net neutrality as long as the legislation actually provides it in the first place.
Only under a very strict "no duty to act" view of what is or isn't at the expense of others.
One can see how strictly Rand applies that rubric of "not at the expense of others" by the raw contempt with which she held groups of weaker people banding together to tell the strong, "Stop hurting us for your own benefit."
Slashdot Mirror
Maxthon blocks ads. I used to use that browser when I worked for a company that had internal apps that required IE back before IE had tabbed browsing.
Lynx? Seriously? Lynx is like the ed of web browsers. I honestly can't imagine why anyone would used lynx outside of situations in which you have no alternative, though I imagine such masochists do exist -- like ed users.
The wisdom of Hobbes, as applied to your posts.
It ain't the spam that clogs my mailbox (and no, spam is no longer text. It's effing HUGE pics!)
Are you sure those pics are being emailed to you or are they hosted on a web server somewhere? While I used to get spam with attached images, I haven't seen those in a while. In my spam folder, I have 691 messages, only 2 of which have attachments, which are both ZIP files probably containing some sort of awful trojan.
I don't know if my ISP is now filtering image-based spam, but if so, the method is now ineffective, and I suspect spammers have moved on. The last news stories I can find on the subject via Google are from 2006. An audit of my mailboxes reveals that I only got a few MBs of email last month, whereas I easily did several GB of P2P traffic.
While I am certainly not a good statistical representative of the internet as a whole, I would not be surprised if people transferring movies, music, software, etc. via P2P took up significantly more traffic than people transferring text, HTML, and rich text via email -- even spam. It takes a whole lot heck of a lot of spam to equal one episode of a TV show via BT or YouTube.
(P.S. If you're seeing images in your spam email, FOR THE LOVE OF MIKE TURN OFF IMAGES IN YOUR CLIENT! Have you never head of web bugs? You may be verifying the existence of your address to spammers.)
What happens if your box becomes a zombie and you aren't aware and it sends out millions of e-mails as part of a botnet? Face it, the majority of users DON'T know how to protect themselves online.
Well, the obvious line of reasoning for why the above poster thought that metering might do something about viruses and spam is that it would provide an incentive for people to learn to protect themselves as well as to fix things when they went wrong (as most of those same users don't even know how to check to see if they are infected).
Sure, this will hurt some people at first, but it's the same kind of reasoning for why cops pull people over for having brake-lights that are out. Without the stick of a ticket, people have no motive to check something that they wouldn't normally notice was a problem in day-to-day use, or they'll pay professionals to check for them, and the end result is that more people have working brake-lights to keep them safe. It will serve to educate people.
(That said, I honestly can't imagine viruses and spam botnets generating THAT much traffic compared to normal use. I doubt people would even notice unless their machine was part of a DoS attack.)
So, in other words, people complaining about BitTorrent users overutilizing the network should read their contract, see there's no minimum guarantee of service or line speed, and get stuffed instead of trying to bully other people into using the network in ways that would make life more convenient for them?
Despite being a heavy BT user, I can't feel anything but horror at that line of thought because that line of thinking is behind every single tragedy of the commons situation EVER.
"There's no law saying that I can't."
"It's my land, so I'll do what I want with it! Don't you tell me what to do with it."
"I don't care about people downstream; I'll do what I see fit to do with MY water."
Et cetera. I mean, that's the situation as stands, but actually encouraging that line of thinking only encourages those on the short end of the stick to consume as much as possible to "get theirs." Pretty soon, it sucks for everybody.
How *dare* you attempt to impugn the liberal practice of "shoot the messenger"!? He *allowed* the Messiah an opportunity to say something that revealed his true thoughts and beliefs!! Burning at the stake is too good for such a heretic!!
I'm so torn! I could go one of two ways...
The High Road Reply:
"You know, you'd be a bit more credible if you simply noted that partisans of all stripes play the 'shoot the messenger' game, and portraying it as a 'liberal practice' only reveals your own short-sighted, partisan bias. You could have pointed out that the whole 'is he or is he not a plumber because of a union-backed licensing program' was a silly argument to begin with by people desperately grasping at straws to discredit and already non-credible messenger that the McCain camp looked silly embracing in the first place when they could have just let the guy flame out on his own."
The Low Road Reply:
"At least his wife's cover wasn't blown, severely damaging her career, (arguably treasonously) endangering undercover agents, and destroying our line of info on Iran's nuclear program over an article calling BS on an obvious lie. 'Cause that's the kind of stupid thing you'd never expect security-conscious conservatives to do!"
Everyone here seems to work under the assumption that heavy bittorrent users would be worse off in a world with download caps or metered bandwidth. I don't think so. It would force companies to compete to give good service with clear contracts where they actually tell you what they are really selling. This is bound to increase, not decrease, the availability of real bandwidth per dollar for most users, included us computer geeks.
How?
Is this some sort of strange free market fundamentalist idea that the market will provide solutions that make everyone happy, or do you have a good clear model by which free riders on the system stand to benefit under a system that holds them accountable and is explicitly designed to discourage their behavior?
I mean, I have to accept that what I am, from the view of lying "We sell unlimited bandwidth and are happy to serve customers of all stripes!" ISPs -- a "free rider" of sorts. I pay for the absolute cheapest DSL package available in my area, and I use about a third of its maximum capacity (upstream) every month. I probably transfer 10-100x the data of the average user of their *most expensive* package, and my ISP probably sees me as someone using "more than their fair share."
What ISPs want to do by metering connection is to create a world that provides a financial disincentive to heavy users. This gives them more breathing room to slow down upgrades, lets them attract more customers (who can't afford current rates), and lets them gouge the living heck out of the those who have high demands (restoring the usual "supply v. demand" pricing curve you get elsewhere) and turn high bandwidth into a premium luxury good that you can charge increasing rates for (like they do for business customers).
In a world priced to suit low bandwidth users and to dig more money out of high bandwidth users, how do high bandwidth users benefit more? Right now I pay less than average for my connection and use far more than average. I can see policy reasons for the public as a whole maybe benefiting from such a move, but how on earth does flipping the cost equation benefit me at all?
Guess who has a lower tolerance for BS? ..."Lynette" whose children are screaming at her because their Wbox 3 is 'broken'?
The developers of the next generation of consoles and game software will do so in the environment created by the ISPs.
Give me one good reason why a console game *needs* the ability to send out multiple streams of UDP data at the same time. 'Cause that's what ISPs will look for -- not individual protocols. You just look for an app that *looks like* a badly behaving P2P app and throttle the entire user's stream. Well-behaved P2P apps, like Steam, will be whitelisted.
And I don't see very many mothers continuing to scream when the service rep looks at why the connection is throttled and asks if their family is using any file-sharing apps and strongly hints that the ISP doesn't support piracy of movies and music and that they should either shut off their filesharing or upgrade to a package that supports it or be faced with possible termination if they're caught violating their ToS. Little "Lynette" here isn't likely to even be AWARE of most legitimate uses for P2P, and frankly most big ISPs (the ones making the filtering decisions for the little ones that sublease their lines too) don't have to give a damn about customer service because they're one of the only two providers in town. ...And the other guys are doing the same thing.
Game, set, match for the ISPs. It's cheaper to hire low-skilled workers in India to listen to screaming moms than it is to upgrade backbone bandwidth. You don't honestly think whining to the outsourced customer support rep of the local duopoly actually *means* anything, do you?
I found a free PDF version of the article, if anyone is interested.
From page 11: ... and with dry season rain three years previous."
"Acorn production by the red oak [turkey oak] had the greatest [correlation] with precipitation. Numbers of acorns per ramet were negatively associated with wet season (July) rainfall two years previous and with rainfall during the dry season (October through May) three years previous in each association where this oak occurred. Similarly, the combined acorn crops of [turkey oaks] from all associations correlated negatively with wet season (July) rainfall two years previous
"Acorn production of the white oak [Chapman oak] was positively correlated in at least one association with rainfall during the preceding late dry season (March) and negatively with rainfall during the preceding July. Acorn production by this oak in all associations combined was positively correlated with precipitation during the preceding dry season... Similar to [Chapman oak], the other white oak [sand live oak] showed a negative relationship with the previous year's July rainfall in scrub and a positive correlation with September rainfall one year previous ... when all associations were combined."
However, the paper found that sandhill oak and myrtle oak has a positive correlation between rainfall and acorn production. Even so, in the article they talk about strong rains this year in Washington, and there is a possibility that that might be related to the problem there. Who knows?
The AC is right. In grad school, my wife studied population genetics of coast live oak (quercus agrifolia), and she saw the same boom-and-bust cycles of acorn production. The boom years are known as "mast" years--not sure what the bust years are called.
This is just a normal cycle, and, as usual, the media's reporting of science is atrocious.
It's a shame, frankly, that this discussion got hijacked early on by a global warming denier, because the story itself is the real story here.
If you look at the linked discussion group, what you have is a bunch of people posting in a thread about how they see something happening local to them, and the same event happens across the nation. While a few other people chime in with the evidence that it's not happening near them, the conclusion is drawn that this is a "wide spread problem."
However, this is really just like support groups for bulimics, white power groups, child porn perverts, crazy people who think that fibers are growing under their skin, etc. (if you'll forgive the almost Godwin-invoking list of examples here).
What you have is a bunch of people who are experiencing something abnormal who, in the absence of the internet, would be forced to normally conclude that what they are experiencing isn't typical and go on about their lives. With advent of the internet, however, these people are able to cobble together into groups to share their experiences and convince each other that what's going on really IS a big deal. In the case of the above groups, they all convince each other that their deviant behavior or insanity is *normal*, and they all reinforce their normally marginal beliefs with references to other people experiencing the same thing.
You see this also with partisan politics or alternative medicine, where people create entire net *communities* of alternative reality where "mainstream" facts are replaced with an underground information economy of half-truths and self-deceptions. "Homeopathy cured me where modern medicine couldn't!" "Barack Obama is a secret Muslim!" "Bush and Cheney have set up a shadow government to take over if they lose the election!" (ca. 2004) "Aspartame causes toxic formaldehyde buildup!" (And yes, "Global warming is caused by the sun!" I can't resist getting *that* dig in.) Instead of true facts from science and history, you have entire alternative webs of "facts" that allow people to reinforce delusional beliefs.
The failure of the media here is kind of a side effect of the legitimization of bloggers who often eat up this kind of stuff. This is totally a blogger-type story. Some guy reads something on the internet and says, "zomg! did u here that? i gotta lj bout it!" and then brain-dumps some vapid rumor-mongering about how people are seeing starving squirrels and empty trees across the nation (as if it's the *entire* nation). Add an interview with a token local sciency-type person, and you've ratcheted up the "journalistic credibility" to bona fide newspaper levels -- at least for "science" "journalism," anyway.
Bah. This is a non-story. The story here is the story itself and how sad it is that this is getting reported.
How do they feel about people outside their "tribe" knowing this stuff? I know a lot of people who share pretty personal stuff on LJ but locked to friends, but I wouldn't claim to know them that well.
People have a very different emotional reaction between, "Oh, all my friends found out about it," and "Oh, everyone in town found out about it," and "Oh, crap, it's all over the internet and the news now. I will forever be known as 'the Noodle Guy'" (to quasi-steal from Calvin & Hobbes).
Some things you can live down because everybody knows you. Other things you can't because that's all most people know about you. It's the difference between having no privacy between peers and being infamous in the community.
Also, privacy gives people a chance to redeem themselves or start their lives over if things get really bad. When some incident becomes enshrined on the internet or in the news for all to find when searching for your name, your job prospects and love life can be ruined forever in a way that wasn't possible when you could just pack up and leave for somewhere where people didn't know all your past sins.
As for who controls things I invite you to stop and take a look around sometime.
Sure. Let's do that.
Let's look into the halls of power in Washington. Look at the House, the Senate, the Presidency, the heads of executive agencies, and the Federal Courts. Look at the biggest lobbyists, the head partners at the big law firms, and the leaders of the biggest political think tanks. Let's look into the halls of industry. Look at the CEOs, the CFOs, the Presidents, and all the members of the boards of the companies of the nation.
What do you see? Mostly, rich white men. Men. Unfortunately, our society still has a strong gender bias towards giving men positions of power. What the wives of wealthy men do in their twilight years after their husbands have transferred much of their wealth to the next generation pales in comparison to what rich men do with it.
And again, your entire argument is ridiculous in a thread about the effects of immortality on the distribution of power because your entire argument for women holding the real power is their greater longevity. Immortality makes that irrelevant.
As for insults merely saying "Bah" in response to something is just silly. I took him to task for it. Lucky he has you to protect him.
Honestly, it just makes you look foolish to make half your post a whine about a three-letter, dismissive exclamation instead of the arguments that followed, and if that show of petulance was "taking to task" in your mind, then I feel sad for you.
Once again - in a couple who does the dying and who does the inheriting?
Bah. You're talking consumption, and I'm talking the use of wealth. These are not the same thing. Who invests? Who runs industry? Who donates the most to political causes? Who exercises power? High-income family are far more likely than middle class families to be single-breadwinner families, and take one guess which gender has the most high end jobs and which one stays at home.
The consumption habits of the wealthy are the tip of the iceberg. Look into what they do with their wills and trusts and how they exercise their power well before their twilight years. Also your entire argument for women holding the real wealth is based on the fact that women live longer than men, and the issue of immortality takes that away, putting the man back in charge.
Dude, I don't even know what you're trying to say.
But 8 points for style. It makes me feel nostalgic. Yeah baby!
Don't you just love scientific religion? 'Tis a mathematical certainty! /bow
Welcome to entropy.
Most advertising does not cater to the top 20% which make up the executive and investor class that controls 80% of the wealth. That's a very male-dominated demographic, as well -- especially the top 1% that controls 33% of the wealth.
Do not confuse mass advertising that *you* see day to day with the kind of targeted advertising directed at the very wealthy. The things the truly wealthy spend most of their money on -- investments -- aren't advertised on TV or in catalogs.
No idea. I tried looking around, but I don't know if cleaning and draining the meat would do as much to clear it out as it does for shark flesh.
On the other hand, there are apparently Finnish "candies" made from ammonium salt, sugar, and licorice, but they are also "an acquired taste."
I'm honestly scared of the day that they do figure out how to cure aging, because it will lead to an even greater stratification of social status and class.
Forget money for a second -- think of civil rights. Do you think that we would have equal racial rights nowadays if 100 years ago we had developed this technology, and no one of middle class or better means alive in 1900 had died of natural causes since then?
Right now the gay rights movement is in a situation that might be telling. In age groups under the 35, support for & opposition to gay marriage is 50-50. Opposition slowly climbs until it reaches a peak of 90% opposed around age 70. (Above that age support climbs a bit, but so does "don't know.")
If everyone alive today was alive 100 years from now (and not senile), then chances are that the gay rights movement would never gain any traction. New births might tilt the demographic, but we have a lot more to worry about than civil rights & economic strati if we find immortality without controlling population growth strictly.
Putting aside any feelings you might have for / against gay marriage, can you see how immortality may close of future rights battles? Who knows what we may have to encounter in the future of civil rights -- artificial organisms, hybrid life forms, AI, or even simple human issues like transgender rights or immigrant rights. The broad historical march of American society towards greater freedom and greater recognition of those different from us as still people may grind to a crawl or even a halt.
And the same goes for scientific progress as well. As Max Planck once said, "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."
Think of what immortality means for that as well.
Giant squids use ammonia salts to provide buoyancy. I can't imagine just how awful that must taste.
At least, Architeuthis species do. I know nothing about whether this kind of squid does, but it wouldn't surprise me since several other, smaller, deep sea squids use ammonia for buoyancy as well.
By launching criminal charges against anyone who posts on 4chan's /b/ board for using the pseudonym "Anonymous" on their posts, and sending us all to jail?
"And nothing of value was lost..."
Seems part of the way there, but you haven't advocated the abolition of private property, completely bottom up ownership of industry, or really any of the extreme ideology associated with full-on socialism and the ending of capitalism.
All of the things you mention are compatible with a mixed-model economy that still embraces capitalism wherever it's practical.
When's the last time you've seen an actual socialist post on Slashdot, and how often do you see that compared to libertarian ones?
I think you're using that word without knowing what it means. Most people who oppose libertarians on Slashdot are fans of a balanced approach to economics, but it's not atypical for fanatics who follow an extreme philosophy to paint all the people who disagree with them as belonging to the other extreme pole. The debate here isn't Black v. White so much as Fanatics v. Moderates.
(That said, I find it equally funny that every single thread where you find one side dominating the positive moderation will include several posts whining about how people with the same viewpoint get modded down. The real trend on Slashdot is that several high level libertarian posts get modded up, and then 5x as many rebuttals get modded up, and then petty little jerks from both sides go back days later and mod down people of the opposing side. Ah, politics on Slashdot!)
It depends on your regulatory framework. If net neutrality laws come down to, "Don't discriminate traffic based on who the parties are, what the protocol is, or what the content of the traffic is," then any regulatory capture that happens is hamstrung in what it can accomplish.
If the agency promulgates regulations that undermine their statutory mandate, you go after them with an APA claim, arguing that the agency's decisions were "arbitrary and capricious." If they engage in selective enforcement, go with a 14th Amendment claim. Etc.
Honestly, I have a hard time seeing how regulatory capture could really happen with net neutrality as long as the legislation actually provides it in the first place.
But not at the expense of others.
Only under a very strict "no duty to act" view of what is or isn't at the expense of others.
One can see how strictly Rand applies that rubric of "not at the expense of others" by the raw contempt with which she held groups of weaker people banding together to tell the strong, "Stop hurting us for your own benefit."