Everyone is afraid of the Internet because of the scary pedophiles and child pornographers lurking at every click, waiting to exploit the innocence of our precious and trusting children, yada yada yada.
Put this in these terms. You -- the children of the community -- put your trust in this provider and they deliberately violated it and peddled your virginal assets all over town, to anyone who was interested, including to (do a little research first) advertisers that are associated with pornography (e.g. that are in any way involved with creating naughty banner ads or engaged in any way with any website of vaguely dubious decency).
Presented badly and without any care as to the way your message is received, you'll come off as a bunch of whiny spoiled anti-capitalist (and thus un-American) geeks. Presented properly, the PTA will be up in arms, and hell hath no fury like a band of PTA moms in defence of their children's innocence.
Fig 1. "The Copulation" as imagined and drawn by Leonardo da Vinci.2 With permission from the Royal Collection. Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II is gratefully acknowledged ...
We did not foresee that the men would have more problems with sexual performance (maintaining their erection) than the women in the scanner. All the women had a complete sexual response, but they described their orgasm as superficial. Only the first couple was able to perform coitus adequately without sildenafil (experiments 1 and 2). The reason might be that they were the only participants in the real sense: involved in the research right from the beginning because of their scientific curiosity, knowledge of the body, and artistic commitment. And as amateur street acrobats they are trained and used to performing under stress. (Emphasis added.)
... Acknowledgments... P van Andel does not want to be acknowledged for his idea of using MRI to study coitus.
Nuclear weapons are really hard for the average person to make or get a hold of. Try it sometime and see. One needs, ideally, to run a government of a good-sized country for a number of years. Failing that, one generally needs lots of money, a huge amount of planning, a good number of friends/followers who share your plans, and a willingness to risk being apprehended and unpleasantly killed by agents of a concerned superpower. Virus-writing, however, has rather lower barriers to entry. Psychological stability is not one of them.
1 Crackbrained Dolt Doth Not A Broken System Make
on
Building The Ubervirus
·
· Score: 1
Yes, this particular moderator was a nit. Either that, or he/she/it accidentally mis-moused in the drop-down box, clicking "Offtopic" instead of "The Greatest Damn Brilliant Piece Of Insight To Issue From The Human Mind Since Plato", and then moderating in blissful ignorance of the error.
Humans are not infrequently A: stupid/destructive/confused twits or B: butterfingered. We should not act surprised when proof of this fact is, as here, made evident to us. Nor should we presume the fact that a system does not absolutely prevent all foolishness or error on the part of its moderators to be an indication that this deliberately subjective system is functioning in an unintended manner. That's what the multiplicity of moderators is for -- to (most often) sufficiently compensate for blunders like this.
When asked why, they reply, "Fuckers like that just piss me off," and resume their abuse.
So deep-rooted is their need to demonstrate that, though detested and scorned as weak by some, they are not without power, for they retain the ability to degrade another.
Re:eye of needle (STILL OFF TOPIC)
on
Battlefield Earth
·
· Score: 1
'course this is totally unverified, and may be a pile of hooey...
IANAEAGH (I am not an etymological and geographic historian), but I'd guess it's a pile of hooey. I've heard this explanation before, with the difference being that it was a very low gate which required a camel, never a graceful beast, to get down on its knees and shuffle through. The implication being, of course, that it is difficult and maybe uncomfortable, but possible for someone who makes the effort.
It's an amusing image, too. Rather more amusing than imagining the well-fed rich guy who first made it up ad-libbing it to the ragged and hungry poor who had the gall to reproach him.
No reasonable slashdotter could consider the above comment to be Flamebait. This post was moderated down for reasons of personal bias, plain and simple.
Since the poster both A: labeled scientology a "sci-fi cult/religion" and B: said that Hubbard was "okay in (his) book" and praised his writing, it is difficult to say whether he was moderated down by A: a Scientologist, who felt morally obligated to censor to the best of his ability anything non-adulatory written about the late Big Guy, or B: by an equally closed-minded anti-Scientologist, who felt that in the eternal battle against the evil brainwashing Xenu-huggers there are no neutrals, and that anyone who broaches any related subject without rigorously excoriating the CoS is providing aid and comfort to the enemy, and may and should be silenced by whatever means are necessary.
In either case, it is a thoroughly Microsoft attitude, and it disgusts me.
"Only the most serious calls, involving serious violence -- rape, assault, possible crimes with guns -- were forwarded to school officials; the rest were not passed along at all."
Hold on a second here. Let's set aside for a moment any moral aspects of creating anonymous classroom informants, and agree for the time being that much information could be obtained that could indicate what students were prone to undesirable behavior, whether shooting up cafeterias, bullying dweebs, or thinking Marilyn Manson is, like, really cool.
Under the above-quoted policy, NONE OF THIS information would be given to the school officials who are supposed to be intervening to save the schools from our tragically disturbed youth! The only things Pinkerton would tell them about are already-committed felonies and conspiracies to commit felonies. (And this is stuff that Pinkerton should be reporting to the local police, anyway, not to the school.) Why, then, are students encouraged to rat on those who seem depressed or angry if those reports are only going to linger in Pinkerton's files??
A cheesy graphic of a keyboard appears, with Microsoft clipart around the edges, and a pair of badly animated mice hopping down the sides and slowly creeping along the bottom.
You painstakingly hunt and peck a seventeen-letter alphanumeric password (that you just pulled out of your wazoo) on the on-screen keyboard while loudly sneering "That'll show them keyboard sniffers!" in the general direction of where you think the hidden mike is, while feebly trying to block the hidden camera from seeing the monitor.
Meanwhile, you're hitting the space bar (or x or the Any Key) when the little mouse hops down to the row containing the first character of your password, and hitting Enter (or c or Shift+Any) when the other little mouse creeps under the right column. A monitor tape would have no clue, and the keyboard sniffer would only get the same meaningless series of strokes, which you could further mess up by having the mice go out of bounds for a few seconds, during which you could type in garbage. When you're all done, you point and click the Enter key on the monitor.
You can even defeat a combined/synchronized keyboard/monitor videotape by Velcroing a detached number pad to the underside of your desk, and bumping it with your knee (or heck, fingers) with or without using the Shift on your keyboard.
For the full effect, though, you should stick two sticky notes to the bottom of your monitor: one should contain the alphabet from A-M, with N-Z written underneath them backwards, and the second should contain an encrypted password, which, with the aid of the other sticky note, a 133t hax0r could decrypt to read "Natalie Portman pours hot grits down snoopers' pants."
Because accusing Microsoft of evil deeds is, when not accurate (indeed, especially when not realistic), just plain fun. It's like throwing tomatoes at Dan Quayle: it's not very nice, but you just can't help yourself. And accusing China of evil deeds, while often unlikely and usually barely plausible, functions as a warning that yes, there does exist a country which is often vaguely hostile to us that will, if not now then in the near future, have the ability to seriously (and possibly anonymously) screw us over, and upon whose goodwill the survival of the Internet (and possibly large chunks of the world economy) will depend. Of course, the Chinese government almost certainly looks on us as a serious threat to their computer networks, and are quite correct in doing so.
This is true, but just because a very risk-averse person should have used far-off computers does not mean that this is the case. What is familiar and convenient often trumps what is rather more sensible, especially in the mind of someone who believes that he's already been so clever that he could never be caught in any case. And the Chinese army probably would've been a bit more subtle. Maybe.
And so, Dear Reader, the trail eventually led up to a little backwoods town in Washington named Redmond, the last place anyone would have thought to look for an evil computer nerd trying to destroy the Internet...
Yes, this is a very nice thing for American autoworkers and their families. But most of them either have computers or are likely to get them in a year or two.
The truly significant and groundbreaking step here is that ALL their workers worldwide will get PCs. 190,000 of these are overseas. What is a surprisingly kind gesture here is manna from heaven in Poland or India. I don't know the level of penetration of computers into these countries, but I rather doubt that it has even grazed the top of the blue-collar market.
In America, if someone works for Ford, you'll know where they got their PC.
In India, if someone works for Ford, you'll know they HAVE a PC.
This is extremely good for PR in these countries, as well as boosting worker loyalty and getting a more educated workforce.
When I go to get ice cream, I want ice cream. Just give me ice cream. I don't need some whiny slacker bugging me about what flavor, what cone, and how many scoops. It's an ice cream place, dammit: bring me ice cream! I shouldn't even have to ask for it. I should be able to just gesture at a picture and grunt.
Slashdot Mirror
Everyone is afraid of the Internet because of the scary pedophiles and child pornographers lurking at every click, waiting to exploit the innocence of our precious and trusting children, yada yada yada. Put this in these terms. You -- the children of the community -- put your trust in this provider and they deliberately violated it and peddled your virginal assets all over town, to anyone who was interested, including to (do a little research first) advertisers that are associated with pornography (e.g. that are in any way involved with creating naughty banner ads or engaged in any way with any website of vaguely dubious decency). Presented badly and without any care as to the way your message is received, you'll come off as a bunch of whiny spoiled anti-capitalist (and thus un-American) geeks. Presented properly, the PTA will be up in arms, and hell hath no fury like a band of PTA moms in defence of their children's innocence.
Fig 1. "The Copulation" as imagined and drawn by Leonardo da Vinci.2 With permission from the Royal Collection. Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II is gratefully acknowledged ... P van Andel does not want to be acknowledged for his idea of using MRI to study coitus.
...
We did not foresee that the men would have more problems with sexual performance (maintaining their erection) than the women in the scanner. All the women had a complete sexual response, but they described their orgasm as superficial. Only the first couple was able to perform coitus adequately without sildenafil (experiments 1 and 2). The reason might be that they were the only participants in the real sense: involved in the research right from the beginning because of their scientific curiosity, knowledge of the body, and artistic commitment. And as amateur street acrobats they are trained and used to performing under stress. (Emphasis added.)
...
Acknowledgments
Nuclear weapons are really hard for the average person to make or get a hold of. Try it sometime and see. One needs, ideally, to run a government of a good-sized country for a number of years. Failing that, one generally needs lots of money, a huge amount of planning, a good number of friends/followers who share your plans, and a willingness to risk being apprehended and unpleasantly killed by agents of a concerned superpower.
Virus-writing, however, has rather lower barriers to entry. Psychological stability is not one of them.
Yes, this particular moderator was a nit. Either that, or he/she/it accidentally mis-moused in the drop-down box, clicking "Offtopic" instead of "The Greatest Damn Brilliant Piece Of Insight To Issue From The Human Mind Since Plato", and then moderating in blissful ignorance of the error.
Humans are not infrequently A: stupid/destructive/confused twits or B: butterfingered. We should not act surprised when proof of this fact is, as here, made evident to us. Nor should we presume the fact that a system does not absolutely prevent all foolishness or error on the part of its moderators to be an indication that this deliberately subjective system is functioning in an unintended manner. That's what the multiplicity of moderators is for -- to (most often) sufficiently compensate for blunders like this.
When asked why, they reply, "Fuckers like that just piss me off," and resume their abuse.
So deep-rooted is their need to demonstrate that, though detested and scorned as weak by some, they are not without power, for they retain the ability to degrade another.
:-)
'course this is totally unverified, and may be a pile of hooey...
IANAEAGH (I am not an etymological and geographic historian), but I'd guess it's a pile of hooey. I've heard this explanation before, with the difference being that it was a very low gate which required a camel, never a graceful beast, to get down on its knees and shuffle through. The implication being, of course, that it is difficult and maybe uncomfortable, but possible for someone who makes the effort.
It's an amusing image, too. Rather more amusing than imagining the well-fed rich guy who first made it up ad-libbing it to the ragged and hungry poor who had the gall to reproach him.
No reasonable slashdotter could consider the above comment to be Flamebait. This post was moderated down for reasons of personal bias, plain and simple.
Since the poster both A: labeled scientology a "sci-fi cult/religion" and B: said that Hubbard was "okay in (his) book" and praised his writing, it is difficult to say whether he was moderated down by A: a Scientologist, who felt morally obligated to censor to the best of his ability anything non-adulatory written about the late Big Guy, or B: by an equally closed-minded anti-Scientologist, who felt that in the eternal battle against the evil brainwashing Xenu-huggers there are no neutrals, and that anyone who broaches any related subject without rigorously excoriating the CoS is providing aid and comfort to the enemy, and may and should be silenced by whatever means are necessary.
In either case, it is a thoroughly Microsoft attitude, and it disgusts me.
"Only the most serious calls, involving serious violence -- rape, assault, possible crimes with guns -- were forwarded to school officials; the rest were not passed along at all."
Hold on a second here. Let's set aside for a moment any moral aspects of creating anonymous classroom informants, and agree for the time being that much information could be obtained that could indicate what students were prone to undesirable behavior, whether shooting up cafeterias, bullying dweebs, or thinking Marilyn Manson is, like, really cool.
Under the above-quoted policy, NONE OF THIS information would be given to the school officials who are supposed to be intervening to save the schools from our tragically disturbed youth! The only things Pinkerton would tell them about are already-committed felonies and conspiracies to commit felonies. (And this is stuff that Pinkerton should be reporting to the local police, anyway, not to the school.) Why, then, are students encouraged to rat on those who seem depressed or angry if those reports are only going to linger in Pinkerton's files??
You sit down to log on.
A cheesy graphic of a keyboard appears, with Microsoft clipart around the edges, and a pair of badly animated mice hopping down the sides and slowly creeping along the bottom.
You painstakingly hunt and peck a seventeen-letter alphanumeric password (that you just pulled out of your wazoo) on the on-screen keyboard while loudly sneering "That'll show them keyboard sniffers!" in the general direction of where you think the hidden mike is, while feebly trying to block the hidden camera from seeing the monitor.
Meanwhile, you're hitting the space bar (or x or the Any Key) when the little mouse hops down to the row containing the first character of your password, and hitting Enter (or c or Shift+Any) when the other little mouse creeps under the right column. A monitor tape would have no clue, and the keyboard sniffer would only get the same meaningless series of strokes, which you could further mess up by having the mice go out of bounds for a few seconds, during which you could type in garbage. When you're all done, you point and click the Enter key on the monitor.
You can even defeat a combined/synchronized keyboard/monitor videotape by Velcroing a detached number pad to the underside of your desk, and bumping it with your knee (or heck, fingers) with or without using the Shift on your keyboard.
For the full effect, though, you should stick two sticky notes to the bottom of your monitor: one should contain the alphabet from A-M, with N-Z written underneath them backwards, and the second should contain an encrypted password, which, with the aid of the other sticky note, a 133t hax0r could decrypt to read "Natalie Portman pours hot grits down snoopers' pants."
Because accusing Microsoft of evil deeds is, when not accurate (indeed, especially when not realistic), just plain fun. It's like throwing tomatoes at Dan Quayle: it's not very nice, but you just can't help yourself. And accusing China of evil deeds, while often unlikely and usually barely plausible, functions as a warning that yes, there does exist a country which is often vaguely hostile to us that will, if not now then in the near future, have the ability to seriously (and possibly anonymously) screw us over, and upon whose goodwill the survival of the Internet (and possibly large chunks of the world economy) will depend. Of course, the Chinese government almost certainly looks on us as a serious threat to their computer networks, and are quite correct in doing so.
This is true, but just because a very risk-averse person should have used far-off computers does not mean that this is the case. What is familiar and convenient often trumps what is rather more sensible, especially in the mind of someone who believes that he's already been so clever that he could never be caught in any case. And the Chinese army probably would've been a bit more subtle. Maybe.
And so, Dear Reader, the trail eventually led up to a little backwoods town in Washington named Redmond, the last place anyone would have thought to look for an evil computer nerd trying to destroy the Internet...
Yes, this is a very nice thing for American autoworkers and their families. But most of them either have computers or are likely to get them in a year or two.
The truly significant and groundbreaking step here is that ALL their workers worldwide will get PCs. 190,000 of these are overseas. What is a surprisingly kind gesture here is manna from heaven in Poland or India. I don't know the level of penetration of computers into these countries, but I rather doubt that it has even grazed the top of the blue-collar market.
In America, if someone works for Ford, you'll know where they got their PC.
In India, if someone works for Ford, you'll know they HAVE a PC.
This is extremely good for PR in these countries, as well as boosting worker loyalty and getting a more educated workforce.
When I go to get ice cream, I want ice cream. Just give me ice cream. I don't need some whiny slacker bugging me about what flavor, what cone, and how many scoops. It's an ice cream place, dammit: bring me ice cream! I shouldn't even have to ask for it. I should be able to just gesture at a picture and grunt.