That's actually not accurate. The anonymity->trolling idea was a theory somebody came up with offhand based on a single study of how people act in-person in situations where they're either completely unknown/anonymous or fully recognized, but *not* the Internet standard of pseudonymous.
Studies since then have matched what social sites have clearly shown: most people that engage in aggressive behavior online have no problem posting the same things under their real names, as they're unashamed or even proud of their words, as they see themselves as either just having fun or "telling it like it is." Because of this, the presence of pseudonymity/anonymity has very little impact on the frequency of assholes.
True, but there are keyboard shortcuts in Windows, Linux, and OSX. (Not my site/guides; I just ran across it while looking up the "compose key" setting in KDE as a novice years ago.)
I'm sure there's some FOSS out there that does the same thing too.
Linux has the compose key; I set mine to CapsLock. Best use for the blasted key I can think of — though I'm obviously still too lazy to compose-key my apostrophe into a proper curly one 99% of the time...
The reason Obama won each time wasn't because an insufficient number of people didn't trust/like him -- it's the "lesser evil"voting method at work. It's a lot like the old joke about being in a crowd chased by a monster:the folks that survive aren't all the fastest, they're simply not the slowest.
In 2008, the Democratic Party was dangerously split by hostility between Obama's & Clinton's fans, and the Left was further fractured by the voters angry over Democrat politicians not living up to their pledge to change things. The GOPlost that time because of the damage Bush/Cheney had caused and because the GOP's candidates were literally considered laughably awful.
In 2012, Left-leaning voters were extremely angry over the performance both Obama *and*the other Democrats had given over the previous four years. There was a very real chance that the Democrats were going to lose...but because the Right-Wing politicians had managed to make their side look like it would've probably caused even more damage, the GOP once again lost.
That's the reason that the guy you're responding to blamed the GOP for putting Obama in power -- it could've convinced any number of people that the guy wasn't a great candidate, but it *couldn't* convince them that its own candidates weren't worse in one way or another. It's something to keep in mind in the near future, too; 2016 will be here before we know it...
There was no warning pictogram on the layer that the victims interacted with, which was found at the scrapyard that the thieves had sold the dismantled machine to. When the capsule was brought to a hospital, the staff couldn't figure out whether it was dangerous until a visiting nuclear physicist borrowed equipment from a government lab to check.
The only person that 'played with' or smeared it on their skin was a six-year-old girl who died after eating a sandwich some of the grains/powder had fallen onto.
Evidently only the initial scavengers/thieves were uneducated & poor. The guy that found the cesium-137 didn't handle it in a way that suggested a lack of money (sharing it, wanting to have it turned into a ring for his wife, offering rewards for helping extract it, etc.). The city the families lived at the edges of is similar to a standard major North American city and has a similar educational system, so chances are that they were as educated as anyone up here.
Sounds nice, as long as the "1940s" you describe doesn't extend to the old gender roles -- those are fine for people that naturally fit them, but not very pleasant for those of us that don't.:-)
US, which keep cutting funds from NASA in name of trying to fix social problems that strangely keep getting worse and worse the more money the government apply on them.
The US has been *reducing* the amount spent on "trying to fix social problems" (or anything that primarily benefits everyday citizens, for that matter) for at least 3 decades now, not increasing it!
Our problems have worsened for a wide variety of reasons, but as a quick starting point: job outsourcing leaving countless Americans unemployed, waves of underpaid H1B workers & legal/illegal immigrants compounding the problem, and bulk retailers like WalMart (which severely underpay employees) replaced the decently-paying stores. That's not even touching the clusterfuck in our schools, healthcare issues, or other problems here.
The Guardian reported in late September that the USA's diplomats were being expelled from Venezuela because Maduro claimed they'd been conspiring with the extreme-right to destroy Venezuela's economy:
Maduro said a group of embassy officials that his government had been following for months was "dedicated to meeting with the Venezuelan extreme right, to financing it and feeding its actions to sabotage the electrical system and the Venezuela economy."... The last time Venezuela expelled US diplomats was on 5 March, when it ejected two military attaches for allegedly trying to destabilise the nation. That move came several hours before Maduro announced that Chavez had died of cancer.
Obviously our embassy rejected the accusations as unfounded, but considering our government's long track record in the region, their word isn't exactly worth much.
BTW: what does this Thor movie have to do with nerds? Serious question, I did not see it and before today I've never heard of it.
You're asking that about a movie based on a comic book full of sci-fi and fantasy elements? Seriously?
While I like fantasy/SF, I have to agree. Just because "nerd" meant a particular stereotype 15-20 years ago shouldn't automatically determine things now. For example, back then nerds were (supposedly) all chronically single hetero teenage boys into ham radio & hand-building electronics from the capacitors up -- not exactly a description that fits the average Slashdotter now, which is why the post topics are radically different from what they would've been back then.
TBH, it doesn't seem right that those of us that fit the old stereotype should automatically have their preferred entertainment covered, while users that are just as (if not more) nerdy that prefer different genres get zero coverage of their favorites... That's too much like if the site were to only cover tech-related politics in the USA, leaving the rest of the planet out.
Since the site can't handle coverage of all major genres, it seems more reasonable that we all do exactly what those non-entertainment-stereotypical nerds do -- get news directly related to tech (including movie technology, of course) here on Slashdot, get our entertainment boost on another decent site. (Hell, we could have one post dedicated to a discussion of our favorite relevant sites, so we can all *find* the good ones.) Or alternately, perhaps Slashdot could kill the dull-as-fuck "BI" area and replace it with "/. entertainment." Life isn't fair, but that doesn't mean we can't try to improve it.
the left relentlessly hates everything that scientists and engineers produce
Conservatives are the ones against stem-cell research/therapy, the theory of evolution, government investment into researching/developing 'green' energy sources, theory of human-induced global warming, government investment in medical research & public university medical schools, and a lot of other stuff Ican't recall off the top of my head.
It's also typically conservatives & libertarians that feel that the government shouldn't spend money on oldschool "public works"economic stimulus programs like you mentioned (which are typically left-wing methods of handling a serious recession/depression). They push to instead have deep tax cuts for corporations & highly rich individuals in hope they'll create jobs, and otherwise to strangle government spending -- a massive part of the current fight over the national debt.
IMHO we'd be best off if the government had (or would)invest stimulus-style funds into a massive public-works project to bring fiber broadband to households around America (just as they did with POTS), then let any ISP sell access as a free market to keep prices low. That alone could catapult us into an "Internet 2.0" (rather than merely "Web 2.0") economic boom.
Slashdot Mirror
That's actually not accurate. The anonymity->trolling idea was a theory somebody came up with offhand based on a single study of how people act in-person in situations where they're either completely unknown/anonymous or fully recognized, but *not* the Internet standard of pseudonymous.
Studies since then have matched what social sites have clearly shown: most people that engage in aggressive behavior online have no problem posting the same things under their real names, as they're unashamed or even proud of their words, as they see themselves as either just having fun or "telling it like it is." Because of this, the presence of pseudonymity/anonymity has very little impact on the frequency of assholes.
True, but there are keyboard shortcuts in Windows, Linux, and OSX. (Not my site/guides; I just ran across it while looking up the "compose key" setting in KDE as a novice years ago.)
I'm sure there's some FOSS out there that does the same thing too.
Linux has the compose key; I set mine to CapsLock. Best use for the blasted key I can think of — though I'm obviously still too lazy to compose-key my apostrophe into a proper curly one 99% of the time...
The reason Obama won each time wasn't because an insufficient number of people didn't trust/like him -- it's the "lesser evil"voting method at work. It's a lot like the old joke about being in a crowd chased by a monster:the folks that survive aren't all the fastest, they're simply not the slowest.
In 2008, the Democratic Party was dangerously split by hostility between Obama's & Clinton's fans, and the Left was further fractured by the voters angry over Democrat politicians not living up to their pledge to change things. The GOPlost that time because of the damage Bush/Cheney had caused and because the GOP's candidates were literally considered laughably awful.
In 2012, Left-leaning voters were extremely angry over the performance both Obama *and*the other Democrats had given over the previous four years. There was a very real chance that the Democrats were going to lose...but because the Right-Wing politicians had managed to make their side look like it would've probably caused even more damage, the GOP once again lost.
That's the reason that the guy you're responding to blamed the GOP for putting Obama in power -- it could've convinced any number of people that the guy wasn't a great candidate, but it *couldn't* convince them that its own candidates weren't worse in one way or another. It's something to keep in mind in the near future, too; 2016 will be here before we know it...
There was no warning pictogram on the layer that the victims interacted with, which was found at the scrapyard that the thieves had sold the dismantled machine to. When the capsule was brought to a hospital, the staff couldn't figure out whether it was dangerous until a visiting nuclear physicist borrowed equipment from a government lab to check.
The only person that 'played with' or smeared it on their skin was a six-year-old girl who died after eating a sandwich some of the grains/powder had fallen onto.
Evidently only the initial scavengers/thieves were uneducated & poor. The guy that found the cesium-137 didn't handle it in a way that suggested a lack of money (sharing it, wanting to have it turned into a ring for his wife, offering rewards for helping extract it, etc.). The city the families lived at the edges of is similar to a standard major North American city and has a similar educational system, so chances are that they were as educated as anyone up here.
Sounds nice, as long as the "1940s" you describe doesn't extend to the old gender roles -- those are fine for people that naturally fit them, but not very pleasant for those of us that don't. :-)
US, which keep cutting funds from NASA in name of trying to fix social problems that strangely keep getting worse and worse the more money the government apply on them.
The US has been *reducing* the amount spent on "trying to fix social problems" (or anything that primarily benefits everyday citizens, for that matter) for at least 3 decades now, not increasing it!
Our problems have worsened for a wide variety of reasons, but as a quick starting point: job outsourcing leaving countless Americans unemployed, waves of underpaid H1B workers & legal/illegal immigrants compounding the problem, and bulk retailers like WalMart (which severely underpay employees) replaced the decently-paying stores. That's not even touching the clusterfuck in our schools, healthcare issues, or other problems here.
Maduro said a group of embassy officials that his government had been following for months was "dedicated to meeting with the Venezuelan extreme right, to financing it and feeding its actions to sabotage the electrical system and the Venezuela economy." ... The last time Venezuela expelled US diplomats was on 5 March, when it ejected two military attaches for allegedly trying to destabilise the nation. That move came several hours before Maduro announced that Chavez had died of cancer.
Obviously our embassy rejected the accusations as unfounded, but considering our government's long track record in the region, their word isn't exactly worth much.
BTW: what does this Thor movie have to do with nerds? Serious question, I did not see it and before today I've never heard of it.
You're asking that about a movie based on a comic book full of sci-fi and fantasy elements? Seriously?
While I like fantasy/SF, I have to agree. Just because "nerd" meant a particular stereotype 15-20 years ago shouldn't automatically determine things now. For example, back then nerds were (supposedly) all chronically single hetero teenage boys into ham radio & hand-building electronics from the capacitors up -- not exactly a description that fits the average Slashdotter now, which is why the post topics are radically different from what they would've been back then.
TBH, it doesn't seem right that those of us that fit the old stereotype should automatically have their preferred entertainment covered, while users that are just as (if not more) nerdy that prefer different genres get zero coverage of their favorites... That's too much like if the site were to only cover tech-related politics in the USA, leaving the rest of the planet out.
Since the site can't handle coverage of all major genres, it seems more reasonable that we all do exactly what those non-entertainment-stereotypical nerds do -- get news directly related to tech (including movie technology, of course) here on Slashdot, get our entertainment boost on another decent site. (Hell, we could have one post dedicated to a discussion of our favorite relevant sites, so we can all *find* the good ones.) Or alternately, perhaps Slashdot could kill the dull-as-fuck "BI" area and replace it with "/. entertainment." Life isn't fair, but that doesn't mean we can't try to improve it.
the left relentlessly hates everything that scientists and engineers produce
Conservatives are the ones against stem-cell research/therapy, the theory of evolution, government investment into researching/developing 'green' energy sources, theory of human-induced global warming, government investment in medical research & public university medical schools, and a lot of other stuff Ican't recall off the top of my head.
It's also typically conservatives & libertarians that feel that the government shouldn't spend money on oldschool "public works"economic stimulus programs like you mentioned (which are typically left-wing methods of handling a serious recession/depression). They push to instead have deep tax cuts for corporations & highly rich individuals in hope they'll create jobs, and otherwise to strangle government spending -- a massive part of the current fight over the national debt.
IMHO we'd be best off if the government had (or would)invest stimulus-style funds into a massive public-works project to bring fiber broadband to households around America (just as they did with POTS), then let any ISP sell access as a free market to keep prices low. That alone could catapult us into an "Internet 2.0" (rather than merely "Web 2.0") economic boom.
Because most of the young bucks & does on Slashdot these days are actually consumer enthusiasts, not truly tech-savvy?