One could argue that 'natural' intelligence developed in humans is the worst thing to ever happen to the planet's inhabitants as a whole.
I'd love to see that argument. If it weren't humans, it'd be whatever the next in line species is. That is how nature operates. In the game of kill or be killed, I prefer to be in the camp of the former, and we need to ensure the game stays that way.
I bought into the Samsung hype, fancy TV, best of breed mobile devices, I even have a Samsung Microwave. But as an owner I find their service to be among the worst I've ever come across. When my phone stopped working, they said it was water damaged and not covered by warranty. After weeks of phone calls and letter writing I had to take them to court to get a replacement. Ironically at about the same time, my daughter's iPod stopped working in a similar manner. 2 minutes in the Apple store they replaced it on the spot despite it having a cracked screen. I still won't own any Apple devices due to their overly restrictive interface, but they know how to treat their customers
Samsung recently pushed out an updated firmware for their LED TVs which breaks Plex, the most popular app for Samsung TVs. This issue is all over the Internet and Samsung's response is deafening silence. They won't roll back or even offer an alternate FW version, customers are left on their own and treated like shit.
I'll never buy another Samsung product no matter how good the specs are. Backup service is equally important and these guys are the worst at it.
Prior to the invention of aircraft a land owner used to own the airspace above their property all the way up to the stars. The FAA changed this for practical reasons, but I see no need to give away these rights just because you have a new toy and are too lazy to take it somewhere less annoying than where I live.
pro tip: boys love drone and often act as great ambassadors to the parents.
I only have daughters, and I have my own protip, they don't like being spied on while sunbathing in bikinis in their own fenced backyard by men with flying cameras.
Second protip, a father will go to jail to protect his daughters.
My neighbour is a film producer, he has an industrial sized hexcopter for professional filming, and I've never seen him use it in our neighbourhood other than for test flights within his own yard. So I know it is possible to own a drone and not be a jerk about it.
I don't see a single one of these that the pilot definitively violated. "Don't fly near people or stadiums" is the only thing he might have violated,
So you don't see any violations apart from the violations? Sweet.
And there's no might about it. Flying near people definitely breaches the don't fly near people rule.
It's how the legal system in the US works. If you didn't learn this in high school, you simply didn't listen to what was taught to you in the most basic of civics classes.
I never went to school in the US. Can you tell me the outcome if a Peeping Tom mounts a video camera to a pole and hangs it over my yard directly at my teenage daughter?
For bonus points, what if I throw a bunch of ball bearings really hard and fast at the camera causing it to smash and drop on the ground?
I actually hope the guy who shot it down just gets a small fine and let go. Because the drone hovering in your backyard isn't the kind of shit we should be accepting.
I hope the case gets dismissed. I'm no fan of US gun laws, read my posting history, but this guy was on his own property defending his family from creepy behaviour.
This is actually one of the most valid reasons to own projectile weapon I can think of, which is why I support restrictions to drone use. I don't want to see increased gun ownership just to defend against this type of nuisance.
Why is it that I'm supposed to be afraid of the known very few GMO changes and not be afraid of the unknown thousands of changes in the natural process?
Because diversity breeds strength.
Nature has a nasty way of playing catch-up. Look at the rise Asthma, Hay fever and allergies in conjunction with our increasingly sterilised environment. I'm fine with GM food, but we should be a little cautious that any reduction in diversity will have consequences sooner or later (most likely later when it's too late)
I have no problem with GM food. I do have a big problem with closed source, trademarked, copyrighted and patented food.
I also have concerns about forced sterialisation, cross pollination and reduced diversity mono-cultures.
I won't argue, it was weak, but the point that I'm struggling to demonstrate is that dissent is part of a healthy democracy, and we should be able to distinguish the difference.
Snowden isn't out to overthrow and replace the current system, he is merely shining a light on those who are exploiting it.
Maybe a better way to put it it that the aspirations of the founding fathers are more closely aligned with Snowden's actions, then the current government's (both sides)?
No, Snowden is up there with Ben Franklin and the like. People who resisted their government at the very highest levels, people who would have hanged for their activities if they'd allowed themselves to get caught.
The funny about the US is that is was founded on terrorism. It was owned by the King of England, and the terrorists rose up and defeated him.
How is Snowden any different? The US govt is now playing the role of the King of England, and he is playing the great American Hero. Where are his supporters who will happily fight and die along side him? Nah too hard, what are the Kardashians up to this week?
This is not the America I grew up in. This is disgraceful.
Actually it is the America you grew up in, you just didn't know it.
If one thing has changed over the decades it is visibility of detail of how the government operates. Decades ago they were still doing the same shit, possibly worse, but they had a lot more shadows to hide in.
Then it's a shoddily-written law that targets the methods of doing the action, without addressing the action itself. Actions should be punishable; methods should not be, unless there's a special reason to change the punishment based on the method used to perform the action.
Like shoddily built old houses and cars, people wrote the best laws they could at the time. When flaws are identified, then isn't the answer to amend and improve them? You're response seems to be just leave it and blame the original law writers for not getting it perfect the first time around.
If I were a lawyer, or otherwise versed in the appropriate legal terminology, I would've used it. As it is, I stuck to vernacular English.
Yeah but the law can't be that vague, which is why it is always changing to catch up with evolving language and technology
I'm not talking about penalties. I'm talking about a threshold of occurrences before I think something should be done about the problem.
You think, what about what I think? Or others think? I'm fine that you have your opinion, but you should also respect that other people have opinions, and your personal experience doe not reflect everyone else's experience on earth.
Drones may not present an issue to you or me right now, but somewhere on the planet I can imagine that they are, and I can also imagine that the popularity of drones is growing extremely fast, so even if not a problem right now, it soon will be (just like Laser pointers when they first hit the market)
Bullshit; a law exists. Assault and battery would both apply, and possibly aggravated assault, to emphasize the life-changing damage that blinding someone would cause.
Assault and battery won't stand up in court without evidence of injury.
The problem with lasers is a lot of damage is done indirectly, ie distraction causing accidents, which is not covered by assault and battery laws. Hence new laws specifically targeted at the new threat, previously impossible with the technology of the day.
That doesn't seem to be true, at least in the U.S. Lasers of various powers are widely available. The change, as I perceive it, is that the novelty value wore off, and most people in society began to recognize that using a dangerous tool as a toy is irresponsible. That being said, I can still go to a pet store and buy a class-1 laser as a cat toy. I can buy a class-3 in a store, marketed for pointing to stars.
Well that's the great thing about the Internet, you get to hear how it is in places that aren't where you're from.
The US is supposed to be free...free to succeed and free to fuck up.
Most good lessons in life are learned more from fucking up and having to deal with the repercussions.
That's fine if you live in a bubble, but when your fuck-up negatively affects my life then the only path is chaos.
Freedom is relative across all of society. And the most free a society can get is when there are rules in place that ensure other's behaviour impact your life as little as possible. Freedom has never meant 'everyone do whatever they like'.
You might want to be careful with that line of thinking. For example, forcing you to exercise would also measurably lengthen your life; do you want the government to be able to mandate such a thing?
I'd actually support it. The biggest cost to healthcare is fat bastards who eat the wrong food and don't do enough exercise. So yeah, if that means you live longer and I pay less tax, the sign me up for that one.
External health costs? Do you have any idea how many highly toxic chemicals are used, in quantity, to turn polysilicon into a working solar cell?
No, but a better way to frame this question would be, "Do you have any idea how many highly toxic chemicals are emitted into the environment, in quantity, to turn polysilicon into a working solar cell?"
Nuclear energy is toxic, but if you put the toxic stuff in a box and store it under a mountain, then it is much less of a concern to me.
You are a damn fool if you think that disarming a society makes them any more free or safe.
As proven by the US and their awesome homicide rate you mean?
In every instance in history the opposite has happened.
Citation? I can't think of any case in a modern democracy where less guns meant more violence, so you'll have to provide some evidence for this bold claim.
When the guns are taken away from citizens tyranny is soon to follow.
Yet every western democracy that has less guns than the US, also has lower homicide rates, and are falling. Your statement does not match the data.
Do you really think that ISIS would have a chance in hell of surviving if the citizens of those countries were armed?
They are armed you twonk. ISIS are citizens with guns fighting other citizens with guns as well as armies that have guns and tanks. Do you actually know what is going on over there?
The reason they have so much power now is because guns were taken away from the citizens long ago.
When? When exactly did the all the guns get taken off the people of Syria and Iraq? Please provide a date and reference when the great gun prohibition was enacted in these states?
. I don't see the point of singling out one particular technology that can be abused.
Just because you can't see it doesn't mean it's doesn't exist.
New Technology allows you to do new things in new ways, and hence actions may be against the principal of an existing law, but not captured by it's definition.
You also can't be as vague as saying "No peeping" because that's how people get off with excuses like "I wasn't peeping, I was peeking".
Laws have to be specific otherwise people with good lawyers squirm out of them.
I'd put different thresholds on imaginary privacy issues and safety issues likely to result in death.
And those exist. The penalty for unlicensed drone use is not the same as manslaughter for example.
It's like putting a ban on walkie-talkies in the 90s because you could eavesdrop on cordless phone calls with them, versus issuing citations for not wearing a seatbelt in a car. They aren't really comparable situations. One is rare, of limited scope, and isn't likely to hurt anyone. The other is a preventative action that lowers traffic fatalities.
Correct, but laws are generally the thing that keeps this rare, and prevents it becoming a bigger issue.
An example is laser pointers. They were all the rage a few years ago, everyone had them and they became a nuisance. No laws existed against blinding people with lasers because why would you have a law for something that hadn't been invented?
Then a pilot got flashed in the eyes while trying to land a fully loaded airliner so the authorities cracked down and banned them. Now they've almost disappeared from use (still around, but nowhere near the same number).
So the law identified an issue, dealt with it, and created and outcome satisfactory to the rest of society. This is no different.
Slashdot Mirror
Citation?
Extinction is part of evolution, don't think for one moment that every other species wouldn't kill you if it didn't have the chance.
One could argue that 'natural' intelligence developed in humans is the worst thing to ever happen to the planet's inhabitants as a whole.
I'd love to see that argument. If it weren't humans, it'd be whatever the next in line species is. That is how nature operates. In the game of kill or be killed, I prefer to be in the camp of the former, and we need to ensure the game stays that way.
I bought into the Samsung hype, fancy TV, best of breed mobile devices, I even have a Samsung Microwave. But as an owner I find their service to be among the worst I've ever come across. When my phone stopped working, they said it was water damaged and not covered by warranty. After weeks of phone calls and letter writing I had to take them to court to get a replacement. Ironically at about the same time, my daughter's iPod stopped working in a similar manner. 2 minutes in the Apple store they replaced it on the spot despite it having a cracked screen. I still won't own any Apple devices due to their overly restrictive interface, but they know how to treat their customers
Samsung recently pushed out an updated firmware for their LED TVs which breaks Plex, the most popular app for Samsung TVs. This issue is all over the Internet and Samsung's response is deafening silence. They won't roll back or even offer an alternate FW version, customers are left on their own and treated like shit.
I'll never buy another Samsung product no matter how good the specs are. Backup service is equally important and these guys are the worst at it.
Stem Cell Research and Computational power are all defence. The stronger and more capable you are as a nation, the more effective your self defence.
Prior to the invention of aircraft a land owner used to own the airspace above their property all the way up to the stars. The FAA changed this for practical reasons, but I see no need to give away these rights just because you have a new toy and are too lazy to take it somewhere less annoying than where I live.
pro tip: boys love drone and often act as great ambassadors to the parents.
I only have daughters, and I have my own protip, they don't like being spied on while sunbathing in bikinis in their own fenced backyard by men with flying cameras.
Second protip, a father will go to jail to protect his daughters.
My neighbour is a film producer, he has an industrial sized hexcopter for professional filming, and I've never seen him use it in our neighbourhood other than for test flights within his own yard. So I know it is possible to own a drone and not be a jerk about it.
Some of it seemed like using the "drone" as an excuse to be belligerent in public.
Are you talking about the owner or the other people? It seems to work both ways.
I don't see a single one of these that the pilot definitively violated. "Don't fly near people or stadiums" is the only thing he might have violated,
So you don't see any violations apart from the violations? Sweet.
And there's no might about it. Flying near people definitely breaches the don't fly near people rule.
It's how the legal system in the US works. If you didn't learn this in high school, you simply didn't listen to what was taught to you in the most basic of civics classes.
I never went to school in the US. Can you tell me the outcome if a Peeping Tom mounts a video camera to a pole and hangs it over my yard directly at my teenage daughter?
For bonus points, what if I throw a bunch of ball bearings really hard and fast at the camera causing it to smash and drop on the ground?
There shouldn't be anything wrong with simply flying over to get from point A to point B.
FAA already has this covered. Public airspace starts at 500 feet, or 1000 feet over any building or antenna.
I actually hope the guy who shot it down just gets a small fine and let go. Because the drone hovering in your backyard isn't the kind of shit we should be accepting.
I hope the case gets dismissed. I'm no fan of US gun laws, read my posting history, but this guy was on his own property defending his family from creepy behaviour.
This is actually one of the most valid reasons to own projectile weapon I can think of, which is why I support restrictions to drone use. I don't want to see increased gun ownership just to defend against this type of nuisance.
Why is it that I'm supposed to be afraid of the known very few GMO changes and not be afraid of the unknown thousands of changes in the natural process?
Because diversity breeds strength.
Nature has a nasty way of playing catch-up. Look at the rise Asthma, Hay fever and allergies in conjunction with our increasingly sterilised environment. I'm fine with GM food, but we should be a little cautious that any reduction in diversity will have consequences sooner or later (most likely later when it's too late)
I have no problem with GM food. I do have a big problem with closed source, trademarked, copyrighted and patented food.
I also have concerns about forced sterialisation, cross pollination and reduced diversity mono-cultures.
So can someone tell me, is better or worse than than banning stem cell research?
Pretty lame comparison.
I won't argue, it was weak, but the point that I'm struggling to demonstrate is that dissent is part of a healthy democracy, and we should be able to distinguish the difference. Snowden isn't out to overthrow and replace the current system, he is merely shining a light on those who are exploiting it.
Maybe a better way to put it it that the aspirations of the founding fathers are more closely aligned with Snowden's actions, then the current government's (both sides)?
No, Snowden is up there with Ben Franklin and the like. People who resisted their government at the very highest levels, people who would have hanged for their activities if they'd allowed themselves to get caught.
The funny about the US is that is was founded on terrorism. It was owned by the King of England, and the terrorists rose up and defeated him.
How is Snowden any different? The US govt is now playing the role of the King of England, and he is playing the great American Hero. Where are his supporters who will happily fight and die along side him? Nah too hard, what are the Kardashians up to this week?
This is not the America I grew up in. This is disgraceful.
Actually it is the America you grew up in, you just didn't know it.
If one thing has changed over the decades it is visibility of detail of how the government operates. Decades ago they were still doing the same shit, possibly worse, but they had a lot more shadows to hide in.
Then it's a shoddily-written law that targets the methods of doing the action, without addressing the action itself. Actions should be punishable; methods should not be, unless there's a special reason to change the punishment based on the method used to perform the action.
Like shoddily built old houses and cars, people wrote the best laws they could at the time. When flaws are identified, then isn't the answer to amend and improve them? You're response seems to be just leave it and blame the original law writers for not getting it perfect the first time around.
If I were a lawyer, or otherwise versed in the appropriate legal terminology, I would've used it. As it is, I stuck to vernacular English.
Yeah but the law can't be that vague, which is why it is always changing to catch up with evolving language and technology
I'm not talking about penalties. I'm talking about a threshold of occurrences before I think something should be done about the problem.
You think, what about what I think? Or others think? I'm fine that you have your opinion, but you should also respect that other people have opinions, and your personal experience doe not reflect everyone else's experience on earth.
Drones may not present an issue to you or me right now, but somewhere on the planet I can imagine that they are, and I can also imagine that the popularity of drones is growing extremely fast, so even if not a problem right now, it soon will be (just like Laser pointers when they first hit the market)
Bullshit; a law exists. Assault and battery would both apply, and possibly aggravated assault, to emphasize the life-changing damage that blinding someone would cause.
Assault and battery won't stand up in court without evidence of injury.
The problem with lasers is a lot of damage is done indirectly, ie distraction causing accidents, which is not covered by assault and battery laws. Hence new laws specifically targeted at the new threat, previously impossible with the technology of the day.
That doesn't seem to be true, at least in the U.S. Lasers of various powers are widely available. The change, as I perceive it, is that the novelty value wore off, and most people in society began to recognize that using a dangerous tool as a toy is irresponsible. That being said, I can still go to a pet store and buy a class-1 laser as a cat toy. I can buy a class-3 in a store, marketed for pointing to stars.
Well that's the great thing about the Internet, you get to hear how it is in places that aren't where you're from.
You wrote a whole bunch of words there but didn't actually make any point. Why do you even bother?
The US is supposed to be free...free to succeed and free to fuck up.
Most good lessons in life are learned more from fucking up and having to deal with the repercussions.
That's fine if you live in a bubble, but when your fuck-up negatively affects my life then the only path is chaos.
Freedom is relative across all of society. And the most free a society can get is when there are rules in place that ensure other's behaviour impact your life as little as possible. Freedom has never meant 'everyone do whatever they like'.
You might want to be careful with that line of thinking. For example, forcing you to exercise would also measurably lengthen your life; do you want the government to be able to mandate such a thing?
I'd actually support it. The biggest cost to healthcare is fat bastards who eat the wrong food and don't do enough exercise. So yeah, if that means you live longer and I pay less tax, the sign me up for that one.
External health costs? Do you have any idea how many highly toxic chemicals are used, in quantity, to turn polysilicon into a working solar cell?
No, but a better way to frame this question would be, "Do you have any idea how many highly toxic chemicals are emitted into the environment, in quantity, to turn polysilicon into a working solar cell?"
Nuclear energy is toxic, but if you put the toxic stuff in a box and store it under a mountain, then it is much less of a concern to me.
You are a damn fool if you think that disarming a society makes them any more free or safe.
As proven by the US and their awesome homicide rate you mean?
In every instance in history the opposite has happened.
Citation? I can't think of any case in a modern democracy where less guns meant more violence, so you'll have to provide some evidence for this bold claim.
When the guns are taken away from citizens tyranny is soon to follow.
Yet every western democracy that has less guns than the US, also has lower homicide rates, and are falling. Your statement does not match the data.
Do you really think that ISIS would have a chance in hell of surviving if the citizens of those countries were armed?
They are armed you twonk. ISIS are citizens with guns fighting other citizens with guns as well as armies that have guns and tanks. Do you actually know what is going on over there?
The reason they have so much power now is because guns were taken away from the citizens long ago.
When? When exactly did the all the guns get taken off the people of Syria and Iraq? Please provide a date and reference when the great gun prohibition was enacted in these states?
. I don't see the point of singling out one particular technology that can be abused.
Just because you can't see it doesn't mean it's doesn't exist.
New Technology allows you to do new things in new ways, and hence actions may be against the principal of an existing law, but not captured by it's definition.
You also can't be as vague as saying "No peeping" because that's how people get off with excuses like "I wasn't peeping, I was peeking".
Laws have to be specific otherwise people with good lawyers squirm out of them.
I'd put different thresholds on imaginary privacy issues and safety issues likely to result in death.
And those exist. The penalty for unlicensed drone use is not the same as manslaughter for example. It's like putting a ban on walkie-talkies in the 90s because you could eavesdrop on cordless phone calls with them, versus issuing citations for not wearing a seatbelt in a car. They aren't really comparable situations. One is rare, of limited scope, and isn't likely to hurt anyone. The other is a preventative action that lowers traffic fatalities.
Correct, but laws are generally the thing that keeps this rare, and prevents it becoming a bigger issue.
An example is laser pointers. They were all the rage a few years ago, everyone had them and they became a nuisance. No laws existed against blinding people with lasers because why would you have a law for something that hadn't been invented?
Then a pilot got flashed in the eyes while trying to land a fully loaded airliner so the authorities cracked down and banned them. Now they've almost disappeared from use (still around, but nowhere near the same number).
So the law identified an issue, dealt with it, and created and outcome satisfactory to the rest of society. This is no different.
Then I suppose you have a problem with everything;
You suppose wrong.