If words were really powerless advertising wouldn't work. Like it or not, things people read clearly affect them.
Modern feminism is rooted in critical theory, aka neo-Marxism. Critical theory denies logical positivism, the idea that arguments in philosophy or social science need to be derived from empirical facts and logic. As a result, modern feminism (and other so-called "social justice" movements) don't bother with using rational arguments to convince people that social injustices exist and/or that their proposed solutions are effective; instead, they start with the assumption that their perception of social injustice is sufficient justification by itself for grievances and change, and they use language not as a tool for logical arguments, but to manipulate. It's like Soviet propaganda without even a pretense of facts. Take Anita Sarkeesians own words for it:
With the help of some amazing mentors and by reading a lot of feminist writing, especially the words of women of color and queer women from around the world, I learned to see through a sociological lens and understand the world as it really exists, as a series of intersecting social systems. Once you have a systemic and institutional framework, you see how oppression manifests in many subtle ways under the systems of what bell hooks calls “white supremacist capitalist patriarchy”.
Note that there is nothing about statistics, facts, policies, or rational arguments in her world view; it's all about what "lens" you see the world through. Her videos aren't about making rational arguments about objective facts, they are like advertising, intended to manipulate you into drinking her Coolaid and joining her clan.
So you are absolutely right that words have power. They have even more power today where social and political issues and policies are highly complex, where most people's choices are indeed easily influenced by perception, not facts. And that is exactly the reason why people get so upset by the manipulative and deceptive use of language by people like Sarkeesian.
But the reactionary outrage to a panel about online harassment is completely stupid and childish.
I haven't followed this, but would I assume the outrage is over the people on the panel (Caroline Sinders, Katherine Cross, Randi Harper), not the topic.
And if you believe you're too smart to be manipulated that way, you're almost certainly wrong.
Yet, you seem to be oblivious to how you are being manipulated.
Actually, criticism online in certain ways is in fact a Chargeable Offense in Canada and the EU, and if used against any EU or Canadian citizens in the US is a violation of their rights.
Really? Can you give examples of Americans being convicted of violating European restrictions on free speech?
So you are saying that OS X is "innovative" because it consists largely of 1980's technology (NextStep, BSD, Smalltalk, OO dev tools)? Seems to me that that makes it about three decades behind the times.
I'm not certain which society is easier to live with. One that lies to you and the judiciary branch or one that just does as it pleases but admits it.
In the US, the executive branch gets a lot of leeway until legislators and courts catch up. It's not surprising that quickly after the widespread adoption of the Internet and the Web, executive branch agencies went overboard. It will take a few more decades of activism to sort this all out, but there is a good chance that we'll end up with pretty good protections against government intrusion into privacy in the US, because the constitutional framework is actually there.
Just remember, European governments are really concerned about your privacy! That's why they want all the private and personal data of Europeans kept on European servers. You know, so that they can better protect you!
I blame most of the destination argument on the creation of the Mars underground in the 1980's. Prior to that NASA was focused on using the Shuttle for industrialization in LEO with projects like demonstrating the repair and return of satellites, building structural items in orbit, tethers, etc.
And the shuttle, an overpriced and poor design, shows that they weren't up to the task.
We need to give Mars a rest and once again spend the limited budget on building capabilities in space, space tugs, orbital refueling, lunar LOX, that would serve for going to all the interesting destinations beyond Earth, not keep wasting money on plans to go to a single one that is already well mapped and explored.
I think NASA should focus on science earth observation and interplanetary probes. Leave the industrial stuff to industry.
Unemployment rates are not, and have never been, a useful measure of labor participation. For that, you look at the labor force participation rate. Of course, when you do, you see that that has been steadily going down under Obama, making this one of the worst administrations in history.
That's effectively already the rule; H-1B workers need to be paid at least "prevailing wage", which in practice makes them more expensive than American workers. Furthermore, the DOL makes prevailing wage determinations.
Because package versioning is not a language issue. It's a build issue, and should be part of your build system.
In many languages, building code is a language issue. The fact that Go takes a fairly old-fashioned view of batch compilers and separate build systems is just a choice it makes, not a fundamental part of nature. Furthermore, language issue or not, the question simply becomes why are the commonly used build systems for Go so poor.
A deficiency that's not Go's problem to solve IMO.
So you're saying that people should adopt Go only once all the major deficiencies in other common software systems have been addressed? That's going to be when hell freezes over.
(In addition, there are reasons for why OpenGL is the way it is; it's not a deficiency, it's a tradeoff.)
Yes, OpenGL is a big hack. Why is this Go's problem?
The world is full of "big hacks" and shitty software, so languages that can't deal well with such systems aren't going to cut it. In different words, it's Go's problem because users aren't going to use Go if they can't get their work done in it.
Bullshit. This coalition is not "liberals", it probably covers a large range of political backgrounds
They aren't "liberals" in the traditional political science or European sense. They are, however, "liberals" in the modern American sense, which means that they are a mix of progressives, right wing populists, and neo-Marxists.
Next thing you know the USA will have anti-holocaust denial laws (for the Nazi holocaust) and anti-holocaust assertion laws (for the Native American holocaust).
Oh, we have no problem asserting that the Spanish and the British empires committed genocide against Native Americans. Why would we be shy about that?
A lot of people are going to see some sort of causal link between them raising the salaries and the business soaring
There is a causal link: a fast growing business with high profits in an inefficient rent-seeking industry with high barriers to entry due to government regulators can afford to pay its lucky employees more than they are worth. In addition, such businesses need to pay a premium for employee retention since losing key employees at that early stage can be devastating. If the credit card business wasn't such a rip-off of consumers, they wouldn't be able to pay these kinds of salaries.
They will be going after the credit card numbers and corporate secrets, the point is that your toaster would be the weak link in your systems. If they can hack the toaster, they can get the admin password for the toaster as well as the addresses of all the other things in the house. Form there try that admin password on something like the fridge.
That's utter nonsense. Most IoT devices run on Z-Wave or ZigBee networks and are paired by button presses; they don't have network passwords or user passwords, and have no TCP/IP access. They speak specialized protocols to a single IoT hub sitting somewhere in your home.
Furthermore, even for the few IoT devices that do run on WiFi, as I was saying: If your home network security assumes that every single attached device is patched and secure, you have already lost.
Just as people didn't think about how phones can track their movements everywhere, there will be things that smart appliance will do that nobody really understands all the unintended consequences of.
What makes you think people "didn't think about how phones can track their movements"? Lots of people thought about it. Lots of people also concluded it's not a problem. I find it convenient, actually, that I can find out where I was at any time in the past that have have had my phone; it's functionality I wouldn't want to miss.
Such as whether or not she's home at a given time, or whether or not she has company, for two obvious examples.
I wasn't objecting to the idea that you can get some information about people, but that you can get a (and I quote) "complete profile".
But examples aren't needed. Even if the data really is meaningless and harmless (which it is not), it is still a fact that it's nobody's damned business.
And that is precisely why such data is legally and technologically protected. What we are discussing here is what the risk is when such protections occasionally fail, and the answer is that the risk is pretty much nil.
There are lots of these small, portable computers around. People like them because they can take their compute environment with them between work and home, because they can tape one of these to the back of their TV, etc.
At $99, this looks like a pretty good deal for an Intel-based computer. If you want to run Linux and are happy with an ARM, of course, a Raspberry Pi or Beaglebone is better and cheaper.
That could involve sniffing your network,... compromising other devices, being an anon gateway, you name it.
IoT devices usually run over low speed, low power networks separate from WiFi, so they can't even see WiFi traffic. For the few devices that people do put on WiFi, they are likely much less of a risk than a Windows or Mac computer, since the primary attack vectors against computers--Web, e-mail and apps--don't exist.
overloading the wiring,
An IoT toaster or light bulb has no magical capabilities that a regular toaster or light bulb doesn't also have.
Just imagine someone monitoring the data feed from the house down the street where an attractive young woman lives by herself. After a few days, definitely after a month, a complete profile of her activities could be constructed.
Really? Like what? That she keeps her house at 65F? That she wakes up at 6:30 am and goes to bed ad 10 pm? That she does laundry twice a week, usually on a Thu and Sun? That she usually leaves for work at 8:00 am and returns at 5:30 pm? So what?
There is absolutely NO reason for ANY kitchen appliances to be online or have any kind of network presense
There are plenty of reasons, such as monitoring the temperature in your refrigerator to make sure things haven't gotten too warm, keeping track of inventory and expiration dates, starting dinner a few hours before getting home, monitoring the health and maintenance status of appliances.
unless you such a bone idle sack of fat that you can't even be bothered to open a fridge door to check whats inside but would sooner do it via an app.
if you're a single male living in a single household from whom cooking consists of sticking a TV dinner into the microwave, that's the view you would take. But guess what: your life isn't the measure of all things in the world.
As for IoT kitchen devices, an unsecured toaster on your network just shouldn't be a security problem, not because of the toaster itself, but because networks should be set up so that a compromised node doesn't compromise the entire network.
Slashdot Mirror
Modern feminism is rooted in critical theory, aka neo-Marxism. Critical theory denies logical positivism, the idea that arguments in philosophy or social science need to be derived from empirical facts and logic. As a result, modern feminism (and other so-called "social justice" movements) don't bother with using rational arguments to convince people that social injustices exist and/or that their proposed solutions are effective; instead, they start with the assumption that their perception of social injustice is sufficient justification by itself for grievances and change, and they use language not as a tool for logical arguments, but to manipulate. It's like Soviet propaganda without even a pretense of facts. Take Anita Sarkeesians own words for it:
Note that there is nothing about statistics, facts, policies, or rational arguments in her world view; it's all about what "lens" you see the world through. Her videos aren't about making rational arguments about objective facts, they are like advertising, intended to manipulate you into drinking her Coolaid and joining her clan.
So you are absolutely right that words have power. They have even more power today where social and political issues and policies are highly complex, where most people's choices are indeed easily influenced by perception, not facts. And that is exactly the reason why people get so upset by the manipulative and deceptive use of language by people like Sarkeesian.
I haven't followed this, but would I assume the outrage is over the people on the panel (Caroline Sinders, Katherine Cross, Randi Harper), not the topic.
Yet, you seem to be oblivious to how you are being manipulated.
Really? Can you give examples of Americans being convicted of violating European restrictions on free speech?
So you are saying that OS X is "innovative" because it consists largely of 1980's technology (NextStep, BSD, Smalltalk, OO dev tools)? Seems to me that that makes it about three decades behind the times.
In the US, the executive branch gets a lot of leeway until legislators and courts catch up. It's not surprising that quickly after the widespread adoption of the Internet and the Web, executive branch agencies went overboard. It will take a few more decades of activism to sort this all out, but there is a good chance that we'll end up with pretty good protections against government intrusion into privacy in the US, because the constitutional framework is actually there.
Just remember, European governments are really concerned about your privacy! That's why they want all the private and personal data of Europeans kept on European servers. You know, so that they can better protect you!
And the shuttle, an overpriced and poor design, shows that they weren't up to the task.
I think NASA should focus on science earth observation and interplanetary probes. Leave the industrial stuff to industry.
Unemployment rates are not, and have never been, a useful measure of labor participation. For that, you look at the labor force participation rate. Of course, when you do, you see that that has been steadily going down under Obama, making this one of the worst administrations in history.
That's effectively already the rule; H-1B workers need to be paid at least "prevailing wage", which in practice makes them more expensive than American workers. Furthermore, the DOL makes prevailing wage determinations.
In many languages, building code is a language issue. The fact that Go takes a fairly old-fashioned view of batch compilers and separate build systems is just a choice it makes, not a fundamental part of nature. Furthermore, language issue or not, the question simply becomes why are the commonly used build systems for Go so poor.
So you're saying that people should adopt Go only once all the major deficiencies in other common software systems have been addressed? That's going to be when hell freezes over.
(In addition, there are reasons for why OpenGL is the way it is; it's not a deficiency, it's a tradeoff.)
The world is full of "big hacks" and shitty software, so languages that can't deal well with such systems aren't going to cut it. In different words, it's Go's problem because users aren't going to use Go if they can't get their work done in it.
They aren't "liberals" in the traditional political science or European sense. They are, however, "liberals" in the modern American sense, which means that they are a mix of progressives, right wing populists, and neo-Marxists.
Oh, we have no problem asserting that the Spanish and the British empires committed genocide against Native Americans. Why would we be shy about that?
There is a causal link: a fast growing business with high profits in an inefficient rent-seeking industry with high barriers to entry due to government regulators can afford to pay its lucky employees more than they are worth. In addition, such businesses need to pay a premium for employee retention since losing key employees at that early stage can be devastating. If the credit card business wasn't such a rip-off of consumers, they wouldn't be able to pay these kinds of salaries.
That's utter nonsense. Most IoT devices run on Z-Wave or ZigBee networks and are paired by button presses; they don't have network passwords or user passwords, and have no TCP/IP access. They speak specialized protocols to a single IoT hub sitting somewhere in your home.
Furthermore, even for the few IoT devices that do run on WiFi, as I was saying: If your home network security assumes that every single attached device is patched and secure, you have already lost.
What makes you think people "didn't think about how phones can track their movements"? Lots of people thought about it. Lots of people also concluded it's not a problem. I find it convenient, actually, that I can find out where I was at any time in the past that have have had my phone; it's functionality I wouldn't want to miss.
Little is "required". People like Internet connections for the IoT because it's convenient and, contrary to what TFA claims, is low risk.
Yeah, but a MacMini is big, heavy, and fairly expensive. The next step up from something like the Kangaroo is an Intel NUC.
I wasn't objecting to the idea that you can get some information about people, but that you can get a (and I quote) "complete profile".
And that is precisely why such data is legally and technologically protected. What we are discussing here is what the risk is when such protections occasionally fail, and the answer is that the risk is pretty much nil.
Yes, I'm sure. Which part of "usually" did you not understand?
Obviously, there are a bunch of WiFi-connected IoT devices, but they are the exception.
There are lots of these small, portable computers around. People like them because they can take their compute environment with them between work and home, because they can tape one of these to the back of their TV, etc.
At $99, this looks like a pretty good deal for an Intel-based computer. If you want to run Linux and are happy with an ARM, of course, a Raspberry Pi or Beaglebone is better and cheaper.
Yes: it's called an HMD or an iPad.
IoT devices usually run over low speed, low power networks separate from WiFi, so they can't even see WiFi traffic. For the few devices that people do put on WiFi, they are likely much less of a risk than a Windows or Mac computer, since the primary attack vectors against computers--Web, e-mail and apps--don't exist.
An IoT toaster or light bulb has no magical capabilities that a regular toaster or light bulb doesn't also have.
Really? Like what? That she keeps her house at 65F? That she wakes up at 6:30 am and goes to bed ad 10 pm? That she does laundry twice a week, usually on a Thu and Sun? That she usually leaves for work at 8:00 am and returns at 5:30 pm? So what?
There are plenty of reasons, such as monitoring the temperature in your refrigerator to make sure things haven't gotten too warm, keeping track of inventory and expiration dates, starting dinner a few hours before getting home, monitoring the health and maintenance status of appliances.
if you're a single male living in a single household from whom cooking consists of sticking a TV dinner into the microwave, that's the view you would take. But guess what: your life isn't the measure of all things in the world.
As for IoT kitchen devices, an unsecured toaster on your network just shouldn't be a security problem, not because of the toaster itself, but because networks should be set up so that a compromised node doesn't compromise the entire network.