That reads like you think you are correcting GP...
Some of us are a little touchy aren't we?
When the OP started off with "Palin really is an idiot," it seems to me that the best option for someone who feels that way about another individual (regardless of whether it is or is not true) is to simply ignore that person. The intent wasn't to correct but to provide a solution.
I think what came out was my frustration with most Slashdotters in general: They're repeating much of the same rubbish that is common on other sites like Reddit, and it's really quite annoying. Perhaps I hold the readership here to a higher standard, which is part of the reason why I feel it is better to offer a solution.
My apologies that you saw it as a correction. Had you read my entire post, you would have seen that I have mixed feelings about Palin, too. In fact, you later admit immediately after suggesting that I was correcting the OP by qualifying it with:
when in fact there is nothing you say that contradicts what GP said
How can I be correcting the OP and agreeing with him (or her--more or less)? Again, the objective was to offer a solution! Ignore Palin. It's not difficult.
I'm really somewhat appalled that you would make such an assumption. Perhaps I didn't make my frustration all that clear, because frankly, what's the use of continually whining about a political figure who may or may not have any chance in hell of ever running for anything again?
After all, the reason she's received so much press is precisely because no one will ignore her. That, fundamentally, was the crux of my entire point. Sorry you missed it.
I thought the intent of the one-party notification laws was with regard to otherwise private communication. Recording someone in a public location, paid for by the taxpayers cannot possibly qualify as private communication...
Exactly, I thought we all stopped listening to these kinds of propaganda in the 80s...
Yeah, really...
I realize the OP had the intent of correcting someone else with regards to the department, but here's what bugs me: Yes it may fall under the auspices of $DEPARTMENT, but how the hell is it right that ICE agents can break down someone's door and throw them to the ground when the only crime they've committed falls under civil law and these "criminals" are by no means dangerous?
I suppose one of the problems with nitpicking is that it is exceedingly easy to blur the lines between one facet of the development process and another. From an extremely high level view, I would probably argue that ideas live on one end of the spectrum and coding, implementation, and--as you suggested--architecture live on the other.
But, since you replied, I would assume that you understood the gist of my point which was that ideas are not the hard part by any stretch of the imagination. After all, we're splitting hairs over the implementation of the idea, not the generation of the idea itself!
I think the biggest problem here is that the Left is, in general, doing everything they can to destroy her (or at least giving that impression)--even though she's already been politically undermined. Remember the Tina Fey incident of "I can see Russia from my back porch?" That's a good example.
If it were true that people like yourself really did feel Palin is a total idiot, the best solution is to ignore her. By dragging her back out into the discussion, the press is doing nothing more than validating her as a political force and in many ways, providing a great deal of confirmation to her followers that there is a concerted effort to destroy her.
Of course, neither of us have control over the press. In some regards, their activities could be viewed in two ways: 1) by the political Right as a means of destroying her and otherwise active malice or 2) by the political Left as a means of validating her beliefs to her followers and thus making them more rabid. While the intent may be to portray what they feel as a total lunacy the net effect it has is far greater.
So really: The best option is to ignore her.
Disclosure: I consider myself right wing. I don't particularly like Palin because she's politically toxic and hypocritical (her daughter had a kid out of wedlock while Palin strongly espouses her religious beliefs), and I think she would be far better off keeping to herself and her family due to the activities of the press. Moreover, I see a bit of irony with the negative attention she's been gathering for herself never mind that she welcomed TLC into her home to film what I can only surmise to have been an obnoxious reality show. That alone is an embarrassment to my political beliefs (and I agree with most of her political stances!), and is an absolute disgrace that aspiring political leaders would bring such attention onto themselves. Political leaders should have some dignity and decency, and I can't help but feel that her activities in the last year or two have indicated otherwise.
What's even more worrying is that there will be no way to prove anything was redacted or censored, or is or isn't the original unedited email.
To be fair, this would be trivial to do with a distributed electronic version as well since I doubt they'd be sending an entire mbox file/maildir/whatever (also trivial to edit) to the press or granting the press access to an account hosted by someone else.
It's not like e-mail itself is so magical that it can't be edited without printing it out. Well, except maybe to the state of Alaska.
I also have to take issue with the blog author's responses to comments related to this profiler. About seven comments down he writes:
Code is easy. Ideas are hard.
That's probably one of the most ludicrous things I've seen. Ideas are not hard. They're easy. Want some examples?
I have an idea: Let's go to the moon.
I have an idea: Let's go to Mars.
I have an idea: Let's come up with clean, plentiful energy.
I realize I'm nitpicking, but the way he should have written it is:
Code is easy. Ideas are easy. Implementation is hard.
Because, frankly, an idea is less than 1% of the total work in a project. Anyone can have an idea. Code and implementation (more so the latter, but they're so heavily intertwined that the boundaries are greatly blurred) are the remaining 99%. Granted, that is probably what he meant by an idea, but for the sake of clarity it's important to emphasize.
I have him friended because I find his posts pretty entertaining (I use the friend system on/. as a glorified "hey, I like this person's posts" filter), and perhaps I would have been better off classifying his comment history as "snarky" more than sarcastic. Either way, I get a great deal of enjoyment out of it even if I completely disagree with the point he's making, but I think that's largely because a lot of people are unnecessarily touchy.:)
That said, I don't disagree with what you wrote otherwise, and I'll certainly grant that familiarity is oftenâ"usuallyâ"an overriding concern. I don't think that nullifies whether or not something is in poor taste or not, however.
This is also true.
I admit I was put off a bit by OSQA's Stack-like UI, including down to the not-quite-perfectly-circular rep icons. Although I'm also somewhat torn: Competition is good, there are few decent QA frameworks out there, and it's written in Python. What a dilemma!
I did miss one other thing in my post: Intent. I think the general taste of something (whether good or bad) also depends on intent in addition to the other requisites. If the intent is to create a familiar system that others could use for their own benefit, then it was conducted in a net positive (e.g. "good") taste.
Conversely, if it was copied directly because the intent was largely that of laziness and to create a knockoff without any social value, then the system was designed in a manner with a net negative (e.g. "bad") taste.
But I think you get the idea. I apologies for the overly verbose examples, but it isn't you I'm worried about--there are others who will likely read through this thread and throw a tantrum and nitpick on points that either one of us may have glossed over, even though we're both largely in agreement.
To be fair, I used to think that, but apparently it wasn't a case about cross-pollination at all. It might be worth going back and looking at that case again.
Thanks for pointing that out. I guess that falls into the category of "popular myths." While a cursory glance shows a few sites (including one Canadian site) that repeat different flavors of the story, the Wikipedia entry seems to agree that it had nothing to do with pollination or with any of the popularly espoused beliefs I found in addition to that particular myth:
In 1998, Monsanto's patented genes were discovered in the canola grown on Percy Schmeiser's farm. As a result, Monsanto sued Percy Schmeiser for patent infringement for growing genetically modified Roundup-resistant canola. The trial judge ruled that Schmeiser had intentionally planted the seeds, ruling that the "infringement arises not simply from occasional or limited contamination of his Roundup susceptible canola by plants that are Roundup resistant. He planted his crop for 1998 with seed that he knew or ought to have known was Roundup tolerant."[11] This high profile case, Monsanto Canada Inc. v. Schmeiser, went to the Supreme Court level.
Monsanto representative Trish Jordan commented: "This is very good news for us, Mr. Schmeiser had infringed on our patent." After years of legal wrangling, in 2004 the case was heard by the Canadian Supreme Court. The Court ruled in favor of Monsanto, rejecting Schmeiser's argument that by not using Roundup herbicide on the canola, he did not "use" the plant gene. The Court ruled that farming is an activity that requires human intervention, and so by planting the crops, Schmeiser was "using" the plant gene. However, Schmeiser also won a partial victory, with the Supreme Court disagreeing with the damages given by the trial judge. The Supreme Court stated that since Schmeiser did not gain any profit from the infringement, he did not owe Monsanto any damages. Though the amount of damages were low (C$19,382), this also meant that Schmeiser did not have to pay Monsanto's substantial legal bills.
Thanks for setting that straight.
We do produce enough food to feed ourselves here in America. The problem with rising food costs has everything to do with ethanol, and nothing much to do with anything else.
I do agree. I still think it's the bureaucrats' fault for creating legislation where a significant part of our corn stocks are going into creating biofuel no one's using.
I tend to lean toward what ShakaUVM pointed out with regards to ethanol production. His citation aside, it is rather interesting that corn (specifically) increased so dramatically in price after a huge shift in production of that specific crop was made to biofuel. That says nothing of the impact increased market pressure on feed grains had on other industries including beef, chicken, and pork. It's easy to assume that only corn-related products are going to increase, but the problem that we're having currently is that corn is used in so many different products so a price increase in corn affects almost everything else.
For instance: Did you know that corn starch is used in some brands of drywall as a binder for gypsum?
Otherwise, I do agree. I read an interesting article in with Sciam or Discover--it's been so long that I don't remember which--and in it, several leading experts from fertility to mortality participated in a several year long study in which they concluded that the Earth could reasonably support 10 billion people. More importantly, 10 billion is something of a magic number in terms of mortality; at that point, populations will begin to level off in growth for reasons I don't fully remember. I'm sure affluence, wars, famine, crop failure, and other circumstances played a part in their reasoning.
Whatever the case, I think it's a shame that Slashdot wastes a disproportionate amount of time arguing for scientific evidence in another article's thread related to anecdotal "proof" of electronic devices interfering with aircraft operations, yet takes the source article for this thread as gospel.
tepples may have a history of sarcastic responses, and there are times when I often disagree with what he has to post, but he gets his point across.
In this case, I tend to agree with his sarcasm. The fact that you aren't appreciative of it is awful telling--never mind that you feel GNU/Linux being a copy of UNIX to be (initially) in poor taste.
Yes, 1-to-1 knockoffs are generally bad, generally in poor taste, and generally the result of a) lack of skill and/or creativity, 2) familiarity, or 3) so great an influence by the product being copied that no one has a choice. SO's knock offs like OSQA probably fall into #2 with the exception of some of the icons (but it's F/OSS, so if you don't like that, you can fix it). But what about Bing? What about most modern search engines? Is putting a branding image plus a simple text field a knock off of Google in poor taste? No, it's #3. Google has been so influential that a large number of search-centric sites (well, those who want to be successful, anyway, with the exception of Yahoo and MSN) copy them. And Linux? I'd place it always in #2. Familiarity is often far more important than any other criteria.
Either way, I suppose it's important to point out something that most of us are bound to overlook: One individual's idea of poor taste is another's idea of creativity, success, or familiarity. Cultural differences are an important backdrop to how we each view something, perhaps to the extent of serving as our primary or exclusive social filters.
Note: I'm not condoning 1-to-1 copies of someone else's labor. My personal opinion is that it is generally in poor taste, but since very few here play devil's advocate...
If we turned 5% of the Sahara desert into solar collector, we could turn the other 95% into one enormous farm and effectively terraform it so that it wasn't desert any more. The Sahara is quite large, has a year-round growing season and lots of sun -- as a farm supplied with unlimited water it could probable feed the entire world all by itself. Ditto the Australian Outback, ditto the US southwest, ditto much of central and western India (away from the major rivers, where farming is tied to the monsoon).
Good luck.
The environmentalists and existing environmental regulations would prohibit us from ever feeding the already starving nations.
Not that I don't like your idea of effectively terraforming deserts so they can become usable land. It's just that there are some people so terrified of human impact that they don't care if their fellow humans die to save a critter or two. What they don't realize is that if we don't do something about our predicament soon to get off this rock, we may as well just be a blip on the map. To say nothing of their beloved endangered creatures.
The problem with your argument, is that all of the advanced unnecessary accessories are now comparatively cheap, whereas the basic necessities of life are increasing in cost dramatically.
A standard size house block of land 50km away from the nearest cbd here costs approximately $300k-400k AUD (about $330k-440k USD) _without_ even a house on it.
You are looking at closer to a million dollars simply for a typical house.
I have Australian relatives who have jested about the relative ignorance of Americans with me in the past, and I can't help but think that notion is highly infectious (though typically more so among Europeans) to the point that everyone is equally guilty of the same thing: There is nothing that exists outside our own boundaries. Our world is our own, and anything else to the contrary is wrong.
To illustrate, you have provided the relative costs of land in Australia under the pretext that it is roughly equivalent elsewhere. It is not. In the Southwestern US (New Mexico, specifically), it is feasible to purchase 4-6 acres of land, which is much larger than the standard "house sized" block of anywhere from 1/4th to 1/2 an acre, for $75-100k USD. There are some houses in the mountains near here sitting on similar sized plots of land selling for $350k USD. Admittedly this area isn't particularly fertile, and its arid nature is roughly analogous to many of the drier locales in Australia, but it is feasible to grow some crops including corn, cherries, and apples. I am told that 50-60 years ago (or more), this area was well known for growing other goods including cabbage and lettuce.
My point, though, is that quantities of land larger than what one might place a single house on are available in parts of the developed world for much cheaper. Although we do lack many of the regulations, fees, and taxes that are levied against Australians, and wages and the cost of living are significantly lower than elsewhere, which is responsible for the reduced cost. Of course, land that includes water rights (needed for irrigation) is often significantly more expensive. It largely depends on your local, local economy, real estate market, and... well, you get the idea.
I do agree with your other points. Food is increasing in costs, and much of that is tied to fuel costs (shipping, harvesting, sowing, etc), water costs, and economic pressures on grain crops like corn which are being diverted to ethanol. This much is certainly true.
However, I think it's reasonably easy for us to overlook the importance of commercial agriculture: The relative social cost is cheap. (That is, if you choose not to listen to the various ecological loonies who spend their free time musing about farm labor, CO2 emissions, Big Farmers, and various other real or imagined evils.) Modern agriculture allows large-scale division of labor (that's why we're here on Slashdot--someone else is doing the work to feed us), and because of the economies of scale reached by larger operations, it is feasible to feed larger populations for lower relative costs year-round than it would be to produce your own. So, regardless of how expensive commercially farmed produce is becoming, it is still certainly cheaper than producing your own (which ties into your other point). That said, I do believe that most people who care for a garden do so either as a hobby or for their own benefits. Growing a small vegetable patch to subsidize store-bought produce is feasible for all but the apartment dwellers--and I know of a few who live in apartments and still manage a tomato plant or two!--and there's certainly nothing wrong with hobbyist growers.
Though, the problem I have--not with you, your points are quite valid and spot on--with many of the posts in response to this article is that there is clearly no appreciation for modern agriculture by anyone but a small minority of Slashdotters. It isn't that we need a new economic system, nor do we need more (or fewer) regulations. The problem is almost entir
Not to crush your Robin Hood hero imagery, but it looks like these guys really are just thugs.
Sure they are. I don't agree with what they're doing, after all there's far better ways to go after a corporation like Sony without causing monetary damage.
On the other hand, I certainly don't feel any remorse for Sony either. Their product quality control has really gone downhill in recent years, and repeat DMCA take down notices (Sony's BMG wing, anyway) to various channels I follow on Youtube kind of leads me to think these immortal words: You reap what you sow. And that's to say nothing of the various things they've done in the recent past.
Again, I don't think it's right, but I can't say I feel sorry for Sony, either. I'd imagine there's a lot of people who feel this way, too.
Son, vi is the VIsual version of ed, the line EDitor. Try editing files with ed for a while and you'll think vi is so user friendly that you'll play first person shooters with hjkl.
Hey, that's not funny. I'm left-handed and play FPS games with JKIL.
Were there some (sons or daughters or grand-nieces) of some well-connected people on that flight?
I like that your first assumption is that the search is being pushed by rich and "well-connected people" and has nothing to do with the fact that there are many hundreds of other aircraft flying that could suffer from similar potential faults. As another responder pointed out, the French lawsuit also have significant pull (which is protocol AFAIK in France whenever loss of life occurs).
This is less about pride and more about safety. Nice troll, though.
It can work because many don't have java-script enabled so you can't even collapse the offending thread.
That's a good point, although I wonder how many people don't particularly like Slashdot 2.1's (3.0?) UI. I'm still running with the classic comment mode enabled--or as close to it as I can get. Filtering by my friends list and a reasonable threshold seems to catch most of the junk.
However, even I will admit that sometimes the junk is so astoundingly stupid, it's vaguely humorous.
It's far better to shoot the thieves with a video camera and then use the video evidence to apprehend them later. Physical possessions can (mostly) be replaced. Of course, if they threaten you with bodily harm for filming them....
I really hope you're trolling or being sarcastic. Unfortunately, since there are quite a few people who believe as you do, I will offer my response. I don't expect you to agree--and that's the beauty of the world we live in--but this is how I believe.
If you're at home when an armed robbery occurs, there is no guarantee that you'll be spared your life much less presented with an opportunity to film the assailants. Yes, most criminals are petty thieves simply looking for something they can hock to pay for their drug habits, but if you're willing to bet your life on that, you're either insane or your worldview is severely detached from reality.
So how do you guarantee your own safety during an armed robbery? You kill the criminal.
Yes, I know. There's all sorts of arguments against this ranging from "what if a kid finds your gun" to "killing someone isn't right no matter the circumstance." I think they're all wrong, and are clearly the result of either 1) someone living (or wanting to live, God forbid) in a police state or 2) someone who hasn't yet been victimized by a violent crime. It's easy to argue against self defense when you're safe (or are you?) at home, but once it happens, your tune will undoubtedly change. Of course, for those who have been victimized and still feel that self defense is inappropriate, I suppose there isn't much hope.
As a very tangentially related aside, concealed carry laws (that means carrying a concealed firearm for those of you who don't have anything similar in your jurisdiction) were pushed in New Mexico by the state police and signed into law by a liberal governor. You're required to attend classes on safe handling of a firearm and New Mexico statutes regarding self defense. The motive of the state police? Potential victims are the only first responders of a violent crime; the police simply perform clean-up duty, tap witnesses, and make arrests. It's relatively rare for the police to stop an armed robbery in progress unless the criminal is a total idiot.
I realize this may open up the discussion for comparing the rates of violent and gun-related crimes in the US to those of other, more "civilized" countries, but it's important to remember that the US is comprised of a significant land area and a highly diverse population, income brackets, and dozens of other variables that undoubtedly factor in to why this is a problem. And no, I don't want to hear about that, either. Probably the closest Western country that comes close in terms of similar income spread, ethnic diversity, and land area but not population density is Australia (sorry, Canada). However, that is another discussion for another time.
Whoops. Please mod down my original post as redundant. I checked to see if I could find references in the Slashdot comment tree and I totally missed the twoprevious comments that said the same thing. Slashdot 3.0 (?)'s threading confuses me even with "classic" mode enabled, which doesn't often seem to do what I expect.
My apologies for repeating something that was already well known.
Isn't a second defined to be 1/60th of a minute which is 1/60th of an hour, which is 1/24th of a day? And a day is the amount of time it takes for the sun to revolve around the earth. For this reason, it won't add up at all since this change will have redefined what a second is.
No, a second is defined as:
The second is the duration of 9 192 631 770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom.
We all need to learn to ignore that whole YouTube fad thing and come to terms with the fact that only big Hollywood money can make "real" content. Just sit back, relax, have a can of government-permitted intoxicant, and watch whatever your push-content provider has decided to make available to you.
It's times like this when I wish that Slashdot had a "+1, Sad but true" mod.
you have to deal with the people who have been stopping the building of trains, for the past 100 years. there are many different groups that oppose trains, but they are in general, on the conservative side of the spectrum model of political opinions.
the 'individualists' would
I think you're also forgetting how much of the US is comprised of rural areas. I highly doubt it'd be cost effective to use trains as a mode of public transit in all but a handful of areas with higher population density. Otherwise, you're limited to buses. Don't believe me? Take a trip to the Southwest sometime--and I don't just mean Phoenix. Or better yet, go somewhere exceedingly sparse like Wyoming.
Oh look the troll-fucker is back with some shit-spewing from his retarded mouth!!! Go shove a dildo up your arse you gay-focher
Almost your entire recent comment history is focused on slinging insults at the OP. I advise that if you want to accomplish anything, you should probably behave like an adult. Ironic, too, because I had friended you for an insightful comment some months back. Regardless--anyone who wastes as much energy as you have in attacking the OP (whether you agree with him or not) should probably be modded into oblivion.
I recall reading in one of the many previous articles on these machines installed by the TSA that there is a very real concern among children and the elderly (children because of their smaller body mass and the elderly because of their thinner skin) that the exposure to these machines could have a potentially hazardous outcome to individuals in these groups. I don't think the OP is trolling as this is something that has been discussed before and seems to me to be a legitimate concern. I lack the domain specific knowledge required to fully understand and appreciate why this is (or why this isn't) a concern, but I have read some statements from individuals who are in the medical field and they have expressed worries that these scanners may be exposing travelers inappropriate hazards.
To put it another way that I heard it: When you have a chest x-ray, your entire upper body mass is absorbing the energy of the scanner (what doesn't pass through, anyway); with these millimeter wavelength scanners, the radiation is focused along a narrow band of flesh around the body, meaning these is less mass exposed to the same (or slightly less) energy. Perhaps the professor who thought up this concern is a nutjob, and maybe he's wrong, but I think it's something deserving of further study.
I realize there is probably a legitimate (in your mind) reason to disdain the OP, but please try to keep the discussion on topic. Or maybe post some random meme.
It's funny how some people rage against the government for being less efficient than the private sector (which it is not) and then turn around and get paranoid about how this supposedly inept bunch of keystone cops is going to pull off some incredibly complex fascist task.
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
Slashdot Mirror
Some of us are a little touchy aren't we?
When the OP started off with "Palin really is an idiot," it seems to me that the best option for someone who feels that way about another individual (regardless of whether it is or is not true) is to simply ignore that person. The intent wasn't to correct but to provide a solution.
I think what came out was my frustration with most Slashdotters in general: They're repeating much of the same rubbish that is common on other sites like Reddit, and it's really quite annoying. Perhaps I hold the readership here to a higher standard, which is part of the reason why I feel it is better to offer a solution.
My apologies that you saw it as a correction. Had you read my entire post, you would have seen that I have mixed feelings about Palin, too. In fact, you later admit immediately after suggesting that I was correcting the OP by qualifying it with:
How can I be correcting the OP and agreeing with him (or her--more or less)? Again, the objective was to offer a solution! Ignore Palin. It's not difficult.
I'm really somewhat appalled that you would make such an assumption. Perhaps I didn't make my frustration all that clear, because frankly, what's the use of continually whining about a political figure who may or may not have any chance in hell of ever running for anything again?
After all, the reason she's received so much press is precisely because no one will ignore her. That, fundamentally, was the crux of my entire point. Sorry you missed it.
That's what puzzles me.
I thought the intent of the one-party notification laws was with regard to otherwise private communication. Recording someone in a public location, paid for by the taxpayers cannot possibly qualify as private communication...
I guess that's about to be tested.
Yeah, really...
I realize the OP had the intent of correcting someone else with regards to the department, but here's what bugs me: Yes it may fall under the auspices of $DEPARTMENT, but how the hell is it right that ICE agents can break down someone's door and throw them to the ground when the only crime they've committed falls under civil law and these "criminals" are by no means dangerous?
Are we really that brainwashed?
Also a good point.
I suppose one of the problems with nitpicking is that it is exceedingly easy to blur the lines between one facet of the development process and another. From an extremely high level view, I would probably argue that ideas live on one end of the spectrum and coding, implementation, and--as you suggested--architecture live on the other.
But, since you replied, I would assume that you understood the gist of my point which was that ideas are not the hard part by any stretch of the imagination. After all, we're splitting hairs over the implementation of the idea, not the generation of the idea itself!
I think the biggest problem here is that the Left is, in general, doing everything they can to destroy her (or at least giving that impression)--even though she's already been politically undermined. Remember the Tina Fey incident of "I can see Russia from my back porch?" That's a good example.
If it were true that people like yourself really did feel Palin is a total idiot, the best solution is to ignore her. By dragging her back out into the discussion, the press is doing nothing more than validating her as a political force and in many ways, providing a great deal of confirmation to her followers that there is a concerted effort to destroy her.
Of course, neither of us have control over the press. In some regards, their activities could be viewed in two ways: 1) by the political Right as a means of destroying her and otherwise active malice or 2) by the political Left as a means of validating her beliefs to her followers and thus making them more rabid. While the intent may be to portray what they feel as a total lunacy the net effect it has is far greater.
So really: The best option is to ignore her.
Disclosure: I consider myself right wing. I don't particularly like Palin because she's politically toxic and hypocritical (her daughter had a kid out of wedlock while Palin strongly espouses her religious beliefs), and I think she would be far better off keeping to herself and her family due to the activities of the press. Moreover, I see a bit of irony with the negative attention she's been gathering for herself never mind that she welcomed TLC into her home to film what I can only surmise to have been an obnoxious reality show. That alone is an embarrassment to my political beliefs (and I agree with most of her political stances!), and is an absolute disgrace that aspiring political leaders would bring such attention onto themselves. Political leaders should have some dignity and decency, and I can't help but feel that her activities in the last year or two have indicated otherwise.
To be fair, this would be trivial to do with a distributed electronic version as well since I doubt they'd be sending an entire mbox file/maildir/whatever (also trivial to edit) to the press or granting the press access to an account hosted by someone else.
It's not like e-mail itself is so magical that it can't be edited without printing it out. Well, except maybe to the state of Alaska.
I also have to take issue with the blog author's responses to comments related to this profiler. About seven comments down he writes:
That's probably one of the most ludicrous things I've seen. Ideas are not hard. They're easy. Want some examples?
I have an idea: Let's go to the moon.
I have an idea: Let's go to Mars.
I have an idea: Let's come up with clean, plentiful energy.
I realize I'm nitpicking, but the way he should have written it is:
Because, frankly, an idea is less than 1% of the total work in a project. Anyone can have an idea. Code and implementation (more so the latter, but they're so heavily intertwined that the boundaries are greatly blurred) are the remaining 99%. Granted, that is probably what he meant by an idea, but for the sake of clarity it's important to emphasize.
I have him friended because I find his posts pretty entertaining (I use the friend system on /. as a glorified "hey, I like this person's posts" filter), and perhaps I would have been better off classifying his comment history as "snarky" more than sarcastic. Either way, I get a great deal of enjoyment out of it even if I completely disagree with the point he's making, but I think that's largely because a lot of people are unnecessarily touchy. :)
This is also true.
I admit I was put off a bit by OSQA's Stack-like UI, including down to the not-quite-perfectly-circular rep icons. Although I'm also somewhat torn: Competition is good, there are few decent QA frameworks out there, and it's written in Python. What a dilemma!
I did miss one other thing in my post: Intent. I think the general taste of something (whether good or bad) also depends on intent in addition to the other requisites. If the intent is to create a familiar system that others could use for their own benefit, then it was conducted in a net positive (e.g. "good") taste.
Conversely, if it was copied directly because the intent was largely that of laziness and to create a knockoff without any social value, then the system was designed in a manner with a net negative (e.g. "bad") taste.
But I think you get the idea. I apologies for the overly verbose examples, but it isn't you I'm worried about--there are others who will likely read through this thread and throw a tantrum and nitpick on points that either one of us may have glossed over, even though we're both largely in agreement.
Thanks for pointing that out. I guess that falls into the category of "popular myths." While a cursory glance shows a few sites (including one Canadian site) that repeat different flavors of the story, the Wikipedia entry seems to agree that it had nothing to do with pollination or with any of the popularly espoused beliefs I found in addition to that particular myth:
Thanks for setting that straight.
I do agree. I still think it's the bureaucrats' fault for creating legislation where a significant part of our corn stocks are going into creating biofuel no one's using.
I tend to lean toward what ShakaUVM pointed out with regards to ethanol production. His citation aside, it is rather interesting that corn (specifically) increased so dramatically in price after a huge shift in production of that specific crop was made to biofuel. That says nothing of the impact increased market pressure on feed grains had on other industries including beef, chicken, and pork. It's easy to assume that only corn-related products are going to increase, but the problem that we're having currently is that corn is used in so many different products so a price increase in corn affects almost everything else.
For instance: Did you know that corn starch is used in some brands of drywall as a binder for gypsum?
Otherwise, I do agree. I read an interesting article in with Sciam or Discover--it's been so long that I don't remember which--and in it, several leading experts from fertility to mortality participated in a several year long study in which they concluded that the Earth could reasonably support 10 billion people. More importantly, 10 billion is something of a magic number in terms of mortality; at that point, populations will begin to level off in growth for reasons I don't fully remember. I'm sure affluence, wars, famine, crop failure, and other circumstances played a part in their reasoning.
Whatever the case, I think it's a shame that Slashdot wastes a disproportionate amount of time arguing for scientific evidence in another article's thread related to anecdotal "proof" of electronic devices interfering with aircraft operations, yet takes the source article for this thread as gospel.
No, no, no, no, no.
It should be clear: Copyright infringement leads to piracy, and piracy leads to terrorism.
Ergo, copyright infringement is terrorism.
tepples may have a history of sarcastic responses, and there are times when I often disagree with what he has to post, but he gets his point across.
In this case, I tend to agree with his sarcasm. The fact that you aren't appreciative of it is awful telling--never mind that you feel GNU/Linux being a copy of UNIX to be (initially) in poor taste.
Yes, 1-to-1 knockoffs are generally bad, generally in poor taste, and generally the result of a) lack of skill and/or creativity, 2) familiarity, or 3) so great an influence by the product being copied that no one has a choice. SO's knock offs like OSQA probably fall into #2 with the exception of some of the icons (but it's F/OSS, so if you don't like that, you can fix it). But what about Bing? What about most modern search engines? Is putting a branding image plus a simple text field a knock off of Google in poor taste? No, it's #3. Google has been so influential that a large number of search-centric sites (well, those who want to be successful, anyway, with the exception of Yahoo and MSN) copy them. And Linux? I'd place it always in #2. Familiarity is often far more important than any other criteria.
Either way, I suppose it's important to point out something that most of us are bound to overlook: One individual's idea of poor taste is another's idea of creativity, success, or familiarity. Cultural differences are an important backdrop to how we each view something, perhaps to the extent of serving as our primary or exclusive social filters.
Note: I'm not condoning 1-to-1 copies of someone else's labor. My personal opinion is that it is generally in poor taste, but since very few here play devil's advocate...
Good luck.
The environmentalists and existing environmental regulations would prohibit us from ever feeding the already starving nations.
Not that I don't like your idea of effectively terraforming deserts so they can become usable land. It's just that there are some people so terrified of human impact that they don't care if their fellow humans die to save a critter or two. What they don't realize is that if we don't do something about our predicament soon to get off this rock, we may as well just be a blip on the map. To say nothing of their beloved endangered creatures.
I have Australian relatives who have jested about the relative ignorance of Americans with me in the past, and I can't help but think that notion is highly infectious (though typically more so among Europeans) to the point that everyone is equally guilty of the same thing: There is nothing that exists outside our own boundaries. Our world is our own, and anything else to the contrary is wrong.
To illustrate, you have provided the relative costs of land in Australia under the pretext that it is roughly equivalent elsewhere. It is not. In the Southwestern US (New Mexico, specifically), it is feasible to purchase 4-6 acres of land, which is much larger than the standard "house sized" block of anywhere from 1/4th to 1/2 an acre, for $75-100k USD. There are some houses in the mountains near here sitting on similar sized plots of land selling for $350k USD. Admittedly this area isn't particularly fertile, and its arid nature is roughly analogous to many of the drier locales in Australia, but it is feasible to grow some crops including corn, cherries, and apples. I am told that 50-60 years ago (or more), this area was well known for growing other goods including cabbage and lettuce.
My point, though, is that quantities of land larger than what one might place a single house on are available in parts of the developed world for much cheaper. Although we do lack many of the regulations, fees, and taxes that are levied against Australians, and wages and the cost of living are significantly lower than elsewhere, which is responsible for the reduced cost. Of course, land that includes water rights (needed for irrigation) is often significantly more expensive. It largely depends on your local, local economy, real estate market, and... well, you get the idea.
I do agree with your other points. Food is increasing in costs, and much of that is tied to fuel costs (shipping, harvesting, sowing, etc), water costs, and economic pressures on grain crops like corn which are being diverted to ethanol. This much is certainly true.
However, I think it's reasonably easy for us to overlook the importance of commercial agriculture: The relative social cost is cheap. (That is, if you choose not to listen to the various ecological loonies who spend their free time musing about farm labor, CO2 emissions, Big Farmers, and various other real or imagined evils.) Modern agriculture allows large-scale division of labor (that's why we're here on Slashdot--someone else is doing the work to feed us), and because of the economies of scale reached by larger operations, it is feasible to feed larger populations for lower relative costs year-round than it would be to produce your own. So, regardless of how expensive commercially farmed produce is becoming, it is still certainly cheaper than producing your own (which ties into your other point). That said, I do believe that most people who care for a garden do so either as a hobby or for their own benefits. Growing a small vegetable patch to subsidize store-bought produce is feasible for all but the apartment dwellers--and I know of a few who live in apartments and still manage a tomato plant or two!--and there's certainly nothing wrong with hobbyist growers.
Though, the problem I have--not with you, your points are quite valid and spot on--with many of the posts in response to this article is that there is clearly no appreciation for modern agriculture by anyone but a small minority of Slashdotters. It isn't that we need a new economic system, nor do we need more (or fewer) regulations. The problem is almost entir
Sure they are. I don't agree with what they're doing, after all there's far better ways to go after a corporation like Sony without causing monetary damage.
On the other hand, I certainly don't feel any remorse for Sony either. Their product quality control has really gone downhill in recent years, and repeat DMCA take down notices (Sony's BMG wing, anyway) to various channels I follow on Youtube kind of leads me to think these immortal words: You reap what you sow. And that's to say nothing of the various things they've done in the recent past.
Again, I don't think it's right, but I can't say I feel sorry for Sony, either. I'd imagine there's a lot of people who feel this way, too.
Hey, that's not funny. I'm left-handed and play FPS games with JKIL.
I like that your first assumption is that the search is being pushed by rich and "well-connected people" and has nothing to do with the fact that there are many hundreds of other aircraft flying that could suffer from similar potential faults. As another responder pointed out, the French lawsuit also have significant pull (which is protocol AFAIK in France whenever loss of life occurs).
This is less about pride and more about safety. Nice troll, though.
That's a good point, although I wonder how many people don't particularly like Slashdot 2.1's (3.0?) UI. I'm still running with the classic comment mode enabled--or as close to it as I can get. Filtering by my friends list and a reasonable threshold seems to catch most of the junk.
However, even I will admit that sometimes the junk is so astoundingly stupid, it's vaguely humorous.
I really hope you're trolling or being sarcastic. Unfortunately, since there are quite a few people who believe as you do, I will offer my response. I don't expect you to agree--and that's the beauty of the world we live in--but this is how I believe.
If you're at home when an armed robbery occurs, there is no guarantee that you'll be spared your life much less presented with an opportunity to film the assailants. Yes, most criminals are petty thieves simply looking for something they can hock to pay for their drug habits, but if you're willing to bet your life on that, you're either insane or your worldview is severely detached from reality.
So how do you guarantee your own safety during an armed robbery? You kill the criminal.
Yes, I know. There's all sorts of arguments against this ranging from "what if a kid finds your gun" to "killing someone isn't right no matter the circumstance." I think they're all wrong, and are clearly the result of either 1) someone living (or wanting to live, God forbid) in a police state or 2) someone who hasn't yet been victimized by a violent crime. It's easy to argue against self defense when you're safe (or are you?) at home, but once it happens, your tune will undoubtedly change. Of course, for those who have been victimized and still feel that self defense is inappropriate, I suppose there isn't much hope.
As a very tangentially related aside, concealed carry laws (that means carrying a concealed firearm for those of you who don't have anything similar in your jurisdiction) were pushed in New Mexico by the state police and signed into law by a liberal governor. You're required to attend classes on safe handling of a firearm and New Mexico statutes regarding self defense. The motive of the state police? Potential victims are the only first responders of a violent crime; the police simply perform clean-up duty, tap witnesses, and make arrests. It's relatively rare for the police to stop an armed robbery in progress unless the criminal is a total idiot.
I realize this may open up the discussion for comparing the rates of violent and gun-related crimes in the US to those of other, more "civilized" countries, but it's important to remember that the US is comprised of a significant land area and a highly diverse population, income brackets, and dozens of other variables that undoubtedly factor in to why this is a problem. And no, I don't want to hear about that, either. Probably the closest Western country that comes close in terms of similar income spread, ethnic diversity, and land area but not population density is Australia (sorry, Canada). However, that is another discussion for another time.
Whoops. Please mod down my original post as redundant. I checked to see if I could find references in the Slashdot comment tree and I totally missed the two previous comments that said the same thing. Slashdot 3.0 (?)'s threading confuses me even with "classic" mode enabled, which doesn't often seem to do what I expect.
My apologies for repeating something that was already well known.
No, a second is defined as:
Source.
It's times like this when I wish that Slashdot had a "+1, Sad but true" mod.
I think you're also forgetting how much of the US is comprised of rural areas. I highly doubt it'd be cost effective to use trains as a mode of public transit in all but a handful of areas with higher population density. Otherwise, you're limited to buses. Don't believe me? Take a trip to the Southwest sometime--and I don't just mean Phoenix. Or better yet, go somewhere exceedingly sparse like Wyoming.
Almost your entire recent comment history is focused on slinging insults at the OP. I advise that if you want to accomplish anything, you should probably behave like an adult. Ironic, too, because I had friended you for an insightful comment some months back. Regardless--anyone who wastes as much energy as you have in attacking the OP (whether you agree with him or not) should probably be modded into oblivion.
I recall reading in one of the many previous articles on these machines installed by the TSA that there is a very real concern among children and the elderly (children because of their smaller body mass and the elderly because of their thinner skin) that the exposure to these machines could have a potentially hazardous outcome to individuals in these groups. I don't think the OP is trolling as this is something that has been discussed before and seems to me to be a legitimate concern. I lack the domain specific knowledge required to fully understand and appreciate why this is (or why this isn't) a concern, but I have read some statements from individuals who are in the medical field and they have expressed worries that these scanners may be exposing travelers inappropriate hazards.
To put it another way that I heard it: When you have a chest x-ray, your entire upper body mass is absorbing the energy of the scanner (what doesn't pass through, anyway); with these millimeter wavelength scanners, the radiation is focused along a narrow band of flesh around the body, meaning these is less mass exposed to the same (or slightly less) energy. Perhaps the professor who thought up this concern is a nutjob, and maybe he's wrong, but I think it's something deserving of further study.
I realize there is probably a legitimate (in your mind) reason to disdain the OP, but please try to keep the discussion on topic. Or maybe post some random meme.
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
- Robert J. Hanlon