most freakouts surrounding nuclear power are based on 1960s technology. modern reactor designs, such as pebble bed reactors, are designed to be passively safe. that is, you can just walk away from them, doing nothing, and they will not release gas, go china syndrome, or anything else unsafe. older nuke tech requires active safety management: someone must always be on the job, making sure nothing f***s up. designing safety into nuclear reactor design from the philosophical ground up is the way of the future
there is a bell curve of trust for government in every populace. this bell curves drifts toward more trust, and drifts towards less trust as the government does certain things. one of the benefits of democracy as opposed to other types of governments is that trust and therefore legitimacy and therefore stability are maximized in these societies
on one end of the bell curve are the nimrods who trust their government no matter what, a fatal amount of overtrust
likewise, there are always permanent malcontents on the other end of the bell curve, who distrust their government no matter what, a fatal lack of trust. there are always people who you can't ever convince or reach, and these are just people to be written off as useless, since their distrust of the government is more a feature of their own malformed psychology than anything their government did or didn't do. unfortunately, these permanent useless malcontents are often the loudest (and dumbest) voices on a number of issues
so just because there exists people who distrust their government doesn't really mean anything. there are always people who distrust the government. the question is really one of how much of those people make up the populace. there is always a permanent residual amount, hopefully (for society) in the minority. there just the empty malcontents of history. a permanent feature of the human condition
the law must hew closely to an actual concept of fairness. the law must not just serve a few well-placed economic interests. otherwise, it undermines the entire relationship between the law and its citizenry should it be understood that the law serves a special economic interest group at the detriment of the rights and freedoms of the people at large
if the people begin to see the law as illegitimate, as serving a special class of people rather than the public at large, this undermines society in subtle ways, large and small
can someone come along and say "you can serve", and "you can request", and keep and monitor that separation? seems rather daunting
otherwise, if the status quo is two way traffic flow, p2p traffic can be obfuscated in such a way that it is hard to detect and hard to isolate from "acceptable" traffic
so i think all these laws do is breed stronger p2p apps
china is obviously a great power in this world. when you are a great power, you get criticized. with great power, this kind of criticism is a natural occurence
a true great man can take lots of criticism in stride. an immature powerless man meanwhile freaks out every time someone suggests the slightest negative thing about him. it shows a lack of confidence, an insecurity
han ultranationists: do you believe that china is a great power? if you do, then start acting as that great power status dictates: have more confidence. china will be criticized more and more every year since it is so powerful now. if you cannot handle that criticism, then you are in danger of destroying your own greatness with your own insecure behavior
to defeat the creation of insecure people in china, you should foster a healthy amount of internal dissent and self-critical thinking in china. if you do not, if you censor anything that remotely criticizes the chinese government or the chinese nation, then what you do is make the chinese people permanent children. you incubate chinese who are unable to handle criticism without freaking out in insecurity and a lack of confidence
and thereby diminishing the greatness of china
china is a great nation. i believe that as an american. so start acting like a great nation, and grow some thicker skin when foreigners criticize china. being criticized is a natural product of being powerful. get used to it. believe me, as an american, i know something about being criticized on the world stage! and mostly, i just shrug it off. you should to
that there are han imperialists and han apologists shouldn't really amaze you. every culture and country in this world: russia, brazil, nigeria, mexico, india, etc., etc. has a loud vocal nationalist sentiment
the americans that engage in nationalist chest thumping of course deserved to be spoken out against, but most importantly on this point, in the usa, according to law, you can actually speak out against them
whereas in china, or cuba, or turkey, and other countries, to criticize your country or your government, something most americans consider second nature, is very much foreign and is outright censored and punished
such that if there are fascist nationalist forces being bred somewhere in this world, it is in the incubators that filter out any self-critical thought, such as with china and its web policy
that's why you get these mainland chinese freaking out whenever they hear a foreigner criticize china. they are very tender on the point. as an american, we're pretty much immune to other nations criticizing us, it's pretty much an international past time at this point, but for a chinese, grown up in a media environment that purposefully eradicates all self-critical thought, the idea of criticizing chinese government or chinese character is alien
this, of course, is extremely dangerous. china as a growing power will get more such criticism, as is natural for any great power in the world. but if the chinese people cant' take the criticism, you run the real risk of a demagogue seizing control in china, someone who panders to nationalist chest-thumping, rather than prudent governance
people always talk about american self-interest as the greatest evil in this world. but compared to the chinese, americans are practically thick skinned when it comes to anti-americanism. anti-chinese sentiment really drives some mainland chinese absolutely nuts. its psychologicaly unhealthy and a stunted frame of mind, to have no capacity for self-criticism, and to just reject all of it out of hand as foreign meddling
the very idea of self-criticism is anathema to han ultranationalists. certainly most american nationalists also suffer form an allergy to self-criticism. but this is more a function of their own personal psychological failures, rather than a government-level psychological incubation
that 4th dimensional rotational axis means you have to reach forward in time in order to solve one side in the present, without affecting any other sides you solved in the past, meaning you can't twist it to the present, without affecting what you've already solved in the future
fortunately for the people of your texas precinct, you are obviously a man of integrity, to even ask this question so publicly
the surest way to protect from any sort of tampering is more people like you
unfortunately, what makes electornic voting so insidious is it does a few things:
1. order of magnitude more attack vectors. sure with paper ballots you can throw a truckload out, manufacture duplicates, etc. but for every way you can hack paper voting, there 10 more ways to hack mechanical voting, and 100 more ways to hack electronic voting
2. force magnification. how messy is it to create the conspiracy of many people to mess with a paper voting system? how complicated is the conspiracy? how long does it take? meanwhile, one well placed hacker can manipulate the voting for an entire county, state, or country, in a matter of seconds
2. untraceability. paper ballots are messy. they leave finger prints, it is slow to change them, you have to hide or burn them, etc.. electronic voting meanwhile: one person with the right knowledge and access can, in a few seconds of time, create entirely false audit trails, statistically sound voting variations, etc. such that you don't even know if you can depend upon the integrity of the votes
3. lack of transparency. the legitmacy of any government depends upon trust. even the appearance of not knowing what is going on behind the scenes is enough to create rumbles in the populace, feelings of helplessness and being disconnected from their government. a paper ballot you can touch, feel, trust. its a piece of paper. it goes in a box. trust. transparancy. governmental legitimacy. electronic voting is black box. your vote goes in one end... something happens. i can't see it, i can't touch it, i don't know what is going on... out the other end comes sausage
it is not entirely wrong to say that the greatest threat to democracy in the world today is not religious fanatacism, is not authoritarian regimes... it is electronic voting
did the laserjet printers enjoy the movies? did they think robert downey jr. aced the role? did they find the non-religious artifact theme an acceptable deviation from indiana jones canon?
come on new york times. i expect the important questions to be asked!
to be nothing but a wish in the middle of a hurricane, god knows why you think the law ever protected you from anything, or ever would. the rule of law is exactly as you describe it in your first sentence, and then in your second sentence you make a solid statement of its total lack of worth. so which is it oh great guru, you have faith in the value of the law, or you have no faith in the value of the law? pick one, you can't have it both ways
"You need to hit the history and philosophy books before going any further down this path, or you'll manage to make yourself sound even more naive. You'll be surprised to learn that you're not the first to ask those rhetorical questions, and that they actually have been thought out."
gee, thanks dad, can i borrow the car keys? in your vast wisdom as compared to mine, one would have hoped that you would have learned at some point that patronization and condescension would engender anything but hatred in whomever you were talking to, prick
if you understand that governments change, you wouldn't view the retardedness under the bush administration as an unstoppable slippery slope into fascism, but a fart in a small room that will evaporate under the next administration
but far be it for me to point out that your own words betray your hysterical attitude. feel free to carry on believing we are all going to hell in your panic and fear
oh, and feel free to call me a bush supporter based on nothing but the vaguest of impressions. meanwhile, i'm going to call you an asshole. that's based on a clear interpretation of your own hysterical, prejudicial thinking towards me. but don't worry about the insult, asshole, by calling me a bush supporter, you've insulted me far worse. asshole
jack thompson could write the script, say: these two parents don't pay attention to their kids' videogames, and the kid shoots up the local school. fairly boring and insipid plot. but bear with me here:
then uwe boll comes along. now what uwe boll usually does is take redeeming material for the movies that shows some promise, and utterly makes it into the most insipid useless crap imaginable. so what would happen if uwe boll started with insipid crap to begin with instead?
the inverse! uwe boll would make a movie masterpiece!
by starting with the insane ranting lunacy of the imagination of jack thompson, uwe couldn't help himself but to completely destroy the script writer's vision, a movie that completely betrays the original material. he couldn't help but turn a ranitng stupid insane jack thompson script into the reverse: a masterpiece of art. nothing at all like what jack thompson wrote, therefore: something oscar worthy, an awesome thoughtful and poignant commentary on videogames and society
they would negate each other and create genius! a troll apocalypse!
you've conceded that all of the major switches are already snooped on
what you are concerned about now is that the government will be able to snoop on the internet users who shape their traffic according to their detailed knowledge of quirkly local internet topology
how many people is that?;-P
you don't win an argument by switching and confining the argument's scope to a neglible issue
so say the government gets all of these vast snooping powers now on these neglible traffic channels. if this is the last vestige of your freedom, i guess you never had any to begin with, and your resistance to these snooping powers are moot. which is my whole point
you mean where instead of going through open relays i run my own wire from my house to kandahar?
"direct peering"
i do not think that concept means what you think it means
you catch the big major pipes. that's all you need to see everything. and you can do that in a number of ways in a number of places, without the notification or involvement of any company
the internet is not some weird foreign entity the govt needs to inject itself into. we are talking about a system that was built on top of an originally government project. the government has been there every step of the way. the internet has grown up organically on top of the government
when someone runs some new pipe somewhere, they know about it. no one laid some pipe somewhere that lots of internet traffic is moving over that the government doesn't know about
basically your position is: "we must stop the government snooping on... the network built on top of the government network"
most of these injuries are due to the poor ergonomics of stooping over a laptop placed on your lap
what i've done is devoted my eating regimen to ice cream, fast food, and sugary sodas, thereby establishing a nice shelf space, massive rolls of belly fat, on which to perch my laptop. now that my laptop is securely nestled close to my face, my wrists assume a natural curvature during typing, my back is straight rather than stooped over, and i've even reduced my eye strain
therefore, i heartily (cough wheeze) endorse a high calorie regimen to decrease RSI via belly perching your laptop for better ergonomics. its a dramatic improvement in joint health
the snooping doesn't make it possible to map your social network, the structure of the internet makes it possible to map your social network. you and other idealists basically say: "i want a free and open network... that is also locked up and closed" what?
look: the internet is good thing, because it is open. but all good things also have a downside. the downside is that any expectation of privacy is absurd in an environment which, inherent to the technology, has none
and then people compound this absurd expectation of unfettered access with an expecation of security and privacy, with the more insane expecation, drum roll please, that governments are going to act completely virtuous on this system and not snoop on you. you expect a virtuousness in government that no government has ever had in the history of governments!
2 absurdities, one compounding the other
protect your own privacy. don't, for any reason, believe your privacy ever was, is, or ever could be an inherent component of a system that is based on free and unfettered access. and certainly don't expect your GOVERNMENT to protect your privacy for you!
how can people be so schizophrenic as profess complete cynicism in how governments behave towards their citizens... but then also somehow expect a law or two here and there will suddenly impart magical levels of virtousness that have never existed in government behavior ever before. i don't get it
there's that same fallacy: we need a law to protect us from people who don't obey the law;-P
follow your opinion of the government all the way through: you say it is going to rape your rights, a heinous thing to do. ok, so, we will simply pass a law, and **poof** magically, heinous people will suddenly be virtuous
i'm not saying the government is heinous. i'm not saying the government is virtuous. i'm saying you need to make up your mind. because currently, you put forth both concepts: the government acts heinously. therefore, we need a law that the government will follow, of course... because it acts virtuously
Slashdot Mirror
americans who raise their hackles when faced with the scarcity of a video game console
the very existence of this story is a sign of the decline of american society
"where's my blinking flashing noisy shiny drug!?"
you can rest assured any serious society on the move isn't obsessing over video game consoles
now go ahead, mod me a troll. prove me yet more right
most freakouts surrounding nuclear power are based on 1960s technology. modern reactor designs, such as pebble bed reactors, are designed to be passively safe. that is, you can just walk away from them, doing nothing, and they will not release gas, go china syndrome, or anything else unsafe. older nuke tech requires active safety management: someone must always be on the job, making sure nothing f***s up. designing safety into nuclear reactor design from the philosophical ground up is the way of the future
there is a bell curve of trust for government in every populace. this bell curves drifts toward more trust, and drifts towards less trust as the government does certain things. one of the benefits of democracy as opposed to other types of governments is that trust and therefore legitimacy and therefore stability are maximized in these societies
on one end of the bell curve are the nimrods who trust their government no matter what, a fatal amount of overtrust
likewise, there are always permanent malcontents on the other end of the bell curve, who distrust their government no matter what, a fatal lack of trust. there are always people who you can't ever convince or reach, and these are just people to be written off as useless, since their distrust of the government is more a feature of their own malformed psychology than anything their government did or didn't do. unfortunately, these permanent useless malcontents are often the loudest (and dumbest) voices on a number of issues
so just because there exists people who distrust their government doesn't really mean anything. there are always people who distrust the government. the question is really one of how much of those people make up the populace. there is always a permanent residual amount, hopefully (for society) in the minority. there just the empty malcontents of history. a permanent feature of the human condition
legitimacy
a very important concept
the law must hew closely to an actual concept of fairness. the law must not just serve a few well-placed economic interests. otherwise, it undermines the entire relationship between the law and its citizenry should it be understood that the law serves a special economic interest group at the detriment of the rights and freedoms of the people at large
if the people begin to see the law as illegitimate, as serving a special class of people rather than the public at large, this undermines society in subtle ways, large and small
can someone come along and say "you can serve", and "you can request", and keep and monitor that separation? seems rather daunting
otherwise, if the status quo is two way traffic flow, p2p traffic can be obfuscated in such a way that it is hard to detect and hard to isolate from "acceptable" traffic
so i think all these laws do is breed stronger p2p apps
that ability to zoom into a picture with far better clarity than the picture offers. deep zooming would seem to be a wrapper for high res pictures
china is obviously a great power in this world. when you are a great power, you get criticized. with great power, this kind of criticism is a natural occurence
a true great man can take lots of criticism in stride. an immature powerless man meanwhile freaks out every time someone suggests the slightest negative thing about him. it shows a lack of confidence, an insecurity
han ultranationists: do you believe that china is a great power? if you do, then start acting as that great power status dictates: have more confidence. china will be criticized more and more every year since it is so powerful now. if you cannot handle that criticism, then you are in danger of destroying your own greatness with your own insecure behavior
to defeat the creation of insecure people in china, you should foster a healthy amount of internal dissent and self-critical thinking in china. if you do not, if you censor anything that remotely criticizes the chinese government or the chinese nation, then what you do is make the chinese people permanent children. you incubate chinese who are unable to handle criticism without freaking out in insecurity and a lack of confidence
and thereby diminishing the greatness of china
china is a great nation. i believe that as an american. so start acting like a great nation, and grow some thicker skin when foreigners criticize china. being criticized is a natural product of being powerful. get used to it. believe me, as an american, i know something about being criticized on the world stage! and mostly, i just shrug it off. you should to
that there are han imperialists and han apologists shouldn't really amaze you. every culture and country in this world: russia, brazil, nigeria, mexico, india, etc., etc. has a loud vocal nationalist sentiment
the americans that engage in nationalist chest thumping of course deserved to be spoken out against, but most importantly on this point, in the usa, according to law, you can actually speak out against them
whereas in china, or cuba, or turkey, and other countries, to criticize your country or your government, something most americans consider second nature, is very much foreign and is outright censored and punished
such that if there are fascist nationalist forces being bred somewhere in this world, it is in the incubators that filter out any self-critical thought, such as with china and its web policy
that's why you get these mainland chinese freaking out whenever they hear a foreigner criticize china. they are very tender on the point. as an american, we're pretty much immune to other nations criticizing us, it's pretty much an international past time at this point, but for a chinese, grown up in a media environment that purposefully eradicates all self-critical thought, the idea of criticizing chinese government or chinese character is alien
this, of course, is extremely dangerous. china as a growing power will get more such criticism, as is natural for any great power in the world. but if the chinese people cant' take the criticism, you run the real risk of a demagogue seizing control in china, someone who panders to nationalist chest-thumping, rather than prudent governance
people always talk about american self-interest as the greatest evil in this world. but compared to the chinese, americans are practically thick skinned when it comes to anti-americanism. anti-chinese sentiment really drives some mainland chinese absolutely nuts. its psychologicaly unhealthy and a stunted frame of mind, to have no capacity for self-criticism, and to just reject all of it out of hand as foreign meddling
the very idea of self-criticism is anathema to han ultranationalists. certainly most american nationalists also suffer form an allergy to self-criticism. but this is more a function of their own personal psychological failures, rather than a government-level psychological incubation
that 4th dimensional rotational axis means you have to reach forward in time in order to solve one side in the present, without affecting any other sides you solved in the past, meaning you can't twist it to the present, without affecting what you've already solved in the future
rubik's hypercube has me stumped
fortunately for the people of your texas precinct, you are obviously a man of integrity, to even ask this question so publicly
the surest way to protect from any sort of tampering is more people like you
unfortunately, what makes electornic voting so insidious is it does a few things:
1. order of magnitude more attack vectors. sure with paper ballots you can throw a truckload out, manufacture duplicates, etc. but for every way you can hack paper voting, there 10 more ways to hack mechanical voting, and 100 more ways to hack electronic voting
2. force magnification. how messy is it to create the conspiracy of many people to mess with a paper voting system? how complicated is the conspiracy? how long does it take? meanwhile, one well placed hacker can manipulate the voting for an entire county, state, or country, in a matter of seconds
2. untraceability. paper ballots are messy. they leave finger prints, it is slow to change them, you have to hide or burn them, etc.. electronic voting meanwhile: one person with the right knowledge and access can, in a few seconds of time, create entirely false audit trails, statistically sound voting variations, etc. such that you don't even know if you can depend upon the integrity of the votes
3. lack of transparency. the legitmacy of any government depends upon trust. even the appearance of not knowing what is going on behind the scenes is enough to create rumbles in the populace, feelings of helplessness and being disconnected from their government. a paper ballot you can touch, feel, trust. its a piece of paper. it goes in a box. trust. transparancy. governmental legitimacy. electronic voting is black box. your vote goes in one end... something happens. i can't see it, i can't touch it, i don't know what is going on... out the other end comes sausage
it is not entirely wrong to say that the greatest threat to democracy in the world today is not religious fanatacism, is not authoritarian regimes... it is electronic voting
did the laserjet printers enjoy the movies? did they think robert downey jr. aced the role? did they find the non-religious artifact theme an acceptable deviation from indiana jones canon?
come on new york times. i expect the important questions to be asked!
if they were printing say, graphics rendered via ascii art, they would basically turn into a sonically attractive drum section
maybe the laser printers were just jealous?
so the company went belly up, but no one lost the shirts off their backs
somewhere, a cliche has just died...
thank you, i'll be here all week
to be nothing but a wish in the middle of a hurricane, god knows why you think the law ever protected you from anything, or ever would. the rule of law is exactly as you describe it in your first sentence, and then in your second sentence you make a solid statement of its total lack of worth. so which is it oh great guru, you have faith in the value of the law, or you have no faith in the value of the law? pick one, you can't have it both ways
"You need to hit the history and philosophy books before going any further down this path, or you'll manage to make yourself sound even more naive. You'll be surprised to learn that you're not the first to ask those rhetorical questions, and that they actually have been thought out."
gee, thanks dad, can i borrow the car keys? in your vast wisdom as compared to mine, one would have hoped that you would have learned at some point that patronization and condescension would engender anything but hatred in whomever you were talking to, prick
what an asshole you are
if you understand that governments change, you wouldn't view the retardedness under the bush administration as an unstoppable slippery slope into fascism, but a fart in a small room that will evaporate under the next administration
but far be it for me to point out that your own words betray your hysterical attitude. feel free to carry on believing we are all going to hell in your panic and fear
oh, and feel free to call me a bush supporter based on nothing but the vaguest of impressions. meanwhile, i'm going to call you an asshole. that's based on a clear interpretation of your own hysterical, prejudicial thinking towards me. but don't worry about the insult, asshole, by calling me a bush supporter, you've insulted me far worse. asshole
both survive by trolling video games
jack thompson could write the script, say: these two parents don't pay attention to their kids' videogames, and the kid shoots up the local school. fairly boring and insipid plot. but bear with me here:
then uwe boll comes along. now what uwe boll usually does is take redeeming material for the movies that shows some promise, and utterly makes it into the most insipid useless crap imaginable. so what would happen if uwe boll started with insipid crap to begin with instead?
the inverse! uwe boll would make a movie masterpiece!
by starting with the insane ranting lunacy of the imagination of jack thompson, uwe couldn't help himself but to completely destroy the script writer's vision, a movie that completely betrays the original material. he couldn't help but turn a ranitng stupid insane jack thompson script into the reverse: a masterpiece of art. nothing at all like what jack thompson wrote, therefore: something oscar worthy, an awesome thoughtful and poignant commentary on videogames and society
they would negate each other and create genius! a troll apocalypse!
you've conceded that all of the major switches are already snooped on
;-P
what you are concerned about now is that the government will be able to snoop on the internet users who shape their traffic according to their detailed knowledge of quirkly local internet topology
how many people is that?
you don't win an argument by switching and confining the argument's scope to a neglible issue
so say the government gets all of these vast snooping powers now on these neglible traffic channels. if this is the last vestige of your freedom, i guess you never had any to begin with, and your resistance to these snooping powers are moot. which is my whole point
you mean where instead of going through open relays i run my own wire from my house to kandahar?
"direct peering"
i do not think that concept means what you think it means
you catch the big major pipes. that's all you need to see everything. and you can do that in a number of ways in a number of places, without the notification or involvement of any company
the internet is not some weird foreign entity the govt needs to inject itself into. we are talking about a system that was built on top of an originally government project. the government has been there every step of the way. the internet has grown up organically on top of the government
when someone runs some new pipe somewhere, they know about it. no one laid some pipe somewhere that lots of internet traffic is moving over that the government doesn't know about
basically your position is: "we must stop the government snooping on... the network built on top of the government network"
absurdity
most of these injuries are due to the poor ergonomics of stooping over a laptop placed on your lap
what i've done is devoted my eating regimen to ice cream, fast food, and sugary sodas, thereby establishing a nice shelf space, massive rolls of belly fat, on which to perch my laptop. now that my laptop is securely nestled close to my face, my wrists assume a natural curvature during typing, my back is straight rather than stooped over, and i've even reduced my eye strain
therefore, i heartily (cough wheeze) endorse a high calorie regimen to decrease RSI via belly perching your laptop for better ergonomics. its a dramatic improvement in joint health
is the only way to snoop on network traffic
hilarious
your email here is blocked
;-(
there's no way on massify to contact the cto
the snooping doesn't make it possible to map your social network, the structure of the internet makes it possible to map your social network. you and other idealists basically say: "i want a free and open network... that is also locked up and closed" what?
look: the internet is good thing, because it is open. but all good things also have a downside. the downside is that any expectation of privacy is absurd in an environment which, inherent to the technology, has none
and then people compound this absurd expectation of unfettered access with an expecation of security and privacy, with the more insane expecation, drum roll please, that governments are going to act completely virtuous on this system and not snoop on you. you expect a virtuousness in government that no government has ever had in the history of governments!
2 absurdities, one compounding the other
protect your own privacy. don't, for any reason, believe your privacy ever was, is, or ever could be an inherent component of a system that is based on free and unfettered access. and certainly don't expect your GOVERNMENT to protect your privacy for you!
how can people be so schizophrenic as profess complete cynicism in how governments behave towards their citizens... but then also somehow expect a law or two here and there will suddenly impart magical levels of virtousness that have never existed in government behavior ever before. i don't get it
you believe that?
;-P
(snicker)
"This copying would also be illegal today"
there's that same fallacy: we need a law to protect us from people who don't obey the law
follow your opinion of the government all the way through: you say it is going to rape your rights, a heinous thing to do. ok, so, we will simply pass a law, and **poof** magically, heinous people will suddenly be virtuous
i'm not saying the government is heinous. i'm not saying the government is virtuous. i'm saying you need to make up your mind. because currently, you put forth both concepts: the government acts heinously. therefore, we need a law that the government will follow, of course... because it acts virtuously
make up your mind
you haven't thought your cunning plan all the way through
you forgot the part about who plugs you into the wall
who's in control now biatches!