This is why when I hear those desperate voices by the pundits; "they can't keep their doctor" -- I'm like, in what Universe is my Doctor that important?
1) I can't afford to see one now and 2) All the doctors I've ever seen in my life in the USA have not known me from a stray dog.
People who listen to the disclaimers to "consult your physician" before X, Y or Z have not gotten the memo; you are on your own to make sure you are healthy. If you don't do something after being persistently sick -- nobody is going to show up and help you with that.
I know when I was asked to do usability on an early website I was designing to be as a portal, I committed hearsay -- and this is after I'd made a living creating 3D interfaces that looked like the real world. I said; look at the top 5 or 6 links that all the popular websites have and just do those. Break everything down based on that. What most people are used to is what they expect to see. Generic an vanilla is useful. People are not here to "interact" with our website, they are here for content and the quickest way to navigate to that with the least hassle is the BEST way.
It's hard to do usability when you say; "done!" It's like someone who makes vitamins or artificial flavors to add to food. Why not just give people strawberries without adding citric acid? We are at year 40 of the food additive business (figure I pulled from my rear) and what's the food you pay a premium to get? Food with a short list of ingredients and just the stuff you wanted. Anything unpronounceable at the top of the ingredients list gets my veto.
>> But let me say; the dang phones have a lot of room for improvement. A hand tool shaped like a bar of soap? Really? I could spend pages explaining on how and why phones are done wrong -- the most basic is that then need to be slightly LESS rectangular so you know which end is up in your pocket. The should have a flip front because we've lost all kinds of space to separate the mic from the listening speaker and we hang up with our cheeks all the time (until 3D sensing tech gets better). Clamshell was a natural way to protect the screen from keys -- and to hang up without the infernal phone blanking on us and we try and activate it again and hang up.
Applying logic to our roll over and scratch my belly please society?
Anyone want to bet we still have drunk driving laws being used to do random searches even after we have self-driving cars? I expect someone to come along in a minute and explain how I want this.
To "take seriously" drunk driving in my state, the blood alcohol levels are ridiculously low. I'm part Irish -- not having SOME alcohol in my system can actually lead to impairment. Any fool knows that!
I knew the Snowden impact was going to be huge -- not because suddenly politicians would be activated because people "woke up" -- but because medium-sized companies will suspect either rightly or wrongly that "hey, maybe some of that spying affected us in a trade negotiation or lost technology?" The politicians care now, because the MONEY cares.
And then you will see US corporations care about security like the auto company cares about Gas Mileage; they have no choice. Either show you are secure and you stand up to NSA or you don't get the sale.
NOW it matters. Some fat cat might lose a chunk out of their wallet -- and there will be outrage!
The damage won't be to US security -- but the economic damage will be in the tens of billions of dollars of lost sales.
We need indefinite detention for sellers of Rubber Duckies. Rubber Duckiesin bath tubs have killed more people via slip and fall than 9/11 -- something MUST BE DONE!
>> Please don't take this as a tacit agreement on my part that any future False Flags need to up the ante to prove to us how much we need 1 million people involved in the "security apparatus." Stop hiring consultants from the former Stazi for instance.
There seems to be some disagreement about the identification of manure.
No, I think it pretty much identifies the ter'rism bogieman and people who blog like 100% of assassinations and arrests are all 100% accurate and that this small sample reflects that 100% of the reports and scares were justified.
Since lightning kills 10x more people, we need to strip search everyone for wires and spend $4 trillion putting up lightning rods ever 10 meters or so -- just to have a commensurate threat/response profile.
Choose any two. You want all three? That's where you are exceeding the limits of a lawful and transparent society.
I've seen much more scrutiny on teachers than I do on Bankers and more scrutiny on temp help line workers than police. This world is upside down on "personal responsibility" such that people with the least income and power are given the most responsibility and least privacy.
As long as no bad guy ever uses a private jet,... since private jets have very little scrutiny yet could potentially cause more problems. It's so nice that our bad guys behave so well and confine themselves to doing evil that affects the commoners...
So we are to believe that "helping people" led to the fall of Rome?
Those Calligula orgies in the blood of killed statesmen -- that's some kind of Progressive socialism?
The brain damage due to drinking out of a water system lined with lead wasn't also a factor?
The reliance on a military conquest system and not on educating people to create value was an example of a militaristic system -- not navel gazing hippies.
The Roman empire lasted quite a while in human history terms. They fell not because of good ideas to help people -- they fell because of Tyrants and a populace that wanted to support an empire of plunder rather than sharing their good ideas with the subjugated nations. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and a whacked-out tyrant is just a tyrant paying no attention to Progressive Philosophers.
Are you just trying to attach blame to Progressives on random historical events?
I think it's amusing how people quote agencies like the NSA to repeat how "Snowden has damaged our security and is perhaps a traitor" -- it's as if people have a disconnect between; "These guys were just lying about everything, and now they've confirmed it, and you still act like this is an agency with authority and integrity and they are now telling you who the big enemy is."
It's going to be even funnier if they start admitting to things that Snowden didn't have dirt on; "And let me explain this picture you might see of me in a little ballerina dress greeting what might look like aliens from another planet..."
If we trip them up on this whole; "revealing before the whistleblower" they might accidentally create a situation where the public is informed enough to have an actual Democracy. Oops!
I'd like to propose a "hypothesis" that the reason we see these anomalous structures where we should be seeing more randomness would also explain some anomalies we currently blame on dark matter; the influence via gravity of either other dimensions, or extra-Universe objects (basically, other Universes not directly tied to our own). It would mean Gravity is also an "extra dimensional" force or particle that isn't normally observable in our Space/Time.
I'm not totally convinced of this hypothesis -- but I think it's worth throwing it in there, because I think that the early Universe models are probably quite good, and these superstructures should not exist except for forces we are not yet currently aware of.
I just think it's ironic that people have to state "what science is" on Slashdot. I'm not criticizing the practice -- I'm concerned by how much we NEED to inform people of WHY science is good, even if it is never settled, and what the scientific process is.
This is just sad. This is a culture in decline. Forget about Rock Music, long hair, tattoos -- whatever shocking thing the next generation comes up with; SCIENCE is one of the first targets of a society in decline.
Of course, anyone I have to explain this to based on historical examples is probably also someone who has been told why science is necessary and important and still doesn't get it. *sigh*
My kids got a "Jedi Mind" toy that allows you to control brain waves and thus a fan moving a ping-pong ball up and down.
THIS is training to defeat a Polygraph. The problem is people who have "trained" to give Polygraphs and people who sell Insurance Investments; they both have this idea that since someone paid them to do something, it is automatically a useful and important endeavor.
Most of us are doing something that in the scheme of things is probably not really that necessary -- you just have to realize it.
What we REALLY need here is to track who's asking to track people who want to learn how to beat the Polygraph.
We've got a Fascist Fifth Column in our country, and it is massive and pervasive and must be rooted out. We've got to find all know associates of these people abusing power, their friends on Facebook, their offshore bank accounts, their subscriptions to the Limbaugh letter, and the banana hammocks they ordered from the International Male catalog for their "business trip" to various top secret islands that have nothing but sweat shops and brothels.
I'm betting there is a think tank for "unexplained deaths" to come up with new, plausible ways to remove irritating people.
The "small plane crash" is notorious for Latin American leaders standing in the way of multinational profits. There's many ways to cause heart attacks. Perforations with an ice gun that leaves nothing but a small hole (been around for decades).
So yeah -- you bring up some good cases of deaths that make you go "hmmm".
It's important for dastardly deeds to have some level of novelty, so that the populace doesn't start to suspect. You can't always control the investigation at the small plane crash to remove evidence, after all.
No, they did count on the courts being corruptible -- that's why we have three equal powered parts to the government. The Federalists, knew rightly that a weak central government was the quickest path to corruption. Like what we have now; states outbidding each other to lower standards for companies to move there.
When Clarence Thomas' wife made about $700,000 consulting for a Koch owned puppet company that was behind "Citizen's United" the justice department led by SOMEONE would have come on down on him like a Hammer and we'd be talking about impeachment. But that didn't happen. You've got whistle blowers and protestors seeing more jail time than all the bankers combined who "lost billions" and throw in torturers and war criminals.
The Constitution was a framework that's only as good as the people put in place to uphold it. IF it had teeth, those sharp pointy things would be employed against bloggers and Snowden right now.
I think the main reason Apple gets on everyone's radar is because they are the least politically active. The really corrupt companies spend a lot of money greasing palms and trying to win deals that make them part of the infrastructure.
Seriously, Italy is the guiding light now of standing up to corruption? Is Berlesconi in Prison yet?
Ya'll come on down, orgies at the capital and free wine! Of course, Apple, shame on you! You aren't invited to the after party.
People call Atlas Shrugged a fiction because it's a tell-tale giveaway of people who base world-views on sketchy hypothetical situations. Sure a dictator can force elite, intelligent people to do their bidding, but in most cases, we've got wealthy and powerful people abusing the system, and then they enlist a few people who think they are smart by saying; "Smart people believe the poor and powerless are in control and a danger to the wonders of capitalism" -- that's the excuse for WHY SMART people aren't running things and don't have all the money.
If the Poor and Powerless were abusing the system to control SMART PEOPLE (i.e., Libertarians and programmers who made big money ten years ago) then they wouldn't be Poor and Powerless, would they?
I found this "Oversight Kourt Coordinated Automated Response Daemon" (OK_CARD.asp) and when I poked it with a query, all it sent back was; "In answer to your query YES. And we've also Friended you."
Oh, and if I'm ever in a court case that involves a EULA, I'll hold it in the same regard as the contract with my Bank that says how they can mess me over and that's just policy, and the NSA's "permission" to do whatever they are doing.
You know you are in a fascist country when the greatest threats to your well being are legal.
I'm sure that somewhere in our lives within the thousand and one EULAs we've all clicked, someone added "Oh, and this includes the NSA, and we get your first born child, thanks!"
It's probably been grafted into the DNA of a Monsanto genetically engineered soybean, and by biting that soybean, you agree to the terms of the DNA-spliced EULA embedded therein. Or you can choose not to eat the soybean that they passed laws in California not to tell you about. And it was in a EULA embedded on the Golden Gate Bridge, and by driving over that x-ray etched crystal engraving, you have accepted the terms of that EULA.
So I'm fairly sure we all "opted in" to the NSA, and I'm sure that if I "google it" I could quickly find that the NSA is a corporation and has a board of directors so that makes us all save. We don't know who owns stock in the CIA either, but we can probably assume that they are very, very rich by now.
Slashdot Mirror
This is why when I hear those desperate voices by the pundits; "they can't keep their doctor" -- I'm like, in what Universe is my Doctor that important?
1) I can't afford to see one now and
2) All the doctors I've ever seen in my life in the USA have not known me from a stray dog.
People who listen to the disclaimers to "consult your physician" before X, Y or Z have not gotten the memo; you are on your own to make sure you are healthy. If you don't do something after being persistently sick -- nobody is going to show up and help you with that.
I know when I was asked to do usability on an early website I was designing to be as a portal, I committed hearsay -- and this is after I'd made a living creating 3D interfaces that looked like the real world. I said; look at the top 5 or 6 links that all the popular websites have and just do those. Break everything down based on that. What most people are used to is what they expect to see. Generic an vanilla is useful. People are not here to "interact" with our website, they are here for content and the quickest way to navigate to that with the least hassle is the BEST way.
It's hard to do usability when you say; "done!" It's like someone who makes vitamins or artificial flavors to add to food. Why not just give people strawberries without adding citric acid? We are at year 40 of the food additive business (figure I pulled from my rear) and what's the food you pay a premium to get? Food with a short list of ingredients and just the stuff you wanted. Anything unpronounceable at the top of the ingredients list gets my veto.
>> But let me say; the dang phones have a lot of room for improvement. A hand tool shaped like a bar of soap? Really? I could spend pages explaining on how and why phones are done wrong -- the most basic is that then need to be slightly LESS rectangular so you know which end is up in your pocket. The should have a flip front because we've lost all kinds of space to separate the mic from the listening speaker and we hang up with our cheeks all the time (until 3D sensing tech gets better). Clamshell was a natural way to protect the screen from keys -- and to hang up without the infernal phone blanking on us and we try and activate it again and hang up.
Applying logic to our roll over and scratch my belly please society?
Anyone want to bet we still have drunk driving laws being used to do random searches even after we have self-driving cars? I expect someone to come along in a minute and explain how I want this.
To "take seriously" drunk driving in my state, the blood alcohol levels are ridiculously low. I'm part Irish -- not having SOME alcohol in my system can actually lead to impairment. Any fool knows that!
I had mod points yesterday, but now I don't.
I did not use them responsibly and they went away.
I suggest all of you urge the Slashdot to give you your money back.
I knew the Snowden impact was going to be huge -- not because suddenly politicians would be activated because people "woke up" -- but because medium-sized companies will suspect either rightly or wrongly that "hey, maybe some of that spying affected us in a trade negotiation or lost technology?" The politicians care now, because the MONEY cares.
And then you will see US corporations care about security like the auto company cares about Gas Mileage; they have no choice. Either show you are secure and you stand up to NSA or you don't get the sale.
NOW it matters. Some fat cat might lose a chunk out of their wallet -- and there will be outrage!
The damage won't be to US security -- but the economic damage will be in the tens of billions of dollars of lost sales.
However it could be argued that the bad guys "saved lives" because they stopped traffic and that lowered the overall death rate in Boston.
Boy, we number crunchers are a cold bunch!
We need indefinite detention for sellers of Rubber Duckies. Rubber Duckiesin bath tubs have killed more people via slip and fall than 9/11 -- something MUST BE DONE!
>> Please don't take this as a tacit agreement on my part that any future False Flags need to up the ante to prove to us how much we need 1 million people involved in the "security apparatus." Stop hiring consultants from the former Stazi for instance.
There seems to be some disagreement about the identification of manure.
No, I think it pretty much identifies the ter'rism bogieman and people who blog like 100% of assassinations and arrests are all 100% accurate and that this small sample reflects that 100% of the reports and scares were justified.
Since lightning kills 10x more people, we need to strip search everyone for wires and spend $4 trillion putting up lightning rods ever 10 meters or so -- just to have a commensurate threat/response profile.
Badge, Gun, Privacy.
Choose any two. You want all three? That's where you are exceeding the limits of a lawful and transparent society.
I've seen much more scrutiny on teachers than I do on Bankers and more scrutiny on temp help line workers than police. This world is upside down on "personal responsibility" such that people with the least income and power are given the most responsibility and least privacy.
As long as no bad guy ever uses a private jet,... since private jets have very little scrutiny yet could potentially cause more problems. It's so nice that our bad guys behave so well and confine themselves to doing evil that affects the commoners...
But Hell itself doesn't have pavement, just a lot of douchebags who didn't have good intentions.
So we are to believe that "helping people" led to the fall of Rome?
Those Calligula orgies in the blood of killed statesmen -- that's some kind of Progressive socialism?
The brain damage due to drinking out of a water system lined with lead wasn't also a factor?
The reliance on a military conquest system and not on educating people to create value was an example of a militaristic system -- not navel gazing hippies.
The Roman empire lasted quite a while in human history terms. They fell not because of good ideas to help people -- they fell because of Tyrants and a populace that wanted to support an empire of plunder rather than sharing their good ideas with the subjugated nations. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and a whacked-out tyrant is just a tyrant paying no attention to Progressive Philosophers.
Are you just trying to attach blame to Progressives on random historical events?
I think it's amusing how people quote agencies like the NSA to repeat how "Snowden has damaged our security and is perhaps a traitor" -- it's as if people have a disconnect between; "These guys were just lying about everything, and now they've confirmed it, and you still act like this is an agency with authority and integrity and they are now telling you who the big enemy is."
It's going to be even funnier if they start admitting to things that Snowden didn't have dirt on; "And let me explain this picture you might see of me in a little ballerina dress greeting what might look like aliens from another planet..."
If we trip them up on this whole; "revealing before the whistleblower" they might accidentally create a situation where the public is informed enough to have an actual Democracy. Oops!
I'd like to propose a "hypothesis" that the reason we see these anomalous structures where we should be seeing more randomness would also explain some anomalies we currently blame on dark matter; the influence via gravity of either other dimensions, or extra-Universe objects (basically, other Universes not directly tied to our own). It would mean Gravity is also an "extra dimensional" force or particle that isn't normally observable in our Space/Time.
I'm not totally convinced of this hypothesis -- but I think it's worth throwing it in there, because I think that the early Universe models are probably quite good, and these superstructures should not exist except for forces we are not yet currently aware of.
I just think it's ironic that people have to state "what science is" on Slashdot. I'm not criticizing the practice -- I'm concerned by how much we NEED to inform people of WHY science is good, even if it is never settled, and what the scientific process is.
This is just sad. This is a culture in decline. Forget about Rock Music, long hair, tattoos -- whatever shocking thing the next generation comes up with; SCIENCE is one of the first targets of a society in decline.
Of course, anyone I have to explain this to based on historical examples is probably also someone who has been told why science is necessary and important and still doesn't get it. *sigh*
My kids got a "Jedi Mind" toy that allows you to control brain waves and thus a fan moving a ping-pong ball up and down.
THIS is training to defeat a Polygraph. The problem is people who have "trained" to give Polygraphs and people who sell Insurance Investments; they both have this idea that since someone paid them to do something, it is automatically a useful and important endeavor.
Most of us are doing something that in the scheme of things is probably not really that necessary -- you just have to realize it.
What we REALLY need here is to track who's asking to track people who want to learn how to beat the Polygraph.
We've got a Fascist Fifth Column in our country, and it is massive and pervasive and must be rooted out. We've got to find all know associates of these people abusing power, their friends on Facebook, their offshore bank accounts, their subscriptions to the Limbaugh letter, and the banana hammocks they ordered from the International Male catalog for their "business trip" to various top secret islands that have nothing but sweat shops and brothels.
I'm betting there is a think tank for "unexplained deaths" to come up with new, plausible ways to remove irritating people.
The "small plane crash" is notorious for Latin American leaders standing in the way of multinational profits. There's many ways to cause heart attacks. Perforations with an ice gun that leaves nothing but a small hole (been around for decades).
So yeah -- you bring up some good cases of deaths that make you go "hmmm".
It's important for dastardly deeds to have some level of novelty, so that the populace doesn't start to suspect. You can't always control the investigation at the small plane crash to remove evidence, after all.
Magnetic stealth is the perfect cloaking mechanism -- just as long as the enemy never launches anything metallic at it, they are home free!
No, they did count on the courts being corruptible -- that's why we have three equal powered parts to the government. The Federalists, knew rightly that a weak central government was the quickest path to corruption. Like what we have now; states outbidding each other to lower standards for companies to move there.
When Clarence Thomas' wife made about $700,000 consulting for a Koch owned puppet company that was behind "Citizen's United" the justice department led by SOMEONE would have come on down on him like a Hammer and we'd be talking about impeachment. But that didn't happen. You've got whistle blowers and protestors seeing more jail time than all the bankers combined who "lost billions" and throw in torturers and war criminals.
The Constitution was a framework that's only as good as the people put in place to uphold it. IF it had teeth, those sharp pointy things would be employed against bloggers and Snowden right now.
I think the main reason Apple gets on everyone's radar is because they are the least politically active. The really corrupt companies spend a lot of money greasing palms and trying to win deals that make them part of the infrastructure.
Seriously, Italy is the guiding light now of standing up to corruption? Is Berlesconi in Prison yet?
Ya'll come on down, orgies at the capital and free wine! Of course, Apple, shame on you! You aren't invited to the after party.
People call Atlas Shrugged a fiction because it's a tell-tale giveaway of people who base world-views on sketchy hypothetical situations. Sure a dictator can force elite, intelligent people to do their bidding, but in most cases, we've got wealthy and powerful people abusing the system, and then they enlist a few people who think they are smart by saying; "Smart people believe the poor and powerless are in control and a danger to the wonders of capitalism" -- that's the excuse for WHY SMART people aren't running things and don't have all the money.
If the Poor and Powerless were abusing the system to control SMART PEOPLE (i.e., Libertarians and programmers who made big money ten years ago) then they wouldn't be Poor and Powerless, would they?
HINT: the above is not a trick question.
"then what?"
On your Facebook page you see; "Catfood LIKES his home foreclosure by FlagStar!"
I found this "Oversight Kourt Coordinated Automated Response Daemon" (OK_CARD.asp) and when I poked it with a query, all it sent back was; "In answer to your query YES. And we've also Friended you."
Oh, and if I'm ever in a court case that involves a EULA, I'll hold it in the same regard as the contract with my Bank that says how they can mess me over and that's just policy, and the NSA's "permission" to do whatever they are doing.
You know you are in a fascist country when the greatest threats to your well being are legal.
I'm sure that somewhere in our lives within the thousand and one EULAs we've all clicked, someone added "Oh, and this includes the NSA, and we get your first born child, thanks!"
It's probably been grafted into the DNA of a Monsanto genetically engineered soybean, and by biting that soybean, you agree to the terms of the DNA-spliced EULA embedded therein. Or you can choose not to eat the soybean that they passed laws in California not to tell you about. And it was in a EULA embedded on the Golden Gate Bridge, and by driving over that x-ray etched crystal engraving, you have accepted the terms of that EULA.
So I'm fairly sure we all "opted in" to the NSA, and I'm sure that if I "google it" I could quickly find that the NSA is a corporation and has a board of directors so that makes us all save. We don't know who owns stock in the CIA either, but we can probably assume that they are very, very rich by now.