There is no such thing as a free lunch, as they say; as a user, you pay many times over for this kind of 'free' by being exposed to adverts, having you every move tracked and your information sold off to unknown third parties. This sort of watering down the concept of what is 'free' is a bad thing - quite apart from the inevitable association with important ideas of freedom, it is simply a barefaced lie.
I myself am wondering why this is even news at all.
Two reasons, really. One thing is that because this is a Muslim family, it will be picked up by people Daesh's propagandists and used to 'prove' that we in the West are all out against Islam and must be exterminated. That makes it a sensitive issue. The other thing is that although this isn't a new issue in general, we still need to hold this kind of mindless idiocy up to the public eye, so that the tossers in DHL or whoever feel the pressure and are encouraged to get the finger out to change things for the better.
For astrology, it's been discredited over and over and over. There's never been any hint of evidence into validity, not even preliminary theories.
OTOH, there are good reasons to think that certain things, like eg. an opposition between the Sun and any of the inner planets, would have a negative influence on events on Earth;-)
So, yes, Americans watch a lot of TV, but is there any evidence that watching TV lowers IQ? I would suspect that the causation is the other way around.
You mean, low intellligence causes TV in the US? That would explain a few things;-)
Seriously, though, there probably hasn't been much research directly into the effect of TV on IQ - traditionally, IQ has been assumed to be an innate characteristic, not something that was fundamentally changed by the environment; which is not to say that a given IQ is not shaped by training, but the assumption has always been that you wer born with 'a given amount of intelligence' - an ability to learn - and that schooling would be secondary in shaping how well you did academically. So, on this basis, one would assume that watching TV has no influence either way.
On the other hand, it has always been clear that even if you are very intelligent, you still need to put in a certain amount of effort in order to develop your abilities, and time spent on passively watching pointless TV programmes is likely to develop a person's abilities less than actively studying something or working to solve problems of some sort. There has been recent research to suggest that intelligence may be somewhat plastic, at least when you are child, so it could be there is a basis for saying that watching too much TV lowers intelligence - or at least doesn't develop it to it full potential, which arguably is the same thing.
...those banging at your doors don't give a damn about laws.
Unless they have poor security and get hacked repeatedly. Some places you can almost just walk in, and if they are a small company, they may not feel that they have money to spend on proper security. Unless they are made painfully aware of the benefits.
People today don't use the word 'parlance', so I assume you are old and therefore your opinion of "today" is irrelevant....
Well, I know of at least one person who does. It may not be totally Street English, but it is not uncommon. Apart from that, it is a rather braindead thing to say that my views are irrelevant because I use a word you wouldn't use, don't you agree? Also, you failed to criticise me for not putting a comma after "A gang"; surely that would have put me outside the human race?
Considering how none of the new "agreements" are binding, what real difference does it make? Show and no go, feel good BS.
And how binding do you think a "binding" agreement would be? Considering the fact that most of these state leaders would have to go home and have their binding agreements ratified. This is how all politics work; you state your intentions, and then you start working towards making it happen, but nowhere is it guaranteed that it will. One of the costs of having democracy. Hopefully the respective parliaments and electorates are not all too benighted to actually go and do something about things.
The best way to deal with terrorism is to neglect them totally.
I assume you meant 'ignore', not 'neglect'? But no, we should definitely not try to ignore them, on the contrary. We need to make them unattractive in the eyes of vulnerable, young people, as well as work to ensure the the young are not vulnerable to the pseudo-religious claptrap of extremists. People only fall for this kind idiocy because they are unable to find any hope of have a meaningful future in society.
We also, and I hate to say this, have to go and fight Daesh militarily with our own soldiers on the ground, most likely. I have been a pacifist most of my life, but we put our foot in it - again - when we invaded Iraq to topple Hussein (who was in power because of what we did previously etc etc); the only way out of this mess is to carry it through to the end. And this time, let's try to be sincere about fixing what we have broken so badly. Daesh is only one symptom of what is really wrong; we can wipe them out, but unless we cure the underlying illness, the cancer will just come back.
Please read the flaming summary at least, FFS. They used a law that requires commercial infringement, SO THIS IS NOT AGAINST THAT LAW!!!!!
Get it yet, you freakish retard???
You seem upset? In fact, I would say you seem to be howling obscenely; I mean five exclamation marks? Hardly the hallmark of serene composure. I will, however, try to stop laughing and answer politely.
You don't really seem to have read - and understood - what I was writing; I don't think it should be illegal to share your music with friends or use it creatively. However, that sort of viewpoint belongs in the area of politics: that's where legislation is worked out. Police and judges are barred from making legislation in most Western societies due to the principle of separation powers. IOW, they have no other choice than following the law.
That aside, I was trying to understand what the reasoning might have been behind prosecuting what to most must seem like a fairly innocent activity. You may not think it is right, and you may not think the police, prosecutors and judge chose to interpret the laws in that way, but they did. Personally, I prefer to understand things, even if I don't agree with them - how else can I hope to make a sensible counter-argument? You appear to have made a different choice; you are free to do so, of course, but I think, if you want the respect of your peers, then you need to change the tone and level of your arguments.
Time for you to look up tax avoidance vs. tax evasion.
Time to look at why it is possible for anybody to avoid paying tax. The reason why we pay tax is simple and easy to understand: we pay for things like infrastructure, health care (in countries where this exists), schools, military etc. When we avoid paying tax, it means we are freeloading - parasites on society - and that those who do pay their taxes have to shoulder the burden. The idea of paying tax in proportion to your income is only really used because it is relatively easy to work out, at least for ordinary individuals, but what we really should be doing is tax according to how much load you put on the facilities provided by society, at least if 'you' are a company. And the calculation of load should include the effect a company's activities have on people's health, how much waste they produce, which society has to deal with etc.
A gang in today's parlance, is a group of people working together for criminal purposes, age and gender are irrelevant.
As I understand it, whether they actually derive financial benefit from what they do, is also irrelevant; they are breaking the law when they share things they don't own the IP rights for. Not that I necessarily agree that it should be illegal, but that is political matter, not a legal one. The reasoning behind why what they did was illegal runs like this: On one hand, these gentlefolks did in fact derive some benefit from what they did - not financial, but social, and they clearly found that attractive enough to break the law. On the other hand, it could be said that they took customers away from the companies that might otherwise have benefitted, so that is one, potential, financial damage. The other one os that there may be record companies that own the songs, who feel they have lost out.
Personally, I think it is wrong that record labels, publishers and others can sit on good music, works of art or stories for as long as they can, without making them available to the public. IMO you should lose your IP very quickly, once you stop making them available - perhaps these things should be tranferred to some public IP store, from where people could then keep buying them. The proceeds could go to charity or to supports young artists.
Inevitable? Perhaps. I'm not too worried. Freedom has always found a way and will continue to do so in the future; and it will also find a natural balance with the need for a stable, functioning society - we don't really need the internet for that, it's just a convenient tool.
As for the internet, I tend to think of it in terms of cost vs benefit; there are some clear and very important benefits: it enables fast, global communication, which helps break down barriers and open up our minds. It gives us access to knowledge in a way that was unthinkable even 20 years ago. Unfortunately, it also makes it very, very easy to disseminate worthless crap, and it seems like 90% of everything you find on the internet is exactly that. The costs of the internet are very real too - the infrastructure is expensive to establish and maintain, for one thing, and it enables organised crime, like drugs cartels, people smugglers, paedophiles, terrorists,... (not to mention financial criminals). Is it worth the price? I don't know, and the problem is as far as I can tell, that the so-called freedom advocates are not willing to engage in a discussion of the fact; they seem to preclude any outcome that might favour any level of restriction.
The problem with that is that only those who are willing to take part in discussions will get any say. Plus, try to look at it from another perspective: the internet exists because somebody was willing to pay for the infrastructure: cables, computers etc. The ones that footed the bill are likely to feel that they are being generous for even paying attention to the opinions of the users. Freedom may be a fundamental right, but the existence of the internet isn't.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder - to me, the UI of cat and vi (the old vi, not vim) are far more attractive than any GUI. GUIs have so much more scope for getting it wrong; they so often end up feeling like an overstuffed, Victorian living room with arsenic in the wallpaper (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...). To make a good GUI, concentrate on simplicity, extensibility and convenience; an interface that is good to use will be naturally beautiful.
It would probably be more damaging to one's career - certainly as a hard talking politician - to be found on the Hello Kitty fan club's name list, than any revelations about drug taking, sexual deviancy or Communist sympathies. Ant chance that there were names of top terrorists among them?
Bring the nation's attention upon a thoroughly broken system that has been quietly abused for years?
Crime is crime, greed is greed and so on. This guy didn't idealistically bring his own livelihood in danger to highlight the failings of "the broken system". That's like saying the bankers who undermined our economy with irresponsible practices driven by shortsighted greed were heroes - it's a disingenious argument.
If you start by limiting your thinking to procedural...
I don't think that really is at the heart of the problem - 'procedural' is just a tool, and it has it its place, certainly. But to make a good engineer, you have to start with a 'problem', something you want to solve, and choose your tools to fit the problem. The problem with managers who tink they have understaood it all is that they then think we 'just do'... and then they go out and buy a tool that can 'just do...' whatever. Like, if you are a team of builders working on a new house - imagine the manager going out to buy this new, amazing electric drill and insisting that it is used not just to make holes, but also screw in screws and cut timber, which it could be made to do; but on top of that, he also wants it to dig holes and make the coffee, and if you can't, he'll tell you that you're imcompetent.
The things you point out are certainly valid concerns, but I think it is about time we try to grow up a bit and stop sweeping the very real problems of things like hate-crimes, bullying and other anti-social behaviours under the carpet of 'Free Speech'. I think I value free speech just as much as most, and there is no doubt that it is crucial for the proper functioning of society, that we are free to point out real problems without fear of punishment. But there is a balance to be struck - one person's freedom should not be allowed to take away the freedom of others, for example. Whether the so-called freedom advocates like it or not, there is a discussion to be had about this - in a reality where technology races ahead, we can't just lean back and declare that it was settled once and forever several hundred years ago; on the contrary, we have to review the issue regularly.
German Muslim: 'Islam Is Coming And Your Daughters Will Wear The Hijab'
As a non-Muslim, I have to ask - where do you find any hate-speech in that statement? As I read it, it is certainly provocative, and it implies that the speaker expects us all to become Muslims, but that could very well be as the result of peaceful evangelism (if such a word is appropriate - what would a Muslim call it?) To me it just comes across as a frustrated outburst as a result of the fact that many second generation muslims are much less devout; just like most Christians in the West, really.
Interestingly, being apes, we have evolved from a group of animals that eat a lot of fruit, and studies suggest that we may have evolved an ability to process alcohol better than many other groups as a result of eating fermenting fruit. Which incidentally may be naturally high in B12 because of the fermentation process. Just a thought.
Anybody who is moderately intelligent and understands the idea of doing one thing after another is able to learn how to carry out the basics of coding. I think most of my generation learned to write code by picking up whichever manual was at hand, reading it and then try to work out how to solve some small problem; it took me an afternoon to get started, and I can't imagine it would take anybody else longer, really. What is missing is the word 'well'; any idiot can learn to string instructions together, as I thought when I heard about Cameron learning it, but doing it well is another matter altogether.
It falls in three phases, I think:
1: Learning that coding consists of writing simple instructions and thinking "Oh, it that all it is?" 2: Learning a bit more and realising that writing a good program for a substantial project is actually hard 3: Building up years of experience and eventually becoming good
Regrettably, a lot of people never progress past 1; and unfortunately a lot of them are managers, who then think that they are equipped to make decisions about the subject.
Slashdot Mirror
It was hacked - there is no such thing as too much Fosters.
The fact that it is free is irrelevant...
There is no such thing as a free lunch, as they say; as a user, you pay many times over for this kind of 'free' by being exposed to adverts, having you every move tracked and your information sold off to unknown third parties. This sort of watering down the concept of what is 'free' is a bad thing - quite apart from the inevitable association with important ideas of freedom, it is simply a barefaced lie.
Why don't they use water-boarding? It works so well, as we all know.
I myself am wondering why this is even news at all.
Two reasons, really. One thing is that because this is a Muslim family, it will be picked up by people Daesh's propagandists and used to 'prove' that we in the West are all out against Islam and must be exterminated. That makes it a sensitive issue. The other thing is that although this isn't a new issue in general, we still need to hold this kind of mindless idiocy up to the public eye, so that the tossers in DHL or whoever feel the pressure and are encouraged to get the finger out to change things for the better.
For astrology, it's been discredited over and over and over. There's never been any hint of evidence into validity, not even preliminary theories.
OTOH, there are good reasons to think that certain things, like eg. an opposition between the Sun and any of the inner planets, would have a negative influence on events on Earth ;-)
So, yes, Americans watch a lot of TV, but is there any evidence that watching TV lowers IQ? I would suspect that the causation is the other way around.
You mean, low intellligence causes TV in the US? That would explain a few things ;-)
Seriously, though, there probably hasn't been much research directly into the effect of TV on IQ - traditionally, IQ has been assumed to be an innate characteristic, not something that was fundamentally changed by the environment; which is not to say that a given IQ is not shaped by training, but the assumption has always been that you wer born with 'a given amount of intelligence' - an ability to learn - and that schooling would be secondary in shaping how well you did academically. So, on this basis, one would assume that watching TV has no influence either way.
On the other hand, it has always been clear that even if you are very intelligent, you still need to put in a certain amount of effort in order to develop your abilities, and time spent on passively watching pointless TV programmes is likely to develop a person's abilities less than actively studying something or working to solve problems of some sort. There has been recent research to suggest that intelligence may be somewhat plastic, at least when you are child, so it could be there is a basis for saying that watching too much TV lowers intelligence - or at least doesn't develop it to it full potential, which arguably is the same thing.
...those banging at your doors don't give a damn about laws.
Unless they have poor security and get hacked repeatedly. Some places you can almost just walk in, and if they are a small company, they may not feel that they have money to spend on proper security. Unless they are made painfully aware of the benefits.
People today don't use the word 'parlance', so I assume you are old and therefore your opinion of "today" is irrelevant....
Well, I know of at least one person who does. It may not be totally Street English, but it is not uncommon. Apart from that, it is a rather braindead thing to say that my views are irrelevant because I use a word you wouldn't use, don't you agree? Also, you failed to criticise me for not putting a comma after "A gang"; surely that would have put me outside the human race?
Exactly. English is not my native language, so sometimes I use the wrong words
Sorry if I sounded like I was trying to put you down - I just wanted to make sure I understood correctly; my own English isn't too brilliant either :-)
Considering how none of the new "agreements" are binding, what real difference does it make? Show and no go, feel good BS.
And how binding do you think a "binding" agreement would be? Considering the fact that most of these state leaders would have to go home and have their binding agreements ratified. This is how all politics work; you state your intentions, and then you start working towards making it happen, but nowhere is it guaranteed that it will. One of the costs of having democracy. Hopefully the respective parliaments and electorates are not all too benighted to actually go and do something about things.
The best way to deal with terrorism is to neglect them totally.
I assume you meant 'ignore', not 'neglect'? But no, we should definitely not try to ignore them, on the contrary. We need to make them unattractive in the eyes of vulnerable, young people, as well as work to ensure the the young are not vulnerable to the pseudo-religious claptrap of extremists. People only fall for this kind idiocy because they are unable to find any hope of have a meaningful future in society.
We also, and I hate to say this, have to go and fight Daesh militarily with our own soldiers on the ground, most likely. I have been a pacifist most of my life, but we put our foot in it - again - when we invaded Iraq to topple Hussein (who was in power because of what we did previously etc etc); the only way out of this mess is to carry it through to the end. And this time, let's try to be sincere about fixing what we have broken so badly. Daesh is only one symptom of what is really wrong; we can wipe them out, but unless we cure the underlying illness, the cancer will just come back.
Please read the flaming summary at least, FFS. They used a law that requires commercial infringement, SO THIS IS NOT AGAINST THAT LAW!!!!!
Get it yet, you freakish retard???
You seem upset? In fact, I would say you seem to be howling obscenely; I mean five exclamation marks? Hardly the hallmark of serene composure. I will, however, try to stop laughing and answer politely.
You don't really seem to have read - and understood - what I was writing; I don't think it should be illegal to share your music with friends or use it creatively. However, that sort of viewpoint belongs in the area of politics: that's where legislation is worked out. Police and judges are barred from making legislation in most Western societies due to the principle of separation powers. IOW, they have no other choice than following the law.
That aside, I was trying to understand what the reasoning might have been behind prosecuting what to most must seem like a fairly innocent activity. You may not think it is right, and you may not think the police, prosecutors and judge chose to interpret the laws in that way, but they did. Personally, I prefer to understand things, even if I don't agree with them - how else can I hope to make a sensible counter-argument? You appear to have made a different choice; you are free to do so, of course, but I think, if you want the respect of your peers, then you need to change the tone and level of your arguments.
Time for you to look up tax avoidance vs. tax evasion.
Time to look at why it is possible for anybody to avoid paying tax. The reason why we pay tax is simple and easy to understand: we pay for things like infrastructure, health care (in countries where this exists), schools, military etc. When we avoid paying tax, it means we are freeloading - parasites on society - and that those who do pay their taxes have to shoulder the burden. The idea of paying tax in proportion to your income is only really used because it is relatively easy to work out, at least for ordinary individuals, but what we really should be doing is tax according to how much load you put on the facilities provided by society, at least if 'you' are a company. And the calculation of load should include the effect a company's activities have on people's health, how much waste they produce, which society has to deal with etc.
A gang in today's parlance, is a group of people working together for criminal purposes, age and gender are irrelevant.
As I understand it, whether they actually derive financial benefit from what they do, is also irrelevant; they are breaking the law when they share things they don't own the IP rights for. Not that I necessarily agree that it should be illegal, but that is political matter, not a legal one. The reasoning behind why what they did was illegal runs like this: On one hand, these gentlefolks did in fact derive some benefit from what they did - not financial, but social, and they clearly found that attractive enough to break the law. On the other hand, it could be said that they took customers away from the companies that might otherwise have benefitted, so that is one, potential, financial damage. The other one os that there may be record companies that own the songs, who feel they have lost out.
Personally, I think it is wrong that record labels, publishers and others can sit on good music, works of art or stories for as long as they can, without making them available to the public. IMO you should lose your IP very quickly, once you stop making them available - perhaps these things should be tranferred to some public IP store, from where people could then keep buying them. The proceeds could go to charity or to supports young artists.
Inevitable? Perhaps. I'm not too worried. Freedom has always found a way and will continue to do so in the future; and it will also find a natural balance with the need for a stable, functioning society - we don't really need the internet for that, it's just a convenient tool.
As for the internet, I tend to think of it in terms of cost vs benefit; there are some clear and very important benefits: it enables fast, global communication, which helps break down barriers and open up our minds. It gives us access to knowledge in a way that was unthinkable even 20 years ago. Unfortunately, it also makes it very, very easy to disseminate worthless crap, and it seems like 90% of everything you find on the internet is exactly that. The costs of the internet are very real too - the infrastructure is expensive to establish and maintain, for one thing, and it enables organised crime, like drugs cartels, people smugglers, paedophiles, terrorists, ... (not to mention financial criminals). Is it worth the price? I don't know, and the problem is as far as I can tell, that the so-called freedom advocates are not willing to engage in a discussion of the fact; they seem to preclude any outcome that might favour any level of restriction.
The problem with that is that only those who are willing to take part in discussions will get any say. Plus, try to look at it from another perspective: the internet exists because somebody was willing to pay for the infrastructure: cables, computers etc. The ones that footed the bill are likely to feel that they are being generous for even paying attention to the opinions of the users. Freedom may be a fundamental right, but the existence of the internet isn't.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder - to me, the UI of cat and vi (the old vi, not vim) are far more attractive than any GUI. GUIs have so much more scope for getting it wrong; they so often end up feeling like an overstuffed, Victorian living room with arsenic in the wallpaper (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...). To make a good GUI, concentrate on simplicity, extensibility and convenience; an interface that is good to use will be naturally beautiful.
It would probably be more damaging to one's career - certainly as a hard talking politician - to be found on the Hello Kitty fan club's name list, than any revelations about drug taking, sexual deviancy or Communist sympathies. Ant chance that there were names of top terrorists among them?
Bring the nation's attention upon a thoroughly broken system that has been quietly abused for years?
Crime is crime, greed is greed and so on. This guy didn't idealistically bring his own livelihood in danger to highlight the failings of "the broken system". That's like saying the bankers who undermined our economy with irresponsible practices driven by shortsighted greed were heroes - it's a disingenious argument.
A small clarification: Superman is fictional, Monkey King is mythological, which is the same thing, but with the benefits of tradition and hindsight.
If you start by limiting your thinking to procedural ...
I don't think that really is at the heart of the problem - 'procedural' is just a tool, and it has it its place, certainly. But to make a good engineer, you have to start with a 'problem', something you want to solve, and choose your tools to fit the problem. The problem with managers who tink they have understaood it all is that they then think we 'just do' ... and then they go out and buy a tool that can 'just do...' whatever. Like, if you are a team of builders working on a new house - imagine the manager going out to buy this new, amazing electric drill and insisting that it is used not just to make holes, but also screw in screws and cut timber, which it could be made to do; but on top of that, he also wants it to dig holes and make the coffee, and if you can't, he'll tell you that you're imcompetent.
The things you point out are certainly valid concerns, but I think it is about time we try to grow up a bit and stop sweeping the very real problems of things like hate-crimes, bullying and other anti-social behaviours under the carpet of 'Free Speech'. I think I value free speech just as much as most, and there is no doubt that it is crucial for the proper functioning of society, that we are free to point out real problems without fear of punishment. But there is a balance to be struck - one person's freedom should not be allowed to take away the freedom of others, for example. Whether the so-called freedom advocates like it or not, there is a discussion to be had about this - in a reality where technology races ahead, we can't just lean back and declare that it was settled once and forever several hundred years ago; on the contrary, we have to review the issue regularly.
German Muslim: 'Islam Is Coming And Your Daughters Will Wear The Hijab'
As a non-Muslim, I have to ask - where do you find any hate-speech in that statement? As I read it, it is certainly provocative, and it implies that the speaker expects us all to become Muslims, but that could very well be as the result of peaceful evangelism (if such a word is appropriate - what would a Muslim call it?) To me it just comes across as a frustrated outburst as a result of the fact that many second generation muslims are much less devout; just like most Christians in the West, really.
Can you Say vitamin B12?
Interestingly, being apes, we have evolved from a group of animals that eat a lot of fruit, and studies suggest that we may have evolved an ability to process alcohol better than many other groups as a result of eating fermenting fruit. Which incidentally may be naturally high in B12 because of the fermentation process. Just a thought.
The ideacthat there are to many people is an american urban legend.
Well, to be fair, there does seem to be rather a lot of Americans ;-) (*runs for cover while removing tongue from cheek*)
Anybody who is moderately intelligent and understands the idea of doing one thing after another is able to learn how to carry out the basics of coding. I think most of my generation learned to write code by picking up whichever manual was at hand, reading it and then try to work out how to solve some small problem; it took me an afternoon to get started, and I can't imagine it would take anybody else longer, really. What is missing is the word 'well'; any idiot can learn to string instructions together, as I thought when I heard about Cameron learning it, but doing it well is another matter altogether.
It falls in three phases, I think:
1: Learning that coding consists of writing simple instructions and thinking "Oh, it that all it is?"
2: Learning a bit more and realising that writing a good program for a substantial project is actually hard
3: Building up years of experience and eventually becoming good
Regrettably, a lot of people never progress past 1; and unfortunately a lot of them are managers, who then think that they are equipped to make decisions about the subject.