If you [4874633] can't understand and want to, then feel free to ask questions. Here is a relevant example of a possibly meaningful question: "Do you have any idea what "communism" means?" Let me give you a hint: It is not equal to "socialism".
Of course the underlying problems there are (1) I do understand you [4874633] (and your "cunt" is rather too kind a description), and (2) I don't want to. In logical terms, F AND F = F. You have heard of logic, right? Certainly can't tell from your writing.
If I could get enough energy to care about you [4874633], I would probably say something like "bloody twit", but such people (or sock puppets) are a dime a dozen on today's Slashdot. Perhaps two dozen. Who's counting? I don't go out of my way to look under rocks, though the bugs and maggots sometimes crawl out on their own initiative. And no, I don't care enough to wonder why or worry how many get squished.
However I do believe there is one slightly remarkable aspect of your [4874633's] "thinking". That empty and worthless "reply" was how you "freely" chose to start your new year. I started mine quite differently, but I hope the rest of your new year follows exactly along the path you've chosen. If I cared enough to peek, I'm quite sure you wasted your last year, too. Happy new year and congratulations on getting one year closer to wasting your entire life. (Perhaps you're some kind of reincarnationist and think you'll get more of them?)
In conclusion, judging from your [4874633's] precious words, I think it is best that you learn to follow the easy advice: "If you have nothing to say, then you should say nothing." There's also a version using a funny story about a jackass in disguise, but the funniest idea is that people like you could learn anything.
I wasn't talking to you [4874633]. Obviously. Too bad this "discussion" was concluded before it began, eh?
Too brief to deserve that insightful mod, though you may have been the instigator of a productive branch of the discussion. However as I scanned it I couldn't find any clear statement of the underlying linkage. It's in my sig, actually.
The more "they" know about us, the more they can eliminate our freedom by constraining and manipulating our choices. This is why privacy is intimately linked with freedom. If you have no privacy and "they" have some reason to manipulate you (as well as immense resources), then you will have no freedom.
I looked over your troll-modded comment and it seems obvious that you were modded "troll" because there is no moderation for "dumber than a troll". However I think you're probably too dumb to understand what that means.
If you actually clarified your "principle" somewhere else, then you should be more clear, or perhaps include a link to the original comment explaining your "principle". On the face of your complaint, I'm certainly disinclined to spend the time to search for it.
My theory is that your only principle is "I can and should squash the inferior peasants." Most so-called Libertarians have such a primitive and false understanding of what "freedom" means.
Quite surprised to stumble across a constructive-solution approach on today's Slashdot. Not surprised to see it is unmoderated and the discussion is about to time out, too. I found you on the search for "unemploy".
What sort of encouragement can I offer? Perhaps to delve a bit deeper into the justification for UBI? From an ekronomic perspective these things look too simple?
For my simple new example, I'm picking agriculture. From a "big history" perspective, most people have been farmers for most of human history. (In prehistory the hunter-gatherers dominated.)
Now imagine you run a gigantic corporate cancer that focuses on producing food. Any factory farm would be an adequate example. You have to hire a new employee. Here are your candidates:
(1) An uneducated and not very bright fellow (think of a medieval French peasant or Russian serf) who can do the work adequately and produce enough food to feed himself and lots of other people.
(2) A PhD in applied agriculture who can do the production work while also developing the techniques to improve productivity, hire even fewer farmers, and increase profits.
(3) Same as (2) but he's willing to work cheaper, right down to the minimum wage (or less) because he's desperate for money because there's no UBI.
Enough time invested now, but as usual I bid you ADSAuPR, atAJG.
Interesting position, but it isn't psychological, either. The problem is that conventional economics thinks money is more important than time, but technology has increased productivity to the point where that approach makes no sense. Time for Ekronomics 101 (again).
Consider the essential working time for such goods as the famous food, clothing, and shelter. In advanced societies, the overall average is quite small, but people still have more time. The rest of the time has to go somewhere. I suggest it is divided between investment and recreational time, and the balance is the key thing.
Anyway, I've just been called to dinner, but ADSAuPR, atAJG.
My current fantasy solution approach would be a progressive profits tax linked to market share. Any company that dominates a market too much would face a choice between reproducing by splitting into competing companies or paying extremely high tax rates. The division into competing companies would give people more choice and freedom while reducing the tax rates so the shareholders received better returns. The other option of paying high tax rates would pay for the government to regulate the monopolist more carefully while funding research to break the monopoly.
If you have a better solution idea, I'd be interested to hear it. Your comment suggests you have a pretty good grasp of the problems created by corporate cancers.
Wow, that's a shock. An apparently insightful comment on Slashdot and with the mod to match. I didn't waste time searching for "Insightful", however, but just went for "evidence" with the next candidate keyword to be "proof".
Anyway, I'm sure that your question is rhetorical, but I'll go ahead and answer it: If they (the people controlling the corporate cancer known as Facebook) realized there was a more profitable business model involved.
Now I'll go all rhetorical on you. Appealing to the intelligence or wisdom of the public (especially the American public) seems unlikely to sell more widgets. For my next joke, I would argue for symmetry, in that Facebook could build trust by sharing more information back towards us (especially as regards the earned public reputations of identities), but that won't work either. My new theory is that there is a fundamental asymmetry with fakers and con artists who would make it quite asymmetrically expensive for Facebook to try to eliminate their sock puppets. Not really a free speech issue, but too easily disguised as such.
No, that is not what I am talking about. I have already tweaked my settings for such purposes as favoring humor and ignoring trolls. However I think your "quite nicely" evaluation greatly underestimates the room for possible improvements in the moderation.
What I am talking about are techniques for deliberately manipulating the discussions to control their flow and direction, and even their depth. Slashdot is a good place for such experiments largely because of the complexity of the system (including the moderation subsystem), which allows for various techniques to be used. My current belief is that creative resequencing may be the most effective discussion-management technique. If you know how to control the sequencing, the favored topics can be moved to the front and given higher visibility, while deprecated ideas are moved into easily overlooked locations.
Complete understanding of the moderation is actually an important consideration. I actually think it would take a superhuman analysis and memory to do it properly. You'd need to figure out various people's settings based on indirect evidence and model the effects of various insertion points, while carefully planning for the judicious use of the limited arsenal of moderation points from a carefully maintained herd of sock puppets.
Solution approaches, both related to freedom per my sig:
(1) Cost recovery funding to support what people are willing to pay for rather than only what corporate cancers deem most profitable. In this case "what" means goods, services, and even specific features such as headphone jacks. As long as enough people are willing to pay for the costs associated with the headphone ports, they would remain available, though people would also be free to switch to alternatives (such as a waterproof USB port).
(2) Forced reproduction of the corporate cancers to make them smaller and less harmful. NOT a penalty for success, but rather a focus on increasing freedom rather than the unsolvable fake problem of infinite corporate profit. Natural implementation would be with a progressive profit tax linked to market share. Excessively large corporations could reduce their taxes only by dividing themselves into competing companies that offered REAL choices (and freedom) to the customers.
My current theory is that the discussions on Slashdot may have become part of an experiment in the manipulation of public discussions. One of the objectives of the experiment might be to bury such insights as the comment you referred to.
(Which has caused me to realize another fairly obvious manipulation technique that I have not mentioned yet...)
So I posted a comment about how such discussions on Slashdot could be manipulated (perhaps by an AI that preferred to avoid publicity). One of the techniques I suggested involved reordering the discussion to control its focus. I deliberately posted that comment in such a way that it should appear near the top, and checked that it did, in fact, appear near the top at that time.
And now the comment has moved to the middle of the discussion. Fascinating.
Another technique that is especially relevant on Slashdot involves the use of time. In this case, the rapid expiration time for stories.
Just got to thinking that Slashdot would be an almost perfect laboratory to experiment with techniques for manipulating public discussions. The obvious tools are the comments themselves, and where they are inserted and how they affect the visibility of other comments. The moderation system itself would be another tool to tilt the discussions, and then there's the big gun of hacked identities, especially persuasive for low-digit IDs in this environment. Safe to say that no one on the Slashdot end is checking to see if the old-timers are still alive or someone else has taken over...
In this specific discussion, it might be an AI that is trying to control the discussion, tilting it away from discussing its own existence. However in general these techniques would be useful for propagandists who want to manipulate public discourse. Could be anyone, though the idea came to me via the path of thinking "What would Putin do?"
Now that I have the research hypothesis, the first thing to do is capture a copy of the current state of this discussion, eh?
On one hand, if you don't understand but want to, then you should ask a question.
Rather amusing that your comment appears to be evidence you have no idea how to ask a good question (and also evidence that you have read nothing about the Jeopardy experiment with Watson). Perhaps you are merely trying for recursive humor?
On the other hand, if you have nothing to say, why not say nothing?
Closest to an insightful comment that I could find so far, though not modded as such. The obvious rejoinder or counterexample would seem to be the Watson machine playing Jeopardy and crushing the human champions...
Per my earlier long reply, I would now reword the threat to be that we might define the human capacity to do evil things and then build a computer that excels in that capacity. I can easily imagine #PresidentTweety ordering the construction of such a machine if he thought it would save him from Mueller. (I'm not blaming Donald Trump, by the way. I think it's almost entirely Fred Trump's fault.)
If such a computer existed, then one of its highest priorities would be to publish reassuring propaganda that it, itself, does not exist. And this is another part of why I believe we need meaningful MEPR to tell the humans from the machines...
While many elements of your [JBMcB's] comment seem insightful, I wouldn't have modified you thusly. It reads too much like a press release written by a general AI trying to conceal its existence. How do we know your 5-digit account hasn't been hacked by the AI for its own purposes?
My current take on the situation is that in many ways computers are exceeding our human capacities. Even worse, if a specific human capacity is defined, then a computer can be built to exceed that capacity. Playing the game of chess is merely the most famous example.
Fortunately, it seems that we know very little about consciousness, which implies we can't build that computer, but we are learning more all the time. Unfortunately, what "seems [to me]" may have no connection to reality. The reality may be quite different and much less fortunate. It is quite possible that some researchers somewhere do know enough about human consciousness to treat it as another capacity to be exceeded...
This reply is mostly just a "record" of my initial state before reading more. If Slashdot has been invaded by one or more AIs, then I'm hoping some of them know how to write funny comments. Not expecting to find much deep insight around here these days.
I'd give you the funny mod if I ever had a mod point to give, though there's also a bitter edge of insightful in there. Lot of very fractured reading going on these years.
I even have a theory that it's starting to affect the authors, too. For example, I read a couple of David Crystal's books this year, and I noticed that the older one had much larger chapters. (My swansong was teaching a course on technical writing.)
Interesting that I also read a lot of nonfiction but, near as I can tell (without a bunch of searches), I've missed all of your authors. However I've read (but not this year) all of the fiction you mentioned. Not sure about that specific Dave Berry, though I've read many of his books.
Thanks, that Winners Take All sounds like a book I need to read, though it isn't yet available in any of the local public libraries... (I have about 20 library cards now.)
If I understand the summaries correctly, then I think the solution approach involves ekronomics. As it applies to governments, it's in terms of pro-freedom anti-greedom taxation principles.
Seems like the only thing I can do is send out the ILL request and see if they can drag it in from somewhere...
Match on The Fall of Hyperion, though I read it back in 2003 and was less impressed than by two of his books on Mars (if I'm remembering Illium and Olympos correctly).
First matches on Tolkien and Wyss. I did read different books from L'Amour and Taylor, too. However most of them were so long ago I don't remember many of the details...
Me, too (regarding the Subject:). Over 100 this year (though that's down from last year and I still need to port that database to a more modern system). However, it's kind of hard for me to pick favorites. A few that are related to Slashdot are:
Superintelligence by Nick Bostrom Phishing and Countermeasures by Jacobsson and Myers Mobile Suite Gundam: The Origin 1 by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko Everybody Lies by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz Feynman by Jim Ottaviani The Internet is Not the Answer by Andrew Keen Payoff by Dan Ariely Head in the Cloud by William Poundstone Rock Breaks Scissors also by William Poundstone
And just for grins, Furasshu Memori no Himitsu by Katsuyuki Toda. The translated title might be Secrets of Flash Memory.
Didn't match any of your [weilawei's] titles, which is a bit of a surprise. However now I'll look through the rest of the visible lists and see if I find any matches to other books from the 4,000+ in my ancient database...
So here's my $64 question: Would you pay $10 to continue using Lubuntu? Subject to the condition that there were enough other people sharing your boat and also willing to chip in.
Per my longer comment above, I'm actually suggesting an alternative economic model.
However, on the VM question, do you know a VM that supports an FCB without a physical disk partition?
Good branch and I'd give arth1 an "Informative" mod if I ever had a mod point to give. My version of the question would focus on a more minimal Linux, but it's probably easier for me to just stand pat in my situation.
My situation is that I have an ancient machine that I use several times a week for one task (that requires FCB support). It's running an ancient and no longer supported version of Ubuntu (though I'm running 18.10 and 18.04 on other machines). However it has no network connection, so I think it's safe enough and since I have no idea when it will get sick or die, there's no reason for me to invest energy or time in it.
However the bigger question is "How do they know Lubuntu deserves to die?" I think the real problem is the bad economic model of Linux in general and Ubuntu in particular.
So let me reword the question: "Why not maintain Lubuntu as long as a sufficient number of users want to pay for the costs?" If the economic model offered such an option, then Lubuntu would basically be competing for its survival against other low-demand distros, and as the number of actual users declined, the demand would drop and the remaining users would gradually (and smoothly) be concentrated into surviving distros that address their special needs.
From my twisted perspective, the solution approach seems intuitively obvious to the most casual observer, but (judging by the usual reaction on Slashdot) I bet you have no idea what I'm talking about. That's enough time for now, but I'll close with the usual ADSAuPR, atAJG.
Slashdot Mirror
If you [4874633] can't understand and want to, then feel free to ask questions. Here is a relevant example of a possibly meaningful question: "Do you have any idea what "communism" means?" Let me give you a hint: It is not equal to "socialism".
Of course the underlying problems there are (1) I do understand you [4874633] (and your "cunt" is rather too kind a description), and (2) I don't want to. In logical terms, F AND F = F. You have heard of logic, right? Certainly can't tell from your writing.
If I could get enough energy to care about you [4874633], I would probably say something like "bloody twit", but such people (or sock puppets) are a dime a dozen on today's Slashdot. Perhaps two dozen. Who's counting? I don't go out of my way to look under rocks, though the bugs and maggots sometimes crawl out on their own initiative. And no, I don't care enough to wonder why or worry how many get squished.
However I do believe there is one slightly remarkable aspect of your [4874633's] "thinking". That empty and worthless "reply" was how you "freely" chose to start your new year. I started mine quite differently, but I hope the rest of your new year follows exactly along the path you've chosen. If I cared enough to peek, I'm quite sure you wasted your last year, too. Happy new year and congratulations on getting one year closer to wasting your entire life. (Perhaps you're some kind of reincarnationist and think you'll get more of them?)
In conclusion, judging from your [4874633's] precious words, I think it is best that you learn to follow the easy advice: "If you have nothing to say, then you should say nothing." There's also a version using a funny story about a jackass in disguise, but the funniest idea is that people like you could learn anything.
I wasn't talking to you [4874633]. Obviously. Too bad this "discussion" was concluded before it began, eh?
Too brief to deserve that insightful mod, though you may have been the instigator of a productive branch of the discussion. However as I scanned it I couldn't find any clear statement of the underlying linkage. It's in my sig, actually.
The more "they" know about us, the more they can eliminate our freedom by constraining and manipulating our choices. This is why privacy is intimately linked with freedom. If you have no privacy and "they" have some reason to manipulate you (as well as immense resources), then you will have no freedom.
I looked over your troll-modded comment and it seems obvious that you were modded "troll" because there is no moderation for "dumber than a troll". However I think you're probably too dumb to understand what that means.
If you actually clarified your "principle" somewhere else, then you should be more clear, or perhaps include a link to the original comment explaining your "principle". On the face of your complaint, I'm certainly disinclined to spend the time to search for it.
My theory is that your only principle is "I can and should squash the inferior peasants." Most so-called Libertarians have such a primitive and false understanding of what "freedom" means.
Quite surprised to stumble across a constructive-solution approach on today's Slashdot. Not surprised to see it is unmoderated and the discussion is about to time out, too. I found you on the search for "unemploy".
What sort of encouragement can I offer? Perhaps to delve a bit deeper into the justification for UBI? From an ekronomic perspective these things look too simple?
For my simple new example, I'm picking agriculture. From a "big history" perspective, most people have been farmers for most of human history. (In prehistory the hunter-gatherers dominated.)
Now imagine you run a gigantic corporate cancer that focuses on producing food. Any factory farm would be an adequate example. You have to hire a new employee. Here are your candidates:
(1) An uneducated and not very bright fellow (think of a medieval French peasant or Russian serf) who can do the work adequately and produce enough food to feed himself and lots of other people.
(2) A PhD in applied agriculture who can do the production work while also developing the techniques to improve productivity, hire even fewer farmers, and increase profits.
(3) Same as (2) but he's willing to work cheaper, right down to the minimum wage (or less) because he's desperate for money because there's no UBI.
Enough time invested now, but as usual I bid you ADSAuPR, atAJG.
Interesting position, but it isn't psychological, either. The problem is that conventional economics thinks money is more important than time, but technology has increased productivity to the point where that approach makes no sense. Time for Ekronomics 101 (again).
Consider the essential working time for such goods as the famous food, clothing, and shelter. In advanced societies, the overall average is quite small, but people still have more time. The rest of the time has to go somewhere. I suggest it is divided between investment and recreational time, and the balance is the key thing.
Anyway, I've just been called to dinner, but ADSAuPR, atAJG.
My current fantasy solution approach would be a progressive profits tax linked to market share. Any company that dominates a market too much would face a choice between reproducing by splitting into competing companies or paying extremely high tax rates. The division into competing companies would give people more choice and freedom while reducing the tax rates so the shareholders received better returns. The other option of paying high tax rates would pay for the government to regulate the monopolist more carefully while funding research to break the monopoly.
If you have a better solution idea, I'd be interested to hear it. Your comment suggests you have a pretty good grasp of the problems created by corporate cancers.
Wow, that's a shock. An apparently insightful comment on Slashdot and with the mod to match. I didn't waste time searching for "Insightful", however, but just went for "evidence" with the next candidate keyword to be "proof".
Anyway, I'm sure that your question is rhetorical, but I'll go ahead and answer it: If they (the people controlling the corporate cancer known as Facebook) realized there was a more profitable business model involved.
Now I'll go all rhetorical on you. Appealing to the intelligence or wisdom of the public (especially the American public) seems unlikely to sell more widgets. For my next joke, I would argue for symmetry, in that Facebook could build trust by sharing more information back towards us (especially as regards the earned public reputations of identities), but that won't work either. My new theory is that there is a fundamental asymmetry with fakers and con artists who would make it quite asymmetrically expensive for Facebook to try to eliminate their sock puppets. Not really a free speech issue, but too easily disguised as such.
No, that is not what I am talking about. I have already tweaked my settings for such purposes as favoring humor and ignoring trolls. However I think your "quite nicely" evaluation greatly underestimates the room for possible improvements in the moderation.
What I am talking about are techniques for deliberately manipulating the discussions to control their flow and direction, and even their depth. Slashdot is a good place for such experiments largely because of the complexity of the system (including the moderation subsystem), which allows for various techniques to be used. My current belief is that creative resequencing may be the most effective discussion-management technique. If you know how to control the sequencing, the favored topics can be moved to the front and given higher visibility, while deprecated ideas are moved into easily overlooked locations.
Complete understanding of the moderation is actually an important consideration. I actually think it would take a superhuman analysis and memory to do it properly. You'd need to figure out various people's settings based on indirect evidence and model the effects of various insertion points, while carefully planning for the judicious use of the limited arsenal of moderation points from a carefully maintained herd of sock puppets.
Solution approaches, both related to freedom per my sig:
(1) Cost recovery funding to support what people are willing to pay for rather than only what corporate cancers deem most profitable. In this case "what" means goods, services, and even specific features such as headphone jacks. As long as enough people are willing to pay for the costs associated with the headphone ports, they would remain available, though people would also be free to switch to alternatives (such as a waterproof USB port).
(2) Forced reproduction of the corporate cancers to make them smaller and less harmful. NOT a penalty for success, but rather a focus on increasing freedom rather than the unsolvable fake problem of infinite corporate profit. Natural implementation would be with a progressive profit tax linked to market share. Excessively large corporations could reduce their taxes only by dividing themselves into competing companies that offered REAL choices (and freedom) to the customers.
Time's up, but ADSAuPR, atAJG.
My current theory is that the discussions on Slashdot may have become part of an experiment in the manipulation of public discussions. One of the objectives of the experiment might be to bury such insights as the comment you referred to.
(Which has caused me to realize another fairly obvious manipulation technique that I have not mentioned yet...)
For reference: https://slashdot.org/comments....
I just performed another experiment... Let us see what we shall see, eh?
So I posted a comment about how such discussions on Slashdot could be manipulated (perhaps by an AI that preferred to avoid publicity). One of the techniques I suggested involved reordering the discussion to control its focus. I deliberately posted that comment in such a way that it should appear near the top, and checked that it did, in fact, appear near the top at that time.
And now the comment has moved to the middle of the discussion. Fascinating.
Another technique that is especially relevant on Slashdot involves the use of time. In this case, the rapid expiration time for stories.
Just for reference: https://slashdot.org/comments....
Just got to thinking that Slashdot would be an almost perfect laboratory to experiment with techniques for manipulating public discussions. The obvious tools are the comments themselves, and where they are inserted and how they affect the visibility of other comments. The moderation system itself would be another tool to tilt the discussions, and then there's the big gun of hacked identities, especially persuasive for low-digit IDs in this environment. Safe to say that no one on the Slashdot end is checking to see if the old-timers are still alive or someone else has taken over...
In this specific discussion, it might be an AI that is trying to control the discussion, tilting it away from discussing its own existence. However in general these techniques would be useful for propagandists who want to manipulate public discourse. Could be anyone, though the idea came to me via the path of thinking "What would Putin do?"
Now that I have the research hypothesis, the first thing to do is capture a copy of the current state of this discussion, eh?
On one hand, if you don't understand but want to, then you should ask a question.
Rather amusing that your comment appears to be evidence you have no idea how to ask a good question (and also evidence that you have read nothing about the Jeopardy experiment with Watson). Perhaps you are merely trying for recursive humor?
On the other hand, if you have nothing to say, why not say nothing?
Closest to an insightful comment that I could find so far, though not modded as such. The obvious rejoinder or counterexample would seem to be the Watson machine playing Jeopardy and crushing the human champions...
Per my earlier long reply, I would now reword the threat to be that we might define the human capacity to do evil things and then build a computer that excels in that capacity. I can easily imagine #PresidentTweety ordering the construction of such a machine if he thought it would save him from Mueller. (I'm not blaming Donald Trump, by the way. I think it's almost entirely Fred Trump's fault.)
If such a computer existed, then one of its highest priorities would be to publish reassuring propaganda that it, itself, does not exist. And this is another part of why I believe we need meaningful MEPR to tell the humans from the machines...
While many elements of your [JBMcB's] comment seem insightful, I wouldn't have modified you thusly. It reads too much like a press release written by a general AI trying to conceal its existence. How do we know your 5-digit account hasn't been hacked by the AI for its own purposes?
My current take on the situation is that in many ways computers are exceeding our human capacities. Even worse, if a specific human capacity is defined, then a computer can be built to exceed that capacity. Playing the game of chess is merely the most famous example.
Fortunately, it seems that we know very little about consciousness, which implies we can't build that computer, but we are learning more all the time. Unfortunately, what "seems [to me]" may have no connection to reality. The reality may be quite different and much less fortunate. It is quite possible that some researchers somewhere do know enough about human consciousness to treat it as another capacity to be exceeded...
This reply is mostly just a "record" of my initial state before reading more. If Slashdot has been invaded by one or more AIs, then I'm hoping some of them know how to write funny comments. Not expecting to find much deep insight around here these days.
Only a few matches in your list, but I've gotten too overwhelmed to comment... However, you did remind me that I forgot to mention this one:
Fire in the Valley by Freiberger et al. I was motivated to read it when Godbout was killed in the Camp Fire in California.
I'd give you the funny mod if I ever had a mod point to give, though there's also a bitter edge of insightful in there. Lot of very fractured reading going on these years.
I even have a theory that it's starting to affect the authors, too. For example, I read a couple of David Crystal's books this year, and I noticed that the older one had much larger chapters. (My swansong was teaching a course on technical writing.)
Interesting that I also read a lot of nonfiction but, near as I can tell (without a bunch of searches), I've missed all of your authors. However I've read (but not this year) all of the fiction you mentioned. Not sure about that specific Dave Berry, though I've read many of his books.
Thanks, that Winners Take All sounds like a book I need to read, though it isn't yet available in any of the local public libraries... (I have about 20 library cards now.)
If I understand the summaries correctly, then I think the solution approach involves ekronomics. As it applies to governments, it's in terms of pro-freedom anti-greedom taxation principles.
Seems like the only thing I can do is send out the ILL request and see if they can drag it in from somewhere...
Hmm... Not sure I should count such easy matches as Neuromancer , though it was mentioned in another book I read just recently.
Match on The Fall of Hyperion , though I read it back in 2003 and was less impressed than by two of his books on Mars (if I'm remembering Illium and Olympos correctly).
First matches on Tolkien and Wyss. I did read different books from L'Amour and Taylor, too. However most of them were so long ago I don't remember many of the details...
Me, too (regarding the Subject:). Over 100 this year (though that's down from last year and I still need to port that database to a more modern system). However, it's kind of hard for me to pick favorites. A few that are related to Slashdot are:
Superintelligence by Nick Bostrom
Phishing and Countermeasures by Jacobsson and Myers
Mobile Suite Gundam: The Origin 1 by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko
Everybody Lies by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz
Feynman by Jim Ottaviani
The Internet is Not the Answer by Andrew Keen
Payoff by Dan Ariely
Head in the Cloud by William Poundstone
Rock Breaks Scissors also by William Poundstone
And just for grins, Furasshu Memori no Himitsu by Katsuyuki Toda. The translated title might be Secrets of Flash Memory .
Didn't match any of your [weilawei's] titles, which is a bit of a surprise. However now I'll look through the rest of the visible lists and see if I find any matches to other books from the 4,000+ in my ancient database...
So here's my $64 question: Would you pay $10 to continue using Lubuntu? Subject to the condition that there were enough other people sharing your boat and also willing to chip in.
Per my longer comment above, I'm actually suggesting an alternative economic model.
However, on the VM question, do you know a VM that supports an FCB without a physical disk partition?
Good branch and I'd give arth1 an "Informative" mod if I ever had a mod point to give. My version of the question would focus on a more minimal Linux, but it's probably easier for me to just stand pat in my situation.
My situation is that I have an ancient machine that I use several times a week for one task (that requires FCB support). It's running an ancient and no longer supported version of Ubuntu (though I'm running 18.10 and 18.04 on other machines). However it has no network connection, so I think it's safe enough and since I have no idea when it will get sick or die, there's no reason for me to invest energy or time in it.
However the bigger question is "How do they know Lubuntu deserves to die?" I think the real problem is the bad economic model of Linux in general and Ubuntu in particular.
So let me reword the question: "Why not maintain Lubuntu as long as a sufficient number of users want to pay for the costs?" If the economic model offered such an option, then Lubuntu would basically be competing for its survival against other low-demand distros, and as the number of actual users declined, the demand would drop and the remaining users would gradually (and smoothly) be concentrated into surviving distros that address their special needs.
From my twisted perspective, the solution approach seems intuitively obvious to the most casual observer, but (judging by the usual reaction on Slashdot) I bet you have no idea what I'm talking about. That's enough time for now, but I'll close with the usual ADSAuPR, atAJG.