HOW can that be insightful? The reference of "He" is not clear unless you refer back to the Subject: line. Okay, so it's #PresidentTweety, but I STRONGLY doubt this was even his decision. The Mooch is the Donald's soulmate. You don't fire your TRUE soulmate.
I think this decision came directly from General Kelly. Trump has curled into the fetal position and has retrogressed to his high school days in the fake military private school. In Trump's delusional memory he was a YUGE success as a fake platoon commander.
Really. NOT a joke. Look it up in such sources as Trump Revealed. His beloved dad sentenced him there for obedience training when he got too gangsta and started playing with knives. (The book is already a bit fuzzy in my recollection, but I think Trump now claims (as reported in the book) that he doesn't even remember the knives.)
(So far the only reference to the book, but I bet I don't even get an informative mod... Maybe there are some other good references in the discussion, but I just haven't found them yet?)
Oh well. Moot for me since I'm never going to see another mod point to give.
However, I already said that along the lines of "As a novel, I would have already thrown it away for going beyond the limits of how far and high I can suspend my disbelief."
What? The Mooch is ALREADY gone? Poor #PresidentTweety!
My next speculation is that they'll call the clown car back and Sean Spicer will be allowed to hang around for a while.
All of this AFTER I wrote a GREAT rant? I'm so OBE? I'm SO sad. NOT.
Oh well, just for the off-record, here's part of the rant that could have been funny history:
Welcome to the Bungling Brother's Flying White House Circus with ringmaster the Mooth!
The Mooch has already fired Reince Preibus out of the Bannon Cannon, and tomorrow's show will be a cage match between the Mooth and General Kelly! No ref, because #PresidentTweety (the Bungling Brother himself) doesn't want to get involved in the squabbles he caused! Smart money says Kelly will win, but when has anything smart happened in this White House? If the Mooch wins, his next targets will be Mad Dog Mattis, McMaster, Tillerson, and even the YUGE Bannon!
Get your tickets and popcorn now! It's the YUGEST unGREATEST show on earth, right before they blow up the planet!
Well, if I ever got a mod point, then I'd be inclined to give you at least an "informative" for that. However, I'm not certain it's Putin, though the high-end estimates for Putin's wealth do go as high as $200 billion. Other estimates put him as low as $20 billion. Dark money is YUGE, even compared to Tor. Sometimes I wonder if Putin is really a puppet and front-man working for someone who is even better at hiding.
I'm actually most interested in seeing #PresidentTweety's laundry receipts for Putin's dirty rubles. The secret of his tax returns is that Trump went bankrupt and his only assets are his cut from the laundry business. You aren't bankrupt until your creditors give up on you, and they gave up on Trump decades ago. The only thing that saved Trump was his underworld connections who needed cleaner money. Now you know why he's in such a panic, eh?
Oh yeah. I should note that if Trump is really the secret puppeteer behind Putin, then he's the greatest actor of all time. I know he's a great liar, but NO way I can believe that one.
Oh, and a tip of the hat to the anonymous troll with the negative mods. Even allowing for the fundamental brokenness of the Slashdot moderation system, the feedback on what really cut your gut is sort of helpful. Mostly by proving you lack any other stronger response.
Well, you sound sincere, but I think you are extremely wrong. I hope I can differ politely enough to avoid the usual uncivil results on today's Slashdot.
Taxes are important, and corporations are actually the main beneficiaries of the good things that taxes can provide. Not to say that the current system is doing a very good job of providing those things, but that's a different problem, and abolishing taxes is just a silly idea, along the lines of the baby in the bathwater.
It is better to think in terms of what you want to accomplish with your tax policies. I think taxation should be designed to INCREASE human freedom. In particular, I think that means tax policy should encourage competition among corporations so that we have more choices and better choices. At one level, per my sig, freedom is about the choices we can make.
Therefore I think we should have a progressive tax on corporate profits, but it should be linked to market share. The more a company dominates some market and thereby reduces our freedom to choose alternative products or services, the taxes on that company's profits should increase. In normal cases, where there is no natural monopoly, the goal of the tax policy should be to make sure there are at least 3 to 5 meaningful choices, and I even think there should be major tax incentives for DIVIDING a giant company into sincere competitors. In the abnormal case, where there is a natural monopoly, then the higher tax rates should be used primarily for two purposes: (1) Careful regulation of the monopolist to limit abuse, and (2) research into ways to break the monopoly. You must realize that the monopolist is NEVER going to be sincere about that second one...
Now how to get there from here? I can only wish I saw a path. Right now it looks like corporate cancerism is going to kill the host [society].
Though on many of his days Spicer looked like a really dull object, I think #PresidentTweety's only use for Spicer was as a distraction to confuse the REAL news.
Alternative Subject: How to collaborate with the Russians without even trying!
Think about it. Trump obviously has no real communications strategy and his supporters could care less about White House press briefings.
Trump only has a FAKE communications strategy based on Twitter. Now if you were a clever and cunning Russian spy, and you noticed this, how would you take advantage of it?
I think Mueller's investigation should be extended to Twitter. Specifically, I think he should investigate Russian tampering with the election via Twitter. I even have a few ideas how it could be done. Putin's hackers would have begun by analyzing Twitter to find the most influential retweeters for election-related topics. Just focusing on one side of it, they would try to help the pro-Trump tweeters. For example, if a reliable pro-Trump tweeter was sleeping when Trump tweeted a juicy one, they would keep tabs and make sure the tweet was called to his attention when he came back to Twitter. You can actually extend that even farther to put more thumbs on the scales. Break the influencers down by specific interests and constituencies. If a particular Trump tweet will appeal to that specific tweeter's audience, then make sure he gets it, but if it would offend some of his target demographic, then you give it a pass. These sorts of activities should leave traces in the Twitter records, but I'm betting no one has looked for them. Yet.
Sean Spicer? Just a distracting clown. The only surprise was that the clown actually grew a backbone at the last minute. Or maybe not. Maybe Spicer wasn't standing on his principles but just pragmatically decided he wants to sell the first kiss-and-tell book from the inside?
Brief, but I guess it's an earned moderation. Not sure I agree. As I understand the story (but mostly from other sources), it seems that Spicer suddenly grew a backbone and insisted on resigning. Hard to believe, but even #PresidentTweety realized it would look better if Spicer hung around and just did nothing except for taking the money. Or perhaps Trump was merely afraid of another kiss-and-tell book? Will Spicer's be the first from the inside of the Donald's White House? I'm sure the publishers are lining up with YUGE advances.
Regarding Preibus, there is NO trace of a backbone, so Trump will keep him around for the sake of appearance. A FAKE chief of staff looks better than none at all, though a REAL chief of staff could actually be useful if getting things done were a factor to Trump. Priebus has already pledged his undying loyalty to the Mooch.
Don't forget that #PresidentTweety wants government of the Donald, by the Donald, for the Donald. Trump thinks useless Priebus is GREAT as a bone-toss [boner-toss?] to the GOP, even though the so-called Republicans are dedicated to government of the corporations, by the lawyers, for the richest 0.1% of the population. The YUGE corporations obviously prefer the GOP, but I think the REAL joke is that Trump is NOT even in the 0.1%. The hilarious secret of Trump's tax returns is that his so-called assets are just laundry fees for Putin's dirty rubles.
Remember ol' Honest Abe? That "government of the people, by the people, for the people" stuff? Today there ain't NO major player on that side. Ain't no one worrying about the country or Constitution these days. Especially on the GOP side, the priorities are just party politics, private profits, and personal power.
So you want to invoke the congress-critters oaths to defend and protect the Constitution? You think they're going to impeach Trump for attacking the First Amendment?
Okay, I give up. Why was this moderated funny? Lack of a "stupid troll" moderation?
Really getting desperate for something actually funny on Slashdot. If this topic isn't a target-rich environment for humor, nothing is.
If I wanted to pretend to have a discussion with Putin's troll, then the obvious tech link is the struggle between direct IT use by #PresidentTweety versus an actual and rational "communications strategy". In this battle, it looks like the tweeter-in-chief thinks he won, but he thinks a lot of BS.
Dismissing such corporate lobbying as "corruption" is far too simplistic an explanation to merit the "insightful" mod. Maybe it's just too soon for the story and better comments are yet to come, but (of course) I think it's just a reflection of the current "state of the Slashdot". Hint: The state of the Slashdot is NOT "strong, very strong".
There is a deep issue here, but it involves the prioritization of the single metric of "money, more money" above everything else. In reality, LOTS of other things are as important or even MORE important than money, but corporate cancerism now reduces everything else to that metric. If I were forced to pick a single metric, I would probably pick time, and I certainly think time is much more important than money. From that perspective, I think the deeper solution is to dump crude economics and evolve to ekronomics, a time-based approach to assess what is actually important in life, even for the so-called lives of corporations.
What is interesting to me about this particular story is the underlying conflict. WHY are they spending all this money?
I think we're seeing a climatic struggle here, and the giant (EVIL) corporations are obviously in favor of today's so-called Republicans. That's because they have some agreement on their priorities. Today's GOP actively wants government of the corporations, by the lawyers, for the richest 0.1% of the population.
The other side of the struggle has much simpler priorities. #PresidentTweety wants government of the Donald, by the Donald, for the Donald. The corporations obviously don't like that so much, but the joke is that Trump is NOT even in the 0.1%. The hilarious secret of Trump's tax returns is that his so-called assets are just laundry fees for Putin's dirty rubles. (Gross simplification, especially in that Trump's incompetence had driven him to dirty money long before Putin became a player.)
Government of the people, by the people, for the people? Ain't NO major player on that side. Ain't no one worrying about the country or Constitution these days. Especially on the GOP side, the priorities are just party politics, private profits, and personal power.
So you want to invoke their oaths to defend and protect the Constitution? ROFLMAO
Not funny, but I never get any mod points so I can't give you the "insight" mod you earned. Actually, I was confused by your subject, but now I have probed and see that the Subject: was inherited from one of Putin's paid trolls. (Why are you feeding the troll?) This is a topic with LOTS of room for humor and insight, but I couldn't find any of the first and little of the second, especially in the comments so modded.
Actually I'm interested in "saving" Twitter. Probably impossible, but can you imagine the use of a dual icon system on Twitter? In some ways, the structured data of the Twitter might make it especially convenient to do the analysis. It's the same basic idea, with the left icon being your avatar and linked to your profile and whatever private information you want to share, and the right icon being a graphic summary of your public reputation and linked to an analysis of how people see you and the data (in the form of tweets, liked tweets, and RTs) that explains that public reputation. Might not even the multiple dimensions, but just a simple color code. Green for a reputable person, perhaps a verified authority or celebrity or someone who gets favorable reactions from such, yellow for a small amount of bad comments mixed in, orange for mostly negative reactions, and red for probably trolls, both the amateurs and Putin's professionals.
(On a "recovered" or page-one-rewritten Slashdot, I think multiple dimensions would be needed, but the basic color coding could still be used. As the joke goes, DAUPR. (Also, I like sincerity and I hate liars.))
Again, I have to disagree (though I'm repeating myself). America has become a government of the corporations, by the lawyers, for the richest 0.1%. You're going in the right direction in the last two parts, but I have doubts about the last one. If corporate cancerism finally triumphs, it might be reduced all the way to the richest person.
Sorry, but I must beg to disagree. It's government of the corporations, by the lawyers, for the richest 0.1%. At least that's what #PresidentTweety says he remembers hearing Abe Lincoln say on the tape recording. Notwithstanding, he REALLY thinks it's government of the Donald, by the Donald, for the Donald, but I'm betting that Amazon, the google, Apple, Microsoft, Goldman Sachs, and all their little friends will eventually put Trump in his place.
The idiots? No one cares about the idiots. Especially not the idiots who voted for the idiot Donald.
Latest proof of idiocy? The calls to (and from) the White House are traceable (and almost certainly recorded in full). Trump just lied that Scarborough called him first (so it isn't blackmail or abuse of power or any of those other sordid things), but any fool can check the phone records and determine that Trump is lying. Again.
Amazon will gladly sell the data, ANY data or ANYTHING they can sell.
But why "three" and why exclude Apple? I certainly think Apple qualifies as one of today's most EVIL companies. It's just that their flavor of EVIL is slightly different from the google and Facebook.
And we shouldn't forget Microsoft, even though their EVIL has largely gone stale. Also the secretive EVIL of Oracle with database-level power over much of our personal data. Oh yeah, and Goldman Sachs. There are others. Forget capitalism. In this age of corporate cancerism the race is to the most cancerous, and if your company fails to become EVIL enough, it will be destroyed and consumed by a bigger cancer. I suppose we'll eventually get to one cancerous corporation that will finally destroy the host AKA the world economy.
Solution time: Enforce OUR ownership of OUR personal data. Anyone who has our personal data has to tell us exactly WHAT data they have, and if we ask them to delete it, then they have to delete it and retaining any unauthorized copies would be a felony.
A Solution? In the age of #PresidentTweety? ROFLMAO.
Too early for funny or anything closer to insight? Anyway...
Certainly Facebook deserves bankruptcy. Try to imagine if all the time wasted on Facebook was invested in ANYTHING useful. Too bad it isn't going to happen.
Facebook has first-mover advantage in an age of cancer. Humans are social animals, and even the extremely fake social is highly attractive, even addictive, to many people. Maybe the entire system will collapse and take Facebook down with it, but I'm not advocating for the Trump solution.
Is there any solution? Maybe, but I doubt it. Just increase the VALUE of the human time spent on Facebook so it isn't such a total waste of humanity. Unfortunately, that would require tracking and visualizing the reputation, which would add complexity that Facebook doesn't want to invest in.
Even worse, Facebook would have to change their business philosophy as regards the time of members. Right now Facebook thinks MORE time (wasted or not) is ALWAYS better, and they are NOT interested in helping members know when to stop wasting time. As long as Facebook claims MORE time, it's more fake money in the fake market cap.
Enough time "invested" in Slashdot, but I'll close with my favorite joke these days: Details available upon polite and sincere request. ROFLMAO.
If I ever got a mod point to give, that probably deserves one. The sheer amount of time wasted on Facebook is awesome, but the worst part is that Facebook regards more wasted time as their primary metric of success. Imagine that time was focused on something useful like education or curing cancer or ANYTHING besides propagating fake news and silly questions.
Not too bad and deserves the insightful mod. Maybe I'd add a point if I ever got one to give. As usual these years, more disappointed by the lack of funny, however. This is another target-rich topic.
However, you left out the pragmatic meaning, the metric Facebook will use to assess their "success". You can say that the amount of data they collect is one kind of metric, but the more important metric and the one I believe Facebook uses internally as their primary objective is TIME. How much of our time can Facebook waste? From that perspective, the question is "How can we 'get everyone together' to squander all of their available recreational time on Facebook?"
I still suffer from delusions about the existence of grand solutions. Unfortunately they all seem to require putting freedom before profits. Fat chance of that happening, especially while #PresidentTweety is prancing about.
Not really hoping for any funny comments, but there is great room for insight on this topic, and I wasn't able to detect much based on such mods or my keyword searches. Unfortunately, I feel lacking in motivation on behalf of what is left of Slashdot. I thought I had a couple of minutes to spare, but the pending task was completed so my time priorities have been rearranged and I should leave soon. So...
The analysis of the "Comment Subject:" is entirely intuitively obvious starting from the sig below, but in the lack of time, I'll just close with the hint: How does it profit the google to support terrorists? If you find that wording too abrasive, then here's a "softer" form: Why does the google find it convenient and cost effective to provide so much free publicity to people who are essentially using jujitsu against free speech to destroy the societies that most value democracy, apple pie, and all that jazz?
Could have been the entry point for an insightful analysis. You didn't comment (or notice) that it's not a spurious correlation. The EULA was perfected by Microsoft so that liability was eliminated as a real concern for the developers.
I think the other major wrinkle perfected by MS was selling to the makers, not the actual users.
There are other possibilities, but because the rules of the game are biased for YUGE companies, not increasing consumer choice and freedom, we're screwed. I suppose Trump's voters hoped that he'll screw it up so hard that we'll get unscrewed, but that's not how entropy works.
False argumentation. Your obviously false premise is that there was a strong consensus among the founders (on guns or on anything else). There were a few absolutists among them, but in general they were pragmatic, and through sincere discussions were able to reach working compromises.
You're also assuming that they were absolutely incapable of learning and changing their minds. However, based on the evidence so far, I think that's just projection. The founders themselves understood that their solutions and compromises were not perfect and that the Constitution would need to change with the times. That's why they included a mechanism for amending the Constitution, and then they had to compromise on a twisted invocation of that mechanism to get the Constitution ratified in the first place. Rather a straw man argument (and yet you've justified nothing stronger), but the founders obviously would NOT have included a right to own nuclear weapons in the 2nd Amendment even had a time traveler told them about the weapons of the future.
Additional sophistry on your part: Highly selective evidence. That rises to a Level 2 lie of partial truth. There are plenty of quotes that disagree with your selection.
The truth that you are NOT revealing is why you love guns so much. I'm vaguely curious why, but the usual 'psychological' approach is to assume it's some form of personal insecurity. Accept no substitutes except guns?
Near as I can detect, nothing you said addresses any of the actual points I raised, so I take your inability to respond (or understand) as some sort of concession. Unfortunately, it is getting harder and harder to care what you think or what you concede.
Slashdot Mirror
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
If you pay close attention, you'll notice the big dog himself flopping down on the right side while his minions run around barking and panicking.
The rating system should report the LOG of the mods. Base e, of course. Then a report of 5 would be e^5 and it would mean something heavy.
Go ahead. Mod me off topic, but he started it!
HOW can that be insightful? The reference of "He" is not clear unless you refer back to the Subject: line. Okay, so it's #PresidentTweety, but I STRONGLY doubt this was even his decision. The Mooch is the Donald's soulmate. You don't fire your TRUE soulmate.
I think this decision came directly from General Kelly. Trump has curled into the fetal position and has retrogressed to his high school days in the fake military private school. In Trump's delusional memory he was a YUGE success as a fake platoon commander.
Really. NOT a joke. Look it up in such sources as Trump Revealed . His beloved dad sentenced him there for obedience training when he got too gangsta and started playing with knives. (The book is already a bit fuzzy in my recollection, but I think Trump now claims (as reported in the book) that he doesn't even remember the knives.)
(So far the only reference to the book, but I bet I don't even get an informative mod... Maybe there are some other good references in the discussion, but I just haven't found them yet?)
Hmm... Insightful? But so short?
Oh well. Moot for me since I'm never going to see another mod point to give.
However, I already said that along the lines of "As a novel, I would have already thrown it away for going beyond the limits of how far and high I can suspend my disbelief."
What? The Mooch is ALREADY gone? Poor #PresidentTweety!
My next speculation is that they'll call the clown car back and Sean Spicer will be allowed to hang around for a while.
All of this AFTER I wrote a GREAT rant? I'm so OBE? I'm SO sad. NOT.
Oh well, just for the off-record, here's part of the rant that could have been funny history:
Welcome to the Bungling Brother's Flying White House Circus with ringmaster the Mooth!
The Mooch has already fired Reince Preibus out of the Bannon Cannon, and tomorrow's show will be a cage match between the Mooth and General Kelly! No ref, because #PresidentTweety (the Bungling Brother himself) doesn't want to get involved in the squabbles he caused! Smart money says Kelly will win, but when has anything smart happened in this White House? If the Mooch wins, his next targets will be Mad Dog Mattis, McMaster, Tillerson, and even the YUGE Bannon!
Get your tickets and popcorn now! It's the YUGEST unGREATEST show on earth, right before they blow up the planet!
My next plan was to work in this latest footage of discussions at the White House: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Well, if I ever got a mod point, then I'd be inclined to give you at least an "informative" for that. However, I'm not certain it's Putin, though the high-end estimates for Putin's wealth do go as high as $200 billion. Other estimates put him as low as $20 billion. Dark money is YUGE, even compared to Tor. Sometimes I wonder if Putin is really a puppet and front-man working for someone who is even better at hiding.
I'm actually most interested in seeing #PresidentTweety's laundry receipts for Putin's dirty rubles. The secret of his tax returns is that Trump went bankrupt and his only assets are his cut from the laundry business. You aren't bankrupt until your creditors give up on you, and they gave up on Trump decades ago. The only thing that saved Trump was his underworld connections who needed cleaner money. Now you know why he's in such a panic, eh?
Oh yeah. I should note that if Trump is really the secret puppeteer behind Putin, then he's the greatest actor of all time. I know he's a great liar, but NO way I can believe that one.
Oh, and a tip of the hat to the anonymous troll with the negative mods. Even allowing for the fundamental brokenness of the Slashdot moderation system, the feedback on what really cut your gut is sort of helpful. Mostly by proving you lack any other stronger response.
Well, you sound sincere, but I think you are extremely wrong. I hope I can differ politely enough to avoid the usual uncivil results on today's Slashdot.
Taxes are important, and corporations are actually the main beneficiaries of the good things that taxes can provide. Not to say that the current system is doing a very good job of providing those things, but that's a different problem, and abolishing taxes is just a silly idea, along the lines of the baby in the bathwater.
It is better to think in terms of what you want to accomplish with your tax policies. I think taxation should be designed to INCREASE human freedom. In particular, I think that means tax policy should encourage competition among corporations so that we have more choices and better choices. At one level, per my sig, freedom is about the choices we can make.
Therefore I think we should have a progressive tax on corporate profits, but it should be linked to market share. The more a company dominates some market and thereby reduces our freedom to choose alternative products or services, the taxes on that company's profits should increase. In normal cases, where there is no natural monopoly, the goal of the tax policy should be to make sure there are at least 3 to 5 meaningful choices, and I even think there should be major tax incentives for DIVIDING a giant company into sincere competitors. In the abnormal case, where there is a natural monopoly, then the higher tax rates should be used primarily for two purposes: (1) Careful regulation of the monopolist to limit abuse, and (2) research into ways to break the monopoly. You must realize that the monopolist is NEVER going to be sincere about that second one...
Now how to get there from here? I can only wish I saw a path. Right now it looks like corporate cancerism is going to kill the host [society].
Though on many of his days Spicer looked like a really dull object, I think #PresidentTweety's only use for Spicer was as a distraction to confuse the REAL news.
Alternative Subject: How to collaborate with the Russians without even trying!
Think about it. Trump obviously has no real communications strategy and his supporters could care less about White House press briefings.
Trump only has a FAKE communications strategy based on Twitter. Now if you were a clever and cunning Russian spy, and you noticed this, how would you take advantage of it?
I think Mueller's investigation should be extended to Twitter. Specifically, I think he should investigate Russian tampering with the election via Twitter. I even have a few ideas how it could be done. Putin's hackers would have begun by analyzing Twitter to find the most influential retweeters for election-related topics. Just focusing on one side of it, they would try to help the pro-Trump tweeters. For example, if a reliable pro-Trump tweeter was sleeping when Trump tweeted a juicy one, they would keep tabs and make sure the tweet was called to his attention when he came back to Twitter. You can actually extend that even farther to put more thumbs on the scales. Break the influencers down by specific interests and constituencies. If a particular Trump tweet will appeal to that specific tweeter's audience, then make sure he gets it, but if it would offend some of his target demographic, then you give it a pass. These sorts of activities should leave traces in the Twitter records, but I'm betting no one has looked for them. Yet.
Sean Spicer? Just a distracting clown. The only surprise was that the clown actually grew a backbone at the last minute. Or maybe not. Maybe Spicer wasn't standing on his principles but just pragmatically decided he wants to sell the first kiss-and-tell book from the inside?
Brief, but I guess it's an earned moderation. Not sure I agree. As I understand the story (but mostly from other sources), it seems that Spicer suddenly grew a backbone and insisted on resigning. Hard to believe, but even #PresidentTweety realized it would look better if Spicer hung around and just did nothing except for taking the money. Or perhaps Trump was merely afraid of another kiss-and-tell book? Will Spicer's be the first from the inside of the Donald's White House? I'm sure the publishers are lining up with YUGE advances.
Regarding Preibus, there is NO trace of a backbone, so Trump will keep him around for the sake of appearance. A FAKE chief of staff looks better than none at all, though a REAL chief of staff could actually be useful if getting things done were a factor to Trump. Priebus has already pledged his undying loyalty to the Mooch.
Don't forget that #PresidentTweety wants government of the Donald, by the Donald, for the Donald. Trump thinks useless Priebus is GREAT as a bone-toss [boner-toss?] to the GOP, even though the so-called Republicans are dedicated to government of the corporations, by the lawyers, for the richest 0.1% of the population. The YUGE corporations obviously prefer the GOP, but I think the REAL joke is that Trump is NOT even in the 0.1%. The hilarious secret of Trump's tax returns is that his so-called assets are just laundry fees for Putin's dirty rubles.
Remember ol' Honest Abe? That "government of the people, by the people, for the people" stuff? Today there ain't NO major player on that side. Ain't no one worrying about the country or Constitution these days. Especially on the GOP side, the priorities are just party politics, private profits, and personal power.
So you want to invoke the congress-critters oaths to defend and protect the Constitution? You think they're going to impeach Trump for attacking the First Amendment?
ROFLMAO
Okay, I give up. Why was this moderated funny? Lack of a "stupid troll" moderation?
Really getting desperate for something actually funny on Slashdot. If this topic isn't a target-rich environment for humor, nothing is.
If I wanted to pretend to have a discussion with Putin's troll, then the obvious tech link is the struggle between direct IT use by #PresidentTweety versus an actual and rational "communications strategy". In this battle, it looks like the tweeter-in-chief thinks he won, but he thinks a lot of BS.
If I ever got mod points I'd have to give you both funny and insight for that brief one.
Dismissing such corporate lobbying as "corruption" is far too simplistic an explanation to merit the "insightful" mod. Maybe it's just too soon for the story and better comments are yet to come, but (of course) I think it's just a reflection of the current "state of the Slashdot". Hint: The state of the Slashdot is NOT "strong, very strong".
There is a deep issue here, but it involves the prioritization of the single metric of "money, more money" above everything else. In reality, LOTS of other things are as important or even MORE important than money, but corporate cancerism now reduces everything else to that metric. If I were forced to pick a single metric, I would probably pick time, and I certainly think time is much more important than money. From that perspective, I think the deeper solution is to dump crude economics and evolve to ekronomics, a time-based approach to assess what is actually important in life, even for the so-called lives of corporations.
What is interesting to me about this particular story is the underlying conflict. WHY are they spending all this money?
I think we're seeing a climatic struggle here, and the giant (EVIL) corporations are obviously in favor of today's so-called Republicans. That's because they have some agreement on their priorities. Today's GOP actively wants government of the corporations, by the lawyers, for the richest 0.1% of the population.
The other side of the struggle has much simpler priorities. #PresidentTweety wants government of the Donald, by the Donald, for the Donald. The corporations obviously don't like that so much, but the joke is that Trump is NOT even in the 0.1%. The hilarious secret of Trump's tax returns is that his so-called assets are just laundry fees for Putin's dirty rubles. (Gross simplification, especially in that Trump's incompetence had driven him to dirty money long before Putin became a player.)
Government of the people, by the people, for the people? Ain't NO major player on that side. Ain't no one worrying about the country or Constitution these days. Especially on the GOP side, the priorities are just party politics, private profits, and personal power.
So you want to invoke their oaths to defend and protect the Constitution? ROFLMAO
Not funny, but I never get any mod points so I can't give you the "insight" mod you earned. Actually, I was confused by your subject, but now I have probed and see that the Subject: was inherited from one of Putin's paid trolls. (Why are you feeding the troll?) This is a topic with LOTS of room for humor and insight, but I couldn't find any of the first and little of the second, especially in the comments so modded.
Actually I'm interested in "saving" Twitter. Probably impossible, but can you imagine the use of a dual icon system on Twitter? In some ways, the structured data of the Twitter might make it especially convenient to do the analysis. It's the same basic idea, with the left icon being your avatar and linked to your profile and whatever private information you want to share, and the right icon being a graphic summary of your public reputation and linked to an analysis of how people see you and the data (in the form of tweets, liked tweets, and RTs) that explains that public reputation. Might not even the multiple dimensions, but just a simple color code. Green for a reputable person, perhaps a verified authority or celebrity or someone who gets favorable reactions from such, yellow for a small amount of bad comments mixed in, orange for mostly negative reactions, and red for probably trolls, both the amateurs and Putin's professionals.
(On a "recovered" or page-one-rewritten Slashdot, I think multiple dimensions would be needed, but the basic color coding could still be used. As the joke goes, DAUPR. (Also, I like sincerity and I hate liars.))
A rapid DOG or even YOU would have been much better than #PresidentTweety.
No, I am NOT trying to engage you in dialog. I only have one question for you. Are you sincerely so stupid, just proudly ignorant, or paid to fake it?
Actually, I suppose there's a follow up question if you pick the third option: Who do you think is paying you?
Again, I have to disagree (though I'm repeating myself). America has become a government of the corporations, by the lawyers, for the richest 0.1%. You're going in the right direction in the last two parts, but I have doubts about the last one. If corporate cancerism finally triumphs, it might be reduced all the way to the richest person.
Sorry, but I must beg to disagree. It's government of the corporations, by the lawyers, for the richest 0.1%. At least that's what #PresidentTweety says he remembers hearing Abe Lincoln say on the tape recording. Notwithstanding, he REALLY thinks it's government of the Donald, by the Donald, for the Donald, but I'm betting that Amazon, the google, Apple, Microsoft, Goldman Sachs, and all their little friends will eventually put Trump in his place.
The idiots? No one cares about the idiots. Especially not the idiots who voted for the idiot Donald.
Latest proof of idiocy? The calls to (and from) the White House are traceable (and almost certainly recorded in full). Trump just lied that Scarborough called him first (so it isn't blackmail or abuse of power or any of those other sordid things), but any fool can check the phone records and determine that Trump is lying. Again.
Amazon will gladly sell the data, ANY data or ANYTHING they can sell.
But why "three" and why exclude Apple? I certainly think Apple qualifies as one of today's most EVIL companies. It's just that their flavor of EVIL is slightly different from the google and Facebook.
And we shouldn't forget Microsoft, even though their EVIL has largely gone stale. Also the secretive EVIL of Oracle with database-level power over much of our personal data. Oh yeah, and Goldman Sachs. There are others. Forget capitalism. In this age of corporate cancerism the race is to the most cancerous, and if your company fails to become EVIL enough, it will be destroyed and consumed by a bigger cancer. I suppose we'll eventually get to one cancerous corporation that will finally destroy the host AKA the world economy.
Solution time: Enforce OUR ownership of OUR personal data. Anyone who has our personal data has to tell us exactly WHAT data they have, and if we ask them to delete it, then they have to delete it and retaining any unauthorized copies would be a felony.
A Solution? In the age of #PresidentTweety? ROFLMAO.
Too early for funny or anything closer to insight? Anyway...
Certainly Facebook deserves bankruptcy. Try to imagine if all the time wasted on Facebook was invested in ANYTHING useful. Too bad it isn't going to happen.
Facebook has first-mover advantage in an age of cancer. Humans are social animals, and even the extremely fake social is highly attractive, even addictive, to many people. Maybe the entire system will collapse and take Facebook down with it, but I'm not advocating for the Trump solution.
Is there any solution? Maybe, but I doubt it. Just increase the VALUE of the human time spent on Facebook so it isn't such a total waste of humanity. Unfortunately, that would require tracking and visualizing the reputation, which would add complexity that Facebook doesn't want to invest in.
Even worse, Facebook would have to change their business philosophy as regards the time of members. Right now Facebook thinks MORE time (wasted or not) is ALWAYS better, and they are NOT interested in helping members know when to stop wasting time. As long as Facebook claims MORE time, it's more fake money in the fake market cap.
Enough time "invested" in Slashdot, but I'll close with my favorite joke these days: Details available upon polite and sincere request. ROFLMAO.
If I ever got a mod point to give, that probably deserves one. The sheer amount of time wasted on Facebook is awesome, but the worst part is that Facebook regards more wasted time as their primary metric of success. Imagine that time was focused on something useful like education or curing cancer or ANYTHING besides propagating fake news and silly questions.
Not too bad and deserves the insightful mod. Maybe I'd add a point if I ever got one to give. As usual these years, more disappointed by the lack of funny, however. This is another target-rich topic.
However, you left out the pragmatic meaning, the metric Facebook will use to assess their "success". You can say that the amount of data they collect is one kind of metric, but the more important metric and the one I believe Facebook uses internally as their primary objective is TIME. How much of our time can Facebook waste? From that perspective, the question is "How can we 'get everyone together' to squander all of their available recreational time on Facebook?"
I still suffer from delusions about the existence of grand solutions. Unfortunately they all seem to require putting freedom before profits. Fat chance of that happening, especially while #PresidentTweety is prancing about.
Not really hoping for any funny comments, but there is great room for insight on this topic, and I wasn't able to detect much based on such mods or my keyword searches. Unfortunately, I feel lacking in motivation on behalf of what is left of Slashdot. I thought I had a couple of minutes to spare, but the pending task was completed so my time priorities have been rearranged and I should leave soon. So...
The analysis of the "Comment Subject:" is entirely intuitively obvious starting from the sig below, but in the lack of time, I'll just close with the hint: How does it profit the google to support terrorists? If you find that wording too abrasive, then here's a "softer" form: Why does the google find it convenient and cost effective to provide so much free publicity to people who are essentially using jujitsu against free speech to destroy the societies that most value democracy, apple pie, and all that jazz?
Could have been the entry point for an insightful analysis. You didn't comment (or notice) that it's not a spurious correlation. The EULA was perfected by Microsoft so that liability was eliminated as a real concern for the developers.
I think the other major wrinkle perfected by MS was selling to the makers, not the actual users.
There are other possibilities, but because the rules of the game are biased for YUGE companies, not increasing consumer choice and freedom, we're screwed. I suppose Trump's voters hoped that he'll screw it up so hard that we'll get unscrewed, but that's not how entropy works.
False argumentation. Your obviously false premise is that there was a strong consensus among the founders (on guns or on anything else). There were a few absolutists among them, but in general they were pragmatic, and through sincere discussions were able to reach working compromises.
You're also assuming that they were absolutely incapable of learning and changing their minds. However, based on the evidence so far, I think that's just projection. The founders themselves understood that their solutions and compromises were not perfect and that the Constitution would need to change with the times. That's why they included a mechanism for amending the Constitution, and then they had to compromise on a twisted invocation of that mechanism to get the Constitution ratified in the first place. Rather a straw man argument (and yet you've justified nothing stronger), but the founders obviously would NOT have included a right to own nuclear weapons in the 2nd Amendment even had a time traveler told them about the weapons of the future.
Additional sophistry on your part: Highly selective evidence. That rises to a Level 2 lie of partial truth. There are plenty of quotes that disagree with your selection.
The truth that you are NOT revealing is why you love guns so much. I'm vaguely curious why, but the usual 'psychological' approach is to assume it's some form of personal insecurity. Accept no substitutes except guns?
Near as I can detect, nothing you said addresses any of the actual points I raised, so I take your inability to respond (or understand) as some sort of concession. Unfortunately, it is getting harder and harder to care what you think or what you concede.
Good joke, but the ONLY one in such a target-rich environment?
Sadness unleavened by humor.