Firstly to address the article, one is a start-up loan guarantee to offset the risks in surmounting what is a huge barrier to entry, the other is a continued subsidy to aid an established industry. Sure they're both in the same vein of using public funds to bolster industry, but not quite comparable beyond that, are they? Continued subsidy of established industry is one of the major arguments made by those who are against US agricultural subsidies, and they make a reasonable point regarding the negative impact it has to the outside world. Many countries feel justified to place tariffs on US agricultural products because of this.
Now to address your post, let's look at the not so apparent inconsistency in the rhetoric surrounding the motivations behind the subsidy. If the Chinese government indeed only wanted to make renewable energy more affordable for the average Chinese person, as many say is the sole motivation, it could very well have implemented a tax rebate policy with low-income allowances for Chinese consumers (as it's typically done in the US, at least the rebate part) -- and if fearing the money drain to imported panels, they could even have made "for use on domestically made panels only" a condition for such rebates/allowances. Under such a policy, imported solar panels would find it difficult to compete in the Chinese market, but it wouldn't be as big of a deal. That's not what happened. By continuing to subsidize the already established manufacturers directly, it places anti-competitive behavior behind the rather more difficult-to-assail rhetoric of "making energy affordable for the average Chinese person." Unfortunately, this rhetorical sleight of hand is able to misdirect many people.
Yeah public apology and implementation of more stringent training would have been better, but 170k is pretty good as punitive fine and sets a precedent for future lawsuits. It doesn't say if the department intends to dock the officers' salaries to offset the cost (I hope so).
Now that brings up the question: How does/. reconcile its popularly held belief that people are by and large lazy/stupid/ignorant with its other popularly held belief that people deserve the truth from politicians and a say in policy?
It seems more like they gave him a chance to go legit. As in, I see you're making money off our products, I'd like you to join our authorized reseller/distributor program. I don't think accusations of hypocrisy really work here, because they make it sound like the media companies should be lambasted for NOT being belligerent on initial contact -- that had they "used the stick" from the beginning, they would have retained the consistency to not get blamed for "hypocrisy"
Reading your post again, it seems as if you believe the purpose of the freedom of speech is to beg government to do what you want. I think if you believe that, you've already thrown your hands up in defeat. Defeatist thinking like this is already endemic in the Chinese populace, you can call it the Mei Ban Fa syndrome -- when you speak to Chinese people about politically charged issues, the most common answer is "mei ban fa" (can't be helped), as in "we're just the rabble, government won't listen" Americans would do well to not infect themselves with it.
Freedom of speech doesn't mean much when your political leaders don't listen to it.
The freedom of speech is MOST important when leaders don't listen, because with it one can spread his/her thoughts, create ripples in society, and begin a movement. When that movement changes society, government has no choice but to follow. Perhaps in this case of your pet causes you can make the argument that society changes too slowly for your liking, but that's not a criticism of the value of the freedom of speech.
If it is wrong to advertise to someone without their solicitation or even permission, then should it not also be wrong to harvest that person's organs without their solicitation or even permission?
OP didn't say being in bed with DC is ok did he? Is it in any way possible in your world that one could be against both things at the same time? Imagine someone replying to a SOPA thread saying "why is this so bad, but nobody yells and screams when China censors information about political protest?" Think of all the responses accusing that person of going off-topic/trolling/making excuses!
the forces holding the nucleus together is many MANY times greater than the bonds holding molecules together (think difference between nuclear bomb vs acid/base reaction). IANAPhysicist, but I think the only place you can get anything close to alchemy would be in a nuclear reactor (nuclear decay would be a kind of undirected alchemy). This process seems to me like "chemistry one-atom-at-a-time." Imagine regular chemistry as making bread dough, you put flour and water together and get an uneven (at the molecular level) glob, with some parts a little drier, some wetter. With this process, you can actually build a perfectly uniform and homogeneous dough -- one water, one flour, one water, one flour, and on and on. With that in mind then, the first thing that comes to mind is super strong materials (uniform at molecular level = no weak points where tears/ruptures can develop)
But there hasn't been any evidence of altruism on the Anonymous side has there? If anything they've proven to be just as self-serving, albeit with different agendas. But the way I look at it, someone might prefer turd burgers to shit sandwiches, but most would say "that's not a choice I want to make."
Civil disobedience isn't just disruption. Civil disobedience entails the breaking of laws such that one's subsequent arrest/prosecution can reveal the injustice of those laws to the public, which then brings about a change in the social/political atmosphere, leading to progress. The intent of black students to sit in white only restaurants was not to punish those restaurant owners who may have supported segregation laws; their intent was to put a spotlight on the unequal treatment despite claims of "separate but equal." That's how you practice civil disobedience -- by targeting specifically unjust laws, breaking them, and exposing them to the public
Now compare with Anonymous, what laws did they break in an attempt to reveal their injustice? They only broke fraud and network intrusion laws. Does that mean they were against fraud and network intrusion laws out of the belief that those laws were unjust? There is no way one can logically compare Anonymous with historical examples of civil disobedience.
It makes me think, is there a parallel between this and the health insurance debate? For insurance to remain sustainable for the system and affordable for the individual, there cannot be a significant number of people who opt out. Thus, as with health care mandates, a certain level of authoritarianism (policies and their enforcement through punitive measures) is necessary to maintain the overall public welfare, and to prevent situations where drivers find themselves saddled with lifelong debt in the event of catastrophic accidents.
So, if one is inclined towards health insurance mandates and the like (with their attached punishment for noncompliance), he/she should also be inclined towards car insurance mandates (with the same sort of punishment for noncompliance). Not implying that you belong to any side of the argument, just pointing out a set of logic in this thread that in another thread might be viewed differently.
The thing with conspiracy theories is that they can go anywhere. One fun thing to do is to flip everything on their head and see if that would make sense as well. For example:
1. Stuxnet was a false flag perpetrated by Iran to gather world wide sympathy 2. Iranian intelligence service discovered one of their "scientists" was a CIA asset that was leaking info on their nuclear program, they killed him in a manner that would frame the US/Israel and thus garner more sympathy. Two birds with one stone. 3. The creative mind could go on and on.
1. Yes, because advertising for cancer drugs increases demand. In what universe?
isn't that an argument AGAINST the initial (implied) claim that Bayer spends more on ads than research? It doesn't seem like Bayer would spend money on ads over research when obviously as you've pointed out cancer treatment demand doesn't increase just due to more awareness. So that's more of a rebuttal to the GP anon than to cpu5602
2. And at a pittance compared to government funding. Plus they demand tax cuts for doing it, so...net loss.
which government would fund this, India? If the Indian government had funded the research in its totality, I wonder how it or the tax paying population would respond to another country taking the research without compensation. The solution then is a global fund, but who pays how much?
As for points 3 and 4, it would seem that in a world where research is given away, the countries or companies which invest in their production capability will always win over those which invest their research capability. Just build your factories and wait for the other guys to publish the formulas.
You've sugar-coated what he did with the phrase "political dissent" in order to spin him into a hero of some sort. In which utopia do you envision the dumping of private information and credit card numbers being respected as a form of "political dissent"? You'll find far better liberals than Hammond anywhere you look. I'd say this might be another case of 1st world problems -- here you are, churning out these melodramatic flourishes to frame petty vandalism as an act that champions the everyman, while on the other side of the world real people burn themselves to death with real flames in protest. Consider THAT political dissent.
I can see things like bitcoin "challenging the status quo." Could you explain how defacing websites, breaking into systems, and releasing private information challenges the status quo?
Would you characterize an atheist as one who denies the existence of god outright, or someone who, in the absence of proof, does not allow himself to accept the positive claims of others?
I thought a cracker is a white southern gentleman who is fond of using the whip on his African servants. Or is it a thin salted biscuit? In any case, it sure isn't a person who is trying to break into computer systems. Modifying source code to change and improve it? Isn't that just tinkering ("tinkerer"?), or more colloquially, "fucking around"? So maybe "fuckarounder" is more appropriate. On second thought, "hacker" might be a good alternative since it's not already populated with a bunch of other definitions.
In Slashdot religion bashing threads, there is one thing that always stands out to me. When child-abusing Mormons, anti-abortion Catholics, or other anti-science Christians are getting a much-deserved pummeling, absolutely NO ONE raises their voice to blunt the attacks with "so are all religions", nor does anyone bring up Islam as a counter-argument of "this religion is not the only one". Yet in threads where outrageous things are done in the name of Islam, there are always a disproportionate number of posters who jump to its defense using this kind of logic.
For a supposed nerd community that's mostly atheist and presumably equal-opportunity when it comes to bashing religions, it seems some religions are offered more sympathy than others. It's almost as if some people here make the assumption that when one bashes Christianity, he/she must be a rational atheist, but if one bashes Islam, he/she must be a Christian. Why the bias?
Slashdot Mirror
Firstly to address the article, one is a start-up loan guarantee to offset the risks in surmounting what is a huge barrier to entry, the other is a continued subsidy to aid an established industry. Sure they're both in the same vein of using public funds to bolster industry, but not quite comparable beyond that, are they? Continued subsidy of established industry is one of the major arguments made by those who are against US agricultural subsidies, and they make a reasonable point regarding the negative impact it has to the outside world. Many countries feel justified to place tariffs on US agricultural products because of this.
Now to address your post, let's look at the not so apparent inconsistency in the rhetoric surrounding the motivations behind the subsidy. If the Chinese government indeed only wanted to make renewable energy more affordable for the average Chinese person, as many say is the sole motivation, it could very well have implemented a tax rebate policy with low-income allowances for Chinese consumers (as it's typically done in the US, at least the rebate part) -- and if fearing the money drain to imported panels, they could even have made "for use on domestically made panels only" a condition for such rebates/allowances. Under such a policy, imported solar panels would find it difficult to compete in the Chinese market, but it wouldn't be as big of a deal. That's not what happened. By continuing to subsidize the already established manufacturers directly, it places anti-competitive behavior behind the rather more difficult-to-assail rhetoric of "making energy affordable for the average Chinese person." Unfortunately, this rhetorical sleight of hand is able to misdirect many people.
Yeah public apology and implementation of more stringent training would have been better, but 170k is pretty good as punitive fine and sets a precedent for future lawsuits. It doesn't say if the department intends to dock the officers' salaries to offset the cost (I hope so).
Now that brings up the question: How does /. reconcile its popularly held belief that people are by and large lazy/stupid/ignorant with its other popularly held belief that people deserve the truth from politicians and a say in policy?
It seems more like they gave him a chance to go legit. As in, I see you're making money off our products, I'd like you to join our authorized reseller/distributor program. I don't think accusations of hypocrisy really work here, because they make it sound like the media companies should be lambasted for NOT being belligerent on initial contact -- that had they "used the stick" from the beginning, they would have retained the consistency to not get blamed for "hypocrisy"
Reading your post again, it seems as if you believe the purpose of the freedom of speech is to beg government to do what you want. I think if you believe that, you've already thrown your hands up in defeat. Defeatist thinking like this is already endemic in the Chinese populace, you can call it the Mei Ban Fa syndrome -- when you speak to Chinese people about politically charged issues, the most common answer is "mei ban fa" (can't be helped), as in "we're just the rabble, government won't listen" Americans would do well to not infect themselves with it.
Freedom of speech doesn't mean much when your political leaders don't listen to it.
The freedom of speech is MOST important when leaders don't listen, because with it one can spread his/her thoughts, create ripples in society, and begin a movement. When that movement changes society, government has no choice but to follow. Perhaps in this case of your pet causes you can make the argument that society changes too slowly for your liking, but that's not a criticism of the value of the freedom of speech.
All unsolicited advertisement is spam
If it is wrong to advertise to someone without their solicitation or even permission, then should it not also be wrong to harvest that person's organs without their solicitation or even permission?
OP didn't say being in bed with DC is ok did he? Is it in any way possible in your world that one could be against both things at the same time? Imagine someone replying to a SOPA thread saying "why is this so bad, but nobody yells and screams when China censors information about political protest?" Think of all the responses accusing that person of going off-topic/trolling/making excuses!
the forces holding the nucleus together is many MANY times greater than the bonds holding molecules together (think difference between nuclear bomb vs acid/base reaction). IANAPhysicist, but I think the only place you can get anything close to alchemy would be in a nuclear reactor (nuclear decay would be a kind of undirected alchemy). This process seems to me like "chemistry one-atom-at-a-time." Imagine regular chemistry as making bread dough, you put flour and water together and get an uneven (at the molecular level) glob, with some parts a little drier, some wetter. With this process, you can actually build a perfectly uniform and homogeneous dough -- one water, one flour, one water, one flour, and on and on. With that in mind then, the first thing that comes to mind is super strong materials (uniform at molecular level = no weak points where tears/ruptures can develop)
But there hasn't been any evidence of altruism on the Anonymous side has there? If anything they've proven to be just as self-serving, albeit with different agendas. But the way I look at it, someone might prefer turd burgers to shit sandwiches, but most would say "that's not a choice I want to make."
Civil disobedience isn't just disruption. Civil disobedience entails the breaking of laws such that one's subsequent arrest/prosecution can reveal the injustice of those laws to the public, which then brings about a change in the social/political atmosphere, leading to progress. The intent of black students to sit in white only restaurants was not to punish those restaurant owners who may have supported segregation laws; their intent was to put a spotlight on the unequal treatment despite claims of "separate but equal." That's how you practice civil disobedience -- by targeting specifically unjust laws, breaking them, and exposing them to the public
Now compare with Anonymous, what laws did they break in an attempt to reveal their injustice? They only broke fraud and network intrusion laws. Does that mean they were against fraud and network intrusion laws out of the belief that those laws were unjust? There is no way one can logically compare Anonymous with historical examples of civil disobedience.
It makes me think, is there a parallel between this and the health insurance debate? For insurance to remain sustainable for the system and affordable for the individual, there cannot be a significant number of people who opt out. Thus, as with health care mandates, a certain level of authoritarianism (policies and their enforcement through punitive measures) is necessary to maintain the overall public welfare, and to prevent situations where drivers find themselves saddled with lifelong debt in the event of catastrophic accidents.
So, if one is inclined towards health insurance mandates and the like (with their attached punishment for noncompliance), he/she should also be inclined towards car insurance mandates (with the same sort of punishment for noncompliance). Not implying that you belong to any side of the argument, just pointing out a set of logic in this thread that in another thread might be viewed differently.
The thing with conspiracy theories is that they can go anywhere. One fun thing to do is to flip everything on their head and see if that would make sense as well. For example:
1. Stuxnet was a false flag perpetrated by Iran to gather world wide sympathy
2. Iranian intelligence service discovered one of their "scientists" was a CIA asset that was leaking info on their nuclear program, they killed him in a manner that would frame the US/Israel and thus garner more sympathy. Two birds with one stone.
3. The creative mind could go on and on.
1. Yes, because advertising for cancer drugs increases demand. In what universe?
isn't that an argument AGAINST the initial (implied) claim that Bayer spends more on ads than research? It doesn't seem like Bayer would spend money on ads over research when obviously as you've pointed out cancer treatment demand doesn't increase just due to more awareness. So that's more of a rebuttal to the GP anon than to cpu5602
2. And at a pittance compared to government funding. Plus they demand tax cuts for doing it, so...net loss.
which government would fund this, India? If the Indian government had funded the research in its totality, I wonder how it or the tax paying population would respond to another country taking the research without compensation. The solution then is a global fund, but who pays how much?
As for points 3 and 4, it would seem that in a world where research is given away, the countries or companies which invest in their production capability will always win over those which invest their research capability. Just build your factories and wait for the other guys to publish the formulas.
Do the words "geek" and "cracker" make you blush as well?
So what did he do it for? Compromising stratfor's servers and dumping cc numbers was done in pursuit of what cause?
You've sugar-coated what he did with the phrase "political dissent" in order to spin him into a hero of some sort. In which utopia do you envision the dumping of private information and credit card numbers being respected as a form of "political dissent"? You'll find far better liberals than Hammond anywhere you look. I'd say this might be another case of 1st world problems -- here you are, churning out these melodramatic flourishes to frame petty vandalism as an act that champions the everyman, while on the other side of the world real people burn themselves to death with real flames in protest. Consider THAT political dissent.
Suffragettes didn't do it for the lulz iirc.
I can see things like bitcoin "challenging the status quo." Could you explain how defacing websites, breaking into systems, and releasing private information challenges the status quo?
Would you characterize an atheist as one who denies the existence of god outright, or someone who, in the absence of proof, does not allow himself to accept the positive claims of others?
That only happens if they didn't establish the right connections in government. The ones who get shot are the little guys who stepped on bigger toes.
I thought a cracker is a white southern gentleman who is fond of using the whip on his African servants. Or is it a thin salted biscuit? In any case, it sure isn't a person who is trying to break into computer systems. Modifying source code to change and improve it? Isn't that just tinkering ("tinkerer"?), or more colloquially, "fucking around"? So maybe "fuckarounder" is more appropriate. On second thought, "hacker" might be a good alternative since it's not already populated with a bunch of other definitions.
Conventional payload - might be unmanned
Nuclear payload - you bet your ass it will be manned
that's why it's "optionally-manned"
In Slashdot religion bashing threads, there is one thing that always stands out to me. When child-abusing Mormons, anti-abortion Catholics, or other anti-science Christians are getting a much-deserved pummeling, absolutely NO ONE raises their voice to blunt the attacks with "so are all religions", nor does anyone bring up Islam as a counter-argument of "this religion is not the only one". Yet in threads where outrageous things are done in the name of Islam, there are always a disproportionate number of posters who jump to its defense using this kind of logic.
For a supposed nerd community that's mostly atheist and presumably equal-opportunity when it comes to bashing religions, it seems some religions are offered more sympathy than others. It's almost as if some people here make the assumption that when one bashes Christianity, he/she must be a rational atheist, but if one bashes Islam, he/she must be a Christian. Why the bias?
You can therefor recover enough money from them to pay for fixing the holes.
why would they do that when they can get far more by hyping up their IPO?