Yeah sure and all the vitriol and bile and 'fake news' and propaganda from state actors and crime and [insert miscellaneous internet bullshit here] that the internet is chock full of now is just so fucking great. It's just so fucking wonderful that the Corporate World has de-facto taken over control of the internet and turned it ironically into the 'walled gardens' (with invisible walls so the sheep don't get panicked) you accuse so-called 'learned scholars' of pontificatiing from. It's just such a fucking wonderful internet that national governments have exerted more and more control over, in most cases to quash anti-government sentiment, freedom of speech/freedom of expression/information sharing in general and to spy on their own citizens so they can arrest people they don't like. If you really like the gods-be-damned internet the way it is right now in 2019 then I question your values, ethics, and morals. The internet has been perverted into something not-so-great, a mere shadow of what it could have been. That's what he's concerned about and rightly so. In many ways we would have been better off if it had never been invented in the first place (or at least never opened to the general public).
Fuck off. I saw bitcoin as just a dumb fad and then as a tool for criminals and that's what it's turning out to be. Won't last, will get regulated by governments, transactions made traceable, just like all other financial transactions. Meanwhile you dumb asses are losing your shirts because it fluxuates even worse than the stock exchange. Screw that you can all be dumb all you want I'll have none of it.
No, sorry, I can't agree with that, not when at least 50% of all so-called 'cryptocurrency' is used for illegal things, and especially not when cryptocurrency exchanges are getting hacked into and drained practically daily, and by the way how is using cryptocurrency any different than paying for everything in U.S. currency electronically? It's really not, and even if you say it's not 'traceable' right now, it will be traceable as soon as the government can arrange that. No thanks, I like physical cash.
Because, friend OrangeTide, the current prevailing business models all boil down to pay, Pay, PAY endlessly. Corporations (The Rich, really) want to remake the world into a place where only They get to own things, and everyone else only rents them. So of course they want you to 'rent' your own money you earn, by taking some of it when you try to spend it. Can't do that if you have nasty-old physical cash, now can they?
Also they want to be able to track every single dollar you spend, know where it came from and where it goes, which goes in your Very Personal Profile, so they can target more and more ads at you, so you'll buy more things, so they get more fees, and more data, and so on, and so on.
Governments of course will love a cashless world, because when you can't spend a single dollar without announcing your precise location, it's about as good as GPS for tracking individual citizens' whereabouts.
Needless to say we must fight against this 'cashless' bullshit tooth and nail.
These weren't ferals but rather other peoples cats
Ah, that's different. If they were running around loose (i.e. 'outside cats') then it might be a grey area, and an enlightened judge might not prosecute, I'd think, since if the ostensible owners couldn't be bothered to get their outside cats fixed, then that might be viewed as 'irresponsible'.
From the summary: aidhyanathan said Zuckerberg wants people to abandon competing, person-to-person forms of communication such as email, texting and Apple's iMessage in order to "do everything through a Facebook product."
I'd rather stop using the Internet entirely and forget it ever existed than have to use any Facebook-owned service. Fuck that shit.
Also would like to point out to your readers that it's a well-established practice of some businesses to schedule workers for just less than 'full time' so they can avoid giving them benefits.
"Free time" doesn't pay your monthly bills, or were you born with a silver spoon in your mouth and have never had to worry about such things?
A few less hours work a week isn't enough time to have a second part-time job to make up the difference, and the so-called 'gig economy' / 'side hustle' jobs don't pay very much when you take into account how much time they can take. I find your comment to be unrealistic and out-of-line.
The business world left entirely to it's own devices, with no laws or oversight to regulate them, would bring back horrors like the mining camps of old, where your wages were charged against for the tools and supplies necessary to do your job, and the only place you could buy food or other necessities to live was the 'company store', which price-gouged the living daylights out of you; life in those mining camps amounted to indentured servitude, if not outright slavery; workers families were de-facto held hostage, because if you were 'fired' you were thrown out of your company-owned housing, and would have no money or transportation to go anywhere else. Lack of regulation of business would also bring back things like Debtors' Prison and child labor.
As an aside to this subject, if you look at the 'for-profit' prison system, and how certain demographics of our citizens are treated by law enforcement and the criminal legal system, it comes close to slavery. But that really is a different subject.
Actually there are people who do precisely this all the time, and there are veterinarians who will provide the service for free, to help fix the feral cat population problem without euthanising them all. Apparently you're ignorant of any such things.
See this other comment I wrote, it might help you feel a little more like it's not all running out of control: https://hardware.slashdot.org/...
While I acknowledge that you're right about 'The Few' (i.e. 'The Rich') wanting to control everything, remember that it's always been that way, and always will be that way; however one way or another, in the end, The People always end up getting their say in things. Our (U.S.) government may be flawed and in many cases leveraged by The Rich, but if you pay attention you see that it's not completely compromised, there is still hope for us who are The 99%. What some corporations might want to do would amount to a very real Robot Apocalypse, but these 'robots' are not all that great to start with, so-called 'AI' is mostly marketing hype and not fundamentally much better than what they had in the 1990's, and governments are not going to allow gigantic double-digits of unemployment to happen just so corporations can cut their labor costs. It'll all work itself out in the end, we just have to keep paying attention to it all and not be silent about it.
It'll be the death of a thousand cuts. Eventually the job losses will put downward pressure on wages, then on sales, and then more layoffs and it'll spiral down. It's a classic race to the bottom. The only thing that can stop it is human reason and action from outside the system.
That statement amounts to spreading fear uncertainty and doubt -- and I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and say that wasn't your intent.
Machines are tools meant to serve mankind. Plain and simple. What you're describing is a perversion of that, where, if left unchecked, mankind ends up serving machines. That cannot be allowed to happen, and it is my belief that it will not be allowed to happen, based on the simple fact that it would be utter madness. Corporations may be running out of control in many instances in this the 21st century, but we haven't completely lost control of them yet, and besides which, here's another simple truth that no one can avoid: If too many humans are displaced by robots, there won't be anyone with money to spend to buy things and services anymore, therefore corporations will fail. Long before we reach that point governments will step in and ensure that something is done to give people jobs: either controls on using so-called 'robots', or re-education/re-training programs to give displaced workers the opportunity to work, or who-knows-what, but something will be done. It's just common sense. We may feel sometimes like we're living in a Hell Dimension, but we're really not.
Now, inevitably, some myopian will likely chime in with nonsense about so-called 'Universal Basic Income' -- which indeed is nonsense, as anyone who can do basic math should be able to determine. Doesn't scale up, is a drain on the economy, and would bankrupt any country within the first 2 years that tried to implement it on a nation-wide scale. No, sorry, we're not ever going to be living in some fantasy Utopia where robots do all the work and humans just lounge about all day every day their entire lives, making art and discussing philosophy, or whatever. It's so unrealistic that I've already spent too many words talking about it.
I meant SPECIFICALLY a product like a gods-be-damned power cord with a gods-be-damned wireless surveillance camera in it. It's rather specific don't you think?
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah sure ONE MAN is responsible for the cesspool the internet has become. Read this: https://tech.slashdot.org/comm...
Yeah sure and all the vitriol and bile and 'fake news' and propaganda from state actors and crime and [insert miscellaneous internet bullshit here] that the internet is chock full of now is just so fucking great. It's just so fucking wonderful that the Corporate World has de-facto taken over control of the internet and turned it ironically into the 'walled gardens' (with invisible walls so the sheep don't get panicked) you accuse so-called 'learned scholars' of pontificatiing from. It's just such a fucking wonderful internet that national governments have exerted more and more control over, in most cases to quash anti-government sentiment, freedom of speech/freedom of expression/information sharing in general and to spy on their own citizens so they can arrest people they don't like. If you really like the gods-be-damned internet the way it is right now in 2019 then I question your values, ethics, and morals. The internet has been perverted into something not-so-great, a mere shadow of what it could have been. That's what he's concerned about and rightly so. In many ways we would have been better off if it had never been invented in the first place (or at least never opened to the general public).
I think I understand quite enough.
Fuck off. I saw bitcoin as just a dumb fad and then as a tool for criminals and that's what it's turning out to be. Won't last, will get regulated by governments, transactions made traceable, just like all other financial transactions. Meanwhile you dumb asses are losing your shirts because it fluxuates even worse than the stock exchange. Screw that you can all be dumb all you want I'll have none of it.
Trump says something that isn't completely idiotic!
Could have been just dumb luck, it's a simple binary choice.
DST was originally to benefit farmers whose workday was dictated by daylight hours. Since that's not an issue anymore we don't need DST.
No, sorry, I can't agree with that, not when at least 50% of all so-called 'cryptocurrency' is used for illegal things, and especially not when cryptocurrency exchanges are getting hacked into and drained practically daily, and by the way how is using cryptocurrency any different than paying for everything in U.S. currency electronically? It's really not, and even if you say it's not 'traceable' right now, it will be traceable as soon as the government can arrange that. No thanks, I like physical cash.
It won't 'soon be over' if everyone fights against it tooth and nail instead of just being passive sheep and accepting it.
Because, friend OrangeTide, the current prevailing business models all boil down to pay, Pay, PAY endlessly. Corporations (The Rich, really) want to remake the world into a place where only They get to own things, and everyone else only rents them. So of course they want you to 'rent' your own money you earn, by taking some of it when you try to spend it. Can't do that if you have nasty-old physical cash, now can they?
Also they want to be able to track every single dollar you spend, know where it came from and where it goes, which goes in your Very Personal Profile, so they can target more and more ads at you, so you'll buy more things, so they get more fees, and more data, and so on, and so on.
Governments of course will love a cashless world, because when you can't spend a single dollar without announcing your precise location, it's about as good as GPS for tracking individual citizens' whereabouts.
Needless to say we must fight against this 'cashless' bullshit tooth and nail.
Hello,
I'm not a millennial, far from it, I think you're smart and this 'columnist' is an idiot.
Carry on..
If the reports of Russian meddling I've seen are accurate..
Ah, I see: you believe Whitehouse press releases.
These weren't ferals but rather other peoples cats
Ah, that's different. If they were running around loose (i.e. 'outside cats') then it might be a grey area, and an enlightened judge might not prosecute, I'd think, since if the ostensible owners couldn't be bothered to get their outside cats fixed, then that might be viewed as 'irresponsible'.
You're not wrong. But I think someone needs to slap them otherwise they might think it's okay.
Not illegal so far as I know. A public service really, the ferals don't breed, their health is checked, and they're released to live out their lives.
From the summary: aidhyanathan said Zuckerberg wants people to abandon competing, person-to-person forms of communication such as email, texting and Apple's iMessage in order to "do everything through a Facebook product."
I'd rather stop using the Internet entirely and forget it ever existed than have to use any Facebook-owned service. Fuck that shit.
Go back to 4chan, troll.
"Some workers look bad, so all workers must be bad"
Idiot.
Also would like to point out to your readers that it's a well-established practice of some businesses to schedule workers for just less than 'full time' so they can avoid giving them benefits.
"Free time" doesn't pay your monthly bills, or were you born with a silver spoon in your mouth and have never had to worry about such things?
A few less hours work a week isn't enough time to have a second part-time job to make up the difference, and the so-called 'gig economy' / 'side hustle' jobs don't pay very much when you take into account how much time they can take. I find your comment to be unrealistic and out-of-line.
The business world left entirely to it's own devices, with no laws or oversight to regulate them, would bring back horrors like the mining camps of old, where your wages were charged against for the tools and supplies necessary to do your job, and the only place you could buy food or other necessities to live was the 'company store', which price-gouged the living daylights out of you; life in those mining camps amounted to indentured servitude, if not outright slavery; workers families were de-facto held hostage, because if you were 'fired' you were thrown out of your company-owned housing, and would have no money or transportation to go anywhere else. Lack of regulation of business would also bring back things like Debtors' Prison and child labor.
As an aside to this subject, if you look at the 'for-profit' prison system, and how certain demographics of our citizens are treated by law enforcement and the criminal legal system, it comes close to slavery. But that really is a different subject.
Actually there are people who do precisely this all the time, and there are veterinarians who will provide the service for free, to help fix the feral cat population problem without euthanising them all. Apparently you're ignorant of any such things.
They'll turn humanity into this.
See this other comment I wrote, it might help you feel a little more like it's not all running out of control: https://hardware.slashdot.org/...
While I acknowledge that you're right about 'The Few' (i.e. 'The Rich') wanting to control everything, remember that it's always been that way, and always will be that way; however one way or another, in the end, The People always end up getting their say in things. Our (U.S.) government may be flawed and in many cases leveraged by The Rich, but if you pay attention you see that it's not completely compromised, there is still hope for us who are The 99%. What some corporations might want to do would amount to a very real Robot Apocalypse, but these 'robots' are not all that great to start with, so-called 'AI' is mostly marketing hype and not fundamentally much better than what they had in the 1990's, and governments are not going to allow gigantic double-digits of unemployment to happen just so corporations can cut their labor costs. It'll all work itself out in the end, we just have to keep paying attention to it all and not be silent about it.
It'll be the death of a thousand cuts. Eventually the job losses will put downward pressure on wages, then on sales, and then more layoffs and it'll spiral down. It's a classic race to the bottom. The only thing that can stop it is human reason and action from outside the system.
That statement amounts to spreading fear uncertainty and doubt -- and I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and say that wasn't your intent.
Machines are tools meant to serve mankind. Plain and simple. What you're describing is a perversion of that, where, if left unchecked, mankind ends up serving machines. That cannot be allowed to happen, and it is my belief that it will not be allowed to happen, based on the simple fact that it would be utter madness. Corporations may be running out of control in many instances in this the 21st century, but we haven't completely lost control of them yet, and besides which, here's another simple truth that no one can avoid: If too many humans are displaced by robots, there won't be anyone with money to spend to buy things and services anymore, therefore corporations will fail. Long before we reach that point governments will step in and ensure that something is done to give people jobs: either controls on using so-called 'robots', or re-education/re-training programs to give displaced workers the opportunity to work, or who-knows-what, but something will be done. It's just common sense. We may feel sometimes like we're living in a Hell Dimension, but we're really not.
Now, inevitably, some myopian will likely chime in with nonsense about so-called 'Universal Basic Income' -- which indeed is nonsense, as anyone who can do basic math should be able to determine. Doesn't scale up, is a drain on the economy, and would bankrupt any country within the first 2 years that tried to implement it on a nation-wide scale. No, sorry, we're not ever going to be living in some fantasy Utopia where robots do all the work and humans just lounge about all day every day their entire lives, making art and discussing philosophy, or whatever. It's so unrealistic that I've already spent too many words talking about it.
I meant SPECIFICALLY a product like a gods-be-damned power cord with a gods-be-damned wireless surveillance camera in it. It's rather specific don't you think?