Sure thing buddy, let's 'pull out of Europe', and NATO while we're at it. Who needs those freeloaders, right? And we'll get a nice 'thank you' card from Vladimir Putin out of the deal, since it'll make it that much easier for him to conquer Europe -- or didn't that occur to you?
Well, then, I suppose you're also going to contradict me that what I hear and read in the news, about not only voters but members of Congress not being terribly happy, is just 'fake news' or something I'm making up out of wholecloth -- because You like Trump so you want to pretend everyone else likes Trump, even people who didn't vote for him. Wrong. xD
Reminder: 'Politically active conservatives' are not the entire 300,000,000 citizens of the United States, and by the way only roughly HALF the country voted for Trump. So who you're referring to is actually a MINORITY, not the MAJORITY.
It's adorable that you think polls mean anything. All that tells you is what the people polled think, not what the rest of the nation thinks. I could probably find (or create) a poll that would lead you to believe that the Earth is actually flat, too, and it would have just about as much credibility.
Friend, we don't have time for an 'amusing' Leader of the Free World; not anymore. It's not Amateur Night on Planet Earth anymore, things have gotten terribly, horribly real, and we really, really needed someone responsible, experienced, respectable, and capable of making thoughtful, insightful decisions on big and little issues alike. Sadly, we were not offered any such Candidate, not from any political party. So now we're stuck with this disgusting clown who is taking a chainsaw to just about everything. I'm not laughing. Neither are a lot of people who voted for the sonofabitch, either, and neither are a whole bunch of the GOP. Oh and by the way if you didn't figure it out, I am also not a Hillary or Trump supporter.
Oh and by the way I'd like to point out that Angela Merkel was called 'Leader of the Free World' by the press last week; that's about the worst black-eye the U.S. could possibly get so far as I'm concerned; the destruction of the credibility of the U.S. is now more or less complete. We're right down there, now, in the muck with so many African and South American countries, that seem to have a regime change every other week. It'll likely take many decades for us to fix our reputation, if it's even possible to do anymore.
They were BOTH turds, but it happens that Trump managed to bring the absolute worst America has to offer out of the woodwork -- and quite possibly there was interference from Russian operatives to help that along, since it's obvious Trump being in office is beneficial to Putin and Russia. We'll see though won't we? BTW I'm a non-partisan voter from California.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Only if they have nothing better to do, I guess. Some of us 'good people' have full schedules and struggle to get enough sleep. How nice for you if you can.:p
Don't you mean "President Pussy-grabber" or "Pussy-grabber-in-chief"? I was surprised he didn't grab Angela Merkel by the pussy -- and a little disappointed, she probably would have wheeled around and punched him in the nose (much like on Madam Secretary). Would've been entertaining, seeing him get machoed out like that. xD
There's a difference between offensive and injurious intent.
Here's the problem with that, though: Who gets to decide what the difference really is? Consider this scenario:
Someone sets up someone else for an ostensibly harmless practical joke. The joke happens, but the target is injured in the process, has to go to the ER. Charges are filed, a civil suit for damages is filed.
That's a rather extreme example, but well within the realm of possibility; the perpetrator of the joke can claim there was no intent to cause harm, but may be lying about that, but it doesn't matter. Harm was caused as a direct result, and he may well be criminally and civilly libel. Now, substitute sending someone something over the internet. Does it matter if there was intent to cause harm or not?
The problem is setting a legal precedent. If there is legal precedent that just sending someone a picture of something that causes harm of some sort over the Internet can be considered assault, then it potentially opens a Pandoras Box of legal troubles. What if someone is trolling Vegans or animal rights activists by sending gory pictures or videos of animals being slaughtered, and they claim they were caused harm by that? If there's legal precedent to back that claim up, then it's not an outrageous idea that sending anything to anyone over the Internet can be dangerous. Pretty much anyone could be arrested for sending anyone anything, if they can claim they where 'harmed' by it. Do we really want to live in that sort of world? Certainly, the standard (at least in a civil lawsuit) of what's considered reasonable would still stand, but our legal system could be clogged up by letigious people claiming they were injured by a picture.
People who habitually wear this face: https://img.memesuper.com/31c7... probably will, because they don't know any better and/or don't have the technical expertise to do anything else. That's the 'target audience' of Miscreant-o-soft: people who can't defend themselves, and that are too technically ignorant to know what they're doing to themselves. Remember that probably 90% of all computer users at this point in time just want to browse the web, get and send email, watch videos, and maybe play some games.
We don't have any real idea yet how human consciousness works, and we're going to replicate it in a machine in 12 years? LOL, NO, that's nonsense! Also I don't think our machines are making us smarter; I think they're making lots of people lazier and dumber. Why bother learning how to do things yourself? You have some machine that does it for you. Later on: Why do anything for yourself? You have some robot to do it for you. Why even bother moving around?
Hollywood ran out of ideas at least as far back as the 1990's. That's one of the reasons The Matrix was as popular as it was: It was, in many ways, an original thought.
I agree with others on this; leave The Matrix alone. It doesn't need to be 'rebooted', it doesn't need a 'remake'. Leave it be.
Censorship is not inherently bad unless it affects me personally, then it's REALLY BAD
Fixed that for you. People like you typically don't care what happens to anyone else, but you get all righteously indignated and suddenly become 'activists' when it affects you.
It's not just a matter of actual data in files or entries stored on a smartphone. It's things like your GPS position data leaking (or being accessed covertly), your Internet browsing history, MitM attacks to obtain things like bank account numbers and passwords, credit card information, and other financial information, and in extremis, your phone being hacked to the point where it's a mobile surveillance platform, listening in on you and what's going on around you and/or seeing (via the camera that every phone now has) what's going on around you. Don't say it doesn't happen or doesn't happen except rarely, either; there are news stories on a regular basis about this-or-that app that is found to be accessing the microphone, camera, and GPS of smartphones, even when the app is ostensibly not running, and note that I'm only talking about normal apps, not intentional trojans you're either tricked into installing, installing under false pretenses, or that are hacked onto your phone by one means or another.
Disclaimer: I don't want to see child porn or ISIS propaganda of people getting their heads cut off. EVER. However: So-called 'content moderation' should be called what it is: censorship. Doesn't matter if it's a non-governmental, privately-owned company, enforcing their own rules on their own website, it's still censorship. Stop with the 'newspeak' already.
What makes you think I'm NOT talking about non-internet, non-data-theft related crimes too? All laws need to be applied equally or not at all, regardless of whether you're a homeless person, Bill Gates, or the President of the United States.
I have this annoying habit of reading things before I sign them, and if I don't understand it (or someone is trying to hurry me to sign it), I will not sign it. Because I'm not dumb.;-)
.. and just need to try and make things a little better bit by bit
Sure. Right. I totally agree. And we start to do that by not ignoring inequality, especially when it comes to THE LAW, CIVIL RIGHTS, and HUMAN RIGHTS. They need to be applied equally.
Inequality is inequality. If some people can be above the law because they have money and power, then that is flat-out wrong and needs to be corrected. Same with privacy. Otherwise the law means nothing, and if that's the case then we have anarchy.
'Most people' are demonstrably dumb, I'm sorry to say. I don't believe in 'gods', the supernatural, the 'afterlife', or any number of other nonsense things, but if someone came up to me and offered me millions of dollars in exchange for a signed document giving them ownership of my 'soul', I would not become a 'believer' -- but I would certainly know Something Was Up, and I'd tell them to bugger off. If nothing else, it could be some nutjob with tons of money, who would think they could do anything they wanted to me after that, making my life a (excuse the irony) living hell. No thanks. TANSTAAFL.:-)
I think that the correct solution is to legally enforce transparency in ALL layers of society, maybe even to change technology so that secrets become impossible for EVERYONE.
There's a reason that would never work: rich and powerful people would make themselves exempt, by one means or another, just like they do with so many other things. In the end it would only apply to the 'commoners', and as such would at best be no better than things are currently, and at worst it would feel like orders of magnitude worse, with most people feeling like their entire lives are splayed open like a frog on a dissection tray.
You want to make the Internet 'good' again? First make the 'monetization' of the users illegal; no more collection of user data to sell to marketers (or give to the government surveillance junkies). That's the easy part. The next part is nigh-unto impossible: make people be as nice to each other as if they were face-to-face. Not going to happen. Really, the only way the Internet is good for anything at this point, is if you use it in a read-only manner: use it for information (from credible sources) and maybe for person-to-person communication (via email or direct chat). Shopping, banking, paying your bills, interacting with government agencies? Sure, but until Item #1 is taken care of (data collection is illegal) you're at risk of being snooped on, 'collected', 'surveilled', and 'monetized' for someone elses' benefit. Sadly, I think the 'golden age' of the Internet is long gone and won't be coming back. Dark web, maybe? Set up your own sub-Internet? Maybe. For the average person that's beyond their capability though.
Here's the thing: The meter at your house is not the only measuring device electricity providers are using. There are also meters on entire blocks of the electric grid, and (theoretically!) they should be regularly auditing, comparing the sum of the readings from the individual meters with the reading from the meter for that part of the grid. The reason they do this, is twofold: to look for anyone stealing electricity, and to look for evidence of a fault in that part of the grid (i.e. a partial short circuit somewhere, failing transformer, etc, something dissipating power that shouldn't be). I'm not saying that they may indulge in corruption by knowingly overcharging people because the meter at their house is off by a factor of 6, but that's basically what they'd have to be doing: literally stealing people's money by knowingly overcharging them. I cannot say if there is any sort of government oversight of public utilities that would prevent this sort of corruption from happening.
So if someone came up to you and offered you a nice tidy 8-digit sum of money (verifiably legit) for your Immortal Soul, you, not believing there is any such thing, would sign on the dotted line in your own blood, and take the money, and you'd never even wonder if your belief (or lack thereof) was correct or incorrect?
Slashdot Mirror
Sure thing buddy, let's 'pull out of Europe', and NATO while we're at it. Who needs those freeloaders, right? And we'll get a nice 'thank you' card from Vladimir Putin out of the deal, since it'll make it that much easier for him to conquer Europe -- or didn't that occur to you?
Well, then, I suppose you're also going to contradict me that what I hear and read in the news, about not only voters but members of Congress not being terribly happy, is just 'fake news' or something I'm making up out of wholecloth -- because You like Trump so you want to pretend everyone else likes Trump, even people who didn't vote for him. Wrong. xD
Reminder: 'Politically active conservatives' are not the entire 300,000,000 citizens of the United States, and by the way only roughly HALF the country voted for Trump. So who you're referring to is actually a MINORITY, not the MAJORITY.
It's adorable that you think polls mean anything. All that tells you is what the people polled think, not what the rest of the nation thinks. I could probably find (or create) a poll that would lead you to believe that the Earth is actually flat, too, and it would have just about as much credibility.
Friend, we don't have time for an 'amusing' Leader of the Free World; not anymore. It's not Amateur Night on Planet Earth anymore, things have gotten terribly, horribly real, and we really, really needed someone responsible, experienced, respectable, and capable of making thoughtful, insightful decisions on big and little issues alike. Sadly, we were not offered any such Candidate, not from any political party. So now we're stuck with this disgusting clown who is taking a chainsaw to just about everything. I'm not laughing. Neither are a lot of people who voted for the sonofabitch, either, and neither are a whole bunch of the GOP. Oh and by the way if you didn't figure it out, I am also not a Hillary or Trump supporter.
Oh and by the way I'd like to point out that Angela Merkel was called 'Leader of the Free World' by the press last week; that's about the worst black-eye the U.S. could possibly get so far as I'm concerned; the destruction of the credibility of the U.S. is now more or less complete. We're right down there, now, in the muck with so many African and South American countries, that seem to have a regime change every other week. It'll likely take many decades for us to fix our reputation, if it's even possible to do anymore.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Only if they have nothing better to do, I guess. Some of us 'good people' have full schedules and struggle to get enough sleep. How nice for you if you can. :p
SCROTUS
Don't you mean "President Pussy-grabber" or "Pussy-grabber-in-chief"? I was surprised he didn't grab Angela Merkel by the pussy -- and a little disappointed, she probably would have wheeled around and punched him in the nose (much like on Madam Secretary). Would've been entertaining, seeing him get machoed out like that. xD
Yeah sure. Let's set the stage for even more frivolous lawsuits, and more law enforcement man-hours wasted.
There's a difference between offensive and injurious intent.
Here's the problem with that, though: Who gets to decide what the difference really is? Consider this scenario:
Someone sets up someone else for an ostensibly harmless practical joke.
The joke happens, but the target is injured in the process, has to go to the ER. Charges are filed, a civil suit for damages is filed.
That's a rather extreme example, but well within the realm of possibility; the perpetrator of the joke can claim there was no intent to cause harm, but may be lying about that, but it doesn't matter. Harm was caused as a direct result, and he may well be criminally and civilly libel. Now, substitute sending someone something over the internet. Does it matter if there was intent to cause harm or not?
The problem is setting a legal precedent. If there is legal precedent that just sending someone a picture of something that causes harm of some sort over the Internet can be considered assault, then it potentially opens a Pandoras Box of legal troubles. What if someone is trolling Vegans or animal rights activists by sending gory pictures or videos of animals being slaughtered, and they claim they were caused harm by that? If there's legal precedent to back that claim up, then it's not an outrageous idea that sending anything to anyone over the Internet can be dangerous. Pretty much anyone could be arrested for sending anyone anything, if they can claim they where 'harmed' by it. Do we really want to live in that sort of world? Certainly, the standard (at least in a civil lawsuit) of what's considered reasonable would still stand, but our legal system could be clogged up by letigious people claiming they were injured by a picture.
While I realize you're not defending me personally, I appreciate the fact that you're defending the facts. Thank you.
People who habitually wear this face: https://img.memesuper.com/31c7... probably will, because they don't know any better and/or don't have the technical expertise to do anything else. That's the 'target audience' of Miscreant-o-soft: people who can't defend themselves, and that are too technically ignorant to know what they're doing to themselves. Remember that probably 90% of all computer users at this point in time just want to browse the web, get and send email, watch videos, and maybe play some games.
We don't have any real idea yet how human consciousness works, and we're going to replicate it in a machine in 12 years? LOL, NO, that's nonsense! Also I don't think our machines are making us smarter; I think they're making lots of people lazier and dumber. Why bother learning how to do things yourself? You have some machine that does it for you. Later on: Why do anything for yourself? You have some robot to do it for you. Why even bother moving around?
Hollywood ran out of ideas at least as far back as the 1990's. That's one of the reasons The Matrix was as popular as it was: It was, in many ways, an original thought.
I agree with others on this; leave The Matrix alone. It doesn't need to be 'rebooted', it doesn't need a 'remake'. Leave it be.
Censorship is not inherently bad unless it affects me personally, then it's REALLY BAD
Fixed that for you. People like you typically don't care what happens to anyone else, but you get all righteously indignated and suddenly become 'activists' when it affects you.
It's not just a matter of actual data in files or entries stored on a smartphone. It's things like your GPS position data leaking (or being accessed covertly), your Internet browsing history, MitM attacks to obtain things like bank account numbers and passwords, credit card information, and other financial information, and in extremis, your phone being hacked to the point where it's a mobile surveillance platform, listening in on you and what's going on around you and/or seeing (via the camera that every phone now has) what's going on around you. Don't say it doesn't happen or doesn't happen except rarely, either; there are news stories on a regular basis about this-or-that app that is found to be accessing the microphone, camera, and GPS of smartphones, even when the app is ostensibly not running, and note that I'm only talking about normal apps, not intentional trojans you're either tricked into installing, installing under false pretenses, or that are hacked onto your phone by one means or another.
Disclaimer: I don't want to see child porn or ISIS propaganda of people getting their heads cut off. EVER.
However: So-called 'content moderation' should be called what it is: censorship. Doesn't matter if it's a non-governmental, privately-owned company, enforcing their own rules on their own website, it's still censorship. Stop with the 'newspeak' already.
What makes you think I'm NOT talking about non-internet, non-data-theft related crimes too?
All laws need to be applied equally or not at all, regardless of whether you're a homeless person, Bill Gates, or the President of the United States.
I have this annoying habit of reading things before I sign them, and if I don't understand it (or someone is trying to hurry me to sign it), I will not sign it. Because I'm not dumb. ;-)
.. and just need to try and make things a little better bit by bit
Sure. Right. I totally agree. And we start to do that by not ignoring inequality, especially when it comes to THE LAW, CIVIL RIGHTS, and HUMAN RIGHTS. They need to be applied equally.
Inequality is inequality. If some people can be above the law because they have money and power, then that is flat-out wrong and needs to be corrected. Same with privacy. Otherwise the law means nothing, and if that's the case then we have anarchy.
*shrug* whatever you say, friend.
'Most people' are demonstrably dumb, I'm sorry to say. I don't believe in 'gods', the supernatural, the 'afterlife', or any number of other nonsense things, but if someone came up to me and offered me millions of dollars in exchange for a signed document giving them ownership of my 'soul', I would not become a 'believer' -- but I would certainly know Something Was Up, and I'd tell them to bugger off. If nothing else, it could be some nutjob with tons of money, who would think they could do anything they wanted to me after that, making my life a (excuse the irony) living hell. No thanks. TANSTAAFL. :-)
I think that the correct solution is to legally enforce transparency in ALL layers of society, maybe even to change technology so that secrets become impossible for EVERYONE.
There's a reason that would never work: rich and powerful people would make themselves exempt, by one means or another, just like they do with so many other things. In the end it would only apply to the 'commoners', and as such would at best be no better than things are currently, and at worst it would feel like orders of magnitude worse, with most people feeling like their entire lives are splayed open like a frog on a dissection tray.
You want to make the Internet 'good' again? First make the 'monetization' of the users illegal; no more collection of user data to sell to marketers (or give to the government surveillance junkies). That's the easy part. The next part is nigh-unto impossible: make people be as nice to each other as if they were face-to-face. Not going to happen. Really, the only way the Internet is good for anything at this point, is if you use it in a read-only manner: use it for information (from credible sources) and maybe for person-to-person communication (via email or direct chat). Shopping, banking, paying your bills, interacting with government agencies? Sure, but until Item #1 is taken care of (data collection is illegal) you're at risk of being snooped on, 'collected', 'surveilled', and 'monetized' for someone elses' benefit. Sadly, I think the 'golden age' of the Internet is long gone and won't be coming back. Dark web, maybe? Set up your own sub-Internet? Maybe. For the average person that's beyond their capability though.
Here's the thing: The meter at your house is not the only measuring device electricity providers are using. There are also meters on entire blocks of the electric grid, and (theoretically!) they should be regularly auditing, comparing the sum of the readings from the individual meters with the reading from the meter for that part of the grid. The reason they do this, is twofold: to look for anyone stealing electricity, and to look for evidence of a fault in that part of the grid (i.e. a partial short circuit somewhere, failing transformer, etc, something dissipating power that shouldn't be). I'm not saying that they may indulge in corruption by knowingly overcharging people because the meter at their house is off by a factor of 6, but that's basically what they'd have to be doing: literally stealing people's money by knowingly overcharging them. I cannot say if there is any sort of government oversight of public utilities that would prevent this sort of corruption from happening.
They didn't believe that you could own land
So if someone came up to you and offered you a nice tidy 8-digit sum of money (verifiably legit) for your Immortal Soul, you, not believing there is any such thing, would sign on the dotted line in your own blood, and take the money, and you'd never even wonder if your belief (or lack thereof) was correct or incorrect?