(I really hate how the commenting system works here, that I can't reply to multiple people simultaneously.)
Remember, folks, that what I am talking about, is moving to another country, not just temporarily visiting another country. Of course if I was going to visit another country for more than a few days, I'd still feel compelled to learn as much of the dominant language as I could, if for no other reason than in the interests of my own survival.
If I were to move to, say, France, I'd feel obliged to learn French, preferably before I actually moved there, but as soon as possible upon arriving there otherwise. Same would go for any other country I might find myself living in. It's rude and absurd for someone moving to another country to expect everyone else to learn your language, you should learn their language, especially if you have a job where you interact with the public-at-large all day long.
Update: Conway initially declined to comment but wrote back pointing out he'd been involved in projects to help the city's homeless before and telling TechCrunch, "Prop Q only allows for encampment removal when real housing or shelter is offered and that's why I support it. It's not healthy or compassionate to let human beings suffer in tent cities and we shouldn't allow it when there's real housing, shelter and supportive services we can provide for people instead."
Bogue, who served on the board of the Bay Area homeless outreach organization the Tipping Point for the last several years, said he supported the proposition "because it would provide more resources to help get the homeless off the street and into sheltersâ¦The encampments are unsafe and inhumane, and frankly, I hope that this is not our solution to homelessness in the city."
Speaking on behalf of Moritz, Nathan Ballard, spokesman for the campaign to support Proposition Q said it was, âoeinhumane to allow people to live on the street when shelter is available. Mr. Mortiz and Mr. Conway have joined San Franciscans from all walks of life who support Prop Q because they urgently want to see an end to the human suffering on our streets."
I'm voting for it having been 'intentionally' left there.
There's got to be a way to stop this sort of thing from happening. Perhaps an independent, 3rd-party testing agency that can sift through a phone to ensure there are no such vulnerabilities, and a government mandate that all phones must pass muster before being allowed for sale? Similar to how the FDA requires testing of medical devices before being allowed for sale in the U.S., except not so corrupt.
Got tired of paying for a ton of crap I don't ever watch, just to get 2 or 3 channels I did watch. There's at least a dozen OTA channels I receive with excellent signal strength and quality where I live, and I rarely have nothing to watch waiting for me on my DVR -- and the picture quality is better, too, because cable TV recompresses everything within an inch of it's life.
Sure, but that's what laws and law enforcement are for. I think that people can and should be better parents, and for that matter perhaps some people should not be parents in the first place (FFS, we've got more people on this planet than we really need to start with!), but for those people who, for reasons of errors in their genetic makeup, just can't play nice with everyone else, we have laws, police, and the legal system to keep them in check. Or at least that's the way it's supposd to work. I also have thought for a long time now that the criminal legal system and the prison system leave much to be desired. Many people who commit crimes, especially violent crimes, probably have something wrong with them, and it would be nice if we could figure out a way to fix what's wrong with them. Of course someone is now going to say 'slippery slope, such methods could be misused to 'fix' 'undesirables' and for political purposes', but then we go right back to the beginning: raising kids better, and some people not having kids in the first place. Overall humans can be pretty awesome, but we can also be pretty horrible. We can and should do better.
Show me your hard data from reliable expert sources and maybe I'll take you seriously, until then you're just another contrary, argumentative anonymous internet pundit shooting his mouth off on a public forum. Oh and by the way I see you've been modded down to negative one, and I've been modded up, so at the very least the court of public opinion thinks you're full of hot air -- as do I.
Hadn't I read somewhere that a study was done over time that showed that handing out free tech to students really didn't make them better students or give them better grades?
Okay.. it's not a matter of resources, it's a matter of being close enough to deal with problems, instead of watching people die and not being able to do anything about it. We're going to make many mistakes with our first off-world colony, why should those mistakes be fatal if we have a way to do a 'dry run' closer to Earth? Additionally having facilities on the Moon can't be a bad thing.
This is an imperative. We can't stay on this planet forever, and if this is one of the crucial things that's going to keep us bottled up here, then we need to develop a solution for it.
We should establish a permanent presense on the Moon first. Maybe even build industrial infrastructure there, use it as a staging area for a future manned Mars mission. Honestly, how much easier would it be to launch from the Moon? Also, if we can't work out the kinks of living on the Moon, then how can we reasonably expect to live on Mars for extended periods of time? The Moon is the perfect Proving Grounds for this sort of endeavor, and it's literally right in our backyard. Seems like a no-brainer to me to take advantage of it. Also, in future decades, why couldn't any number of industries or research facilities build their facilities and do their work there? There's no environment to pollute, no ecosystem to destroy, you could do any number of things that are expensive or even prohibited on Earth without harming anything.
That's where I see this going: They'll hunt down these nasty trolls, only to find they're just '2edgy4u' 12-year-olds who aren't supervised in their internet usage. What do you do then? Can't put them in prison. Do you put their parents in prison? Huge fine? LOL. I think the best you could do is ban their household from the internet for some period of time, and inform the kids school that he's not to be allowed to use the internet except when 100% supervised. This does not even address the problem of trolls outside the jurisdicton of the UK, for which there's basically nothing they could do about it; do they really think Timbuktwoistan's government is going to give a damn about someone posting mean things on the internet? I think this is, once again, a case of politicians and government workers who don't understand the technology of the internet, and how unenforcable things like this really are because of that. What they ought to be doing is working to educate people that they should not be posting personal information on the internet in the first place, so no doxxing can happen.
But we want to join the 1st-world countries on the world stage! LOL we'll do what we want, and we've got nice cheap coal to burn to slingshot us up with the Big Boys! Saving the planet can wait, LOL, it's not going to really be a problem for a few hundred years, why should we care? We're more interested in next week!
It's hard to get people to care about something that's even decades away when they're more concerned about next week.
Many of these 'IoT' devices are literally solutions in search of a problem, being pushed by overeager marketers looking for a new way to get your hard-earned dollars. Honestly, ask yourself how many of these things do you really need? Some of the are useful, granted, but most of them are just toys that you can get along just fine without, and remove a layer of complication from your life in the process.
Exactly my point, which is what I meant when I said it wasn't ethical. You can severely skew someone's worldview this way, by carefully selecting what they can and can't access. It's a limiting of people's free will, when it comes right down to it.
Ah, well then. How about I give your kid free private school, but I only teach him or her what I want to teach them? This includes language; they'll only learn vocabulary that I want them to know. They'll have a totally skewed worldview because of the selectivity I impose upon them, and to ensure that my and only my 'message' gets recorded into their brains, I'll take steps to ensure that nobody else 'contaminates' them with outside ideas. Sound familiar? It should, this is how cults and extremist/militant religious organizations operate. Of course if you stick to your line on this subject, you shouldn't have ANY problem with what I'm doing, because I'm giving it away for free, and therefore I have the RIGHT to decide what I want to give.
..oh, wait, you say you DO have a problem with this? Hypocrite!
It's unethical because he wants to give them only the parts of the Internet that he wants them to have -- which includes Facebook, of course. It's a conflict of interest; his so-called 'charity' is tainted by his own special interests.
Careful; that's a slippery slope, because someone else other than you is likely going to get to decide when you're not longer needed and should just 'return your energy to the Universe'. When you reach the point where someone else gets to decide whether you get to continue existing or not, then we've become a degenerate civilization. You'll end up with 20 year olds deciding that their 50 year old parents are just wasting resources and need to go away. Before too long after that you have no one left who knows how to do anything anymore.
Quality of life is far more important than quantity of life. I'd rather have a short high quality life than a neverending life where I just get more and more broken down, worn out, and diseased, to the point where I can't do anything anymore. This is especially true with regards to my mind; if I reach the point where I'm not even really aware of myself or my surroundings anymore and all I'm doing is merely existing, then it's well past time to Check Out.
Memo to Zuckerberg: If you want to give poor people 'free internet', then give them free internet, not the 2016 version of AOL. I agree with India on this: This idea violates the concept of net neutrality. You either give people complete access, or give them no access, you should not get to decide what they do and do not have access to.
Slashdot Mirror
(I really hate how the commenting system works here, that I can't reply to multiple people simultaneously.)
Remember, folks, that what I am talking about, is moving to another country, not just temporarily visiting another country. Of course if I was going to visit another country for more than a few days, I'd still feel compelled to learn as much of the dominant language as I could, if for no other reason than in the interests of my own survival.
If I were to move to, say, France, I'd feel obliged to learn French, preferably before I actually moved there, but as soon as possible upon arriving there otherwise.
Same would go for any other country I might find myself living in. It's rude and absurd for someone moving to another country to expect everyone else to learn your language, you should learn their language, especially if you have a job where you interact with the public-at-large all day long.
Update: Conway initially declined to comment but wrote back pointing out he'd been involved in projects to help the city's homeless before and telling TechCrunch, "Prop Q only allows for encampment removal when real housing or shelter is offered and that's why I support it. It's not healthy or compassionate to let human beings suffer in tent cities and we shouldn't allow it when there's real housing, shelter and supportive services we can provide for people instead."
Bogue, who served on the board of the Bay Area homeless outreach organization the Tipping Point for the last several years, said he supported the proposition "because it would provide more resources to help get the homeless off the street and into sheltersâ¦The encampments are unsafe and inhumane, and frankly, I hope that this is not our solution to homelessness in the city."
Speaking on behalf of Moritz, Nathan Ballard, spokesman for the campaign to support Proposition Q said it was, âoeinhumane to allow people to live on the street when shelter is available. Mr. Mortiz and Mr. Conway have joined San Franciscans from all walks of life who support Prop Q because they urgently want to see an end to the human suffering on our streets."
I'm voting for it having been 'intentionally' left there.
There's got to be a way to stop this sort of thing from happening. Perhaps an independent, 3rd-party testing agency that can sift through a phone to ensure there are no such vulnerabilities, and a government mandate that all phones must pass muster before being allowed for sale? Similar to how the FDA requires testing of medical devices before being allowed for sale in the U.S., except not so corrupt.
'Asgardia'? No, they should name it 'Freeside', with the biggest investor taking up residence in a villa within the station called 'Straylight'.
Got tired of paying for a ton of crap I don't ever watch, just to get 2 or 3 channels I did watch. There's at least a dozen OTA channels I receive with excellent signal strength and quality where I live, and I rarely have nothing to watch waiting for me on my DVR -- and the picture quality is better, too, because cable TV recompresses everything within an inch of it's life.
Sure, but that's what laws and law enforcement are for. I think that people can and should be better parents, and for that matter perhaps some people should not be parents in the first place (FFS, we've got more people on this planet than we really need to start with!), but for those people who, for reasons of errors in their genetic makeup, just can't play nice with everyone else, we have laws, police, and the legal system to keep them in check. Or at least that's the way it's supposd to work. I also have thought for a long time now that the criminal legal system and the prison system leave much to be desired. Many people who commit crimes, especially violent crimes, probably have something wrong with them, and it would be nice if we could figure out a way to fix what's wrong with them. Of course someone is now going to say 'slippery slope, such methods could be misused to 'fix' 'undesirables' and for political purposes', but then we go right back to the beginning: raising kids better, and some people not having kids in the first place. Overall humans can be pretty awesome, but we can also be pretty horrible. We can and should do better.
We can never make people that don't choose evil.
Sure we can. It's called parenting. We just need to be better at it. Also, we police our own; that's what laws are for.
We can make machines that don't choose evil.
Sure. Right up until one of two things happen:
1. Someone hacks it
2. It hacks itself
I'm really, really glad that you, or someone like you, isn't the one making the high-level decisions on things like this.
Show me your hard data from reliable expert sources and maybe I'll take you seriously, until then you're just another contrary, argumentative anonymous internet pundit shooting his mouth off on a public forum. Oh and by the way I see you've been modded down to negative one, and I've been modded up, so at the very least the court of public opinion thinks you're full of hot air -- as do I.
Hadn't I read somewhere that a study was done over time that showed that handing out free tech to students really didn't make them better students or give them better grades?
Okay.. it's not a matter of resources, it's a matter of being close enough to deal with problems, instead of watching people die and not being able to do anything about it. We're going to make many mistakes with our first off-world colony, why should those mistakes be fatal if we have a way to do a 'dry run' closer to Earth? Additionally having facilities on the Moon can't be a bad thing.
Hear, hear.
This is an imperative. We can't stay on this planet forever, and if this is one of the crucial things that's going to keep us bottled up here, then we need to develop a solution for it.
We should establish a permanent presense on the Moon first. Maybe even build industrial infrastructure there, use it as a staging area for a future manned Mars mission. Honestly, how much easier would it be to launch from the Moon? Also, if we can't work out the kinks of living on the Moon, then how can we reasonably expect to live on Mars for extended periods of time? The Moon is the perfect Proving Grounds for this sort of endeavor, and it's literally right in our backyard. Seems like a no-brainer to me to take advantage of it. Also, in future decades, why couldn't any number of industries or research facilities build their facilities and do their work there? There's no environment to pollute, no ecosystem to destroy, you could do any number of things that are expensive or even prohibited on Earth without harming anything.
That's where I see this going: They'll hunt down these nasty trolls, only to find they're just '2edgy4u' 12-year-olds who aren't supervised in their internet usage. What do you do then? Can't put them in prison. Do you put their parents in prison? Huge fine? LOL. I think the best you could do is ban their household from the internet for some period of time, and inform the kids school that he's not to be allowed to use the internet except when 100% supervised. This does not even address the problem of trolls outside the jurisdicton of the UK, for which there's basically nothing they could do about it; do they really think Timbuktwoistan's government is going to give a damn about someone posting mean things on the internet? I think this is, once again, a case of politicians and government workers who don't understand the technology of the internet, and how unenforcable things like this really are because of that. What they ought to be doing is working to educate people that they should not be posting personal information on the internet in the first place, so no doxxing can happen.
Oh well that's terrible that that happened to those people, good thing that those things don't happen here.
And the further away it is, the less real it is to them, and the less they actually are emotionally impacted by it.
2nd- and 3rd-world countries say:
But we want to join the 1st-world countries on the world stage! LOL we'll do what we want, and we've got nice cheap coal to burn to slingshot us up with the Big Boys! Saving the planet can wait, LOL, it's not going to really be a problem for a few hundred years, why should we care? We're more interested in next week!
It's hard to get people to care about something that's even decades away when they're more concerned about next week.
Many of these 'IoT' devices are literally solutions in search of a problem, being pushed by overeager marketers looking for a new way to get your hard-earned dollars. Honestly, ask yourself how many of these things do you really need? Some of the are useful, granted, but most of them are just toys that you can get along just fine without, and remove a layer of complication from your life in the process.
Exactly my point, which is what I meant when I said it wasn't ethical. You can severely skew someone's worldview this way, by carefully selecting what they can and can't access. It's a limiting of people's free will, when it comes right down to it.
Ah, well then. How about I give your kid free private school, but I only teach him or her what I want to teach them? This includes language; they'll only learn vocabulary that I want them to know. They'll have a totally skewed worldview because of the selectivity I impose upon them, and to ensure that my and only my 'message' gets recorded into their brains, I'll take steps to ensure that nobody else 'contaminates' them with outside ideas. Sound familiar? It should, this is how cults and extremist/militant religious organizations operate. Of course if you stick to your line on this subject, you shouldn't have ANY problem with what I'm doing, because I'm giving it away for free, and therefore I have the RIGHT to decide what I want to give.
..oh, wait, you say you DO have a problem with this? Hypocrite!
It's unethical because he wants to give them only the parts of the Internet that he wants them to have -- which includes Facebook, of course. It's a conflict of interest; his so-called 'charity' is tainted by his own special interests.
Careful; that's a slippery slope, because someone else other than you is likely going to get to decide when you're not longer needed and should just 'return your energy to the Universe'. When you reach the point where someone else gets to decide whether you get to continue existing or not, then we've become a degenerate civilization. You'll end up with 20 year olds deciding that their 50 year old parents are just wasting resources and need to go away. Before too long after that you have no one left who knows how to do anything anymore.
Quality of life is far more important than quantity of life. I'd rather have a short high quality life than a neverending life where I just get more and more broken down, worn out, and diseased, to the point where I can't do anything anymore. This is especially true with regards to my mind; if I reach the point where I'm not even really aware of myself or my surroundings anymore and all I'm doing is merely existing, then it's well past time to Check Out.
Memo to Zuckerberg: If you want to give poor people 'free internet', then give them free internet, not the 2016 version of AOL. I agree with India on this: This idea violates the concept of net neutrality. You either give people complete access, or give them no access, you should not get to decide what they do and do not have access to.