This move is certainly not a debate on the merits of an idea, it is definitely an action designed to elicit political results. As all political actions are. In this case those results are, in the long term, the preservation of network neutrality, and in the short term, holding those people accountable who are trying to kill network neutrality.
None of what people do in the actual halls of congress is debate: that goes on outside. Politicians show up with an already-formed notion of what legislation they want to support. There's nothing wrong with this, it doesn't mean that debate doesn't take place it just means that it doesn't take place in those particular rooms.
As for your comment about Nazis: the reason why the term Nazi keeps coming up is because there are Nazis who have been holding political rallies recently and have been getting a lot of attention. It's not coincidence or hyperbole, that is something which is actually happening.
It's nothing more than politics as usual.. Is basically what you are saying..
This is awfully dismissive. The parent laid out why this move is particularly effective, and how the opposition party is acting against public sentiment. It certainly is politics, and it's not unique, but it's a little different from the usual.
I'm struggling to understand the argument that you're making here. You seem to be saying that people aren't rational anymore, and so we should just give up on that whole, outdated, "appealing to reason" business that people are used to.
I'm not sure what they're claiming in that regard, but my guess would be something like: "You are purchasing entertainment, all digital items belong to us and not to you and can be removed or altered at any time without notice."
Okay that's a little snarky, but these are items which can't be sold or refunded and for the most part do not translate into having any real-world value. Some items might be rarer than others, and some might be more "valued" by the player base, but any such determinations of value are purely subjective conjecture since these items can't be sold. So they're all worthless.
That's not the argument. The argument is that for a thing to constitute gambling it needs to potentially result in the loss of a wager. There's no chance of loss with loot boxes: you always get something. So buying a loot box constitutes a purchase, rather than a wager, even though you don't know exactly what it is that you're purchasing.
This is a legally valid argument, even though it wouldn't fly anywhere outside of a courtroom.
My greatest fear in terms of fallout from Trump is the collapse of our ability to govern ourselves. Setting aside what he has done and not done legislatively (he's a very weak president, and I don't think his legislative stumbling will really matter much in the long term), he is the most flagrantly corrupt politician that I have ever seen in this country. Not necessarily the most corrupt mind you, but the most flagrant about his corruption. What he has done has demonstrated that even maintaining a pretense of legitimate governance is unnecessary, and I can't help but believe that there are a lot of people out there seeing that and thinking to themselves that if they did what he did, with just a tiny amount of the subtlety that he lacks, then they would be able to get away with anything.
The only way to combat this would be to show that this belief is incorrect, that the American people are smart enough and invested enough and savvy enough to hold corrupt officials accountable, and to not be easily mislead by rhetoric or propaganda. And so I fear that this is a problem which can't be fixed, and that even if Trump is impeached it won't be enough to stop his corruption from spreading and our government from disintegrating. Though it may take a generation before the old guard are completely expunged (i.e.: the honest people who actually do the work of government, i.e.: the "deep state").
I'm confused about your comment. How are you connecting this to what I said? Are you claiming that Obama was going to do something that you would blame for costing you thousands of dollars for healthcare, and that the Nobel Committee should have known that you were going to blame it for this, and that your blame for his part in this thing that you think is responsible for costing you thousands of dollars in healthcare would, when it happened, represent poor global citizenship?
Or you saying something else? I can't say that your comment made much sense to me.
Obama got his peace prize because Bush, like Trump, was an America-firster and Obama signaled a return for the US to responsible global citizenship. Trump, like Bush, is the opposite of that. Of course he's not going to get a prize.
I'm surprised at how much credit Trump is getting in this thread for this development. It's possible that his hysterics unsettled Kim a little, but it seems much more likely that China slapped him down.
If the patent shouldn't have been granted, then it isn't a taking of property because it was never properly instantiated as IP.
I don't see how the one thing follows from the other. Well, to be honest, I have no idea what you mean by "instantiated as IP" - this is not a term that I'm familiar with - but there are plenty of examples of property which should never have been granted.
You're not really disputing the parent. The parent claimed that Republican primary voters went for Trump because he was the outsider candidate, you are saying that people voted for Trump because they felt that they were being ignored by the insider candidates. Those viewpoints are not in opposition.
As for splitting the vote, you linked to a really long wikipedia page without any explanation about what we should be looking for. Nate Silver's guess about why Trump won the primary is mostly in agreement with what the parent said. Trump did poorly up to a point during the primaries, failing to win any state until New York, and then he won every state thereafter. That implies a split vote between the other candidates until something changed and Republican voters rallied behind him.
This is an abuse of the anthropic principle. The fact that I am typing this right now does not mean that I necessarily had to have had waffles for breakfast this morning. It would be entirely possible, even likely, for me to have eaten something else this morning and still be typing this.
That fact that these social networks are big successful shitholes now, does not necessary mean that they were always destined to be shitholes. It wouldn't take a drastic change, at the right time, to alter the direction of discourse. One of the problems on reddit, for example, is its awful moderation system. A few subtle changes there could really help things down the road. In fact, I think that's still true for reddit at least - switching reddit over to Slashdot-style moderation wouldn't fix everything overnight, but it would partially address some of what encourages those bad behaviors. Over time that sort of change can lead to significant improvements.
Great. So I say that NASA doesn't just cover space, but also covers atmospheric science, and you say that the New York Times, one of the oldest and most respectable news organizations in the country, can't be trusted so we should instead get our news from a blog which is exclusively about space, and not about atmospheric science.
The article on the space blog is fine, but like the New York Times article, it's also a story about his controversial appointment and so, like the New York Times article, it doesn't say anything about whether he has a vision that includes manned space missions. The two articles are really very similar, it's just that the space.com article is about 1/3 as long and doesn't go into as much detail about why, exactly, this appointment was so contentious. Since explaining the contentiousness of this appointment was the whole point of an article titled, "New NASA Chief Jim Bridenstine Faces 'Uphill Climb' After Contentious Confirmation," this lack of information should not be considered a positive quality. And yet here we are.
I can't whether you're saying that the article or the parent is shitposting. Can we at least agree that science news qualifies as "News for Nerds"? And that appointing a head for NASA thus falls under that category?
Maybe we can go the extra step of recognizing that NASA is about more than just the romantic space stuff, that the "Air and Space Administration" also does atmospheric science? And that the article is discussing the new administrator's goals for the agency in that respect, exactly as you asked for?
What you're saying here doesn't match with your quote above. I went looking for the article you quoted from, and that is indeed talking about simulated rape (with sex robots). Not merely relieving sexual urges by having sex with prostitutes.
I'm not sure that I agree with the quote, we do encourage people with violent urges to work them out in a safe setting. Nothing as graphic as blood-spurting dummies, but punching things like a pillow or a heavy bag is not considered unhealthy when you're working out some aggression (or this...).
I don't think the parent was encouraging the raping of prostitutes...
Was the parent encouraging the raping of prostitutes? In what way is legalized prostitution a deterrent to sexual assault? Now you've got me all confused.
So what would have been the cowardly variant? Crashing the plane?
Possibly. The cowardly variant might have involved giving up in the face of adversity, or panicking, and either of those things could have resulted in a crash. But not necessarily. She could have cowardly landed the plane safely, crouching down in her chair, covering her face and peeking at the gauges through the cracks in her fingers.
Legalizing prostitution would be easier to achieve, but it's also a much smaller issue. The legality of abortion effects nearly everyone in the country (I was about to say every woman in the country, but the men are certainly also effected), while the legality of prostitution is of relatively limited scope. Though it's still a pretty big group.
At least they don't go around bullying other countries like we do.
They most certainly do. I don't know if you've been living under a rock or something, but Russia annexed part of the Ukraine not too long ago and that conflict is still ongoing. Also, this very story is about "State-Sponsored Russian Hackers Actively Seeking To Hijack Essential Internet Hardware."
I will grant your point that neither they nor we are "the good guys," but that seems like something of a non-sequitur. It isn't necessary for us to be good for their attack on us to be bad.
That's fine, I appreciate pedantry. I will also point out that I said above, "physiological addiction other than gambling" when I had really meant to say "psychological addiction other than gambling." So that's another thing that I did wrong. Plus the cocoa != coca thing.
I don't know if I can blame the spell checker for that one, or just dumb fingers.
Slashdot Mirror
This move is certainly not a debate on the merits of an idea, it is definitely an action designed to elicit political results. As all political actions are. In this case those results are, in the long term, the preservation of network neutrality, and in the short term, holding those people accountable who are trying to kill network neutrality.
None of what people do in the actual halls of congress is debate: that goes on outside. Politicians show up with an already-formed notion of what legislation they want to support. There's nothing wrong with this, it doesn't mean that debate doesn't take place it just means that it doesn't take place in those particular rooms.
As for your comment about Nazis: the reason why the term Nazi keeps coming up is because there are Nazis who have been holding political rallies recently and have been getting a lot of attention. It's not coincidence or hyperbole, that is something which is actually happening.
It's nothing more than politics as usual.. Is basically what you are saying..
This is awfully dismissive. The parent laid out why this move is particularly effective, and how the opposition party is acting against public sentiment. It certainly is politics, and it's not unique, but it's a little different from the usual.
I'm struggling to understand the argument that you're making here. You seem to be saying that people aren't rational anymore, and so we should just give up on that whole, outdated, "appealing to reason" business that people are used to.
I'm not sure what they're claiming in that regard, but my guess would be something like: "You are purchasing entertainment, all digital items belong to us and not to you and can be removed or altered at any time without notice."
Okay that's a little snarky, but these are items which can't be sold or refunded and for the most part do not translate into having any real-world value. Some items might be rarer than others, and some might be more "valued" by the player base, but any such determinations of value are purely subjective conjecture since these items can't be sold. So they're all worthless.
That's not the argument. The argument is that for a thing to constitute gambling it needs to potentially result in the loss of a wager. There's no chance of loss with loot boxes: you always get something. So buying a loot box constitutes a purchase, rather than a wager, even though you don't know exactly what it is that you're purchasing.
This is a legally valid argument, even though it wouldn't fly anywhere outside of a courtroom.
My greatest fear in terms of fallout from Trump is the collapse of our ability to govern ourselves. Setting aside what he has done and not done legislatively (he's a very weak president, and I don't think his legislative stumbling will really matter much in the long term), he is the most flagrantly corrupt politician that I have ever seen in this country. Not necessarily the most corrupt mind you, but the most flagrant about his corruption. What he has done has demonstrated that even maintaining a pretense of legitimate governance is unnecessary, and I can't help but believe that there are a lot of people out there seeing that and thinking to themselves that if they did what he did, with just a tiny amount of the subtlety that he lacks, then they would be able to get away with anything.
The only way to combat this would be to show that this belief is incorrect, that the American people are smart enough and invested enough and savvy enough to hold corrupt officials accountable, and to not be easily mislead by rhetoric or propaganda. And so I fear that this is a problem which can't be fixed, and that even if Trump is impeached it won't be enough to stop his corruption from spreading and our government from disintegrating. Though it may take a generation before the old guard are completely expunged (i.e.: the honest people who actually do the work of government, i.e.: the "deep state").
"Don't blame Trump, instead you should blame Obama for something that started during the Bush administration."
That's some pretty twisted logic, but Obama has to be held accountable somehow. Right? He's not going to pillory himself.
You give no credit to the broad-minded net neutrality defenders. They also played a hand.
I'm confused about your comment. How are you connecting this to what I said? Are you claiming that Obama was going to do something that you would blame for costing you thousands of dollars for healthcare, and that the Nobel Committee should have known that you were going to blame it for this, and that your blame for his part in this thing that you think is responsible for costing you thousands of dollars in healthcare would, when it happened, represent poor global citizenship? Or you saying something else? I can't say that your comment made much sense to me.
Obama got his peace prize because Bush, like Trump, was an America-firster and Obama signaled a return for the US to responsible global citizenship. Trump, like Bush, is the opposite of that. Of course he's not going to get a prize.
I'm surprised at how much credit Trump is getting in this thread for this development. It's possible that his hysterics unsettled Kim a little, but it seems much more likely that China slapped him down.
I'm confused by your comment. Are you suggesting that it would be difficult to replace Bezos? What is it that he does that's so unique?
If the patent shouldn't have been granted, then it isn't a taking of property because it was never properly instantiated as IP.
I don't see how the one thing follows from the other. Well, to be honest, I have no idea what you mean by "instantiated as IP" - this is not a term that I'm familiar with - but there are plenty of examples of property which should never have been granted.
Probably don't care, unless you work for the NSA or Cyber Command. This was an uncontroversial nomination.
You're not really disputing the parent. The parent claimed that Republican primary voters went for Trump because he was the outsider candidate, you are saying that people voted for Trump because they felt that they were being ignored by the insider candidates. Those viewpoints are not in opposition.
As for splitting the vote, you linked to a really long wikipedia page without any explanation about what we should be looking for. Nate Silver's guess about why Trump won the primary is mostly in agreement with what the parent said. Trump did poorly up to a point during the primaries, failing to win any state until New York, and then he won every state thereafter. That implies a split vote between the other candidates until something changed and Republican voters rallied behind him.
This is an abuse of the anthropic principle. The fact that I am typing this right now does not mean that I necessarily had to have had waffles for breakfast this morning. It would be entirely possible, even likely, for me to have eaten something else this morning and still be typing this.
That fact that these social networks are big successful shitholes now, does not necessary mean that they were always destined to be shitholes. It wouldn't take a drastic change, at the right time, to alter the direction of discourse. One of the problems on reddit, for example, is its awful moderation system. A few subtle changes there could really help things down the road. In fact, I think that's still true for reddit at least - switching reddit over to Slashdot-style moderation wouldn't fix everything overnight, but it would partially address some of what encourages those bad behaviors. Over time that sort of change can lead to significant improvements.
Twitter is a lost cause. No idea with Discord.
Great. So I say that NASA doesn't just cover space, but also covers atmospheric science, and you say that the New York Times, one of the oldest and most respectable news organizations in the country, can't be trusted so we should instead get our news from a blog which is exclusively about space, and not about atmospheric science.
The article on the space blog is fine, but like the New York Times article, it's also a story about his controversial appointment and so, like the New York Times article, it doesn't say anything about whether he has a vision that includes manned space missions. The two articles are really very similar, it's just that the space.com article is about 1/3 as long and doesn't go into as much detail about why, exactly, this appointment was so contentious. Since explaining the contentiousness of this appointment was the whole point of an article titled, "New NASA Chief Jim Bridenstine Faces 'Uphill Climb' After Contentious Confirmation," this lack of information should not be considered a positive quality. And yet here we are.
I can't whether you're saying that the article or the parent is shitposting. Can we at least agree that science news qualifies as "News for Nerds"? And that appointing a head for NASA thus falls under that category?
Maybe we can go the extra step of recognizing that NASA is about more than just the romantic space stuff, that the "Air and Space Administration" also does atmospheric science? And that the article is discussing the new administrator's goals for the agency in that respect, exactly as you asked for?
What you're saying here doesn't match with your quote above. I went looking for the article you quoted from, and that is indeed talking about simulated rape (with sex robots). Not merely relieving sexual urges by having sex with prostitutes.
I'm not sure that I agree with the quote, we do encourage people with violent urges to work them out in a safe setting. Nothing as graphic as blood-spurting dummies, but punching things like a pillow or a heavy bag is not considered unhealthy when you're working out some aggression (or this...).
I don't think the parent was encouraging the raping of prostitutes...
Was the parent encouraging the raping of prostitutes? In what way is legalized prostitution a deterrent to sexual assault? Now you've got me all confused.
Funny you should only mention Democrats. That's probably telling.
People blame the president because people always blame the president. They want a single person to point at.
So what would have been the cowardly variant? Crashing the plane?
Possibly. The cowardly variant might have involved giving up in the face of adversity, or panicking, and either of those things could have resulted in a crash. But not necessarily. She could have cowardly landed the plane safely, crouching down in her chair, covering her face and peeking at the gauges through the cracks in her fingers.
he will still be found fully responsible to support the child ... As such, it doesn't effect him in any way.
There must be some kind of language barrier here. These statements are contradictory.
Legalizing prostitution would be easier to achieve, but it's also a much smaller issue. The legality of abortion effects nearly everyone in the country (I was about to say every woman in the country, but the men are certainly also effected), while the legality of prostitution is of relatively limited scope. Though it's still a pretty big group.
At least they don't go around bullying other countries like we do.
They most certainly do. I don't know if you've been living under a rock or something, but Russia annexed part of the Ukraine not too long ago and that conflict is still ongoing. Also, this very story is about "State-Sponsored Russian Hackers Actively Seeking To Hijack Essential Internet Hardware."
I will grant your point that neither they nor we are "the good guys," but that seems like something of a non-sequitur. It isn't necessary for us to be good for their attack on us to be bad.
Where are you going with this? You left off the bit where you give some kind of conclusion. Why did you bring this up?
That's fine, I appreciate pedantry. I will also point out that I said above, "physiological addiction other than gambling" when I had really meant to say "psychological addiction other than gambling." So that's another thing that I did wrong. Plus the cocoa != coca thing.
I don't know if I can blame the spell checker for that one, or just dumb fingers.