Another day, another news item about someone's security getting breached. I'm beginning to wonder if we don't all need to just break out the old zip-zap machines, the good ol' knuckle-busters of old, and get rid of all this electronic bullshit, and go back to the fucking 1970s. I miss my C64... sure it was slow as shit and using a 2400 baud modem sucked, but we didn't know different.
Hell... I'm even beginning to miss bell-bottoms. I miss natural perky tits in tight little sweaters and long straight hair on girls not covered in ridiculous makeup and tattoos... all our great rock and jazz and soul musicians were still alive... and today they're mostly all dead, all the great bands have broken up, all our shit's getting broken into, the world's going to fucking pieces... anyone got a time machine handy? Set course for 1969 and engage. (I'll need a year or two to re-acclimate first.)
(For a list of grievances, we could just play back the second half of "We Didn't Start the Fire," really.) -sigh-
Perhaps even more frequently by crooked prosecutors?
I think it goes a bit further than crooked prosecutors. The whole system stinks, and as it rewards those currently in power, don't look for them to expend an ounce of effort to change it.
The underlying point of all this noise is that in America, notwithstanding what is SUPPOSED to be the case, the entire criminal "justice" system is run for and by the government with the end in mind of maintaining order, by which I mean the order in which those in power stay there. The notion that a jury-trial is really and truly a trial by a jury of your peers is a fig-leaf behind which America hides the fact that while fairness is the stated goal, (sometimes called justice, but, I mean, come on now...) it's not the outcome nearly as often as it should be. Case in point, the top to bottom way in which if you're rich enough, you can just about get away with murder, contrasted with if you're a member of a disenfranchised and relatively powerless and oppressed minority, you can be murdered for selling loose cigarettes, a form of tax-evasion, unless I'm very much mistaken, while the people running the freak-show in what pretends to be our federal central government is and has been for years just choc-full of tax-cheats, tax-dodgers, scam-artists, etc., and it goes back WAY before the clown-prince of America got installed as the phony puppet play-prez.
Oh, and by the way... I dearly love how people pretend that there's something barbaric about executing someone with a sword, (which when done properly is probably just about the closest thing you could have to a quick, certain, and humane execution and relatively inexpensive too,) while murdering a citizen in what pretends to be some species of democracy or republic allows the same thing to happen using cocktails of drugs not designed for this purpose, hangings, firing squads, electrocutions, etc. There's no "couldn't find a vein" with a beheading. There's no "whoops, everyone missed, except for a couple of guys, who managed to shoot the condemned in the nuts". There's no, "wow, I can't believe the rope BROKE," or "goodness, look at him twitch, I don't think the noose broke his neck and now he's strangulating". There's no "insufficient voltage" with a beheading, either. In fact, that was the whole point of the guillotine, to take the strength and skill required to behead OUT of the operation. With a properly trained and capable headsman, it's over instantly. Yet people whine and cry about how it's brutal and barbaric... no, the fact that the state is murdering one of its own citizens is what's barbaric. The beheading, (versus all else,) is just having distaste for the TACTIC, the METHOD used and frankly, it shouldn't be hidden behind closed doors, squirreled away behind all the bureaucracy and bullshit. If you're going to murder someone on behalf of all the people, they should get to watch, up close, and in person. Better still, they should HAVE to watch, and if they don't like that, let them demand politicians change the law so that we can stop murdering our own people, and pretending it's anything other than murder.
Also, on a related note, the death penalty only really applies to everyone around the condemned. The condemned doesn't suffer anymore after the execution, no matter how badly you botch it, or how long it takes. So if someone fucked up badly enough to deserve society's worst punishment, KILLING that person is really letting him or her (or them, etc.,) commit some heinous and infamous crime, and skate on the punishment, assuming he or she or they were even GUILTY of the crime in question, meanwhile, if you're wrong you can't undo it, and also the real perpetrator goes free to do it again. Further, while you murder someone for whatever alleged crime, s/he/y (shey?) committed (or didn't,) that person's/those people's family/ies suffer from that loss, and they themselv
Tech Suffers From Lack of Humanities, Says Mozilla Head
Can someone tell the head of Mozilla to talk to all the STEM majors, (dropouts, active students, and graduates alike,) about their propensity to think humanities don't matter, and the people who study them and work in those fields aren't doing so simply because they're not good enough or smart enough to work in STEM? Because it could well be that the lack of humanities that said head is complaining about, could be exacerbated by the attitudes of people IN STEM, who like to say things like, "What did the Humanities Major say to the STEM Major? Would you like fries with that? LOLOL..."
I'm not saying or even meaning to imply that jokes are what keeps them out and away, I'm saying the whole attitude towards that helped to lead to this landscape we have today.
Also, another thing you MIGHT want to consider is this: as time goes by, each subfield in STEM is going to get more complex, and in order to be an expert, or indeed, even proficient, it will take more time, more schooling, etc., and while some STEM degrees are already really FIVE year degrees, (or four if you're HARD CORE, and/or don't mind the occasional summer class,) it tends to present to some students who might make perfectly fine and dandy STEM people, barriers to entry that simply cannot be surmounted.
I am not suggesting lowering the standards, to be clear, or letting more people in who aren't prepared... but maybe the time has come for, in SOME of these fields, doing away with the current educational paradigm in these areas, and adopting the model of the legal and medical professions. Perhaps it would benefit all concerned to have would-be scientists, physicists, engineers, etc., get a liberal arts or general science bachelor's degree FIRST, THEN go to a school that specializes in whatever specifically they want to do; as these disciplines suffer from lack of humanities, because of increasing emphasis on the core requirements for the specific field, such students end up having narrower and narrower foci, and as a result they are, ironically, less well educated... by which I mean, less BROADLY or ROUNDLY educated. PLUS, it seems increasingly like MORE, rather than LESS, academic hours SHOULD be devoted to certain subjects. History, Economics, and Political Science, for example, are things that the "one-and-done" approach they use in college should be reconsidered, and perhaps scrapped altogether. Too many people seem to either skip these classes entirely, opting to take something else that HAPPENS to satisfy the requirement, or take them, manage to pass, and promptly forget what they learned, since once you leave that course, it's not like you ever have to take a class or pass a test on it again. How much value is there in insisting people take a college class that covers things they'll never need to know again, if you don't make continuing to know it down the line a REQUIREMENT. It may sound like I'm advocating for a COLLEGIATE final exam, that covers every class you took, and... I know speaking for myself that would SUCK, but maybe if we revamped the system so that a good and conscientious student COULD pass such a test, and required them to take one to graduate, might not be such a bad idea. Schools allow latitude on some of these things, and the advisors offices I've seen, (and I've spoken with a few in my day, at different schools and different states,) seem to have a "just check the box" attitude when it comes to things outside the major, as if they'd be as happy or happier if those requirements just went away.
Also, (here's another thought I know I'm going to be positively crucified for suggesting,) maybe it might not be a bad idea to require students who want to use credit towards a certificate, graduation, etc., have to pass a test showing they still know what they learned in a course that's more than a few years old? If you passed a US History course, for example, 15 or 20 years ago, and you're coming back to col
If I regret something I sent via Facebook messenger, then got into an argument as a result, then break up with someone, then closed my Facebook account, sold my house, quit my job, renounced my religion, joined a completely different church in a different faith, and then move to another state... can I open a new Facebook account and use this feature to unsend that message, undoing all the results from pressing send?
The Federal... COMMUNICATIONS... Commission... doesn't... have the authority... to regulate... providers of internet service... which is nothing... but... communications...?
I can't... with... this...
Does this mean they also don't have the authority to regulate anything else? Because that begs the question, why the fuck do they exist?
I second that. I've been carefully cultivating the seconds of my life not caring about Facefook or what happens on it.
These days, when someone says I can visit their page on Facefook, I say, "OMG, is someone still using FACEBOOK in this day and age? HAHAHAHA..." then I ask where I can go to get information about their group or organization without using Facebook because I won't do it, sometimes they'll say something like, "Twitter" and I'll laugh and ask the same question.
Basically, I've boiled it down to this. I use e-mail. I am the old man of the modern age. I TALK to people with my phone (and when I do, I hold it up to my head and use it the way it was INTENDED; a little tiny bit of microwave energy has yet to harm anyone demonstrably,) and I visit their website and use e-mail. If you want me to visit your group, or consider patronizing your business, don't tell me to visit your Facebook page, or see you on Twitter... have a real, actual, big boy (or girl) website like a fucking grown-up. Or don't, but you're not getting my business. (Note, you don't have to have a website at all... if you have like, a store or something, it's fine with me for you not to have a website. BUT if you DO have a presence on the web, and I have to use some bullshit service, like Facefuck or Twatter to get to it, I'm just going to assume you're not serious enough for me to waste my time on.
In the primaries for the upcoming elections, I actually took the time and effort to look into each candidate for office. I visited their websites and looked at them. Except one, who only had a Facebook page, not a real, as I've said, BIG-BOY website like a fucking adult runninig for federal office.
Guess whose page I didn't even bother to look at, and for whom I didn't even consider voting?
Yeah. So... speaking of that, I have to go look at who I am going to vote for in the upcoming general election which won't matter because the state where I live right now is not a swing state and therefore I could comfortably bet about a hundred bucks whom we're going to "elect" in the fraud that is less than a month away. (Sigh...)
Hmmm. Capturing biometric data to pair with exposure to various in-store simuli, retail displays, signage, check out lines etc. All in the guise of giving you some run-of-the-mill fitness feedback.
Those creepy aliens who abduct people and shove probes up their asses? They are actually just doing cutting-edge research for what will become the future of retail.
And let me just say, I, for one, welcome our new alien-engineered, pulse and temperature-measuring shopping-cart overlords.
I've always wondered- what if most species in the galaxy speak from out of their rear end? Or if most species have their brains in their butts?
Aliens might just be sticking a voice recorder up there hoping you'll talk... or trying to do a brainscan to see if they find any intelligence. They must be really confused doing a brain scan and finding nothing but poop...
(Conversation translated into English from an alien language:)
"Lord Captain Qrellxys, we have completed the scans of the dominant lifeforms of Planet 347-T8. They are shaped like us, but where we have our excretory organs, they have strange, soft, squishy, pink, crenulated lumps of flesh. We are unsure what the functions of these organs are."
"Odd, Bio-Researcher First Class Dwnaurvf. Tell me... do they have brains like ours, centrally located between our sensory bulbs and our feet?"
"No, Lord Captian. These humans... my Bio-Researchers have scanned every one the subjects passed to them by the Collection Team... and it has been concluded that they all have shit for brains. Every last one."
"Explains a lot."
"We have reached the identical conclusion, Lord Captain."
I just hate when I music along on my music when suddenly, BOOM! Music pirates firing their acoustical cannons on my vessel!
They force us to heave-to, or risk colliding with them, and throw over their limewire hooks. Repel all Billboarders! I cry to my gallant crew, but we are quickly overcome. The music pirates STREAM onto our vessel, and quickly Spotify our Pandoras box of music CDs, LPs, and cassette tapes are.
They take our hidden treasure and stream back to their ship and sail away, leaving us adrift, musicless. We try to sing or hum, but all our crew who could even carry a tune in a bucket were abducted and went off with the music pirates, damn and blast them.
Those creepy aliens who abduct people and shove probes up their asses? They are actually just doing cutting-edge research for what will become the future of retail.
And let me just say, I, for one, welcome our new alien-engineered, pulse and temperature-measuring shopping-cart overlords.
And that's why you should never spend our lunch break reading in a heavily shielded bank vault. The universe is always on the look out for new and exciting ways to mess with you!
I always wondered though - did the guy really not have a second pair of glasses? Or know where the optometrist was located to find another pair that was at least adequate enough? I suppose really the over-dramatic response was likely shock as the reality of the situation finally found a chink in his carefully constructed emotional armor. Or just dramatic license, but one must never say such things.
You're overthinking it. That's usually my job, sir!
Obviously that's a solution a smart, bookish fellow would have figured out, but perhaps that was the point of letting us see through his eyes, to understand he's so profoundly blind without his glasses, and even if he had a spare pair of glasses in his house, he might have trouble finding his way home to retrieve them. Then there's the fact that likely the ruins of his house would have been sitting on top of that spare pair, making them difficult to retrieve assuming he could find his way home, and manage to clear the wreckage of his house off them. Given the fragility of the pair he was wearing, do you really think they'd have survived?
This is the Twilight Zone, recall, and I believe the whole point of the episode was to fuck with him. In that case, in the Burgess Meredith's character versus the world, the fight was fixed before they started filming. His character should be consoled though, with how much amusement we got contemplating his misery, and then seeing all the pop-cultural references to it, all the parodies, etc. This actually gives me an idea for Halloween, though.
To beat the Twilight Zone in this fight, that character would have had to team up with another character Meredith played in the series, in "The Printer's Devil," and type out a headline on the machine reading something like, "Last Man On Earth Conveniently Finds Indestructible Spare Pair of Glasses After Nuclear Holocaust and Lives Happily Ever After."
Seems to me, Microsoft showing up at an event like this, pretending they want to embrace (and not extinguish, ultimately,) open source software is like the Russian government offering to help the US with election security. Or if you prefer, like the fox offering tips on hen-house security. Or the Hamburglar offering Ronald McDonald tips on sandwich security... etc. etc. etc.
Lawyers for Vizio Smart TV owners propose final deal, around $20 per person (https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/10/lawyers-for-vizio-smart-tv-owners-propose-final-deal-around-20-per-person/)
You'll note that's not enough to defray the cost of buying a new TV of the same class or value from a different manufacturer, which is what they should have required. But that would be bad, because we wouldn't want to REALLY penalize malfeasance. Ugh... I own a Vizio TV myself, from before the "Smart" TV era, so hopefully, (as it has no intenet connection,) it's not spying on me, but I can tell you this, it will be my LAST EVER Vizio purchase.
It just occurred to me... doesn't Vizio mean "I... see... you..." in some language? Makes total sense now. #BoycottVizio.
This is of course the problem with posting to a platform that doesn't let you either delete or edit posts. (I've run into this issue on occasion myself.) But on the other hand, it does encourage thought and consideration before hitting "Submit," so it's not all bad.
But before excoriating someone for not having read down further to see if you corrected yourself later before replying, ask yourself, do you scroll down and make sure first, yourself? In theory we should all be reading the entire conversation before posting, to avoid redundant posts, and to make sure we're not just doing the modern equivalent of talking back to the TV, (replying to a comment in the middle of a conversation that in a sense, has already happened,) but that becomes really impractical when there are more than maybe a few dozen comments in even one thread. I offer no specific solution here, just an observation.
Also, having arguements back and forth where the user-editable 'encyclopedia' Wikipedia is cited as a source... is perhaps less productive than it might seem. Just saying.
Plenty of Billionaires make a point of giving away huge amounts of money to charities.
Thanks, I needed that laugh. It's the fault of the economically oppressed that corrupt government allows the theft of billions of dollars because it was done creatively, and without using at least their own guns, (they use the government's instead, which is cheaper for them anyway,) and... you've clearly been just guzzling that Kool-Aid, haven't you. It's okay. That's one of the things people end up doing in a society in which the rich own almost all of the media, newspapers, radio and TV stations, etc., and they convince you that the way they've rigged the system is in your own best interests, and a lot of you have bought the bullshit, hook, line, and sinker. You'll even defend it, and attack anyone (like, oh, I dunno, ME?) for pointing out how fucked up it is.
It's okay. It's not your fault, in all likelihood. Or maybe you yourself benefit from the system, or are paid to post attacks on anyone like me who points out that the emperor is indeed wearing clothes, but those clothes are made from the skins of peasants. I don't know which but it doesn't really matter, because your straw-man attack actually does nothing to counter my argument, if anything, it underscores it.
I like how you completely ignored any actual point I made, like how there's no way any one person could possibly legitimately earn a billion dollars at their present value, let alone the past, pre-inflation value, instead chosing to cry for the poor, poor billionaires' and their precious freedom to rip people off.
I imagine you're a big fan of Walmart, and think the 'Fight for 15' crowd are a bunch of lazy whiners, right? You perhaps have no problem with Walmart strangling mom-and-pop stores and driving even some conventional, corporate grocery stores out of business, on the 'theory' that people are free to choose which they'll buy from. Yeah, they're free to choose. Just like I can CHOOSE to spend my income on a shirt made by a child in a sweatshop in an economically colonized country that costs 10 dollars, 9+ of which will go to someone in this country, leaving 1 to be divided between the company that made the shirt, and the actual people who did the labor, or one made by a person or a company here, for 50 dollars. I can pay a LOT more by trying to shoulder, by myself, the expense incurred by the loss or lack of the economy of scale because they're being undercut, or I can join the other 99% of people who buy the 10 dollar shirt. Anyone who opts to support fair wages by buying from someone who PAYS fair wages could be paying a lot less if EVERYONE were buying from those who paid fair wages... the shirt would perhaps only cost 20 dollars, or maybe 15. Not much more than you're paying for the one made in Honduras or Lesotho or Pakistan, etc. In fact, pricing is generally made as high as it can be, even when the labor is dirt-cheap, because to do anything else is to throw potential profit away. So they charge as much as the market will bear, same as any and everyone else, and can leverage huge volume...
I just realized I'm basically giving a free class on economics, and really what you need to do is go take a class or read a book. There's no point in me going on with this when you're probably being paid, one way or another, to argue with me in the hopes of convincing others that my points aren't valid, when they plainly are, and your counterarguments are distortions rather than legitimately addressing what I said.
Won't the open market simply fill the void left by a mismanaged company?
I'm inclined to agree with the AC here. Yes, it would be painful for those whose jobs would be lost, and the poor, poor government would have to use some of the sky-high pile of cash they're sitting on to help people through, and they should turn around and visit that pain upon the person or persons most responsible for the misbehavior, perhaps putting the corporate execs and those who allowed them to do it in stocks in the public square, and let people hurl rotten fruit at them or something along those lines, again, with the intent that no one EVER will do it again.
A basic tenet of the theory of punishment for crime as a deterrent for others or of fines and corporate sanctions as, again, a deterrent against others behaving similarly, is that justice must be sure and swift. It is precisely because it is not, it is very unsure, and takes forever if it comes at all, that the deterrent effect is lost. Suppose in your town or village where you live, the local authorities make J-walking a capital crime. Cross the street in the middle, or against the light, and we'll hang you. But they never do it. At first after the enactment of the law, people insist when they're caught that it's not fair, no one publicized the fact that the law was enacted, and that the town HAS no traffic control devices, or that the law never properly defined what a road was, etc. Then there are public protests, acts of civil disobedience, and before you know it, everyone's back to J-walking, and when occasionally someone does it and is caught and tried, every public official is assured this is his or her last term in elected office, and they start getting death-threats, or maybe someone tosses a bomb into a meeting of the city council.
They end up failing to enforce the law and everyone pretty much ignores it. I'll offer a real-life corollary. Weed. Still illegal throughout the United States under federal law in virtually 100% of cases, but for a while, before America started this downward spiral into neofascism, it was being enforced less and less, (until the evil little Keebler Elf got his gnarled little hands on the power to prosecute people for non-crimes,) and maybe one day the government will pull its head out of its ass on this issue, but I'm not holding my breath.
Similarly, when a corporation does something that costs them in one way or another, whether its environmental damage for which they must pay x dollars (or the local equivalent,) or cause some people to be injured or die, for which they must pay y dollars, or it's just normal operating costs, for which they must pay z dollars, etc., the corporate, for-profit world only sees these as costs, and as long as, after costs, they remain sufficiently profitable, A, they will go right on doing exactly what they were doing, and simply let the accountants deal with the numbers, and B, every other company who sees that will simply have to adjust their expectations for profit margins accordingly. It won't actually stop them, unless and until behavior of this kind is both unprofitable, and the risk of getting caught and punished is reasonably close to 100%. It's the reason why corporations don't just murder their competition, literally, or hire people to do it, unless they're members of criminal gangs, in which case they sometimes do, since for THEM, their entire operations are often highly illegal, and without the cover of a legitimate business to operate under the color of, they know if they get caught they're screwed, so that frees them to behave in a way corporations are, mostly not free to operate, happily.
But this case has illustrated I think, pretty well, the fact that a company will do whatever it takes to make a bunch of money and please their owners/shareholders, legal consequences, ethics, morals, etc., be damned. It's typical and illustrative. I doubt this will cause any corporation to behave meaningfully differently, even Vizio themse
If I fuck a Neanderthal, it will help give me resistance to ancient pathogens? Got it.
Lemme see... no, no, no... no, she's obviously H. Sapiens... no, not enough hair on that one, I can, like, straight up see her skin. Maybe she just shaves, but I'm not going to chance it. No. No. No... damn... a cute Neanderthal chick turns out to be hard to find on Tinder. Neanderthals DID have opposable thumbs, RIGHT? Moving on... nope, she's clearly Cro-magnon... no... no... no... (sigh).
You can all laugh now, but when global anthropogenic climate change thaws a pocket of bacteria from 150,000 years ago......and it starts wiping everyone out but me, it is I who will have the last laugh!
Me, and my hawt, hawt, hairy, Neanderthal girlfriend.
A court, the place one used to go to find justice that no longer exists.
When have courts ever been about justice? Justice is the GOAL, but they mostly just hand down verdicts. Will the verdict a court hands down in a case happen to be just? Flip a coin to find out. That’s about the best you can do.
I say we replace courts of justice with a blindfolded guy (or gal... need not especially be male,) and a coin. It wouldn’t be manifestly different from court system results on average, and it would save us all a LOT OF MONEY on lawyers and court costs.
Yeah. I get that people don't like it when lawyers get rich off of other people's misfortune, but headlines like this seem like PR from some organization that wants to get rid of consumer class actions.
Class actions are an economical way of vindicating the rights of large classes of people—and that is why big businesses don't like them. They want the latitude of ripping people off just below the pain threshold, whether they are selling goods or buying labor.
Though arbitration is its own issue, the Federal Arbitration Act should be amended to be more consumer and employee friendly, and to prevent companies from creating click-wrap licenses that strip you of your right to a class action.
The problem is that Vizio should have been beaten to the point where no one would ever even think to do something like this again... corporate bosses and board members jailed, company liquidated, employees fired or laid off, (and then THEY can pursue relief because they were terminated, from the assets in frozen bank accounts belonging to the responsible corporate heads and majority shareholders whose misbehavior and bad decisions caused the company to get liquidated,) with the assets divided evenly between members of he injured class.
This slap on the wrists practically ensures this kind of malfeasance will happen again and again and again... etc.
Sorry, by imperial, I meant the one used in America. Different imperial, I suppose, as I've heard people refer to the ounces, pounds, and tons used here as "imperial" measure, but they could have been misusing it, and I've never had occasion to check before.
But yeah, I meant short tons, the 2000 pound per each ton, (where a pound is 16 ounces, and an ounce is approximately 28 grams times 9.8m/s/s down*,) the one that is 2000/2200 (hence 10% lighter) of a metric one. I suppose the joke would have worked better if I'd said "American ton," but I didn't want to sound excessively ethnocentric. I had actually always thought these were synonymous, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_and_US_customary_measurement_systems) but maybe they're only based on the same thing, rather than being the same thing. Either way, this joke is, I think, dead as a door nail. Ah well.
(* As an aside, before anyone asks, one ounce is NOT equivalent to 28 grams, or approximately... since an ounce is a unit of FORCE, and grams a unit of MASS, so in order to equivocate them properly, you have to acknowledge that the approximate equivalent of an ounce is roughly 28.35... grams times the force of gravity, and since I'm using grams, I phrased the acceleration due to the force of gravity in terms of m/s/s.)
Sure. A bug. Yeah. Oops. Totally an entirely not at all on-purpose, completely innocent accident that just... so... HAPPENS to be of benefit to Facebook and the detriment of a would-be ex-user.
Total coincidence. Sure. Not incompetence or deliberate action. Nooo... it woul not , COULD not be that.
Slashdot Mirror
Another day, another news item about someone's security getting breached. I'm beginning to wonder if we don't all need to just break out the old zip-zap machines, the good ol' knuckle-busters of old, and get rid of all this electronic bullshit, and go back to the fucking 1970s. I miss my C64... sure it was slow as shit and using a 2400 baud modem sucked, but we didn't know different.
Hell... I'm even beginning to miss bell-bottoms. I miss natural perky tits in tight little sweaters and long straight hair on girls not covered in ridiculous makeup and tattoos... all our great rock and jazz and soul musicians were still alive... and today they're mostly all dead, all the great bands have broken up, all our shit's getting broken into, the world's going to fucking pieces... anyone got a time machine handy? Set course for 1969 and engage. (I'll need a year or two to re-acclimate first.)
(For a list of grievances, we could just play back the second half of "We Didn't Start the Fire," really.) -sigh-
Juries are easily swayed by expensive lawyers.
Perhaps even more frequently by crooked prosecutors?
I think it goes a bit further than crooked prosecutors. The whole system stinks, and as it rewards those currently in power, don't look for them to expend an ounce of effort to change it.
The underlying point of all this noise is that in America, notwithstanding what is SUPPOSED to be the case, the entire criminal "justice" system is run for and by the government with the end in mind of maintaining order, by which I mean the order in which those in power stay there. The notion that a jury-trial is really and truly a trial by a jury of your peers is a fig-leaf behind which America hides the fact that while fairness is the stated goal, (sometimes called justice, but, I mean, come on now...) it's not the outcome nearly as often as it should be. Case in point, the top to bottom way in which if you're rich enough, you can just about get away with murder, contrasted with if you're a member of a disenfranchised and relatively powerless and oppressed minority, you can be murdered for selling loose cigarettes, a form of tax-evasion, unless I'm very much mistaken, while the people running the freak-show in what pretends to be our federal central government is and has been for years just choc-full of tax-cheats, tax-dodgers, scam-artists, etc., and it goes back WAY before the clown-prince of America got installed as the phony puppet play-prez.
Oh, and by the way... I dearly love how people pretend that there's something barbaric about executing someone with a sword, (which when done properly is probably just about the closest thing you could have to a quick, certain, and humane execution and relatively inexpensive too,) while murdering a citizen in what pretends to be some species of democracy or republic allows the same thing to happen using cocktails of drugs not designed for this purpose, hangings, firing squads, electrocutions, etc. There's no "couldn't find a vein" with a beheading. There's no "whoops, everyone missed, except for a couple of guys, who managed to shoot the condemned in the nuts". There's no, "wow, I can't believe the rope BROKE," or "goodness, look at him twitch, I don't think the noose broke his neck and now he's strangulating". There's no "insufficient voltage" with a beheading, either. In fact, that was the whole point of the guillotine, to take the strength and skill required to behead OUT of the operation. With a properly trained and capable headsman, it's over instantly. Yet people whine and cry about how it's brutal and barbaric... no, the fact that the state is murdering one of its own citizens is what's barbaric. The beheading, (versus all else,) is just having distaste for the TACTIC, the METHOD used and frankly, it shouldn't be hidden behind closed doors, squirreled away behind all the bureaucracy and bullshit. If you're going to murder someone on behalf of all the people, they should get to watch, up close, and in person. Better still, they should HAVE to watch, and if they don't like that, let them demand politicians change the law so that we can stop murdering our own people, and pretending it's anything other than murder.
Also, on a related note, the death penalty only really applies to everyone around the condemned. The condemned doesn't suffer anymore after the execution, no matter how badly you botch it, or how long it takes. So if someone fucked up badly enough to deserve society's worst punishment, KILLING that person is really letting him or her (or them, etc.,) commit some heinous and infamous crime, and skate on the punishment, assuming he or she or they were even GUILTY of the crime in question, meanwhile, if you're wrong you can't undo it, and also the real perpetrator goes free to do it again. Further, while you murder someone for whatever alleged crime, s/he/y (shey?) committed (or didn't,) that person's/those people's family/ies suffer from that loss, and they themselv
Tech Suffers From Lack of Humanities, Says Mozilla Head
Can someone tell the head of Mozilla to talk to all the STEM majors, (dropouts, active students, and graduates alike,) about their propensity to think humanities don't matter, and the people who study them and work in those fields aren't doing so simply because they're not good enough or smart enough to work in STEM? Because it could well be that the lack of humanities that said head is complaining about, could be exacerbated by the attitudes of people IN STEM, who like to say things like, "What did the Humanities Major say to the STEM Major? Would you like fries with that? LOLOL..."
I'm not saying or even meaning to imply that jokes are what keeps them out and away, I'm saying the whole attitude towards that helped to lead to this landscape we have today.
Also, another thing you MIGHT want to consider is this: as time goes by, each subfield in STEM is going to get more complex, and in order to be an expert, or indeed, even proficient, it will take more time, more schooling, etc., and while some STEM degrees are already really FIVE year degrees, (or four if you're HARD CORE, and/or don't mind the occasional summer class,) it tends to present to some students who might make perfectly fine and dandy STEM people, barriers to entry that simply cannot be surmounted.
I am not suggesting lowering the standards, to be clear, or letting more people in who aren't prepared... but maybe the time has come for, in SOME of these fields, doing away with the current educational paradigm in these areas, and adopting the model of the legal and medical professions. Perhaps it would benefit all concerned to have would-be scientists, physicists, engineers, etc., get a liberal arts or general science bachelor's degree FIRST, THEN go to a school that specializes in whatever specifically they want to do; as these disciplines suffer from lack of humanities, because of increasing emphasis on the core requirements for the specific field, such students end up having narrower and narrower foci, and as a result they are, ironically, less well educated... by which I mean, less BROADLY or ROUNDLY educated. PLUS, it seems increasingly like MORE, rather than LESS, academic hours SHOULD be devoted to certain subjects. History, Economics, and Political Science, for example, are things that the "one-and-done" approach they use in college should be reconsidered, and perhaps scrapped altogether. Too many people seem to either skip these classes entirely, opting to take something else that HAPPENS to satisfy the requirement, or take them, manage to pass, and promptly forget what they learned, since once you leave that course, it's not like you ever have to take a class or pass a test on it again. How much value is there in insisting people take a college class that covers things they'll never need to know again, if you don't make continuing to know it down the line a REQUIREMENT. It may sound like I'm advocating for a COLLEGIATE final exam, that covers every class you took, and... I know speaking for myself that would SUCK, but maybe if we revamped the system so that a good and conscientious student COULD pass such a test, and required them to take one to graduate, might not be such a bad idea. Schools allow latitude on some of these things, and the advisors offices I've seen, (and I've spoken with a few in my day, at different schools and different states,) seem to have a "just check the box" attitude when it comes to things outside the major, as if they'd be as happy or happier if those requirements just went away.
Also, (here's another thought I know I'm going to be positively crucified for suggesting,) maybe it might not be a bad idea to require students who want to use credit towards a certificate, graduation, etc., have to pass a test showing they still know what they learned in a course that's more than a few years old? If you passed a US History course, for example, 15 or 20 years ago, and you're coming back to col
If I regret something I sent via Facebook messenger, then got into an argument as a result, then break up with someone, then closed my Facebook account, sold my house, quit my job, renounced my religion, joined a completely different church in a different faith, and then move to another state... can I open a new Facebook account and use this feature to unsend that message, undoing all the results from pressing send?
I'm... asking for a friend.
The Federal... COMMUNICATIONS... Commission... doesn't... have the authority... to regulate... providers of internet service... which is nothing... but... communications...?
I can't... with... this...
Does this mean they also don't have the authority to regulate anything else? Because that begs the question, why the fuck do they exist?
I second that. I've been carefully cultivating the seconds of my life not caring about Facefook or what happens on it.
These days, when someone says I can visit their page on Facefook, I say, "OMG, is someone still using FACEBOOK in this day and age? HAHAHAHA..." then I ask where I can go to get information about their group or organization without using Facebook because I won't do it, sometimes they'll say something like, "Twitter" and I'll laugh and ask the same question.
Basically, I've boiled it down to this. I use e-mail. I am the old man of the modern age. I TALK to people with my phone (and when I do, I hold it up to my head and use it the way it was INTENDED; a little tiny bit of microwave energy has yet to harm anyone demonstrably,) and I visit their website and use e-mail. If you want me to visit your group, or consider patronizing your business, don't tell me to visit your Facebook page, or see you on Twitter... have a real, actual, big boy (or girl) website like a fucking grown-up. Or don't, but you're not getting my business. (Note, you don't have to have a website at all... if you have like, a store or something, it's fine with me for you not to have a website. BUT if you DO have a presence on the web, and I have to use some bullshit service, like Facefuck or Twatter to get to it, I'm just going to assume you're not serious enough for me to waste my time on.
In the primaries for the upcoming elections, I actually took the time and effort to look into each candidate for office. I visited their websites and looked at them. Except one, who only had a Facebook page, not a real, as I've said, BIG-BOY website like a fucking adult runninig for federal office.
Guess whose page I didn't even bother to look at, and for whom I didn't even consider voting?
Yeah. So... speaking of that, I have to go look at who I am going to vote for in the upcoming general election which won't matter because the state where I live right now is not a swing state and therefore I could comfortably bet about a hundred bucks whom we're going to "elect" in the fraud that is less than a month away. (Sigh...)
Hmmm. Capturing biometric data to pair with exposure to various in-store simuli, retail displays, signage, check out lines etc. All in the guise of giving you some run-of-the-mill fitness feedback.
Because that is not creepy at all.
We will call it... wait for it.... Well Cart!
Pretty close, but I think it'll be "Walcart."
Those creepy aliens who abduct people and shove probes up their asses? They are actually just doing cutting-edge research for what will become the future of retail.
And let me just say, I, for one, welcome our new alien-engineered, pulse and temperature-measuring shopping-cart overlords.
I've always wondered- what if most species in the galaxy speak from out of their rear end? Or if most species have their brains in their butts?
Aliens might just be sticking a voice recorder up there hoping you'll talk... or trying to do a brainscan to see if they find any intelligence. They must be really confused doing a brain scan and finding nothing but poop...
(Conversation translated into English from an alien language:)
"Lord Captain Qrellxys, we have completed the scans of the dominant lifeforms of Planet 347-T8. They are shaped like us, but where we have our excretory organs, they have strange, soft, squishy, pink, crenulated lumps of flesh. We are unsure what the functions of these organs are."
"Odd, Bio-Researcher First Class Dwnaurvf. Tell me... do they have brains like ours, centrally located between our sensory bulbs and our feet?"
"No, Lord Captian. These humans... my Bio-Researchers have scanned every one the subjects passed to them by the Collection Team... and it has been concluded that they all have shit for brains. Every last one."
"Explains a lot."
"We have reached the identical conclusion, Lord Captain."
I just hate when I music along on my music when suddenly, BOOM! Music pirates firing their acoustical cannons on my vessel!
They force us to heave-to, or risk colliding with them, and throw over their limewire hooks. Repel all Billboarders! I cry to my gallant crew, but we are quickly overcome. The music pirates STREAM onto our vessel, and quickly Spotify our Pandoras box of music CDs, LPs, and cassette tapes are.
They take our hidden treasure and stream back to their ship and sail away, leaving us adrift, musicless. We try to sing or hum, but all our crew who could even carry a tune in a bucket were abducted and went off with the music pirates, damn and blast them.
At least they did not steal my ship bell.
The govt should split that with you, 50-50.
I hafta like, press a BUTTON?
WHY cant it jus be liek... automatic?
Those creepy aliens who abduct people and shove probes up their asses? They are actually just doing cutting-edge research for what will become the future of retail.
And let me just say, I, for one, welcome our new alien-engineered, pulse and temperature-measuring shopping-cart overlords.
And that's why you should never spend our lunch break reading in a heavily shielded bank vault. The universe is always on the look out for new and exciting ways to mess with you!
I always wondered though - did the guy really not have a second pair of glasses? Or know where the optometrist was located to find another pair that was at least adequate enough? I suppose really the over-dramatic response was likely shock as the reality of the situation finally found a chink in his carefully constructed emotional armor. Or just dramatic license, but one must never say such things.
You're overthinking it. That's usually my job, sir!
Obviously that's a solution a smart, bookish fellow would have figured out, but perhaps that was the point of letting us see through his eyes, to understand he's so profoundly blind without his glasses, and even if he had a spare pair of glasses in his house, he might have trouble finding his way home to retrieve them. Then there's the fact that likely the ruins of his house would have been sitting on top of that spare pair, making them difficult to retrieve assuming he could find his way home, and manage to clear the wreckage of his house off them. Given the fragility of the pair he was wearing, do you really think they'd have survived?
This is the Twilight Zone, recall, and I believe the whole point of the episode was to fuck with him. In that case, in the Burgess Meredith's character versus the world, the fight was fixed before they started filming. His character should be consoled though, with how much amusement we got contemplating his misery, and then seeing all the pop-cultural references to it, all the parodies, etc. This actually gives me an idea for Halloween, though.
To beat the Twilight Zone in this fight, that character would have had to team up with another character Meredith played in the series, in "The Printer's Devil," and type out a headline on the machine reading something like, "Last Man On Earth Conveniently Finds Indestructible Spare Pair of Glasses After Nuclear Holocaust and Lives Happily Ever After."
Hubble Telescope Hit By Mechanical Failure
That's not fair... that's not fair at all. There was time now. There was... was all the time I needed. That's not fair! That's not fai-ai-airrrr!
Seems to me, Microsoft showing up at an event like this, pretending they want to embrace (and not extinguish, ultimately,) open source software is like the Russian government offering to help the US with election security. Or if you prefer, like the fox offering tips on hen-house security. Or the Hamburglar offering Ronald McDonald tips on sandwich security... etc. etc. etc.
Lawyers for Vizio Smart TV owners propose final deal, around $20 per person (https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/10/lawyers-for-vizio-smart-tv-owners-propose-final-deal-around-20-per-person/)
You'll note that's not enough to defray the cost of buying a new TV of the same class or value from a different manufacturer, which is what they should have required. But that would be bad, because we wouldn't want to REALLY penalize malfeasance. Ugh... I own a Vizio TV myself, from before the "Smart" TV era, so hopefully, (as it has no intenet connection,) it's not spying on me, but I can tell you this, it will be my LAST EVER Vizio purchase.
It just occurred to me... doesn't Vizio mean "I... see... you..." in some language? Makes total sense now. #BoycottVizio.
This is of course the problem with posting to a platform that doesn't let you either delete or edit posts. (I've run into this issue on occasion myself.) But on the other hand, it does encourage thought and consideration before hitting "Submit," so it's not all bad.
But before excoriating someone for not having read down further to see if you corrected yourself later before replying, ask yourself, do you scroll down and make sure first, yourself? In theory we should all be reading the entire conversation before posting, to avoid redundant posts, and to make sure we're not just doing the modern equivalent of talking back to the TV, (replying to a comment in the middle of a conversation that in a sense, has already happened,) but that becomes really impractical when there are more than maybe a few dozen comments in even one thread. I offer no specific solution here, just an observation.
Also, having arguements back and forth where the user-editable 'encyclopedia' Wikipedia is cited as a source... is perhaps less productive than it might seem. Just saying.
Plenty of Billionaires make a point of giving away huge amounts of money to charities.
Thanks, I needed that laugh. It's the fault of the economically oppressed that corrupt government allows the theft of billions of dollars because it was done creatively, and without using at least their own guns, (they use the government's instead, which is cheaper for them anyway,) and... you've clearly been just guzzling that Kool-Aid, haven't you. It's okay. That's one of the things people end up doing in a society in which the rich own almost all of the media, newspapers, radio and TV stations, etc., and they convince you that the way they've rigged the system is in your own best interests, and a lot of you have bought the bullshit, hook, line, and sinker. You'll even defend it, and attack anyone (like, oh, I dunno, ME?) for pointing out how fucked up it is.
It's okay. It's not your fault, in all likelihood. Or maybe you yourself benefit from the system, or are paid to post attacks on anyone like me who points out that the emperor is indeed wearing clothes, but those clothes are made from the skins of peasants. I don't know which but it doesn't really matter, because your straw-man attack actually does nothing to counter my argument, if anything, it underscores it.
I like how you completely ignored any actual point I made, like how there's no way any one person could possibly legitimately earn a billion dollars at their present value, let alone the past, pre-inflation value, instead chosing to cry for the poor, poor billionaires' and their precious freedom to rip people off.
I imagine you're a big fan of Walmart, and think the 'Fight for 15' crowd are a bunch of lazy whiners, right? You perhaps have no problem with Walmart strangling mom-and-pop stores and driving even some conventional, corporate grocery stores out of business, on the 'theory' that people are free to choose which they'll buy from. Yeah, they're free to choose. Just like I can CHOOSE to spend my income on a shirt made by a child in a sweatshop in an economically colonized country that costs 10 dollars, 9+ of which will go to someone in this country, leaving 1 to be divided between the company that made the shirt, and the actual people who did the labor, or one made by a person or a company here, for 50 dollars. I can pay a LOT more by trying to shoulder, by myself, the expense incurred by the loss or lack of the economy of scale because they're being undercut, or I can join the other 99% of people who buy the 10 dollar shirt. Anyone who opts to support fair wages by buying from someone who PAYS fair wages could be paying a lot less if EVERYONE were buying from those who paid fair wages... the shirt would perhaps only cost 20 dollars, or maybe 15. Not much more than you're paying for the one made in Honduras or Lesotho or Pakistan, etc. In fact, pricing is generally made as high as it can be, even when the labor is dirt-cheap, because to do anything else is to throw potential profit away. So they charge as much as the market will bear, same as any and everyone else, and can leverage huge volume...
I just realized I'm basically giving a free class on economics, and really what you need to do is go take a class or read a book. There's no point in me going on with this when you're probably being paid, one way or another, to argue with me in the hopes of convincing others that my points aren't valid, when they plainly are, and your counterarguments are distortions rather than legitimately addressing what I said.
Won't the open market simply fill the void left by a mismanaged company?
I'm inclined to agree with the AC here. Yes, it would be painful for those whose jobs would be lost, and the poor, poor government would have to use some of the sky-high pile of cash they're sitting on to help people through, and they should turn around and visit that pain upon the person or persons most responsible for the misbehavior, perhaps putting the corporate execs and those who allowed them to do it in stocks in the public square, and let people hurl rotten fruit at them or something along those lines, again, with the intent that no one EVER will do it again.
A basic tenet of the theory of punishment for crime as a deterrent for others or of fines and corporate sanctions as, again, a deterrent against others behaving similarly, is that justice must be sure and swift. It is precisely because it is not, it is very unsure, and takes forever if it comes at all, that the deterrent effect is lost. Suppose in your town or village where you live, the local authorities make J-walking a capital crime. Cross the street in the middle, or against the light, and we'll hang you. But they never do it. At first after the enactment of the law, people insist when they're caught that it's not fair, no one publicized the fact that the law was enacted, and that the town HAS no traffic control devices, or that the law never properly defined what a road was, etc. Then there are public protests, acts of civil disobedience, and before you know it, everyone's back to J-walking, and when occasionally someone does it and is caught and tried, every public official is assured this is his or her last term in elected office, and they start getting death-threats, or maybe someone tosses a bomb into a meeting of the city council.
They end up failing to enforce the law and everyone pretty much ignores it. I'll offer a real-life corollary. Weed. Still illegal throughout the United States under federal law in virtually 100% of cases, but for a while, before America started this downward spiral into neofascism, it was being enforced less and less, (until the evil little Keebler Elf got his gnarled little hands on the power to prosecute people for non-crimes,) and maybe one day the government will pull its head out of its ass on this issue, but I'm not holding my breath.
Similarly, when a corporation does something that costs them in one way or another, whether its environmental damage for which they must pay x dollars (or the local equivalent,) or cause some people to be injured or die, for which they must pay y dollars, or it's just normal operating costs, for which they must pay z dollars, etc., the corporate, for-profit world only sees these as costs, and as long as, after costs, they remain sufficiently profitable, A, they will go right on doing exactly what they were doing, and simply let the accountants deal with the numbers, and B, every other company who sees that will simply have to adjust their expectations for profit margins accordingly. It won't actually stop them, unless and until behavior of this kind is both unprofitable, and the risk of getting caught and punished is reasonably close to 100%. It's the reason why corporations don't just murder their competition, literally, or hire people to do it, unless they're members of criminal gangs, in which case they sometimes do, since for THEM, their entire operations are often highly illegal, and without the cover of a legitimate business to operate under the color of, they know if they get caught they're screwed, so that frees them to behave in a way corporations are, mostly not free to operate, happily.
But this case has illustrated I think, pretty well, the fact that a company will do whatever it takes to make a bunch of money and please their owners/shareholders, legal consequences, ethics, morals, etc., be damned. It's typical and illustrative. I doubt this will cause any corporation to behave meaningfully differently, even Vizio themse
If I fuck a Neanderthal, it will help give me resistance to ancient pathogens? Got it.
Lemme see... no, no, no... no, she's obviously H. Sapiens... no, not enough hair on that one, I can, like, straight up see her skin. Maybe she just shaves, but I'm not going to chance it. No. No. No... damn... a cute Neanderthal chick turns out to be hard to find on Tinder. Neanderthals DID have opposable thumbs, RIGHT? Moving on... nope, she's clearly Cro-magnon... no... no... no... (sigh).
You can all laugh now, but when global anthropogenic climate change thaws a pocket of bacteria from 150,000 years ago... ...and it starts wiping everyone out but me, it is I who will have the last laugh!
Me, and my hawt, hawt, hairy, Neanderthal girlfriend.
but the Court finds them only worth $1.00.
A court, the place one used to go to find justice that no longer exists.
When have courts ever been about justice? Justice is the GOAL, but they mostly just hand down verdicts. Will the verdict a court hands down in a case happen to be just? Flip a coin to find out. That’s about the best you can do.
I say we replace courts of justice with a blindfolded guy (or gal... need not especially be male,) and a coin. It wouldn’t be manifestly different from court system results on average, and it would save us all a LOT OF MONEY on lawyers and court costs.
Yeah. I get that people don't like it when lawyers get rich off of other people's misfortune, but headlines like this seem like PR from some organization that wants to get rid of consumer class actions.
Class actions are an economical way of vindicating the rights of large classes of people—and that is why big businesses don't like them. They want the latitude of ripping people off just below the pain threshold, whether they are selling goods or buying labor.
Though arbitration is its own issue, the Federal Arbitration Act should be amended to be more consumer and employee friendly, and to prevent companies from creating click-wrap licenses that strip you of your right to a class action.
The problem is that Vizio should have been beaten to the point where no one would ever even think to do something like this again... corporate bosses and board members jailed, company liquidated, employees fired or laid off, (and then THEY can pursue relief because they were terminated, from the assets in frozen bank accounts belonging to the responsible corporate heads and majority shareholders whose misbehavior and bad decisions caused the company to get liquidated,) with the assets divided evenly between members of he injured class.
This slap on the wrists practically ensures this kind of malfeasance will happen again and again and again... etc.
Sorry, by imperial, I meant the one used in America. Different imperial, I suppose, as I've heard people refer to the ounces, pounds, and tons used here as "imperial" measure, but they could have been misusing it, and I've never had occasion to check before.
But yeah, I meant short tons, the 2000 pound per each ton, (where a pound is 16 ounces, and an ounce is approximately 28 grams times 9.8m/s/s down*,) the one that is 2000/2200 (hence 10% lighter) of a metric one. I suppose the joke would have worked better if I'd said "American ton," but I didn't want to sound excessively ethnocentric. I had actually always thought these were synonymous, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_and_US_customary_measurement_systems) but maybe they're only based on the same thing, rather than being the same thing. Either way, this joke is, I think, dead as a door nail. Ah well.
(* As an aside, before anyone asks, one ounce is NOT equivalent to 28 grams, or approximately... since an ounce is a unit of FORCE, and grams a unit of MASS, so in order to equivocate them properly, you have to acknowledge that the approximate equivalent of an ounce is roughly 28.35... grams times the force of gravity, and since I'm using grams, I phrased the acceleration due to the force of gravity in terms of m/s/s.)
He should ship using the imperial, or standard ton. They’re 10% lighter! Think of the SAVINGS!
Sure. A bug. Yeah. Oops. Totally an entirely not at all on-purpose, completely innocent accident that just... so... HAPPENS to be of benefit to Facebook and the detriment of a would-be ex-user.
Total coincidence. Sure. Not incompetence or deliberate action. Nooo... it woul not , COULD not be that.