I appreciate that these posts are tagged as humorous, but it is a serious trap that I've found many people falling into. AdBlock does not protect your privacy (as far as I can tell). The cookies are still there. Use Cookie Safe.
AdBlock blocks ads. It does not block cookies. Doubleclick is still tracking you unless you refuse to allow their cookies. To handle that aspect, use CookieSafe. NoScript would perhaps also increase privacy (I've seen doubleclick scripts on sites).
This is the first time I've ever read a news report that shows Greenpeace doing something besides political grandstanding. They actually went out and hired someone to do an analysis of the data. Maybe this is the start of a new trend - results-oriented activism, as opposed to the feel-good activism of the past.
Why exactly do you assume they have not been doing such things all along? Maybe you just fell for the usual news propaganda about Greenpeace. After all, "Greenpeace Commissions Study" is hardly headline news.
but is not anybody concerned about our sworn enemies using our scientific advances against us?
Given the quality of papers, giving them access would really slow them down.
Seriously, I know you stay up late at night worrying about how some religious fanatics will suddenly figure out how to use Fibonacci numbers to solve the Riemann Hypothesis and thus build their Gizmatron that will destroy all, but somehow, it doesn't bother me.
And pray tell, who is this "our" in "our scientific advances"?
"I don't hope for that at all. Anyone who feels this way doesn't understand the terrorist mindset. They're not here to live and let live a good life. They're here to die for Allah's greatness and get the fast pass into Paradise. You can't talk with them. You can't reason with them. You either convert -- or die. They even intentionally target and kill others of their own faith in this struggle. Under these circumstances, conventional ideas of freedoms are just weaknesses to be exploited. This is a War, and we either fight it as such, or lose!"
Thanks for parroting others without checking the facts.
Anyway, no free rides.:) @ $30 its a good deal for people who would use it,
It's a crappy deal. For almost 2 years now, I've been paying $20/mo for this and much more (VoIP as well). Equipment was provided so I could set it up with a regular phone. I've both sent calls using Skype and received from those calling me on Skype. Call quality does not warrant $30/mo - more like $10/mo. I can always tell the difference between Skype calls and landlines. Almost no one can do that for my current VoIP provider.
My point was not that PGP is hard to use. I'm sure there are plenty of plugins, etc that make it straightforward. It's the trust model: To use it well, one has to take security seriously. And the masses won't do that. They don't care if people in between can read their emails. Making encryption via PGP automatic won't improve the situation, because the users will not bother validating keys, etc.
Not a criticism of PGP - I like it fine as it is. I wonder if one can ever have a secure encryption scheme that is more or less "automatic" - don't really know too much about this.
If GMail let me upload a PGP applet I signed myself (which I could validate in the pages when I hit them), which they embedded into their pages in Javascript the public could audit for holes, they might actually become by far the best email system for the masses.
Don't ever use "PGP" and "the masses" in the same sentence. There's a reason people don't use it unless they really need to. It's the hassle of exchanging keys and building a trust database, and getting people to use it as it should.
It's a very minor hassle for those who use it well, but getting the masses to follow protocol is next to impossible.
His complaints are non-issues. He just doesn't use his tools properly.
I set my Firefox to allow cookies for the session only. This way, no site rejects me. And they can't track my behavior across sessions.
Sites I visit frequently where I may want to remain logged in, or maintain personalization, I can selectively choose not to have deleted when I close Firefox.
Sites I don't want to have cookies for at all, I simply selectively block for good.
I browse just like I always used to with these settings. No hassles whatsoever.
But engineering as a career isn't. And often the skills needed are the same. If people will be poor scientists, they'll probably be poor engineers. And as far as salaries go, there's much to look forward to (and at a younger age).
The other point you missed is that a well trained scientist is fairly good at leaving science and getting a well paying job. In my office in my grad school, I've seen a bunch of engineers/physics majors get their PhD's and run off to work on financial models and simulations at financial institutions for salaries that exceed 100K. Those wonderful math and simulation skills they learned in their disciplines paid off big time.
For some reason, those who go straight into finance rather than the sciences never get these jobs, because finance/economics programs at most universities dummy down the math. And so they're not very good at doing Monte Carlo simulations for nasty integrals arising in stochastic calculus.
Oh, and physicist PhD's who work in industry (as physicists) get paid about as well as engineers - there's no law that states they have to go into academia and be a post doc.
"Be careful before tossing out the standard issue slashbot line, because when something eventually goes BOOM you won't be allowed to ask "Why didn't the spooks connect the dots and prevent it" if you are now howling that they shouldn't be looking for the dots."
From a Simpson's episode (paraphrased):
Homer: Not a bear in sight. The Bear Patrol must be working like a
charm.
Lisa: That's spacious reasoning, Dad. Homer: Thank you, dear.
Lisa: By your logic I could claim that this rock keeps tigers away. Homer: Oh, how does it work?
Lisa: It doesn't work. Homer: Uh-huh.
Lisa: It's just a stupid rock. Homer: Uh-huh.
Lisa: But I don't see any tigers around, do you?
[Homer thinks of this, then pulls out some money] Homer: Lisa, I want to buy your rock.
[Lisa refuses at first, then takes the exchange]
Your argument is no sounder than Homer's above. It's FUD at best. Explain how what happened here could possibly prevent anything from going BOOM?
Does Civ IV solve the tedium of moving a huge number of troops from one place to another? That seemed to plague all the three previous Civilizations...
"As did BitTorrent for a while before they started to sue BitTorrent users - it takes time for them to shift their focus, but they will."
Bittorrent got hit easily because it is the easiest p2p network to go after. If they want to know who's downloading The Matrix, they just find a popular torrent for it, get on the tracker server, and watch. Simply everyone on that tracker will be sharing the file or portions of it. They just need to log all the IP's.
With Emule or Kazaa, they have to do a search for The Matrix, and start downloading. They'll only be able to see the IP's of the people they are directly getting it from. If I'm also downloading/uploading The Matrix, they won't know it unless they start getting it off me. With Bittorrent, they can without even taking some bytes from me. My presence on the tracker for that particular torrent is evidence enough. My presence on an eMule server is not.
Bittorrent was never designed to be used for anonymous purposes, and as such has no anonymity measures in it.
Contrary to popular belief, most people do not use Gentoo for optimization or learning. Just to get a clean system that manages dependencies well, and to start from scratch in order not to have unneeded services/software installed.
However, one can still learn quite a bit from it - not near as much as LFS, though. Most distributions don't make you compile the kernel, nor configure the X Server. I learned much from doing both. And setting up sound. And my video card, etc. Most distributions do that automatically for you (and often don't pick good values).
Which is what I meant. If you accept it, it's your responsibility to return it.
"Second, how far back in time shall we go?"
If there are clear effects of any event in the past, no matter how long, on the present, then it is not too long ago.
"Are the residents of Tunis entitled to restitution from the Italians because the Romans destroyed Carthage?"
If it can clearly be shown that someone is benefiting (at least financially) presently from the Romans' destruction of Carthage, or that the Tunisians are still suffering presently because of it, then the argument still applies.
"Are the residents of Mexico entitled to payment from Spain because the Conquistadors conquered their ancestors?"
Yes, if they are suffering now as a result of it (the natives, that is). The same applies to what the Spanish did in South America and British/French/Americans did to the natives in North America. According to many, a large number of those natives are still suffering because of what was done centuries ago. And many are even now demanding some form of restitution.
"Are there people in West Africa who merit compensation from other West Africans because they captured their ancestors and sold them as slaves to Europeans and other Africans?"
The question is, "What did those individuals gain"? If historically, they gained enough that it is clear they have some sort of edge over those they wronged (and what that edge is), then some reparations need to be made. If they really were only individuals, then the effect of what they gained will be hard to measure now, and from a practical perspective, the matter would have to be ignored.
Yes, your point is that in some cases, these issues are hard to gauge, and I agree. But when it isn't hard, then the argument should apply.
And I'm not necessarily suggesting a tit-for-tat protocol in the compensation. If the native Americans were wronged, one option is to give a disproportionately more amount of scholarship funds to them (they'd still need to achieve some merit to get it). An affirmative action for them, more or less.
The requirements of deciding what the criteria need be, and the compensation should be, is a matter for the legal system to formulate. I'm not pretending to know what would be considered just. Merely arguing that the principle should hold, and should be implemented wherever it is practical to do so. You yourself admitted this when you said it would be illegal for me to take the stolen land.
" In the more general case, however, we have no obligation to redeem what we, or others, consider the wrongdoing of our ancesters."
That seems like double standards, though. Why would it be illegal for me to take the land my father passed down to me? This, BTW, was assuming that I do not know it's been stolen, but it can be demonstrated clearly enough to the law. If I do not know it's been stolen, I'm not guilty for stealing it. But once it becomes clear to me, I will be guilty for keeping it. I did not imply that I would be responsible for his stealing it in a karma sort of way.
I could return just the land. But if it has been thirty years since it was stolen, those folks were deprived a substantial source of income. It doesn't at all seem fair that they get only the land back. A portion of the profits made during all those years is entitled to them.
"My rather obvious point is that life with material possession and no freedom is far worse than life with few possessions and freedom."
And I would disagree. It's a question of extent. I come from a country with a fair degree of freedom, and a very poor economy. The people who can't afford to always have food on their table don't care much for their freedom.
Whereas in another rich country I lived in (Middle East), where freedoms were far fewer, people were much happier, as they did not worry about food, shelter, education, etc.
Everyone has basic needs. Freedom is a higher need, really. When those basic needs are not met, people will not care that they have some higher needs. There's a hierarchy.
"I hear that alleged logic all the time. I simply do not understand it. We are not responsible for the actions of our ancestors."
No, but you are responsible for any benefits you gained from the actions of your ancestors.
If my father illegally occupied the farm land of a neighbor's, and cultivated it well, and died and passed it down to me, then I have no right to it, and need to return it. In essence, whatever I gained from what my father gained from the stolen land (financially or otherwise), has to be compensated for.
I'm not responsible for his stealing it, but once he passes it down to me, it will be my duty to return it.
Slashdot Mirror
I appreciate that these posts are tagged as humorous, but it is a serious trap that I've found many people falling into. AdBlock does not protect your privacy (as far as I can tell). The cookies are still there. Use Cookie Safe.
You guys are missing the point.
AdBlock blocks ads. It does not block cookies. Doubleclick is still tracking you unless you refuse to allow their cookies. To handle that aspect, use CookieSafe. NoScript would perhaps also increase privacy (I've seen doubleclick scripts on sites).
This is the first time I've ever read a news report that shows Greenpeace doing something besides political grandstanding. They actually went out and hired someone to do an analysis of the data. Maybe this is the start of a new trend - results-oriented activism, as opposed to the feel-good activism of the past.
Why exactly do you assume they have not been doing such things all along? Maybe you just fell for the usual news propaganda about Greenpeace. After all, "Greenpeace Commissions Study" is hardly headline news.
Dune 2 was primitive because it was the first "real-time strategy" game.
Nope. The first was The Ancient Art of War from way back in 1984. If there ever was a game that deserved a remake, this is it!
We need only one law regarding robots:
It is illegal to make sentient robots.
There. Problem solved.
Actually, only for robots under the age of 4. They age quicker, so 4 is the equivalent of 17 in human years.
but is not anybody concerned about our sworn enemies using our scientific advances against us?
Given the quality of papers, giving them access would really slow them down.
Seriously, I know you stay up late at night worrying about how some religious fanatics will suddenly figure out how to use Fibonacci numbers to solve the Riemann Hypothesis and thus build their Gizmatron that will destroy all, but somehow, it doesn't bother me.
And pray tell, who is this "our" in "our scientific advances"?
"I don't hope for that at all. Anyone who feels this way doesn't understand the terrorist mindset. They're not here to live and let live a good life. They're here to die for Allah's greatness and get the fast pass into Paradise. You can't talk with them. You can't reason with them. You either convert -- or die. They even intentionally target and kill others of their own faith in this struggle. Under these circumstances, conventional ideas of freedoms are just weaknesses to be exploited. This is a War, and we either fight it as such, or lose!"
Thanks for parroting others without checking the facts.
Don't care what anyone else thinks. The best place to work is as a faculty at a university.
And if you complain about it not being a company, then you're just plain picky.
My apologies. I retract.
Anyway, no free rides. :) @ $30 its a good deal for people who would use it,
It's a crappy deal. For almost 2 years now, I've been paying $20/mo for this and much more (VoIP as well). Equipment was provided so I could set it up with a regular phone. I've both sent calls using Skype and received from those calling me on Skype. Call quality does not warrant $30/mo - more like $10/mo. I can always tell the difference between Skype calls and landlines. Almost no one can do that for my current VoIP provider.
My point was not that PGP is hard to use. I'm sure there are plenty of plugins, etc that make it straightforward. It's the trust model: To use it well, one has to take security seriously. And the masses won't do that. They don't care if people in between can read their emails. Making encryption via PGP automatic won't improve the situation, because the users will not bother validating keys, etc.
Not a criticism of PGP - I like it fine as it is. I wonder if one can ever have a secure encryption scheme that is more or less "automatic" - don't really know too much about this.
If GMail let me upload a PGP applet I signed myself (which I could validate in the pages when I hit them), which they embedded into their pages in Javascript the public could audit for holes, they might actually become by far the best email system for the masses.
Don't ever use "PGP" and "the masses" in the same sentence. There's a reason people don't use it unless they really need to. It's the hassle of exchanging keys and building a trust database, and getting people to use it as it should.
It's a very minor hassle for those who use it well, but getting the masses to follow protocol is next to impossible.
>>Stewart shilling for the latest Democratic candidate?
"You mean like when he compared the dems to Ewoks? Sure, that's a resounding recommendation. Sorry, but your post is nonsense. Do you even watch TDS?"
In 2004, off the show, but on other shows, he openly stated that he's supporting Kerry.
His complaints are non-issues. He just doesn't use his tools properly.
I set my Firefox to allow cookies for the session only. This way, no site rejects me. And they can't track my behavior across sessions.
Sites I visit frequently where I may want to remain logged in, or maintain personalization, I can selectively choose not to have deleted when I close Firefox.
Sites I don't want to have cookies for at all, I simply selectively block for good.
I browse just like I always used to with these settings. No hassles whatsoever.
How exactly is this "watching"?
Yes, science as a career is painful.
But engineering as a career isn't. And often the skills needed are the same. If people will be poor scientists, they'll probably be poor engineers. And as far as salaries go, there's much to look forward to (and at a younger age).
The other point you missed is that a well trained scientist is fairly good at leaving science and getting a well paying job. In my office in my grad school, I've seen a bunch of engineers/physics majors get their PhD's and run off to work on financial models and simulations at financial institutions for salaries that exceed 100K. Those wonderful math and simulation skills they learned in their disciplines paid off big time.
For some reason, those who go straight into finance rather than the sciences never get these jobs, because finance/economics programs at most universities dummy down the math. And so they're not very good at doing Monte Carlo simulations for nasty integrals arising in stochastic calculus.
Oh, and physicist PhD's who work in industry (as physicists) get paid about as well as engineers - there's no law that states they have to go into academia and be a post doc.
"'How can I do my thesis now?'"
Journals?
"Be careful before tossing out the standard issue slashbot line, because when something eventually goes BOOM you won't be allowed to ask "Why didn't the spooks connect the dots and prevent it" if you are now howling that they shouldn't be looking for the dots."
From a Simpson's episode (paraphrased):
Homer: Not a bear in sight. The Bear Patrol must be working like a
charm.
Lisa: That's spacious reasoning, Dad.
Homer: Thank you, dear.
Lisa: By your logic I could claim that this rock keeps tigers away.
Homer: Oh, how does it work?
Lisa: It doesn't work.
Homer: Uh-huh.
Lisa: It's just a stupid rock.
Homer: Uh-huh.
Lisa: But I don't see any tigers around, do you?
[Homer thinks of this, then pulls out some money]
Homer: Lisa, I want to buy your rock.
[Lisa refuses at first, then takes the exchange]
Your argument is no sounder than Homer's above. It's FUD at best. Explain how what happened here could possibly prevent anything from going BOOM?
Does Civ IV solve the tedium of moving a huge number of troops from one place to another? That seemed to plague all the three previous Civilizations...
"As did BitTorrent for a while before they started to sue BitTorrent users - it takes time for them to shift their focus, but they will."
/uploading The Matrix, they won't know it unless they start getting it off me. With Bittorrent, they can without even taking some bytes from me. My presence on the tracker for that particular torrent is evidence enough. My presence on an eMule server is not.
Bittorrent got hit easily because it is the easiest p2p network to go after. If they want to know who's downloading The Matrix, they just find a popular torrent for it, get on the tracker server, and watch. Simply everyone on that tracker will be sharing the file or portions of it. They just need to log all the IP's.
With Emule or Kazaa, they have to do a search for The Matrix, and start downloading. They'll only be able to see the IP's of the people they are directly getting it from. If I'm also downloading
Bittorrent was never designed to be used for anonymous purposes, and as such has no anonymity measures in it.
Contrary to popular belief, most people do not use Gentoo for optimization or learning. Just to get a clean system that manages dependencies well, and to start from scratch in order not to have unneeded services/software installed.
However, one can still learn quite a bit from it - not near as much as LFS, though. Most distributions don't make you compile the kernel, nor configure the X Server. I learned much from doing both. And setting up sound. And my video card, etc. Most distributions do that automatically for you (and often don't pick good values).
"and you acted illegally in accepting it. "
Which is what I meant. If you accept it, it's your responsibility to return it.
"Second, how far back in time shall we go?"
If there are clear effects of any event in the past, no matter how long, on the present, then it is not too long ago.
"Are the residents of Tunis entitled to restitution from the Italians because the Romans destroyed Carthage?"
If it can clearly be shown that someone is benefiting (at least financially) presently from the Romans' destruction of Carthage, or that the Tunisians are still suffering presently because of it, then the argument still applies.
"Are the residents of Mexico entitled to payment from Spain because the Conquistadors conquered their ancestors?"
Yes, if they are suffering now as a result of it (the natives, that is). The same applies to what the Spanish did in South America and British/French/Americans did to the natives in North America. According to many, a large number of those natives are still suffering because of what was done centuries ago. And many are even now demanding some form of restitution.
"Are there people in West Africa who merit compensation from other West Africans because they captured their ancestors and sold them as slaves to Europeans and other Africans?"
The question is, "What did those individuals gain"? If historically, they gained enough that it is clear they have some sort of edge over those they wronged (and what that edge is), then some reparations need to be made. If they really were only individuals, then the effect of what they gained will be hard to measure now, and from a practical perspective, the matter would have to be ignored.
Yes, your point is that in some cases, these issues are hard to gauge, and I agree. But when it isn't hard, then the argument should apply.
And I'm not necessarily suggesting a tit-for-tat protocol in the compensation. If the native Americans were wronged, one option is to give a disproportionately more amount of scholarship funds to them (they'd still need to achieve some merit to get it). An affirmative action for them, more or less.
The requirements of deciding what the criteria need be, and the compensation should be, is a matter for the legal system to formulate. I'm not pretending to know what would be considered just. Merely arguing that the principle should hold, and should be implemented wherever it is practical to do so. You yourself admitted this when you said it would be illegal for me to take the stolen land.
" In the more general case, however, we have no obligation to redeem what we, or others, consider the wrongdoing of our ancesters."
That seems like double standards, though. Why would it be illegal for me to take the land my father passed down to me? This, BTW, was assuming that I do not know it's been stolen, but it can be demonstrated clearly enough to the law. If I do not know it's been stolen, I'm not guilty for stealing it. But once it becomes clear to me, I will be guilty for keeping it. I did not imply that I would be responsible for his stealing it in a karma sort of way.
I could return just the land. But if it has been thirty years since it was stolen, those folks were deprived a substantial source of income. It doesn't at all seem fair that they get only the land back. A portion of the profits made during all those years is entitled to them.
"My rather obvious point is that life with material possession and no freedom is far worse than life with few possessions and freedom."
And I would disagree. It's a question of extent. I come from a country with a fair degree of freedom, and a very poor economy. The people who can't afford to always have food on their table don't care much for their freedom.
Whereas in another rich country I lived in (Middle East), where freedoms were far fewer, people were much happier, as they did not worry about food, shelter, education, etc.
Everyone has basic needs. Freedom is a higher need, really. When those basic needs are not met, people will not care that they have some higher needs. There's a hierarchy.
"I hear that alleged logic all the time. I simply do not understand it. We are not responsible for the actions of our ancestors."
No, but you are responsible for any benefits you gained from the actions of your ancestors.
If my father illegally occupied the farm land of a neighbor's, and cultivated it well, and died and passed it down to me, then I have no right to it, and need to return it. In essence, whatever I gained from what my father gained from the stolen land (financially or otherwise), has to be compensated for.
I'm not responsible for his stealing it, but once he passes it down to me, it will be my duty to return it.