From a militaristic view, In the novel. 1) Military service is, like you point out, highly discouraged. 2) Only taken up by the incredibly smallest minority, basically the society has the smallest military ever assembled in any society weather real or imagined.
Only during the start, we don't see how recruitment works later on but there's a lot of new recruits by the end of the novel.
3) The only group of people entirly disenfranchised in the this society are the military.
You've got that backwards.
A central idea of the novel is you need to earn the right to vote, and the primary way people do that is with military service.
However, active military don't have the right to vote because they wouldn't want to vote for war. I can remember the actual quote from the book: "if they let the Roughnecks vote the idiots might vote not to make a drop"
The novel revolved around a person in this military, but the society it selves has relegated them to an unimportant and even somewhat denigrated role. Yes, the military is moderately glorified, like the character is somewhat glorified, but what the novel really glorifies is individual human rights.
I'd say there's a lot more glorification than that, the novel specifically singles out the grunts for praise. It's a classic militarist theme of taking in the lowest rungs of society and turning them into well functioning members of a great force.
> a world a fascist would like to create. In the way that all totalitarian regimes state that they are only taking away these rights, killing these people, or redistributing this wealth so that latter we can have this incredibly free society where no one has to be forced to do anything, SURE. But it could be argued since any depiction of a utopia is a depiction of a world that a fascist (or anyone else for that matter) would like to create.
The militarism in Starship Troopers doesn't leave a lot of room for individualism, grunts have a lot of autonomy in how to fight, but their purpose is to contribute to the state and authority is highly string.
But it justified a militaristic society by arguing that the best and most noble members of that society were in the military, implying non-military were less noble and dedicated (else they'd have joined the military).
It did no such thing. Many of the characters were brutish and rather cruel, and the novel even included a military member committing a serious crime against a civilian, for which he was executed. There was nothing "noble" about the soldiers apart from their willingness to sacrifice in defense of society as a whole; in all other respects they were very much regular human beings, with all their wrinkles and warts, just trying to get through another day of living.
It's been a lot of years since I read it, but the vibe I got was that the harsh discipline was part of the message that grunts were being held to a held to a higher standard than the rest of society, and being melded into something better.
If you're arguing that the book encourages the concept of self sacrifice in defence of society, then I suppose that's true. I'm not sure why you're objecting to it, though.
I'm not trying to object to it, just trying to explain how Verhoeven saw fascism in it.
And victory is won when necessity forces a full mobilization and essentially an embrace of militarism.
How is responding to a militaristic adversary with necessary force a glorification of the military, or "militarism"?
How is a massive mobilization with everyone joining the fight not militarism? I'd say the West became militarist for the extent of WWI and WWII, the thing that we generally find objectionable is militarism during a time of peace.
If you think starship troopers glorified militarism, you either didn't read it or didn't understand it. Just like Veerhoven.
The book, at least at the start, didn't depict a militaristic society, ie people were actively discouraged from joining the military.
But it justified a militaristic society by arguing that the best and most noble members of that society were in the military, implying non-military were less noble and dedicated (else they'd have joined the military).
And victory is won when necessity forces a full mobilization and essentially an embrace of militarism.
The original novel did not glorify the arachnids, at all.
I'm not sure if your comment was serious or not, but if it was I'm not sure you read the novel.
I don't think the book is fascist, the defining philosophy of fascism is to strengthen the nation by unifying it for a single purpose. This includes things like forcibly purging opposition and mass mobilization for war/economic progress/whatever the national objective is.
That's not quite Starship Troopers. The military was heavily glorified in the book, the vote was only given to ex-military (with a few exceptions) since they had proven that they put the needs of the nation first. Enlisted infantry were basically depicted as the most noble members of society.
But in the early stages of the war instead of recruiting they actively discourage people from joining the military. And the only reason humanity was united for a single purpose was they were fighting a literally implacable inhuman enemy.
So I don't think the novel is fascist, but it does depict a world a fascist would like to create. And certainly someone extremely suspicious of fascist overtones would be uncomfortable with the narrative.
In the history of presidential job approval polls, only FDR, Eisenhower, and JFK were decisively *more* popular than Trump throughout their presidency.
Presidents almost always become less popular over time.
Trump's the least popular US President in recorded history up to this point in his term.
Other Presidents had years of legacies and scandals with which to erode their legacies, not to mention congress controlled by hostile parties trying to undermine them.
Trump has been historically unpopular out of the gate, and become only more unpopular as he and his party attempts to govern.
Verhoeven grew up in German occupied Netherlands during WWII.
How did the studio think he was going to adapt a movie based on a book that glorified a militaristic society?
Though it is a kind of fun concept. Now I'm kinda interested to see Romeo and Juliet from a director going through a nasty divorce or an SF thriller directed by a technophobe.
You can break up all of those companies, but virtually none in any way that's meaningful.
Break Google search off from Alphabet, and you're left with a giant search company that still makes money hand over fist, and a bunch of stuff that can't be funded.
Partially, though I suspect Youtube and Maps could still be profitable.
The biggest concern I have there is things like DeepMinds, which is legitimate R&D, needs someone with deep pockets that can avoid monetizing for a few years (or you fold that kind of research back into academia).
Break Amazon up so that you have the Internet's online store, and a cloud service that definitely makes money, but doesn't impact the dominance of EITHER.
And Kindle, and all the secret brands that Amazon owns and has sell stuff on Amazon.com. I think Amazon is one of the better candidates for a breakup since they're arguably abusing their monopoly power already.
Break up Apple so that you've got an OS Apple and a Hardware Apple and now you have a significantly diminished shadow of both—the only reason Apple's products work well at all is because the hardware and software is considered in unison.
Easier to break up than FB, but I agree it harms consumers.
I do think Apple could be subject to more regulation than it is now as they have seemed to abuse their control of the platform.
Lastly, you can't really break up Facebook, but you could compel them to give ownership of people's social graphs back to them, since that's where all the value is. It's the connections, and connections of connections that are truly meaningful, and Facebook is the biggest and best in the social network space because they've got the most complete social graph, and they have that because they're the most popular. It's a self-perpetuating cycle. If what you want to do is break that, you could create a Facebook-esque utility that manages your social data, and Facebook or Twitter or whoever just sits on top of that.
Yeah, the trouble is you're not legislating their technical infrastructure. Plus you're making an even bigger privacy issue with this blob of data all sorts of parties can access.
With all the automation and huge increases in productivity, how many of you are working fewer hours than you were 5, 10, 15, or 20 years ago?
I'm willing to bet it's damn few of you. The fact is that automation and increases in productivity do not put money in the pockets of people who work for a living, they put money in the pockets of people who own for a living, which is a very small fraction of the population.
If you're excited by the prospects of automation and AI and all that good stuff, you better come to terms with a massive increase in the social welfare state, because there is no other option.
It's not even that.
Humans compete, I don't work to achieve a standard of living and possessions from 20 years ago, I work to earn as much or more than my social group. If my social group starts working 10 hours a week I'll work 15 to out-compete them, if they increase to 15 I go to 20. Most people just stop in the 40s since we start competing in other aspects of our lives as well.
People will always look for ways to improve their social standing, if we eliminate work entirely we'll start acting like nobility from the middle ages obsessed with group politics and social graces.
Easy enough to say when you have enough resources that you won't need to work to support yourself. How does he propose to distribute this bounteous windfall? Does he think the companies run the AI production facilities are going to be handing out their product to the idled (non-)workers?
Yeah, right, Bill. You go first!
Anyone else remember the 1960's, when they were telling us by 2000 everyone would only have to work 20 hours a week? That sure ended well!
Though to be fair, half your 40 hour week is spent on/.
I enjoyed Bright, Warcraft and King Arthur, despite all 3 getting savaged by critics (and the latter two mostly being disappointments in the US or worldwide). The problem with these movies is they are not 4 quadrant tentpole movies. Warcraft and King Arthur especially were heavy fantasy, as opposed to Lord of the Rings which has broad appeal.
Bright and Warcraft had extensive fantasy world-building, and it's just not something that appeals to everyone. My wife walked in the room while I was watching Warcraft and rolled her eyes so hard I was afraid she'd faint. BUT THAT'S OKAY. Not every movie is for everyone, something that gets lost when comparing critic reviews to audiences. Ironman and the recent Spiderman had broad appeal across genders and age groups. The DC movies did not, but were enjoyed by the very audience the movie was geared towards.
It's not good enough to distill a movie to a single numeric value when there are so many disparate audiences. So the Netflix exec is entirely right: Bright can be both savaged by critics and loved by audiences, but what he might not realize is that it's not loved by ALL audiences, but by fans of this particular genre. What's great about a movie like Bright is that it went full-bore into its world-building and that's going to have lasting appeal to fantasy fans, as opposed to being watered down.
I think the problem is that the question Rotten Tomatoes is asking: "What's the average rating of a bunch of people considered professional movie critics?"
Isn't the question you're interested in, which is: "Is this movie one I'd personally enjoy?"
That's a really hard question to answer but: "What is the rating of a bunch of professional movie critics who are fans of hard-core fantasy?"
Or: "What's the ratings of audiences who share my interests?"
I'm really kinda shocked that IMDB hasn't taken a shot at the last one.
"Some" researchers are saying the BSDs are dying so it must be true, huh? "Read it on the internet, hot damn, must be true then." Bullshit! The BSDs have a large community that is passionate about their choice of operating system. I have been using OpenBSD since 1998 and I will only stop using it once the community completely collapses, development ceases, and the foundation folds. The day that happens, I will have to find another hobby altogether and just keep a smartphone and tablet handy. Learning and using OpenBSD has made me far more knowledgeable about computers, operating systems, networks, and security than any other platform out there. If it weren't for my college roommate introducing me to OpenBSD, I believe I would just be another Microsoft wanker. OpenBSD taught me how the internet works and opened a wealth of knowledge. OpenBSD turned me from a computer power user into a true System Administrator. Ever since that day when I asked my roommate just what the heck OpenBSD was, my life would never be the same.
Here's the problem, in 1998 the BSDs and Linux were still on fairly equal footing, so it made just as much sense for you to learn a BSD.
In 2018 Linux has a giant community, a huge ecosystem, and major companies behind it.
You can get a job on the basis of your Linux expertise and will be able to do so for a while, even if there are corporate BSD systems right now how much longer do you think they're going to last?
How old are the members of that BSD community? If an undergrad is looking to learn BSD or Linux how will you convince them to choose BSD?
I love the idea of BSD, but I don't see they attract the next generation of developers. I think it will live in some form for as long as it keeps its base of impassioned old gurus, but sooner or later they'll run out.
What corruption and incompetence? This is a vague and baseless accusation. You're the one whose decisions cannot be trusted if they are based on rumors and made up theories.
The DOE ignored its own study in order to try and pass a BS rule to favour coal power plants.
The FCC ignored studies and proper rationale to kill Net Neutrality.
The HHS who administers the ACA is running ACA scare stories.
The directory of the CIA is undercutting his own agencies conclusions.
The Secretary of State is decimating the State Department with cutbacks.
So when you tell me that the a member of the Trump administration wants to do X I do not give them the benefit of the doubt.
Getting back to partisan identity emotionalism, it would seem that bringing an end to the ISS is more of a "common sense" decision than a "keep the dream alive" decision.
As well as framing this in disparaging emotionalism, you could just also call this decision "common sense".
That may be true, and if this decision were made under Obama or even Bush I might believe this decision was taken for the proper reasons after careful deliberation.
But this isn't one of their administrations, it's the Trump administration, and the corruption and incompetence of his appointees has proven to be astounding.
I don't know if this funding cut is motivated by Trump personally wanting money for a Mars project he has only a vague understanding of, or an appointee working from some ulterior motive, but I fundamentally don't trust any decision they make.
Apple went without Jobs twice. During the first run, they came up with innovative things like the digital camera and the PDA. Only thing was they were too far ahead of their time. When Jobs returned, he dumped the innovative projects and started selling Macs in fancy colors. He had timing and flare, not necessarily innovation. He made people want the products. Technically, the iPhone wasn't any more innovative than what Palm had already created. But it combined the right things at the right time to make people want to buy it.
I think it was more than that, he had a talent for design, not just aesthetics, but taking a device that was fairly cumbersome (mp3 player, smartphone, desktop computer) and making into something not just functional, but actually enjoyable to use.
I haven't used Apple products for years, but when I interact with them now I'm surprised by how hard to use they are the moment I step outside the narrow set of use-cases they've set out. I suspect that's a symptom of the loss of Jobs' influence.
That earlier silliness is especially ironic, given its presence during the previous administration, which appears to have been using that agency's tools against domestic political rivals.
If everything that "appeared" to be true on the Fox News and Breitbart was actually true then you've be living under the fascist dicatorship of a gay atheist Muslim from Kenya.
What sort of incentive system relies only on revenue? So Musk manages to get the company up to $20bn in revenue, but to do it creates losses of $30bn, and he still gets the stock? That's ludicrous.
Profit is an easier metric to game. All you need to do ramp up profits is slash spending and coast off the work generated by your prior investments.
But to grow revenue you need to actually convince people to give you money.
I'm kind of wondering what the purpose of autopilot is since it's only to be used by a fully attentive driver. What benefit does it add? And if no benefit, why is it in the car in the first place, since it obviously acts as a lure for those who aren't fully attentive?
It allows Tesla to claim they have the first self-driving car.
"Autopilot saves drunk drivers' life". Assuming he would have driven either way (drunks usually do), if he hadn't had autopilot on when he passed out, the car wouldn't have driven for a few minutes on its own, then pulled slowly to a stop and put the blinkers on. He would just have crashed. Possibly into another car.
Most drunk drivers don't try driving when they're so loaded they literally pass out behind the wheel.
More likely he only decided to drive because he thought the auto-pilot would compensate for his intoxication enough to stop him from getting pulled over and allow him to drive home drive safely.
This is one of the big risks with level 2 self-driving cars. The car does so much that people think they can do other things like watch a movie or get loaded behind the wheel. You end up with a car where neither the driver nor the software is able to safely handle a lot of situations.
The now-infamous “Google memo,” written by engineer James Damore, argued against diversity initiatives at Google and said that female engineers were less capable of leading others.
They must be talking about a different memo. Because his memo did not does say that female engineers are less capable of leading. The closest thing I can find is this:
I think context is important.
The traditional justification for discrimination of all types is that the segregation is the natural expression of talents. Aristocracy was justified by claiming the superiority of Nobel lineage. Slavery by the primitive nature of the enslaved. Lack of women's suffrage because women were too emotional and irrational to be trusted with the vote. etc, etc.
By claiming that women are just naturally less inclined to be engineers and leaders he's really feeding into that traditional narrative.
The other big issue with the memo is that while he acknowledges that discrimination exists he's very dismissive about its significance. I've worked with a lot of women in technical roles and it's very apparent that they're often not taken seriously. As a straight white male I find it fundamentally hard to relate to microaggressions because I don't personally experience them. But I also realize my experience is not universal. People are perceptive and there are a lot of women and minorities who can clearly perceive that they're being treated as less qualified on the basis of their gender or race. By not only brushing away the significance of microaggressions and but actually endorsing some of those stereotypes (IQ differences between races, women are neurotic, women/minorities are diversity hires and therefore assumed to be incompetent, etc). I can understand why the memo really pissed a lot of people off.
I think it's unfortunate what happened to Damore, I think he was sincerely trying to help, but unfortunately he didn't understand the other side of the issue and he managed to write something that understandably offended a lot of people.
Slashdot Mirror
Here is the problem I have with both those ideas.
From a militaristic view, In the novel.
1) Military service is, like you point out, highly discouraged.
2) Only taken up by the incredibly smallest minority, basically the society has the smallest military ever assembled in any society weather real or imagined.
Only during the start, we don't see how recruitment works later on but there's a lot of new recruits by the end of the novel.
3) The only group of people entirly disenfranchised in the this society are the military.
You've got that backwards.
A central idea of the novel is you need to earn the right to vote, and the primary way people do that is with military service.
However, active military don't have the right to vote because they wouldn't want to vote for war. I can remember the actual quote from the book:
"if they let the Roughnecks vote the idiots might vote not to make a drop"
The novel revolved around a person in this military, but the society it selves has relegated them to an unimportant and even somewhat denigrated role. Yes, the military is moderately glorified, like the character is somewhat glorified, but what the novel really glorifies is individual human rights.
I'd say there's a lot more glorification than that, the novel specifically singles out the grunts for praise. It's a classic militarist theme of taking in the lowest rungs of society and turning them into well functioning members of a great force.
> a world a fascist would like to create.
In the way that all totalitarian regimes state that they are only taking away these rights, killing these people, or redistributing this wealth so that latter we can have this incredibly free society where no one has to be forced to do anything, SURE. But it could be argued since any depiction of a utopia is a depiction of a world that a fascist (or anyone else for that matter) would like to create.
The militarism in Starship Troopers doesn't leave a lot of room for individualism, grunts have a lot of autonomy in how to fight, but their purpose is to contribute to the state and authority is highly string.
That's a very illiberal form of utopia.
But it justified a militaristic society by arguing that the best and most noble members of that society were in the military, implying non-military were less noble and dedicated (else they'd have joined the military).
It did no such thing. Many of the characters were brutish and rather cruel, and the novel even included a military member committing a serious crime against a civilian, for which he was executed. There was nothing "noble" about the soldiers apart from their willingness to sacrifice in defense of society as a whole; in all other respects they were very much regular human beings, with all their wrinkles and warts, just trying to get through another day of living.
It's been a lot of years since I read it, but the vibe I got was that the harsh discipline was part of the message that grunts were being held to a held to a higher standard than the rest of society, and being melded into something better.
If you're arguing that the book encourages the concept of self sacrifice in defence of society, then I suppose that's true. I'm not sure why you're objecting to it, though.
I'm not trying to object to it, just trying to explain how Verhoeven saw fascism in it.
And victory is won when necessity forces a full mobilization and essentially an embrace of militarism.
How is responding to a militaristic adversary with necessary force a glorification of the military, or "militarism"?
How is a massive mobilization with everyone joining the fight not militarism? I'd say the West became militarist for the extent of WWI and WWII, the thing that we generally find objectionable is militarism during a time of peace.
If you think starship troopers glorified militarism, you either didn't read it or didn't understand it. Just like Veerhoven.
The book, at least at the start, didn't depict a militaristic society, ie people were actively discouraged from joining the military.
But it justified a militaristic society by arguing that the best and most noble members of that society were in the military, implying non-military were less noble and dedicated (else they'd have joined the military).
And victory is won when necessity forces a full mobilization and essentially an embrace of militarism.
> a book that glorified a militaristic society?
The original novel did not glorify the arachnids, at all.
I'm not sure if your comment was serious or not, but if it was I'm not sure you read the novel.
I don't think the book is fascist, the defining philosophy of fascism is to strengthen the nation by unifying it for a single purpose. This includes things like forcibly purging opposition and mass mobilization for war/economic progress/whatever the national objective is.
That's not quite Starship Troopers. The military was heavily glorified in the book, the vote was only given to ex-military (with a few exceptions) since they had proven that they put the needs of the nation first. Enlisted infantry were basically depicted as the most noble members of society.
But in the early stages of the war instead of recruiting they actively discourage people from joining the military. And the only reason humanity was united for a single purpose was they were fighting a literally implacable inhuman enemy.
So I don't think the novel is fascist, but it does depict a world a fascist would like to create. And certainly someone extremely suspicious of fascist overtones would be uncomfortable with the narrative.
Imagine what the Republicans would do if Muller was investigating president Obama under the same circumstances?
How many impeachment votes can you have in one year?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_approval_rating#Historical_comparison
In the history of presidential job approval polls, only FDR, Eisenhower, and JFK were decisively *more* popular than Trump throughout their presidency.
Presidents almost always become less popular over time.
Trump's the least popular US President in recorded history up to this point in his term.
Other Presidents had years of legacies and scandals with which to erode their legacies, not to mention congress controlled by hostile parties trying to undermine them.
Trump has been historically unpopular out of the gate, and become only more unpopular as he and his party attempts to govern.
Verhoeven grew up in German occupied Netherlands during WWII.
How did the studio think he was going to adapt a movie based on a book that glorified a militaristic society?
Though it is a kind of fun concept. Now I'm kinda interested to see Romeo and Juliet from a director going through a nasty divorce or an SF thriller directed by a technophobe.
You can break up all of those companies, but virtually none in any way that's meaningful.
Break Google search off from Alphabet, and you're left with a giant search company that still makes money hand over fist, and a bunch of stuff that can't be funded.
Partially, though I suspect Youtube and Maps could still be profitable.
The biggest concern I have there is things like DeepMinds, which is legitimate R&D, needs someone with deep pockets that can avoid monetizing for a few years (or you fold that kind of research back into academia).
Break Amazon up so that you have the Internet's online store, and a cloud service that definitely makes money, but doesn't impact the dominance of EITHER.
And Kindle, and all the secret brands that Amazon owns and has sell stuff on Amazon.com. I think Amazon is one of the better candidates for a breakup since they're arguably abusing their monopoly power already.
Break up Apple so that you've got an OS Apple and a Hardware Apple and now you have a significantly diminished shadow of both—the only reason Apple's products work well at all is because the hardware and software is considered in unison.
Easier to break up than FB, but I agree it harms consumers.
I do think Apple could be subject to more regulation than it is now as they have seemed to abuse their control of the platform.
Lastly, you can't really break up Facebook, but you could compel them to give ownership of people's social graphs back to them, since that's where all the value is. It's the connections, and connections of connections that are truly meaningful, and Facebook is the biggest and best in the social network space because they've got the most complete social graph, and they have that because they're the most popular. It's a self-perpetuating cycle. If what you want to do is break that, you could create a Facebook-esque utility that manages your social data, and Facebook or Twitter or whoever just sits on top of that.
Yeah, the trouble is you're not legislating their technical infrastructure. Plus you're making an even bigger privacy issue with this blob of data all sorts of parties can access.
Anyone who leaves any balance of coins or fiat currency in an online exchange is a moron.
If you want to speculate, mine / buy your coins, store them in you OWN wallet, then move them to the exchange when you want to sell them.
Store where?
On your computer? Just wait for a keylogger virus to clean you out.
Offline on a spare HD? Hope the HD doesn't die, oh, and be careful a keylogger virus isn't running when you plug it back in.
Redundant duel backups in separate safety deposit boxes and a special offline machine with which to do set up the transfer? Sounds like a lot of work.
Oh, and make sure you can remember your password in 5 years.
With all the automation and huge increases in productivity, how many of you are working fewer hours than you were 5, 10, 15, or 20 years ago?
I'm willing to bet it's damn few of you. The fact is that automation and increases in productivity do not put money in the pockets of people who work for a living, they put money in the pockets of people who own for a living, which is a very small fraction of the population.
If you're excited by the prospects of automation and AI and all that good stuff, you better come to terms with a massive increase in the social welfare state, because there is no other option.
It's not even that.
Humans compete, I don't work to achieve a standard of living and possessions from 20 years ago, I work to earn as much or more than my social group. If my social group starts working 10 hours a week I'll work 15 to out-compete them, if they increase to 15 I go to 20. Most people just stop in the 40s since we start competing in other aspects of our lives as well.
People will always look for ways to improve their social standing, if we eliminate work entirely we'll start acting like nobility from the middle ages obsessed with group politics and social graces.
Easy enough to say when you have enough resources that you won't need to work to support yourself. How does he propose to distribute this bounteous windfall? Does he think the companies run the AI production facilities are going to be handing out their product to the idled (non-)workers?
Yeah, right, Bill. You go first!
Anyone else remember the 1960's, when they were telling us by 2000 everyone would only have to work 20 hours a week? That sure ended well!
Though to be fair, half your 40 hour week is spent on /.
You sounds like a smart poster.
That's my take on the issue entirely!
I enjoyed Bright, Warcraft and King Arthur, despite all 3 getting savaged by critics (and the latter two mostly being disappointments in the US or worldwide). The problem with these movies is they are not 4 quadrant tentpole movies. Warcraft and King Arthur especially were heavy fantasy, as opposed to Lord of the Rings which has broad appeal.
Bright and Warcraft had extensive fantasy world-building, and it's just not something that appeals to everyone. My wife walked in the room while I was watching Warcraft and rolled her eyes so hard I was afraid she'd faint. BUT THAT'S OKAY. Not every movie is for everyone, something that gets lost when comparing critic reviews to audiences. Ironman and the recent Spiderman had broad appeal across genders and age groups. The DC movies did not, but were enjoyed by the very audience the movie was geared towards.
It's not good enough to distill a movie to a single numeric value when there are so many disparate audiences. So the Netflix exec is entirely right: Bright can be both savaged by critics and loved by audiences, but what he might not realize is that it's not loved by ALL audiences, but by fans of this particular genre. What's great about a movie like Bright is that it went full-bore into its world-building and that's going to have lasting appeal to fantasy fans, as opposed to being watered down.
I think the problem is that the question Rotten Tomatoes is asking:
"What's the average rating of a bunch of people considered professional movie critics?"
Isn't the question you're interested in, which is:
"Is this movie one I'd personally enjoy?"
That's a really hard question to answer but:
"What is the rating of a bunch of professional movie critics who are fans of hard-core fantasy?"
Or:
"What's the ratings of audiences who share my interests?"
I'm really kinda shocked that IMDB hasn't taken a shot at the last one.
I know dedicated mining operations are way more efficient, but botnets can get pretty large.
Are there any estimates on just what proportion of crypto-currencies are mined through illegitimate means?
Apple, Google, and Amazon all have multiple products and divisions that can easily be broken off and split into separate entities.
But Facebook is still just Facebook, you can't break it up without major changes to the product itself.
"Some" researchers are saying the BSDs are dying so it must be true, huh? "Read it on the internet, hot damn, must be true then." Bullshit! The BSDs have a large community that is passionate about their choice of operating system. I have been using OpenBSD since 1998 and I will only stop using it once the community completely collapses, development ceases, and the foundation folds. The day that happens, I will have to find another hobby altogether and just keep a smartphone and tablet handy. Learning and using OpenBSD has made me far more knowledgeable about computers, operating systems, networks, and security than any other platform out there. If it weren't for my college roommate introducing me to OpenBSD, I believe I would just be another Microsoft wanker. OpenBSD taught me how the internet works and opened a wealth of knowledge. OpenBSD turned me from a computer power user into a true System Administrator. Ever since that day when I asked my roommate just what the heck OpenBSD was, my life would never be the same.
Here's the problem, in 1998 the BSDs and Linux were still on fairly equal footing, so it made just as much sense for you to learn a BSD.
In 2018 Linux has a giant community, a huge ecosystem, and major companies behind it.
You can get a job on the basis of your Linux expertise and will be able to do so for a while, even if there are corporate BSD systems right now how much longer do you think they're going to last?
How old are the members of that BSD community? If an undergrad is looking to learn BSD or Linux how will you convince them to choose BSD?
I love the idea of BSD, but I don't see they attract the next generation of developers. I think it will live in some form for as long as it keeps its base of impassioned old gurus, but sooner or later they'll run out.
What corruption and incompetence? This is a vague and baseless accusation. You're the one whose decisions cannot be trusted if they are based on rumors and made up theories.
The DOE ignored its own study in order to try and pass a BS rule to favour coal power plants.
The FCC ignored studies and proper rationale to kill Net Neutrality.
The HHS who administers the ACA is running ACA scare stories.
The directory of the CIA is undercutting his own agencies conclusions.
The Secretary of State is decimating the State Department with cutbacks.
So when you tell me that the a member of the Trump administration wants to do X I do not give them the benefit of the doubt.
Getting back to partisan identity emotionalism, it would seem that bringing an end to the ISS is more of a "common sense" decision than a "keep the dream alive" decision.
As well as framing this in disparaging emotionalism, you could just also call this decision "common sense".
That may be true, and if this decision were made under Obama or even Bush I might believe this decision was taken for the proper reasons after careful deliberation.
But this isn't one of their administrations, it's the Trump administration, and the corruption and incompetence of his appointees has proven to be astounding.
I don't know if this funding cut is motivated by Trump personally wanting money for a Mars project he has only a vague understanding of, or an appointee working from some ulterior motive, but I fundamentally don't trust any decision they make.
Apple went without Jobs twice. During the first run, they came up with innovative things like the digital camera and the PDA. Only thing was they were too far ahead of their time. When Jobs returned, he dumped the innovative projects and started selling Macs in fancy colors. He had timing and flare, not necessarily innovation. He made people want the products. Technically, the iPhone wasn't any more innovative than what Palm had already created. But it combined the right things at the right time to make people want to buy it.
I think it was more than that, he had a talent for design, not just aesthetics, but taking a device that was fairly cumbersome (mp3 player, smartphone, desktop computer) and making into something not just functional, but actually enjoyable to use.
I haven't used Apple products for years, but when I interact with them now I'm surprised by how hard to use they are the moment I step outside the narrow set of use-cases they've set out. I suspect that's a symptom of the loss of Jobs' influence.
That earlier silliness is especially ironic, given its presence during the previous administration, which appears to have been using that agency's tools against domestic political rivals.
If everything that "appeared" to be true on the Fox News and Breitbart was actually true then you've be living under the fascist dicatorship of a gay atheist Muslim from Kenya.
What sort of incentive system relies only on revenue?
So Musk manages to get the company up to $20bn in revenue, but to do it creates losses of $30bn, and he still gets the stock? That's ludicrous.
Profit is an easier metric to game. All you need to do ramp up profits is slash spending and coast off the work generated by your prior investments.
But to grow revenue you need to actually convince people to give you money.
It's an autopilot like in an aircraft, that still requires a human pilot(s) to be a systems manager.
Airplanes fly in the sky. The sky is generally pretty empty.
Asking the human to start paying attention again because something unexpected is going on is a bit more feasible.
I'm kind of wondering what the purpose of autopilot is since it's only to be used by a fully attentive driver. What benefit does it add?
And if no benefit, why is it in the car in the first place, since it obviously acts as a lure for those who aren't fully attentive?
It allows Tesla to claim they have the first self-driving car.
"Autopilot saves drunk drivers' life". Assuming he would have driven either way (drunks usually do), if he hadn't had autopilot on when he passed out, the car wouldn't have driven for a few minutes on its own, then pulled slowly to a stop and put the blinkers on. He would just have crashed. Possibly into another car.
Most drunk drivers don't try driving when they're so loaded they literally pass out behind the wheel.
More likely he only decided to drive because he thought the auto-pilot would compensate for his intoxication enough to stop him from getting pulled over and allow him to drive home drive safely.
This is one of the big risks with level 2 self-driving cars. The car does so much that people think they can do other things like watch a movie or get loaded behind the wheel. You end up with a car where neither the driver nor the software is able to safely handle a lot of situations.
The now-infamous “Google memo,” written by engineer James Damore, argued against diversity initiatives at Google and said that female engineers were less capable of leading others.
They must be talking about a different memo. Because his memo did not does say that female engineers are less capable of leading. The closest thing I can find is this:
I think context is important.
The traditional justification for discrimination of all types is that the segregation is the natural expression of talents. Aristocracy was justified by claiming the superiority of Nobel lineage. Slavery by the primitive nature of the enslaved. Lack of women's suffrage because women were too emotional and irrational to be trusted with the vote. etc, etc.
By claiming that women are just naturally less inclined to be engineers and leaders he's really feeding into that traditional narrative.
The other big issue with the memo is that while he acknowledges that discrimination exists he's very dismissive about its significance. I've worked with a lot of women in technical roles and it's very apparent that they're often not taken seriously. As a straight white male I find it fundamentally hard to relate to microaggressions because I don't personally experience them. But I also realize my experience is not universal. People are perceptive and there are a lot of women and minorities who can clearly perceive that they're being treated as less qualified on the basis of their gender or race. By not only brushing away the significance of microaggressions and but actually endorsing some of those stereotypes (IQ differences between races, women are neurotic, women/minorities are diversity hires and therefore assumed to be incompetent, etc). I can understand why the memo really pissed a lot of people off.
I think it's unfortunate what happened to Damore, I think he was sincerely trying to help, but unfortunately he didn't understand the other side of the issue and he managed to write something that understandably offended a lot of people.