Medically - politically - I have to look at the calendar everyday because it feels like I'm in a time warp and it's really 1917.
We, the USA, are getting dumber.
One thing you have to realize is that political issues are never black-and-white, but there are shades of grey. Issues have both positive *and* negative aspects, and it is up to us to assign an inherent value to the plusses and minuses in each case.
Vaccination in the US is all tangled up with immigration and foreign culture.
Measles is brought in by travellers from foreign countries and spurred mostly by immigration - going to visit relatives back in the home country, or having relatives come to visit. Neither of which is a problem, but it adds a small negative value to unrestricted immigration.
A couple of years ago I read about some Islamic groups in Pakistan who intentionally avoided the (freely offered) polio vaccine, and also avoided having polio-laden children *treated*, thinking that if they could somehow get the children into the US they could attack us that way(*).
A few years earlier I read about a California school system with 7,000 students and only enough money for 5,000 vaccinations, but of those 7,000 students 1,500 were illegals. The controversy was about "who gets the vaccinations", and whether we should put tax-paying citizens at a disadvantage by vaccinating foreign nationals for free.
You could definitely say that people are stupid for not getting vaccinated, but you could also say that curbing immigration would help, immigration adds a burden of cost to our society, and that sometimes other cultures and practices will get in the way.
The stupid answer is to have unlimited immigration and also insufficient funds for vaccination. If we have unlimited immigration, we should absolutely be willing to bear the increased medical costs simply for the protection of our own people.
Whether unlimited immigration is worth the increased costs is now a political issue that you can judge for yourself, and perhaps we should poll the population for consensus. Take all the positives and their inherent value, and compare to the negatives and *those* values.
Vaccination is the correct choice, but it's become partly a political issue.
(*) And it didn't help that the CIA used foreign vaxxing programs as a way to locate and register persons of interest.
To call it a "lie" implies some sort of bias. Assumptions are often built in to such statistical analysis. Why is it a lie this time?
It's a lie because the original definition communicated to voters an indication of how the economy was doing, while the current definition leans on that previous definition to give the appearance of a healthy economy when in fact it's terrible.
It's a lie because there has been enormous political pressure to skew the definition towards "statistical assumptions" in a way that suppresses voter outrage and dissent.
It's a lie because the value has morphed from a valid "quick snapshot" of the health of the economy, to a propaganda tool of the government for partisan purposes.
A much better indicator is had by random sampling, such as the Gallup poll, which tracks both employment and "underemployment". Here, underemployment is "people employed under 30 hours a week, but want to work more"(*).
(Also: Gallup good jobs index, which indirectly tells how satisfied workers are with their jobs.)
The Gallup poll notes that the results(*) can't be directly compared because federal statistics are "seasonally" adjusted. Seasonally adjusted? Why should unemployment numbers be adjusted *at all*?
(*) The article is about the UK, not US, but the principles are the same.
There's some serious psychology behind some of the slashdot trolls.
There's the "always make a post and simply contradict" types, there's the "spread fake anecdotes about the poster" types, there's the "talk about the poster behind his back" types(*), and there's the "simply post an insult" types, there's "take the argument to a ridiculous extremes" types, and "associate the argument with racism/homophobia/whatever" types ("that argument is racist!").
Around the time of election there wasn't a lot of thought put into these responses, it was just a lot of "no it isn't" and "you're a jerk" types of responses.
Since that time they've become a lot more strategic and well targeted.
They're using this particular tactic on you because their reading of your personality type indicates that it'll get you angry. They probably tried other types and found them ineffective.
I don't know for certain what their end goal is, but it's probably to chase you away from the site. If every time you post you get angry, you'll soon associate slashdot with anger and eventually say "why bother?".
Posting your views - saying you wish they wouldn't do that - only confirms to them that the tactic is working.
(*) Post as if two other slashdot readers are discussing the poster behind his back, as in "that's just Creimer, no one here likes him". I believe that one is particularly well-crafted, and will cause an emotional response in just about anyone.
Edward Markey is a member of the democratic party, so at this point he has no power whatsoever in congress. It's great that he feels this way but unless he can convince enough other people to care, then he's just pissing in the wind (ie, pandering to his base).
Note that the Democratic party held both houses and the presidency from 2009 to 2011, and nothing useful got done.
Pandering to your base is easy when you're the minority party, or when the other house is controlled by the opposite party.
Then you can pander all you want, placing blame on the other party for preventing you from doing what's right and just for the people!
During 2009 to 2011 the Democrats held majorities in both houses, but not supermajorities! If only the Democrats had just a few more votes, just *think* of all the good things they could have done!
The situation is a bit more interesting right now because many civilian outlets are saying "fix health care or we'll vote you out at the mid-terms". That's about 1.5 years from now, and campaigning starts in about 6 months.
Republicans are between a rock and a hard place with that one, but let's see what happens.
Most likely, congress will flip from R to D, and it still won't matter.
Therefore, there is no plausible situation in which paid prioritization can possibly be beneficial to consumers. Period. At best, it can only increase the potential for consumer harm, and at worst, it is the direct cause of consumer harm.
Your title was "special kind of stupid". Here's a question for you:
Background: The existing rule was notable in that 1) It was a gross overreach for the FCC, in that it was implemented under Title II classification 2) It actually does not completely or correctly implement net neutrality (in the way people expect when they use the term).
My question: Since net neutrality is apparently so obvious that anyone who doesn't "get it" is stupid, can you come up with a regulation that solves the problems noted in the background?
How about proposing an actual law that can be voted on in congress?
It can be written as open source, Google and Microsoft can have their lawyers go over it, the public can read and review it, and then it can be presented to the legislature for implementation.
We can say, in effect: "here is the correct solution, please implement it".
Just to get things started, how about the law is implemented not solely for the internet, but as an anti-trust problem? We could have the law enforced by the FTC instead of the FCC, and therefore apply not only to the internet, but other forms of communication and trade as well. (For example: Visa and Mastercard must treat all clients equally, and not deny certain companies from using their services, or charge different per-transaction amounts for different companies.)
And the law should have language that spells out the goals and guidelines, so that it can be used to cover new methods of communication and devices as they are developed in the future.
In short, instead of calling everyone stupid and, basically, just carrying on, how about we do something to actually *fix* the problems?
live mosquitoes, all male, all incapable of producing offspring.
The kind of control you're attempting simply is... it's not possible. If there is one thing the history of evolution has taught us it's that life will not be contained. Life breaks free, it expands to new territories and crashes through barriers, painfully, maybe even dangerously, but, uh... well, there it is.
You're confusing "life" with "a species". Species die out all the time.
Also, you do realize you're quoting a movie as fact, right?
On the one hand, I think that mosquitos should be intentionally driven to extinction. At least the disease baring ones. My understanding is that they don't occupy a vital niche in the food-chain or otherwise in the ecosystem.
On the other hand, I find unregulated ecological engineering by a private company to be quite creepy.
Don't be.
They're not eradicating *all* mosquitoes, and no one is suggesting that we eventually do that.
Aedes aegypti are not native to the area, and first appeared in 2013. Anopheles, the ones that bite humans, are not native to North America.
There are a couple of hundred species of mosquito and we're only targeting the ones that cause us harm, and the ones that are not native.
The other species will re-expand to fill the empty niches.
I think it's pretty well established that life tends to gravitate toward that which will propagate life.
I think we collective don't really stand much of a chance against nature's natural selection.
In the short term, this may reduce mosquitoes, but long term? Probably not. It won't take long for nature to teach the female mosquito to avoid males that don't procreate properly. But this is one case where I hope I'm wrong. I hate those things!
Possibly, but also possibly not.
The US South used to be subject to screw worm fly, a parasite that lays eggs in open sores of livestock and humans. It's been eradicated using the strategy in the OP - many irradiated male screw worms were released into the wild, who would mate with the females, but the eggs would not hatch.
Each time the male flies are released, the probability of successful mating goes down a little. Keep releasing the flies over time, and the probabilities become progressively less and less.
Mathematically speaking the reproductive probabilities never reach zero, but you reach a point where the discrete nature of the insects comes into play. When the last female in an area dies, there is no recovery.
Screw worms have been eliminated from the US for several decades using this method, and the technique has been generally proven as safe. In the irradiation method, you're not releasing anything into the environment that wasn't already there.
Aedes aegypti is becoming resistant to insecticides, and carries the Zika virus.
If you can make the population crash to zero it won't recover, short of reintroducing it.
I'm looking forward to the time when we can start eradicating some of these pests from the world, such as the Anopheles mosquito in the US (which is not native), mongooses in Hawaii, or cane toads in Australia.
A lot of things Mark Zuckerberg says and does make he think he wants to enter politics. Most others will delegate and work on compiled reports - this attempt to reach out to the masses seems very politician like.
I agree that this seems very politician-like.
I've been thinking about this a lot recently, in the frame of who will be running for president in 2000.
Politics is a rough choice, and it takes a very seasoned celebrity to just shrug off the criticism. Add to that the dirty tricks (operation veritas), the completely made-up stories (pizzagate), and the public's general interest in anything that's shocking, unusual, or worthy of memes.
Anyone who bases their self-image in any way on the opinion of others would be completely devastated in a political run. Ross Perot wasn't able to do that, and I'm continuously surprised that Donald Trump could.
Zuckerberg in particular seems too young to have a solid and strong ego, and he doesn't have the experience of politics or celebrity status to fall back on.
While it's a laudable goal, I just don't see Mark Zuckerberg as a viable presidential candidate in the next two or three elections.
I also wonder how much hands-on leadership he has at Facebook. I don't see him as having a vision, and getting people on-board with that vision. Also, I don't see him taking a lot of risks with the company direction.
Contrast with Jeff Bezos, who is taking Amazon in new directions, with some measure of risk, or Elon Musk, who is drawing together a vertically integrated ecosystem of companies. Those two would probably make better political candidates, if they decided to do that.
Politics is a rough choice, and I don't see Mark Zuckerberg fitting in to that lifestyle.
...but sure, keep telling us about how outrageous his tweets are, how it's shameful that he has no sense of decorum.
Meanwhile, he's quietly getting his agenda passed.
Also of note, Mark Meadows has threatened to shut down the government unless Congress funds the border wall, and if that happens it will be the Democrat's fault!
If he's bringing up fake news that basically means two things: Trump & Brexit.
And pizzagate and golden showers and Russian hacking and many, many others too numerous to list.
There's a metric buttload of less important fake news flowing around the MSM nowadays.
Just today a number of MSM outlets(*) report that Polish first lady Agata Kornhauser-Duda snubbed President Donald Trump by refusing to shake his hand during his visit to Poland on Thursday.
Of course, this is trivially debunked by simply looking at the images of the meet.
At this point I'm not even sure why they do it; I mean... is it really effective to falsely report something in an attempt to tear down Trump? Does false reporting advance them towards some goal?
Far right news outlets are calling out all the MSM fakeness, and because of this the integrity of the far right outlets has been steadily rising. That's starting to take a toll on the believability of the MSM.
Are they really going to continue this process of "just making shit up and printing it" until people simply don't believe them any more?
I would think that's a path to disaster, but then again I don't work at a newspaper. Maybe it's all part of some elaborate plan.
(*) WaPo, HuffPo, and Daily Express, among many others
throw your weight behind the 2018 mid terms. Make it clear that they'll be blood at the polls when NN gets struck down.
That is one of those plans that "sounds good, doesn't work".
1) NN is a minor issue that will be lost among much larger issues such as immigration, the economy, and health care.
2) The left, and I'm not saying this as a cheap insult, is in shambles with no obvious path to recovery and lots of potential paths to complete disaster. (Example: legislature is considering investigating Podesta's ties to Russia.)
3) The left has no one showing any sign of leadership today, which will come up in 2018 when we examine the past performances of whoever the party chooses to run. (Also true of the 2020 presidential election.)
The only positive thing I can see about the Democratic party today is the plan to choose their political positions by referendum.
The referendum thing could work, it could generate a solid foundation of positions that the people could support, but it's being presented and run in a low-class manner, and apparently the proposals won't be curated to weed out immature political emotion-baiting.
The 2018 elections will be largely in full swing a year from now, and all of Nancy Pelosi's incoherent ramblings, all of Chuck Schumer's self-victimizing, all of CNN's arrogance (and loss of viewers), and every stupid thing the left does between now and then will be put on display for the entire country to see.
Pity that - I'm all for having the parties compete with each other for effective leadership ideas.
Net Neutrality will get another article or two on Slashdot, nerds will feel a brief sense of outrage at the click-bait headline.
Any chance these companies could get together and, you know, come up with a plan to fix the problem?
How about suggesting a law that congress could pass that would implement net neutrality?
It could be a model of common-sense legislation. It could be vetted by legal teams of several big companies, and distil the knowledge and understanding of a highly technical subject from experts in the field.
It could avoid the underlying problems of the current net-neutrality law, the aspects that got it canned in the first place.
EVEN IF you believe there will be partisan opposition, Democrats could keep the legislation available in case they re-win control of government. It could be a plank in the liberal position for the times to come, something the public could get behind and use as an [albeit minor] rallying point for the party.
Or is it more effective to just publicly come out in opposition of things?
A government of the idiots, by the idiots and for the idiots
A quite sorry, demeaning & undignified depiction of the generous people of the USA.
For this, you should be ashamed of yourself.
The US is the first to lend aid in disasters around the world. We send our aircraft carriers to desalinate water and pass it out for free, and supply power to the hospitals while the local population recovers.
And when the crisis is over we send our aircraft carriers home, without conquering those nations.
We helped Europe deal with Nazi Germany, then poured billions of dollars into efforts at rebuilding the continent. We forgave billions of dollars of that debt, and continue to shoulder more of the bill for ongoing security than other countries (NATO).
We defeated Japan, occupied the country for a short time, rebuilt their infrastructure, and left them largely with their dignity intact. Japan is not a slave nation to the US, nor another US territory, nor do we laugh and deride them for losing.
The US is the worlds policemen, the country everyone looks to stop genocides and gas warfare and tyrants.
We have innumerable private charities that spend money all over the world to help pull people out of poverty and oppression. One past president has just about finished eliminating Guinea worm worldwide.
We have a ton of problems and endlessly debate them in the public eye, but that is by design. We're loud, insulting, and sometimes ignorant and insensitive.
Saying that we're all idiots is fine, that's your right.
But note that we idiots still help out when disasters happen worldwide, and when the disaster is over we come home without conquering anyone.
75% of the US population and GDP lay in urban areas
Best recognize. And the rest of you just sit your civil war memorial protecting oxycontin using bring back our coal jobs Toby Keith listening asses down.
We got this.
Well, let's just see where your liberal policies have gotten us, shall we?
I was just now reading an article on immigration, which lists 6 quick facts(*) from the immigration report Trump asked for.
This was information largely hidden by the Obama administration, and Trump made it public.
From that report:
.) The US gets one new immigrant for every four Americans who are born. .) The US gets one temporary foreign worker for every five new (turns 18 and enters the workforce) American workers. .) 50 percent of foreign temporary workers are white-collar professionals (about 35,000 per month, of 70,000 incoming per month) .) Trump won by getting 80,000 more votes than Hillary in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. The 264,533 new [immigrants who became citizen] voters in the first six months is basically three times the number of 2016 voters who gave Trump his victory. New citizen immigrants are changing the political landscape of the country.
Note that this information was basically hidden by Obama: no one knew what was happening, and no one knows how long it was went on (and we probably never will).
To put this simply: When your two kids turn 18 and are trying to get jobs, there is also one immigrant competing for those same jobs.
And it's white collar jobs as well as low-level ones.
So tell me - how will that GDP work out for you, when you're out of a job?
(*) There will be the inevitable idiot claiming that Breitbart isn't a credible source. You may note that the idiot doesn't discredit the story, or the information from the story, or (heavens!) the *source* of the information on which the story is based. Take that as you may.
Genius is a strong word, by which I mean an incorrect one. But it is a clever strategy, which he stumbled upon quite conveniently. If he were the first big personality to discover Twitter, that would have been one thing. This is another thing.
Genius is probably accurate.
No one knows with any certainty, but there were studies during the election about who was smarter. Trump came out somewhere North of 150 in estimated intelligence, as did Hillary Clinton. Both candidates were rated at roughly the same level based on their achievements, scholarship, and writing ability (Trump has a Bachelor of Science).
Calling him any sort of stupid is belied by the fact that he is a self-made billionaire, successful reality TV star, and the current president of the US. On top of that he has a strong family, raised good kids, and has a smart and lovely wife.
...any one of which is rather difficult to do if you're not smart.
Mensa generally accepts an IQ of 140 as genius level, so it seems that both Donald *and* Hillary are well above the genius level.
Does not sound like much of a study. More like a bit of a theory.
Yep. Researchers find a trend in the data, then rationalize an explanation and present it as "theory".
I'll propose an alternate explanation for the data.
People are tired of being told what to think, the outlets have been telling people what to think in the strongest possible terms, and as a result the strength of the words has declined.
Calling someone a liar, fascist, racist, islamophobe, Hitler, Cthulhu, and everything else was so completely over the top(*) that many people simply got used to the terms, thinking that exaggeration was the new normal they applied an internal reverse bias to compensate.
The term "sad" is mild, so when you encounter it you might think the person saying it *isn't* exaggerating, and may be choosing their words carefully. It's the difference between someone saying "I'm uncomfortable" versus "I'm too hot!". Literally, the 2nd phrase implies required action, which isn't usually true (that the action is required), and is taken as exaggeration. The 1st phrase sounds more accurate and reasonable, and gives the impression of truthfulness.
So when Trump says something is "sad", it's in lieu of calling something bad, nasty, stupid, or unconscionable. It comes off as more nuanced, non-exaggerated, and more trustworthy.
That's my theory, and it also fits the data.
Can someone propose a test to distinguish between the two theories?
(*) If you don't think that the recent media coverage was over the top, consider Breitbart's enormous jump in readership in recent months, [Democrat minority leader] Nancy Pelosi is desperately trying to shore up support, and CNN is now literally synonymous with the term "fake news". That doesn't happen overnight, nor from isolated events, nor does it happen for no good reason.
As further described in this Agreement, the Settlement Fund shall be used by the Settlement Administrator to pay for: (a) all reasonable Administrative Expenses; (b) the Taxes described in Sections 3; (c) Service Payments award by the Court, as described in Section 11; (d) attorneys’ fees and costs approved by the Court, as described in Section 12; (e) Credit Services as described in Section 4; (f) Alternative Compensation as described in Section 5; (g)Out-of-Pocket Costs as described in Section 6.
So the fund also covers taxes and administrative expenses, such as putting up a website where class members can go to register to get their money.
People will want to dismiss this "Oh noes, Ethiopia will be poor." But the truth is this is how things go from bad or barely manageable to absolute hell. Civilized societies turn to civil war and in our time feeding grounds for terrorism. The Yucatan peninsula went from 1.2 million people, with scientists, politicians, and surprisingly advanced civilization at the time, to just over 100k in less than 100 years. Drought was a big part of that.
Imagine what kind of havoc had to have happened for 9/10 of your friends and family to not have descendants. That's serious war and hell, and we see our own human history showing that we're not good at these long term planning challenges. The funny thing is that there were politicians in the Yucatan, in the beginning, that tried to get people to change farming practices to cope with the changing climate, but they were always immediately voted out of office because it would have affected profits.
So laugh and dismiss all you want, but vote for leaders that take this seriously and plan properly.
(Emphasis mine)
Sorry, I read that and just laughed out loud! Cats and dogs living together! Bwa ha ha ha.... !
Seriously.
Do you have any hard evidence to cite? Something without, for example, emotional content?
Slashdot Mirror
Medically - politically - I have to look at the calendar everyday because it feels like I'm in a time warp and it's really 1917.
We, the USA, are getting dumber.
One thing you have to realize is that political issues are never black-and-white, but there are shades of grey. Issues have both positive *and* negative aspects, and it is up to us to assign an inherent value to the plusses and minuses in each case.
Vaccination in the US is all tangled up with immigration and foreign culture.
Measles is brought in by travellers from foreign countries and spurred mostly by immigration - going to visit relatives back in the home country, or having relatives come to visit. Neither of which is a problem, but it adds a small negative value to unrestricted immigration.
A couple of years ago I read about some Islamic groups in Pakistan who intentionally avoided the (freely offered) polio vaccine, and also avoided having polio-laden children *treated*, thinking that if they could somehow get the children into the US they could attack us that way(*).
A few years earlier I read about a California school system with 7,000 students and only enough money for 5,000 vaccinations, but of those 7,000 students 1,500 were illegals. The controversy was about "who gets the vaccinations", and whether we should put tax-paying citizens at a disadvantage by vaccinating foreign nationals for free.
You could definitely say that people are stupid for not getting vaccinated, but you could also say that curbing immigration would help, immigration adds a burden of cost to our society, and that sometimes other cultures and practices will get in the way.
The stupid answer is to have unlimited immigration and also insufficient funds for vaccination. If we have unlimited immigration, we should absolutely be willing to bear the increased medical costs simply for the protection of our own people.
Whether unlimited immigration is worth the increased costs is now a political issue that you can judge for yourself, and perhaps we should poll the population for consensus. Take all the positives and their inherent value, and compare to the negatives and *those* values.
Vaccination is the correct choice, but it's become partly a political issue.
(*) And it didn't help that the CIA used foreign vaxxing programs as a way to locate and register persons of interest.
Fusion reactor
Curing cancer
Life extension (fountain of youth)
Driverless cars
Flying cars
Sentient AI
Did I miss anything?
They just released 20 million modified mosquitos in an attempt to wipe out Aegypti and eliminate Zika in Long Beach Ca.
To call it a "lie" implies some sort of bias. Assumptions are often built in to such statistical analysis. Why is it a lie this time?
It's a lie because the original definition communicated to voters an indication of how the economy was doing, while the current definition leans on that previous definition to give the appearance of a healthy economy when in fact it's terrible.
It's a lie because there has been enormous political pressure to skew the definition towards "statistical assumptions" in a way that suppresses voter outrage and dissent.
It's a lie because the value has morphed from a valid "quick snapshot" of the health of the economy, to a propaganda tool of the government for partisan purposes.
A much better indicator is had by random sampling, such as the Gallup poll, which tracks both employment and "underemployment". Here, underemployment is "people employed under 30 hours a week, but want to work more"(*).
(Also: Gallup good jobs index, which indirectly tells how satisfied workers are with their jobs.)
The Gallup poll notes that the results(*) can't be directly compared because federal statistics are "seasonally" adjusted. Seasonally adjusted? Why should unemployment numbers be adjusted *at all*?
(*) The article is about the UK, not US, but the principles are the same.
There's some serious psychology behind some of the slashdot trolls.
There's the "always make a post and simply contradict" types, there's the "spread fake anecdotes about the poster" types, there's the "talk about the poster behind his back" types(*), and there's the "simply post an insult" types, there's "take the argument to a ridiculous extremes" types, and "associate the argument with racism/homophobia/whatever" types ("that argument is racist!").
Around the time of election there wasn't a lot of thought put into these responses, it was just a lot of "no it isn't" and "you're a jerk" types of responses.
Since that time they've become a lot more strategic and well targeted.
They're using this particular tactic on you because their reading of your personality type indicates that it'll get you angry. They probably tried other types and found them ineffective.
I don't know for certain what their end goal is, but it's probably to chase you away from the site. If every time you post you get angry, you'll soon associate slashdot with anger and eventually say "why bother?".
Posting your views - saying you wish they wouldn't do that - only confirms to them that the tactic is working.
(*) Post as if two other slashdot readers are discussing the poster behind his back, as in "that's just Creimer, no one here likes him". I believe that one is particularly well-crafted, and will cause an emotional response in just about anyone.
Edward Markey is a member of the democratic party, so at this point he has no power whatsoever in congress. It's great that he feels this way but unless he can convince enough other people to care, then he's just pissing in the wind (ie, pandering to his base).
Note that the Democratic party held both houses and the presidency from 2009 to 2011, and nothing useful got done.
Pandering to your base is easy when you're the minority party, or when the other house is controlled by the opposite party.
Then you can pander all you want, placing blame on the other party for preventing you from doing what's right and just for the people!
During 2009 to 2011 the Democrats held majorities in both houses, but not supermajorities! If only the Democrats had just a few more votes, just *think* of all the good things they could have done!
The situation is a bit more interesting right now because many civilian outlets are saying "fix health care or we'll vote you out at the mid-terms". That's about 1.5 years from now, and campaigning starts in about 6 months.
Republicans are between a rock and a hard place with that one, but let's see what happens.
Most likely, congress will flip from R to D, and it still won't matter.
The end.
Therefore, there is no plausible situation in which paid prioritization can possibly be beneficial to consumers. Period. At best, it can only increase the potential for consumer harm, and at worst, it is the direct cause of consumer harm.
Your title was "special kind of stupid". Here's a question for you:
Background: The existing rule was notable in that 1) It was a gross overreach for the FCC, in that it was implemented under Title II classification 2) It actually does not completely or correctly implement net neutrality (in the way people expect when they use the term).
My question: Since net neutrality is apparently so obvious that anyone who doesn't "get it" is stupid, can you come up with a regulation that solves the problems noted in the background?
How about proposing an actual law that can be voted on in congress?
It can be written as open source, Google and Microsoft can have their lawyers go over it, the public can read and review it, and then it can be presented to the legislature for implementation.
We can say, in effect: "here is the correct solution, please implement it".
Just to get things started, how about the law is implemented not solely for the internet, but as an anti-trust problem? We could have the law enforced by the FTC instead of the FCC, and therefore apply not only to the internet, but other forms of communication and trade as well. (For example: Visa and Mastercard must treat all clients equally, and not deny certain companies from using their services, or charge different per-transaction amounts for different companies.)
And the law should have language that spells out the goals and guidelines, so that it can be used to cover new methods of communication and devices as they are developed in the future.
In short, instead of calling everyone stupid and, basically, just carrying on, how about we do something to actually *fix* the problems?
It can't be that hard, because see is as obvious.
Why not work to actually fix the problems?
They're not eradicating *all* mosquitoes, and no one is suggesting that we eventually do that.
Actually, I would suggest we do just that.
Mosquitoes are part of the food chain, bats eat them.
There no real need to remove the ones that don't bother us, so why go to all the trouble?
So, genocide is OK under certain circumstances, as long as it makes life a tad bit more convenient for ourselves. I'll notify the UN.
Genocide is defined as the killing of a large group of people, especially an ethnic group or nation.
Also, feel free to notify the UN that you think genocide is OK under certain circumstances. Be sure to use your real name.
live mosquitoes, all male, all incapable of producing offspring.
The kind of control you're attempting simply is... it's not possible. If there is one thing the history of evolution has taught us it's that life will not be contained. Life breaks free, it expands to new territories and crashes through barriers, painfully, maybe even dangerously, but, uh... well, there it is.
You're confusing "life" with "a species". Species die out all the time.
Also, you do realize you're quoting a movie as fact, right?
On the one hand, I think that mosquitos should be intentionally driven to extinction. At least the disease baring ones. My understanding is that they don't occupy a vital niche in the food-chain or otherwise in the ecosystem.
On the other hand, I find unregulated ecological engineering by a private company to be quite creepy.
Don't be.
They're not eradicating *all* mosquitoes, and no one is suggesting that we eventually do that.
Aedes aegypti are not native to the area, and first appeared in 2013. Anopheles, the ones that bite humans, are not native to North America.
There are a couple of hundred species of mosquito and we're only targeting the ones that cause us harm, and the ones that are not native.
The other species will re-expand to fill the empty niches.
I think it's pretty well established that life tends to gravitate toward that which will propagate life.
I think we collective don't really stand much of a chance against nature's natural selection.
In the short term, this may reduce mosquitoes, but long term? Probably not. It won't take long for nature to teach the female mosquito to avoid males that don't procreate properly. But this is one case where I hope I'm wrong. I hate those things!
Possibly, but also possibly not.
The US South used to be subject to screw worm fly, a parasite that lays eggs in open sores of livestock and humans. It's been eradicated using the strategy in the OP - many irradiated male screw worms were released into the wild, who would mate with the females, but the eggs would not hatch.
Each time the male flies are released, the probability of successful mating goes down a little. Keep releasing the flies over time, and the probabilities become progressively less and less.
Mathematically speaking the reproductive probabilities never reach zero, but you reach a point where the discrete nature of the insects comes into play. When the last female in an area dies, there is no recovery.
Screw worms have been eliminated from the US for several decades using this method, and the technique has been generally proven as safe. In the irradiation method, you're not releasing anything into the environment that wasn't already there.
Aedes aegypti is becoming resistant to insecticides, and carries the Zika virus.
If you can make the population crash to zero it won't recover, short of reintroducing it.
I'm looking forward to the time when we can start eradicating some of these pests from the world, such as the Anopheles mosquito in the US (which is not native), mongooses in Hawaii, or cane toads in Australia.
A lot of things Mark Zuckerberg says and does make he think he wants to enter politics. Most others will delegate and work on compiled reports - this attempt to reach out to the masses seems very politician like.
I agree that this seems very politician-like.
I've been thinking about this a lot recently, in the frame of who will be running for president in 2000.
Politics is a rough choice, and it takes a very seasoned celebrity to just shrug off the criticism. Add to that the dirty tricks (operation veritas), the completely made-up stories (pizzagate), and the public's general interest in anything that's shocking, unusual, or worthy of memes.
Anyone who bases their self-image in any way on the opinion of others would be completely devastated in a political run. Ross Perot wasn't able to do that, and I'm continuously surprised that Donald Trump could.
Zuckerberg in particular seems too young to have a solid and strong ego, and he doesn't have the experience of politics or celebrity status to fall back on.
While it's a laudable goal, I just don't see Mark Zuckerberg as a viable presidential candidate in the next two or three elections.
I also wonder how much hands-on leadership he has at Facebook. I don't see him as having a vision, and getting people on-board with that vision. Also, I don't see him taking a lot of risks with the company direction.
Contrast with Jeff Bezos, who is taking Amazon in new directions, with some measure of risk, or Elon Musk, who is drawing together a vertically integrated ecosystem of companies. Those two would probably make better political candidates, if they decided to do that.
Politics is a rough choice, and I don't see Mark Zuckerberg fitting in to that lifestyle.
All past presidents have had bad things said about them.
I think there's a difference between saying bad things, and saying false things.
Do you think there's a difference? Should the MSM be allowed to print just any old thing they make up?
Also, I think there's a difference between saying bad things, and saying things that make someone fear for their life.
Do you think there's a difference? Should celebrities be allowed to say they want to kill someone, blow up their house, or kill them in effigy?
...this so-called president is an idiot who is in waaaaaaaaaaaay over his head.
And in the meantime, over 500 VA employees were fired, demoted, or disciplined for incompetence.
Meanwhile, he's quietly getting his agenda passed.
Also of note, Mark Meadows has threatened to shut down the government unless Congress funds the border wall, and if that happens it will be the Democrat's fault!
Also also, Ronna McDaniel wants to delay or cancel the [legislature] August recess unless health care is fixed.
I am *SO* happy that people are outraged over his tweets!
He's so waaaaaaaaay over his head, what with all the winning and such!
Bwaaaah ha ha ha ha!
The president of Poland himself called out the incident as fake.
When the leader of a foreign country calls out your news services for fake news, you think maybe there is something to the claim?
Contrary to some surprising reports my wife did shake hands with Mrs. and Mr. Trump @POTUS after a great visit. Let's FIGHT FAKE NEWS.
— Andrzej Duda (@AndrzejDuda) July 6, 2017
If he's bringing up fake news that basically means two things: Trump & Brexit.
And pizzagate and golden showers and Russian hacking and many, many others too numerous to list.
There's a metric buttload of less important fake news flowing around the MSM nowadays.
Just today a number of MSM outlets(*) report that Polish first lady Agata Kornhauser-Duda snubbed President Donald Trump by refusing to shake his hand during his visit to Poland on Thursday.
Of course, this is trivially debunked by simply looking at the images of the meet.
At this point I'm not even sure why they do it; I mean... is it really effective to falsely report something in an attempt to tear down Trump? Does false reporting advance them towards some goal?
Far right news outlets are calling out all the MSM fakeness, and because of this the integrity of the far right outlets has been steadily rising. That's starting to take a toll on the believability of the MSM.
Are they really going to continue this process of "just making shit up and printing it" until people simply don't believe them any more?
I would think that's a path to disaster, but then again I don't work at a newspaper. Maybe it's all part of some elaborate plan.
(*) WaPo, HuffPo, and Daily Express, among many others
throw your weight behind the 2018 mid terms. Make it clear that they'll be blood at the polls when NN gets struck down.
That is one of those plans that "sounds good, doesn't work".
1) NN is a minor issue that will be lost among much larger issues such as immigration, the economy, and health care.
2) The left, and I'm not saying this as a cheap insult, is in shambles with no obvious path to recovery and lots of potential paths to complete disaster. (Example: legislature is considering investigating Podesta's ties to Russia.)
3) The left has no one showing any sign of leadership today, which will come up in 2018 when we examine the past performances of whoever the party chooses to run. (Also true of the 2020 presidential election.)
The only positive thing I can see about the Democratic party today is the plan to choose their political positions by referendum.
The referendum thing could work, it could generate a solid foundation of positions that the people could support, but it's being presented and run in a low-class manner, and apparently the proposals won't be curated to weed out immature political emotion-baiting.
The 2018 elections will be largely in full swing a year from now, and all of Nancy Pelosi's incoherent ramblings, all of Chuck Schumer's self-victimizing, all of CNN's arrogance (and loss of viewers), and every stupid thing the left does between now and then will be put on display for the entire country to see.
Pity that - I'm all for having the parties compete with each other for effective leadership ideas.
Net Neutrality will get another article or two on Slashdot, nerds will feel a brief sense of outrage at the click-bait headline.
And then we'll move on to something else.
Any chance these companies could get together and, you know, come up with a plan to fix the problem?
How about suggesting a law that congress could pass that would implement net neutrality?
It could be a model of common-sense legislation. It could be vetted by legal teams of several big companies, and distil the knowledge and understanding of a highly technical subject from experts in the field.
It could avoid the underlying problems of the current net-neutrality law, the aspects that got it canned in the first place.
EVEN IF you believe there will be partisan opposition, Democrats could keep the legislation available in case they re-win control of government. It could be a plank in the liberal position for the times to come, something the public could get behind and use as an [albeit minor] rallying point for the party.
Or is it more effective to just publicly come out in opposition of things?
A government of the idiots, by the idiots and for the idiots
A quite sorry, demeaning & undignified depiction of the generous people of the USA.
For this, you should be ashamed of yourself.
The US is the first to lend aid in disasters around the world. We send our aircraft carriers to desalinate water and pass it out for free, and supply power to the hospitals while the local population recovers.
And when the crisis is over we send our aircraft carriers home, without conquering those nations.
We helped Europe deal with Nazi Germany, then poured billions of dollars into efforts at rebuilding the continent. We forgave billions of dollars of that debt, and continue to shoulder more of the bill for ongoing security than other countries (NATO).
We defeated Japan, occupied the country for a short time, rebuilt their infrastructure, and left them largely with their dignity intact. Japan is not a slave nation to the US, nor another US territory, nor do we laugh and deride them for losing.
The US is the worlds policemen, the country everyone looks to stop genocides and gas warfare and tyrants.
We have innumerable private charities that spend money all over the world to help pull people out of poverty and oppression. One past president has just about finished eliminating Guinea worm worldwide.
We have a ton of problems and endlessly debate them in the public eye, but that is by design. We're loud, insulting, and sometimes ignorant and insensitive.
Saying that we're all idiots is fine, that's your right.
But note that we idiots still help out when disasters happen worldwide, and when the disaster is over we come home without conquering anyone.
We're idiots, but compassionate and generous.
Best recognize. And the rest of you just sit your civil war memorial protecting oxycontin using bring back our coal jobs Toby Keith listening asses down.
We got this.
Well, let's just see where your liberal policies have gotten us, shall we?
I was just now reading an article on immigration, which lists 6 quick facts(*) from the immigration report Trump asked for.
This was information largely hidden by the Obama administration, and Trump made it public.
From that report:
Note that this information was basically hidden by Obama: no one knew what was happening, and no one knows how long it was went on (and we probably never will).
To put this simply: When your two kids turn 18 and are trying to get jobs, there is also one immigrant competing for those same jobs.
And it's white collar jobs as well as low-level ones.
So tell me - how will that GDP work out for you, when you're out of a job?
(*) There will be the inevitable idiot claiming that Breitbart isn't a credible source. You may note that the idiot doesn't discredit the story, or the information from the story, or (heavens!) the *source* of the information on which the story is based. Take that as you may.
Genius is a strong word, by which I mean an incorrect one. But it is a clever strategy, which he stumbled upon quite conveniently. If he were the first big personality to discover Twitter, that would have been one thing. This is another thing.
Genius is probably accurate.
No one knows with any certainty, but there were studies during the election about who was smarter. Trump came out somewhere North of 150 in estimated intelligence, as did Hillary Clinton. Both candidates were rated at roughly the same level based on their achievements, scholarship, and writing ability (Trump has a Bachelor of Science).
Calling him any sort of stupid is belied by the fact that he is a self-made billionaire, successful reality TV star, and the current president of the US. On top of that he has a strong family, raised good kids, and has a smart and lovely wife.
Mensa generally accepts an IQ of 140 as genius level, so it seems that both Donald *and* Hillary are well above the genius level.
Does not sound like much of a study. More like a bit of a theory.
Yep. Researchers find a trend in the data, then rationalize an explanation and present it as "theory".
I'll propose an alternate explanation for the data.
People are tired of being told what to think, the outlets have been telling people what to think in the strongest possible terms, and as a result the strength of the words has declined.
Calling someone a liar, fascist, racist, islamophobe, Hitler, Cthulhu, and everything else was so completely over the top(*) that many people simply got used to the terms, thinking that exaggeration was the new normal they applied an internal reverse bias to compensate.
The term "sad" is mild, so when you encounter it you might think the person saying it *isn't* exaggerating, and may be choosing their words carefully. It's the difference between someone saying "I'm uncomfortable" versus "I'm too hot!". Literally, the 2nd phrase implies required action, which isn't usually true (that the action is required), and is taken as exaggeration. The 1st phrase sounds more accurate and reasonable, and gives the impression of truthfulness.
So when Trump says something is "sad", it's in lieu of calling something bad, nasty, stupid, or unconscionable. It comes off as more nuanced, non-exaggerated, and more trustworthy.
That's my theory, and it also fits the data.
Can someone propose a test to distinguish between the two theories?
(*) If you don't think that the recent media coverage was over the top, consider Breitbart's enormous jump in readership in recent months, [Democrat minority leader] Nancy Pelosi is desperately trying to shore up support, and CNN is now literally synonymous with the term "fake news". That doesn't happen overnight, nor from isolated events, nor does it happen for no good reason.
Reading the settlement agreement provides the following disbursement
As further described in this Agreement, the Settlement Fund shall be used by the Settlement Administrator to pay for:
(a) all reasonable Administrative Expenses;
(b) the Taxes described in Sections 3;
(c) Service Payments award by the Court, as described in Section 11;
(d) attorneys’ fees and costs approved by the Court, as described in Section 12;
(e) Credit Services as described in Section 4;
(f) Alternative Compensation as described in Section 5;
(g)Out-of-Pocket Costs as described in Section 6.
So the fund also covers taxes and administrative expenses, such as putting up a website where class members can go to register to get their money.
People will want to dismiss this "Oh noes, Ethiopia will be poor." But the truth is this is how things go from bad or barely manageable to absolute hell. Civilized societies turn to civil war and in our time feeding grounds for terrorism. The Yucatan peninsula went from 1.2 million people, with scientists, politicians, and surprisingly advanced civilization at the time, to just over 100k in less than 100 years. Drought was a big part of that.
Imagine what kind of havoc had to have happened for 9/10 of your friends and family to not have descendants. That's serious war and hell, and we see our own human history showing that we're not good at these long term planning challenges. The funny thing is that there were politicians in the Yucatan, in the beginning, that tried to get people to change farming practices to cope with the changing climate, but they were always immediately voted out of office because it would have affected profits.
So laugh and dismiss all you want, but vote for leaders that take this seriously and plan properly.
(Emphasis mine)
Sorry, I read that and just laughed out loud! Cats and dogs living together! Bwa ha ha ha.... !
Seriously.
Do you have any hard evidence to cite? Something without, for example, emotional content?