Interesting. You were modded +4 Insightful for suggesting that we power a desalinization plant by mixing fresh water with salt water. Slashdot really does manage to surprise me every day.
People who fiddle with their phones aren't filming you.
Ummm, how do you know that? Most smartphones now have cameras built in. How do you know they're not recording while holding the phone up to "fiddle" with them?
I know Americans don't want to hear this... but a large gap between rich and poor is BAD for society.
Systems in which the gap between the rich and poor is kept small by government fiat have been tried. It's called communism, and it has failed miserably.
CEO salaries are set by the board of directors, not the workers or even the shareholders. Exec wages are high because the boards are stacked with people rubbing each others backs.
The Board of Directors is elected by the shareholders as a whole. If the company is running inefficiently because the Board is giving unreasonably high salaries to the execs, then the Board will be voted out, or the company will be ripe for a hostile takeover (which is basically the same thing: a majority of shareholders votes out the current Board.)
To the GPL or Free Software Foundation folks, they want to write software that is free as in free speech. You can copy it, and distribute it, but you can't restrict other people's rights to copy it and distribute it. Just like I can't hand out a copy of the US Constitution or a speech by Abraham Lincoln and forbid other people from sharing it or publishing a copy. Free as in Freedom of the software
Actually, since both the US Constitution Lincoln's speeches are now out of copyright, you can use them verbatim in a larger work, such as a novel, and restrict further copying/distribution of that novel. That's exactly how BSD licensed software works, but not GPL. If the Constitution were licensed like the GPL, and I quoted it in a novel (assuming the quote were long enough to not be covered by the fair use exemption) then I would have to release my entire novel under the GPL as well. So your example really doesn't support your argument, but rather the opposite.
Yes, we can all look it up, but would it have killed the submitter or editors to mention in the summary, even with a sentence or two, what the heck WxWidgets actually is?
To the guys doing it, there was no difference between the virtual and a real girl. Your point is meaningless in the context of the comment you are replying to.
I guess it depends on what you think a criminal justice system should be for. If it's to put away people who have bad thoughts, then I would agree with your point; if it's to put away people who have actually done harm, then I think my point is valid. I happen to believe it should be for the latter.
Asking a 10 year old to get naked isn't a gray area, this isn't a case where a 16 or 17 (or even 15) year old "looked old enough"; this is absolutely a (virtual) child these turkeys are trying to use for their own thrills. More like this and fewer child porno cases against cartoons are what is needed.
I see you put the word "virtual" in parenthesis, perhaps hoping we wouldn't notice it, or if we did, think it really isn't relevant. But if you remove the word "virtual" entirely, then you're making a blatantly false statement, if you remove the parentheses, then you're making a true, but ridiculous statement. Very clever of you, but I doubt it will work on most Slashdot readers.
What are they charged with? "Molesting under age pixels"?
In many countries, including the U.S., it is unlawful to attempt to solicit sex or sexual activity from a minor, and it is not a defense if the target is in actuality not a minor, as long as the accused believes him or her to be such. Since it is impossible to prove a belief, a reasonable person test is usually employed: would a reasonable person, under those circumstances, believe they are communicating with a minor. This is how adult police, masquerading as children online, are able to conduct sting operations against potential predators. In this case, they merely substitute computers for police.
why we're trying to over-complicate this? Take the odometer reading at annual inspection and be done with it.
Problem is, this will encourage people to mess with their odometers. Right now it is illegal to sell a car if you know the odometer has been tampered with and you fail to disclose this to the potential buyer (it is a form of fraud). It is fairly rare for people to actually do this, since mileage is only one factor in determining the value of a car and it simply isn't worth the risk/trouble for people to set back their odometers.
If people are taxed substantially for their odometer readings, however, there will be a much greater incentive for people to do this (for instance, by disconnecting their speedometer cable when driving). This would mean, among other things, that buyers of used cars will often have false information about the car's mileage when making a purchase decision.
But the people who programmed her do. She's just (well) designed to *appear* to have it.
But is there really any difference between having free will and appearing to have free will? Or, put another way, is there really any difference between the illusion of free will and free will? Is "free will" even a clearly defined concept? Some philosophers think not.
and someone is going to say 'oops' in a few years, when we wipe out all or part of life on earth.
We're certainly not going to wipe out all life on earth. What we might do is change all life on earth. And as has always happened in the past, something newer and better will evolve to fill the vacuum. I, for one, am excited about the new future. Hopefully it will contain something better than humans.
You may want to read about herd immunity. We need a certain percentage of the population to be vaccinated to protect everyone against the disease, including those who cannot have the vaccination. Leaving it up to everyone to decide for themselves what they want to do won't work. We don't let people decide what side of the road to drive on, now do we?
Yes, I've heard of "herd immunity", but I don't believe people should be treated like cattle. And I don't believe it's right to force a medical procedure on someone for the good of someone else. Thank God I live in America. I chose to get vaccinated, but it was MY choice (and my parent's choice when I was a child.)
It's unfortunate they made the issue out to be the efficacy of the vaccine and not the moral implications about forcing medication on people against their will. I, like most, believe the autism-MMR link is pure nonsense, but I do believe it must be every person's right to refuse medical treatment, including vaccines. (In the case of children, parents sometimes need to make decisions on their behalf, of course, but it shouldn't be the government making those decisions.) Of course, an exception to that rule can be made if people want the privilege of traveling to certain foreign countries which are known to harbor specific diseases, but otherwise, it should be up to parents, or adults to make these decisions, wrong though they may be.
The U.S. has been scoring poorly relative to other countries for decades now, and continues to be the world leader in innovation and productivity
Imagine what we, as a nation, could achieve if we were well educated.
Probably about the same as other better educated countries. Americans are not genetically superior beings, nor is our country specially blessed by any deity. One of the reasons we don't score as well as some other countries is because we don't spend as much time in school. Very few other countries have two month summer vacations, for instance. And, at least for me, summer vacation was the time I was most creative and had the most active imagination. I believe those qualities are essential for innovation. (Remember, Thomas Edison had only three weeks of formal schooling.) Chinese students, on the other hand, spend almost every waking moment in school or doing school work. And although they score very well on international tests, employers frequently complain they don't think outside the box, or innovate as well as their American counterparts.
Oddly enough, success in today's economy (or any other day's for that matter) doesn't depend very strongly on how well you perform on a multiple choice test. The U.S. has been scoring poorly relative to other countries for decades now, and continues to be the world leader in innovation and productivity. It is no coincidence that Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Google, etc., etc. are all American companies, or that the Internet was created in America, not to mention the personal computer, integrated circuits and transistors. Or GPS, or air travel, or (going back a bit) the light bulb and audio recording. Most of the things that make the world the way it is today come from America. And yet we keep scoring worse than the Finns on multiple choice international math tests. I don't think I'll lose any sleep over it.
No matter how much the police officer may wish to testify that information you gave him leads him to believe you are innocent, he is expressly prohibited from doing so.
That's simply false. Just watch the George Zimmerman trial.
The problem is that civilian GPS firmware prohibits the device from giving a fix if it is above a certain altitude (around 60,000 feet) and moving faster that about mach 1. This makes it useless for midcourse guidance of a rocket, which is the point.
Is someone with the technical abilities to build a guided missile really going to be deterred by the fact that off the shelf civilian GPS firmware is crippled in this way? The specifications for the GPS system are publicly available and many manufacturers have successfully used them to build GPS receivers, so it can't be rocket science (pun intended). And even if one were to use off the shelf GPS components, how hard would it be to modify the firmware? Firmware is just software stored in some type of read only or flash memory. Would it be that hard to download, inspect and modify it? It seems to me it would be about as hard as removing copy protection from a game.
Social media breeds the lifestyle where privacy is just putting clothes on; all else is fair game. Although, I do use Facebook and Google+ myself, I'm careful what I post
You'd better be careful about what others post about you as well. Simply having an account allows you to be tagged. Right now, Facebook allows you to disallow those tags, but that policy could change at any time. Frankly, it's safest not to have a Facebook account at all if you care about privacy.
This has GOT to be a troll. I'm sure ANYONE reading Slashdot knows that Star Wars was created by George Lucas not Steven Spielberg. PLEASE tell me you're trolling.
Slashdot Mirror
Interesting. You were modded +4 Insightful for suggesting that we power a desalinization plant by mixing fresh water with salt water. Slashdot really does manage to surprise me every day.
People who fiddle with their phones aren't filming you.
Ummm, how do you know that? Most smartphones now have cameras built in. How do you know they're not recording while holding the phone up to "fiddle" with them?
I know Americans don't want to hear this... but a large gap between rich and poor is BAD for society.
Systems in which the gap between the rich and poor is kept small by government fiat have been tried. It's called communism, and it has failed miserably.
CEO salaries are set by the board of directors, not the workers or even the shareholders. Exec wages are high because the boards are stacked with people rubbing each others backs.
The Board of Directors is elected by the shareholders as a whole. If the company is running inefficiently because the Board is giving unreasonably high salaries to the execs, then the Board will be voted out, or the company will be ripe for a hostile takeover (which is basically the same thing: a majority of shareholders votes out the current Board.)
How about making them answerable to the workers?
When the workers start paying the CEO's salary, then he/she absolutely should be answerable to them.
To the GPL or Free Software Foundation folks, they want to write software that is free as in free speech. You can copy it, and distribute it, but you can't restrict other people's rights to copy it and distribute it. Just like I can't hand out a copy of the US Constitution or a speech by Abraham Lincoln and forbid other people from sharing it or publishing a copy. Free as in Freedom of the software
Actually, since both the US Constitution Lincoln's speeches are now out of copyright, you can use them verbatim in a larger work, such as a novel, and restrict further copying/distribution of that novel. That's exactly how BSD licensed software works, but not GPL. If the Constitution were licensed like the GPL, and I quoted it in a novel (assuming the quote were long enough to not be covered by the fair use exemption) then I would have to release my entire novel under the GPL as well. So your example really doesn't support your argument, but rather the opposite.
True. "He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom."
Yes, we can all look it up, but would it have killed the submitter or editors to mention in the summary, even with a sentence or two, what the heck WxWidgets actually is?
To the guys doing it, there was no difference between the virtual and a real girl. Your point is meaningless in the context of the comment you are replying to.
I guess it depends on what you think a criminal justice system should be for. If it's to put away people who have bad thoughts, then I would agree with your point; if it's to put away people who have actually done harm, then I think my point is valid. I happen to believe it should be for the latter.
Asking a 10 year old to get naked isn't a gray area, this isn't a case where a 16 or 17 (or even 15) year old "looked old enough"; this is absolutely a (virtual) child these turkeys are trying to use for their own thrills. More like this and fewer child porno cases against cartoons are what is needed.
I see you put the word "virtual" in parenthesis, perhaps hoping we wouldn't notice it, or if we did, think it really isn't relevant. But if you remove the word "virtual" entirely, then you're making a blatantly false statement, if you remove the parentheses, then you're making a true, but ridiculous statement. Very clever of you, but I doubt it will work on most Slashdot readers.
What are they charged with? "Molesting under age pixels"?
In many countries, including the U.S., it is unlawful to attempt to solicit sex or sexual activity from a minor, and it is not a defense if the target is in actuality not a minor, as long as the accused believes him or her to be such. Since it is impossible to prove a belief, a reasonable person test is usually employed: would a reasonable person, under those circumstances, believe they are communicating with a minor. This is how adult police, masquerading as children online, are able to conduct sting operations against potential predators. In this case, they merely substitute computers for police.
Because Java allows native access to USB hardware.
Maybe that's a darn good reason for requiring people to authorize Java applets manually!
why we're trying to over-complicate this? Take the odometer reading at annual inspection and be done with it.
Problem is, this will encourage people to mess with their odometers. Right now it is illegal to sell a car if you know the odometer has been tampered with and you fail to disclose this to the potential buyer (it is a form of fraud). It is fairly rare for people to actually do this, since mileage is only one factor in determining the value of a car and it simply isn't worth the risk/trouble for people to set back their odometers.
If people are taxed substantially for their odometer readings, however, there will be a much greater incentive for people to do this (for instance, by disconnecting their speedometer cable when driving). This would mean, among other things, that buyers of used cars will often have false information about the car's mileage when making a purchase decision.
For anyone operating a VPN mail or other communications in any country you should consider that your government can compel you to produce information.
True. Is anyone here old enough to remember anon.penet.fi?
But the people who programmed her do. She's just (well) designed to *appear* to have it.
But is there really any difference between having free will and appearing to have free will? Or, put another way, is there really any difference between the illusion of free will and free will? Is "free will" even a clearly defined concept? Some philosophers think not.
and someone is going to say 'oops' in a few years, when we wipe out all or part of life on earth.
We're certainly not going to wipe out all life on earth. What we might do is change all life on earth. And as has always happened in the past, something newer and better will evolve to fill the vacuum. I, for one, am excited about the new future. Hopefully it will contain something better than humans.
You may want to read about herd immunity. We need a certain percentage of the population to be vaccinated to protect everyone against the disease, including those who cannot have the vaccination. Leaving it up to everyone to decide for themselves what they want to do won't work. We don't let people decide what side of the road to drive on, now do we?
Yes, I've heard of "herd immunity", but I don't believe people should be treated like cattle. And I don't believe it's right to force a medical procedure on someone for the good of someone else. Thank God I live in America. I chose to get vaccinated, but it was MY choice (and my parent's choice when I was a child.)
It's unfortunate they made the issue out to be the efficacy of the vaccine and not the moral implications about forcing medication on people against their will. I, like most, believe the autism-MMR link is pure nonsense, but I do believe it must be every person's right to refuse medical treatment, including vaccines. (In the case of children, parents sometimes need to make decisions on their behalf, of course, but it shouldn't be the government making those decisions.) Of course, an exception to that rule can be made if people want the privilege of traveling to certain foreign countries which are known to harbor specific diseases, but otherwise, it should be up to parents, or adults to make these decisions, wrong though they may be.
The U.S. has been scoring poorly relative to other countries for decades now, and continues to be the world leader in innovation and productivity
Imagine what we, as a nation, could achieve if we were well educated.
Probably about the same as other better educated countries. Americans are not genetically superior beings, nor is our country specially blessed by any deity. One of the reasons we don't score as well as some other countries is because we don't spend as much time in school. Very few other countries have two month summer vacations, for instance. And, at least for me, summer vacation was the time I was most creative and had the most active imagination. I believe those qualities are essential for innovation. (Remember, Thomas Edison had only three weeks of formal schooling.) Chinese students, on the other hand, spend almost every waking moment in school or doing school work. And although they score very well on international tests, employers frequently complain they don't think outside the box, or innovate as well as their American counterparts.
Oddly enough, success in today's economy (or any other day's for that matter) doesn't depend very strongly on how well you perform on a multiple choice test. The U.S. has been scoring poorly relative to other countries for decades now, and continues to be the world leader in innovation and productivity. It is no coincidence that Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Google, etc., etc. are all American companies, or that the Internet was created in America, not to mention the personal computer, integrated circuits and transistors. Or GPS, or air travel, or (going back a bit) the light bulb and audio recording. Most of the things that make the world the way it is today come from America. And yet we keep scoring worse than the Finns on multiple choice international math tests. I don't think I'll lose any sleep over it.
No matter how much the police officer may wish to testify that information you gave him leads him to believe you are innocent, he is expressly prohibited from doing so.
That's simply false. Just watch the George Zimmerman trial.
The problem is that civilian GPS firmware prohibits the device from giving a fix if it is above a certain altitude (around 60,000 feet) and moving faster that about mach 1. This makes it useless for midcourse guidance of a rocket, which is the point.
Is someone with the technical abilities to build a guided missile really going to be deterred by the fact that off the shelf civilian GPS firmware is crippled in this way? The specifications for the GPS system are publicly available and many manufacturers have successfully used them to build GPS receivers, so it can't be rocket science (pun intended). And even if one were to use off the shelf GPS components, how hard would it be to modify the firmware? Firmware is just software stored in some type of read only or flash memory. Would it be that hard to download, inspect and modify it? It seems to me it would be about as hard as removing copy protection from a game.
Social media breeds the lifestyle where privacy is just putting clothes on; all else is fair game. Although, I do use Facebook and Google+ myself, I'm careful what I post
You'd better be careful about what others post about you as well. Simply having an account allows you to be tagged. Right now, Facebook allows you to disallow those tags, but that policy could change at any time. Frankly, it's safest not to have a Facebook account at all if you care about privacy.
The difference is you can turn OFF your cellphone when you go somewhere you don't want people knowing about.
I will sue you !!
This has GOT to be a troll. I'm sure ANYONE reading Slashdot knows that Star Wars was created by George Lucas not Steven Spielberg. PLEASE tell me you're trolling.